The Rising: Antichrist Is Born (15 page)

Her mentor also had her eating more healthily and walking. Marilena felt better than she had in a long time. And with each passing day, her sense of anticipation—and angst—grew. She couldn’t wait to be a mother, but she imagined all manner of complications. Though the baby did not move, Marilena felt tiny protrusions here and there. Only occasionally did they feel normal, as if she could make out his position and form. Most of the time it seemed she detected too many bones, too many limbs, and good grief, sometimes what felt like two heads. What if she was carrying a monster?

“Of course. I’ll drive you. But I certainly have no business there.”

“I’m sure you’d be welcome.”

“I’ll wait for you. You will want to express condolences to the husband. And were there children?”

“Grown.”

“Well, at least that’s good.”

Marilena e-mailed Sorin to tell him to watch for her at the funeral and found it terribly disconcerting when he still did not respond. She sent several test e-mails to see if he was getting them, finally receiving a terse message: “Yes, you’re coming through loud and ‘ clear.”

That made it all the more disturbing when she arrived at the sad rites, only to discover that not only had Sorin chosen to stay away—the more she thought about it, the more thoughtful she found it—but that Baduna also was nowhere to be seen. When she asked after him, his children and his wife’s relatives grew stony, hatred burning in their eyes.

Sorin’s absence made some sense. He was, after all, the interloper, the cause of the split and thus indirectly of the death. But Baduna would not even attend the funeral of his own wife? They were still married!

Even worse, if possible, word came to Marilena the following week that Baduna had actually joked about his wife in class. A student had apparently had the gall to ask if it was true that his wife had killed herself because Baduna had “come out.”

“Yes,” he was quoted. “You know, I knew her to get awfully tired at times, but I never knew her to be exhausted.”

Rumors said even the students felt he had crossed a line so revolting that not one laughed. And the university was in the process of determining appropriate discipline for the remark. Normally the department head would have been involved in something like that, but of course in this case . . .

The debacle left Marilena speechless. She was curious about Sorin’s take on it, but he clearly had moved on from caring about communicating with her. She had hoped that by informing him she would be at the funeral he would have at least wanted to greet her—if not there, then somewhere in Bucharest. But no.

At Marilena’s next appointment the doctor asked three times if she was certain she had not detected even the slightest movement in her womb. “He sleeps a lot,” the doctor decided, “but surely not twenty-four hours a day.”

Marilena cried out when the doctor tried to manipulate the baby, to get him in a position where he would be freer to move. Still nothing.

“You may want your sister to join us for a moment.”

As the three of them sat in the examining room, the doctor explained various reasons a baby might not move. “Paralysis. Retardation. Brain dysfunction.”

Marilena caught her breath, but Viv smiled serenely. “I’m confident he’s fine and will be fine.”

“We’re prepared,” Viv said.

Marilena shot her a double take. “I’m glad you are.”

Viv, so far, had proved a good housemate—other than the smoking and obsessive privacy. Her care seemed genuine, and she showed signs of selflessness. She was a smart woman, though not the intellectual Sorin had been. Marilena missed that. But Viv appeared teachable and clearly enjoyed it when Marilena shared with her what she had been reading and studying. Viv spent her free time with tarot cards, a Ouija board, praying to the spirits, channeling, and even automatic writing.

Marilena found this bizarre. Viv would put herself into a trance, pen in hand, paper at the ready. As she nodded and her eyes rolled back, she would begin writing fast and furiously in a stream-of-consciousness style. No one could think that fast, and she claimed she herself had to read it later to know what had been communicated.

A sample result of one of her sessions:

The child within shall serve me endleeely and be protected supernaturaily though one day he will be wounded unto death but I will raise him up to continue to worehip me and be worshiped and he shall have a right-hand prophet who will instruct the world and the nations and the leaders and the people to bend the knee and bow the head before me but the one who bears him shall suffer if she does not share his devotion and thus endeth the message.

“I don’t like the sound of ‘wounded unto death.’”

“Isn’t it time you adjusted your thinking?”

“I can’t just ‘adjust,’” Marilena said. “It has to be real. I have to feel it.”

“Do you want to suffer?”

“Of course not, but I don’t want my son to suffer either. Faking something will surely not absolve me.”

