“Noted.” The Scot waved a hand toward a chair. “Your holiness, it’s as cheap sitting as it is standing.”
Khoury picked up another file and took a seat a few chairs down from Rossi. “You aren’t taking this very seriously, Patrick.”
MacLeod picked up a file, opened it and propped his butt against the edge of the side table. “Can’t get my head ‘round any of this.”
Rossi: “One of the shadows appeared as we were standing there.”
“Tad too convenient, don’t you think?” asked MacLeod. “I’ve a mind to play Michelangelo. Get up on a scaffold and examine the things up close. Take some photographs. Do some chemical tests.”
“They’ve already been conducted.” Khoury held up a thick stack.
MacLeod went over to the priest and snatched the papers from him. “Don’t believe everything you read, your holiness.”
“Stop calling me that.”
MacLeod returned to his perch on the desk and flipped through the packet. “Whatever pleases you, Sir Ry Guy.”
“Boys, we’re in this together for the duration,” said Rossi. “Can’t we all just get along?”
Khoury folded the top corner of a page and turned to the next one. Folded the top corner of that page. “I want something simple. A notebook.”
“I’m hungry,” said Rossi.
“I need a whiskey.”
Pens and notebooks arrived, as did more files. Last came dinner - a stack of pizza cartons and square Styrofoam containers spilling over with spaghetti. Two bottles of wine were also delivered, along with a case of bottled water. All three looked longingly at the wine, but went for the acqua.
Cloistering themselves in the situation room/library/dungeon into the night, the trio read, took notes, ate and talked. Each approached the files based on his or her area of expertise.
Rossi tackled the reading methodically and chronologically. She started from the beginning, learning how the first shadow emerged and spawned worry that the cleaning had disfigured the frescoes. As more shadows appeared, each one followed by a disaster, the Vatican’s concern for a work of art was replaced by fear for humanity’s future. Like the ripples from a stone dropped in the water, the fear spread in a widening circle. The Italian government was brought into the case. The governments of other European nations. Finally, the United States.
She saw that specialists from every field had been secretly brought in to examine the phenomenon. Art historians. Forensic scientists. Theologians. Harvard University had sent people. Oxford University had dispatched a group. The European Union had assembled a committee to visit, as had the United Nations and NATO. INTERPOL had assigned investigators. Before the FBI, the CIA had been in the loop.
Though she could see when the Megiddo team became involved, she found no record of what it had accomplished. All through the files, names were blacked out, hiding the identity of individuals who had worked on any aspect of the case. Missing entirely was anything about the opposition group. The violent few.
MacLeod immersed himself in the files on the two miracles themselves. The folders for each case were surprisingly full: Medical reports, police reports, witness statements, photographs. That didn’t convince him, however. Documents could be forged and witnesses paid. Even photographs could be manipulated.
He held up one of the photographs, a particularly gruesome color close-up of the bricklayer’s neck injury. A tube-like body part - the severed esophagus - was visible. The picture might have been stolen from another man’s file, or could have been pulled off the Internet.
“I’m going to ring some of these miracle doctors,” MacLeod announced.
“Not until I have a chance to go through that pile,” she said. “You might screw it up. Scare them off.”
“You don’t trust me,” he said indignantly.
“I don’t know you.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“She’s correct: No outside probing until we’ve all had a chance to background ourselves on every aspect of this,” said Khoury, and he continued to scribble.
The priest took the most voluminous notes. Like Michelangelo’s ceiling, his analysis was biblically based. In the early morning hours, he pushed back his chair and stood up with an open file between his hands. “It makes sense if viewed through a futurist lens.”
“In English,” said Rossi.
“Aye,” said MacLeod.
“In Revelation...”
“Stop right there,” said MacLeod. “I don’t want to hear any more about this doom and gloom book of yours. It’s at the end of the New Testament and our painter friend’s ceiling is all about Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament. You’ve got it all backwards.”
