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  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE MONASTERY

  Saturday afternoon

  TEN OF the eleven teachers were seated around the thick mahogany conference table when David Abraham stepped into the room from his office. Ten. Raul was still missing.

  The teachers looked crestfallen by the monumental defeat they’d been handed two hours earlier. A dozen white candles suspended from a golden chandelier lit their faces. Heavy navy blue velvet drapes imported from Spain lined the entire conference room except for the south wall, where a large painting of two children tickling each other’s noses with daisies served as a constant reminder of why they’d all given so many years of their lives to Project Showdown.

  “Where is Raul?” David asked, crossing to the head of the table.

  “He’s checking on the students,” Andrew said.

  As if on cue, Raul walked in, robe swirling. He walked to the table quickly.

  “Fifteen more have followed the others into the tunnels,” he said. “That makes nineteen below and eighteen above. I can hardly imagine a worse scenario.”

  Raul reached the table, but didn’t sit. He paced, ran an arm across his wet brow, pushing his locks to the side as he did. “I understand this principle of testing them by fire to harden the steel of their wills, but it appears those wills have melted. At least most of them, and I imagine others will follow.”

  “Sit down, Raul.”

  The head overseer sat.

  “Where is Samuel?” David asked.

  “He’s retreated to his room. To write, he said.”

  David nodded. He had always known that this moment would come, and upon reflection his decision to withhold the truth from these good-hearted men seemed right. Certainly necessary.

  Now they would learn what he told Samuel four days earlier, when Billy first entered the forbidden places below.

  “Evil has conquered the students,” Andrew said.

  David pulled out his chair and sat.“Has it,Andrew? Our risk has increased, but can there be life without risk? Did God take a risk by creating man with a free will? Did he know of the horrors that would follow?”

  “God knew the outcome. We do not,” Andrew said.

  “True, but allowed evil to test that outcome. Did you all think this day would never come?”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Raul said. “God allowing evil and us jeopardizing our life’s work strike me as two different things. Just because God allowed evil doesn’t mean we should. These are children, David! They’re contracting a disease down there!”

  David looked around the table. “The rest of you feel the same?”

  To a man they looked desperate. Several nodded. The rest didn’t respond.

  Mark Anthony, the forthright monk who’d come to them from a little-known New Mexico monastery, Christ in the Desert, spoke. “Correct me if I’m misunderstanding the situation, but there are only three ways out of our current predicament. One, the children come to their senses on their own, through a second challenge perhaps. Two, the children remain in the tunnels and disintegrate into an unholy mess, perhaps ending in death. Or three, we intervene.”

  “I think that summarizes it well enough,” David said. “Assuming we can stop what has started. And of these outcomes, which conforms to the purpose of this project?”

  Raul responded from the far end. “Certainly not death.”

  “Then what, Raul, is your suggestion?”

  The head overseer hesitated. No matter how much they protested, surely none of them would suggest throwing in the towel until every possible alternative had been explored. David was counting on it.

  “We cast another challenge immediately,” Raul said. “This time Samuel can argue—”

  “The rules require us to wait three days.”

  “Then change the rules!”Andrew said. “It’s the rules that have put us here.”

  “So you’re suggesting we pull the plug on the monastery now? Send the children back to the orphanages and count our project as a failure?”

  No response. Good. He would build on this position of strength.

  “Excuse me for the interruption.” Francis Matthew, the quiet priest from Ireland, looked up at David.“But do we know what is causing their disease?”

  David eyed the man. “The worms,” he said.

  “Worms?” Andrew said. “What worms?”

  “There are worms in the dungeons. Their excretions seem to have a harmful effect on . . . certain children.”

  The teachers stared at him, clearly taken aback by this revelation.

  “How long have you known about these . . . these worms?” Andrew asked.

  David put his elbows on the table and gently pressed his palms together. “Bear with me for a moment. Mark, please remind us why we are here.”

  The overseer looked around the table, searching for the catch. They all knew why they were here. Why would David ask?

  “We are twelve teachers—now eleven—gathered from around the world for this project sponsored by Harvard University. The project’s purpose is to examine innocence and the effects of evil upon that innocence. We are sworn to follow strict guidelines in the instruction of thirty-seven children, which you brought to this monastery nearly thirteen years ago. The children have been carefully isolated from influences that might corrupt them. When they are sixteen, they will be reinserted into society, and we will see what effects the children and society have upon each other.”

  Mark stopped. In a nutshell that was it. Or, more correctly, that was what they all thought.

  “And how have they been instructed?”

  “They have been instructed in all disciplines. We have carefully taught them to distinguish right from wrong according to a monotheistic world-view that follows the teachings of Christ.”

  “Good. And what else?”

  “I’m not sure how specific you want me to be. You determined from the beginning that we should focus all of their learning through writing. We’ve taught the children to understand the best of all human experiences and to pen them eloquently. They are arguably the world’s finest writers at this age.”

  “An understatement, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would. To a student, they are brilliant writers, regardless of their age.”

