Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

EIGHTEEN

Manhattan

“Okay, Monsignor. Another deep breath, and hold this one.”

Vincenzo Riccio filled his lungs while Dr. Karras’s fingers probed his abdomen under the lower right edge of his rib cage. The young oncologist’s normally tanned-looking skin was relatively pale today. The overhead fluorescents of the examining room reflected off the fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead.

“Damn!” he muttered as his fingers probed more deeply under Vincenzo’s ribs.

“Something wrong?” Vincenzo said, exhaling at last.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean...”

Vincenzo sat up and pulled down his undershirt.

“I don’t understand.”

Karras ran a hand through his short black hair. “Neither do I.”

“Perhaps you’d better tell me the problem, Doctor. I think I deserve to know.”

The examination had started out routinely enough, with Vincenzo arriving at the outpatient cancer clinic, reading in the waiting room until his name was called, and then being examined by Dr. Karras. But after examining him just as he had now, Karras had stepped over to the chart and pulled out yesterday’s blood test results. After checking those for what seemed like an unduly long time and shuffling through the sheaf of previous reports, he examined Vincenzo’s abdomen again, then sent him for a CT scan of the liver, with comparison to the previous study.

“Stat,” he’d said into the phone. “Double stat.”

So Vincenzo had allowed himself to be swallowed by the metal gullet of the scanner where his liver could be radiographically sliced and diced, and now he was back again on the examining table. He had an inkling as to the nature of Dr. Karras’s discomfiture, but dared not voice it...dared not even think it.

“The problem is—”

The intercom beeped. “Doctor Weiskopf is here.”

“Weiskopf?” Karras said. “From radiology? What’s—? Oh, shit. Excuse me.” He all but leapt for the examining room door.

A few moments later he was back, trailing in his wake a tall, bearded man whom he introduced as Dr. Weiskopf. He looked about fifty and wore a yarmulke; a large manila x-ray envelope was tucked under his left arm.

“I’ve never met a walking miracle,” Weiskopf said softly as they shook hands.

Vincenzo suddenly felt weak. “Miracle?”

“What else can you call it? I looked at your scan from today, then called up your initial scan from July, and I said to myself, Moshe, a trick this Karras kid is playing on you, trying to make a fool of you by asking you to compare the very sick liver of one man to the perfectly healthy liver of another. And then I spied an osteophyte—doctorese for a bone spur—on one of the vertebrae of the new scan; much to my shock, there was the very same spur on the old scan. So I had to come and see this man for myself.”

Vincenzo looked from Weiskopf to Karras. “What...what’s he saying?”

“He’s saying your liver scan’s normal, Monsignor.”

“You mean the tumor’s shrinking?”

“Shrinking?” Weiskopf said. “It’s gone! Pfffft! Like it was never there. On your first scan your liver was, if you’ll pardon the term, Swiss-cheezed with tumors—”

“Nodular,” Karras added. “And half again it’s normal size,”

“But now it’s perfectly homogeneous. Not even a little fatty degeneration.”

“And it’s back to normal size,” Karras said. “I can barely feel it anymore.”

“Is that what you were doing to me?” Vincenzo felt giddy and dizzy, wanting to laugh or cry or both, wanting to fall to his knees in prayer but struggling to maintain his composure. “For a while there I thought you were trying to feel my spine from the front.”

Karras smiled weakly. “Last week your liver was big and nodular. Your liver enzymes were climbing. Now...”

“Maybe we’re onto something with this new protocol,” Weiskopf said.

Karras was shaking his head, staring at Vincenzo. “No. The protocol’s a bust. We haven’t seen significant tumor regression with anyone.”

Weiskopf tapped his x-ray envelope. “Until now.”

“Uh-uh.” Karras was still shaking his head and staring. “Even if it were the protocol, tumor regression would be gradual. A slow shrinking of the tumors. And even in a best-case scenario we’d be left with a battered and scarred but functioning liver. The Monsignor’s CT shows a perfectly healthy liver. Almost as if he’d had a transplant.”

“I can’t explain it,” Weiskopf said.

“Maybe you already did,” Vincenzo said. “It’s a miracle.”

Vincenzo was regaining his inner composure now. He hadn’t been totally unprepared for this. After the apparition had passed through him three nights ago, he’d been wracked with horrific pain for a few moments, and then it had passed, leaving him weak and sweaty. He’d staggered back to his quarters at the mission where he fell into an exhausted sleep. But when he awakened early the next morning he’d felt better than he had in years. And each passing day brought renewed strength and vigor. A power had touched him outside that alley. He’d been changed inside. He’d wondered how, why. He’d prayed, but he’d dared not hope...

Until now.

A miracle...

The doctors’ smiles were polite but condescending.

“A figure of speech, Monsignor,” Weiskopf said.

Karras cleared his throat. “I’d like to admit you for a day or two, Monsignor. Do a full, head-to-toe work-up to see if we can get a handle on this and...”

Vincenzo shook his head as he slipped off the examining table and reached for his cassock.

“I’m sorry, but I have no time for that.”

“Monsignor, something extraordinary has happened here. If we can pin this down, who knows how many other people we can help?”

“You will find nothing useful in examining me,” he said as he fastened his Roman collar. “Only confusion.”

“You can’t say that.”

“I wish it were otherwise. But unfortunately what happened to me cannot be applied to your other cases. At least not in a hospital or clinic setting.”

“Where then?”

“I do not know. But I’m going to try and find out.”

Vincenzo was returning to the Lower East Side. Something was drawing him back.

‡

“Y’soup’s goin’ cold, guy. Ain’t y’gonna eat it?”

Emilio glanced at the scrawny little man to his right—bright eyes crinkled within a wrinkled face framed by a mass of gray hair and beard matted with food and dirt; a gnarled finger with a nail the color of asphalt pointed to the bowl that cooled before him on the table.

“Do you want it?” Emilio said.

This was Emilio’s third meal at the church-basement soup kitchen called Loaves and Fishes and so far he’d managed to get through each time without having to eat a thing.

“Well, if you ain’t gonna be eatin’ it, it’d sure be a sin to waste it.”

Emilio switched bowls with the old man, trading his full one for an empty. He placed his slice of bread on the other man’s plate as well.

“Ain’tcha hungry?” the old man said, bending over the fresh bowl and adding his slurps to the chorus of guttural noises around them.

“No. Not really.” He’d had a big breakfast in the East Village before walking over to St. Joseph’s. “I’m not feeling well lately.”

“Yeah? Well, then, this is the place to be.” The old man leaned closer and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Miracles happen here.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Talk of miracles had brought him to Loaves and Fishes.

Emilio had been in town a week and a half and hadn’t uncovered a thing. And didn’t expect to. A waste of time as far as he was concerned. But the opinion of Emilio Sanchez did not count in this matter. The Senador wanted him here, sniffing about, turning over any rocks the CDC might miss, and so here he was. The Senador was receiving copies of the official CDC reports as they were filed. What he wanted from Emilio was the unofficial story, “the view from street level,” as the Senador had put it.

To do that, Emilio had rented a room in one of the area’s seedy residential hotels, stopped taking showers, and let his beard grow. He’d picked up some thrift-shop clothes and begun wandering the Lower East Side, posing as a local.

And it was as a local that he’d run into someone named Pilgrim who ranted on about his blind friend Preacher who’d begun to see at a place called Loaves and Fishes, and how all the men who’d been cured of AIDS used to come to Loaves and Fishes.

And so now Emilio came to Loaves and Fishes.

Not that he suspected to find anything even vaguely supernatural going on, but there was always the chance that the place might be frequented by someone pedaling a drug or a folk medicine that might have been responsible for the now-famous AIDS cures.

But he’d found nothing here. Just a crowd of hungry losers stuffing their faces with anything edible they could lay their hands on. No fights, which struck Emilio as unusual with this sort of group. Maybe they were just too busy eating. Nothing special about the staff, either. Mostly lonely old biddies filling up their empty days toiling in what they probably thought was service to mankind, plus a beautiful young nun who spent too much of her time in the kitchen.

And a young priest who seemed to be in charge. Emilio had been startled to recognize him as the same priest the Senador had chewed up and spit out in front of the Waldorf last spring. He doubted the priest would recognize him, but just the same, Emilio kept his head down whenever he came around.

Disgusted, he decided to leave. Nothing here. No miracles of any kind, medical or otherwise. As he rose to his feet, he heard the priest say he was running back to the rectory for something, but instead of leaving through the front of the room, he used a door in the rear of the kitchen.

Emilio wove through the maze of long tables and hurried up the steps to the street. As he ambled along, blinking in the sun’s glare and trying to look aimless, he glanced down the alley between the church and the rectory. He stopped. Hadn’t he seen the priest go out a door in the kitchen? He’d assumed it led up to street level. But there was no corresponding door in the alley. Where had the priest gone if he hadn’t returned to the rectory?

He looked up at the rectory and was startled momentarily to see the priest’s blond head pass a window. Emilio smiled. An underground passage. How convenient. He supposed there were all sorts of passages between these old buildings.

He walked on, taking small satisfaction in having cleared up a mystery, no matter how inconsequential. Emilio didn’t like mysteries.

Further along he passed a man wearing a white lab coat and holding an open brief case before him. The briefcase was lined with rows of three-ounce bottles.

“Hey, buddy! You got the sickness?”

Emilio looked at him and the guy’s eyes lit with sudden recognition. He backed up two steps.

“Oh, shit. Hey, sorry. Never mind.”

Emilio walked on without acknowledging him.

How could he learn anything, or even make sense of anything in this carnival atmosphere? The entire area seemed to have gone mad. At night people wandered about in droves carrying candles and chanting the Rosary and seeing the Virgin Mary everywhere. Hucksters were set up on every corner selling “I (heart symbol) Mary-hunting” badges, “Our Lady of the Lower East Side” T-shirts, Virgin Mary statues, slivers of the True Cross, rosaries, and sundry other religious paraphernalia.

Quick-buck grifters and con artists had moved in too. Emilio had already had run-ins with a few of them, and the guy he’d just passed had been the first. He’d approached Emilio just as he’d started to today, asking him if he had “the sickness”—the local code for AIDS.

Curious, Emilio had said, “What if I do?”

With that the guy had launched into a spiel about his cure-all tonic, claiming his elixir, “Yes, the stuff right in these bottles you see before you here,” was the stuff that had cured the AIDS cases everyone was talking about.

Emilio had listened awhile, then pushed him into a corner and knocked him around until he admitted that he hadn’t even come to the city until he’d read about the cures.

Emilio had similar run-ins with a number of the snake-oil salesmen he’d come across and under pressure the stories were all the same: charlatans preying on the weak, the sick, and the desperate.

Not that Emilio cared one way or the other, he simply didn’t want to bring one of their potions back to Paraiso and look like a fool in the eyes of the Senador.

This whole trip seemed a fool’s errand.

And yet...

A feeling was in the air...and in himself...a twinge in his gut, a vague prickling at the back of his neck, a sense that these littered streets, these leaning, tattered buildings hid a secret. Even the air felt heavy, pregnant with...what? Dread? Anticipation? A little of both, maybe?

Emilio shook it off. The Senador had not sent him here for his impressions of the area; he wanted facts. And whatever it was that was raising his gooseflesh, Emilio doubted it would be of any use to the Senador and Charlie.

But something was going on down here.

‡

Vincenzo Riccio stood in the dusk on the sidewalk in front of St. Joseph’s church. He did not stare up at its Gothic facade, but at the doorway that led under its granite front steps. People carrying candles were beginning to gather on those steps. They carried rosaries and clustered around an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was preparing them for a prayer meeting tonight. Vincenzo paid them little heed.

He had wandered the Lower East Side all day, tracing a spiral path from the Con-Ed station by the FDR, following a feeling, an invisible glow that seemed to be centered in the front of his brain, pulling him. Where or why it was drawing him, he could not say, but he gave himself over to the feeling, allowed it to lead him in shrinking concentric circles to this spot.

And now he was here. The invisible glow, the intangible warmth, the only warm spot in the city lay directly before him, somewhere within this church.

In the course of the weeks he had spent down here searching for the vision, Vincenzo had passed St. Joseph’s numerous times. He had crossed himself as he’d come even with its sanctuary, and even had stopped in once to say a prayer. But he had not been struck by anything especially important about the place. A stately old church that, like its neighborhood, had seen better days.

Now it seemed like...home.

But what precisely was it that he had followed here? He had no doubt that the strange sensation was connected to the apparition that had touched him with ecstasy and cleansed him of the malignancy that had been devouring him. Neither did he doubt that the apparition was a visitation of the Blessed Virgin. A true visitation. Not an hallucination, not a wish fulfillment, not a publicity stunt. He had seen, he had been touched, he had been healed. This was the real thing. His wish had been granted: He had witnessed a miracle before his death. But as a result of that miracle, his death was no longer imminent. He had been granted extra time. And he’d used some of that extra time to find this place.

