Millennium Rising - Hardcover

Jensen, Jane

 
9780345430342: Millennium Rising
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0345430344 ISBN 13: 9780345430342
Verlag: Del Rey, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Just after the millennium, a group of pilgrims of all faiths journey to the Mexican village of Santa Pelagia to witness a miraculous vision, including twenty-four people who experience their own apocalyptic dream that the Day of Judgment is at hand.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Jensen has been both a computer programmer and a computer game designer, winning accolades for her interactive mystery series "Gabriel Knight." Technology is a second love; her first is humanities. She has had an interest in comparative religion and philosophy for many years, perhaps in an effort to balance (or fathom) her upbringing as a fundamentalist minister's daughter. She wrote Millennium Rising because in 1994 she bought a book on prophecies and it scared her for weeks. She did not build a bunker in her backyard, preferring to subscribe to "Skeptical Inquirer" instead, and she and her husband remain resolute residents of downtown Seattle.

Aus dem Klappentext

around the world warn of the terrifying signs and wonders that will foretell the end of the world. For thousands of years, the prophets have always proved false. Until now . . .

Shortly after the change of the Millennium, in a tiny Mexican village, people of different faiths are flocking to Santa Pelagia from all over the planet to witness a miraculous visitation. Among them are twenty-four who experience something more personal: a messenger clothed in the raiments of his or her own beliefs--the Virgin Mary, an angel of Islam, the Hindu goddess Kali. And each is given the same terrifying message: the Day of Judgment is at hand.

The Vatican sends Father Michele Deauchez to investigate. And Deauchez, caught up in the incredible experience, watches his palms run red with blood from the wounds of the stigmata. Yet, as a man of reason, a man deeply scarred by his own experience of the supernatural, he cannot--will not--believe.

Simon Hill is an investigator of a diff

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DAY 1

SANTA PELAGIA, MEXICO

The first thing Deauchez noticed when he woke up was how quiet it was. He arose from his makeshift bed on the couch and went to the window of Father Espanza's office, pulled back the heavy drapes, and blinked in the glare of the midday sun. The streets of Santa Pelagia were empty. Discarded blankets in dirty doorways, food wrappers, and other, more personal castoffs, like the baby shoe perched on a nearby flowerpot, were the only evidence of the crowds that had so recently inundated the small village. Even the thick pall of fear was gone, leaving an aftertaste like that at the scene of a day-old car wreck.

Deauchez checked his watch. He'd been out for ten hours. He wished Martinez or Espanza had awakened him, but then they wouldn't unless he'd requested it, would they? And he hadn't said a word to them when he'd stumbled back through the dark last night; hadn't spoken, hadn't even checked the statue in the vestibule. To what end? It had bled, of course. Certainly the thing had bled--his own clothes had been covered with the stuff. He looked around now and noticed that the bloodied suit he'd left on the chair had been taken by someone; somewhere a middle-aged woman scrubbed his things, watching mesmerized as the water turned red, all the while muttering breathless, endless novenas.

A shrill bleeping sounded from his black leather bag. In a moment, Deauchez had the computer on the coffee table and opened it with a single smooth gesture. On-screen was the red-capped visage of Brian Cardinal Donnelley.

"Just getting up, Michele?"

"A moment ago, yes."

"How are you feeling?"

"I'm perfectly well."

Donnelley managed a distracted smile. He tapped a manila folder on his desk. "I read your report. Any further thoughts now that you've had some rest?"

"I have nothing to add, Your Eminence. Except that from what I can see of the town, most of the pilgrims have already left."

"Last night's was understood to be the final message, wasn't it?"

"Even so, the crowds must have been quite eager to get home. It's unfortunate. I was hoping to interview some of the witnesses."

Donnelley leaned forward and studied Deauchez keenly. "There was something I missed in your report. You didn't specify ... that is, you didn't exactly come right out and say whether or not you yourself saw ... Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth."

Deauchez had a brief flash of the old cypress in Sanchez's field: the leaf-laden, oddly twisted top branches shaking violently in a wind that made no sound. "Nothing," he answered sharply. "That is, as I wrote there, the, the, the ... mood in the crowd was thick with an almost opaque fear. Until you have been in such surroundings you really cannot imagine how difficult it is to think clearly. It was a classic case of crowd hysteria."

