The Visitation (38 page)

Adrian tried to explain. “Well, remember how Jesus said that John the Baptist was Elijah? This is the same kind of thing.”

“Brandon yelled at me last night. That doesn’t sound like Jesus loving Mary Magdalene.”

Adrian puzzled over that one a moment. “That’s possible. Even God got angry with Moses.”

Sally didn’t buy that either. “I was too tired to have sex, Adrian. Brandon got all mad over a stupid thing like that. That doesn’t sound like God or somebody at unity with the Christ or whatever he’s supposed to be.”

Adrian gasped. “Oh my . . .”

“What?”

“It’s Elkezar. He’s speaking again.” She turned to her table and started writing. “Oh my. Oh my oh my.”

Sally looked over her shoulder. “What? What’s he saying?”

She could read Elkezar’s words as Adrian wrote them: “Remember the fate of Korah and Miriam.”

“Who’s Korah?” she asked.

Adrian’s voice was hushed with fear. “Korah led a rebellion against Moses in the wilderness. The earth opened and swallowed him up, him and his followers.” Sally was about to back away, but Adrian grabbed her arm. “Miriam stood against Moses and the Lord struck her with leprosy!”

Sally sank to her knees, weak with fear. “I thought he loved me!”

“
Brandon
loves you! This threat is from
God.”

Sally thought it over. It didn’t take long. “I’d better get back.” “Brandon will receive you. You’ll be safe there.”

Sally kissed Adrian on the cheek and hurried out the door.

Adrian stared at the paper before her with its cryptic message.

“Elkezar. I’ve never known you to be so harsh.”

She felt an icy breath of wind at her back, though the curtains at the window did not stir and the houseplants did not waver. She felt it again. Her skin crawled as she turned and saw nothing, but
felt
something there. “Is that you?”

There was no answer.

“Elkezar? Is that you?”

He had never hidden from her before, never lurked like a prowler, but now she could feel him watching her, just out of sight. “I gave her your message. She’s going back to the Christ right now. You saw her go, didn’t you?” She felt as if cold, heavy lead was filling her stomach. She began to tremble. “Elkezar? Please, don’t tease me now.”

It was the eerie stillness that scared her, the deadness in the air, the chilling cold. The waiting.

He stood there—somewhere—his presence like a poison, the pendulum on the wall clock swinging away the seconds, Adrian’s short, frightened little breaths the only sound.

At last, without a word, he turned away. She could feel him retreating slowly, taking his own time, letting the effect linger as hideous terror seeped out of the rooms and hallways in small, agonizing degrees.

Several minutes later, only when she was sure it was safe to do so, she stirred, turning once again to the paper on her desk.

Now it read, “So also for Adrian.”

JACK MCKINSTRY
was having doubts, but neither he nor his wife Lindy dared say anything for fear of jinxing business. The Sooper Market was doing well. Mack’s was still the prime location where the denizens of the Macon ranch got their groceries, and Michael the Prophet came through almost every day to post flyers and announcements of coming meetings. Brandon Nichols and his followers always plugged the store to the pilgrims coming through, just as they talked up the other businesses in town. It was best not to tamper with a good relationship, but just keep sacking up those groceries and filling the tills.

But how were they supposed to handle a visit from the Virgin Mary?

Sure, they knew who Mary Donovan was. She’d been a regular customer and they knew her by name. She was a friend of Dee Baylor. Since she was a young divorcée, it was safe to assume she wasn’t a virgin. But here she was, decked out in a robe, shawl, and sandals, pushing a cart up and down the aisles, grocery shopping for Mrs. Macon and . . . her son.

“Oh, he used to love this when he was little!” she exclaimed, taking a box of Cap’n Crunch off the shelf. Then she’d stroll past the bread and bakery shelves recalling, “Oh, these are just like the ones he multiplied on the shores of Galilee! I was so proud!” She picked up a jar of tartar sauce. “My son will provide the fish!”

Jack had a good guess that, if she
had
a grocery list, she wasn’t following it. Mrs. Macon wasn’t going to be happy about this. He hurried to join Mary near the frozen vegetables. “How you doin’, uh, Mary?”

“My soul doth magnify the Lord,” she replied. “And behold, these peas are on sale!”

