The blackness, too, faded, allowing meager cloud-filtered daylight to reenter the room.  And when Dan could once again make out details, he saw that Emilio was gone.  His pistol lay on the rug, but no trace of the man who owned it.

Dan staggered back and slumped against a support column.  He leaned there, feeling weak.  So fast...one moment a man in frenzied motion, the next he was gone, swallowed screaming by impenetrable blackness.

But gone where?

“Oh, please!” the senator cried, dropping to his knees and thrusting his clasped hands toward the Virgin.  “Please!  I meant you no harm, I meant no one any harm in bringing you here.  I only wanted to help my son.  You can understand that, can’t you?  You had a son yourself.  I’d give anything to make mine well again.”

“Anything?”

“Absolutely anything.”

“Then you must give up everything,” she told him.  “All your possessions—money, property—and all your power and ambitions.  Give everything away to whomever you wish, but give it up, all of it, get it out of your life, out of your control, and your son will live.”

“Charlie will live?” he said in a hushed voice as he struggled to his feet.

“Only if you do what I have said.”

“I will.  I swear I will!”

“We shall see,” the Virgin said.

Dan had gathered enough of his wits and strength to dare to address her.

“Why are you here?” he said, then glanced at Carrie.  “Is it our fault?  Did we cause all this?”

“It is time,” the Virgin said.  “A war of faiths threatens to devastate the world.  It is time for Him to return and speak to His children.  And what I say now shall be heard by all His children.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Kiryat Bialik, Israel

Customs Inspector Dov Sidel sat before the TV in his apartment with his wife Chaya, transfixed by the images of destruction from Jerusalem.  He hadn’t been able to eat or take even a sip of tea since word had come.  The Western Wall . . . gone as if it had never been.

Suddenly the picture dissolved into the face of a woman.

Dov stared at her and she stared back.  Something familiar about her face.  He felt he knew her, and yet he couldn’t quite place her.

Oh, well...

He pressed the channel button on the remote.  The same face.  He pressed again and again and it was the same on every channel, even the unused frequencies.  This woman’s face, in perfect reception.

And then it struck him.  That relic, that body that had been slipped past him as a sculpture, the one he’d reported as being on display in New York.  This woman resembled a younger version of that mummified body.  In fact, the longer he stared at her the more convinced he became.

He was reaching for the phone when Chaya screamed from the kitchen.

‡

Manhattan

Monsignor Vincenzo Riccio sat in his quarters at the Vatican Mission, talking on the phone with the Vatican.  The Holy See was in a state of paralyzed shock, and he was discussing with his superiors the Church’s response after the catastrophes of the last eighteen hours.  He heard a sudden scream from the kitchen, followed by the crash of breaking china.  Then another scream.  He excused himself from the conference call and hurried along the hall to see what was wrong.

The cook was standing by the sink, her hands pressed against her tear-streaked cheeks as she stared at the soapy water.  She was praying in her native Italian.

“Gina?” Vincenzo said, approaching.  “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with fear and wonder, and pointed to the water.

“Maria!”

Vincenzo stepped closer and saw a woman’s face reflected in the surface of the water.  Not Gina’s face.  Another’s.  And immediately he knew who she was.  He felt lightheaded, giddy.  He swung around, looking for someone, anyone to tell, to call over and share this wondrous moment.  But then he saw the same face in the gleaming surface of Gina’s stainless steel mixing bowl, in the shiny side of the pots stacked next to the sink.

She was everywhere, in every reflective surface in the kitchen.

He ran back to the dining room and there was her face again, this time in the mirror over the hutch, and in the silver side of the coffee service.

He ran into the next room where two of his fellow priests crouched before the television, pressing the remote, but on every channel, broadcast and cable, was the same face.

Vincenzo shakily lowered himself to the edge of a chair to sit and wait.

‡

Cashelbanagh , Ireland

Seamus O’Halloran paused on his front stoop and sniffed the clean coolness of the early evening air.  He looked about his empty yard.  After word spread that the monsignor from the Vatican had found a perfectly natural explanation for the tears, the crowds of faithful no longer flocked to Cashelbanagh to see the Weeping Virgin.  In some ways he missed the throngs on his side lawn waiting breathlessly for the next tear, and in other ways he did not.  It was nice to be able to work around the yard without clusters of strangers watching over your shoulder.  And he no longer had those reporter folks asking him the same questions over and over again.

A shame about the Church.  Father Sullivan and most of the women had been in a panic when it dissolved before their eyes this morning.  They’d all waited around, huddled in the bare spot of earth where the nave used to be, but nothing else happened—no thunder, no lightning, no openings in the earth spewing forth demons.  So they’d all gone home.

He wondered if life would ever get back to normal again—whatever normal was.  But at least one thing was sure: Blaney’s still stood.  Sure now if the pub ever vanished into thin air, there would be a tragedy.  Time for him to head down there for a pint.  But first he decided he’d take a look at the side lawn and see how it was coming along.  He strolled around the corner of the house and admired  the grass.  Without the constant trampling of the crowds, it was filling in smooth and green again.  As he turned to go, he glanced up at his grandfather Danny’s painting of the Blessed Mother and froze.

The painting was changing.  He watched, rooted to the ground by terror, as her skin tones darkened while her features ran and rearranged themselves into a different face.

When she smiled at him, Seamus uprooted himself and ran shouting for his wife.

‡

Everywhere...

Gridlock on the streets of Manhattan.  The ever-swirling schools of cars, trucks, taxies, and buses screech to a halt as a face appears in their side- and rearview mirrors.  It is seen dimly on the surface of every windowpane and brightly in every puddle.  It is the same across the country, in the towns, in the cities, in the fields, in schools, barrooms, and on the computer screens of corporate offices.

And across the world, in Sydney, Nara, Beijing, Angkor, Luzon, New Delhi, Mumbai, Baghdad, Tunis, Mecca, Johannesburg, Jerusalem, Bosnia, Quito, Paris, London, and Rome, it is the same.  Every surface capable of reflecting an image is filled with the same face.

For a moment a fascinated world stops, gathers together, and watches.

As she begins to speak, the billions of watchers, even the deaf, even the comatose hear her words and understand.

‡

“I bring you word from our Creator.  The words I say are His, not mine, and He wishes all of you to listen.  I shall call Him ‘He’ simply because that is how we traditionally think of the Creator, but He is neither ‘He’ nor ‘She.’  What can those words mean when there is only one?  And He is the One.  Whether you call him Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu, He cares not, for He has no name.  Whether you visualize him as a man, or a woman, or a feathered serpent, He cares not, for he is pure Being, without shape.

“I was one of you, and for a short time, He was part of me.  We have touched, and for that reason I am allowed to be His voice.  Listen well: