The Omen (2 page)

The Thorns were both of Catholic parentage, but neither of them was religious. Katherine was given to occasional prayer and visits to church on Christmas and Easter, but more out of superstition and sentiment than a belief in Catholic dogma. Thorn himself was lapsed and did not take seriously, as Katherine did, the fact that their son Damien was never christened. It wasn't that they didn't try. Immediately after his birth they dutifully brought the infant to church, but so abject was his terror upon entering the cathedral that they cut the ceremony short. The priest had followed them out to the street with water cupped in his hands, warning that if the child were not christened he could never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but Thorn refused to continue, seeing clearly that the infant was in a state of terror. To satisfy Katherine they improvised a ceremony at home, but she was never totally reassured, intending one day to return with Damien and make sure it was done right.

That day never came, for they were swept into a whirlwind of distractions, and the christening was forgotten. The Economy Conference had ended and they moved back to Washington, Thorn resuming his duties as a Presidential advisor and becoming a political entity in his own right. Their rambling estate in McLean, Virginia, became the scene of gatherings that made the columns from New York to California, and the Thorn family became familiar to readers of national magazines all over the country. They were photogenic, they were rich, and they were on the way up. And, more important, they were often in the company of the President. It was plain that Thorn was being groomed, and it came as no surprise to political speculators when he was appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James, a key position in which he could display his charismatic potential to advantage.

Returning to London, the Thorns took up quarters in the seventeenth-century mansion at Pereford. Life became a beautiful dream, for Katherine especially; so perfect it was almost frightening. At their country house she could remain in seclusion being nothing more than a mother to her adored child; then, when she chose, she could emerge to be her husband's hostess at diplomatic functions. Now that she had her child, she had everything, including her husband's adoration, and she blossomed like an orchid; fragile, yet in full flower, pleasing everyone with her freshness and beauty.

The Pereford mansion was elegant and steeped in English history. It had a cellar where an exiled duke had hidden until he was found and executed, and it was surrounded by a forest where King Henry V had hunted wild boar. There were secret passages and drafty crawlways; but mostly there was joy, for the house was filled with company and laughter at all hours of the day.

For household duties, there was a staff of day help as well as a permanent couple, the Hortons, very English, very dignified, who acted as cook and chauffeur. To entertain Damien when Katherine was occupied with official chores, there was a plump English girl named Chessa, no more than a child herself, but a delight to everyone and an indispensable addition to the family. She was bright and full of play, and adored Damien as though he were her own. They would often spend hours together, Damien toddling after her on the vast lawn or sitting quietly by the pond where she would catch tadpoles and dragonflies for them to bring home in jars.

The boy was growing into an artist's rendering of the ideal child. In the three years since his birth the promise of physical perfection had been fulfilled, and his health and strength were phenomenal too. He had a kind of composure, a contentment, that one rarely sees in the young, and visitors occasionally found themselves unnerved by his gaze. If intelligence could be measured by attention span, then he was a genius, for he would often sit for hours, positioned on a small wrought-iron bench beneath an apple tree, his eyes trained on the people who came and went, absorbing every detail of what took place before him. Horton, the chauffeur, occasionally took him out on errands, enjoying his silent presence, amazed by the child's fascination with everything that went on in the world.

"He's like a little man from Mars," Horton once remarked to his wife. "Like he was sent here to study the human race."

"He's the apple of his mother's eye," she responded. "Wouldn't do you no good to be heard saying that."

"I'm not downing him. Just that he is a bit unusual."

The only other troubling aspect about Damien was that he rarely used his voice. Joy was expressed with a wide, dimpled grin; sorrow with strangely silent tears. Katherine once mentioned this to her physician, but the doctor was most reassuring. He told the story of a child who never uttered a word until he was eight years old, and then only to remark that he didn't like mashed potatoes. When, in amazement, the mother asked him why, if he could speak, he'd never spoken before, the child replied that up until now she'd never served mashed potatoes.

Katherine had laughed at the story and relaxed about Damien. After all, Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four, and Damien was only three and a half. Aside from being quiet and observant, he was in every way the perfect child, the appropriate issue of the perfect marriage of Jeremy and Katherine Thorn.

