Cradle and All

by James Patterson

  The wind quickly swallowed the baby’s cry as the birds hovered everywhere around Father Rosetti. They looked as if they wanted to swoop down and carry away the infant.

  Justin heard a tortured cry from above. “Pray for me, Father O’Carroll.”

  With trembling hands, the Vatican priest slowly opened the woolen blanket. His lips moved in prayer as he crossed the baby’s forehead with the side of his thumb. The infant howled in pain and struggled fiercely.

  Then Father Rosetti opened the blanket and showed the head and face to Justin.

  Justin stared into the child’s eyes — and thousands of eyes stared back. He could clearly see countless eyes inside those of the child’s. The legions were right there.

  Justin stumbled backward, almost losing his footing on the rock. His heart thundered. At first he had seen a child’s face, but then it changed before his eyes. What he saw was grotesque. It became the face of the fiercest animal, then several animals in one, and it roared angrily at him. It tried to scare him away, and nearly succeeded.

  The sound was hideous and unearthly. The animal shook furiously, with great strength, and then bit into Rosetti’s cheek with long, sharp teeth when the priest wouldn’t release his grip. The animal, the Beast, screamed and screamed. All of the devils inside the infant seemed to scream at once.

  The priest didn’t pull away. Nicholas Rosetti held the Beast right up to his face.

  “You saw it, Justin. The eyes, the legions. You know. Now go back to Rome. The true virgin is there. Please pray for me, Father.”

  Rosetti stepped right off the high cliff. The priest and infant fell together. They seemed suspended by an invisible cord for a few seconds. The infant continued to struggle, to cling with its teeth to Rosetti’s lower face.

  The birds flew all around the falling priest. Their wings whirred like thousands of rotor blades. Shrieking, they seemed to be trying to catch Father Rosetti, to break his fall.

  At last Rosetti and the child clapped the cold, choppy water and disappeared beneath the dark and turbulent waves. A thick column of smoke rose from the sea. The water hissed loudly.

  The birds all over the mountain shrieked louder than ever as they swooped in enormous numbers to the sea below. They changed shapes — became flying wolves. They dived into the waves and never reappeared, never resurfaced.

  Justin finally dropped to the rocks of the high cliffside, and he sobbed uncontrollably. “Requiem aeternam dona eis.” He prayed for the eternal soul of Nicholas Rosetti, and for his own soul as well.

  He had seen the face of Satan.

  Chapter 107

  I WAS KEENLY AWARE of the almost unnatural quiet that had fallen over the hospital room. First the silence, then the laughter, and then . . . silence again.

  The doctors, the Salvatore Mundi nurses, and the technicians stood still, staring with awed faces as they watched the infant’s first awkward moves. They looked as if they were experiencing the most important and beautiful moment of their lives.

  No one could have been affected more than I. I had begun trembling as if the room were very cold, while in fact the room was quite warm.

  You are here for a reason. You are the bravest of us all. Over and over, I heard the words of Father Rosetti the last time we’d spoken.

  Anne, I hope and pray that I know the truth about the two young virgins now. But the Beast must be killed.

  I was dizzy and on the verge of panic when I suddenly heard my name spoken. The voice was deep and resonant. What was I supposed to do?

  I looked up at a doctor nearby. He hadn’t spoken my name.

  I turned toward a dark-haired technician monitoring the EKG machine. The voice wasn’t his either.

  The voice came again. Louder. Surer. Nearer.

  Anne, it called to me. It must die — or we will. An eternity of suffering for mankind. Kill the Beast, Anne! Kill the child now!

  I moved closer to the doctor. Closer to the child. My body was quivering.

  In the name of the Father, kill the child of evil!

  We were promised a clear sign at the moment of the divine birth, Father Rosetti had said. He said it was a matter of faith. Did I have faith? Why me? Why had I been chosen to be in Rome?

  I recited simple prayers from my childhood. The Hail Mary. Glory be to the Father. I felt terribly alone in the hospital room.

  I heard the deep voice again.

  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — KILL THE CHILD!

