F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (32 page)

           
 
Disgusted, he decided to leave. Nothing here.
No miracles of any kind, medical or otherwise. As he rose to his feet, he heard
the priest say he was running back to the rectory for something, but instead of
leaving through the front of the room, he used a door in the rear of the
kitchen.

           
 
Emilio wove through the maze of long tables
and hurried up the steps to the street. As he ambled along, blinking in the
sun's glare and trying to look aimless, he glanced down the alley between the
church and the rectory. He stopped. Hadn't he seen the priest go out a door in
the kitchen? He'd assumed it led up to street level. But there was no
corresponding door in the alley. Where had the priest gone if he hadn't
returned to the rectory?

           
 
He looked up at the rectory and was startled
momentarily to see the priest's blond head pass a window. Emilio smiled. An underground
passage. How convenient. He supposed there were all sorts of passages between
these old buildings.

           
 
He walked on, taking small satisfaction in
having cleared up a mystery, no matter how inconsequential. Emilio didn't like
mysteries.

           
 
Farther along he passed a man wearing a white
lab coat and holding an open briefcase before him. The briefcase was lined with
rows of three-ounce bottles.

           
 
"Hey, buddy!" the guy said.
"You got the sickness?"

           
 
Emilio looked at him and the guy's eyes lit
with sudden recognition. He backed up two steps.

           
 
"Oh, shit. Hey, sorry. Never mind."

           
 
Emilio walked on without acknowledging him.

           
 
How could he learn anything, or even make
sense of anything in this carnival atmosphere? The entire area seemed to have
gone mad. People were wandering about in droves at night carrying candles and
chanting the Rosary and seeing the Virgin Mary everywhere. Hucksters were set
up on every corner selling I LOVE MARY-HUNTING badges, OUR LADY OF THE LOWER
EAST SIDE T-shirts, Virgin Mary statues, slivers of the True Cross, rosaries,
and sundry other religious paraphernalia.

           
 
Quick-buck grifters and con artists had moved
in too. Emilio had already had run-ins with a few of them, and the guy he'd
just passed had been the first. He'd approached Emilio just as he'd started to
today, asking him if he had "the sickness"—the local code for AIDS.

           
 
Curious, Emilio had said, "What if I
do?"

           
 
With that the guy had launched into a spiel
about his cure-all tonic, claiming his elixir, "Yes, the stuff right in
these bottles you see before you here," was the stuff that had cured the
AIDS cases everyone was talking about.

           
 
Emilio had listened awhile, then pushed him
into a corner and knocked him around until he admitted that he hadn't even come
to the city until he'd read about the cures.

           
 
Emilio had similar run-ins with a number of
the snake-oil salesmen he'd come across and under pressure the stories were all
the same: charlatans preying on the weak, the sick, and the desperate.

           
 
Not that Emilio cared one way or the other, he
simply didn't want to bring one of their potions back to Paraiso and look like
a fool in the eyes of the
senador.

           
 
This whole trip seemed a fool's errand.

           
 
And yet . . .

           
 
There was a feeling in the air . . . and in
Emilio himself . . . a twinge in his gut, a vague prickling at the back of his
neck, a sense that these littered streets, these leaning, tattered buildings,
hid a secret. Even the air felt heavy, pregnant with . . . what? Dread?
Anticipation? A little of both, maybe?

           
 
Emilio shook it off. The
senador
had not sent him here for his
impressions
of the area; he wanted facts. And whatever it was that
was raising his gooseflesh, Emilio doubted it would be of any use to the
senador
and Charlie. But
something
was going on down here.

           
 
Vincenzo Riccio stood in the dusk on the
sidewalk in front of
St. Joseph
's church. He did not stare up at its Gothic facade, but at the doorway
that led under its granite front steps. People carrying candles were beginning
to gather on those front steps. They carried rosaries and clustered around an
elderly woman in a wheelchair who was preparing them for a prayer meeting
tonight. Vincenzo paid them little heed.

           
 
He had wandered the
Lower East Side
all day, tracing a spiral path from the
Con-Ed station by the FDR, following a feeling, an invisible glow that seemed
to be centered in the front of his brain, pulling him. Where or why it was
drawing him, he could not say, but he gave himself over to the feeling, allowed
it to lead him in shrinking concentric circles to this spot.

           
 
And now he was here. The invisible glow, the
intangible warmth, the only warm spot in the city lay directly before him,
somewhere within this church.

           
 
In the course of the weeks he had spent down
here searching for the vision, Vincenzo had passed
St. Joseph
's numerous times. He had crossed himself as
he'd come even with its sanctuary, and even had stopped in once to say a
prayer. But he had not been struck by anything especially important about the
place. A stately old church that, like its neighborhood, had seen better days.

           
Now it seemed like . . . home.

