And then he loosened his grip and his fingers began to caress the back of her hand. She felt her intestines writhe with revulsion but she kept her hand where it was.
He’s half out of his mind, she told herself. Disoriented... doesn’t know what he’s doing.
But then she saw the smile twisting his lips, and the look in his eyes. No repentance there, no guilt...more like fond memories.
Carrie pulled her hand away. She wanted to run but she stood firm. Maybe she was projecting. Wasn’t that what they called it when you saw what you expected to see? Maybe he was just glad to see her and she was misinterpreting his responses. After all, she hadn’t laid eyes on him in fourteen years...
She couldn’t run now. Not after she’d made it this far. Besides, she’d come here on a mission.
To give him a chance.
She glanced around. All the nurses were busy. She pulled out the Zip-loc baggie filled with the filed nails from the Virgin and dipped a finger into the powder. Originally she’d planned to mix it with a few drops of water and let him drink it, but with all these tubes running in and out of him, she didn’t see how that would be possible. But that citrus swab looked perfect.
She pulled it from the plastic cup, transferred the powder from her finger to the swab, and then leaned over the bed.
He was still looking at her with that...that expression in his eyes. She shuddered and concentrated on his mouth, slipping the swab through his open lips and running it across his dry tongue and up and down the insides of his cheeks.
His smile broadened. His hand reached up to grab her wrist but she pulled back in time to avoid him.
“There,” she said softly. “I’ve done my part. The rest is between you and God.”
He continued to stare at her, grinning lasciviously. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She’d done her duty. No use in torturing herself any longer.
“I’m going to go now. I never—”
Suddenly his smile vanished and he began to writhe in the bed. Carrie heard the beeps of his cardiac monitor increase their tempo. She glanced up and saw the blips chasing each other across the screen. She smelled something burning, and when she looked down, black, oily smoke was seeping out around the edges of his hospital gown. The skin of his arms began to darken and smoke.
“Nurse!” Carrie cried, not knowing what else to do. “Nurse, what’s happening?”
By the time the blonde nurse reached the bedside his writhing had progressed to agonized thrashing. Smoke streamed from his now blackened skin and collected in a dark, roiling cloud above the bed as he tore the respirator tube from his throat and belched a stream of black smoke with a hoarse, breathy scream.
The nurse gasped. “Oh, my God!”
At that instant he burst into flame.
The nurse screamed and Carrie reeled away, raising her arm to shield her face from the heat.
He was burning! Dear sweet Jesus, the whole bed was engulfed in a mass of flame!
No...not the bed. Carrie saw now that the bed wasn’t burning. Neither was his hospital gown. Nor the sheets.
Just him.
The CCU dissolved into chaos. Screams, shouts, white-clad bodies darting here and there, shouting into phones, brandishing fire extinguishers, dousing the bed with foam, with white jets of carbon dioxide, but the flames burned on unabated, crisping his skin, boiling his eyes in their sockets, peeling the blackened flesh from his bones, and still he moved and writhed and kicked and thrashed, still alive within the consuming flames.
Still alive...still burning...
And then when it seemed that there was nothing left of him but his skeleton and a crisp blackened membrane stretched across his bones, he stiffened and arched his body until only his heels and the back of his head touched the mattress. He remained like that for what seemed an eternity, exhaling his last smoky breath in a prolonged, quavering ululation, then he collapsed.
And with his collapse, the flames snuffed out.
All was quiet except for the long high-pitched squeal of his flat-lined cardiac monitor. The nurses and orderlies crowded around the bed, covering their mouths and noses as they gaped at the blackened, immolated thing that had once been Walter Ferris, lying stiff and twisted in his unmarred, unscorched hospital gown.
Sick with the horror of it, Carrie staggered back, fighting to maintain her grip on consciousness. She turned and stumbled toward the swinging doors, the voices of the CCU staff echoing above the howl of the monitor...
