"Yeah? How can you tell?"

"That's the way it rings when it's Danny."

The phone did sound weird. One long, uninterrupted ring that kept going. But weird ring or not, Renny knew it wasn't Danny Gordon on the phone. He snatched it up.

"Hello!"

A child's voice, terrified, screaming.

"Father, please come and get me! Pleeeeease! Father, Father, Father, I don't want to die. Please come and get me. Don't let him kill me. I don't want to dieT

Renny felt his heart begin to thud in response to the anguish in that little voice. It made him want to run out the door and find him, help him, wherever he was.

But he knew where he was. Danny was down the hall, in bed, hooked up to half a dozen tubes and monitors.

"Is that you, lady?" he shouted into the phone. "This is Detective Sergeant Augustino, NYPD, and you just made the biggest mistake of your life!"

The line was dead. He depressed the plunger and dialed the operator. After identifying himself he asked if she had just put the call through to extension 2579. She said no and checked with the other operators. No one could remember putting a call through to that extension all morning. He slammed the phone down.

"She's somewhere in the hospital!" he said.

"What?" The priest was back on his feet, his eyes wide.

"If the call didn't come through the switchboard, it had to originate in-house. She's probably sitting in some corner playing her tape into the phone."

"You mean it sounded like a tape to you?"

"Come to think of it… no."

Father Bill was suddenly running down the hall.

"Danny! She's here to finish him off!"

Renny followed him. He hated the thought of entering Danny's room, of hearing Danny's sound, his voiceless scream, like air escaping a punctured tire. Endlessly. It never stopped. The whole time you were in there it went on and on and on. He didn't know how Father Bill stood it. But he followed the priest into the room. He'd go anywhere, to hell itself to catch the bitch who'd done this to that kid…

But Danny was just as they'd left him, twisting and writhing in openmouthed agony. Renny could bear only a moment or two in that room, then he had to flee it, leaving Father Bill alone at the bedside.

Bill seated himself at the side of the bed, pulled a Rosary from his pocket, and began fingering the beads. But he didn't say the usual Our Fathers and Hail Marys. He couldn't find the words. His mind was saturated with Danny's ungodly torment.

Ungodly. A fitting adjective. Where was God when Bill needed Him? When Danny needed Him? Where had He been Christmas Eve? On vacation?

Or is He out there at all?

Such a question would have been unthinkable a few days ago. But Bill had run out of excuses.

And he knew them all. All the gentle explanations of why bad things happen to good people, and why even the most devout, most sincere, most selfless prayers often go unanswered. He knew how events often seemed to conspire to work against the best people, against the best things they tried to achieve. But that didn't mean there was a Divine Hand at work, moving people around, shaping events, checking off names of those who could go on living and those whose time was up.

As Bill saw it, death, disease, rape, murder, accidents, famine, plague—they all had earthly causes, and therefore had earthly solutions. As God's creatures we were expected to find those solutions. That was why He equipped us with hands, hearts, and minds.

Neither God nor the mythical Satan were the cause of our woes; if the culprits weren't ourselves or other people, they were time, circumstance, or nature.

Or so Bill had thought.

How did he explain what had happened—what was still happening—to Danny?

From everything Bill knew, from everything he had seen during the past few days, the answer was None Of The Above.

None of the above.

Sure, blame whoever had posed as Sara for taking a knife to Danny. She started it all. But what about the rest of it? The endless pain, the wounds that refused to heal, the unresponsiveness to anesthesia, the transfusions—almost fifty liters had been poured into Danny since his arrival—that seemed to be sucked down some black hole never to be seen again—what of them? Danny wasn't eating; his kidneys weren't functioning, so he was putting out no urine; his heart was beating but there was no blood for it to pump. It was impossible for him to be alive—every doctor who'd seen him had uttered those same words at one time or another.

Impossible… but here he was.

And what of Herb Lorn? A hollow man—not just spiritually, but without internal organs or a nervous system—who had dissolved when Bill punched a hole in his chest.

Good God!… the hole in his chest… the cold… the stench… the slime…

As much as his faith resisted it, as much as his mind saw it as a surrender of the intellect, he could not escape the feeling, the overwhelming belief that something supernatural was at work here.

Something supernatural… and evil.

And Danny was the target.

Why Danny? What had this child ever done to deserve this living hell? He was an innocent, and he was being put through unimaginable torture by a force beyond nature. Something dark and powerful had taken hold of him and was thumbing its nose at the laws of God and man and nature, keeping Danny beyond the reach of humanity's most advanced medical science.

And deep in his gut Bill knew that the torture would go on as long as Danny lived.

Where there's life, there's hope.

Bill had lived by that neat little aphorism for the four and a half decades of his life. He'd believed it.

But no more. Poor little Danny's case broke that rule. As long as he remained alive, there was no hope of relief for Danny. His life would go on—

No. Not life. Existence was a better term. For what Danny had now was not life. His existence would go on as it had since Christmas Eve—unhealed wounds, unremitting pain, with no hope of relief.

At least not from anything in this world.

Bill pocketed the Rosary and said a silent prayer of his own.

Help him, Lord. Something beyond the natural is causing his torment and so only something else beyond the natural can save him. That's You, Lord. We can bounce back from any blow Your world hands us, but we are helpless against the otherworldly. That's why Danny needs You to step in on his behalf. Not for

my sake—put his wounds on me, if that will do it. Just don't let him suffer anymore. If there's something that can be done that's not being done, let me know. Tell me and I'll do it. No matter what it is, I'll do it. Please.

Danny's rasping screams ceased and he opened his eyes.

Bill froze and watched as Danny's eyes stared about the room, searching, finally stopping when they found Bill. He grabbed the boy's hand and squeezed.

"Danny?" Bill said. "Danny, are you there? Can you hear me?"

Danny's lips moved.

"What?" Bill said, leaning closer. "What is it?"

The lips moved again. A whisper escaped.

Bill moved closer still. The breath from the parched tunnel of Danny's throat was sour as Bill put his ear almost against the dry lips.

"What, Danny? Say it again."

"Bury me… in holy ground… It won't stop… till you bury me…"