Reborn, page 31
The fluidity of his ad-libbed explanations pleased Jonah. He could almost believe them himself.
“I know,” she said, slumping back to a reclining position on the rear seat. “I was stupid. But I think the baby’s okay. I mean, the pain’s gone now and there’s been no more bleeding.”
Lucky for you, he thought. If she lost the One, he would kill her. Slowly.
“But what about that flaming cross almost killing us! You can’t tell me I imagined that!”
“Course not. The church got hit by lightning, the cross got knocked through the roof and ceiling, and that was it. We were lucky.”
“But the glow—!”
“St. Elmo’s fire. Used to see it out on the farm during storms when I was a boy. Scary, but harmless.”
“You and Bill—you’ve got an explanation for everything!”
“You mean that priest fellow?”
“Yes. He says I should forget all this Satan nonsense and concentrate on having a healthy baby.”
Jonah smiled ruefully. He had never thought he’d ever find himself on the same side as a priest.
“I couldn’t agree more, young lady. We all want that boy to be safe an’ strong.”
“Boy? Do you think it’s going to be a boy?”
“Sure do.” I know it.
“I have that feeling too. I think I’ll name him James, after his father.”
“That’ll be nice.”
He has no father, but name him anything you want. Won’t matter a bit.
“Thanks for coming when you did, Jonah. You saved my life.”
“Think nothing of it.”
Because your life means nothing to me without the One.
7
“Where is she?” said the thin pale one.
Emma glared up from her chair at the men who surrounded her. The one with the ax had reached through the smashed window and unlocked the front door for the rest. They wanted Carol but Emma would die before telling them.
“She’s gone. Gone for the week. Gone for a rest.”
“Really? When did she leave?”
“Straight from the hospital.”
“She’s lying,” he said to the others. “We spoke to her here on the phone earlier this afternoon.”
Two of the men hurried down from the upper levels.
“No one upstairs.”
“Come on, lady,” said the thin one. “We have no intention of harming you. We just want to find Carol Stevens.”
“What do you want with her?”
“We’ll take that up with her.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. What could—
Suddenly one of the men shouted, “There’s a car coming in!”
“Do you feel it?” the thin one said in a hushed voice, his eyes wide and bright with excitement. “Do you feel it? It’s her!”
Emma tried to scream out a warning but a hand clamped over her mouth.
8
By the time Jonah realized something was wrong, it was too late.
Carol was still shaky when they got back to the mansion, so he got her out of the car and had an arm around her waist as he helped her through the light rain up to the front door. As soon as he stepped into the foyer, he sensed the danger. He spun Carol around to get her back to the car but suddenly there were four men facing him on the front porch and more coming from the house.
“Who are you?” Carol said.
“We just want to talk to you, Mrs. Stevens,” said someone from behind them. Jonah turned and saw a pale, thin man standing inside the foyer. “Come in. Please.”
Jonah’s mind raced. He knew who they were and he sensed why they were here. Inside the mansion, death awaited the One.
I can’t let this happen!
“Recognize them?” he said to Carol. “They’re the ones who were here last Sunday. They killed Jim.”
“Oh, God.” He could feel her anger funneling strength into her body as she straightened away from him and stood on her own. Her voice gained a sharper edge. “Who the hell are you and why are you here?”
“My name is Martin,” the man said. He motioned the others away from the door. “Please come in. I’ll explain everything.”
Jonah had calculated their total number at half a dozen or so, but only a few stood between Carol and freedom. If he could keep those occupied…
“Let’s go in,” Jonah said, taking her arm as if to guide her through the door. “Let’s hear what they have to say.”
As Carol stared at him in disbelief, he watched the strangers. He saw them relax. They thought they’d won. That was when Jonah made his move.
Whirling, he shoved Carol toward the porch steps, shouting, “Run!”
Continuing the same motion, he grabbed two of the strangers and flung them into the other two. During the confusion on the porch he saw Carol stumbling down the steps, looking back with a white, frightened face.
“Lock yourself in the car and go!” he shouted.
Then someone leaped onto his back. Then another. And then a third. As he went to his knees under the weight he saw Carol reach the car. Mentally, he cheered her on.
Go, girl! Get away from here! Run them down on the way out!
9
With a scream welling in her throat, Carol pulled the car door open and threw herself into the front seat.
Safe!
But as she went to slam the door, someone grabbed the outside handle and yanked it back. The waiting scream broke free.
“Stay away from me! Leave me alone!”
She looked up into the bland face and gentle eyes of someone who could have been an accountant or a hot dog vendor or a department manager at Macy’s. But there was no mistaking his determination as he stood in the rain and stared down at her.
“We have no wish to harm you, Mrs. Stevens.”
“Then let me go!”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that. At least not at the moment.” He held out his hand to assist her from the car. She noticed that it was bandaged; so was his other hand. He pulled it back as if he’d suddenly changed his mind. “Please come with me.”
Another man, about ten years older but equally bland looking, joined the first and looked down at her. Both his hands were bandaged too. Despite her fear, she was struck by the strangeness of those bandages.