  My hands were trembling and my legs were weak. I could barely stand, but I took another step closer to the infant.

  My eyes checked a table of sharp metal instruments used during the delivery. There was a scalpel I could use.

  I nearly fainted at the thought. It repulsed me.

  You must, Anne. That’s why you’re here.

  “Give him to me.” I finally spoke, hearing my own voice as if it were someone else’s. “Let me hold the child. Let me give him to Kathleen.”

  As I reached out my arms, Dr. Annunziata suddenly turned and handed the child over to a nurse.

  Something in the doctor’s eyes gave me pause.

  Was I imagining it, or had Annunziata observed something about Kathleen? Something that I needed to know?

  He spoke quietly to me, confidentially. I heard the regret in the doctor’s voice. “This is not a holy child. But he is still a child of God.”

  The voice in my head stopped abruptly. This infant wasn’t the Savior. But it was an innocent, human baby.

  The nurse holding the baby wrapped it with a clean blanket in a few deft movements. Then she presented the baby to Kathleen.

  Kathleen took the child into her arms. Her eyes immediately filled with tears. I saw that the baby had the same blue eyes as Kathleen.

  She looked into the baby’s sweet face and I could see a mother’s love wash over her. “My son,” she said. “My baby boy.”

  I believed that. I believed in the mother and her child. And I believed that my investigation was finished.

  Chapter 108

  IT WAS FINALLY OVER for me. The suffering was apparently over for countless others.

  That night, word arrived that rain had come to parts of India where there had been nothing but punishing heat and sun for months; children with polio stopped arriving at hospitals in Boston, Los Angeles, and elsewhere; the plagues that had run rampant in Asia and Mexico suddenly, miraculously ended. It would be someone else’s job to decode and demystify everything that had happened.

  Not mine.

  I still didn’t know what had occurred in Ireland. I couldn’t reach Justin. No one had called Rome from there, at least not to my knowledge.

  A room had been reserved for me at a nearby hotel and I decided to walk there from the hospital. I was bone-tired, but I didn’t think I could sleep.

  I tried to stay off the main streets for fear I might be recognized. I didn’t even know the name of the narrow, cobblestone alley where I was walking, but it didn’t really matter. I wanted to be alone, and I was.

  Suddenly, I was driven to my knees by a hard blow to the center of my back. The pain was terrible. I looked around but saw no one.

  My body began to shake and wouldn’t stop.

  A deep voice spoke to me and I could feel and smell hot stinking breath.

  You failed your Church, Anne. You failed again.

  “I don’t think I did,” I protested. “I didn’t fail!”

  I was struck again, even harder than the first time. Then I was pressed facedown into the dusky cobblestones of the street. I tasted dirt and then my own blood. I was petrified.

  You’re willful and disobedient. And now it’s your turn to die. You can join Father Rosetti and Father O’Carroll. They’re already dead. They died horrible deaths in Ireland.

  “No!” I yelled as loudly as I could with my nose and mouth jammed into stone. “They’re not dead. Leave me alone.”

  I took another incredible blow; it was as if a bat ha
d struck my head and neck.

  I touched the place where I’d been struck. No blood!

  “You can’t hurt me!” I yelled, even louder this time.

  Suddenly, I wasn’t afraid. I picked myself up and I stared defiantly at where the Voice seemed to come.

  “Where are you? Why don’t you show yourself? Coward!” I yelled.

  There was a flash of light. Nicholas Rosetti stood before me where no one had been a moment before.

  He was on his feet, but I could tell that he was dead. His skin was waxy and pale and blue in places. His eyes showed no movement. But the Voice came from his mouth, like a cheap ventriloquist’s trick.

  I told you that Rosetti was dead. Now do you believe in my power? Still believe I can’t hurt you?

  I looked at poor Father Rosetti in sorrow and shock, and then Justin was standing where the priest had been. Justin looked more animated than Rosetti. Was he alive?

  Still believe I can’t hurt you, Anne? the Voice asked again

  “Yes, yes. In the name of GOD, I do believe that,” I yelled. “You can’t!”