The man named Haber Jennings was born an Aquarian; a textbook product of Uranus on the rise in conjunction with a waxing moon. He was ill-kempt and persistent to the point of embarrassment. Jennings was a paparazzi; one of the geeks of the journalism world, tolerated only because he was willing to do what none of the others would. Like a cat stalking a mouse he had been known to hole up for days waiting for a single photo: Marcello Mastroianni sitting on the toilet, taken with a long lens from the top of a eucalyptus tree; the Queen Mother having her corns removed; Jackie Onassis on her yacht, vomiting. These were his stock in trade. He knew where to be and when, his photos unlike any others in the trade. He lived in a one-room flat in Chelsea and seldom wore socks. But he researched his subjects with the thoroughness of Salk seeking the cure for polio.

Lately he had become fixated on the Ambassador to London, a prime target because of his perfect facade. Did the beautiful couple ever have sex? And if so, how? He sought to reveal what he called their humanity, but in truth he wanted to prove that everyone was as disgusting as himself. Did the Ambassador ever buy an obscene magazine and masturbate? Did he have any girls on the side? These were the questions that intrigued him, and though they would never be answered, there was always hope; this was the impetus that motivated him to watch and wait.

Today he would go to the Thorn estate in Pereford, probably not to photograph because there would b many others, but just to get the layout, to find the right windows, the entrances and exits, determine which servants could be bought for a couple of pounds.

Rising early, he checked out his cameras, wiping the lenses with Kleenex, then squeezed a boil, using the same tissue to absorb the discharge. He was thirty-eight years old and still plagued with skin blemishes, this being no small factor in going through life with a camera in front of his face. His body was lean but without muscle tone, the only definition coming from the rumpled clothes that he pulled from a pile at the foot of his bed.

Before leaving, he set his darkroom timers, then shuffled through piles of papers looking for the engraved invitation. It was to be a birthday party. The fourth birthday of the Thorn child. From all the ghetto areas of London busloads of crippled children and orphans were already on the way to Pereford.

The drive through the English countryside was relaxing and Jennings lit up an opium joint to free his mind. After a while the road seemed to be moving beneath him, the car standing still, and he released his hold on reality, exploring the corners of his mind. His fantasies were still life, like the pictures he took. The subject was himself, always frozen in heroic gesture. Crossing an icepack with sled dogs, rubbing Copper-tone on Sophia Loren.

For a mile outside the Thorn estate, policemen directed traffic and checked credentials; stuporously Jennings gazed straight ahead while they double-checked his invitation to make sure it was real. He was accustomed to this treatment and knew that all he had to do to avoid it was to appear presentable. But this was part of his ammunition. He could better observe people because they preferred to pretend he wasn't there.

Finally ushered through the great wrought-iron gates, Jennings blinked hard, trying to shake the opium illusions before he realized that the illusion was real.

The entire estate had been turned into a sumptuous carnival. The lawns were teeming with color and life, small bodies running between circus tents and carousels, while vendors moved through, hawking cotton candy and taffy apples, their voices lost in the waltz-wheeze of organ music that pumped children up and down on swans and pink horses. There was a fortune teller's booth with many of London's most important dignitaries queued up before it, Shetland ponies running free, even a baby elephant painted with red dots accepting peanuts from hordes of squealing children. Photographers ran everywhere, out of their minds with greed, but to Jennings there was nothing there to photograph. Only the facade. The brick wall that everyone else took for reality.

"What's the matter, mate? Run out of film?"

It was Hobie talking, the stringer for the News Her-aid, feverishly reloading beside the hot-dog table, as Jennings casually approached and took a handful of food.

"Just waiting for his canonization," Jennings replied with distaste.

"How's that?"

"I don't know if we've got just the heir to the Thorn millions here, or Jesus Christ himself."

"You're a fool to miss out, man. It's not often you'll get into a place like this."

"Why bother? What I need I can buy from you."

"You want an exclusive, do you?"

"No other way."

"Well, good luck, then. This is the most private family this side of Monaco."

The exclusive. That was the Jennings dream. Private entree into rarefied realms. There was excitement in the stalking to be sure, but no status, no respect. If he could somehow work his way inside; that's where it was at.

"Hey, Nanny! Nanny!" shouted Hobie in the distance. "Look this way!" And all attention focused on a towering birthday cake being wheeled out from inside.

The child's nanny, Chessa, was dressed as a clown, her face whitened with powder and painted with a garish red smile. As the photographers danced about her, she delighted in the attention, hugging, kissing, smearing her makeup onto the child.

"Can he blow them out?" they shouted. u Let him take a try."

Jennings' eyes traveled slowly through the crowds; he spotted the face of Katherine Thorn, standing at a distance, a vague hint of disapproval playing about her mouth. For a split second her mask was down, and Jennings instinctively reached for his camera, clicking off a shot. At the birthday cake a howl of applause and approval went up, as Katherine slowly moved forward.

"Tell his fortune!" shouted a reporter. "Take him to the fortune teller!" And as a body, the crowd began to move, bearing the nanny and her adored child across the lawn.

"I'll take him," said Katherine, reaching toward them as they passed.

"I can do it, mum," replied the nanny brightly.

'Til do it," smiled Katherine.

And in the single moment as their eyes met, the nanny relinquished the child. It was a moment unnoticed by all, the momentum and noise carrying them forward, but Jennings was watching it through his viewfinder. As the crowd moved on, the nanny was left standing alone, the towering house framed behind her, the clown costume somehow accentuating her air of desertion. Jennings hit the button twice before the young girl turned and walked slowly back to the house.

At the fortune teller's tent Katherine admonished reporters to stay outside, then entered, breathing a sigh of relief at the sudden quiet and darkened atmosphere.

"Hello, little boy."

The words came from beneath a hood; an apparition -was seated behind a small green table, her voice strained to sound witchlike, her face made up in green. As Damien gazed down, he stiffened, climbing fast to his mother's shoulder.

"Come on, Damien," laughed Katherine, "this is a nice witch. Aren't you a nice witch?"

"Of course," laughed the fortune teller. "I won't hurt you."

"She's going to tell your fortune," coaxed Katherine.

"Come on," gestured the fortune teller. "Hold out your hand."

But Damien would not, clinging tightly to his mother. The fortune teller lifted her rubber mask, revealing herself to be just a plain young girl wearing an enormous grin.

"Look. I'm just a person. This won't hurt a bit."

Relaxing, Damien held out his hand, Katherine sitting with him, across the card-strewn table.

"Oh, what a nice, soft hand. This is going to be a good, good fortune."

But she paused, gazing at the hand with confusion.

"Let's try the other," she said.

As Damien held out his other hand, the girl gazed at both, clearly puzzled.

"Is this part of the routine?" asked Katherine.

"I've never seen this," said the girl. "I've been doing children's parties for three years, and I've never seen it before."

"Seen what?"

"Look. No personality lines. All he's got is creases."

"What?"

Katherine looked too.

"They look fine to me," she said.

"Was he in a fire?" the girl asked.

"Of course not."

"Look at your own hand. Look at all the tracing. It's different with each person. These are marks of our identity."

There passed an uncomfortable silence, the child himself gazing at his hands, wondering what was wrong.

"Look how smooth his fingertips are," said the girl. "I don't think he has any prints."

Katherine looked closely. She realized it was true.

"Well," laughed the girl, "if he robs a bank, they won't catch him."

And then she laughed harder, while Katherine gazed at the small hands in puzzled silence.

"Could you tell his fortune, please? That's what we came in for." ^Catherine's voice was uneasy.

"Of course."

But as the young girl reached for the child's hand, they were interrupted by a voice from outside. It was Chessa, the nanny. And she was shouting from a distance.

"Damien! Damien!" she cried. "Come out! I've got a surprise for you!"

The fortune teller paused, sensing, as Katherine did, a certain desperation in the cry.

"Damien! Come out and see what I'll do for you!"

Exiting from the tent with Damien in her arms, Katherine paused, gazing upward toward the house. There, poised on the roof was Chessa, a heavy rope in her hand, cheerfully stretching it upward to show it was wound around her neck. Beneath her the crowds began to turn, smiling in confused anticipation as the small clown moved forward to the edge and held her hands out as if readying a high dive into a pool of water.

"Look here, Damien!" she shouted. "It's all for you!"

