Brendan gave a softly exhaled “no.”

Father Wycazik wanted to shout at him, shake him, shock him out of his numbing gloom. But he patiently said, "Countless good priests have suffered crises of faith. Even some saints wrestled angels. But they all had two things in common: Their loss of faith was a gradual process that continued many years before reaching a crisis; and they could all point to specific incidents and observations from which doubt arose. The unjust death of a child, for instance. Or a saintly mother stricken with cancer. Murder. Rape. Why does God allow evil in the world? Why war? The sources of doubt are innumerable if familiar, and though Church doctrine answers them, cold doctrine is sometimes little comfort. Brendan, doubt always springs from specific contradictions between the concept of God's mercy and the reality of human sorrow and suffering."

“Not in my case,” Brendan said.

Gently but insistently, Father Wycazik continued. "And the only way to assuage that doubt is to focus on those contradictions that trouble you and discuss them with a spiritual guide."

"In my case, my faith just ... collapsed under me ... suddenly ... like a floor that seemed perfectly solid but was rotten all along."

"You don't brood about unjust death, sickness, murder, war? Like a rotten floor, then? Just collapsed overnight?"

“That's right.”

“Bullshit!” Stefan said, launching himself up from his chair.

The expletive and the sudden movement startled Father Cronin. His head snapped up, and his eyes widened with surprise.

“Bullshit,” Father Wycazik repeated, matching the word with a scowl as he turned his back on his curate. In part he intended to shock the younger priest and force him out of his halftrance of selfpity, but in

part he was also irritated by Cronin's uncommunicative...

despair. Speaking to the curate but facing the window, where patterns of frost decorated the panes and where wind buffeted the glass, he said, "You didn't fall from committed priest in August to atheist in December. Could not. Not when you claim you've had no shattering experiences that might be responsible. There must be reasons for your change of heart, Father, even if you're hiding them from yourself, and until you're willing to admit them, face them, you'll remain in this wretched state."

A plumbless silence filled the room.

Then: the muffled ticking of the ormolu and mahogany clock.

At last, Brendan Cronin said, "Father, please don't be angry with me. I have such respect... and I value our relationship so highly that your anger..... on top of everything else . . . is too much for me right now."

Pleased by even a threadthin crack in Brendan's shell, delighted that his little stratagem had produced results, Father Wycazik turned from the window, moved quickly to the wingback chair, and put a hand on his curate's shoulder. "I'm not angry with you, Brendan. Worried. Concerned. Frustrated that you won't let me help you. But not angry."

The young priest looked up. "Father, believe me, I want nothing more than your help in finding a way out of this. But in truth, my doubt doesn't spring from any of the things you mentioned. I really don't know where it comes from. It remains . . . well, mysterious."

Stefan nodded, squeezed Brendan's shoulder, returned to his chair behind the desk, sat down, and closed his eyes for a moment, thinking.

"All right, Brendan, your inability to identify the cause of your collapsed faith indicates it's not an intellectual problem, so no amount of inspirational reading will help. If it's a psychological problem, the roots lie in your subconscious, awaiting revelation."

When he opened his eyes, Stefan saw that his curate was intrigued by the suggestion that his own inner mind was simply malfunctioning. Which meant God hadn't failed Brendan, after all: Brendan had failed God. Personal responsibility was far easier to deal with than the thought that God was unreal or had turned His back.

Stefan said, "As you may know, the Illinois Provincial of the Society of Jesus is Lee Kellog. But you may not know that he oversees two psychiatrists, both Jesuits themselves, who deal with the mental and emotional problems of priests within our order. I could arrange for you to begin analysis with one of those psychiatrists."

“Would you?” Brendan asked, leaning forward in his chair.

"Yes. Eventually. But not right away. If you begin analysis, the Provincial will refer your name to the province's Prefect of Discipline, who will begin to pick through your actions of the past year to see if you've violated any of your vows."

“But I never-”

“I know you never,” Stefan said reassuringly. "But the Prefect of Discipline's job is to be suspicious. The worst thing is . . . even if your analysis leads to a cure, the Prefect will scrutinize you for years to come, to guard against a lapse into unpriestly conduct. Which would limit your prospects. And until your current problem, Father, you struck me as a priest who'd go farmonsignor, perhaps higher."

“Oh, no. Certainly not. Not me,” Brendan said selfdeprecatingly.

"Yes, you. And if you beat this problem, you could still go far. But once you're on the Prefect's danger list, you'll always be suspect. At best you'll wind up no better than me, a simple parish priest."

A smile flickered at the corners of Brendan's mouth. "It would be an honorand a life well spentto be, as you say, no better than you."

