Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (39 page)

A thundering roar filled the room as warm seawater splashed against his back, soaking him.  Dan squeezed his eyes shut, encircled Carrie with his arms, and held her cold body tight against him...one last embrace...

Any second now...

But nothing happened.  The water continued to splatter him but the roar of the waterspout remained level.  Dan lifted his head and risked a peek.

It had backed off to a quarter mile or so, but remained out there in the mist, dominating the panoramic view, lit by flashes within and around it, swirling, twisting, a thousand yards wide, snaking from the sea to the sky, but moving no closer. 

Dan rose and studied it.  For no reason he could explain, it occurred to Dan that it seemed to be...waiting.

Ahead of him, the senator and the murderer were struggling to their feet and staring at it through the empty window frames.

“What
is
that?” Senator Crenshaw cried.

“Not ‘what,’“ Carrie said as she rose to her feet behind Dan.  “
Who
.”

The senator turned and stared at her a moment.  He seemed about to ask her who she was, then decided that wasn’t important now.

“ ‘Who?’ “  He glanced back at the looming tower.  “All right, then...
who
is it?”

“It’s Him,” Carrie said, beaming.  She pointed to the Virgin.  “He’s come for His mother.”

The senator glanced at the Virgin, gasped, and gripped the edge of the hospital bed for support.  Dan looked to see what was wrong.

The Virgin was changing.

The seawater from the spout that had soaked into her robes, into her skin and hair was having a rejuvenating effect.  The blue of the fabric deepened, her hair darkened and thickened, and her face...the cheeks were filling out, the wrinkles fading as color surged into her skin.

The murderer cringed back and murmured something in Spanish as the senator leaned more heavily against the bed.  Carrie moved closer and dropped to her knees.  Dan glanced to his right and saw that Kesev, even the imperturbable Kesev, was gaping in awe.

And then the Virgin moved.

In a single smooth motion she sat up, then stood and faced them.

Dan saw Kesev drop to his knees not far from Carrie, but Dan remained standing, too overwhelmed to move.

She was small framed, almost petite.  Olive skin, deep, dark hair, Semitic features, not attractive by Dan’s tastes, but he sensed an inner beauty, and an undeniable strength radiating from her sharp brown eyes. 

Those eyes were moving, finally fixing on Carrie, kneeling before her.  Smiling like a mother gazing upon a beloved child, she reached out and touched Carrie’s head.  “Dear one,” the Virgin said softly, her voice gentle, soothing.  “Rise, both of you. I am not to be worshipped.  We are almost through here.”

Kesev rose but Carrie remained on her knees.

The Virgin’s smile faded as she turned to Senator Crenshaw. 

“Arthur,” she said.  “The prayermaker.”

Crenshaw held her gaze, but with obvious difficulty

“Emilio,” she said, frowning at the murderer.  “The killer.”

He turned away. 

Then it was Dan’s turn. 

A tiny smile curved her lips as she trapped his eyes with her own.

“Daniel.  The hunger-feeder.”

Dan felt lifted, exalted.  He sensed her approval and basked in it. 

Finally she turned away and Dan felt the breath rush out of him.  He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.  She could have called him vow-breaker, fornicator, doubter...so many things.  But hunger-feeder...he’d take that any day.

Her expression was neutral as she faced Kesev.

“So, Iscariot...you broke another trust.”

Iscariot!
  Dan’s mind reeled.  No...it couldn’t be!

“Mother, events conspired against me.  I beg your forgiveness.”

“It is not my place to forgive.”

“Perhaps it is
I
who should forgive!” Iscariot cried.  “Once again I have been used! 
Used!
”

“You are not alone in that,” the Virgin said pointedly.

Iscariot’s head snapped back, as if he been struck, but he recovered quickly.

“Perhaps not.  But it is I who have been reviled throughout the Christian Era.  And yet without me, there would
be
no Christian Era—no crucifixion, no resurrection.”

“You wish to be celebrated for betraying Him?”