And in a single movement she stepped off the roof, her body plummeting downward, snapped back up by the rope, then hanging limp. Silent. Dead.

On the lawn they stood in stunned silence, the small body swinging gently to the accompaniment of a carousel waltz. And then there was a scream. It was Katherine.

It took four people to quiet her and move her into the house.

Left alone in his room, Damien gazed out over the empty lawn, only maintenance men and vendors left, staring upward in silence as a policeman grimly mounted a ladder and cut the body down. It slipped from his grip, falling headfirst onto a bricked patio. And it lay there crumpled, eyes gazing skyward, mouth painted in a garish grin.

The days before Chessa's funeral were painted in gloom. The skies above Pereford had turned to gray, reverberating with distant thunder, and Katherine spent most of her time sitting alone in the darkened living room, staring into space. A coroner's report had shown that there was a high amount of Benadryl, an allergy drug, in the girl's bloodstream when she died, but this only added to the confusion and speculation as to why she had taken her life. To avoid the reporters who would try to embellish the story, Thorn remained at home, his attention on his wife who was, he feared, slipping into that state he had seen a few years before.

"You're letting this get the best of you, you know," he said one night as he entered the living room. "It's not as though she were a member of our family."

"She was," replied Katherine quietly. "She told me she wanted to stay with us forever."

Thorn shook his head, unable to make any sense of it.

"I guess she changed her mind," he said. He hadn't meant to sound cold, but his words were harsh, and he aware of Katherine's eyes finding his from across the room.

'Tm sorry," he added. "I hate to see you like this."

"It was my fault, Jeremy."

"Your fault?"

"There was a moment at the party."

Thorn crossed the room and sat beside her, his eyes etched with concern.

"She was getting a lot of attention," Katherine continued, "and I was jealous of it. I took Damien from her because I couldn't stand sharing center stage."

"I think you're being a little hard on yourself. The girl was deranged."

"And so am I," whispered Katherine, "if being in the limelight means so much to me."

Her voice fell to silence. There was nothing left to say. She slid into Thorn's arms and he held her until she slept. It was the kind of sleep he had seen before when she was taking Librium, and he wondered if the shock of Chessa's death had caused her to take it again. He sat there the better part of an hour before lifting her in his arms and carrying her into her room.

The following morning Katherine attended Chessa's funeral, taking Damien with her. It was a private affair conducted in a small cemetery on the outskirts of town, attended only by the girl's family, Katherine and Damien, and a balding priest who read from the scriptures while holding a folded newspaper over his head to ward off the persistent drizzle of rain. Fearing the publicity that would surround their attendance, Thorn had refused to go, entreating Katherine to do the same. But her need was plain. She had loved the girl and needed to put her to rest.

Outside the cemetery a group of reporters milled about, prevented from entering by two United States Marines, dispatched at the last minute by Thorn from his staff at the Embassy. Unseen among them was Haber Jennings, cloaked in black rain slicker and high boots, positioned in the far trees, scrutinizing the proceedings through a long-distance lens. It was no ordinary lens but a monstrous affair mounted on a tripod; a lens with which he could no doubt photograph two flies mating on the moon. With careful precision his telescopic viewer wandered from face to face: the family weeping; Katherine in a state of shock, the child beside her restless, his eyes roaming the bleak terrain.

It was the child who captured Jennings' interest, and he waited patiently for precisely the right moment to snap his shutter. It came in an instant. A flickering of the eyes and a sudden change of expression as though the boy had been suddenly frightened, then, just as suddenly, soothed. With his eyes riveted on a point far across the cemetery, his small body relaxed, somehow warmed in the midst of the cold, drizzling rain. Swinging his telescopic viewer, Jennings searched the landscape finding nothing but headstones. And then something moved. A dark, blurred object slowly coming into focus as Jennings adjusted his lens. It was an animal. A dog. Large and black, its pointed face distinguished by narrow-set eyes and a lower jaw that protruded forward, exposing teeth, stark against midnight fur. Unseen by all others, it sat motionless as statuary, its attention fixed firmly ahead. Jennings cursed himself for having loaded black and white, for the yellowed eyes added the perfect touch of eeriness to the scene. He opened his aperture so they'd expose stark white, then swung back to the boy, doing the same.