“Exactly,” Khoury said excitedly. “That last book helps us unlock the images that are based on the first book.”
“You’re not making sense, man.”
“Hear him out, Patrick,” said Rossi.
Khoury went up to the board and scribbled the word IDEALISTS on the far left side. “At one extreme are idealists who see everything in Revelation as symbolic, as something meant to inspire. They don’t believe any of the things described in the book will actually come to pass.”
“Count me as one of those clever laddies,” said MacLeod.
In the middle of the board, Khoury wrote PRETERISTS and HISTORICISTS. “Preterists think everything in the book has already happened; it’s all in the past. Historicists see the book in the context of unfolding history. They believe certain events in the past were represented by the descriptions in Revelation, and that other things have yet to occur.”
At the far right side of the board, he wrote FUTURISTS.
“They interpret the symbols literally, and think that all of it is going to take place in the future. That is how the ceiling and its symbols are operating. That’s how we need to interpret them.” He circled the word multiple times. “As futurists.”
“You completely believe these symbols can predict the future,” said Rossi.
“Yes,” said Khoury.
“And you’re saying Revelation offers insight into them,” she said.
“Exactly.”
The Scotsman got up from his chair and marched toward the priest. “Give me one example, Father Ryan. Tell me how one thing in these files was predicted in your precious book of doom.”
“Seven.”
“What?”
“Seven is a key number in the Book of Revelation.” Khoury went to the dry board, drew a 7 and circled it. “Seven seals on a scroll are broken one at a time, each unsealing bringing mayhem. The sun turns black. The moon becomes red.”
The priest put up a second 7 and drew a circle around it. “Seven trumpets blare, heralding locusts, hail and fire. Something different with each sounding.”
Khoury put up a third 7 and circled it. “Seven bowls of plagues are poured out.”
“So what?” barked the Scot.
Khoury picked up the remote, activated one of the screens and flipped from one disaster photo to another. The flaming twin towers. Rushing water. Palm trees bent in half by winds. “Seven disasters were announced by the shadows, all of them similar in size and scope. All spectacular, be it in the amount of physical destruction or number killed. After the seventh, there was a lull in activity, the longest since this began. Then the two miracles surfaced.”
Rossi: “If your math is correct, we’ve got the shadow hands and...”
“Four more miracles to go after that. Another lull. Then a final set of seven.” The priest nodded toward the mayhem on the screen. “Perhaps the miracles will be even more amazing. The catastrophes even more devastating.”
“Hard to imagine how that’s possible,” said Rossi.
“Or maybe they will be less obvious,” said Khoury, punching off the screen and flinging down the remote. “More insidious. Subversive.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Revelation speaks about a beast that seems to have a fata
l wound, but it’s healed,” said Khoury. “This amazes people, and causes them to follow the beast. They also worship a dragon, which gave the beast its power.”
“The man behind the man,” she said. “Something that would be played out in the political arena?”
“A third creature exercises authority on the healed beast’s behalf,” said Khoury. “He forces everyone to receive the mark of the beast: 666.”
The Scot pulled a Bible from one of the bookshelves and waved it at Khoury. “Isn’t it true that every other number on God’s earth is in Revelation? The four horsemen of the apocalypse. This 666 nonsense. You’ve got numbers coming out of each and every orifice.”
Khoury threw up his hands. “All I am saying is, if you look at the ceiling...”
“It’s bullshit. You can cook up any number you want by looking at Michelangelo’s ceiling.” MacLeod dropped the Bible on the table, went to the board and started scribbling numbers and X’s in a nonsensical algebra formula. “Could be if you multiply the number of panels by the number of teeth in your head, you’ll come up with the date of the End of Days.”
“That’s enough,” growled Khoury.
“Exchange the numbers for letters and play them backwards,” continued the Scot, scribbling a sentence:
Paul is dead.
