The Omen (10 page)

'Tomorrow," panted Tassone into the Ambassador's frightened eyes. "One o'clock, Kew Gardens. . . ."

"Unhand me!" gasped Thorn.

"Five minutes, then you'll never see me again."

"Get your hands . . ."

"Your wife is in danger. She'll die unless you come."

As Thorn pulled back, the priest was suddenly gone; the Ambassador was left dazed, gazing into strange faces, flashbulbs going off in his eyes.

Thorn had struggled as to what to do about the priest. He could simply send the police in his stead, and they could take Tassone to jail. But the charge would be harassment, and Thorn, as complainant, would have to appear. The priest would be interrogated. The issue would become public. The newspapers would have a feast, capitalizing on the rantings of an insane man. He couldn't have it. Not now, not ever. There was no way of knowing what the priest would say. His fixation centered around the birth of the child; a macabre coincidence that it was an area in which Thorn had something to hide. As an alternative to the police, perhaps Thorn could send an emissary to pay the man off, or threaten him into going away. But that would also mean involving an outsider.

He thought of Jennings, the photographer, and almost followed the impulse to call him, to tell him he had located the man he was looking for. But that wouldn't do either. There could be nothing more dangerous than involving a member of the press. Yet he wished there were someone. Someone he could share it with. For in truth he was frightened. He was afraid of what the priest would say.

Thorn took his own car that morning, explaining to Horton that he wanted some time to be by himself, and he drove all morning, avoiding the office for fear he would be questioned about where he was going for lunch. It occurred to him that he could simply ignore the priest's demand, that the rebuff might finally make him lose interest and go away. But that wasn't satisfactory either, for Thorn himself sought the confrontation. He needed to face the man down and hear everything he had to say. He had said Katherine was in danger, that she would die unless Thorn came. It was not possible that Katherine was in danger, but it pained Thorn that she too had become a focal point in the demented man's mind.

Thorn arrived at twelve thirty, parked by the curb, and waited tensely in his car. The time passed slowly, and he listened to the news, only half-hearine as the roll call of countries in trouble was sounded. Spain, Lebanon, Laos, Belfast, Angola, Zaire, Israel, Thailand. One could literally close his eyes and point to the map and be within inches, at most, of a hot spot. It seemed the longer man's time on earth, the shorter the outlook for habitation. The time-bomb was ticking and one of these days it would go off. Plutonium, the by-product of nuclear power, was now available to everyone, and with it, even the smallest countries could arm themselves for atomic war. Some were bent, anyway, on suicidal destruction. They would lose nothing if in their outrage they took the rest of the world with them. Thorn thought of the Sinai Desert, the Promised Land. He wondered if God knew when he promised it to Abraham that it was there that the time-bomb would go off.

He gazed at the clock on his dashboard; it was one o'clock. Pulling himself together, he slowly entered the park. He had worn a raincoat and dark glasses so as not to be recognized, but the disguise added to his anxiety as he searched for the fieure of the priest. He spotted him, and froze, fighting off the impulse to go no farther. Tassone was alone on a bench, his back to him; Thorn could easily have turned without being seen. But instead he moved forward, circling the priest and confronting him head on.

Tassone was jarred by Thorn's sudden appearance; his face was tense and bathed in sweat, as though suffering unendurable pain. For a long moment, they stared in silence.

"I should have brought the police" said Thorn curtly.

"They can't help you."

"Get on with it. Say what you have to say."

Tassone's eyes fluttered and his hands began to tremble. He was plainly under intense exertion; the exertion of fighting pain.

"When the Jews return to Zion ..." he whispered.

"What?"

".. . When the Jews return to Zion. And a comet fills the sky. And the Holy Roman Empire rises. Then you and I. . . must die."

Thorn's heart leapt. The man was insane. It was a poem he was reciting, his face rigid and trancelike, his voice rising in shrill intensity.

"From the Eternal Sea he rises. Creating armies on either shore. Turning man against his brother. Till man exists no more!"

Thorn watched as the priest began to quake in every fiber, struggling to make himself heard.

