The Visitation

by Frank Peretti

  Rod came back, “I’m trying to break up a fight right now.”

  Brett was already heading for his car. “Rod, I want this guy!”

  “Okay, I’m rolling!”

  JIM BAYLOR burst through his front door. “Dee?” No answer. “Dee?” The other car was in the driveway. She had to be here. He ran into the kitchen. Her purse was on the table. She was home, all right. “Dee?”

  “I’m in the bedroom,” she finally replied. Her voice sounded low and strange.

  He hurried down the hall. “You okay? Mark Peterson says he saw you ripping through town—”

  She was sitting on the end of the bed with his .357 Magnum revolver in her hand.

  He froze in the doorway. He tried to smile. “Hey, Dee. What’s, what’s up?”

  “Ichabod,” she said, her eyes cold and brooding. “My life is Ichabod, our house is Ichabod, and it’s all your fault!”

  “Ichabod. Who’s that?”

  “The clouds never came and the blessing is gone—and it’s because you drove them away! You and your spirit of unbelief!”

  “Uh, Dee? Why don’t you just put that gun down—”

  “If thine right eye offend thee, pluck it out!” She pointed the gun his direction and—

  He was already on the floor when it fired and a slug punctured the wall behind him. “DEE!”

  She jumped to her feet, clasping the gun in both hands. “Purge out the old leaven and let there be a new lump!”

  Should he wrestle her, try to take the gun?

  She was aiming it again. He scurried, half crawling, out of the doorway as the gun fired and another slug hit the wall.

  BANG! She was in the hall now and the bullet went right over his head.

  He ran.

  NANCY LEANED TOWARD US, her voice hushed and intense. “I talked to Pete Jameson, the county health inspector. He never required an additional source of water for Cantwell’s building project, so Cantwell never had to develop that spring up in the willow draw. But he had Nevin dig a huge hole up there, bigger than was needed. Nevin thought there had to be something else going on besides a water development—but then he had that ‘riding accident’ and came back dead.”

  I turned to Kyle the same time he turned to me. “The car,” I said.

  “The car!” he echoed.

  “What car?” Nancy asked.

  “The car that might be buried in that big hole!” I answered.

  “Let’s go!” said Kyle, jumping to his feet.

  “Let’s plan,” I said, and he sat down again.

  ROD TOOK THE HIGHWAY. Brett took the back road behind the grain elevators. No sirens, no lights. They were hoping they could surprise—

  “Got him!” Rod hollered into his radio. “He’s behind the building right now!”

  He screeched and fish-tailed off the highway, rolling and bouncing through a yard and a flower bed and finally into the overgrown field behind the Sundowner Motel. Brett came the other way, hitting his brakes on the gravel road and sending up a cloud of dust.

  The Sundowner Motel was a long, one-story building with ten units and plain, evenly spaced, rear windows. Their man, wearing sunglasses and a low hat, was standing just outside the ninth window when they converged on the scene. Now he took off running. Rod and Brett were out of their cars in an instant, Brett closest to the suspect, about to head him off. But Brett was limping on that leg of his. The suspect got by him and headed up the road toward the grain elevators.

  “Don’t lose him!” Rod hollered, then got back in his car and rolled like a tank through the field and onto the gravel road. He turned left, heading around the block, hoping to block the suspect’s route of escape.

  DON ANDERSON crouched behind the counter like a soldier under siege, eyes darting about, fists clenched, looking for his next move, his way of escape.

  The washing machines were rumbling like Patton’s tanks, mobilizing, marching, forming a blockade to trap him. The CD players were screaming and cheering and the televisions, with their big, gray eyes, were watching his every move and giving away his location.

  Of course, the customers in the store had no idea what Don was so agitated about. Was he just kidding around or what?

  “No, no way!” Don whispered. “Not today!”

  The CDs on the rack were scraping and scratching like little flat rats, trying to dig and gnaw their way out of their shrink-wrapped boxes. They wanted him. He was their jailer!

  The radios were blaring like an angry mob, hopping, rocking, and rattling on their shelves as their ringleader, a Sony Surround Stereo, bellowed in a deep, slow-speed voice, “When Don Anderson screams his last, hear it first on K-I-L-L! You want Death? We’ve got it!”

  “We’re bad, we’re bad, we’re bad, we’re bad!” sang the others. “Radio Kay Eye Double Ell!!”

  Don feared it would come to this. He had brought a baseball bat to the store just in case. Now he intended to use it.

  A million angry bees swarmed through every wire in the place, fighting to get out, to get to him.

  The radio control race cars were spinning their wheels, wearing their way out of their boxes, wanting to run over him.

  The metal detector on the wall was beeping, probing, bending and weaving like the head of a cobra, trying to send a signal that would fry his fillings.

  The microwaves were inviting him in.

  The flashlights were looking for him.

  The international power converters were trying to step down his nervous system.

  The remote controls were jamming his brain.

  And the washers and dryers kept marching, marching, rumbling and rocking, getting closer and closer, closer and closer— “YAAAAAAHHHH!!!” He leaped over the counter with his baseball bat and pulverized a radio control car.

  Crunch! Smash! Radio after radio went flying from the shelves.

  Rattle, crack, crinkle! The CDs flew like Frisbees and fluttered like snowflakes.

  “YAAAAA!!”

  The customers cleared out as Don started discounting all the washing machines. Off went a lid, off went a door, a stacked washer and dryer toppled like a crumbling tower. He smashed away a shelf, then a row of TVs, and then his bat went through the gas line feeding the store’s furnace. He smelled the stench of leaking gas.

  “Try to poison me, will you?” he screamed, and dispatched a row of clock radios.

  MICHAEL KEPT MARCHING along that white line, prophesying to the point of pitiful fabrication. “Though an army of evil rises against him, still the good of his hands and the fire of his mouth will be felt and seen, beginning here, and spreading there, and waking people up from their slumber of unbelief and making them, uh, pay attention to what’s going on, for he is come to . . . to, uh, do good works in the earth . . .” Brother, what am I saying? What am I doing?

  Suddenly, he heard a vicious, villainous laugh from somewhere behind him, so wicked that he spun around, looking for danger.

  It was the Messiah. He was leaning over the side rail of the flatbed, pointing and laughing, his teeth bared in a snarling grin.

  The mean old Mary had come out second best to Virgin Mary Donovan. With her shawl in tatters, her face scratched and her nose bleeding, she lay on the sidewalk as her son in the bathrobe comforted her and the tourists took more pictures.

  “I am he!” the Messiah bellowed tauntingly, his eyes crazy, his hair flying. “Hey, Cracker!” he hollered to the cowering christ in the bathrobe. “You’re next! Any time, Cracker, any time!” Then he materialized some more loaves and tossed them to the crowds. “Come and get it, my children! Come to me!”

  Matt kept driving as another Reader’s Digest inspirational favorite played over the loudspeakers, “Who made the mountains, who made the trees . . .?”

  Uninvited, maybe even unseen by Cantwell, big, blustery Armond Harrison got a leg-up from some of his men and climbed onto the flatbed. As his followers cheered and the crowd snapped pictures, he smiled, waved back, then held up the Messiah’s ha
nd like a referee announcing the winner of a boxing match. “We’re standing with you, Brandon! All of us!” Harrison’s people let out one big, organic whoop.

  Justin Cantwell smiled, waved, and eased Harrison toward the edge of the flatbed.

  Then Cantwell shoved him off, right on top of Harrison’s followers who collapsed like a house of cards under his weight.

  “I am he,” Cantwell reminded him, “and there is no other!” He returned his attention to the crowds. “Come to me! Whatever you need, I will give it! I am the one and only Messiah in your future!”

  Matt stuck his head out the truck window. “Michael! I don’t hear any prophesying out there!”

  Michael turned his eyes forward again. He kept walking, but not a word would come to his lips.

  Here came a vendor selling picture postcards of Jesus in the clouds and bumper stickers that read, I SAW Him IN ANTIOCH, WASHINGTON, or I SAW Her IN ANTIOCH, WASHINGTON.