Why? What was so special about this St. Joseph’s church? What significance could it have for the Virgin Mary? It was built on land that had been an undeveloped marsh until a millennium and a half after the birth of Christianity. Vincenzo did not know of any sacred relics housed here.

And yet...

Something was here. The same warm glow that had suffused his entire being a few nights ago seemed to emanate from this building. Not from where he would have expected—from the sanctuary of the church itself—but from its lower level. From the basement which appeared to be some sort of soup kitchen.

What could be here? The remains of some American saint unrecognized by the Church? Was that the reason behind the Blessed Mother’s visitations?

Inside...it’s inside.

Vincenzo was drawn forward. Why shouldn’t he go in? After all, he was wearing his cassock and collar. Who would stop a priest from entering a church? Especially a monsignor on a mission from the Holy See. Yes. Hadn’t the Vatican itself asked him to investigate the reports of visitations in this parish? That was precisely what he was doing.

As he descended the short flight of stone steps he passed under a hand-painted sign that read “Loaves and Fishes.” He pushed through a battered door and entered a broad room lined with long tables and folding chairs. Toward the rear, a serving counter. And beyond that, a kitchen.

Further inside...

Feeling as if he were in a dream, he skirted the tables and moved toward the kitchen. A growing excitement quivered in his chest. He heard voices, running water, and clinking crockery from the kitchen. He rounded the corner and came upon three women of varying shapes, sizes, and ages busily scrubbing pots, plates, and utensils. The big, red-cheeked one glanced up and saw him.

“Sorry, we’re closed until—oh, sorry, Father. I thought you were one of the guests. Are you looking for Father Dan?”

Vincenzo had no idea who Father Dan was.

“Is he the pastor?”

“No. Father Brenner is the pastor. Father Dan is the associate pastor. He went back to the rectory about half an hour ago.”

Down...it’s beneath your feet.

“Is there a basement here?”

“This is the basement, Father,” another woman said.

“But there’s a furnace room below here,” said the thinnest and oldest of the three.

Vincenzo saw a door in the rear corner and moved toward it.

“Not that one,” said the old woman. “That leads to the rectory. “There’s another door on the far side of the refrigerator there.”

Vincenzo changed direction, brushing past them, unable to fight the growing urgency within him.

So close...so close now.

He pulled the door open. A sweet odor wafted up from the darkness below.

Flowers.

As his eyes adjusted, Vincenzo made out a faint glow from the bottom of the rutted stone steps. He started down, dimly aware of the women’s voices behind him speaking of Father Dan and something about a Sister Carrie. Whether they were speaking to him or to each other he neither knew nor cared. He was close now...so close.

At the bottom he followed the light to the left and came upon a broad empty space with a single naked bulb glowing from the ceiling.

No...this can’t be it...there’s got to be more here than an empty basement.

Off to his left...a voice, humming. He followed the sound around a corner and found the door to a smaller room standing open. As he stepped inside, his surroundings became more dream like.

I’m here...this is the place...I’ve come home...

Candlelight flickered off the walls and low ceiling of a room that seemed alive with sweet-smelling blossoms. He saw a woman there, her back was to him and she was humming as she straightened the folds of the robes draped around some sort of statue or sculpture recumbent on—

And then Vincenzo saw the glow. He recognized that glow, knew that glow. The same soft, pale luminescence had enveloped the apparition. He could not be mistaken. Hadn’t it touched him, been one with him for a single glorious instant? How could he forget it? He realized then that this was no statue or sculpture before him. This was a human body laid out on a makeshift bier.

But whose body?

Suddenly Vincenzo knew, and the realization was like a physical blow, staggering him, numbing him, battering his consciousness until it threatened to tear loose from its moorings and...simply...drift.

This was no holy relic, no unsung, uncanonized saint. This was her!

He knew it and yet a part of him stubbornly refused to accept it. Impossible! Tradition held that she was assumed body and soul into Heaven. And even if tradition were wrong, even if her body had remained preserved for two thousand years, she would not—could not—be here in this church basement in Lower Manhattan. It defied all reason, all belief, all common sense.

Can it be her? Can it truly be her?

As he lurched forward he heard a voice speaking. His own. In his native tongue.

