F. Paul Wilson - Reborn

"Who is this Brother Robert you keep talking about? I've never heard of him."

Martin's eyes glowed. "A wise and holy man. He wants to meet you. Come."

Something about the younger man's intensity frightened her.

"I… I don't know."

He gripped her arm insistently. "Please. It will only take a minute."

Grace wanted to run from this man, yet he was offering her answers to the questions that had plagued her since that awful night in St. Patrick's when she had begun singing about Satan instead of the Blessed Virgin. She had not had a good night's sleep since.

"All right. But only for a minute."

"Good! It's this way."

He led her up Fifth Avenue past the Art Deco splendor of the Empire State Building, then east on Thirty-seventh Street into the Murray Hill district with its procession of stately brown-stones in various states of repair. Halfway between Lexington and Park they stopped before a three-story brownstone.

"This is it," Martin said.

Brownstone steps ran up to the front door on the first floor. A shorter flight curved down to the right to the basement. A hand-printed sign on the basement door read chapter house. A slim, leafless tree stood to the left. Naked vines clung to the stucco front.

"Which floor is your apartment?"

"All of them—this is my house."

It occurred to Grace then that if she was getting involved with a crazy man, at least he was a well-to-do crazy man.

He led her up to the heavy glass-and-oak front door and into the blessed warmth of the foyer, then down a narrow hall to a sitting room. Their footsteps echoed on the highly polished bare hardwood floor; the walls and ceilings were painted a stark, flat white. Grace followed him into a brightly lit sitting room—as stark and white and bare as the hallway except for some sparse ultramodern furniture and abstract paintings on the walls.

And a man standing at the window, looking out at the street.

She recognized him immediately as a Cistercian monk by his beige habit, wide leather belt, and long, brown, cowled scapular. The cowl was down. He stood bareheaded and tonsured, a striking anachronism amid the glass-and-chrome and abstractions, yet he appeared to be perfectly at home. His graying hair was on the long side, falling from the glistening bareness of his tonsure over the tops of his ears and trailing to the base of his neck. He was of average height but very lean. As he turned to face her Grace saw that he had a neat, full, dark beard, salted with gray. For all his leanness, he had a round, cherubic face. His eyes were deep brown and kind; the weathered skin around his eyes crinkled with his smile as he stepped toward her.

"Miss Nevins," he said. His voice was deep, chocolate-smooth, and French-accented. "How good of you to come. I'm Brother Robert."

He pronounced it Ro-bair .

"I can only stay a minute," Grace said.

"Of course. I simply wanted an opportunity to personally invite you into our little circle. And to impress upon you how special you are."

His eyes… so wise… so gentle and kind…

"Special? I don't understand."

"God chose you to announce the warning in His own house. You must be destined to play an important part in His plan to defeat the Antichrist."

Me? Why would God choose me?

"The Antichrist?"

"Yes. Your words in that song were a warning for all of us from the Lord. The Spirit touched you and made you aware— as He has Martin and myself and a few select others—that the devil has been made flesh and dwells among us."

Grace didn't think she knew any such thing.

"Why me?"

Brother Robert shrugged inside his robes. "Who would be so bold as to explain why the Lord moves in the ways He does?"

"Won't you come to the service tonight?" Martin said, his pale face eager.

Grace hesitated. Then, in a burst of revelation, she realized that this might be the chance she had been praying for, the chance to atone for her past, to make right all the sins of her youth. All those lives. Was God offering her salvation?

This would explain the horrid corruption of that lovely hymn, and the malaise she had felt lately. Satan had entered the world, and God had chosen her as a soldier in His army to battle him.

Yet still she hung back. She wasn't worthy!

"I…I don't know."

"If not tonight," Brother Robert said, "then Sunday afternoons, here, at three o'clock."

"Here?"

"Martin has given us the use of his basement for our prayer meetings."

"I'll try," Grace said, turning and heading down the hall. She had to get away, be by herself, think this over. She needed time. "Not tonight. Maybe Sunday. Not tonight."

"You can't stay away," she heard Martin say behind her. "You have been called. Like it or not, you are one of us now!"

2

Brother Robert went to the window and watched the plump little woman hurry down the sidewalk.

At his elbow, Martin said, "She's afraid."

"And well she should be," he replied.

"I'm not afraid. This is the Lord's fight, and I am ready to die for His cause!"

Brother Robert glanced at the younger man. Martin was a useful ally, dedicated and eager—sometimes too eager. His militancy could be a bit much at times.

"I'm going to my room to pray that she does not turn away from us."

"Will you be having lunch later?"

He shook his head. "I am fasting today."

"Then I will fast as well."

"As you wish."

Brother Robert went up to the second floor to the bare four walls and single window that served as his quarters. In the corner, straw had been spread on the floor and covered with a blanket. This was his bed. He lifted his habit and knelt bare-kneed on the uncooked rice he had sprinkled over the hardwood floor upon his arrival. He stared out the window at the cold blue of the sky. Before beginning his prayers, he thought about the abbey in Aiguebelle, and his cell there, and how he wished he could return. He missed the two a.m. rising for matins, the daily routine, the simple common labors, the time for meditation, the nearness to God, the silence .

No weakness of the flesh had drawn him away, but rather a weakness of the spirit. The discipline, the celibacy, the fasting—these had not been burdens. He had reveled in them. No, it was another appetite that had called to him, an insatiable lust—for knowledge. He had wanted to know , he had hungered for answers. The hunger had driven him to the farthest, darkest corners of the world, where he had learned too much.

It had finally brought him here, to this small group of Catholic Pentecostals who met in this brownstone. For some reason the people who gathered here had been touched by the Spirit and made aware that the Antichrist had slunk into the world like a thief in the night. These people—Grace Nevins as well—had been recruited, just as he had been recruited. He could not return to the abbey now. He had to stay with them and wait until the Spirit moved them all toward God's will, toward Armageddon.

He prayed they would be strong enough for the terrible tests that lay ahead.

3

"Oh, I can hardly wait!" Emma said.

Jim stood in his parents' small living room and smiled at his mother's childlike excitement over the prospect of a guided tour of the Hanley mansion.

"It's quite a place," he told her.

And it was. He had explored the old Victorian monstrosity with Carol yesterday. She was a longtime admirer of Victorian homes, and he had taken real pleasure in her delight over the place.

"Dad's not home yet?" he said.

"No." She glanced at her watch. "It's almost four. Maybe he was held up at the plant."

Jim nodded absently as memories of Monday night strobed across his mind. He and Carol had explained away their bruises with the story of a slip on the ice, each one pulling the other down. That had stopped other people's questions, but it hadn't stopped the questions roiling in Jim's mind.