The Blood of the Lamb

by Thomas F Monteleone

  Billy tried to take a swing at Peter with his good hand, but he blocked it easily, and grabbed the wrist of the boy’s burned hand. Slowly, Peter stretched out with his index finger toward the charred flesh. Terrified, Billy tried to pull away, but Peter’s movement was inexorable, determined.

  When he touched the boy’s ruined palm, the now familiar aura shimmered like blue neon. Tears burst from the boy’s eyes as he watched and felt his bums healing. After a moment, Peter withdrew his finger; the flesh was whole and pink. He glanced over at Daniel and Marion. The Jesuit’s face was a mask of stolid acceptance. Marion looked like she might start crying.

  “My hand!” Billy sobbed out the words through his tears. He dropped to his knees, unable to stop looking at his rejuvenated skin. “My hand…! Jeez, mister, who are you?” There was no anger in his voice now, only awe.

  “Praise Jesus!” cried the store clerk as she bustled out from behind the counter to grab the boy’s hand. “Praise the Lord Jesus! We’ve seen a miracle!”

  Billy’s girlfriend pulled away from Marion, and slid down beside him. Grabbing his hand, seeing its healthy glow, she too began whimpering.

  “How’d you do that, man?”

  “It’s a miracle!” crowed the red-haired woman as she wiped her hands nervously on her apron. “It’s a sign from the Lord!”

  Billy and Laureen stood up slowly. The boy cleared his throat and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his leather jacket. He looked down at the still cooling lump of steel, then up at Peter and half-smiled. “I’m sorry, man. For what I did before. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.”

  Peter nodded. “I know you are. But why did you do it?”

  “Just got married,” Billy said, looking down at his shoes.

  “Billy, shut up!” hissed his wife.

  “I lost my job. We needed money. Bad.”

  “Bad enough to shoot somebody?”

  Billy grinned self-consciously; there was a rough-edged handsomeness about him. “Hell, it wasn’t even loaded…I just didn’t have any place left to turn, you know?”

  Peter nodded. “I understand.”

  Billy looked at him squarely once again. “I got a real funny feelin’ when I first saw you. What’re you, like Superman or somethin’?”

  Peter smiled, put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He was basically a good kid, driven by desperation. Peter had seen many people with the same look in their eyes.

  “Billy,” he said softly, “I don’t know who or what I am just yet. But I plan to find out.”

  “You’re a miracle-worker, that’s what you are, mister,” said the counter clerk. “I never seen nothin’ like that. Our pastor says the Millennium’s comin’ and that there’ll be signs and portents—just like what you done. You’re a sign, mister!”

  Peter looked at Billy, smiled. “Why don’t you clean up the mess you made.”

  Billy nodded, turned to pick up the bag full of pilfered goods, then looked back at him. “What am I gonna do? We don’t have any money. No place to live.”

  Without thinking, Peter heard himself say, “You can come with us.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  Peter shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Daniel moved close to him, whispered softly, “You sure you want to do this?”

  Peter looked at him and shrugged. Turning to the store clerk, he asked: “Any place nearby to camp?”

  “Take 219 north to Treasure Lake. Lots of campgrounds around there,” said the woman. He found the bright light burning behind her eyes a bit zealous.

  Peter looked at Billy and Laureen. “Know where she’s talking about?”

  Billy nodded hesitantly.

  “Want to lead us up there?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said the boy, shrugging.

  “Okay, then,” said Peter. “Clean this place up for the lady and meet us outside.”

  “Yes sir,” said Billy.

  Marion and Daniel followed Peter out to the gas pumps.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” said Marion as she unlatched the nozzle and inserted it into the side of the Mazda. She pushed her long hair back from her face. Peter thought she looked harried and confused. “Are you sure we can trust them?”

  “No, but they seem like okay kids. Just scared and crazy. Kind of like us, really.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t try to rob anybody with a gun,” said Daniel.

  Peter smiled. “Hey, who knows what we might have to do before we’re through.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” said Marion. “It frightens me.”

  “Sorry…” Peter touched her shoulder for a moment. He felt comfortable being close to her. It was a new experience for him.

  “It looks like you’ve gotten some control over…over what you can do,” said Daniel.

  “Yeah,” said Peter. “I think so. It’s not something I can really think about, though. I have to kind of just let it happen.”

  Daniel nodded. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Marion topped off the tank and returned to the store to pay the clerk just as Billy and Laureen came outside. They climbed aboard the big Harley and Billy kicked in the engine.

  “You gonna follow me?!” he yelled above the barely muffled purr of the twin cams.

  Peter nodded and waved. Marion returned with the red-haired clerk. The big woman in the apron approached him, held out her hand. “Mister, I just wanna thank you for what you did. It was a sign from God, I know it was. I always knew I would witness a miracle before I died, and I wanna thank you for it—whoever you are.”

  “My name is Peter,” he said, smiling and gently shaking her hand.

  “I’m Gretta Stowe. Thank you so much, Peter.” She was staring at him with what could only be called adoration. It made him damned uncomfortable.

  Marion keyed the Mazda’s ignition, and he used the sound as a cue to break contact. “Good-bye, Ms. Stowe.”

  Billy cranked on the Harley and the maroon bike lurched crazily from the gravel lot onto Route 219.

  Gretta Stowe watched Peter as he settled into the car’s passenger seat and Marion let out the clutch. The red-haired woman cupped her hands to her mouth and yelled: “Praise the Lord!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Du Bois, Pennsylvania—Ellington

  * * *

  August 29, 1998

  Dan had the feeling he was witnessing a historic event. He’d been standing in the back of the Grace Pentecostal Church of God—originally a feed and grain store—for more than an hour, watching and listening to his closest friend talk to about thirty rural souls.

  It didn’t look like anything special. Peter stood before the group, dressed in a pair of jeans and a polo shirt, charming the hell out of them with his big, dark eyes and his natural orator’s voice. He spoke with the right cadence and perfect timbre. It was like hitting a 95-mile-per-hour fastball or taking an S-turn at five gees—some people had the right stuff, some didn’t. Peter definitely did. When he spoke, you couldn’t help but listen.

  Daniel shifted in his metal folding chair and glanced at Marion, who was taking notes in her journalist’s pad. Her little Sony audio recorder was cranking away. She looked at Dan and managed a half-smile—as if to say, What have we gotten ourselves into now?

  Daniel smiled back, then looked toward Peter, who leaned against the side of the pulpit, his left arm casually draped over it. He could have been standing on a street corner, rapping about the latest song. But his small audience, including Billy Clemmons and the sultry, long-haired Laureen, hung on his every word. Daniel shook his head slowly. He wondered if Catholics were still called “Papists” in backwoods places like Du Bois…

  Peter’s discourse was general enough to allay any suspicions of Catholicity. He’d begun the “meeting” by allowing Billy Clemmons and the red-haired woman from the grocery to give witness to the miraculous events of the afternoon. Although Peter disclaimed any responsibility for what had happened, always stressing that he was only a
n instrument in God’s steady hand, Dan could tell the people wanted to hear something different. They loved him, there was no doubt about that. His delivery, the casual, sincere way he involved every member of his audience, made people trust him. He was telling them what they wanted to hear about love and faith and the fear of God as the end of the Second Millennium rolled on.

  For the last year or two, the religious tenor of the country had been changing. People were lapsing into what Dan had termed an apocalyptic mood. A majority of the American population believed that when the century ended, the world would be irrevocably altered. As the years toward the end of the century fell away, the media had mapped a steady increase in church or temple attendance for all the organized religions. Part of the increase could be attributed to the demographic “bulge” of postwar baby-boomers who were now slipping into middle and retirement age and returning to their various faiths. But part of it was due to superstition. Though the world trembled on the threshold of the twenty-first century, most people were as superstitious and insecure as they had been a thousand years before.

