The Rising: Antichrist Is Born (16 page)

Maybe it was only her imagination, but Marilena was convinced that Nicky had wisdom far beyond his years. While he was average in his progress in speech and vocabulary, as he was with learning to walk, at times she and Viv believed he was following their conversation.

He followed whoever was speaking, which she supposed was normal. But those eyes. Their blue deepness contrasted with his olive skin and yellowish hair, and in them Marilena detected a sadness, a world weariness that made her think twice about her lifelong prejudice against reincarnation. Had this little one endured a previous life of deep turmoil? Sometimes he simply gazed at her for long periods, as if trying to determine what she was thinking. And in those moments, when she tried to tickle him or play with him, he would pull away and eye her from a distance, as if he knew something she didn’t.

Viv spent a lot of time with the baby, and while she did seem a bit one-dimensional, Marilena was relieved that she was so easy to get along with. The women emphasized time for themselves, not requiring constant face time with each other.

Yes, Marilena wished Viv would use that facile, if not brilliant, mind of hers for something other than her obsession with the spirit world. But that, after all, had been how they met. And Viv had recently met with Reiche Planchette and begun to advertise and teach classes in the Cluj area. She was in her element introducing new people—skeptics naturally, as Marilena had been—to the wonders of the realm beyond.

Marilena had settled into a routine of taking care of Nicky every morning through the lunch hour. Then Viv took over for the next three hours as Mariiena did her reading and research, supplying information to sundry professors. While this paid nowhere near what she had made as a full professor, it proved more than enough because she paid no rent.

  In the evenings, when Viv was out teaching or engaging in her own contacts with the spiritual world, Nicky was Marilena’s responsibility again. When Viv returned and Nicky was asleep, the women talked. Marilena found Viv a curious sort but generally pleasant and agreeable. While Viv seemed to care about everyone she met, she was not above talking about them behind their backs. It was nice to know she wasn’t perfect, but Marilena had to wonder what Viv said about her when she was not present.

Chapter 11

As Ray Steele neared his twelfth birthday, things began happening to his mind and body. As he became more muscular and body hair appeared, his face lost its soft smoothness and he suffered from acne, first mildly, then full force. While he remained a great athlete, a top student, and even popular, he sensed people looked at him differently.

  He grew even taller, found himself clumsy—not on the field or the court, just standing or walking around. His mother’s purchases couldn’t keep up with his growth and often his pants left too much sock showing. Ray was suddenly self-conscious, awkward, shy. He began to avoid situations he used to revel in. He isolated himself in a small group of guys, enabling him to avoid girls. And yet it seemed all he and his friends talked about was girls, and in ways he had never dreamed he would talk.

People used to like him, to admire him. Now he was just a pimply-faced humbler whose gangliness made him appear more clumsy, than athletic. He didn’t like himself and wasn’t sure he liked anyone else either.

Ray had no idea what went on at Steele Tool and Die in Belvidere, Illinois, before he began working there.

Even when he started, sweeping the floors and taking out the trash twenty-four hours after his thirteenth birthday, the only machine he recognized in the shop was a drill press like the one he had seen in industrial arts class; He was fascinated with the safety precautions built into it. The operator could manually center the piece of steel beneath the huge, ugly cutter, but he could not engage the drill unless each hand was on a separate button, far from the action.

Ray pledged to attack his job the way he approached his studies and his sports—with everything that was in him. He wanted to work hard so he could keep his job, make his money, make his dad proud, and—mostly— so he could afford flying lessons when he was fourteen. If in the process he learned the machines and the business and how to interact with working people, so much the better.

The workers—four men and two women—took to him immediately. They seemed old and mature enough not to care about his out-of-control acne and his fast-growing gangliness. Two seemed to view him with quiet suspicion at first, their expressions making clear they wouldn’t kowtow to him just because of who he was. Another seemed overly friendly, as if perhaps he would kiss up to the boy. But eventually, Ray believed he had won them all over with his deference and hard work. He believed they genuinely liked him for himself, and they were generous with their teaching , and advice.

His dad had a zero-tolerance policy. “No breaks for the boss’s kid. I got to answer to six full-time employees who are gonna be watching you—and me—every day, looking for favoritism.” It helped that his father clarified that, while they were to teach Ray the machines, their jobs were not in jeopardy. “Anyway, legally he’s too young to operate these alone. And by the time he’s old enough, he plans to be on to other things.”

Nicky Carpathia would be required to start school when he turned six, and while that was a year away, his mother couldn’t wait. Despite her prodigious academic history and doctorate, Marilena felt inadequate to keep up with a child she resisted calling precoce, but precocious he was. As soon as he learned to walk and talk, Nicky had soared to heights she couldn’t imagine. Even ¦, with Viv and Marilena trying to keep him engaged, no amount of teaching and reading and studying proved enough to satisfy him.

After being read to every night since he was old enough to understand, by age four Nicky had insisted on trying to read by himself. He would stop Marilena and point at words, sounding them out. It seemed in no time he was reading. Marilena and Viv took to speaking in Russian or English when they wanted to discuss something in front of him. But he soon caught on to that too. Marilena experimented by buying children’s books in various languages, including Chinese. Before she knew it, he understood and could speak—at least rudimentarily— nearly every language she and Viv knew.

Now, at age five, Nicky was deeply into nature. He would dig on the property, bringing roots and bugs and other creatures into the cottage, demanding to know what they were. Marilena bought a set of encyclopedias and also showed Nicky how to look things up on the Internet. Within six months he was as proficient as she on the computer.

Nicky was generally even-tempered but distant. At times he scared Marilena, seeming so old for his age. She never spanked or disciplined him, though she often wanted to. When he resisted going to bed, she insisted and tucked him in, turning off his light and shutting the door. She would check on him later and frequently find him standing on his bed, and when she turned on the light she could see his fierce look, arms folded, eyes smoldering.

He was already telling Marilena and Viv when he wanted to eat, what he wanted to eat, and refusing anything else. His schedule was his schedule, and nothing they did could dissuade him. It wasn’t long before Marilena realized he was running the show. She had wholly lost control, but fortunately, when left alone, he was satisfied to stay out of trouble. He read, he logged time on the computer, he explored outside.

Then came the day he read a book of short stories about a girl who had her own horse. He badgered and badgered until Marilena and Viv agreed to buy him a pony and a saddle and a bridle. Marilena told him he would have to wait until an expert could come teach him to ride, but Nicky would have none of it. She watched in horror as he entered the makeshift corral and the animal stiffened and backed away.

Nicky stood in front of the pony and spoke to it. “Your name is Star Diamond, and I am going to ride you.” Somehow he managed to get the saddle on and the bridle and reins in place, and within minutes he was walking the horse in circles. A week later Nicky was riding it about the property.

He read everything he could find about horsemanship and began to look as if he had been born in the saddle, holding the reins between his fingers just so. Still average in size for his age, he controlled Star Diamond, fully in charge of a beast eight times his weight.

  Marilena had read that teenagers could be difficult, finding their parents and authority figures wrong on every issue, countering their every suggestion. It seemed Nicky was a five-year-old teenager. He argued and debated and crossed her. He refused to do- anything he didn’t want to, and he spoke disrespectfully to both her and Aunt Viv.

His only interaction with other children came when Viv’s spiritualist classes brought their families together for outings, sometimes at the cottage. To Marilena’s amazement, Nicky somehow got along with other kids. She didn’t understand it. He was so much brighter than even those older than he. And he was an only child used to getting his own way and not having to share toys or attention. But he showed qualities of a diplomat: flattering, complimenting, feigning interest, and manipulating others for his benefit.’ Marilena had been certain some parent would complain about her impossible child, but the opposite happened. She was bombarded with invitations for him to visit other kids in their homes.