‡

“Puo essere lei? Puo essere veramente lei?”

Carrie cried out in shock and fear at the sound of the strange voice behind her. She turned and saw a man in black silhouetted in the light from the door, staggering toward her. Reflexively, she began to dodge aside, but stopped and forced herself to stand firm. Anyone trying to get to the Virgin would have to go through her first.

Then she saw his collar. A priest.

“Father?”

He didn’t seem to hear. He continued forward, trembling hands folded before him as if in prayer, eyes fixed on the Virgin as his expression twisted through a strange mixture of confusion, pain, and ecstasy.

“Puo essere lei?”

She didn’t understand the priest’s words, but the devotion in his eyes caused her insides to coil with alarm.

He knows! she thought. Somehow he knows!

Sensing he meant no harm, Carrie eased aside and let him approach. Her mind raced as she watched him gaze down at the Virgin. No...obviously he meant no harm, but his mere presence was a catastrophe. No matter what his intentions, he was going to ruin everything.

“Who are you?”

He didn’t seem to hear, only continued to stare down at the Virgin.

“Who are you, Father?” This time she touched his arm.

He started and half turned toward her, tearing his eyes away from the Virgin at the last possible second. Carrie hadn’t realized how old and thin he looked until now.

“It’s her, isn’t it,” he said in hoarse, accented English, and Carrie’s heart sank as she searched but found no hint of a question in his tone. “It’s truly her!”

“Who do you mean, Father?” she said, hoping against hope that he’d give the wrong answer.

But instead of answering in words, he knelt before the Virgin, made the sign of the cross, and bowed his head.

That was more than enough answer for Carrie. She began to shake.

I’m going to lose her. They’re going to take her away from me!

At that moment she heard the scuff of hurried footsteps out in the old furnace room, then Dan dashed in. He skidded to a halt when he saw the figure in black kneeling before the bier, then stared at Carrie, alarmed, confused, breathing hard.

“Hilda called me over...said there was a strange priest...” He glanced at the newcomer. “Who...how?”

Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Dan stood in the center of the room, looking indecisive for a moment, then he stepped forward and laid a hand on the other priest’s shoulder.

“I’m Father Daniel Fitzpatrick, Father, associate pastor here, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The older man turned his head to the side, then rose stiffly to his feet. He stared at the Virgin a moment longer, then turned toward Carrie and Dan and drew himself to his full height.

“I am Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio. From Rome. From the Vatican.”

Carrie stifled a groan as she heard Dan mutter, “Oh, God. You’re the priest from the pub!”

“You must explain this,” Msr. Riccio said, gesturing toward the Virgin. “How...how is this possible?”

“How is what possible?” Dan said.

The older priest raised a hand. “Please. There is no point in trying to fool me. I was touched by her, healed by her. I know this is the Blessed Mother. Do you understand? I do not believe it, think it, or feel it, I know it. What I do not know is why she is hidden away in this dingy cellar, and how she came to be here. Will you please explain that to me, Father Fitzpatrick.”

Dan held the monsignor’s stare for a moment, then turned to Carrie and introduced her as Sister Carolyn Ferris.

“Carrie, this is your show. What do you want to do? Whatever you decide, I’m with you all the way.”

Carrie felt as if she were perched on the edge of a precipice...during an earthquake. Her mind was numb with the shock of being discovered. She could see no sense in lying. The monsignor already knew the core truth. Why not tell him the details.

And suddenly hope was alive within her.

Yes! The details. Maybe if he knew how the Virgin had been hidden away in a cave much like this subcellar room, he’d realize that she had to remain hidden...right here.

“It began with a scroll Father Fitzpatrick received as a gift...”

‡

“I see,” Vincenzo said softly as Sister Carolyn finished her story, closing with the details of the cures and miracles at the soup kitchen one floor above.

He had been too fascinated to interrupt her long monologue more than once or twice for clarifications. He had studied her expression for some hint of insincerity, but had found none, at least none that he could detect in the candlelight. And as she spoke he came to understand something about this beautiful young woman. She was deeply devoted to the Virgin. No hint of personal gain or notoriety had crossed her mind in bringing the Virgin here to her church. It had seemed like the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and so she had done it. She was one of the good ones. He sensed a hard knot of darkness deep within her, an old festering wound that would not heal, but otherwise she was all love and generosity. Had she always been like this, or was it the result of prolonged proximity to...her?

He turned to stare again at the Virgin.

“An incredible story,” he said into the silence.

If I were someone else, he thought, or even if I had happened to stumble upon this little room only last week, before my encounter with the Blessed Mother, I would have said they are both mad. Good-hearted, sincere, and well intentioned, to be sure, but quite utterly mad. But I am not someone else, and I believe every incredible word.

“Then you can see, can’t you,” Sister Carolyn said, and Vincenzo sensed that she was praying he could and would see, “that she has to remain here? Remain a secret?”

“A secret? Oh, no. That is the last thing this discovery should be. This is the Mother of God, sister. She should have a cathedral of gold, she should be exalted as an ideal, a paradigm for a life of faith and purity.”

“But Monsignor, that isn’t what the Apostles intended when they brought her to the Resting Place in the desert.”

“Who are we to say what the Apostles intended? And besides, these are different, difficult times. True faith, generous and loving, seems to be on the wane, replaced by wild-eyed fundamentalist factions that call themselves holy and faithful and servants of God, yet are anything but. Think what the physical presence of the Mother of God could mean to the Church, to Christianity, to all of humanity? This could usher in a whole new age of faith.”

“Or mean the end of faith,” Dan said.

The statement startled Vincenzo. “Whatever do you mean?”

He pointed to the body. “Here she is—solid, visible touchable. She cures the incurable. You don’t need to believe that—it happens. No faith is necessary when the proof is before you.”

He was right. Was that what this was all about? The end of the need for faith? If so, it marked the beginning of…what? Peace?

Dear Jesus, it all fit, didn’t it. It all made sense now. The discovery of the scroll, the journey of these two good people to the Holy Land, finding the remains of the Blessed Virgin, removing her from the desert, the Vatican sending him to Ireland and then New York, the apparitions, his cure, his arrival in the subcellar of this humble old church—these weren’t random events. Three times his path and the Virgin’s had crossed: in Cork City, on the streets outside, and now in this tiny room. There was a pattern here, a purpose, a plan.

And now Vincenzo saw the outcome of that plan.

The Virgin was to be revealed to the world. And when she was brought to the Vatican, when she joined the Holy Father in Rome, it would herald a new age. Perhaps it would signal the Second Coming.

Philosophers and academics had been speaking of the end of history for years already. What will they say now?

The staggering immensity of the final sequence of events that might be set into motion numbed him for a moment.

The end of history...all history.

But he couldn’t tell these two what he knew. At least not now. He could, however, try to reassure them.

“There is a plan at work,” he said. “And we are all playing our parts. You’ve played your parts, and now I must play mine. And the Vatican must play its own part.”

“But what if the Vatican doesn’t play its part?” she cried. “What if, instead of showing her to the world, they hide her away in one of the Church’s deepest vaults where they’ll test her and probe her and argue endlessly whether to reveal her or keep her hidden from the world? Don’t say it couldn’t happen. This may not look like much, but here at least she has some contact with the world. People are benefiting from her presence. Leave her here.”

“I can’t make that decision.”

“Once she gets to Rome, she may disappear forever, as if we never found her.”

“That is absurd,” Vincenzo said.

But within he wondered if she might not be right. He was more familiar than she with the internecine ways of the Holy See, and realized it was all too possible that the Virgin might be lost in the labyrinth of Vatican politics.

“Please!” she cried.

He was wounded by the tears in her eyes. How could he separate her from the Virgin? That seemed almost...sinful.

Vincenzo shook himself. His duty was clear.

“I’m sorry, but I really have no choice. I must report this to Rome at once.”

Sister Carolyn began to sob. The sound tore at his heart. He had to leave. Now. Before he changed his mind.

“I’ll be back as soon as I have the Vatican’s decision.”

“Don’t be surprised if you find an empty room,” Father Fitzpatrick said.

Vincenzo swung toward him. “Please do not do anything so foolish as to move her or try to hide her. I found her here. I can find her anywhere.”

He hurried out of the room leaving behind the sobbing nun and the stricken, silent priest.

This is the way it has to be, he told himself. This is the best way, the only way.

Then why did he feel like such a villain?

He would make it up to Sister Carolyn. He would see to it that she was not separated from her beloved Blessed Mother. He would convince the Holy see that Sister Carolyn Ferris must accompany the Virgin to Rome to tell her story.

But first he had to convince the Holy See that the body in the subcellar of this church was indeed the Blessed Virgin. He could do that. They’d believe him. He’d debunked so many reputed visitations in the past that they’d listen when he told them he’d found the real thing. More than a visitation—the greatest find since the dawn of the Christian Era.

And then it would begin.

The Second Coming...the end of history...

‡

Carrie clenched her teeth and tried to rein in her emotions. What was wrong with her? She’d never cried easily before. Now she couldn’t seem to help herself.

She’d just about regained control when Dan stepped up beside her and gently encircled her in his arms. His touch, and the depth of love and warmth in the simple gesture, toppled her defenses. She sagged against him and broke down again.

“It’ll be all right, Carrie. We’ll work something out.”

But what could they work out? Her worst nightmare had come true.

She straightened and faced him. “They’re going to take her, Dan. They’re going to take her and seal her away where no one will ever see her again, where no one but a privileged few will even know she exists.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.” Anger was beginning to elbow aside the fear and desperate sorrow. “And I know we didn’t go to all that trouble to find her and bring her here just so she could be locked up in a Vatican vault!”

“But what the monsignor said about a ‘plan’ makes sense. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you sense a hand moving the pieces around a chessboard. We’re a couple of the pawns, Carrie. So’s the monsignor.”

“Maybe,” she said, although she knew exactly what Dan was talking about. She’d felt it too. “And maybe the ‘plan’ isn’t meant to play out the way the monsignor sees it. We can’t let the Vatican have her.”

“How are we going to stop it? You heard what he said about being able to find her if we try to hide her. I don’t know how or why, but I believe him.”

Carrie believed him too. Maybe it was the cure he claimed the Virgin had performed, maybe it was part of the “plan.” Whatever it was, the monsignor seemed to have been sensitized to the Virgin. He was like a smart bomb, targeted on Carrie’s dreams.

She had to find a way to stop him.

And suddenly she knew how.

“All right...” she said slowly. “If we can’t hide her from the monsignor, we won’t hide her at all...from anyone.”

“I don’t—”

“You will.”

Excitement and dread blossomed within her as she considered the repercussions of what she was about to do.

She drew Dan to the Virgin’s side.

“Will you carry her upstairs for me?”

“Upstairs? Into the kitchen?”

“No. Further up. Into the church.”

‡

Dan stood in the nave of St. Joe’s with the Virgin’s stiff remains in his arms, and tried to catch his breath. The church was locked up tight for the night, silent but for the muffled voices of the latest contingent of Mary-hunters chanting their nightly Rosary outside on the front steps. He wasn’t puffing from the exertion of carrying her up from the subcellar—the Virgin was as light as ever—but from anxiety.

What was Carrie up to? She wouldn’t explain. Was she afraid he’d balk if she told him? No. He’d do almost anything to keep her from crying again. He’d never heard her cry before. It was a sound he never wanted to hear again.

“Now what? Where do I put her?”

She stood in the church’s center aisle, turning in a slow circle, as if looking for something. Suddenly she stopped her turn.

“There,” she said, pointing to the space past the chancel rail.

“In the sanctuary? There’s no place—”

“On the altar.”

Dan felt his knees wobble. “No, Carrie. That wouldn’t be right.”

She turned and faced him, her expression fierce. “Can you think of anyone with more of a right to be up there?”

Dan couldn’t.

“All right. But I don’t like this.”

He passed her and walked down the center aisle, genuflected, then stepped over the chancel rail and approached the altar, a huge block of Carerra marble. It stood free in the center of the sanctuary so the celebrating priest could say Mass facing his congregation.

This was strange, really strange. What was this going to solve or prove? Carrie didn’t expect the Virgin to come alive or anything crazy like that, did she?

The thought rattled Dan as he stood before the altar. His life had been so full of strange occurrences lately that nothing would surprise him.

As he set the Virgin gently upon the gleaming marble surface of the altar, he heard a metallic clank at the far end of the church. He turned in time to see Carrie pushing open the front doors.

“She’s here!” he heard her cry to the Mary-hunters gathered outside. “You don’t need to look any further. The Blessed Mother is here! Come in! See her! She’s waiting for you!”

“Oh. no!” Dan said softly as he saw the Mary-hunters edge through the doors, “Oh, God, Carrie. What are you doing?”