  On top of the usual mess was an explosion of fringe organizations, “new” churches, and apocalyptic movements that were springing up like after-the-rain mushrooms. Many were transparent ruses, set up only to capitalize upon people’s natural fears, but some were sincere—and some were dangerously unstable.

  Dan thought the approaching turn of the century might be the most bizarre, the most embarrassing carnival yet foisted upon the people of the world.

  Watching his friend speak, Dan hoped Peter was not doomed to become part of the sideshow.

  He hadn’t wanted Peter to get involved with this little country church. But it would have been hard to turn down the delegation who’d showed up at the Treasure Lake campgrounds several hours back. The grocery clerk had raved to the Grace Church’s pastor and the town’s sheriff, convincing them to pay a visit to the strangers by the lake. Peter had no choice but to accommodate the locals.

  Dan checked his watch and slipped out the door to have a cigarette. He’d been trying to quit for the last year or so—without success, even though he’d started smoking the nicotine-free brands. Obviously his was a psychological rather than a physical or chemical addiction. He smiled to himself…maybe he could just get Peter to zap him with a cure.

  “Well, what do you think of all this?” Marion’s voice drifted to him like a scented breeze. She’d come up beside him so quietly he hadn’t noticed.

  Looking up at the night sky, he was amazed, as he always had been, at the sheer number of stars in this corner of the galaxy. It helped to be up in the Appalachian foothills instead of on a street corner in the Bronx. Back there, Dan mused, if he looked up at night he’d be lucky to see a street light.

  “Well,” he said, “it’ll give me some good material for my what-I-did-on-my-summer-vacation essay.”

  “Yeah, me too. Seriously, though…”

  “Okay. What do I think of all this? Personally, I don’t think we should be doing anything to draw attention to ourselves.” He took a long pull off his cigarette. They didn’t taste much different than the ones laced with good ole Saint Nick.

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Marion. She looked up at the sky, crossed her arms under her breasts. A small silence passed between them, then: “Have you been listening to him?”

  Dan smiled. “Yeah, he’s pretty convincing. That boy surely do have a silver tongue, don’t he?”

  She laughed. “What made you become a priest, Dan?”

  “Changing the subject?”

  She shrugged. “I do it all the time. I’m a news-hound, remember?”

  “Why do you ask? Because I don’t ‘seem’ like a priest? Don’t act like one?”

  She grinned. “Yeah, I guess that’s part of it.”

  He exhaled slowly, studying the thin stream of smoke as it mingled with the crisp evening air. “Okay, why a priest? I really don’t know, anymore. I come from a strict Catholic family in Syracuse. My mother’s brother was a priest, a Jesuit, and I always thought he was a great guy. Real intelligent, full of curiosity and personality.”

  “And you wanted to grow up like him?”

  “Kind of. My father died working for the railroad when I was only five—got in the way of the wrong boxcar is the way the story gets told. After that, my uncle was pretty much my only male role model. I guess it was expected all along that I was going to be a priest. It’s an honor in strict Catholic homes to have a son with a calling.”

  “Calling?”

  “Catholic buzz-word, sorry. It means, supposedly, a divine request from God to become a priest.”

  “‘Supposedly’? Why, Father Ellington, do I detect a trace of cynicism in your heart?”

  Dan smiled, flipped his cigarette into the parking lot. “Well, if not my heart, at least my voice.”

  “Want to explain?”

  He took a deep breath, exhaled. The air was crisp, terrifying clean. “Well, in addition to the seminary and the theological stuff, the Jesuits put you through a tough academic program. I’ve got a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature. You know how it is—you get all that education and somewhere along the line you learn how to think. I mean really think—for yourself.”

  “Sure,” she said, smiling. “And then, for a while, nobody can tell you a damn thing.”

