Reborn ac-4

by F. Paul Wilson

  Besides, even as she stood here, all her emotions seemed to be running out of her. An endless tunnel had opened inside her. All her feelings seemed to be flowing down its black length toward a yawning, bottomless pit, leaving her empty, cool, controlled.

  "Carol!" Bill cried. "Thank God you're all right!"

  She started toward him, then saw Brother Robert's body with the bloody crucifix jutting from his heart.

  I don't know who should be thanked, she thought, but I've got a funny feeling it's not God!

  She looked away and darted behind Bill's chair.

  "What happened in there?" he said, trying to look at her over his shoulder as her shaking fingers worked at the knots.

  Carol experienced another of those sudden surges of hatred for Bill, a blazing rage that urged her to take a length of clothesline and strangle him with it. It frightened her. She shook it off.

  "Grace is dead."

  "I mean, to you. Are you okay?"

  "I'll never be the same," she said, "but I'm okay, and so's the baby."

  "Good!"

  Oh, I hope it's good!

  "What about… Emma?" he said.

  "Gone. Like Grace. Both gone." A sob built in her throat, but she forced it down the tunnel.

  Finally the knot at the back came free and she began to unwind the rope from around Bill's chest. As the coils loosened, he managed to pull an arm free.

  "I'll get the rest," he said. "See if you can get Jonah started."

  Jonah… she almost had forgotten about him. He'd been so quiet. She turned toward her father-in-law and hesitated. He was sitting calmly in his chair, smiling at her. She pushed herself forward and knelt beside him to work on the knots.

  "You did good!" he whispered.

  "I didn't do anything."

  "Yes, you did. You kept strong. You kept the baby. That's all that matters."

  Carol looked into his eyes. He was right. Her baby—Jim's and hers. That was all that really mattered.

  "We've got to get away," he said, still whispering.

  "We?"

  "Yes. You've got to hide. I can help. I can take you south. To Arkansas."

  "Arkansas?"

  "Ever been there?"

  "No." In fact, Carol couldn't even remember if she had ever said the word before this.

  "We'll keep on the move. Never stay in one place long enough for them to gather strength against the baby."

  "But why? Why do they want to hurt him?"

  She searched Jonah's face for an answer, but there was nothing written there.

  "You heard them," he said. "They think he's the devil."

  "After what just happened, I wonder if they may be right," she muttered.

  "Don't say that!" Jonah hissed. "He's your baby! Part of your flesh! It's your bound duty to protect him!"

  Carol was stunned by his vehemence. He seemed genuinely concerned for the child. Maybe that was because he and Emma had never had a natural child of their own. But Emma was dead, murdered, and he didn't seem to care. All his concern was focused on the child. Why?

  "I'll go to the police," she said.

  "How can you be sure some of them won't be involved with these fool Chosen? Or won't join up later?"

  The thought was chilling. This was becoming a paranoid nightmare.

  "Here," Bill said, dropping to her side. "Let me finish those."

  Carol noticed that his hands were shaking too. She resisted the urge to claw at his face as he worked on Jonah's knots. These irrational bursts of hatred for Bill—she didn't understand them, but she wouldn't let them control her. She would dominate them. She would learn to control everything in her life now.

  She stood and walked to the bay window to stare out at the clearing sky. She felt as if she were in the center of a great whirlwind, and she desperately wished she knew which way to turn, where to go. The sun was low, shining through a break in the clouds on the horizon. The air was cold again. She clutched her arms across her chest and tried to rub away the chill.

  And suddenly felt her blood freeze.

  23

  As he loosened the last of the knots that bound Jonah Stevens, Bill heard a low moan, a tragic mixture of shock and pain. He glanced up and saw Carol standing by the bay window. Her back was to him and she was swaying back and forth, as if she were standing on the deck of a ship in a storm.

  "Carol? Are you all right?"

  He saw her stiffen. She turned to him, her hands thrust stiffly into the pockets of her sundress, her face a deathly white.

  "No," she said in a soft, hoarse voice. "I may never be all right again."

  She looked as if she were about to keel over any minute. He rushed to her side and took her arm.

  "Here. Sit down."

  She shook off his hand, then lowered herself to the window seat where she sat with her shoulders hunched, trembling. She looked up at him; her attempt at a smile was awful.

  "I'm okay," she said.

  Bill didn't believe her, so he went to the phone and lifted the receiver.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Jonah said in a low voice.

  "Calling the police."

  Bill saw a look pass between Carol and Jonah. What had they been whispering about while she'd been working on his knots?

  "I don't think that's such a good idea," Carol said.

