These were the kinds of unanswered questions that Papa Jim hated most of all.
He sighed impatiently, puffing on his cigar, ignoring the irritated looks of the doctors and nurses who were in the observation room with him. Meanwhile, on the other side of the glass, a nurse, doctor, and anesthesiologist were monitoring the patient closely as she was slowly brought back to consciousness.
His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. Scowling in irritation, Papa Jim turned away from the window and fished it out. But his scowl vanished when he saw who was calling. It was Denny, his personal assistant and bodyguard, an ex-Special Forces man who upon his discharge had turned to crystal meth, then armed robbery, and finally wound up in one of Papa Jim’s prisons on a second-degree murder conviction. Papa Jim had pulled some strings to have the man enrolled in a supervised early release program, under his own supervision of course, which had earned him Denny’s unswerving loyalty. He was basically a trained killer with the heart of a thug, but Papa Jim’s faith-based prison system had tamed him. Denny had become addicted to a new drug in jail: religion. The religion of Papa Jim, that is. And he was just as zealous in its pursuit as he’d been in the pursuit of crystal meth. Papa Jim had been looking for someone like Denny for a while, a man capable of protecting him not only from the Congregation but from Conversatio as well. He might be working with Conversatio, even pretending, at least for now, to be one of them, but he didn’t trust them. If his enemies or his allies turned on him, he would need someone without ties to either. That was just basic business sense. And Denny filled the bill. The conflict between Conversatio and the Congregation meant nothing to him. And his wants were as limited as his imagination and intelligence, so money meant nothing to him either. Papa Jim admired him as he would a top-notch hunting dog or racehorse.
“What is it?” he snapped, annoyed at the interruption, even though he was sure that Denny wouldn’t be calling without a damn good reason.
“The kid’s awake, Boss,” came the familiar voice.
“Shit. I’ll be right there.” He dropped the cigar and ground it out beneath his shoe.
“He’s coming to you.”
“Say what?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Well, stop him.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“What the hell does that mean? He’s a nine-year-old kid, for Christ’s sake!”
“He’s, um, glowing.”
“Glowing?”
“Shining like a star.”
“Are you drunk?”
“I sure as hell wish I was.”
“Hold him until I get there, Denny. That’s a goddamn order, do you hear me?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Sit on him if you have to. Just don’t hurt him, understand?”
“Yessir.”
Fuming, Papa Jim flipped the cell phone closed and jammed it back into his pocket. Glowing, my ass, he thought. A more likely explanation was that Denny was back on crystal meth. Damn, but it was getting harder and harder to find good help these days.
“The patient is awake, Mr. Osbourne.”
“What?” One of the doctors in the room gestured toward the window. Papa Jim looked. He’d been so preoccupied with Denny’s call that he’d forgotten about Lisa. But now he saw that she was indeed awake, sitting up in bed and glancing nervously around the hospital room as she listened to the doctor. “Oh hell,” he said. “Perfect timing.”
“Sir?” queried the same doctor who had spoken.
Papa Jim shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll be right back. It seems the boy is awake too.” But before he could take a step, the door to the hospital room opened and Ethan walked in. The boy was wearing a green hospital gown and moving like a sleepwalker. Needless to say, he wasn’t glowing. Papa Jim sighed. It looked like he was going to be in the market for a new bodyguard. Then he gasped in disbelief.
On the other side of the glass, the doctor, nurse, and anesthesiologist were dropping to their knees. Almost immediately, the doctors and nurses in the observation room followed suit.
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” he demanded.
“Can’t you see?” said one of the nurses, her gaze fixed on the window.
“See what?”
“The glow.”
Papa Jim squinted. He didn’t see anything that could remotely be described as a glow. Just an ordinary-looking nine-year-old boy who, ignoring the kneeling figures around him, went straight to his mother—or, rather, the woman he thought of as his mother—and, climbing up into her bed and putting his arms around her, burst into tears.
“It’s him,” the nurse said in an awestruck whisper. “The second Son!”
Tears of joy were running down her cheeks.
“Praise God!” echoed the doctor fervently. “He’s come at last!”
“I’m going in there,” said Papa Jim. He felt like the whole world had gone crazy. Turning away from the window, he strode toward the door, yanked it open, and stepped into the reception area of his Charleston office. His secretary, Joyce, looked up at him from her desk with a quizzical half smile.
Papa Jim froze. He had a peculiar feeling, similar to déjà vu, only even more unsettling. It wasn’t that he remembered being in this exact situation before, standing in the doorway of his office and looking at Joyce like this. Instead, it was as if he shouldn’t even be here. Should be somewhere else entirely. In fact, had been somewhere else just seconds ago. But that was crazy. Where else would he have been?
“Something the matter, Boss?” asked Joyce.
“Just a bit of a brain fart.” Papa Jim shook his head sheepishly and gave a rheumy chuckle. “I swear, Joyce, I’m going to forget my own name one of these days.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“A couple of aspirin,” he said. “All of a sudden, I feel a headache coming on.”
“Be right there, Boss.”
Papa Jim grunted and returned to his office. He sat down at his desk and stared in mystification at the papers scattered across its polished wooden surface. He had absolutely no memory of working on any of it. Was this, he wondered, how it started? The first symptoms of senility, or worse?
“Here’s your aspirin, Boss.”
“Thanks, Joyce.” He took the pills and the glass of water she handed him and swallowed them down. “Close the door on your way out,” he told her.
When she had gone and he was alone, he opened the bottom drawer of the desk, took out a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and poured three fingers’ worth into the glass that Joyce had given him. He drank it straight down.
Then, with a heavy sigh, he started in on the paperwork.
During the time that Ethan had lain unconscious in the Conversatio hospital outside Phoenix, he had been dreaming the most extraordinary dreams. Actually, it was only one dream, an extremely vivid and lucid dream that stretched over the whole three days and nights.
In the dream, Ethan was walking along a raw, unpaved road, really more of a path, through a hardscrabble landscape in which there was no sign of life save stunted, cactus-like plants, scurrying lizards, and dark birds flying high in the cloudless, bleached-out sky. Every so often, a sharp, almost disconsolate cry would issue from one of these birds, as if they, too, were strangers here. The noise did not so much break the silence as accentuate it. The uneven ground, which climbed and fell precipitously, was baked hard beneath Ethan’s sandaled feet, and clouds of dust rose with each footfall, hanging thickly in the hot, breezeless air. There was no indication that rain had ever fallen here or ever would.
Ethan followed the path, not knowing where he was, how he had gotten here, or where he was going. Other than the sandals, his only clothing was a tattered robe of some kind of roughly tanned animal skin that hung to his knees. It was hot, made his skin itch, and smelled vile, especially as he sweated under the relentless sun. He carried a thin walking stick in one hand, which he used to help himself over dry fissures and rockslides. Far in the distance on all s
ides were the hazy shapes of mountains, gray and ominous as lowering storm clouds. There were no other people and no evidence that other people had ever come here.
He was alone. He called out at first, shouting “Hello!” at the top of his lungs, but there was no reply save the fading echoes of his own voice. Because such shouting only made his parched throat ache for water, he soon desisted, trudging on in silence.
He remembered everything up to the moment his mother had appeared at the bathroom door with a gun in her hands. After that, nothing. It occurred to him that he was dead, his soul judged and condemned to limbo, for he was certain that this place couldn’t be Heaven—it was far too bleak and unpleasant—yet he felt pretty sure that the other place would be infinitely worse. He wished that he could meet someone friendly, someone who could tell him what was going on.
Slowly, the sun climbed higher in the desert of the sky. Then, equally slowly, it began to set.
As it began to grow dark, the air became cooler, and the numbness to which he’d been reduced by fatigue and thirst was replaced by uncertainty and gnawing fear. What if there were dangerous animals that came out at night in search of prey? How could he run from them or defend himself with only a thin walking stick? The answer was simple: He couldn’t. He couldn’t even build a fire to ward off the cold and keep whatever animals there were at bay.
He searched in mounting desperation for some kind of shelter. At last he spotted what appeared to be a cave in the rocky hills along one side of the path. He hurried toward it. Up close, it turned out to be more of a crevice than a cave, a jagged breach in the rock face that extended back as far as he could see in the gloaming. How far back did it go? Was there anything else in there?
He hesitated, trembling with uncertainty. Then, casting an apprehensive glance over his shoulder at the bare landscape fast submerging under pools of shadow deepening to night, he crept inside and squatted there, clenching his stick tightly with both hands.
Soon darkness had fallen. The only light came from thousands upon thousands of glittering stars that he could see past the canopy of stone that constituted the top of the crevice in which he crouched like a fearful animal. The sight was beautiful in a chilly, remote way, and though it filled him with loneliness, he couldn’t stop looking, as if he might somehow connect all those bright dots into a picture that would explain everything.
But of course no picture emerged.
After a time, he could not have said how long, Ethan felt a great weariness steal over him, and his chin dropped to his chest. Was he asleep? Was he dreaming?
From out of the darkness came a voice. It was a voice he recognized. A voice he would never forget.
The voice of the priest who had tried to kill him.
“Hello, Ethan. Fancy meeting you here.”
Terror flooded him. But he couldn’t move. It was as if he had turned to stone.
“Cat got your tongue?” asked the voice.
He couldn’t open his mouth. Couldn’t cry for help. And even if he could have done so, who would have heard him in this wasteland?
“Or perhaps you’re afraid of the dark,” the voice continued. “I can help with that.”
Light flared suddenly, accompanied by a dull whumping sound, like a firecracker set off under a tin can, and a smell like burned matches. The light was a dull red, wavering as if with heat, though there was no heat, and it had no source that he could see.
“Is that better?” asked the voice solicitously. Only it wasn’t just a voice anymore. There was a body to go with it now. The priest stood before Ethan, looking down at him with eyes like bottomless black pits that might have held all the darkness just banished from the cave and more besides, his head crooked at an unnatural angle that was perhaps explained by the noose cinched tightly around his neck, one end of which dangled before him like some obscene umbilical cord.
The priest sighed; air wheezed past his lips. “Look what you made me do,” he said sorrowfully.
Ethan strained with all his might to break free of whatever force was holding him in place, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t even avert his gaze from the priest’s horrific visage and accusatory stare. Or close his eyes.
“Yes, this is all your fault,” the priest said, his head lolling bonelessly across his chest. “You drove me to this terrible sin. You killed me as surely as if you were the hangman. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”
At that, Ethan felt whatever was silencing him disappear.
“Go—go away,” he said through chattering teeth.
“Oh no,” said the priest. “That won’t work here. You’re on my turf now. And I want to know what gave you the right to meddle with my life. Who do you think you are, Jesus Christ? Answer me, damn you!”
Ethan pressed his lips together. He tried to tell himself that this was just a bad dream. But the angry man before him didn’t vanish, not even when he tried to wake himself up by biting his tongue.
“I’m waiting,” said the priest.
“You started it!” Ethan burst out. “You’re a bad man, and I was just trying to stop you from hurting my mom and dad!”
“Well, you didn’t do a very good job of it, did you?” the priest sneered. “Is that why you killed me? For revenge?”
“I didn’t kill you!”
“You’re a murderer, Ethan. And you know where murderers go, don’t you?” The drooping face acquired the sickly suggestion of a smile. “Why, they come here. To hell.”
“You’re a liar! I never killed anyone!”
“You killed me. And what about your father?”
“You’re the one who killed him!”
“But you could have brought him back. You know it’s true. You could have saved him, but you didn’t. You let him die. That’s the same as killing him.”
Ethan shook his head. “No . . .”
“You’ve killed two people so far. Not bad for a nine-year-old! Who’s next, I wonder? Your mother? One of your friends?”
“Shut up!” Ethan cried.
“You’re dangerous, Ethan. You’re a menace!”
“Shut up!”
“If only you had the courage to do what I did. It’s not so hard. And once you’re gone, you won’t be able to hurt anyone else ever again. Your mother will be safe. They’ll all be safe. I’m telling you this for your own good.” The priest’s hands scrabbled at the noose around his neck, loosening it and slowly lifting it off as Ethan watched in horror. With his head still flopping like that of a rag doll, the priest extended the noose. “Take it,” he said. “Take it and do the right thing for once, before it’s too late.”
Ethan screamed.
And just like that, the light vanished, taking the hanged priest with it. But instead of darkness, a soft pink glow spilled into the crevice. Outside, the sun was rising. The night had passed; it was morning.
So began the second day.
Afraid the priest would return, Ethan stumbled outside and resumed his interrupted trek, following the path that seemed to stretch on forever without reaching anything at all resembling a destination or stopping point. Once again, he saw no other traveler, only the dark shapes of birds wheeling high overhead. As the sun rose, the landscape was unchanging in its bleakness, so that it almost seemed as if he were wandering in circles. He was thirsty, but there wasn’t a drop of water to be found, nor anything to eat. Many times he thought of giving up, of throwing himself down on the hard, rocky ground and waiting for whatever would come next. But something drove him on.
It was the thought of his mother. Was she alive? He sensed that she was, and that she needed him, and that only by pressing on could he find her.
As he walked, shambling like a zombie under the hot sun, Ethan replayed the nightmarish visit of the priest over and over again in his mind. He had no doubt that a ghost had come to him, the spirit of a dead man damned for all eternity. But did that mean that he, too, was dead?
And what of the terrible things the ghost had said to him? Were th
ey true? Was he really responsible for the priest’s death? For his father’s death?
No!
The priest had committed both crimes, first killing his father and then, for reasons equally unfathomable, himself. The man had been crazy, that much was clear. And Ethan remembered as well the demon that had taken possession of the man’s soul. He remembered how he had seen it inside him, the foulness like a thick coating of tar. Ethan had dispelled the demon with a word . . . but that hadn’t killed the man. No, he thought. But perhaps, with the demon gone, the man had been horrified by the knowledge of what he had done, what he had tried to do. So horrified that he’d been driven to kill himself. If that were true, then wasn’t the priest’s ghost right in a way? Hadn’t he at least contributed to his death?
And why had the priest targeted him and his family in the first place? Had it been random? Ethan didn’t think so. No, everything the priest had said and done in life and death led him to the conclusion that the attack had been purposeful. And he could think of only one reason for it. It was because of the power he possessed, the ability to see into people’s hearts, into their very souls, and make changes there with nothing more than a word or a thought. He’d done it to Peter, hadn’t he? Somehow, when he’d used his power for the first time, he must have alerted the priest, and the priest had come after him.
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