  “Right,” said Dan. “But the important thing is that you learn to always ask the next question. You know what I mean?”

  “I think so. Never be satisfied with prepared answers, with programmed responses…My business is a lot like that too.”

  “Exactly. The Jesuits consider themselves very progressive and scientific. So they gave me all these intellectual tools and told me to shoehorn them into a medieval, dogmatic way of seeing the world. Marion, I’ll tell you—it’s tough.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “And I’ll be honest with you. Before this business with Peter fell into my lap, I had started to lose my whole sense of perspective.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dan shook another cigarette from his pack, lighted it. “I mean I was having a real psychological crisis. In the seminary, they call it ‘loss of faith syndrome,’ and they try to teach you ways to safeguard against it or cope with it.”

  “And it happened to you?”

  “Yeah. Big time. I don’t want to get into a long theological discussion, but I’ve been having serious doubts about everything. Sometimes the idea of a supreme being is baffling to me; other times, it seems downright silly. The idea of our consciousness surviving death—well, it sounds like a great idea, but…”

  “I know.” she said. “I have the same thoughts. Most of the time I try to put them out of mind.”

  “Yeah, it’s better to worry about the next one-day sale at Macy’s.” His voice was cutting.

  “Hey, did I really deserve that?” Her big green eyes were smiling at him.

  “No, you didn’t. Sorry.” He almost sighed.

  “You’re forgiven.” Marion Windsor smiled a natural smile, full of grace and beauty. She was an intriguing woman. “You were saying something about Peter…?” she asked.

  “Yeah, right. Peter. I mean look what’s happening to him—zapping a mugger? Burning a guy’s arm off!? I hear all that and, the way my mind works, I’m right away trying to come up with rational explanations, scientific reasons to make it all plausible.

  “I mean, miracles and direct intervention don’t happen every day. We’re not prepared to accept such things.”

  “The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know.”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. But Peter touched me and made all those faith-healers look like trained-animal acts! C’mon, Marion—I don’t know about you, but I’m never going to be the same after going through that. After seeing it, feeling it!”

  “It is miraculous, isn’t it?”

  “What else can you call it?” Dan inhaled, blew out a thin line of smoke
.

  “Do you think he’s Christ?”

  Dan chuckled nervously. “Just the idea bothers me. I don’t know who or what he is. But if they really did clone him from the blood on the shroud, then, yeah—genetically, he is the guy who was crucified and wrapped in that sheet. If the guy in the shroud was Christ, then so is Peter.”

  “Whenever I let myself think about it, I just feel stunned.”

  “I know—like this can’t really be happening.”

  “But it is,” said Marion.

  “And yet, Peter keeps telling us he doesn’t feel like God…”

  Marion nodded. “Maybe, but I feel he’s…changing somehow. I haven’t known him long, so maybe it’s not my place to say that, but it’s what I feel.”

  “I’ve had the same feelings,” said Dan, “and I’ve known him a long time—if anybody should notice him acting differently, it should be me.”

  “Like today, with Billy, he seemed so sure of himself.”

  “Yeah,” said Dan. “He’s learning to use his powers.”

  “Did you ever wonder what else he might be able to do?”

  Dan smiled weakly, took the final drag off his cigarette and flipped it onto the gravel. “You mean things he hasn’t discovered yet?”

  Marion swallowed, nodded.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Dan. “And I don’t mind telling you—it’s kind of scary.”

  Peter sat in the back seat of the Mazda as they returned to the campsite. As he spoke, Dan could detect in his voice an enthusiasm and excitement he’d never heard before. Dan wasn’t sure if that was bad or good.

  “So much has happened lately, I’d almost forgotten how good it is to give a sermon.” Peter said as they drove north on 219. Only a suggestion of the thick, leafy forest on both sides of the two-lane asphalt was visible in the beams of the car’s headlights.

  “Really?” asked Marion. She could see the single headlamp of Billy’s Harley close on their tail.