Read Online F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 by Midnight Mass (v2.1) - Free Book Online Page B

to curve upward but made it only
halfway to a smile, then she was gone.
                 Carole
hugged the limp cold body closer and moaned in boundless grief and anguish to
the unfeeling walls. She saw the leering faces begin to crawl away from the
window and she shouted at them though her tears.
                 "Go!
That's it! Run away and hide! Soon it'll be light and then I'll come looking
for you! For all of you! And woe to any of you that I find!"
                 She
cried over Bernadette's body a long time. And then she wrapped it in a sheet
and held and rocked her dead friend in her arms until sunrise on Easter Sunday.
                  
                 CAROLE
. . .
                  
                 The
voice yanked her from sleep, the voice that sounded like Bernadette's but
robbed of all her sweetness and compassion.
                 was when you turned your back on the Lord, Carole. That was when you began your
life of sin.>
                 After
the horrors of Easter weekend had come loneliness. Carole had begun talking to
herself in her head—just for company of sorts—to ease her through the long
empty hours. But the voice had taken on a life of its own, becoming
Bernadette's. In a way, then, Bern was still alive.
                 "Yes,"
Carole said, sitting up on the side of the bed and peering out the window at
the lightening sky. "I suppose that was when it began."
                 She'd
walked out of the tomb of St. Anthony's convent on Easter morning and left the
old Sister Carole Hanarty behind. That gentle soul, happy to spend her days and
nights in the service of the Lord, praying, fasting, teaching chemistry to
reluctant adolescents, and holding to her vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, was dead.
                 In
her place was a new Sister Carole, tempered in the forge of that night and
recast into someone relentlessly vengeful and fearless to the point of
recklessness.
                 And
perhaps, she admitted with no shame or regret, more than a little mad.
                 She'd
departed St. Anthony's and begun her hunt. She'd been hunting ever since.
                 Carole
stretched and glanced around the room. The walls had been decked with family
pictures of weddings and children when she'd moved herself in. She'd removed
those and lain the ones on the bureau and dresser face down. All those smiling
children ... she couldn't bear their eyes watching her.
                 She
knew their names. The Bennetts—Kevin, Marie, and their twin girls. She hadn't
known them before, but Carole felt she knew them now. She'd seen their family
photos, seen the twins' bedroom.
                 She
knew from the state of the empty house when she'd found it that the owners
hadn't moved out. They'd been driven out. She hoped for the sake of their souls
that they were dead now. Truly dead.
                 not too late to be turning back. You can start following the rules again. You
can become a good person again and go back to doing the Lord's work.>
                 "But
the rules have changed," Carole whispered.
                 Being
a good person meant something different than it had then. And doing the Lord's
work . . . well, it was an entirely different sort of work now.
                  

           -
2 -
                  
                 ZEV
. . .
                  
                 It
had been almost a full minute since he'd slammed the brass knocker against the
heavy oak door. That should have been proof enough. After all, wasn't the
knocker in the shape of a cross? But no, they had to squint through their
peephole and peer through the sidelights that framed the door.
                 Zev
sighed and resigned himself to the scrutiny. He couldn't blame