The Next Queen of Heaven-SA Read Online Free PDF Page A

that’s that?” She stood up so fast the chair came an inch off the floor with her.

    They left the rectory together. Jeremy was silent. He didn’t think he’d done very well.
    Though he liked Sister Alice Coyne, he wished he’d just waited until Father Mike was available.
    But Our Lady’s was a zoo this morning, and Jeremy wanted to get back to the boys with an answer as soon as possible. It seemed important—every minute was important.

    Ahead, Sister Alice paused on the rectory sidewalk and Jeremy nearly bumped into her.
    An orderly was fussing at the open doors of an ambulance. They were getting that woman out of harm’s way. She was half sitting up on the stretcher, waving her arms about, barking orders, and her kids looked fussed and flustered.

    The parking lot was partially cleared of cars by now, so the ambulance could maneuver, but Sister Alice wanted to beat it to the driveway. She dug for her keys in the colorful peasant rucksack she carried, a souvenir of that summer holiday spent in Managua with Witness for Peace. “You celebrating Halloween night with your buddies?” she asked Jeremy.

    He shrugged. “Not going out on the town. I’m not one for disguises. They give me the creeps.”

    “Well, look the other way, then. I’m about to become Sister Mary Leadfoot, scourge of the New York State Thruway.” She jammed dark glasses on and jumped in her car.

    That didn’t go too poorly, thought Jeremy. Inconclusive, but nothing ruled out.

    As he turned back to the church, to straighten up the sheet music and lock up the AV
    system, he pictured the night ahead. Halloween was for kids. He hated grown-ups in masks and always had.

    He imagined himself tonight, upstairs in his flat, a back room on a dead-end street blunted by a hill beginning three lots on. Maybe with the guys, maybe not. Avoiding the monstrous crowds. Halloween seemed like Epiphany, the apostles all closeted away from the callous crowds and from the fear of the risen Jesus, too, about whom they’d been starting to hear.
    And He appeared to them in their midst. Through a locked door. Talk about your Stephen King scenario: they must have been scared witless. And then they devoted their lives to the church and died as martyrs, every last one of them as far as he knew. A haunting of sorts.

5
    IF DYING WAS moving through a dark tunnel to the light, what happened if you got stuck? What did that do to you? How about to the people in the tunnel behind you who were trying to die? How come the study circles had never talked about this?

    Leontina Scales couldn’t quite identify the smeared landscape beyond the windows, nor could she pull into focus the face hovering above her. She suspected it to be that vengeful Virgin Mary, thundering down. “Point oh two five cc’s,” said the voice. “Relax your fists, Mrs. Scales. I only want to do this once.”

    Haven’t you already done enough, thought Mrs. Scales. And what about that thing under the stairs, which you were in cahoots with and no denying? Like Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night: the Virgin stops the traffic and then who-the-hell-knows-who jumps out.
    Surprise. It sure wasn’t Clark Gable. Though didn’t Clark Gable have a kind of Satanic perkiness to his eyebrows, come to think of it? Could it have been Salman Rushdie? Or did she have this straight?

    Then a nip, a sting in her arm somewhere. A stitch, a spindle’s prick. She struggled and cried out, and hit out; even endless vigilance wasn’t enough.

    “Is she normally agitated like this?” asked Our Lady.

    “Is she normal, better question,” said a voice that sounded like Tabitha.

    “All will be well,” said Our Lady, taking Leontina’s pulse with a manner more practiced than motherly. Though perhaps that amounted to the same thing. “Jesus, she’s strong. She’s a pisser, she is.” She looked over the horizon. “Takes all kinds to make a world.” Tabitha’s voice said, “I don’t suppose she’s like,