In her ninth month Marilena experienced discomfort she could only have imagined. Her doctor had grave reservations. “If the baby shows no signs of movement before birth, he will likely be forever immobile, even if his pulse and respiration are good.”

With about a week to go before the due date, Viv received what appeared to be an urgent, alarming message through the tarot cards. She immediately went to the Ouija board, which, she was careful to point out to Marilena, clearly spelled out “Prepare the sacrifice.”

The next morning Viv returned from her errands with a humane mousetrap and a tiny cage.

“I have seen no mice or any evidence of them,” Marilena said.

“Nevertheless, a mouse is the proper sacrifice.”

“For what?”

“Trust me.”

Two days later the women were awakened by the sound of a mouse in the trap. Viv eagerly transferred it to the cage, where it darted about and squeaked to the point that Marilena had to turn on a small fan to drown out the noise so she could sleep.

The following Sunday night Marilena was so miserable she couldn’t imagine sleeping, but she stretched out as best she could. She tossed and turned and, after several hours, thought she detected the beginning of contractions. How could she be sure? She didn’t want to wake Viv until she really had to. An hour later she was sure.

“Where are you going?” Marilena called out. “We have to go!”

Viv rushed inside and emerged shortly carrying the mouse cage and a handful of colorful markers.

“You’re the vessel, dear. And I see you every day.”

They hardly saw another car en route. Marilena was struck by the inky blackness of the night. She saw no clouds, no moon, and strangely, no stars. “Have you ever seen such darkness?” she said.

“It’s jet-black,” Viv said.

Marilena was about to tell her that was redundant, but a contraction stole her breath.

“Ma’am,” Viv said, as directly as Marilena had ever heard her, “this is no pet. This is a creature irreplaceable to Mrs. Carpathia’s religion.”

‘I’m sorry, but—”

“But nothing. Do not presume to allow your provincial regulations to encroach on the religious freedom of a patient. You know we don’t have time to get our lawyer and the authorities involved, but I will if forced.”

“The doctor will never—”

“I will tell him the same thing I’m telling you. I’ll accept full responsibility. Now don’t threaten the health of this child by delaying.”

In the labor room Marilena’s contractions went from bad to worse, yet she resisted any suggestion of an anesthetic. The baby’s heartbeat remained strong, but the doctor still appeared grim about the absence of movement. “Prepare yourself for a severely handicapped child,” he said.

Viv began to lecture him about “upsetting the mother at a time like this,” but the subject changed quickly when he noticed the mouse. Viv warned him about violating Marilena’s freedom to practice her religion.

“This is a first for me,” he said. “What kind of religion requires a mouse in the labor room?”

“Ours,” Viv said. “And it will be in the delivery room as well, so deal with it.” She reiterated that she would indemnify him and the hospital. A document stipulating the same was quickly delivered, and Viv signed. When the doctor tried to get Marilena to sign too, Viv warned that she would create such a fuss he would regret it, and he caved.

“We need to get her into delivery now anyway,” he said.

Marilena was in the midst of painful contracting and pushing and wished Viv would settle in and hold her hand, coach her, help her breathe. But the woman was flitting here and there, incongruously perching the mouse cage atop a stainless-steel table, then drawing a circle on the floor around the bed, extending it to include two nurses and the doctor.

“What the devil are you doing?” the doctor said, and Marilena nearly burst out laughing.

“Don’t mind me,” Viv said. “It’s just part of our religion.”

“What are you drawing?” one of the nurses said.

“Mind your business,” Viv said, “not mine.”

“That’s a pentagram, isn’t it? A Pythagorean pentagram. But what’s that round one?”

“The circle,” Viv said. “From the Grimorium Verurn.”

“What’s that?”

“The True Grimoire from the 1500s.”

“What’s a grimoire?”

“A manual for invoking—”

“Honestly, Viv!” Marilena shouted. “You’re going to miss the baby!”

“Not on your life,” Viv said, finally settling near the mouse.

At nearly half past three in the morning, Marilena knew the time had come, lust when she thought she had no more strength left to push, a last effort made the doctor say, “There’s the head.”

“One more push,” the doctor said.