“Christ, what happened?”...”An oxygen fire?”...”Naw, look at the bed—not even scorched!”...”What happened to the smoke alarms? How come they never went off?”...”Damnedest thing I ever seen!”...
Out in the hall Carrie stepped aside to let the hospital’s emergency crew pass. She leaned against the wall and retched.
She’d come here to forgive him...she had forgiven him.
Apparently someone else had not.
Archdiocese to Close St. Joe’s
The Cardinal has announced that the Archdiocese of New York will temporarily close St. Joseph’s Church until the Diocese and Vatican officials have had time to evaluate the phenomena surrounding the relic displayed on the altar of the Lower Manhattan church.
“Let’s just call it a cooling-off period,” the Cardinal declared at a news conference yesterday. “In the present climate of crowds, hysteria, and conflicting claims of right of ownership, clear, reasoned, dispassionate judgment is quite nearly impossible.”
St. Joseph’s parishioners will be instructed to attend services at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery until their own church is reopened.
The city has announced it will clear the area around St. Joseph’s in order to allow Church investigative teams to do their work without interference.
(The New York Post)
Emilio stood back and watched the police herd the Mary-hunters from the street in front of St. Joseph’s. The hordes of the faithful were reluctant to go and protested vociferously. Some protested with more than their voices, crying that they had driven thousands of miles to be healed and weren’t about to be turned away now.
But they were indeed turned away. And some of those who would not leave voluntarily were either dragged away or driven away in the backs of paddy wagons.
By whatever means necessary, the entire block was cleared by nightfall. The church doors were locked and a police cordon was set up across each end of the street.
Emilio shook his head in admiration. He didn’t know how he had done it, but he saw the Senador’s hand in all this. There were still roadblocks before him, but the Senador had cleared the major obstacle between Emilio and the relic.
The rest was up to him.
Already he had a plan.
IN THE PACIFIC
20o N, 128o W
The storm continues to gain in size and strength as it races along its northeasterly course. It now stretches one hundred and fifty miles across as its cumulonimbus crown reaches to forty thousand feet.
The spinning core of its heart increases its speed, and the entire storm moves with it. The swirling mass of violent weather is aimed toward northern Mexico.
TWENTY-ONE
Manhattan
Decker honked and yelled and edged the D’Agostino’s truck through the crowd until it nosed up against one of the light blue “Police Line” horses that blocked access to the street ahead. Beyond the barrier the pavement stretched dark and empty in front of St. Joseph’s, illuminated in patches by the streetlamps. An island of calm in a sea of frustrated Mary-hunters.
“You know what to say?” Emilio said.
Decker nodded. “Got it memorized.”
He jammed some gum into his mouth and slid out from behind the wheel as one of the cops approached.
Emilio watched from his spot in the middle of the front seat. Molinari slouched to his right, trying to look casual with his elbow protruding from the open passenger window. Emilio was keeping a decidedly low profile at this point in their little mission. Dec
ker and Mol sported extra facial hair, glasses, and nostril dilators to distort their appearances, but Emilio had gone to the greatest length to disguise himself. He’d added a thick black beard to augment his mustache, a shaggy wig, and a Navy blue knitted watch cap pulled low over his forehead, almost to his eyebrows. He was often caught in the background when the Senador was photographed leaving his office or his car, and he didn’t want the slightest risk of being identified later.
“Street’s closed, buddy,” the cop said. “You gotta go down to—”
“Gotta delivery here,” Decker said, chewing noisily on the gum as he fished a slip of paper from his pocket. “The rect’ry.”
“Yeah? Nobody told me about that.”
“We deliver alla time, man. Youse guys maya shut down da choich, but dem priests still gotta eat, know’m sayin’?”
As the cop stared at Decker, Emilio winced and closed his eyes. He heard Mol groan softly. Decker was laying it on too thick.
The cop pulled a flashlight from his belt. “Let’s have a look at what you’re deliverin’. You wouldn’t be the first Mary-hunters tried to sneak by us tonight.”