“No.  Simply understood.  I believed in Him more than the others—I was led to believe He was divine.  I thought He would destroy the Romans—all of them—as soon as they dared to lay a hand on Him.  But he didn’t!  He allowed them to torture and kill him! 
I
was the one who was betrayed!  And I’ve spent nearly two thousand years paying for it, most of them alone, all of them miserable.  Haven’t I suffered enough?”

Her expression softened into sympathy.  “I decide nothing, Judas.  You know that.”

Judas Iscariot!  Of course!  It all fit. 

They’d been reading the
real
Gospel of Judas.  The scroll’s author had mentioned being educated as a Pharisee, and of being an anti-Roman assassin, using a knife—they were called
iscarii
.  Judas Iscariot had been all those things.  And Kesev was Hebrew for...
silver
!

“But you hung yourself!” Dan blurted.

The man he’d known as Kesev looked at him and nodded slowly.  “Yes.  Many times.  But I am not allowed to die.”

“W-why are you here?” Crenshaw said.

The Virgin turned to him and pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“Yes-yes,” Crenshaw said quickly, “and I’m terribly sorry about that.  Grievously sorry.”  He pointed at the waterspout still roaring outside the empty window frames.  “But why is He here?”

Again the Virgin pointed to Emilio.

“Because you told him to bring me here.”

“
No
!” Emilio screamed. 

He had a pistol—no silencer this time—and was holding it in a two-handed grip.  The wavering barrel was pointed at the Virgin.  A wild look filled his eyes; he crouched like a cornered animal as he let loose a rapid-fire stream of Spanish that Dan had difficulty following.  Something about all this being a
treta
, a trick, and he’d show them all.

Then he began pulling the trigger and firing at the Virgin.

The reports sounded sharp and rather pitiful against the towering roar from outside.  Dan didn’t know where the bullets went.  Emilio was firing madly, the empty brass casings flying through the air and bouncing along the floor, but the Virgin didn’t even flinch.  No holes appeared in her robes, and Dan saw no breakage in the area behind her.  The bullets just seemed to disappear after they left the muzzle.

Finally the hammer clinked on an empty chamber.  Emilio lowered the pistol stood staring at his untouched target.  With a feral whine he cocked his arm to throw it at her.

That was when the light went out.

Not the electricity—the light.  An instant blackness, darker than a tomb, darker than the back end of a cave in the deepest crevasse of the Marianas Trench.  Such an absolute absence of light that for an instant Dan panicked, unsure of up or down.

And then a scream—Emilio’s voice, filled with unbearable agony as it rose to a soul-tearing crescendo, and then faded slowly, as if he were falling away through space. 

The blackness, too, faded, allowing meager cloud-filtered daylight to reenter the room.  And when Dan could once again make out details, he saw that Emilio was gone.  His pistol lay on the rug, but no trace of the man who owned it.

Dan staggered back and slumped against a support column.  He leaned there, feeling weak.  So fast...one moment a man in frenzied motion, the next he was gone, swallowed screaming by impenetrable blackness. 

But gone where?

“Oh, please!” the senator cried, dropping to his knees and thrusting his clasped hands toward the Virgin.  “
Please!
  I meant you no harm, I meant no one any harm in bringing you here.  I only wanted to help my son.  You can understand that, can’t you?  You had a son yourself.  I’d give anything to make mine well again.”

“Anything?”

“Absolutely
any
thing.”

“Then you must give up
everything
,” she told him.  “All your possessions—money, property—and all your power and ambitions.  Give everything away to whomever you wish, but give it up, all of it, get it out of your life, out of your control, and your son will live.”

“Charlie will live?” he said in a hushed voice as he struggled to his feet.

“Only if you do what I have said.”

“I will.  I swear I will!”

“We shall see,” the Virgin said.

Dan had gathered enough of his wits and strength to dare to address her.

“Why are you here?” he said, then glanced at Carrie.  “Is it our fault?  Did we cause all this?”

“It is time,” the Virgin said.  “A war of faiths threatens to devastate the world.  It is time for Him to return and speak to His children.  And what I say now shall be heard by all His children.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Kiryat Bialik, Israel

Customs Inspector Dov Sidel sat before the TV in his apartment with his wife Chaya, transfixed by the images of destruction from Jerusalem.  He hadn’t been able to eat or take even a sip of tea since word had come.  The Western Wall . . . gone as if it had never been.