“Please don’t fear us,” the second one said. “We’re only here to help you.”
Both their expressions showed a strange mixture of serenity and implacable purpose. Here were a pair who had found the answer to all things in life. No further questions were necessary.
The effect was chilling.
She looked past them at the porch where four men were still struggling to subdue Jonah. The first followed her gaze.
“We mean him no harm, either. Come.”
Carol fought the hysteria straining against the underside of her diaphragm. They seemed sincere about meaning her no harm, yet something within her screamed in fear at the look in their eyes.
But what choice had she? She was outnumbered and outflanked. The porch was out of sight of the road and none of the neighbors were close enough to hear if she screamed. Her arms and legs felt leaden, too weak to put up a struggle, too heavy to run.
And up on the porch, they had Jonah on his feet and were leading him inside.
“All right. I’ll come. Just don’t touch me.”
That seemed to be the furthest thing from their minds. Both men stepped back out of her way, but she noticed that the first kept a firm grip on the door handle.
They followed her to the porch. The one who had called himself Martin was waiting there. He spoke to the men with her.
“Go signal Brother Robert.”
The second one trotted off toward the road.
Carol wondered at the significance of that as Martin preceded her into the front hallway. Then she heard Emma’s breathless voice coming from the parlor.
“—tried to warn you, Jonah, but they gagged me and pulled me into the back room!”
Carol followed Martin into the parlor where one of the men was tying Jonah into a chair as two others steadied his arms. In the doorway to the dining room stood Emma, flanked by two more of the men.
And they all had bandages on their hands. What did that mean?
“Carol!” Emma cried. “I’m so glad you’re all right! I was so worried!”
Carol felt a blast of fury at these interlopers. The Hanley mansion didn’t really feel like her house, and so she hadn’t reacted as instinctively as she might have had they been in the old family cottage. But with the sight of the smashed leaded window, the shattered glass on the carpet, the axes leaning against the wall, something changed within her. She suddenly felt protective toward this old place.
This was her house, and it was probably these people who burned her out of her old home. And now they were making themselves right at home here! And tying up her father-in-law!
She stormed into the parlor.
“Get out! All of you get out of my house!”
“We’ll be leaving soon,” Martin said, unperturbed.
“Not soon! Now! I want you all out of here now!” She strode to where they were binding Jonah’s wrists to the arms of the chair. “Stop that! Untie him immediately!”
The men glanced up at her, then at Martin, then continued tying their knots.
“All in good time,” Martin said. “But there’s someone I think you ought to talk to first before you get too upset.”
Carol was ready to scream at him when she heard the sound of tires splashing through the puddles on the driveway. She glanced through the front window and saw three cars pulling in. None of them looked familiar. As she watched, the doors opened and a number of women got out—five in all—and a bearded man in monk’s robes with the cowl pulled up over his head. As they approached the front porch she recognized the short, portly figure in the lead.
“Aunt Grace!”
“Grace?” Emma shouted from the far side of the room. “Grace Nevins? She’s with them? I should have known! She helped them kill my Jimmy!”
Carol barely heard her. Aunt Grace was here. That was good. Emma was just overwrought. She had nothing to fear from Aunt Grace. She’d taken her parents’ place after they were killed. If she knew these people, she’d straighten everything out.
10
Grace had sensed the evil within the house as she stepped up onto the porch. But when she entered and saw Carol dash across the front hallway, running toward her with outstretched arms, it slammed against her like a mailed fist.
“Aunt Grace! Help us! We’re being held prisoner here!”
Grace willed herself not to recoil as Carol clung to her. But holding her trembling niece was like embracing a sack of maggots. She had no doubt now—the Antichrist was within her. She felt a sudden righteous rage at Satan for doing this to her own niece. How dare he!
“You’ll be fine, dear,” she said, stroking her niece’s long, damp hair.
I will free you from your affliction. I will rip the corruption from within you and return you to your old unsullied self.
She hated herself for being so deceitful. For despite her desire to free Carol from Satan, she dreaded the ugly scene to come and wanted to put off the unpleasantness as long as she could, to compress it and concentrate it into the shortest possible length of time, into a tiny bitter pill that could be downed in a single swallow.
“Aunt Grace, do you know these people?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve known them since Ash Wednesday.”
“Can you get them out of here?”
“Don’t you worry. You know I wouldn’t let anything happen to my niece. Just relax. Tomorrow this will all seem like a dream and you’ll be fine. In fact, you’ll be better than you are right now.”
You’ll be free of the loathsomeness growing inside you.
She felt Carol relax, but fear still hovered in her niece’s eyes when she leaned back and looked at her.
“Just get them out of here. Please? You should see what they’ve done to Jonah!”
“Show me.”
She followed Carol into the room to the right. She’d never seen a house like this, so ornate, so cluttered. She stopped at the threshold, startled by the sight of Jonah Stevens trussed in a chair and straining at his bonds.
“You!” Jonah shouted when he saw her. His single eye glared at her from a rage-distorted face. “I might have known you’d be involved in this!”
Might have known? What did he mean by that?
But it was Emma who suddenly dominated the scene. She pulled away from the two Chosen guarding her and lunged across the room at Grace, her fingers curved like talons as she screamed at the top of her voice.
“It’s you! You killed my Jimmy! Yooouuu!”
Grace shrank back from the attack, and luckily the other Chosen were able to grab and restrain Emma before she reached her. Emma’s words became raving gibberish and she screamed and spit and bit and kicked at her captors as they dragged her to the floor. She was like a madwoman, like a wounded wild animal.
Finally, whether from exhaustion or the realization that she was helpless, Grace couldn’t say, Emma calmed and lay there on the flowered carpet, panting and grunting.
Wounded. Yes, she’d been wounded, hadn’t she? Poor Jim wasn’t to blame for being born without a soul. He’d been used by Satan to impregnate poor Carol, and then discarded. Her heart went out to poor Emma for her loss, but that did not make Grace fear her rage any less.
Jim used, Carol used. And Carol no doubt destined to be discarded like Jim after she’d served her purpose and the Antichrist was born. It was all so dirty, so treacherous. Well, Grace would put an end to all of that here today.
She watched with relief as they lifted Emma from the floor and prepared to tie her into a chair like her husband. She wailed piteously.
“She killed my Jimmy! She killed my Jimmy and she’s got to pay for it!”
“Emma, please,” Carol was saying. “Grace had nothing to do with that.” She turned pleading eyes on her. “Did you, Aunt Grace?”
Grace shook her head.
In a way, she told herself, her denial was true. She’d been against that first trip to Monroe, hadn’t wanted to come along, and had stayed in the car throughout the whole tragic confrontation.
“She lies!” Jonah roared. “She was there! I saw her in one of the cars!”
Carol stared at her. “That’s not true, is it?”
Grace could not bring herself to lie to her niece. “You have to understand, Carol. I—”
“She was there to kill Jim!” Jonah said. “And now she’s here to kill Jim’s baby!”
Grace would have given her life then to stop the growing horror she saw in Carol’s face.
Carol’s voice was a whisper. “No…”
“Carol, dear, you’ve got to know that the child you’re carrying is not really Jim’s. It’s—”
Carol’s hands were over her ears as her voice rose to a scream.
“NO!”
11
Bill had watched the awesome fury of the storm from his parents’ living room. Now that it had dwindled to a rumbling drizzle he was on his way. The temperature had dropped a good twenty degrees. Winter was making a last stand against spring. He had the defroster temperature up as high as it would go to keep the windshield clear.
He had to pass Carol and Jim’s old house on his way to Glen Cove Road, and he felt an ache in his chest as he drove by the charred ruins at 124 Collier.
That got him thinking about Carol and how she was managing, if she was all right.
But of course she was all right. She was out at the Hanley place with her in-laws.
Then why did he have this per sis tent gnawing feeling that she wasn’t all right?
He was approaching Glen Cove Road and was about to turn south when he abruptly pulled the car over to the shoulder by a Citgo station and stopped. The feeling was growing stronger.
This is silly, he thought.
He didn’t believe in premonitions or clairvoyance or any of that extrasensory nonsense. It not only went against the teachings of the Church, but it went against his personal experience.
Yet he could not escape the feeling that Carol needed him.
He put the car in gear, started toward Glen Cove Road again, then braked and pounded on the steering wheel with his fist.
He could see that he wasn’t going to be able to rest easy until he’d settled this.
He pulled into the Citgo station, dug the Hanley mansion’s phone number out of his pocket, and dropped a dime. No ring. The operator came on and told him the phone was out of order. Lines were down all over upper Nassau County. The storm, you know.
Right. The storm. Maybe the mansion had been hit. Maybe it was ablaze right now.
Damn. He was going to have to take a run out there. Just drive by. He wouldn’t stop in. Just make sure everything looked okay, then head for Queens.
He took the direct route through the harborfront area but was slowed by the traffic being detoured away from a fire on Tremont Street. He joined the rubberneckers, straining to see what was burning up the hill. What ever it was, it looked to be near Our Lady. An awful thought struck him—maybe the burning building was Our Lady. He’d said mass there only this morning.
He was tempted to park and run uphill to see. If Our Lady was ablaze, maybe he could help Father Rowley. But the sight of the smoke heightened his anxiety about Carol’s safety. He gunned the car toward Shore Drive.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the street in front of the mansion wall free of fire trucks and no pall of smoke dirtying the air over the roof.
But the driveway inside the gate was loaded with cars.
Something about that didn’t sit right. He did a U-turn down the street and drove by again. Slowly.
A good half dozen cars in the drive—J. Carroll, both Jonah’s and Emma’s, and others he didn’t recognize. Curious, he pulled in by the wall and walked around to the gate. Maybe he could knock on the front door and ask if anyone had seen his sunglasses. Nobody had to know that they were sitting on the dashboard of his car.