  David nodded slowly. “You’ve each done a masterful job with admirable dedication. I couldn’t have found more loving and honorable men if I’d spent a decade scouring the earth.”

  They sat in silence. The air felt heavy.

  “What I’m about to tell you will come as a shock. When you’ve heard, I think you’ll understand my decision not to tell you sooner.”

  For twelve years, he’d dreaded this moment. Now that it was upon him, he was eager for it.

  “You all know of me as a historian and psychologist. You also know that I was and am an avid collector of antiquities. My collection was well known before I left Harvard University.”

  “Left Harvard?” Andrew asked. “You’re no longer with the university?”

  “No, my friend, I am not.” He took a deep breath. “In truth, Project Showdown has nothing whatsoever to do with Harvard. Or, for that matter, any other institution. It is funded and run solely by me. The sale of my collection was quite lucrative.”

  He paused and studied them. They would need a minute to absorb that he’d been feeding them a bald-faced lie for the past thirteen years. They were in shock. Either that or exceptionally even mannered.

  He seized on their silence.

  “Nearly twenty years ago, an antiquities dealer from Iran sent me a rather large shipment of unspecified and unverified artifacts for a tidy sum. Mostly clay pots, for which I quickly determined I’d overpaid. But there was one item of interest.

  “The shipment contained a crate of ancient books, mostly diaries kept by mullahs and such. Among the books was one particularly old leather-bound volume that was unique for two reasons. One, it appeared to be from a time period earlier than its binding would sug
gest, like finding a steel sword from the bronze age. Two, it contained only one entry. The rest of the book was blank, which I could not make sense of, because the title was The Stories of History. I analyzed the single entry and discovered that it was written in a unique kind of charcoal whose use was discontinued long before the kind of paper in the book was ever discovered. Very odd. Do you follow this?”

  They stared at him without responding, but these anomalies weren’t lost on such scholars.

  “For two years the book sat in my study, a mystery to me. Then one day my eldest son, Christopher, when he was five years old, wrote in the book. Yes, he was a very bright boy.”

  They all knew that his eldest son had been killed in an automobile accident when he was six.

  “How he got the book from the shelf I don’t know, but he had the book on the desk behind me. It was a secretary I reserved for paying bills and attending personal business. An oak desk. Stained, not painted. But you see, that was a problem, because when I glanced back to see my son with the book, I saw that the desk was red, not a stained oak as it had been only minutes earlier. I was stunned. Here sat a bright red desk in my office, and I had no idea how it got there.”

  They stared, uncomprehending. And who could comprehend such a thing?

  “It was only after I’d circled the desk twice in disbelief that I looked at what Christopher had written. ‘The desk is red.’ Those were the words on the page written in his distinctive chicken scratch. He’d written ‘the desk is red,’ and now I was looking at a red desk.”

  “Surely you aren’t suggesting that it had anything to do with his writing,” Andrew said.

  “Exactly my thoughts. I was inclined to think that my mind was playing tricks on me. That I’d had someone paint the desk red and forgotten about it, and that my son was simply writing what he saw. But my wife assured me that the desk had indeed been stained oak. She thought I’d painted it that hideous color and was outdoing myself by making up some nonsense about forgetting.”

  “That could have been.”

  “But it wasn’t. It took me three days to accept the fact that my son’s writing had somehow changed the desk. You have to understand, I wasn’t a religious man at the time. This desk turning red because it was written red was tantamount to words becoming real, something that I wasn’t able to accept. I took a chip off the desk and had it analyzed—trust me,my friends, the desk was red. Candy-apple red, to be exact. It was only then that I formed my hypothesis. This book from Iran was a history book with the power to create history. The power to create fact. My son had written ‘the desk is red,’ and so the desk was red.”

  “Impossible!”Mark said.

  David stood and paced at the end of the table. “Impossible? For me, at the time, yes, it was impossible. But for religious men like you, it should be commonplace!”

  He leveled his argument with animated gestures now. “Think of it! Holy Scripture is full of references to the power of words. A disciple cries, ‘Rise up and walk,’ and a man rises up and walks. Christ calls to the storm, ‘Be still,’ and the waves become still.”

  David strode to the shelf, pulled out the black leather-bound Bible, and thumped it with his knuckles. “Recorded in this book are scores and scores of events that are no less impossible than my desk turning red. Speaking donkeys, writing on the wall, people rising from the dead. These impossibilities, my friends, are the word becoming real. The word becoming flesh. This is the common ground which all such events share.”

  He set the Bible down.“‘In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ That which is supernatural becomes natural—this is the incarnation, not only of Christ, but of all supernatural events. Satan reveals himself as what? A dragon, a snake, through an antichrist who is raised from the dead. Now how do those compare to my desk turning red?”

  “They have spiritual significance,” someone said.

  “And so does this, as you will clearly see.” Sweat beaded David’s face. He took a calming breath.

  “Why would God allow such a book to—”

  “Why would God allow Hitler his chapter in history? Why would God send a whale to swallow Jonah or turn a woman into a pillar of salt? Surely there were other ways. But I’ll leave the particular methods of God to God.”