Rossi stepped between the two men. “We’re all getting punchy. Let’s try to get a few hours of sleep. Approach this with clearer heads.”
The priest walked to the end of the room and dragged his hand down his face. “I haven’t slept for twenty-four hours.”
“I can beat that,” said Rossi, yawning.
MacLeod pulled down on his vest. “I apologize for losing my temper.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Rossi.
Khoury said nothing.
“Away to your beds,” said MacLeod. “For my penance, I’ll stay behind and tidy up.”
The Scot waited until they had disappeared through the door leading to their quarters, and then summoned a young Swiss Guard who’d been serving as their runner all evening. “Can you get me back inside the chapel, laddie?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MacLeod was alone in the Sistine Chapel.
He walked into the middle of the space and sat cross-legged on the floor. After tipping his head back, he determined the position would be too uncomfortable to hold for any length of time. Groaning, he stretched out on his back.
“Getting too old for this crap,” he muttered.
The beautiful marble floor was cold and hard; he might as well be lying on a block of ice. He took off his blazer, rolled it into a ball and tucked it under his head. He should have instructed the guard to drag a mattress into the chapel. A pillow and blanket as well. That would have scandalized the cardinal, not to mention Sir Ry Guy. Him and his seven bollocks.
The chapel wasn’t lighted, and that was good: MacLeod’s third eye saw more clearly in the dark.
All of his life he’d denied his abilities, even while his mother insisted that he had a gift and should use it to improve their situation. She acted as if her son were sitting on a pile of gold, hording it all for himself.
Admitting he had a paranormal talent would have thrown him into the same lot as his mum and her cohorts, and that was the last place he wanted to be. After being forced to participate in their frauds and watching them take money from grieving, desperate people, he’d turned against anything that reeked of spiritualism. The happiest day of his life was when he moved out of their miserable Glasgow flat at the age of sixteen.
After moving to Edinburgh, he’d taken a job as a tour guide and had agreed to lead a group around Mary King’s Close. The underground street was where poor people had lived in tenements - and died of the plague during the seventeenth century. As with every other site in Scotland, it was touted as haunted. Foolishly, he’d gone ahead and taken twelve Americans down to the dank, dark tunnels. He’d kept his ability in check until they’d stepped into what the guides called “Annie’s Room,” where a ten-year-old child had supposedly died of the plague. Even as his tour group moved deeper into the cell, he backed away. His third eye saw a ghost, but it didn’t belong to a darling little girl. The thing knew it was being watched, and it rushed him. Ran right through him. His own scream bounced off the walls of the room and rolled through the tunnels.
He quit the tour gig and got work flipping burgers at the gloriously ghost-free McDonald’s on South St. Andrew Street.
At the university, he could have joined the ranks of the paranormal investigators. Instead, he’d turned on the very people who could have helped him, who would have embraced him and his ability. He made light of their discipline. Taught classes and wrote books designed to discredit their claims. Though he knew it was a kind of self-loathing that drove him, he continued.
He’d started out earning wide respect for his scientific approach to debunking the paranormal, but his passion soon turned him into a pariah – even in his own department. While psychologists who embraced the supernatural were considered fringe by many of their peers, he was vilified for taking it too far to the other extreme. He’d alienated clergymen, churchgoers and anyone else who believed there was a life after this one.
In private, he honed his psychic talent. Trained and fine-tuned it so he could use it quietly and selectively. After a child went missing, he phoned in an anonymous tip to the authorities that led them to her and her kidnapper. When a colleague at the university became widowed, MacLeod surreptitiously directed her to a stash of money that her husband had kept in the ceiling of their flat. He intuited a neighbor boy’s impending accident, and hid the lad’s bicycle until the danger had passed.
Here he was again, using it in secret.
He closed his lids and emptied his head of all frivolous worry. The only image he allowed into his mind was that of the chapel ceiling above him. He could visualize the biblical figures and their stories. God and his chubby angels. Adam and Eve. Creation. The temptation and expulsion. Noah. The water and chaos of the flood. All of it rendered in colors that managed to be both lifelike and fantastic.
As he concentrated on the mental pictures, the frescoes became sharper. Clearer. The images were growing larger. He was moving closer to them. Closer still. He didn’t need a scaffold; his third eye had elevated his psyche. Lifted it up to the ceiling. Raising his right hand, he sensed something solid. He could almost feel the brush strokes. What was this large, golden orb before him? A deeper color in the center, edges of bright yellow. The sun. He was beneath the fresco of God pointing to the sun and the moon. So vivid, he swore he could feel the heat radiating from the ball of fire.
“Brilliant,” he breathed.
Behind God’s figure was the pretend creator, mimicking the Almighty’s stance. Though faint, the image retained a chilling, threatening quality, especially with the horns added. MacLeod moved his fingertips over the shadow, and pulled them back. The disaster heralded by this ghost had already come and gone, so there was no sense in wasting time with it. There was another reason he pulled back, however: What if the horned figure had been planted by the devil himself? Where would his third eye take him?
MacLeod was a couple of panels away from where he needed to go. Slowly, his third eye traveled to that section of the ceiling. The sensation was akin to floating on the water atop an air mattress, with someone else pushing it. He bobbed up and down, weaved a bit to the left and corrected to the right.
The air mattress stalled over the original fresco. Michelangelo’s masterpiece.
Against a pale expanse, he saw two hands - one pointing with a mighty index finger and the other limp as it waited to receive the gift. The artistry was amazing up close. The flesh, so realistic in its varying tones. The Creator’s wrist, thick and strong. Every muscle of God’s palm was articulated as he reached for Adam. MacLeod was tempted to raise his index finger and touch that of the Lord’s, but a part of him told him that would be dangerous. He had no intention of seeing his maker before
his time. Besides, these hands weren’t the ones he needed to visit. Reluctantly, he willed himself beyond the glorious image.
There they were, the newest shadows, the ghost hands poised over those of Adam and God. Crude outlines of the originals, flat and lifeless in their grayness. Michelangelo didn’t create these things; no mortal had painted them. As much as MacLeod hated to admit it, they couldn’t be of this world. Even as he stared at them, he saw them changing. Fading. That meant they were approaching dawn, a new day. The day of the event. He had to work quickly.
Putting his own hands out in front of him, MacLeod reached to touch the gray images.
“Tell me what you know, you ugly bastards,” he whispered.
As if in response to his insult, a searing pain shot through his torso. MacLeod started falling away from the ceiling. Falling, falling, falling. The frescoes becoming smaller and smaller. More distant. He stretched his arms to the heavens, as if that could somehow stop or slow his descent. It didn’t.
MacLeod’s psyche plummeted back into his body so quickly, he felt a thud and gasped to catch his breath. At the same time, pain continued to rip through his body. His lids snapped open, and he saw a red face hovering over him.
MacLeod slapped his hands over his abdomen and felt the handle of a knife. “Shit,” he gasped.
His assailant pulled out the blade and stood up. Dropped something on the floor. Turned around and fled into the blackness.
“Help!” MacLeod yelled, the effort sending ripples of fresh pain through his wound. “Help me!”
He listened hard, hoping for footsteps or voices. Sprawled on the cold floor in the dark, he felt as if he were bleeding out in a cave. Who or what had attacked him? Why? His head felt heavy and light at the same time. Was he dreaming this? The warm dampness under his hands told him it was real.
Less loudly, almost pleading: “Someone! Help!”
Before he’d fallen from the ceiling, he’d caught a glimpse of something from the shadows. Would he lose consciousness before he could tell his partners? MacLeod’s right hand dropped from his abdomen. He tried to paint a message on the marble floor – a word that started with a W - but all he managed was a broad smear of red.
The Devil's Own Crayons Page 10