  Bill didn't want to argue with her. He too was shaking all over, inside and out. He had seen things today he never would be able to explain, had never dreamed possible. He needed the police here to impose some order, some semblance of a sane reality.

  He put the receiver to his ear. There was no dial tone.

  "Line's dead, anyway," Bill said. "But what's wrong with the police?"

  "They might be involved."

  That was preposterous. "I can't—"

  "Bill, will you drive us to the airport?"

  "Who?"

  "Jonah and me. I've got to hide for now. It's the only way I can be sure of being safe, of saving my baby."

  "I can help her disappear," Jonah said.

  He glanced at Jonah and saw him nodding. He remembered the complete lack of emotion as his wife was murdered before his eyes. The man was a snake! Bill couldn't let Carol go with him.

  "No! It's crazy! This can all be straightened out! The police can round up these nuts and—"

  "Jonah can drive me," she said, "or I can drive myself. But I'm going now, and I'd like you to come along. I may never see you again."

  Bill stared at Carol. She had changed. Whatever iron had been scattered through her personality in the past had been drawn together and tempered to a solid, steely core by what had happened to her today. Her eyes looked out at him with unswayable determination. He felt so damn helpless!

  Bill forced the words out. "Okay. I'll drive you."

  Maybe he could change her mind on the way.

  24

  Carol faced Bill at the Eastern Airlines gate.

  "Time to go," she said.

  She felt scared and alone. Jonah was going to be with her, but that was like being alone. Yet she could see no other way. Head south where things weren't so organized, get lost in between the small towns—that was the plan.

  "Will you be all right?" Bill said, his eyes searching her face.

  She hid her real feelings from him. He had been trying to talk her out of this since they had left Monroe, but she had no choice. She had to go.

  "I think so. We'll buy a car once we reach Atlanta, then we'll drive off. I suppose we can be easily traced as far as Atlanta. After that, Jonah promises we'll be almost impossible to find."

  And that was just what she wanted right now. She was going to have her baby and raise him in peace and quiet. And no one was going to stop her.

  She watched Bill glance over to where Jonah was standing by the ramp, waiting to board with her. When Bill looked back at her, his expression was stricken, his eyes full of foreboding.

  "I don't trust him, Carol," he said in a low voice. "He's hiding some
thing. Don't go with him."

  "I have to, Bill." She didn't particularly trust Jonah herself but knew he would protect her and the baby.

  "Does he know what he's doing?"

  "I think so. I hope so."

  She saw Bill's hands curl into fists of frustration as he said, "God, I wish there was something I could do!"

  They stood in silence for a moment, then Bill spoke in an even lower voice. He seemed to fumble for the words.

  "Carol… what happened back at the Hanley place?"

  She did her best to keep her expression neutral, blocking out the horrors of the afternoon. She'd work them out later.

  "You know," she said. "You were there."

  "Emma was dead, Carol. As dead as can be. I know. I sat there looking at her unblinking eyes and her motionless chest before they covered her up. Yet she got up and killed two people."

  "Then I guess she wasn't dead."

  She knew how cold that sounded, but she couldn't help it. This was the only way she could deal with any of what had happened and what might yet come.

  "She was dead, Carol. But she got up and saved you and your baby from your aunt. That wasn't Emma in Emma's body. It was someone else—something else. What's going on here?"

  Something wants to kill my baby; and something else is trying to protect it!

  This was the first time she had allowed the idea to put itself into words, and the bald truth of it terrified her. But the truth was there, staring at her, and she had to face it.

  And she had to choose sides.

  There was a monstrous struggle going on, and she seemed to be at the heart of it. She dreaded the thought of which side of that struggle might be protecting her child. But no matter what the nature of her ally, there was no question with which side she would align herself.

  She would choose for her baby, now and forever.

  "I don't know what's going on, Bill. All I know is that my baby was threatened, and now he's been saved. That's all I care about at the moment."

  "I care about that too," he said. "But I've got to know more." Another glance over his shoulder at Jonah. "I bet he knows more than he's saying."

  "Maybe he does. Maybe he'll tell me." Although she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

  "We're being used," Bill said suddenly.

  Carol didn't let him see that she instantly knew exactly what he meant.

  She said, "I don't understand."

  "Jim, you, me, Grace, Emma, that monk, even Jonah over there—I don't know it but I feel it: We've all been used like pawns in some sort of game. And the game's not over yet."

  "No," she said with leaden certainty. "It's not."

  Suddenly she felt another of those inexplicable bursts of rage at him. Run out of facile rationalizations, smart ass? The words very nearly escaped her before she bit them back.

  The loudspeaker announced the last call for passengers to board the Eastern flight to Atlanta.

  "Gotta go," she said quickly, forcing good feelings for Bill to the surface. "Tell the police whatever you know, or as much as you dare."

  "I guess this is good-bye, then," Bill said. "Let me hear from you once in a while, to know that you're safe."

  He reached for her hand, but she embraced him instead, kissing him on the cheek.

  "I'll be in touch."

  And she would. She fully intended to return to New York sporadically for brief periods to answer any police questions about the three corpses in the mansion and to settle any problems regarding the estate. Once the baby was born, she was going to use Jim's inherited fortune to insulate their child from any and all outside threats. She would make the money grow, and one day it would all go to him.

  Turning, she hurried to join Jonah where he waited by the boarding ramp.

  Twenty-four

  1

  The setting sun had gained some borrowed time up here, miles in the air. It shone redly through the oval window at her shoulder. Jonah sat on her left, head back, eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. He could have been either dozing or praying. Carol doubted it was either.

  She allowed herself to relax just a little. She let her shoulders sag to ease the tension in them but kept her hands balled into fists. The Chosen were below and behind her. She and the baby were up here, out of their reach. Things were under control for the moment.

  Suddenly she felt a chill. A frozen, crystalline locus was expanding deep within her, sucking the heat from her tissues. Quickly it grew, taking her over, radiating icy malevolence. It coursed through her limbs. Sheer viciousness shot from her, streaking outward and down, bathing the globe below.

  2

  Below and to the south, in Memphis, a burly white man watches Martin Luther King speaking on the news. He doesn't listen to the words. He doesn't have to. Always the same damn thing. He hates these uppity niggers making trouble everywhere, especially in the South, hates all of them, but most of all he hates this one with his Nobel Peace prize and his ability to get his face on the TV screen and into everybody's home whenever he wants.

  And now, in this instant, the man decides that he's had all he can take. He ain't gonna sit back and grouse any more like some pissant wimp. He's gonna do something about it.

  He goes to the closet, pulls out his rifle, and begins to clean it.

  3

  Far to the east, in Bengal, a one-armed man who is far older than he looks suddenly dreams of the burned ruins of an ancient temple and decides, despite his many numerous futile attempts in the past, to search once more for a large mottled egg that may lie hidden there.

  4

  To the west, in Los Angeles, a Jordanian student watches once more the news footage of Robert F. Kennedy announcing his intention to seek the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. He has searched the channels all day, watching the footage over and over. It seems amazing and somehow sinful to him that a man would seek the same post as his assassinated brother. A half-formed plan abruptly coalesces into firm determination.

  He forms his hand into the shape of a gun and points the finger-barrel at the grinning image of RFK. His voice is barely a whisper. "Bang bang."

  5

  Farther to the west, in Indochina, an ancient primordial force, known to the locals as Dat-tay-vao, begins a slow, meandering journey that will bring it halfway around the world to the United States.

  Interlude on Central Park West—III

  Mr. Veilleur stares out his apartment window at the growing darkness, thinking.

  The Chosen have failed. He doesn't need to call anyone to know that. He has sensed the burgeoning strength of his ancient enemy, and that is enough. The enemy is leaving for now, and the woman carrying him is alerted and will be on guard. He will be born, and with no one to oppose him, his power will grow. With luck he will not 'realize that he is unopposed, so he will remain cautious. The world will be safe until he grows to manhood.

  Mr. Veilleur turns and glances at his wife, busy setting the table for Sunday dinner.

  And then he'll come for us—but mostly for me.

  For himself, he doesn't care much. He has lived long enough. But what of the world? What of the horrors the enemy will bring about when he comes of age?

  Ah, well. That will be someone else's problem. And it will be a couple of decades hence. Maybe he and the wife will be lucky.

  Maybe they'll be dead by then.

  Epilogue

  As suddenly as it had begun, the dark radiance diminished, shrinking to a cold, tight, hard little knot, and then it was gone. Carol shuddered.

  Oh God, what's happening to me?

  She looked at Jonah. She found him staring at her, smiling and nodding, his eyes aglow.

  "I…I have to go to the bathroom," she said. She was feeling weak and nauseated. She didn't want to be sick on the floor.

  He hopped out of his seat and stood in the aisle to let her by. As she rose, the cabin seemed to spin around her. A passing stewardess reached for her outstretched hand to steady her, but Carol pull
ed it away and clenched it into a fist between her breasts. She wasn't letting anyone touch her hands until she'd had a chance to shave off the fine little hairs she had found sprouting from her palms a few hours ago.

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