"The Book of Revelations predicted it all!" he blurted.

"I'm not here for a religious sermon."

"It is by means of a human personality entirely in his possession that Satan will wage his last and most formidable offense. Book of Daniel, Book of Luke . . ."

"You said my wife was in danger."

"Go to the town of Meggido," entreated Tassone. "In the old city of Jezreel. There see the old man Bugenhagen. He alone can describe how the child must die."

"Look here ..."

"He who will not be saved by the Lamb will be torn by the Beast!"

"Stop it!"

Tassone fell silent, his posture sagging as he raised a trembling hand to wipe perspiration that had accumulated on his brow.

Tm here," said Thorn quietly, "because you said my wife was in dancer."

"I had a vision, Mr. Thorn."

"You said my wife . . ."

"She is pregnant!"

Thorn was stopped, taken aback.

"You're mistaken."

"I believe she is pregnant."

"She's not."

"He will not allow the child to be born. He will kill it while it slumbers in the womb."

The priest groaned, struck again by violent pain.

"What are you talking about?" asked Thorn under his breath.

"Your son, Mr. Thorn! The son of Satan\ He will kill the unborn child and then he will kill your wife! And when he is certain to inherit all that is yours, then, Mr. Thorn, he will kill youl"

"That's enough!"

". . . And with your wealth and power he will establish his counterfeit Kingdom here on earth, receiving his orders directly from Satan."

"You're insane," hissed Thorn.

"He must wife, Mr. Thorn!"

The priest gasped and a tear slipped from his eye; Thorn gazed down at him, unable to move.

"Please, Mr. Thorn . . ." the priest wept.

"You asked for five minutes . . ."

"Go to the city of Meggido," Tassone begged. "See Bueenhagen before it's too late!"

Thorn shook his head, pointing a trembling finger at the priest.

"I've heard you, now . . ." he warned. "I want you to hear me. If I ever see you again . . . Til have you arrested."

Turning on his heel, he began to move away, Tassone calling after him through his tears.

"You'll see me in Hell, Mr. Thorn. There we will share our sentence!"

In a moment, Thorn was gone; Tassone was left alone, his head in his hands. He remained there for several minutes, trying to stop the tears. But they would not stop. It was over and he had failed.

Rising slowly, he gazed about the park. It was empty now and quiet; the stillness was somehow ominous. It was as though he stood in a vacuum, the very air holding its breath. Then, faintly, he began to hear the sound. It was distant at first, almost subliminal, gradually growing in intensity until it filled the atmosphere around him. It was the sound of the OHM, and as it continued to rise, Tassone gripped his crucifix, his breath coming short as he gazed fearfully about the park. The sky was darkening and a breeze began to rise, quickly gaining momentum until the tree limbs shook with anger.

Clutching his cross with both hands, Tassone began to move, seeking the safety of the street. But there the wind suddenly rose around him, paper and debris swirling at his feet as he squinted and gasped, a forceful blast rushing at his face. Across the street he could see a church, but as he stepped off the curb the wind suddenly rushed at him with gale force, and he leaned into it, pushing hard against it to make his way to safety. The sound of the OHM was ringing in his ears now, mixed with the sound of howling wind; Tassone moaning with exertion as he struggled forward, his vision obscured by the cloud of swirling dust. He neither saw nor heard the truck barreling down, only the squeal of its massive tires as it swerved within inches, careening into a row of parked cars, then smashing to a sudden stop.

The wind suddenly halted, and people were screaming, running by Tassone toward the crashed truck, where the driver's head hung limply, dripping blood, against the window. A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky as Tassone stood mid-street, whimpering with fear. A bolt of lightning flashed above the distant church, and Tassone wheeled, running back into the park. With a sudden crash of thunder, rain began to pour down, Tassone running in desperation as lightning began striking around him, a large tree fairly exploding as he passed. Crying out with fear, he slipped in mud, struggling to regain his footing as a finger of electricity streaked downward, splintering a park bench to burning matchsticks beside him. Whirling, he crashed through a stand of bushes, emerging on a small sidestreet, and the lightning came again, hitting a mailbox next to him and hurling it into the air, leaving it peeled back like a used sardine can as it rolled and clattered to the ground.

