The Revelation (14 page)

The sermon he was going to give Sunday. He picked up the black-bound Bible from the small walnut table next to him and opened it to the page he had marked before dinner; a chapter in Job. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something move, and he looked up. The light was still on in the kitchen and he could see nothing there, but the hallway was completely dark. No lights were on in the back of the house at all.

He heard a strange shuffling noise from somewhere back in the hallway.

Andrews jumped slightly, startled, spilling his tea on the Bible lying in his lap. The already thin andtransluscent pages became instantly transparent, backward letters from the next several pages soaking through the words on the open page, blending to form one unreadable black mass.

Black Mass.

Stop it, he told himself.

He was an adult now, not a little child afraid of the dark. And he was a priest, a man of the cloth, a man with the power of the church and the Lord behind him.

Then why were his muscles tensed? Why was he staring into the dark hallway as if looking for signs of movement? Why was he straining to hear strange sounds over the rhythmic cadences ofEr roll Garner's piano?

Andrews closed the Bible, folded his hands atop the smooth black surface, shut his eyes and began to pray. "Our Father .. ." His mouth formed the words, but his voice was silent.

The record ended and there was a sound of tearing paper from one of the back rooms of the house. He could hear it clearly in the sudden stillness.

Adult or no adult, priest or no priest, he wanted to run. His instinct was to throw open the front door, and dash into the street, jump into his car parked next to the curb, take off and spend the night in a nice, clean, modern hotel with well-lit rooms and a peopled lobby. And his instincts were usually good.

He had not been this scared in years.

That's why he had to stay.

Andrews pulled lightly on the chain around his neck and fingered the gold crucifix that hung on the end of the chain. He closed his eyes and again said the Lord's Prayer. When he reached "Deliver us from evil," he said it aloud.

He opened his eyes and sniffed. There was the smell of something burning-charred flesh?--in the air.

No, it couldn't be. He was overreacting, making himself hysterical.

His brain was overloading on imagination. He wasn't approaching this logically, rationally.

But there was a definite burning smell.

What was it? Sulfur? Cinders? The fiery pits of hell?

Nothing. It was nothing. He was just imagining The smoke alarm went off.

He jumped from his chair this time. The alarm was loud, a piercing shriek that cut through the quiet like a sledgehammer through ice cream and which would have blotted out even the loudest noise.

Now he was no longer worried about the house's vibes or the strange noises in the dark. Here was something real--a fire. He ran toward the hallway, no longer afraid. He flipped on the hall light as he dashed past it. The smell was horrible, almost an emetic, and it was getting stronger. The air was beginning to cloud up with a thick brown smog like smoke.

He turned on the light to Father Selway's study and stood for a second in the doorway, trying to see through the thick smoke. His eyes were watering, and when he rubbed them they began to itch. The smoke was definitely coming from within this room, but he could feel no heat and see no flames. The fire had to be small, still controllable. He ran back to the kitchen and grabbed a big metal cooking pot from the cupboard beneath the sink, turning both the hot and cold water on full blast to fill the pot. He left the water on and sprinted back down the hall.

A bad electrical connection had probably started something on fire. A scrap of paper, perhaps. Or a portion of the rug.

He ran into the room. There was a small single flame visible through the clouded air and he quickly poured the water onto it. He ran back to the kitchen for more water.

Three trips later, the fire was out. Andrews, coughing heavily, lurched through the study and opened both windows. He would have to tell the bishop about this. It wasn't serious enough for him to notify the fire department, but the bishop would want to know what happened. He staggered out into the hall and took a deep breath of fresh air, but that only caused a coughing spasm, and he dropped to his knees, almost throwing up. The coughing spell passed, and he stood up.

His throat felt raw and sore. The smoke had cleared from the study for the most part, and the reverend looked into the room.

The study was a shambles. All of Father Selway's books, which had been neatly stacked on bookcases against the far wall had been thrown on the floor and were rudely scattered around the edges of the room. It was a miracle that they had not caught fire. In the center of the room, the front and back covers of Father Selway's oversized display Bible, which had been exhibited on a special stand next to his desk, lay skeletally empty, all the pages torn out. The pages themselves had been torn and crumpled and put into a pile. That was what had been burning.

Andrews stared at the desecrated room in shock. Who had done this? And why? And how? He had been in the house all evening and had heard nothing until five or ten minutes ago, and even that had been barely noticeable.

He blinked back the tears caused by residual smoke and rubbed his eyes lightly. They watered more. He left his eyes alone and stared at the room. By all rights, the place should have gone up like a torch. Why had there been so little fire damage? He walked toward the desk and picked up one of the remaining pages of the display Bible. It was wet from the water and charred around the edges. It felt slimy to the touch. He held it up close to his face, in order to see it better, then dropped it, gagging.

It was covered with excrement.

He looked down at his feet. All of the pages, and all of the other books, had been smeared somehow with human excrement.

On top of Father Selway's desk was a cross made out of molded feces.

Andrews fell to his knees and vomited. Convulsively. Uncontrollably.

He tried to pray, but his mind could not shift its focus from his involuntarily heaving stomach.

From outside somewhere, through one of the open windows, came something that sounded like a whining high-pitched laugh.

The morning did not dawn clear and hot like any other. Instead, it was overcast, a low ceiling of continuous cloud blocking out the sun and weaving through the ragged line of tall trees at the top of the Rim. Although it was not drizzling, there was a light mist in the air, and when Gordon peeked through the partially parted bedroom curtains his view was blurred by the running moisture on the plate glass. He reached over and pulled open the wood-framed window, expecting a blast of humid hothouse air, but the light breeze that splattered the thin mist through the screen was cool and comfortable.

When Marina woke up, she leaned her chin on Gordon's right shoulder, her cheek next to his, and snuggled close against his back. She stared with him out the window, yawning. "Well this is a pleasant surprise."

He let the two halves of the drapes fall back together. The breeze blew them slightly inward. "The weatherman was wrong again." He fell back on the bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the palms of his hands.

"So what else is new?"

Gordon stopped rubbing his eyes and stared up at the ceiling for a minute. "Sandra," he said.

"What?"

"We can name the baby Sandra."

Marina looked at him for a moment then sat up in bed. He looked so calm, so happy lying there that she hated to disturb his mood, but they had to talk this out, they had to discuss the baby sometime. She'd been wanting to bring it up for three days now, and this was a perfect opportunity. She licked her sleep-dried lips, unsure of how to start.

"We have to talk," she said.

Her seriousness must have imparted itself to Gordon because he sat up on his elbows and looked at her, his eyes expectant, troubled. "I

know," he said quietly.

She put her hands on his, feeling the rough hair on his bony knuckles.

His hands felt larger than they should, different, and she had to subdue an instinct to pull her own hands away. Her fingers began tracing an outline of his hand. "I'm still scared."

"I know you are. I am too."

"It's .. . not right. We don't deserve this." She felt confused.

Alternately hurt and angry. She knew words could not convey her feelings-she was not articulate enough to be able to voice such subtle, disparate, and deeply conflicting emotions--and it frustrated her. She felt as if she might cry, but she knew that would do no good.

Gordon brought her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. "I know," he said.

This was not exactly what she had wanted to talk about, this was not how the conversation was supposed to go. But she couldn't help herself. The emotions flooded over her, the rage, the frustration, an excess of feelings threatening any moment to burst out through the psychological safety valve of tears. "Goddamn it. Why did this have to happen to us? ..

. Why does this sort of ... shit . have to happen at all? To anyone?"

Gordon did not have an answer. He did not even have a good substitute, an adequate reassurance. He simply kissed her hand again, murmuring sympathetically,em pathetically hoping it was enough, knowing it was not.

"It's ... so ... fucking .. . unfair."

The sobs came. Tears rolled down her cheeks, silently at first. She closed her eyes tightly, but tears snuck out of them anyway, and her mouth, which had been ready to utter another protest, another complaint, suddenly turned to rubber. She began to cry aloud.

Primally. Unashamedly.

He pulled her to him. He kissed her wet cheeks, tasting the clean saltiness of her tears. His hands ran softly through her thick hair, combing it back. His mouth found hers and they kissed, their tongues touching hesitantly at first then actively entwining. The sobs stopped, slowly, and Gordon's hand slid gently under hernightie , between her legs. She was already wet and offered no resistance.

Soon he was inside her and they were making love. Slowly.

Languorously.

They came simultaneously.

Neither of them spoke for a while afterward, and he stayed on top of her until he fell out. He rolled next to her on the bed and tried to kiss her, but his lips instead became entangled in her hair. She giggled in spite of herself.

Gordon smiled. "Cheered up?"

"Against my will."

"It works every time."

Marina bit her lower lip and put a finger lightly on his mouth. "We might have killed the symptoms, but the problem's still there. We still have to talk."

He nodded. "Shoot."

"What are we going to do?"

Her voice was completely serious once again, and Gordon sat up, looking into her eyes, trying to gauge her feelings, trying to determine in which direction she was leaning. "I don't know," he said.

"I know the tests that were supposed to be positive were positive and the tests that were supposed to be negative were negative, but I'm still worried. What if they're wrong? What do we do then?"

"There's nothing we can do."

"I'm not sure it's worth the risk. I don't know if I want to take that chance. I'm not sure I'm willing to go through with it because I'm not sure I could handle it if anything went wrong."

He put his hand in back of her head and leaned toward her, looking into her eyes. "It's going to have to be your decision. And I'll be behind you no matter what you decide. But I think we should see it through.

The doctors said everything's okay. There's probably a small margin of error there, but not much." He smiled at her. "I think it would be nice to have a little miniature Marina running around here."

She smiled back at him. "Somehow I knew that you were going to be in favor of going through with it."

"What do you think?"

She ran her tongue across her teeth and shrugged noncommittally. "I

don't know."

"You're not leaning one way or the other?"

"Well, maybe I am. But--"

"You'd better decide pretty quick, you know."

"I know. But I'll have to quit school, we'll have to get by on just your salary ..."

"You mean this is because you're worried about money?"

"No, of course not. But we have to take everything into account, and so far the bad points seem to out weight the good."

"Which way are you leaning?"

She tried to look at him seriously, full in the face, but she could not keep the smile from her lips. "I'd kind of like a little Marina running around the house, too."

"Then it's settled."

"Not quite. I still want to think it over a bit." She held up a hand. "I know, I know. I'd better think fast." She kissed his nose. "I will."

Gordon kissed her back, then put his head down on her stomach, as if listening. "Hey," he said, sitting back up. "What about sex? How much longer can we keep on doing it?"

Marina laughed, and her laugh sounded happy, free of troubles. "I should've known you'd worry about that."