They crowded forward, candles in hand, hesitant at first, the curious at the rear pushing those ahead. They were older, mostly female, with a few younger men and women salted among them. Plainly dressed for the most part, but they had an eagerness in common. He saw it in their eyes. They were searching for something but not quite sure what.

And when they saw the body stretched out on the altar they hesitated, but only for a moment, only for a heartbeat. Then they were moving forward again, surging ahead like some giant, single-celled organism, filling the center aisle and splashing against the chancel rail.

Dan listened to the talk within the Mary-hunter amoeba.

“Is it her?”...”Do you think that’s really her?”...”That’s not what I expected her to look like”...”Aren’t you forgetting the Assumption? Can’t be her”...”Right. She was assumed into heaven, body and soul”...”Besides, she looks too old, all dried up...”

And then the crowd was parting like the Red Sea to make way for a pinch-faced old woman in a wheelchair. She wore a fur cap despite the heat and was propelled from behind by a burly orderly in whites.

“Let me through.” The woman swung her cane before her to clear the way. “I’ll tell you if it’s her or not, but I can’t see from back here.”

Her orderly wheeled her up to the brass gates of the chancel rail and she stared across at the altar.

Over and over Dan hear voices murmur, “What do you think, Martha?” and “Martha will know,” and “What does she say?”

Apparently this Martha was an authority of some sort among the Mary-hunters.

“I...” she began, then stopped. “This shouldn’t be but... Get me closer, Gregory.”

Her dutiful orderly unlatched the chancel gates and pushed them open. Dan didn’t want them in the sanctuary and was stepping forward to stop him when he felt a restraining hand on his arm.

Carrie was beside him.

“Wait. Let her look.”

Gregory wheeled old Martha through the gates and parked her next to the altar where she was almost eye level with the Virgin. She peered closely through her bifocals, then, tentatively, she reached out and brushed the Virgin’s cheek with her fingertip.

“Oh!” she cried and threw herself back in her chair as if she’d received a jolt of electricity.

Behind her Gregory stood with hands clasped behind his back, unprepared for the sudden convulsive movement. Martha and her chair went over backward.

A moment of mass confusion in St. Joseph’s with people shouting and crying out in alarm, and then utter silence as Gregory righted the chair, turned to lift Martha back into it, and froze.

Martha was standing beside him.

Dan couldn’t tell who was more surprised—Gregory or Martha.

The old woman looked down at her newly functioning legs and screamed. Pandemonium reigned then as the rest of the Mary-hunters added their own screams to hers, surging forward, surrounding the joyfully weeping Martha and the altar with its precious burden.

When a modicum of control was finally restored, the Mary-hunters knelt as one and began to recite the Rosary.

Their hunt was over.

Dan felt Carrie squeeze his arm. He turned and saw her tight grin, the fierce gleam in her eyes.

“Let the Vatican try to keep her a secret now!”

MIRACLES IN MANHATTAN

“We’ve had many healings,” Martha Harrington announced to reporters from the front steps of St. Joseph’s church on the Lower East Side yesterday.

Mrs. Harrington should know. Three days ago she was wheelchair bound, barely able to stand without the aid of two canes, and even then for only a minute or so. Now she breezes up and down the steps of St. Joseph’s like a teenager. She is reportedly the first miracle cure associated with the mummified body on display within the church.

The body, which the faithful proclaim to be the earthly remains of the Virgin Mary, appeared on the altar of St. Joseph’s three nights ago during a prayer vigil on the church steps. Since then it has become an object of worldwide devotion and the center of a storm of ecclesiastical controversy. So far, the Archdiocese of New York has had no comment on the healings other than to say that the phenomena are under investigation.

“Not everyone is healed,” Mrs. Harrington said. “We can’t explain why some are healed and others are not. It would be presumptuous of me to try. ‘Many are called but few are chosen,’ as the saying goes.”

Obviously, Martha Harrington sees herself as one of the chosen.

(The New York

Times)

IN THE PACIFIC

11^o N, 140^o W

Now a supercell, the storm increases the whirling velocity of its central winds, growing wider, stretching into the upper atmosphere as it angles northeastward. Its spinning core organizes into a funnel cloud that dips down...down...down until it brushes the churning surface of the ocean. The funnel latches onto the sea like a celestial leech, whipping the water to foam as it draws up a thin stream into its 200-mile-an-hour vortex.