CHAPTER ONE:

Even before the accident on Grand Road, Adam Crocker should have known trouble was coming. The previous evening he had a nightmare about Maria, his wife- the details of which he cannot remember. What remains is an ache in the pit of his stomach that fills him with dread and…terror.

All day long at work his brain swirls with questions- what are the dream images his conscious mind refuses to retrieve? And where is Maria? Why isn’t she picking up her cell? True, she rarely answers her phone when she is substituting. Did she get a teaching gig this morning and is presently rocking out some badass Schubert piece on her violin before a room of ungrateful teenagers? Is that it?

The hours drone by. He shuffles around his computer screen making very little headway on an editing project that is already three weeks late. At 6 o’clock, he walks down the hallway to the bathroom to freshen up, to gather some small measure of clarity before the half-hour drive home.

In the mirror, his face looks pale. His usual wavy dark brown hair, dull, his handsome features too sharp and chalky like they have recently been cut from a jagged piece of limestone. His fingers feel clammy and a weight presses heavily on his chest. Maybe the stifling hundred degree day has something to do with it but he doesn’t think so.

 He sucks air into his lungs until a sound like a skittering of cockroaches’ races across the ceiling. He turns his head, listens to the murmurings, and hears what seems like a pattern, a primitive code, a drumming, a chorus and then a single voice.

“Adam…Adam…listen to me…death is coming.”

His neck bubbles with sweat.

What was that?

All he can hear is the dull roar of the air-conditioner. He runs water from the faucet, splashes it over his face.

 And the voice again, soft and feminine.

“Death…listen…it’s coming” The voice talks to him tenderly like it is finishing a child’s goodnight story. He looks over his shoulder to a small window where the eye of the sun peers in at him.

“Don’t be frightened sweetie. . .”

 The voice is back. The voice he heard as a little boy- the voice that guided him through the horrors of childhood, adolescence and beyond.

 Death is coming.

 He has heard these particular words spoken before in church- his preacher father bellowing from the pulpit. “ Get right with God,” he’d shout,” cause death is coming. Can’t you hear his footsteps?”

Death. Is that what this strange day is about?

He backs away from the mirror, listens again. The voice is gone.

At his work station he picks up his laptop, walks down another dim florescent hall. When he reaches Mindy at the reception desk, he forces a steadying smile.

“Are you alright?” she asks in her usual sultry tone.

He forces another smile, which he is sure looks more like a grimace.

“I’m fine. It’s just the heat.”

“Well, watch out for the storm going home. It’s supposed to be a real killer.” She winks.

The black top in the parking lot feels sticky in places. The sky darkens. His old Saab has air-conditioning, but even as he turns on to the Taconic Parkway the draft from its vents is only cool by comparison with the scorched air outside. He puts his window down to catch the moving breeze. From the mountains to the west, a low rumble echoes across the river valley.

Adam gives no thought to the impending storm. All his focus remains on the explicit warning of the voice in the bathroom. Death is coming but where…when? The voice rumbles in his head and he can sense it magnetically pulling him towards a destination. This compulsion swells into a conviction.

He slams his foot on the accelerator.

 Maria. He repeats his wife’s name. Maria. Get home fast. Time is running out. He looks at the clock on the dash.

His whole body shivers with a rippling fear that spreads like hundreds of tiny eels swimming up his spine. He knows every move he makes, every important calculation is now being orchestrated by this power outside of him.

He swerves, speeding past vehicles as if they are standing still. This is not like him. He is always a cautious driver. If a state trooper pulls him over what will he say?

Time is running out.

Death is coming.

The perspiration on Sister Vincent’s forehead is like the ceramic glaze on a plastered statue of an altar saint. She is in her late 30's, her wide face and deep set eyes well suited to the habit that frames it. Her smooth skin gleams in the green light of the instrument panel of the Dodge Dart. A zigzag of lightning flares so bright it stings her blue eyes and the thunderclap that follows is so tremendous that it seems to come not only from the sky but from the ground as well. It’s as if the earth has split open and God is announcing Judgment Day.

Sister Vincent holds tightly to the steering wheel, oblivious to the storm, her thoughts chaotic and contradictory.

She glances at Sister Francis beside her who peers ahead at the fierce wind and driving rain unfazed. The tree shrouded Grand Road is as familiar to Sister Francis as the contours of her own ruined face. She has not aged well, her skin mottled with brown spots and broken capillaries. The sheets of rain, the tires hissing on the pavement- the wipers thumping on the windshield like an eerie metronome- all of this for Sister Francis, is part of God’s wonderful plan.

She turns around, looks at the five year old girl scrunched up in the corner of the back seat, her head on a pillow.

"Sarah is sleeping well now," she says with a stern look of satisfaction.

The little girl’s sleeping face is stained with hours of tears. Oddly, it’s the storm that finally put her to sleep.

Sister Francis sighs softly then glances back at Sister Vincent and smiles.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sister Vincent says,” but doesn’t it seem reasonable to question what we are doing?”

Sister Francis stares straight ahead again, at the wiper blades stuttering across the glass.

“I never fail to feel God’s everlasting love as we approach the convent. I’ll be seventy-five next month. My eyesight is nearly gone. Otherwise I’d still be the one driving. We need say no more.”

The two narrow lanes of black top that is the Grand Road disappear under a blanket of fog and driving rain. Sister Vincent gently applies her brakes as she enters a blind turn. From around the curve she can see headlights up ahead rapidly speeding towards them. A 2 ton red truck is swerving, coming right at them; the man’s face behind the wheel is sallow and withered with dark charred holes where his eyes should be. It looks to Sister Vincent like a malign spirit is at the wheel- a demon or the Devil himself.

She swerves to avoid him, and the Dodge begins to slide- a sickening spin like a ride on a water greased spillway at an amusement park flume.

“Oh my God!" Sister Francis screams. “ God help us.”

Adam turns on to Grand Road as a chain of thunderbolts roars through the darkness. Lightning blinks strobe-like, bristling clusters of shrubbery blowing across his windshield; small shadows in the shape of leaves, then larger silhouettes of tree trunks, and black bars from the rail fences on the sides of the road- each blot of darkness, each geometric breach, a potential opening through which Death may come.

He turns his head left then right looking for a sign, a signal, a warning- anything. The shadows melt together and grow. All is ink-black. He tries to focus only on what lies ahead. Through the pitch dark and billowing of fog a ray of light on the side of the road shines upward from inside a ravine. Adam's headlights illuminate something in the underbrush.

The rain suddenly stops like someone has turned off a faucet; the lingering rumble of thunder fades in the distance. To his right the white flesh of an uprooted tree can be seen, its freshly broken limbs torn and bleeding exposed to the sky. Below, through a mass of brambles, is the Dodge Dart. He pulls over on to the shoulder of the road, angles his high beams towards it.

The car is on its roof- its tires still spinning. Broken scrub pines and torn earth mark the trajectory it has taken in its plunge from the road. A torrent of water rushes by, part of a creek swollen with rain that has jumped its banks. Adam pushes his way through the brush and debris.

In the partially lit confusion of torn metal he can just make out the figure of a woman in a black robe: Sister Francis. Her body is intact but her face has been smashed into a bloody pulp. The rushing creek flows violently over her half-submerged body. The mud and rubble push against the old nun's torso. He reaches down to pull her up to...