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"Yeah? How can you tell?"
"That's the way it rings when it's Da
The phone did sound weird. One long, uninterrupted ring that kept going. But weird ring or not, Re
"Hello!"
A child's voice, terrified, screaming.
"Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease! Father, Father, Father, I don't want to die. Please come and get me. Don't let him kill me. I don't want to dieT
Re
But he knew where he was. Da
"Is that you, lady?" he shouted into the phone. "This is Detective Sergeant Augustino, NYPD, and you just made the biggest mistake of your life!"
The line was dead. He depressed the plunger and dialed the operator. After identifying himself he asked if she had just put the call through to extension 2579. She said no and checked with the other operators. No one could remember putting a call through to that extension all morning. He slammed the phone down.
"She's somewhere in the hospital!" he said.
"What?" The priest was back on his feet, his eyes wide.
"If the call didn't come through the switchboard, it had to originate in-house. She's probably sitting in some corner playing her tape into the phone."
"You mean it sounded like a tape to you?"
"Come to think of it… no."
Father Bill was suddenly ru
"Da
Re
But Da
Bill seated himself at the side of the bed, pulled a Rosary from his pocket, and began fingering the beads. But he didn't say the usual Our Fathers and Hail Marys. He couldn't find the words. His mind was saturated with Da
Ungodly. A fitting adjective. Where was God when Bill needed Him? When Da
Or is He out there at all?
Such a question would have been unthinkable a few days ago. But Bill had run out of excuses.
And he knew them all. All the gentle explanations of why bad things happen to good people, and why even the most devout, most sincere, most selfless prayers often go unanswered. He knew how events often seemed to conspire to work against the best people, against the best things they tried to achieve. But that didn't mean there was a Divine Hand at work, moving people around, shaping events, checking off names of those who could go on living and those whose time was up.
As Bill saw it, death, disease, rape, murder, accidents, famine, plague—they all had earthly causes, and therefore had earthly solutions. As God's creatures we were expected to find those solutions. That was why He equipped us with hands, hearts, and minds.
Neither God nor the mythical Satan were the cause of our woes; if the culprits weren't ourselves or other people, they were time, circumstance, or nature.
Or so Bill had thought.
How did he explain what had happened—what was still happening—to Da
From everything Bill knew, from everything he had seen during the past few days, the answer was None Of The Above.
None of the above.
Sure, blame whoever had posed as Sara for taking a knife to Da
Impossible… but here he was.
And what of Herb Lorn? A hollow man—not just spiritually, but without internal organs or a nervous system—who had dissolved when Bill punched a hole in his chest.
Good God!… the hole in his chest… the cold… the stench… the slime…
As much as his faith resisted it, as much as his mind saw it as a surrender of the intellect, he could not escape the feeling, the overwhelming belief that something supernatural was at work here.
Something supernatural… and evil.
And Da
Why Da
And deep in his gut Bill knew that the torture would go on as long as Da
Where there's life, there's hope.
Bill had lived by that neat little aphorism for the four and a half decades of his life. He'd believed it.
But no more. Poor little Da
No. Not life. Existence was a better term. For what Da
At least not from anything in this world.
Bill pocketed the Rosary and said a silent prayer of his own.
Help him, Lord. Something beyond the natural is causing his torment and so only something else beyond the natural can save him. That's You, Lord. We can bounce back from any blow Your world hands us, but we are helpless against the otherworldly. That's why Da
my sake—put his wounds on me, if that will do it. Just don't let him suffer anymore. If there's something that can be done that's not being done, let me know. Tell me and I'll do it. No matter what it is, I'll do it. Please.
Da
Bill froze and watched as Da
"Da
Da
"What?" Bill said, leaning closer. "What is it?"
The lips moved again. A whisper escaped.
Bill moved closer still. The breath from the parched tu
"What, Da
"Bury me… in holy ground… It won't stop… till you bury me…"