Emilio nodded as Mol nudged him. They’d done this right. This was no fake D’Agostino’s truck. This was the real thing. They’d hijacked it just as it left the store. The driver was bound, gagged and unconscious in the trunk of a car Mol had stolen this afternoon. The back of the panel truck was loaded with grocery bags, all scheduled for delivery elsewhere, but Emilio had changed the addresses on half a dozen of them to read “St. Joseph’s rectory.”
Emilio heard the rear doors open, heard the rustle of paper as a few of the bags were inspected, then heard the door slam closed.
Seconds later, Decker was slipping back behind the wheel as the cop slid the barrier aside and waved them through.
“‘Choich?’“ Mol said, leaning forward and staring at Decker. “‘Choich?’“
Decker shrugged, grinning. “What can I say? I’m a Method actor.”
Mol laughed and grabbed his crotch. “Method this!”
Emilio let them blow off a little steam. They were in—past the guard house, so to speak—but they still had a long way to go.
Decker gave a friendly wave to the cop standing on the sidewalk in front of the church as he drove past, and backed the truck into the alley on the far side of the rectory. Mol and Emilio got out, opened the rear of the trunk, grabbed some bags, and left the doors open as they approached the rectory’s side door with loaded arms.
A middle-aged woman opened the door.
“A gift for Father Dan from one of his parishioners,” Emilio said. “Is he in?”
Emilio knew he was in—he’d confirmed that with a phone call.
“Why, yes,” the woman said. She let them into the foyer, then turned and called up the stairs behind her. “Father Dan! Someone here to see you!”
By the time she turned back again, Mol had put his grocery bags down and had a pistol pointing at her face.
“Not a word, or we’ll shoot Father Dan. Understand?”
Eyes wide, jaw trembling, utterly terrified, she nodded.
“Anyone else in the house besides Father Dan?” Mol said.
She shook her head.
“Good.” Mol smiled. “Now, let’s find a nice little closet so we can lock you up where you won’t get hurt.
Emilio had his own automatic—a silenced Llama compact 9mm—ready and waiting for Father Dan when he came down the stairs.
“Hello,” the priest said. “What—”
And then he saw the pistol.
“Let’s go to church, shall we, Father?” Emilio said.
The young priest looked bewildered. “But there are police all over—”
“The tunnel, Father Dan. We’ll use the tunnel.”
The priest shook his head. “Tunnel? I don’t know what you’re—”
Emilio jabbed the silencer tip against his ribs. “I’ll shoot your housekeeper in the face.”
“All right!” Father Dan said, blanching. “All right. It’s this way.”
“That’s better.
Mol rejoined them then, and gave Emilio a thumbs-up sign. The housekeeper was safely locked away. She’d keep quiet to protect her precious priest from being shot while the priest was leading them to the church in order to keep his housekeeper from being shot.
Wasn’t brotherly love wonderful?
But repeated reminders never hurt. Emilio had worked this one out and memorized it: “No heroics, please, Father. We’re not here to hurt anyone, but we’re quite willing to do so without hesitation if the need arises. Remember that.”
‡
Why are all these things happening, Mother?
Carrie sat in the front pew, staring at the Virgin where she lay upon the altar.
She could not get the sight of her father—now that he was dead, had died so horribly, it seemed all right to call him that—out of her head. The flames, the oily smoke, the smell, the obscene sizzle of burning human flesh haunted her dreams and her waking hours, stealing her appetite, chasing her sleep. That had been no ordinary fire. Only the man had burned, nothing else.
Did I do that, Mother? Did you? Or was that the work of Someone Else’s hand?
And now the church was closed, the sick and lame turned away, the building sealed, the street blocked off. What next? Tomorrow these aisles would be crowded with investigators from the Archdiocese and the Vatican, trailed by nosy, disrespectful bureaucrats from City Hall and Albany, from Washington and Israel, all poking, prodding, examining.