Donnelley was looking at him with an odd expression. Deauchez found he didn't much care for it. He told himself it was only because the lighting in the room was difficult, with the bright sun hitting him from behind. The laptop's inboard camera was not the best.

"Be that as it may, it would be more thorough, I should think, to record all observations from the site."

"I beg your pardon, Your Eminence, but I saw nothing of relevance other than what I already mentioned in the report: that a few people in the crowd did appear to have the wounds of Christ spontaneously appear; and that the statuette I brought from the Vatican did bleed also, apparently independently, though there was blood on my own hands so I cannot absolutely confirm. It was very dark."

"Any traces of stigmata on you now?"

"None. If there had ever been wounds they were closed by the time I got back here last night. The blood on my clothes was real enough."

Donnelley was suddenly cool and remote, as if he'd given up on his questioning. "His Holiness wants to see you as soon as you return. He wants a firsthand summary. I think he's a bit concerned about Santa Pelagia."

"I don't blame him. The situation here was extremely fragile, though it seems to be over for the moment. But ... does that mean you won't grant my request to continue?"

"No. As you say, Deauchez, Santa Pelagia is obviously significant ..."

"The most significant case of mass hysteria this century, if not ever." Deauchez felt a renewed sense of scholarly excitement and dread at those words, a combination this place had engendered in him from the start.

"I would be careful before you lock yourself into that position, Deauchez. This thing is not going to be easily dismissed."

Deauchez was taken aback by Donnelley's icy tone. "That's ... why it's imperative that we learn more."

"Agreed. You know His Holiness leaves for Israel on Monday. I think he would like to make some sort of statement about Santa Pelagia before his trip. Be back by Saturday, will you?"

There was no shower at the church. Father Espanza took Deauchez across the street to the single hotel, Las Rositas Blancas. It hadn't had so much as a broom closet available when Deauchez arrived the previous day, but the recent gold boom had crashed. The owner, a short, plump man with a slickness to his hair and a toughness to his skin that spoke of cigarettes and alcohol, was not mourning the loss of business. He had the look of a man wrestling with much larger questions. He sent searching glances at Deauchez throughout the ritual of signing in, as if he wanted to question him. Father, what do you think about ... Did you see ...? Deauchez avoided his gaze.

He was troubled about the phone call. It gnawed at him as he soaked under the hot water in his room's cracked, mildewed stall. He had the distinct feeling he'd stumbled into one of those painfully political imbroglios where fates were altered and careers ruined by a single, ill-chosen word. He'd seen it happen to others at the Vatican, but he himself had always been spared.

Ten years ago Brian Cardinal Donnelley had been a bishop teaching at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and Deauchez had been one of his favorite pupils. When Donnelley was appointed to head up the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints he'd asked Deauchez to go with him.

Any spot in the Vatican was a choice career move, and Deauchez was immensely flattered. But he hadn't anticipated how much he'd love the work or how well suited for it he'd be. As it turned out, one of the bureau's jobs was investigating supposedly preternatural phenomena presented in support of a sainthood candidate; healings, mostly, but also such Catholic standards as bilocation, the aroma of sanctity, and visions. The Church required hard-core evidence of the divine to declare a saint, and these days they were not disposed to find it. Deauchez's undergraduate major in psychology, as well as his skeptical bent, caused him to excel in his new post.

And for all these years, Deauchez had assumed that Donnelley appreciated him for precisely what he was: a priest more apt to find psychosis than saints. Donnelley always praised Deauchez's logic and reasoning, the "unemotional clarity" in his reports.

Until now.



There was only one main drag in town, the paving so old it had nearly reverted to baked earth. Deauchez walked it slowly, taking a foray into an alley or two and finding precious little on the other side. Not only were these nominal causeways cleared of visitors, but the locals had also gone to ground: a white face glimpsed behind a tattered curtain, a dog that darted away anxiously, the sound of a baby's cry.

It wasn't until he...

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Verlag
Del Rey
Erscheinungsdatum
1999
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345430344
ISBN 13 
9780345430342
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
430
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