He opened the freezer door to grab some. “Yeah, they sure are. How many packages do you need?”

She giggled. “Jesus can start with just one and take it from there.”

He put one package in her cart and then craned his neck to see her grocery list. “You finding everything okay?”

“He leadeth me beside the still shelves and restoreth my memory.”

He could see the list—and the contents of the cart. “Uh, you sure you need all these olives?”

She looked at the dozen cans strewn in the cart and mused, “Blessed is he whose quiver is full of them, for we lack oil and our lamps have gone out.”

“Well, yeah, your list says olive
oil
. That’s on aisle twelve.”

“Oh, thank you. I will turn aside and see this great sight.” She stopped when she saw bags of popcorn. “Jesus was such a creative child! He could pop popcorn by the breath of his nostrils!” She threw four bags into the cart. “He’ll be so excited!”

Jack hurried back to the checkout counter. Ringing up groceries he could deal with. Mary as Virgin Mary was a little out of his realm. “Should we call Mrs. Macon?” Lindy asked from her cash register.

He thought only a half-second and then shook his head.

Don’t meddle,
he thought.
Don’t mess things up
.

JIM BAYLOR
was in his basement sharpening the lawn mower blades when he heard the front door slam and the heavy footsteps of his wife thumping and creaking over the floor joists. She had been to another meeting up at the Macon ranch. She was getting to be a regular Nichols junkie, always going back for more spiritual happy pills. Yep, she was laughing again. She laughed from the front door to the kitchen, and then from the kitchen to the bathroom. After the toilet flush rushed through the black pipes over his head, he could still hear her laughing in their bedroom and then back in the kitchen again.

He hated when she was like this.

Now he heard smaller thumps leaving the living room and going into the kitchen. That would be their daughter, Darlene, roused from her place in front of the television.

“Wuzzofunne?” came Darlene’s voice. Coming through the floor, “What’s so funny?” was a bit muffled.

Jim figured out that Dee said, “The Spirit’s trickling through me, and it tickles!” She started laughing again. A chair squawked over the floor and
thump!
Dee sat down.

Well, is she gonna cook this time?
Jim wondered. He figured he’d better make sure, much as he longed to keep his life as simple as sharpening a lawn mower blade.

When he got to the kitchen, Dee was doubled over the table, red in the face, eyes full of tears, laughing herself silly.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

She couldn’t answer, not then, not ten minutes later. It was much worse this time. She’d been giddy before, tittering and giggling, praising the Lord and seeing something humorous in everything, but tonight she was out of control, maybe out of her mind. He couldn’t handle it, so he returned to the basement. Mower blades he could handle.

He could hear her moving around up in the kitchen, still laughing, but calming down to intermittent giggles. She was opening cupboards and drawers. Good. She’d come down from her spiritual high long enough to fix dinner.

Then the joists started creaking overhead and he could hear her feet shuffling about as she sang. She was dancing up there, shuffling in circles.

The door at the top of the stairs opened and Darlene hollered down the stairs, “Dad, would you make Mom stop?”

“Is she cooking dinner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, see what you can do to help her.”

He could hear Darlene walk into the kitchen. The shuffling stopped, although he still heard some giggles. Then he heard water running.

And Darlene screaming.

He bolted up the stairs and ran for the kitchen, passing Darlene coming the other way, drenched. He got into the kitchen in time to see Dee dancing in circles, waving the sink sprayer over her head and drenching everything including herself.

“Thou hast turned my mourning into dancing for me,” she was singing. “Thou hast put off my sackcloth!”

“Dee!” He grabbed the hand holding the sprayer and got a good dousing before he wrested it from her. “Are you crazy?”

She calmed. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey.”

He put the sprayer back in its place. “Look at this mess!” He grabbed a towel from the rack by the sink and started wiping.

“Gonna get the French fries now,” she tittered and sang, dance-stepping to the refrigerator. She opened the freezer side, took out a bag of frozen French fries, zipped it open, and dumped the French fries all over the kitchen table. “Dinner’s on!” She thought that was funny, and collapsed into a chair, hysterical with laughter. Darlene stood in the kitchen doorway, her wet hair matted to her forehead, her expression pathetic. “You want me to order out again?”