  I walked toward Justin and tears were streaming from my eyes. I kept going, and when I got to him I slowly reached out my hand.

  Justin was gone before I could touch him.

  “You have no power over me!” I screamed like a wild woman on the deserted street. “Be gone! You can’t hurt me. Go! Damn you, go!”

  I stood my ground. I was strong. Father Rosetti was right about that.

  And then I swooned. I dropped to the street like a sack of wet sand. But it was more than a faint. It was a powerful loss of consciousness, like nothing I had ever experienced.

  I was afraid I was dying.

  Chapter 109

  I SEEMED TO ACTUALLY leave my body and then to arrive within an intricate, detailed vision. I tried to be a skeptic, an investigator, but I couldn’t. The vision was too powerful, too overwhelming. I had no choice but to accept it.

  I saw a plain clay house high over a busy marketplace. The air was hot and dry, and I knew I was in a town called Nazareth. I have no idea how I knew this, but I did. There was a young girl coming down the steps from the clay house where she lived.

  And then she was walking right beside me. She looked at me with dazzling blue-green eyes. She was young, and she was very pregnant. I knew that this girl who smiled at me was the Virgin Mary. This was Christ’s mother.

  I looked deeply into Mary’s eyes and saw a truth about all women there, a truth about myself. “You are right, Anne. He can’t hurt you. Not here on Earth; only in Hell. You are too strong. You’re a special person. God bless you, and take care.”

  Then the scenes before my eyes began to change rapidly. They came and went in split seconds. I found that I could take in all the details with ease. It was almost as if I had known everything before and the vision was a memory.

  In the distance, across a long stretch of sand, I saw Jesus as if he were here in the present time. He was nailed to a crude wooden cross, his limbs contorted grotesquely. Then I was with him, looking into his face above me, and crying as I watched him suffer in the most gruesome and obscene manner.

  Jesus was a lovely, dark-faced man. His eyes were closed. His body was scourged and wounded in so many places. A hideous platted crown of thorns pierced his head. I had read the accounts of the Crucifixion in the Gospels. Now I understood it for the very first time.

  The scene shifted. I had a flash of real-time cognition. I knew who I was, where I was. I wondered, What is this vision? Am I insane?

  I thought of Justin again. Was he alive?

  Then I thought of the cloister where I had taken my vows.

  I remembered poor Father Rosetti and his intense questions, and I knew that he really was dead.

  The tone of the fast-flying images changed. Something like a shattering earthquake shook me. As I watched in terror, a tidal wave covered the crowded streets of a major city. Buildings were crushed. Thousands were drowned in an instant of horror and evil. I felt the all-powerful, deep presence of the Beast. The Voice was calling my name again, and it was so real. I prayed. I reject Evil with all of my strength. I reject Evil. I reject Evil.

  My eyes opened.

  I felt a stirring inside my body. It was painful, but then I felt the deepest calm. I knew that a miracle had happened.

  It had happened to me.

  And I finally knew why I had been called into all this, why I was here.

  I was pregnant, and I was a virgin.

  Chapter 110

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING I awoke early to the sound of a phone ringing beside the bed in my hotel room. I picked up and heard, “I’m here. Can I come up, Anne?”

  Tears immediately filled my eyes. My body shook. “Yes. Come now,” I told Justin.

  He was alive and he was in Rome.

  It took Justin a couple of minutes to get upstairs, time enough for me to splash water on my face and run a brush through my hair. My stomach felt funny, but I needed no reminder that I was pregnant. I was certain of it now. The night before I had bought and used a home pregnancy test and it was positive.

  There was a knock and I hurried to the door, realizing that my feet were bare and I was wearing an old nightgown but not really caring.

  I opened the hotel door and fell into Justin’s arms. I let myself go. I burst into tears. We hugged, and then he kissed me, and if there had been even the smallest doubt in my mind that I loved him, it was gone.