  They passed a booth where a man sold Antioch billed caps and tee-shirts that boasted, “I saw Jesus in Antioch, Washington.” You had your choice: a picture of a farmer Jesus driving a combine or a jazzy, comic art face of Jesus between two sheaves. The Virgin got a tee shirt too, a more reverent pose of her standing on the curve of the earth, arms outstretched over the wheat fields of Antioch.

  A barbecue-on-wheels had come to town, selling ribs and hot dogs, and right next to that was an out-of-nowhere artsy booth featuring little crosses, bookends, napkin holders, jewelry, and even Bible covers made from . . . used lumber from Antioch, Washington?

  Sirens and screams broke through the din. People started running out of the way and Michael stopped dead in his tracks. Matt jammed on the brakes. Here came Rod Stanton in his squad car, blowing his siren, flashing his lights, easing from a side street onto the main highway as the crowds scurried aside. He stopped in the middle of the street, jumped out of his car, searched through the crowd, then got back in and kept going.

  And now, here came another christ, a blond one carrying a whip and yelling something about pollution, filth, and greed. He tried to overturn the barbecue-on-wheels in righteous rage, but it was too hot to handle and too heavy to upend. The owner scurried around and slapped him a few times, this way and that, and he moved on, dragging his whip. He had a mother too, who followed him, sharing bites of pocket bread filled with sprouts.

  A skinny pilgrim in a straw hat stepped up to Michael, munching on a hot dog and grinning as if something was funny. “Michael! I’m confused! Which christ is the real one? Do you have a word on that?”

  Michael had no word. No word at all.

  Then a gunshot rang out, and Jim Baylor ran onto the highway from a side street, scrambling in circles, screaming something about his crazy wife.

  Behind him came Dee, waving a gun in the air and prophesying—“ Thou art a robber and a jerk, and thy time has come!” People scattered like frightened rats as she fired the gun and ran by, but then they laughed and took pictures. The sight was so ridiculous it had to be a show!

  But wait. A young girl had fallen to the street, her shoulder bleeding. There were screams. This was no show.

  The Messiah was laughing again.

  AMID SCREAMS, RUNNING, AND RUCKUS, Don Anderson came swinging and shattering his way out the front door of his store, yelling like a warrior, swinging and battling unseen enemies on every side. A teenager wearing a walkman happened to be nearby, and Don went after the walkman. “Take that!” He shattered the walkman, breaking the kid’s pelvis. “Don’t let them get you! Take them out! It’s every man for himself!” The kid’s father tried to grab the bat away and Don opened his skull. A lady in a sunhat got it next, collapsing to the street, her camera and the wrist that held it shattered.

  The front door of Don’s store was broken and hanging open. Penny Adams saw that as an invitation and stepped inside to help herself. Her life ended three seconds later.

  Some say she did something to cause a spark. Some say it was Dee Baylor’s last bullet that missed Jim and went through the store’s front window. The explosion and fireball incinerated any way of knowing for sure, blowing out the store’s front windows. Flame and shards shot out, killing fourteen people on that side of the street, setting four parked cars on fire, and breaking the windows out of a plumber’s supply and beauty shop directly opposite.

  The Messiah looked behind him to see the conflagration, the burning cars, the screaming people, and flaming bodies. He raised his hands heavenward and rejoiced.

  Don Anderson, now a block away, saw his own store go up in a fireball and shouted “YES!” Then he saw a hair dryer in the front window of the pharmacy and promptly broke the glass. “Roast me, will you?”

  “Let me handle it!” said an RV lady from the Macon ranch, who quickly helped herself to the hair dryer.

  “Partake, my people!” the Messiah cried, his wounded arms outstretched. “The bounty of the earth is yours! Partake!”

  Even as the appliance store and the adjacent structures went up in flames, windows began to break all over town—some with stones, some with boots, some with tire irons. The people began to partake.

  HER EYES BLINDED AND STINGING from smoke, her hair singed by heat, Dee fled from the inferno, stumbling, bumping into other frantic bodies, trying to run, trying to see. She bowled headlong into another woman and they both went sprawling. A stolen box of hot curlers broke open, the rollers tumbling and scurrying along the gutter. “Now look what you’ve done!” the woman yelled.

  At that moment Dee realized she no longer had the gun in her hand.

  Across the street, another window shattered. Folks started helping themselves to paper, pens, and office supplies from the Antioch Harvester office while Kim Staples, shrieking in anger and terror, tried to fend them off with reams of paper and boxes of pens.

  The souvenirs, art, and trinkets fashioned from used lumber from Antioch went next, and there was nothing the poor wood carver could do about it.

  The ribs and hot dogs were too hot to steal and the vendor too tough.

  The blond christ with the whip had encountered the southern christ in the bathrobe, and now they were duking it out, rolling, kicking, and biting in the street.

  The Messiah’s prophet was cringing and tongue-tied, and the Virgin Mother was clinging to the back bumper of the truck, cowering like a frightened child. Unflustered, even ecstatic, Justin Cantwell threw out some more loaves. “Come and partake!” He began singing along with the recorded music, “Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain . . .”

  The loaves landed on the pavement, ignored. His sheep weren’t interested in bread anymore. They wanted toys.

  No matter. The flatbed kept rolling, the music kept blaring, and Justin Cantwell kept right on singing as the town came apart all around him.

  ROD FLOORED THE GAS PEDAL. After losing his man between houses and trees, he spotted the suspect again and shouted into his radio, “He’s heading up Maple, the three hundred block!”

  The suspect ducked down an alley and through a yard.

  Rod drove down the alley. “He’s running through the Wimbleys’ yard! Should come out right in front. I’m going on foot.” He stopped his car, leaped out, and started running through the yard as a German shepherd chased and snapped at him and a cat in his path panicked and ran up a tree. The suspect ran into the street. Rod bolted into the street to cut him off.

  SCREEECH!

  A hard, steel bumper clipped Rod at the knees, flipping him onto the hood of Squad Car One. He tumbled against the windshield and then rolled off onto the pavement, dazed and bruised, with one knee snapped sideways.

  Brett jumped out of Car One and limped after the suspect. “Halt! Halt or I’ll shoot!”

  The suspect ran.

  Brett grabbed his leg, then crumpled to the sidewalk. He pulled his gun, aimed. The suspect was looking back . . .

  Mark Peterson darted out of an alley and collided with the man, tackling him to the ground. With a knee in the man�
��s back, he slapped on the cuffs.

  Brett hobbled up the sidewalk, gun in hand. “Mark! What timing!”

  “Heard the radio,” he answered, yanking off the suspect’s hat and sunglasses.

  Then he backed one step away, surprise all over his face.

  The suspect was Norman Dillard.

  OUR HUSHED, CLOSED-DOOR MEETING broke up the moment we heard the gas explosion. We ran out on the front steps of the church to see what had happened. Several blocks up the street, flames were billowing out of the appliance store, making black silhouettes of the scurrying mobs. The town looked like an anthill set on fire.

  “It’s Armageddon!” said Kyle.

  Nancy was down the steps in an instant, obviously concerned for her newspaper office and store.

  The siren atop the volunteer fire department began to wail. Five volunteers were already rolling out the fire trucks.

  “Oh Lord,” Morgan groaned. “Oh precious Lord, that’s Michael!”

  We all spotted him, walking out in front of the big flatbed truck. There was no question who the character riding on the flatbed was.

  “What are we going to do?” Kyle asked.

  “Same plan, everybody,” I said. “Kyle, meet me at my place.” I turned to Morgan, “You have to go to that engagement dinner. Try to act normal. We’ll call your cell phone.” Then I dashed to my Trooper.

  I drove right up the center line of the highway and then slowed to a careful, deliberate crawl, weaving my way through the looters with my windows rolled up and my doors locked. I had an appointment with that flatbed, that ludicrous one-vehicle parade with Justin Cantwell waving to the crowds and the voice of Elvis singing about believing that “for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows.” Michael Elliott was walking in front of the truck, a microphone in his dangling hand, and I could tell from his face and posture that he was having the same, woeful awakening I once had. It was time to grab that kid.

  I pushed forward, braking as a lady ran by with a lamp and two kids ran by with computer games still in the boxes. Broken glass littered the street and crunched under my tires. The whole town was cast in a flickering, orange glow.