Jim was standing in a puddle of water and the towel in his hands could hold no more. Dee was still laughing, starting up again each time she looked at the French fries strewn on the table. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What do we want? Pizza?”

“How about Chinese? The Wah Hing ought to be open.”

Dee looked at him. “
Chinese!”
she cackled, then exploded with more giggling.

Jim envisioned chow mein, rice, sweet-and-sour ribs, and fortune cookies all over the floor. “Make it a pizza. Something plain and simple.”

“MATT KILEY,
if you ever show your ugly face around here again I’ll rearrange your nose and mash it into the highway myself!”

Judy Holliday could take quite a bit of irritation before she got riled, but now she was threatening and cussing a blue streak, and had a frying pan in her hand to back up every word. She was standing over Matt Kiley, and he was lying in the front doorway, half-inside and half-out.

“And don’t you get none of your blood on my carpet!”

Judy’s granddaughter Gildy brought a towel for Matt to dab his face and head. “I think you’d better leave.”

Judy turned on Irv the trucker, the winner in this particular brawl even though he didn’t look like it. “Go on, go in the washroom and wipe that blood off before you drip on something. Greg, go with him, and Linda, there’s some iodine and bandages above the freezer. Go on, all of you!” She turned back to Matt, still lying at her feet in the doorway. “I don’t see you moving!”

He tried to move and got as far off the floor as his knees before he teetered forward again. At least now he was a few feet farther outside.

“He’s out far enough,” Judy observed. “Gildy, get my towel back.”

She knelt gently and took the towel from Matt’s swelling face. “Sorry.”

“Mmph,” he said with swollen lips. He rolled and managed to sit up, looking up at Judy standing in the doorway. “Why’s Irv get to stay?”

“’Cause you’re the ornery cuss that started this whole fight and you know it!” she answered. “Dumb cluck! You knew how Irv feels about that truck of his and you called it names anyway!”

“He had it coming! Used to call me little four-wheels, and I couldn’t do a thing about it!”

“Well, my late husband’s got more brains than both of you, and he’s been dead twenty years! Now git!”

Matt struggled to his feet, his face still smarting as if Irv’s big fist were still buried in it. This hadn’t turned out the way he planned. He should have been able to whup Irv, whup him good. It should have been Irv staggering out of Judy’s and not him.

His legs felt weak and he had trouble standing, but it wasn’t just because Irv had made a milkshake out of his brains. He’d been wondering about himself even when he went into Judy’s. He just didn’t feel the old strength. He expected a good fight would bring it out.

Well, he expected wrong. It used to be there, but not tonight.

The power had faded when he wasn’t watching.

He stumbled and almost fell.

My legs
, he thought.
My legs
.

What happens when all the guys I’ve whupped find out?

I gotta see Nichols and get this fixed.

KYLE AND I SPOKE OFTEN
by telephone or in person over the next few days, and prayed for the people who came to mind: Don, Adrian, Mary, Dee, and Matt being among them. We also discussed a hunch that kept nagging me but seemed terribly farfetched. He thought I should check it out, but I kept stalling. It would be hard enough just for me to make the phone call—I really did not want to talk to those people again. Once I got someone on the line, what in the world would I say? How could they have any idea if Nichols/ Johnson had ever been there?

Still, I couldn’t shake the notion that our local messiah
wanted
me to make that call. He had mentioned L.A. and gave me the “turn to somebody and say” routine. He was too subtle, too cunning, for that to be a blunder. “We’re both angry at the same things,” he said. “We’ve been in the same places, felt the same pain. Herd them in, herd them out.” He was dropping clues.

He had to know I’d been down there—just like him.

On Thursday, nearly a week after my conversation with Nichols/Johnson, I got the number from information and placed a call to Los Angeles.

“Hello,” said a cheerful female voice. “Thank you for calling The Cathedral of Life. Our Sunday morning services start at seven, eight-thirty, ten o’clock, and eleven-thirty; our evening service starts at 6
P.M.
Our Wednesday evening service begins at 7
P.M.
Childcare is available for all services. If you know your party’s extension, you may enter it now. For a ministry menu, press 9.”