F. Paul Wilson - Reborn

"Call them whatever you wish. The side we might call Good doesn't really give a damn about us. It merely wishes to oppose the other side. But the other side is truly harmful. It feeds on fear and hate and violence. But it doesn't cause them, for forcing you to do evil gains it nothing. The evil must rise from within."

"Because we're evil due to Original Sin."

"I've never understood why people buy that Original Sin business. It's just the Church's way of making you feel guilty from day one. It means it's a sin to be born—patently ridiculous. No, we're not evil. But we have a huge capacity for evil."

Grace didn't want to hear, but she couldn't help listening. And as she listened, she sensed the sincerity behind his words.

"And so its agent here—the Presence I mentioned the other day—will strive to make it easier for you to defile yourselves and each other. He will clear the path for all that is base within you to come to the fore, facilitate the actions that destroy the bonds of love and trust and family and simple decency that enrich your lives and feelings for each other. And once each and every one of you is divided from each and every other one, when you all have become mentally, physically, and emotionally brutalized islands of despair, when you have each descended into your own private hell, then he will merge you all into one hell on earth."

"But how bad—?"

"A gentle skim of the history of mankind, even the sanitized accounts preserved in commonly used texts, can give you some idea of man's capacity for what is called 'inhumanity.' That only scratches the surface of what will come. The horrors of daily life will make the Nazi death camps seem like a vacation resort."

Grace closed her eyes in an attempt to envision the future he spoke of, but her imagination failed her. And then suddenly she saw it. The whole apocalyptic vista appeared in her mind—she felt it, touched it, tasted the misery and depravity that lay ahead. She cried out and opened her eyes.

Mr. Veilleur was staring at her, nodding grimly.

"And you won't help us stop him?" she cried.

"No. I'm old. And I've had enough of fighting. I have only a few years left. All I want is to live them out in peace. I can't add to your effort. Only you can do what needs to be done. But I wish you luck today. And don't let anything frighten you off."

"Frighten… ?"

"Yes. You may see things. You may find yourself confronted with your worst fears, your deepest guilts. Ignore them. They can't harm you. Just do what you've been chosen to do."

He accompanied her down to the street where the Chosen waited by their cars. He shook hands with her, then turned and began walking uptown.

As she got into Martin's car to head for Monroe—with a planned stop at a hardware store along the way—Grace watched the older man's retreating figure and could not shake the feeling that she would never see him again.

4

Carol had hoped to hide it from him, but it didn't work. Bill looked up from where he had spread a blanket on the lawn and leapt to his feet.

"Carol? What's wrong?"

Sobbing, she told him about the phone call.

"Damn!" he said. "What is wrong with those people?"

"I don't know! They frighten me!"

"You've got to get the police in on this. Have them watch the house."

"I think you're right. I'll call them after lunch." She looked down at the blanket. "I thought we were going to eat in the gazebo."

"It's warmer out here in the sun."

She dropped to her knees on the blanket and stared at the tuna-fish sandwiches. What little appetite she had before the call was completely gone now.

"How'd they learn I was pregnant? I found out less than two days ago."

Bill seated himself across from her. He didn't seem much interested in eating, either.

"It means they've been watching you."

Carol glanced around at the willows, the house, the empty Sound. Watched ! It gave her the creeps. And it made her suddenly glad that Jonah Stevens would be around.

"Aren't they ever going to leave me alone?"

"Eventually, yes. Once all this publicity dies down, they'll find some other ripe target for their paranoia. Until then, maybe you should reconsider Emma's offer to put you up with them. Or maybe you could stay with my folks. They'd love to have you."

"No. This is the only home I have now. I'm staying here."

She was angry that she should even have to consider hiding from these kooks. But she worried about the baby. Could they really want to hurt her baby?

Jim's baby.

"The voice on the phone—I think it was a woman—said I'm carrying the Antichrist."

Bill stared at her. "And you believe that?"

"Well, no, but—"

"No buts, Carol. Either you believe you're carrying a perfectly normal human baby or you don't. Normal baby or supernatural monster—I don't see much middle ground here."

"But Jim's being a clone—"

"Not that again!"

"Well, it bothers me, what they said. What if they're right? What if a clone really isn't a new human being? I mean, it's really just an outgrowth of cells from an already existing human being. Can it have a soul?"

She watched with dismay as Bill's assured expression faltered.

"How can I answer that, Carol? In the two-thousand-year history of the Church, the question has never arisen."

"Then you don't know!"

"I can tell you this much: Jim was a man, a human, an individual. He had a right to a soul. I believe he had one."

"But you're not sure!"

"Of course I'm not sure," he said gently. "That's what faith is all about. It's believing when you can't be sure."

She thought of the awful dreams she had been having, the consummate evil depicted within them. Were those dreams originating in her womb and filtering up to her subconscious? What if they were more than fantasies? What if they were memories' !

"But what if what you believe is wrong? What if Jim had no soul and Satan used him as a passage into… into me !"

She was losing it. She could feel all control slipping away. Then Bill reached over and squeezed her hand.

"I told you about Satan. He's a fiction. So is the rest of this mumbo jumbo. This isn't a horror story, Carol. This is real life. Antichrists get born in works of fiction, not in Monroe, Long Island."

She felt the panic flow out of her. She was acting silly. But right then, surfacing in the midst of the flood of relief, came a fleeting burst of hatred for Bill and for the comfort he had brought her. Why?

She forced a laugh. "Maybe I should stop thinking so much."

Bill smiled and held out the platter of sandwiches to her.

"Maybe you should."

She took one. She felt so much better now. Maybe she could get something down.

5

Time to go.

Lunch, what little they'd eaten, was over. Bill looked at his watch and reluctantly decided that he had better be hitting the road soon. It had been a hectic weekend, a decided change of pace from the routine of St. F.'s. He knew he couldn't survive this kind of stress too often. Who could? But he realized that all the stresses Carol had put him through since his arrival on Friday afternoon were but a sampling of the pressure weighing upon her hour after hour, day after day. Bad enough that Jim had died a week ago today, but then to learn that she was carrying his baby, and now to have some paranoid lamebrain call and tell her she's carrying the Antichrist!

The limitless possibilities for perversity in daily life never failed to astound him.

Time to go.

Bill looked at Carol sitting across the blanket and felt as if he were looking through her sundress. He kept seeing her naked body as she had stood before him on Friday afternoon. Her breasts with their erect nipples, her fuzzy pubic triangle…