He steadfastly refused to go. “They can come here,” he said. And they did. Marilena wasn’t aware of everything he did or said, but the kids were either intimidated or impressed, because they seemed to enjoy Nicky and were content to do what he wanted.

Marilena feared the start of school in the fall. “Oh, I don’t know, Viv. He’s so young.”

“His soul is as old as the universe, Marilena. Surely you can see that.”

“All I know is that he scares the life out of me.”

“That’s where we differ,” Viv said. “I’m already in awe of him. He thrills me to death. Reiche is eager to see: him start his training.”

“Well, he’s not Mr. Planchette’s child.”

“Careful, Marilena. In a sense, he is.”

Marilena would not argue that point, but she would never concede Nicky to Planchette, even if she had given her word about his spiritual training. “How do you propose to start?”

“Just by talking to him,” Viv said. “With that curious mind, he’ll eat up stories of the origin of the universe.” As a high school freshman, all Ray Steele had going for him was that he had finally begun to get used to his new height. He was over six feet tall, and the athleticism that had been his hallmark in elementary school began to catch up with his new size—at least on the fields and courts. He was still awkward in social situations. He didn’t really fit the chairs in the classrooms, and he tripped and stumbled and bumped into things enough to elicit laughs.

On the positive side, Ray was largely an A student and stayed out of trouble. He worked more and more hours at the tool and die, mostly after school and sports, because the more money he made, the more flying lessons he could afford. His parents made him attend church and Sunday school and youth group, but Ray mostly tuned that out.

There were a couple of girls he liked to see at church, but with his acne flaring worse than ever and having never returned to his status as the attractive jock he had been in grade school, Ray couldn’t bring himself to talk to them.

At school he was enamored with girls too. How he would have loved to have been able to brag to a girl about learning to fly. But the thought of conversing with one, let alone asking one out, was beyond him.

 

Chapter 12

“Fredericka, transmit this via secure e-mail to R.P., please. Then destroy it.”

  “Certainly, Mr. S.”

He slid the handwritten note across his mahogany desk and spun in his chair to peer out over Manhattan.

R.P.:

Have the discussion post-haste. Keport eoonest. Your call on revealing my identity.

Reqards, J. 

But now Planchette had requested an audience with her, and Marilena was already regretting acceding to it.

  “I’m sure it has to do with Nicky’s schooling,” Viv said, “There’s no sense getting defensive until you know.”

  “What does he think, that I don’t know how old Nicky is? that I wouldn’t have already preregistered him? Is he going to remind me to pack him a lunch?”

  Viv smiled. “Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. He and the society have been nothing but helpful so far.”

Intrusive was more like it. And as much as Marilena protested, there was a dark, inner part of her soul that felt some relief she would never acknowledge—especially to Viv. The fact was that while she still desperately loved her son, the gift of motherhood had satisfied only half her deep need. She remembered clearly that longing to have someone to love who would also love her. Sadly, Marilena had never felt loved by her son.

From infancy Nicky had treated her like a necessary evil. He needed her and wanted her only for nursing the first several months. He was not a cuddler, constantly stiffening and pulling away. Marilena had read enough parenting books to know that she should never give up, never stop showing Nicky physical love, whether he responded or not. She believed he would one day begin to turn, to change, to need and want her touch and be willing to return it.

Worse, Marilena found herself jealous of Viv. It was as if the boy didn’t really understand the difference between an aunt and a mother. Besides, Viv wasn’t really his aunt. Marilena had tried to tell him that she herself had carried him in her body and had delivered him. He took this in, asked questions, insisted on looking up childbirth issues in the encyclopedia and online. But it didn’t change his apparent attitude toward Marilena.

The women were treated equally, and he seemed to manipulate each. When he wanted something to eat or help with his reading or the Internet, he would consult whoever happened to be closest. Marilena wanted to be his priority. She believed she had earned it. Anyway, if Nicky had the brain she thought he had, shouldn’t he recognize that she was the more intelligent, more widely read of the two? Maybe someday.