"You're partly correct," Mr. Veilleur said with a sigh. "But the Presence has been in 'this sphere,' as you put it, much longer than a month."
"How do you know so much?" Martin said.
Really, Grace thought, he's acting very childish.
"You wouldn't understand. You wouldn't want to understand. Let's leave it at that, shall we?"
"Tell me, please," Brother Robert said. "When do you think the Presence entered the clone's body?"
"In May of 1941, I believe. Shortly after James Stevens was conceived. Perhaps there is something to this business of the soul, after all. It's very possible that James Stevens, being a clone, never had one. That being the case, the Presence probably thought he had found the perfect vehicle for himself. But instead he wound up trapped. And he remained trapped inside James Stevens's body—impotent, ineffectual, raging— for over a quarter of a century. Until—"
"Until Carol conceived Jim's child!" Grace blurted.
"Exactly. Whatever powers the Presence possesses were blocked while it inhabited James. It remained viable but… disconnected, so to speak. A larva locked in a living chrysalis. But when James Stevens fathered a child, the Presence broke free of him and 'became flesh,' as Martin might say."
"You mean it's taken over Carol's child?" Grace said. The thought horrified her.
"No," Mr. Veilleur said with a slow shake of his head. "It is the child. From the moment of conception its powers have begun to grow. That is the wrongness you've sensed in the world for the past month or so. It is the Presence, maturing within Carol Stevens, growing stronger with each passing day."
"This sounds like Rosemary's Baby," Grace said.
Martin said, "God works in subtle and mysterious ways. Perhaps He inspired that author to write such a book; perhaps He made it a best-seller as a warning to us all!"
Grace was dubious. "God works through The New York Times best-seller list?"
"His hand is everywhere!" Martin leapt to his feet. "And even now the Antichrist is growing within the clone's wife. That explains why we sensed no diminution of the evil when the clone died."
"Stop calling him that!" Grace said, her growing resentment of Martin's callousness finally reaching the breaking point. "He was my niece's husband. He had a name. And we are responsible for his death!"
"That was an accident!"
"An accident that proved very convenient for the Presence," Mr. Veilleur said.
Martin looked shocked for a moment. He made no reply.
"I fear Mr. Veilleur may have a point," Brother Robert said. "And speaking of names, don't you have one for this Presence, as you call it?"
"Actually it's a him, and he has many names, none of which you've ever heard, so they would mean nothing to you."
"How about 'Satan'?" Brother Robert said.
"Satan? Forget Satan! Something evil is coming—you're right about that—but it's not your Satan. Something far worse is on the way, something beyond your worst nightmares. The Antichrist? If only it were! When it gets here, you'll long for your Antichrist. Because prayers won't help you. Neither will guns or bombs."
The utter conviction in Mr. Veilleur's voice drove a shaft of terror through Grace's soul.
"How… how do you know so much about him?"
Mr. Veilleur gazed out the window as a stray cloud passed across the sun.
"We've met before."
4
Bill came in, entering her hospital room like an unarmed man entering a gladiator ring. "Are you okay, Carol?"
Carol's control almost dissolved at the sight of him. She remembered this afternoon—Bill carrying her to the couch, covering her with a blanket, calling the first aid squad, and staying by her side during the ambulance ride.
"Oh, Bill!" she said, sobbing.
She sat up and lifted her arms, aching to embrace him. Her unaccountable lust of a few hours ago was gone now, gone as if it had never been. This was for friendship, from a deep, simple need for someone solid to hold, to cling to.
But Bill only grasped one of her hands and looked down at her with worried eyes. That had always been his way, it seemed—when she had needed some hands-on support after her parents were killed, he had backed off, just as he was doing now.
But who can blame him for being gun-shy after the show I put on a few hours ago?
She felt her face redden with the memory of it.
"Please, Bill," she said. "I'm so sorry about what I did to you before. I don't know what happened to me. It was like someone else had taken me over."
"It's okay," he said softly, smiling and patting her hand. "We both survived."
"But the baby almost didn't."
His hand tightened on hers. "Baby?"
"Yes! Dr. Gallen says there's every chance the baby's still okay."
"You're pregnant?"
"Four to six weeks along. Maybe that's why I acted so crazy back at the mansion. They say the hormone changes in pregnancy make some women do crazy things."
"I don't know much about that sort of thing," he said, grinning shyly. "But please don't ever do anything like that again. I know they say beware the Ides of March, but you almost gave me a heart attack!" He paused as his smile faded. "A baby—"
His voice choked off and she saw tears spring into his eyes as he worked to speak again.
Finally he managed to say, "Carol, that's wonderful!"
She shook her head and then began to cry herself, unable to hold it in any longer.
"Not so wonderful!" she said finally. "Why couldn't this have happened a year ago? It stinks! Jim's child—and he'll never see him! He wanted a child so bad and we weren't sure we could ever have one, and now we do but he's gone and the baby will be born without a father! Why does God play such rotten, dirty tricks?"
"I don't know. But maybe it's not so rotten. I mean, in a way it means that Jim is still alive, doesn't it?"
Struck suddenly by the wonderfulness of the thought, Carol slowly leaned back on the pillow and allowed herself to float on the warmth and comfort it brought.
5
Grace felt cold all over. She rubbed her hands together as she spoke.
"Then you think we played into the hands of this… this Presence when we went out to Monroe. Do you think it was influencing us? Do you think we've been tricked all along?"
"Never!" Martin cried. "How can you say such a thing! The Spirit was with us, guiding us!"
"Wait, Martin," Brother Robert said. "Let us hear Mr. Veilleur's answer. Explain, please."
"Well," Mr. Veilleur said, looking older than when he had arrived here earlier this afternoon, "there are two sides to this. I think you've all been touched by the other side, the one that would resist the Presence. The reason isn't clear yet, but I think the one who has been chosen to stand against the Presence will emerge soon."
"The way is clear enough, isn't it?" Martin said. "The baby must never be born!"
"Carol is my niece!" Grace said, a fiercely protective urge rising within her. "Look what happened to Jim! I won't allow her to be harmed! Never!"
"Of course not!" Brother Robert said, glaring at Martin. "The girl is innocent! To harm her is to sink to the level of the evil we wish to oppose!"
"Then what," Martin cried, his expression anguished, "do we do?"