  Marilena cried out, feeling the child coming. She thrashed, jerking her head side to side, each swing bringing the swooning Viv Ivins into view. The woman held the squirming mouse firmly in one hand, and between her moans and shrieks Marilena heard the tiny squeaks of the panicked animal.

In Viv’s other hand was a small, gleaming knife. As the baby slid from Marilena’s body into the doctor’s hands, Viv lifted the mouse over her head and deftly cut its throat.

“His lungs are certainly fine!” the doctor hollered. “And I’ll be hanged if he’s not moving normally, all four limbs.”

Viv grabbed the paper with which she had lined the cage, wrapped the limp animal, and shoved it back inside. As if she owned the place, she slipped out with it, and Marilena saw her through the window washing up at the doctor’s sink. When Viv returned, the cage was gone.

“What are we naming this screamer?” a nurse said with a smile as the other nurse cleaned him.

  “Nicolae Carpathia,” Marilena said, panting, spelling it for her.

  “And a middle name?”

“We had a list,” Marilena said. “What did we decide on, Viv? Sorin?”

“I never liked that idea. And you resisted anything spiritual. Either of Reiche Planchette’s names would work. Imagine.”

“No,” Marilena said. “I don’t even like him, let alone trust him.”

“You have him wrong, but this is certainly not the ” time to get into that.”

“How about ‘Night,’ as he was born at night?”

  “Or ‘Morning,’” Viv said. “Technically, it’s morning.”

“The darkest morning I’ve ever seen.”

“Jet-black.”

“Jet means ‘black,’ Viv,” Marilena said.

“Then how would you describe the night?”

“Jetty.”

“I like it,” Viv said.

“So do I. Nicolae Jetty Carpathia. Nicolae J. Carpathia.”

“It’s certainly unique.”

“I’ve never heard it as a name before,” the doctor said, placing the baby on Marilena’s chest. “It’s interesting. Dramatic.”

But Marilena had quit listening, quit worrying what Viv was up to. The child had turned himself red from all the wailing. She held him close, rocked him, cooed to him, but he only grew all the louder.

“He has a temper,” the doctor said. “I’m just relieved—astounded, really—to see that he’s perfectly normal.”

“Not normal,” Viv said. “But certainly perfect.”

Nicky Carpathia was physically healthy in all respects and grew fast. By the time he took his first toddling steps at a year old, he had a vocabulary of a few words, including Mama, Aunt Viv, and book. Three months later he was a typical toddler, curious and into everything. Viviana Ivinisova—now going exclusively by Viv Ivins—told Marilena she had never seen a more inquisitive child. And he clearly loved to be read and sung to.

Marilena, of course, had nothing to compare Nicky to. All she knew was that she found him endlessly fascinating and felt as if her life had begun when his had.

Two things impressed Marilena above all. Besides the fact that she seemed to take to mothering as if it had been her destiny, she found herself intrigued by Nicky’s analytical nature and the contrast between his seemingly quiet personality and his occasional outbursts.

Nicky’s inquisitiveness manifested itself in how he played. She and Viv showered him with toys, but his attention span was short. He quickly tired of things he had played with the day before and would set about exploring. Pots and pans and spoons held his interest, and Marilena couldn’t count the number of times she found him lying on his back, holding some object up to his eyes, studying it as he gently turned it over and over. It never seemed to bore him. It was as if he was recording sizes and shapes and textures, feeding into his little brain all sorts of calculations. She could sit and watch this for long stretches.

Marilena had not thought much of his screaming at birth. She had read and been told that this was precisely what you wanted with a newborn. Okay, it surprised her when he had turned himself red from the effort, and the nurse had referred to him as a screamer. The doctor had said something about his lungs and his temper.

Marilena expected this to pass, but it had not. Nicky was a relatively docile child as long as everything was going his way. But a wet or dirty diaper or hunger or fatigue brought out the worst in him. His was not the pitiful whining of a typical child. As soon as he grew frustrated about anything, the screeching began. There was no buildup, no warning. If something—anything— was wrong, Nicky closed his eyes, opened his mouth, drew in a huge breath, and screamed at the top of his voice. He thrashed and swung his fists until whatever had been wrong was fixed. And then he became a sweet, peaceful child again.