           
 
But
what
precisely was it that he had followed here? That the strange sensation was
connected to the apparition that had touched him with ecstasy and cleansed him
of the malignancy that had been devouring him he had no doubt. Neither did he
doubt that the apparition was a visitation of the Blessed Virgin. A
true
visitation. Not a hallucination,
not a wish fulfillment, not a publicity stunt. He had seen, he had been
touched, he had been healed. This was the real thing. His wish had been
granted: He had witnessed a miracle before his death, but as a result of that
miracle, his

           
death was no longer imminent. He had
been granted extra time. And he'd used some of that extra time to find this
place.

           
 
Why? What was so special about this
St. Joseph
's church? What significance could it have
for the Virgin Mary? It was built on land that had been an undeveloped marsh
until a millennium and a half after the birth of Christianity. Vincenzo did not
know of any sacred relics housed here.

           
And yet . . .

           
 
Something
was here. The same warm glow that had suffused his entire being a few
nights ago seemed to emanate from this building. Not from where he would have
expected—from the sanctuary of the church itself—but from its lower level. From
the basement which appeared to be some sort of soup kitchen.

           
 
What could be here? The remains of some
American saint unrecognized by the Church? Was that the reason behind the
Blessed Mother's visitations?

           
 
Inside .
. . it's inside.

           
 
Vincenzo was drawn forward. Why shouldn't he
go in? After all, he was wearing his cassock and collar. Who would stop a
priest from entering a church? Especially a monsignor on a mission from the
Holy See. Yes. Hadn't the
Vatican
itself asked him to investigate the reports
of visitations in this parish? That was precisely what he was doing.

           
 
As he descended the short flight of stone
steps he passed under a hand-painted sign that read LOAVES AND FISHES; he
pushed through a battered door and entered a broad room lined with long tables
and folding chairs. Toward the rear, a serving counter. And beyond that, a
kitchen.

           
 
Farther
inside
. . .

           
 
Feeling as if he were in a dream, he skirted
the tables and moved toward the kitchen. A growing excitement quivered in his
chest. He heard voices, running water, and clinking crockery from the kitchen.
He rounded the corner and came upon three women of varying shapes, sizes, and
ages busily scrubbing pots, plates, and utensils. The big, red-cheeked one
glanced up and saw him.

           
 
"Sorry, we're closed until—oh, sorry,
Father. I thought you were one of the guests. Are you looking for Father
Dan?"

           
 
Vincenzo had no idea who Father Dan was.

           
 
"Is he the pastor?"

           
 
"No. Father Brenner is the pastor. Father
Dan is the associate pastor. He went back to the rectory about half an hour
ago."

           
 
Down . .
. it's beneath your feet.

           
 
"Is there a basement here?"

           
 
"This is the basement, Father,"
another woman said.

           
 
"But there's a furnace room below
here," said the thinnest and oldest of the three.

           
 
Vincenzo saw a door in the rear corner and
moved toward it.

           
 
"Not that one," said the old woman.
"That leads to the rectory. There's another door on the far side of the
refrigerator there."

           
 
Vincenzo changed direction, brushing past
them, unable to fight the growing urgency within him.

           
 
So close
. . . so close now.

           
 
He pulled the door open. A sweet odor wafted
up from the darkness below.

           
 
Flowers.

           
 
As his eyes adjusted, Vincenzo made out a
faint glow from the bottom of the rutted stone steps. He started down, dimly
aware of the women's voices behind him speaking of Father Dan and something
about a Sister Carrie. Whether they were speaking to him or to each other he
neither knew nor cared. He was close now . . . so close.

           
 
At the bottom he followed the light to the
left and came upon a broad empty space with a single naked bulb glowing from
the ceiling.

           
 
No . . .
this can't be it . . . there's got to be more here than an empty basement.

           
 
Off to his left . . . a voice, humming. He
followed the sound around a corner and found the door to a smaller room
standing open. As he stepped inside, his surroundings became more dreamlike.

           
 
I'm here
. . . this is the place . . . I've come home . . .

           
 
Candlelight flickered off the walls and low
ceiling of a room that seemed alive with sweet-smelling blossoms. He saw a
woman there, her back was to him and she was humming as she straightened the
folds of the robes draped around some sort of statue or sculpture recumbent on—

           
 
And then Vincenzo saw the glow. He recognized
that glow,
knew
that glow. The same
soft, pale luminescence had enveloped the apparition. He could not be mistaken.
Hadn't it touched him, been
one
with
him for a single glorious instant? How could he forget it? He realized then
that this was no statue or sculpture before him. This was a human body laid out
on a makeshift bier.

           
 
But whose body?

           
 
Suddenly Vincenzo knew, and the realization
was like a physical blow, staggering him, numbing him, battering his consciousness
until it threatened to tear loose from its moorings and . . . simply . . .
drift.