Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (36 page)

Maybe it’ll clear up ahead.

The copilot calls out the barometric reading: Twenty-three.

“Twenty-
three
?  Check that again.  That’s got to be wrong!”

Then lightning flashes and Densmore sees something through the rain ahead.  Something huge.  Something dark.  The far side of the eye wall?  Maybe this eye isn’t as big as he thought.  Maybe—

“Oh, Christ!”

He turns the wheel and kicks the rudder hard, all but standing the plane on its wing-tip as he banks sharply to the left.  The shouts of alarm and surprise from his copilot and navigator choke off as they see it too.

He finishes the turn and levels off on a circular course around the center of the eye, catching lightning-strobed glimpses of the cyclopean thing in the heart of the storm.  His copilot’s and navigator’s hushed, awed voices fill the cabin.

“What in God’s name
is
that?”

“I don’t know.”

They are at 20,000 feet and whatever it is reaches from the ocean below and disappears into the clouds miles above them.

Densmore realizes that what he sees before him is impossible.  He knows his physics, and something that big breaks all natural laws.  Just like the storm itself.

Which means something else is driving this storm that breaks all the rules and defies the world’s most sophisticated radar tracking system.

And God help whoever is in its way when it makes landfall.

Suddenly he wants to be as far away as possible from this unnatural phenomenon.

“Take some pictures so people won’t think we’re all crazy, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

Moments later, reconnaissance flight 705 re-enters the eye wall but instead of flying through, it is tossed back by the hellish fury of the tornadic winds.  Densmore tries again and again to pierce the wall but each time his craft is rejected like an unwanted toy.

The storm won’t let them leave.  They’re trapped...in the eye...with that thing...

Densmore resumes a circular path along the wall, staying as far as possible from its center.  They’re safe here in the relative calm of the eye—safe at least from the winds—as long as their fuel holds out.

But they’ve got only a few hours’ worth left.

TWENTY-TWO

HURRICANE WATCH

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A HURRICANE WATCH FOR SANTA BARBARA, VENTURA, LOS ANGELES, ORANGE AND SAN DIEGO COUNTIES.  BRING IN LOOSE OUTDOOR OBJECTS, FILL UP YOUR CAR WITH GAS AND STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS.

(
The Weather Channel
)

‡

Manhattan

They sat in the front room of the rectory.  Neither Father Brenner nor Mr. Kesev of the Shin Bet wanted a drink, but Dan didn’t let that stop him.  Monsignor Riccio had come by to offer his condolences.  He seemed to know Kesev—apparently they’d met on the street a while back. 

The Monsignor didn’t say, “This is what you get for recklessly going public with the Virgin,” but Dan guessed he was thinking it.  He was gracious, however, and wished sincerely for the speedy capture of the killers, then he left.  Father Brenner had sat up with him awhile, then he went back to his room to watch TV. 

TV…all the world was watching TV.  The streets, even the ones outside the church—relocked until the blood could be cleaned from the floor—were empty.  Everyone was inside watching the wave of destruction as it wiped out of places worship across the globe.  If there was panic, it wasn’t in the street, it was quiet and private.  Dan figured more prayers were being said across the globe right now than at any other time in history.  And no doubt fewer atheists and agnostics now than at any other time in history a well.

Yet he felt strangely aloof from it all. 

“What do you think it means?” he asked Kesev.  “The destruction of all these churches and temples, I mean.”

“He is coming.”

“Who?  The Antichrist?”

Kesev looked at him.  “There is no such person.  It is a fiction concocted by crazy men.  The Master is coming.”

“You mean Jesus?”

Kesev nodded.

“But why now?”

Kesev shrugged.  “Because He has decided it is time.”

No straight answers from this one.  If Kesev was right, it was the End of Days.  Dan found he didn’t care.  He did care that his glass was empty.  He rose to pour himself a third Dewar’s.

“Sure you won’t have one?”

“No, and I do wish you would not drink too much.”

Dan stopped in mid-pour.  Kesev was right.  This wouldn’t do him any good.  Wouldn’t ease the pain, even a little.  The wound was too wide, too deep, too fresh.

“This is my last.  But what’s it to you?  What do you care about me or how much I drink?”

“I’m sorry for you and for that poor dead woman.  But I’m concerned for my own sake as well.  You see...for many years I have been the Mother’s guardian.”

“ ‘The Mother,’ “ Dan said softly.  “The Virgin.  How Carrie loved her.”  Then the rest of Kesev’s words sank in.  “Guardian?  We had a fake scroll supposedly written by the Virgin’s guardian back in the first century.”

The memory of Carrie’s girlish excitement over that scroll punched a new ache through his chest.

Carrie, Carrie...why couldn’t you have just let them take her?

“Yours was a forgery, a copy of another, but the words were true, as you discovered.”

“Any idea who wrote it?”

“I did.”

Dan stared at him.  “You must know your first century, Mr. Kesev.  That was a pretty convincing scroll.  Where’d you learn all that?”

Kesev shrugged.  “From life.”

“You mean from the guardians before you, passing it down.  Who are these guardians anyway?  Members of some sect?”

“No.  Only one guardian.”

This conversation was getting strange.

“You mean just one at a time...one guardian from each successive generation, right?”

Kesev shook his head.  “No.  Just one guardian.  Ever.  From the beginning.  Me.”

“But that would make you a couple of thousand...”

Kesev nodded slowly, but he wasn’t smiling.

“No...no, that would be—”

“Impossible?”

Dan was about to say yes when it occurred to him: Was anything impossible anymore?

And then he heard the rectory’s side door open.  He stood and started across the room. 
Now
who was it?

‡

Paraiso

“So this is what all the excitement is about.”

Arthur Crenshaw stared down at the mummified body where it rested before him on the glass coffee table.  