  They could hardly argue. No one attempted to.

  “What happened to the book?” Andrew asked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  PARADISE

  Saturday afternoon

  IT TOOK Johnny twenty minutes at a steady climb to reach the lookout over Paradise. He’d been up to the large rock slab that jutted out from the mountain a dozen times with Roland and the others—this far and no farther, their parents warned.

  From this vantage, the buildings lining Main Street looked like play blocks strung along a nearly obscured street, black beneath the dust. Other than the Starlight Theater and the church, both of which looked too large for the town, the buildings were proportionate and evenly spaced. Behind the town, homes scattered across the valley, and long dirt roads wandered between a couple dozen fruit farms.

  Johnny looked at it all through a haze kicked up by the wind. He’d been delayed by a scene of carnage as he left town. Someone had taken an ax to the south side of a building. Claude and company. Other than the toppled theater sign and several busted-up telephone poles, he couldn’t see the damage through the dust from this distance.

  Above him, the clouds roiled. They seemed to be lower today. The air was thinner up here. His right leg ached.

  He faced the mountain. From here, a game trail led to only God knew where. This was it. This was the end of the line, and no red marble.

  Which meant that he’d been mistaken. Deceived. Stranded. He scanned the trees for the red orb. Anything to suggest the red orb had been here. Anything at all out of the ordinary.

  But the only thing that was clearly out of the ordinary was the fact that he’d come up here because a floating red marble had led him up here.

  Johnny faced the valley feeling like an imbecile. Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing after all. Maybe this was what the others were doing down in Paradise right now. Chasing little red marbles around. Or other things that had worked themselves into their minds. Things like Black.

  He stared out at the clouds, swamped with desperation. Something bad was happening, and no one could stop it. His vision clouded, then distorted with tears. Black and gray swirled. There was nothing to do. Nothing to see besides a hazy blur and the red sun floating low . . .

  Johnny blinked.

  It was a red sun floating low on the horizon. It was the red marble, hovering over the cliff ten feet from him. His heart jumped.

  The marble streaked past him and he whirled. It stopped momentarily at the trailhead, then plunged into the brush.

  He didn’t need any more encouragement. He didn’t care if he was being led into a trap. A voice in his head urged him to follow that marble, so he did. Branches broke and fell limp as he passed.

  He began to run, stumbled once, caught himself, and continued his pursuit up the trail.

  He wasn’t sure how long he’d been following the marble when the trees ended and he found himself facing a huge canyon. He pulled up, panting.

  The canyon yawned before him like a mouth cluttered with broken teeth.

  Dozens of rock formations cast shadows along the sandy floor. Boulders the size of small cars squatted at the base of a dozen landslides.

  Blue sky, not black clouds, arched above him. The sunlight was bright enough to make him squint after four days of dusk. He started forward, elated.

  The red marble moved deeper into the canyon.

  Johnny followed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE MONASTERY

  Saturday afternoon

  “WHAT HAPPENED to the book?” David said. “Yes, that’s the question, isn’t it? I’ll spare you the tedious details, but suffice it to say that I confidentially tested t
he book in every way I knew how. My first discovery was that the book didn’t work for me. Only for Christopher. If I wrote, ‘I have a million dollars in my account,’ and then checked my bank balance, I had no more than before. But if I told Christopher to write, ‘Daddy has a million dollars in his account . . .’Well, you get the point.”

  “You did that?”

  “Did what?”

  “Had your son write a million dollars into your account?”

  “Wouldn’t you?” He winked at Raul. “I reported it as an error, though not for a few days, I’ll admit.”

  Several soft chuckles.

  “Why only children?”Matthew asked.

  “Belief. I am quite sure that an adult who possesses the faith of a child would also be able to write history.”

  “Do you still have this book?”

  David held up his hand.“Let me finish. I also learned that the dealer who sold me the crate containing the book had a whole cache of them. Blank, every one of them. I immediately acquired all of them.”

  “How many?”

  “One thousand four hundred and forty-three. Which is—”

  “So many!”

  “—significant. Yes, so many. I had them sent express delivery at considerable expense. I was a mess those days. Every waking moment was consumed by the book. I knew I had in my possession the most powerful tool in history. I could do anything, make anything. My power was mind-boggling. Or I should say,my son’s power was mind-boggling. Fortunately he was willing to write whatever I wanted him to write. Then one day, three weeks after Christopher wrote my desk red, he wrote three simple words about our cat in a fit of frustration. ‘Snuffles is dead.’ And Snuffles was dead.”

  “Dead?” Andrew said.

  “Dead. Right there in the hallway with no apparent cause of death. This terrible side of the books kept me awake that night. And the next. Imagine what one evil man could do with such a weapon. To make matters worse, Christopher was catching on. He played some havoc with his best friend following a heated argument. He broke the boy’s arm. The next morning I made a decision to rid the world of the books. I asked Christopher to write a notation which is permanently etched on my mind into the book: