Virgin

  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 anything.”

  “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.

  And across the world, in Sydney, Nara, Beijing, Angkor, Luzon, New Delhi, Mumbai, Baghdad, Tunis, Mecca, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, Bosnia, Quito, Paris, London, and Rome, it is the same. Every surface capable of reflecting an image is filled with the same face.

  For a moment a fascinated world stops, gathers together, and watches.

  As she begins to speak, the billions of watchers, even the deaf, even the comatose hear her words and understand.

  “I bring you word from our Creator. The words I say are His, not mine, and He wishes all of you to listen. I shall call Him
‘He’ simply because that is how we traditionally think of the Creator, but He is neither ‘He’ nor ‘She.’ What can those words mean when there is only one? And He is the One. Whether you call him Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, He cares not, for He has no name. Whether you visualize him as a man, or a woman, or a feathered serpent, He cares not, for he is pure Being, without shape.

  “I was one of you, and for a short time, He was part of me. We have touched, and for that reason I am allowed to be His voice. Listen well:

  “More than two thousand years ago the Creator allowed an infinitesimal fragment of Himself to gestate in my womb and become human. He dwelt among a subjugated people who believed in a single God and He planted there his message of kinship between all humans.

  “He said He would return and now He has, but He is not pleased with the way His message has been distorted and manipulated and prostituted and profiteered during the intervening millennia. You all have the same Parent, therefore you are all kin. He did not create you so that you would divide into warring factions. Yet you have done just that.

  “You, His children, have warred incessantly, with one part or another of your world engaging in slaughter, blind to the glorious future that is yours if you can but learn to see past the walls that divide you. There is no peace between nations, but a nation is a fabrication. There must be peace between people. One to one. You must learn to recognize the walls that divide you and break them down. One by one.

  “Tear down your walls, children, and find Harmony.

  “You have become masters of your world. You have struggled to the apex of your corner of Creation. You rule it now. But with mastery comes obligation. The rulers of Creation are also responsible for it.

  “Remember this: Every living thing, animal, reptile, vegetable, contains a spark of the Creator. You hold within yourselves the brightest spark, but not the only spark. It is arrogant of you to think that all other living things were put here merely to be disposed of at your whim. They were not. A balance must be struck. It is a law of Creation that one thing must die that another may live, a law that holds true for all things, for the plants as well as the animals. But you fail in your responsibility when you wantonly lay waste to the land. You dim the spark within when you kill for sport and not for sustenance, when you kill for mere vanity to steal another creature’s beauty to wear as your own, or cause a creature pain to test the paints and scents you daub on your bodies. All life has value. Yes, there is a hierarchy in that value, but nothing that lives is without it.

  “And if you must respect the place of the lower life forms in the world around you, certainly you must cherish the life-right of your fellow humans a thousand-fold more. You must not diminish, must not damage, must not shorten the lives around you, for in doing so you also smother His spark within yourself. And nothing dims that spark, nothing hardens the human heart to the value of human life more than the ghastly slaughter of war. You must halt all war, children, including the unseen war: Never shall there be true peace around you while you wage war on the unborn lives within you.

  “Respect all life, children, and find Harmony.

  “Abolish your ceremonies, your communions, your sacrifices, real and symbolic; discard your dietary laws, cast off your clerical vestments, disband your sects, cease calling yourselves Catholic or Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist, for these customs, these identifications, these sects, these labels serve only to set you apart from your kin.

  “Stop your worship. Cease your kneeling, your bowing, your prostrating, your fasts, self-denials, and self-inflicted injuries. You demean not only yourselves but your Creator when you believe that such obeisance pleases Him. He did not create you for that. You insult Him by thinking that He requires worship. What worship could the Creator of all that is possibly need or take pleasure in?

  “Put down your weapons, you murderous, wild-eyed defenders of faith and God. What sort of God would need defenders, especially such puny and misguided warriors as you? He is quite capable of defending Himself.

  “Silence your prayers. He will not answer because He will not listen while you call out from within walls that separate you from your kin. Harmony is the only prayer He heeds.

  “Abandon your rituals, children, and find Harmony.

  “Do not look to Him for guidance or relief; look instead to each other.

  “Your churches, your temples, your mosques have been removed, for these are the most tangible and obvious walls between you. Gather now instead in the streets and parks and squares where there are no walls. Try to reach Him by reaching each other.

  “Discard your Bible, your Koran, your Torah, for each is only partly true, and al lead you into the belief that you have found the One True Path to God, or the One True Voice that will catch His ear. You have not. And that delusion raises another wall, a wall of exclusivity. He did not create you to be divided.

  “Forsake your dogma children, and find Harmony.

  “I say again, use your own lives well, and respect each life around you. You are all kin. Touch one another. You are all living this life together. And so you must all work together toward creating Heaven. It is possible. You have the power. You need only use it.

  “If you do not, if you continue along the same path you have trod these thousands of years, you will create a Hell for yourselves and your children.

  “Look not for a Third Coming. And act not in fear of eternal reward or punishment. Your reward or punishment is here. This is your world, these are your lives. He has given them to you. Use them well, make the most of them, make them mean something, make them count. For this is your Heaven or Hell. You have the power to make it either. The choice is yours.

  “Do not wait for the Rapture of the faithful, or for the Tribulation of the unbeliever. They will not come from on high. Your rapture arises from each other, as do all your tribulations. Heaven or Hell will be of your own making. You have but to choose.

  “Here, now, today marks the end of the age of faith and belief, and the beginning of a new age: the Age of Knowledge. For everything I say here is being recorded a million times, and thus you will have no further need for faith. You will know there is a God and that He is watching. Act accordingly, children.

  “Let this then be the whole of the law:

  “Find Harmony, children, and you will find Heaven.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Paraiso

  Dan had listened raptly. She’d been speaking to the world, he knew, to all of humankind, but he’d felt as if she were speaking only to him. For what she’d said reflected exactly his innermost thoughts and feelings. Because of his vows, his membership in the priesthood, he’d been afraid to vocalize them, even to himself. But now that she had said them, he could acknowledge what he’d sensed, known all along.

  He wondered if that was why he was here, in this house, in her presence—in His presence—why he’d been with her all along.

  As the Virgin finished speaking she touched Carrie’s bowed head and said, “Come, my devoted one.”

  Carrie rose to her feet. The Virgin held out her hand and Carrie took it.

  The Virgin said, “Our time here is done.”

  Our time is done. What did she mean by that?

  Dan swallowed and addressed her again.

  “Wait … please. Can’t you … bring her back? Make her live again? You can do that, can’t you?”

  The Virgin shook her head. “Her time here is through. She is coming with me.”

  “With you? You’re taking her away? Where?” Dan felt a sob building in his chest. He still hadn’t come to terms with Carrie’s death. “Oh, please. I’ve only just begun to know her. You can’t take her away from me now.”

  “I haven’t taken her away. One of your brothers did that.”

  And then Carrie and the Virgin began to rise.

  When they were floating half a doze
n feet above the floor, they began to drift toward the ruined windows, toward the sea, toward the towering column of water that waited for them.

  “Wait!” cried another voice—the man who called himself Kesev, whom the Mother called Iscariot. “Mother, please wait!”

  Their seaward drift slowed.

  “Yes, Judas?”

  “What of me?”

  “What of you, Judas?”

  “Am I to be left here alone? Haven’t I suffered enough? Two thousand years, Mother! Haven’t I earned forgiveness?”

  “Forgiveness does not come from me, Judas. You know that.”

  “Then intercede for me, Mother. Don’t leave me here alone. Everyone I’ve ever known has left me. Please … I do not deserve this anymore.”

  The Virgin paused, as if listening, then extended her free hand toward Judas.

  “Come.”

  Judas rushed forward, leaped to catch her hand, and when their fingers touched, he floated up to join her, clutching her hand in both of his.

  Dan saw tears in Judas’s eyes, and felt them well up in his own. Carrie … Carrie was leaving.

  He fought the urge to call her back, knowing she wouldn’t, couldn’t respond. He’d lost her—not now, not today, but yesterday, when Emilio had put a 9mm hole in her heart.

  The three of them drifted through the ruined window frames, out into the storm, toward the gargantuan swirling, roaring column of water that loomed outside.

  Dan ran to the frames, clung to one, leaning over the precipice that fell away to the pounding surf below. He sobbed unashamedly and let the tears flow down his cheeks. He watched longingly as their progress accelerated and their retreating forms shrank.

  Soon they were lost in the mist.

  Moments later, the cyclopean waterspout began to retreat, shrinking as it moved off into the Pacific. Gradually it thinned from a thousand yards across to a slender tornado-like funnel, and then it was gone.