Suddenly the picture dissolved into the face of a woman.

Dov stared at her and she stared back.  Something familiar about her face.  He felt he knew her, and yet he couldn’t quite place her.

Oh, well...

He pressed the channel button on the remote.  The same face.  He pressed again and again and it was the same on every channel, even the unused frequencies.  This woman’s face, in perfect reception.

And then it struck him.  That relic, that body that had been slipped past him as a sculpture, the one he’d reported as being on display in New York.  This woman resembled a younger version of that mummified body.  In fact, the longer he stared at her the more convinced he became. 

He was reaching for the phone when Chaya screamed from the kitchen.

‡

Manhattan

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio sat in his quarters at the Vatican Mission, talking on the phone with the Vatican.  The Holy See was in a state of paralyzed shock, and he was discussing with his superiors the Church’s response after the catastrophes of the last eighteen hours.  He heard a sudden scream from the kitchen, followed by the crash of breaking china.  Then another scream.  He excused himself from the conference call and hurried along the hall to see what was wrong. 

The cook was standing by the sink, her hands pressed against her tear-streaked cheeks as she stared at the soapy water.  She was praying in her native Italian.

“Gina?” Vincenzo said, approaching.  “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with fear and wonder, and pointed to the water.

“Maria!”

Vincenzo stepped closer and saw a woman’s face reflected in the surface of the water.  Not Gina’s face.  Another’s.  And immediately he knew who she was.  He felt lightheaded, giddy.  He swung around, looking for someone, anyone to tell, to call over and share this wondrous moment.  But then he saw the same face in the gleaming surface of Gina’s stainless steel mixing bowl, in the shiny side of the pots stacked next to the sink.

She was everywhere, in every reflective surface in the kitchen.

He ran back to the dining room and there was her face again, this time in the mirror over the hutch, and in the silver side of the coffee service.

He ran into the next room where two of his fellow priests crouched before the television, pressing the remote, but on every channel, broadcast and cable, was the same face.

Vincenzo shakily lowered himself to the edge of a chair to sit and wait.

‡

Cashelbanagh , Ireland

Seamus O’Halloran paused on his front stoop and sniffed the clean coolness of the early evening air.  He looked about his empty yard.  After word spread that the monsignor from the Vatican had found a perfectly natural explanation for the tears, the crowds of faithful no longer flocked to Cashelbanagh to see the Weeping Virgin.  In some ways he missed the throngs on his side lawn waiting breathlessly for the next tear, and in other ways he did not.  It was nice to be able to work around the yard without clusters of strangers watching over your shoulder.  And he no longer had those reporter folks asking him the same questions over and over again. 

A shame about the Church.  Father Sullivan and most of the women had been in a panic when it dissolved before their eyes this morning.  They’d all waited around, huddled in the bare spot of earth where the nave used to be, but nothing else happened—no thunder, no lightning, no openings in the earth spewing forth demons.  So they’d all gone home.

He wondered if life would ever get back to normal again—whatever normal was.  But at least one thing was sure: Blaney’s still stood.  Sure now if the pub ever vanished into thin air,
there
would be a tragedy.  Time for him to head down there for a pint.  But first he decided he’d take a look at the side lawn and see how it was coming along.  He strolled around the corner of the house and admired  the grass.  Without the constant trampling of the crowds, it was filling in smooth and green again.  As he turned to go, he glanced up at his grandfather Danny’s painting of the Blessed Mother and froze.

The painting was changing.  He watched, rooted to the ground by terror, as her skin tones darkened while her features ran and rearranged themselves into a different face. 

When she smiled at him, Seamus uprooted himself and ran shouting for his wife.

‡

Everywhere...

Gridlock on the streets of Manhattan.  The ever-swirling schools of cars, trucks, taxies, and buses screech to a halt as a face appears in their side- and rearview mirrors.  It is seen dimly on the surface of every windowpane and brightly in every puddle.  It is the same across the country, in the towns, in the cities, in the fields, in schools, barrooms, and on the computer screens of corporate offices.