  I pulled away so I could see him better. I felt so good about him. I almost couldn’t believe that I had gone thirty-four years without feeling what I did now. It was such a long time not to experience love. There had to be a reason, and now I thought I knew what it was.

  “More than anything,” Justin whispered, “I missed you. Anne, I was so afraid I would never see you again. I dreaded that more than dying in Ireland.”

  “Tell me everything,” I said. “Kathleen’s child isn’t the Savior, Justin. Kathleen isn’t the virgin mother.”

  “I know,” he said. “Father Rosetti told me what he knew during our last few hours together. He’s dead. He died horribly, and so did Colleen’s child. The child was the Beast.”

  I told Justin what I had seen on the back street between my hotel and Salvatore Mundi Hospital. Then I told him about my condition.

  Justin stared back into my eyes. “Rosetti said that the true virgin was here in Rome. He meant you, Anne. He said that the message of Fatima was that there would be more than one virgin mother, and that one woman would bear the Savior, one would bear the Beast.”

  “Colleen?” I asked. “She isn’t dead? She’s all right?”

  “I brought Colleen to Woodbine Seminary. She’s being cared for there. I saw Satan, Anne. The eyes of the legions of fallen angels were in the eyes of Colleen’s child. Thousands of eyes, like tiny pinpricks. Such incredible hatred and evil in those eyes. Like nothing I’ve ever seen or imagined.”

  “Hold me,” I whispered, and Justin did. I felt safe in his arms. I felt totally accepted and loved.

  “I love you so much, Anne.” He told me what I already felt so strongly.

  “I love you, Justin. What do we do about it?”

  He knelt before me and softly bowed his head. “I love you with my heart and soul. I know that I’ll love you for eternity. I have to leave the priesthood. Then, please marry me?” he asked.

  I knelt and faced Justin. I wanted to be as close to him as I possibly could be. I needed to stare directly into his beautiful eyes.

  “Yes, I will marry you,” I told him.

  Chapter 111

  NINE MONTHS LATER. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.

  Who can tell about the ways of God? Who can truly understand? I certainly can’t.

  The tiniest, most precious baby was in my arms. The child was only moments old, eyes open and staring directly into mine, actually holding my gaze. Not a thousand eyes, just two beautiful blue ones. It was a perfect child, but I
didn’t need the doctors to tell me that.

  I knew. I just knew.

  Dr. Maria Ruocco leaned in close to me. She was a lovely woman, but not commissioned by the Church to be here. Gently, she brushed the hair away from my face. I saw something in her eyes. This doctor, who had confidently delivered thousands of children, was confused.

  She finally spoke to me. “Anne,” she said, with hushed reverence. “You were still intact.”

  “I know,” I said.

  The baby whimpered, cried, then pulled at me in a most glorious way. Tears of happiness rained down my cheeks. I let down the front of my gown and gave the infant my breast. I thanked God. I didn’t completely understand, but I knew this was good, this was right. It was nine months since I had suddenly and mysteriously received the incredible gift. I had conceived without having sexual intercourse. And now I was delivered of a healthy child.

  Justin stood close to me, his scrub mask hanging around his neck, his handsome face beaming. His eyes were filled with love for me, and love for the child. He had proved himself in a thousand ways while I was pregnant. I loved him even more now than I had that day in Rome.

  And he believed — we both believed in this miracle before our eyes.

  I didn’t know what would happen after I left the hospital room, what the child’s life would be like, or mine either. But I knew happiness on this day. I never wanted it to end.

  I stared down at this child — this holy child — this baby girl, Noelle.

  The Savior of us all was a girl.

  Epilogue

  NOELLE, NOELLE

  Chapter 112

  NOELLE WAS EIGHTEEN YEARS old when she witnessed the terrible car accident on Vandemeer Avenue. She was living with her brothers and sisters and her mother and father, the O’Carroll clan, in a small town in Maine.

  She was a university student and wanted to become a doctor, to do as much good as she could. She had learned that from her parents, who were both good people. They taught at the University of Maine, but they also operated a home for wayward young women. They had always been loving, caring parents.