They’ll be interrogating me about how you got here. I won’t tell them a thing. It’s not me I’m worried about, Mother. It’s you. They’ll treat you like a thing—an it. They may even decide you belong back in Israel. What’ll I do then, Mother?
Carrie felt tears begin to well in her eyes. She willed them away.
There’s a plan, isn’t there, Mother? There has to be. I just have to have faith and—
She heard a noise in the vestibule and turned. She smiled when she saw Dan leading two other strange-looking men up the aisle, but he did not return her smile. He looked pale and grim.
And then she saw the pistols.
She shot to her feet. “Dan? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” His voice was as tight as his features. “They came into the rectory and—”
“What we want is very simple,” the bigger, bearded one said. He stopped a dozen feet or so down the aisle from Carrie and let Dan continue toward her. He gestured toward the altar with his pistol. “We want that.”
Carrie was stunned for a few seconds, unable, unwilling to believe what she’d just heard.
“Want her for what?” she managed to say.
“No time for chatter, Sister. Here’s how we’ll do this. You two will carry her back through the tunnel to the rectory, and we’ll take her from there. No tricks, no games, no heroics, and no one gets hurt.” He gestured with his pistol at Dan. “You take the head and she’ll take the feet. Let’s move.”
“No!” Carrie said.
The bearded man snapped his head back in surprise. Obviously he hadn’t expected that.
Neither had Carrie. The word had erupted from her with little or no forethought, propelled by fear, by anger, by outrage that anyone could even think of stealing the Virgin from the sanctuary of a church.
She faced him defiantly.
“Get out of here.”
He stared at her for a heartbeat or two, then pointed his gun at Dan.
“You cause me any trouble and I’ll shoot your priest friend.”
“No, you won’t. There’s a cop outside that door. All I have to do is scream once and he’ll be in here, and that will be the end of you. Get out now. I’ll give you a chance to run, then I’m going to open the front doors and call the police inside.”
“I’m not kidding, lady,” the big one said through his teeth. “Get up there and do what you’re told.”
“Carrie,
please,” she heard Dan say from her left. “It’s okay. They can’t get past the cops with her anyway. So just do as he says.”
Dan might be right, but Carrie wasn’t going to let these creeps get their filthy hands on the Virgin for even a few seconds.
“Get out now or I scream.”
The shorter one looked about nervously, as if he wanted to take her up on the offer, but the bearded one stood firm. His eyes narrowed as he raised his pistol and aimed it at her chest. His voice was low and menacing.
“No me jodas.”
He wouldn’t dare, she thought. He’s got to be bluffing.
“All right,” she said. “I gave you your chance.”
Still they didn’t move, so she filled her lungs and—
She saw the flash at the tip of the silencer, saw the pistol buck, heard a sound like phut!, felt an impact against her chest, tried to start her scream but she was punched backward and didn’t seem to have any air to scream with. And then she was falling. Darkness rimmed her vision as a distant roaring surged closer, filling her ears, bringing with it more darkness, an all-encompassing darkness...
‡
Nara, Japan
As the first rays of the sun crest the horizon and light the flared eaves of the Todaiji temple, the largest wood structure in the world, it begins to dissolve, to melt into the air. And as the sun rises farther, the temple further dissolves. Finally the sun strikes the bronze surface of the Daibutsu. The bronze of the Buddha seems to glow for a moment, then it too dissolves.
In a manner of minutes, nothing of the Todaiji or its Buddha remains.
‡
Manhattan
Emilio stood frozen with his automatic still pointed at where she had been standing as he watched her fall and lay twitching on the marble floor, the red of her life soaking through the front of her habit and pooling around her.
“Christ, Emilio!” Mol gasped beside him.
“Carrie!” the priest cried, dropping to his knees beside her and gripping her limp shoulders. “Oh, God, Carrie!”
Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set Page 26