Paraiso was empty except for him and Charlie and Emilio.  Decker and Molinari had returned to their respective homes directly from the airport.  Arthur had sent all the help—domestic as well as nursing—home for the night.  The fewer who knew about his “borrowing” of the relic, the better.  Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of the great room lay the unrelieved gloom of the night and the ocean.  No starlight broke through the restless mantle of cloud that stretched above the Pacific like a shroud.  The only sounds were Charlie’s labored breathing and the swoosh of the wind against the glass.

He walked around the table, examining the body from all sides.  Not very impressive.  Hardly lifelike at all.  You could tell it was someone old and female, but that was about all.  Could this be the actual remains of the Virgin Mary?  Didn’t seem possible.  All right, possible, yes, but highly improbable.  You’d think there’d be some sort of glow or aura about it if it was really Mary.  So maybe it was just the nicely preserved remains of an early saint.

Whatever it was, could it save Charlie?

Arthur sighed.  Apparently it had healed others—many others—back in New York.  No reason why it shouldn’t do the same here.

But whatever it did, it had better do it quickly.  Charlie was fading away before his eyes.  The latest try at a new experimental therapy had failed.  Charlie’s CD-4 count was lower than ever.  He didn’t have much time.  This relic was his last chance at a cure. 

But how to go about it?

Charlie was running one of his fevers again, semi-comatose most of the time, and when he was responsive he was delirious—no idea of who he was or where he was or even that he was sick.  He couldn’t pray to this object, couldn’t ask it or anyone else for help.

So that left it up to Arthur to do the praying.

Maybe Charlie and the object should be closer.  And since it was such a major task to move Charlie’s set-up with its IVs and oxygen tank, Arthur figured the easiest way to get the two together was to move the body.

If Mohammed can’t come to the mountain...

He turned to Emilio.  “Let’s move her over by Charlie, table and all.”

Emilio held back a moment.  He’d seemed to be keeping his distance from the body.  Strange...Arthur had always thought of Emilio as the least superstitious man he’d ever met.  When he finally approached, they each took an end of the coffee table and, carrying it like a stretcher, moved the table and its burden around the couch and set it down next to Charlie’s hospital bed.

Arthur then said a prayer, asking the Lord to forgive Charlie for his past and to allow the healing powers in this relic—be it the remains of His earthly mother or some other holy person—to drive the infection from his son’s wasted body so that he might continue his life and have an opportunity to make up for the evil ways of his past.

As he finished the prayer with a heartfelt recital of the “Our Father,” Arthur slipped Charlie’s painfully thin, limp, clammy arm through the guard rail and guided it toward the body on the table.  He pressed the back of Charlie’s hand against its dry cheek and held it there.

Arthur wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but he was hoping for more than what he got, which was nothing.

He swallowed his disappointment.  He had to keep in mind that there’d been no pyrotechnics associated with the Manhattan healings, so the lack of them here didn’t mean that nothing had happened.

He held Charlie’s hand against the skin for a good fifteen minutes, all the while praying for mercy for his son, then he replaced the arm under the bedsheet.

He noticed Emilio standing off to the side, staring out at the darkness.  He seemed preoccupied.

“Well,” Arthur said, “all we can do now is watch and wait.”

Emilio nodded but said nothing.

Arthur shrugged and turned on the TV.  He felt as if he were in a vise. The destruction of the churches in the Far East, moving west, the storm in the Pacific, moving east.  The Weather Channel said it was still headed for the southern part of the state.  Paraiso would get only the fringe winds.

Good.  In the morning he’d have some blood drawn on Charlie for a stat CD-4 count.  If this relic had done its work, the count would be up and Charlie’s fever would break.

Please, God.  Not for me...for Charlie.

He switched to CNN for the latest on the churches and wound up in the middle of a story about the theft of a religious object from a Manhattan church.  Film showed close-ups of enraged faces and crowds tipping over police cars and smashing store windows.

Arthur’s stomach lurched and he glanced back at the body on the table next to Charlie’s bed.  That was the only object they could be talking about.  But why such coverage—on CNN of all places?  He hadn’t expected this kind of commotion.  He’d have to have Emilio drop it off someplace where it could be “discovered” tomorrow.

And then the screen showed the newswoman at a desk with the face of a young nun superimposed over her shoulder.  Arthur leaned forward, straining his ears because what she was saying could not be true.  The young nun had been murdered during the theft of the object.

Murdered!

Arthur swiveled in his seat and tried to rise to his feet but his legs wouldn’t support him.

“Emilio?” he gasped.  “You didn’t...you couldn’t have...”  But the look in Emilio’s eyes told him more than any words could say.  “Dear God, Emilio!  Dear
God!
”

‡

Manhattan

As Dan watched, a pale, dark-haired young woman in a long white coat stepped inside the rectory side door.

Dan dropped his drink.  His knees buckled and he clutched the back of a chair to keep from falling.  He opened his mouth to speak but his voice wasn’t there.

Carrie!

“I have to go to California, Dan,” she said evenly as she entered the front room.

He stumbled forward and threw his arms around her. 

“Carrie!” he croaked.  “You’re alive!  Thank God, you’re—”

She stood stiff and unresponsive in his embrace; her skin was cold against his cheek.  Her chill transmitted to him.  Spicules of ice formed in his blood as she spoke again.

“No, Dan.  I’m not.”

Dan released her and backed away.  She was staring at him with her bright blue eyes, but they were her only lively feature; the rest of her face was slack, and her voice...hollow.  Not movie-zombie dead and robotic.  It had timbre and tone, but something was missing.  Emotion.  She was like some of the guests at Loaves and Fishes who came in stoned on downers. 

An inane question popped out of his reeling mind: “How did you get here?”