Sobbing, the small priest staggered foreward, his eyes gazing upward into the angry sky. The rain came hard, stinging his face, the city blurred before him in the translucent veil of water. All over London people were scurrying for cover; windows were slamming shut; six blocks away a teacher was struggling with an old-fashioned window pole as, in the din of downpouring rain, her small students looked on. She had never heard of the priest Tassone, nor knew that her fate would be linked with his. But at that moment on the slick and hissing streets, Tassone was making his way inexorably toward her. Gasping for breath, he stumbled down narrow alleyways, running aimlessly, fleeing the wrath that pursued him. The lightning was distant now, but Tassone’s strength was failing, his heart stinging within him as he rounded a corner and paused there at the base of a building, his mouth agape, sucking desperately for air. His eyes were fixed on the distant park where lightning still struck with each crash of thunder; he did not think to look up, where a sudden movement occurred above. From a third-story window directly overhead a window pole slipped out, a woman's hands grappling for it as it escaped and plummeted downward, its metal tip cutting air with the directness of an earth-bound javelin. It smashed directly into the priest's head, running the length of his body, impaling him in the grass.

There he hung suspended, his arms akimbo, like a marionette hung up for the night.

All around London, the summer rain suddenly ceased.

From the third floor of a schoolhouse, a teacher stuck her head out the window and began to scream; and on a street on the other side of the park a group of people carried the dead body of a driver from his overturned truck; his forehead bearing the bloodied imprint of the steering wheel against which it had smashed.

As the clouds parted and the sun's rays once again shone peacefully down, a group of small children gathered in silent curiosity around the figure of a priest hung stiffly on a pole. Droplets of rain dripped from his hat, passing a face frozen in an expression of open mouth puzzlement. A horse-fly buzzed about him and lighted on his parted lips.

At the front gate of Pereford the following morning, Horton collected the newspaper and brought it into the sun room where Thorn and Katherine were having breakfast. As he left, Horton noticed that Mrs. Thorn's face was still drawn and etched with tension. She had looked this way for weeks now, and he suspected it had something to do with her regular forays into London to spend time with her doctor. He had at first assumed that the appointments he brought her to were for a physical ailment, but then he saw on the directory in the building's lobby that her Dr. Greer was a psychiatrist. Horton himself had never felt the need for a psychiatrist, nor did he know anyone who did, and he harbored a feeling that they only served to drive people crazy. When one read in the newspapers of people committing atrocities it was often accompanied by the information that they had been seeing a psychiatrist; the cause and effect was clearly plain. Now, as he observed Mrs. Thorn, his theory on psychiatry was being borne out. No matter how cheerful she appeared on the drive into town, she was silent and withdrawn on the way back home.

Since the visits began, her mood had continually darkened, and now she was clearly under a strain. Her relationship with the household staff were limited to terse commands, and her relationship with her child had been all but severed. The unhappy part was that the child himself had begun to want her. The period of weeks she had spent trying to regain his affections had had an effect; but now, as Damien looked about for her, she was nowhere to be found.

For Katherine herself, the therapy had indeed been troubling, for she had scratched the surface of her fears, and found beneath it a bottomless pit of anxiety and despair. The life she led was fraught with confusion, and she felt she no longer knew who she was. She remembered who she used to be and what she once wanted, but that was all gone now, and she could envision no future. The simplest things filled her with fear: the phone ringing, the oven timer going off, the teapot whistling as though demanding to be attended to. She was coming to the point where she simply could not cope, and the act of getting through each day required continual courage.

This day took more courage than most, for she had discovered something that demanded action. It required the kind of confrontation with her husband that she feared, and adding to her anxiety was the child. He had made it a habit of hanging close to her in the morning, trying to attract her attention: today he was noisily riding a wheeled car around the parquet floor in the sun room, bumping insistently into her chair and screaming like a train engine as he played.