"But you can go farther and be of great service to the Church. And I'm determined you'll have that chance. So I want you to give me until Christmas to help you find a way out of this hole. No more pep talks. No debates about the nature of good and evil. Instead, I'll apply some of my own theories about psychological disorders. You'll get amateur treatment from me, but give it a chance. Just until Christmas. Then, if your distress is still as great, if we're no nearer an answer, I'll put you in the hands of a Jesuit psychiatrist. Deal?"

Brendan nodded. “Deal.”

“Terrific!” Father Wycazik said, sitting up straight, rubbing his hands together briskly, as if about to chop wood or perform some other invigorating exercise. "That gives us more than three weeks. For the first week, you'll put away your ecclesiastical suits, dress in ordinary clothes, and report to Dr. James McMurtry at St. Joseph's Hospital for Children. He'll see that you're assigned to the hospital staff."

“As chaplain?”

"As an orderlyemptying bedpans, dhanging bedclothes, whatever is required. Only Dr. McMurtry will know you're a priest."

Brendan blinked. “But what's the point of this?”

“You'll figure it out before the week is up,” Stefan said happily. "And when you understand why I sent you to the hospital, you'll have one important key to help you unlock your psyche, a key that'll open doors and give you a look inside yourself, and maybe then you'll see the cause of your loss of faithand overcome it."

Brendan looked doubtful.

Father Wycazik said, “You promised me three weeks.”

“All right.” Brendan unconsciously fingered his Roman collar and seemed disturbed by the thought of removing it, which was a good sign.

"You'll move out of the rectory until Christmas. I'll give you funds to pay for meals and an inexpensive hotel room. You'll work and live in the real world, beyond the shelter of the ecclesiastic life. Now, change clothes, pack your suitcases, and report back to me. Meanwhile, I'll call Dr. McMurtry and make the necessary arrangements."

Brendan sighed, got up, went to the door. "There's one thing maybe supports the notion that my problem's psychological, not intellectual. I've been having these dreams ...

actually the same dream every time."

“A recurring dream. That's very Freudian.”

"I've had it several times a month since August. But this week it's become a regular occurrencethree out of the last four nights. It's a bad one, tooa short dream that I have over and over again in one night. Short, but . . . intense. It's about these black gloves."

“Black gloves?”

Brendan grimaced. "I'm in a strange place. Don't know where. I'm lying in bed, I think. I seem to be ... restrained. My arms are held down. And my legs. I want to move, run, get out of there, but I can't. The light is dim. Can't see much. Then these hands . . ." He shuddered.

“Hands wearing black gloves?” Father Wycazik prompted.

"Yes. Shiny black gloves. Vinyl or rubber. Tightly fitted and shiny, not like ordinary gloves." Brendan let go of the doorknob, took two steps toward the middle of the room, and stood with his hands raised before his face, as if the sight of them would help him recollect the details of the menacing hands in his dream. "I can't see whose hands they are. Something wrong with my vision. I can see the hands ... the gloves ... but only up to the wrists. Beyond that, it's all ... blurry."

By the offhanded way that Brendan had mentioned the dream, almost as an afterthought, he obviously wanted to believe that it was of no consequence. However, his face was paler than before, and there was a vague but unmistakable flutter of fear in his voice.

A burst of winter wind rattled a loose window pane, and Stefan said, “The man with black glovesdoes he say anything to you?”

“He never speaks.” Another shudder. Brendan lowered his hands, thrust them in his pockets. “He touches me. The gloves are cold, slick.” The curate looked as if he could feel those gloves even now.

Acutely interested, Father Wycazik leaned forward in his chair and said, “Where do these gloves touch you?”

The young priest's eyes glazed. "They touch . . . my face. Forehead. Cheeks, neck . . . chest. Cold. They touch me almost everywhere."

“They don't hurt you?”

“No.”

“But you're afraid of these gloves, of the man wearing them?”

“Terrified. But I don't know why.”

“One can't help but see how Freudian a dream it is.”

“I suppose,” the curate said.

"Dreams are a way for the subconscious mind to send messages to the conscious, and in this case it's easy to see Freudian symbolic meanings in these black gloves. The hands of the devil, reaching out to pull you down from grace. Or the hands of your own doubt. Or they could be symbols of temptations, of sins seeking your indulgence."

Brendan seemed grimly amused by the possibilities. "Especially sins of the flesh. After all, the gloves do touch me all over." The curate returned to the door and put his hand on the knob, but paused again. "Listen, I'll tell you something odd. This dream ... I'm halfsure it's not symbolic." Brendan let his gaze slide away from Stefan's, down to the worn rug. "I think those gloved hands represent nothing more than gloved hands. I think ... somewhere, someplace, at some time or other, they were real."

“You mean you were once in a situation like the one in your dream?”

Still looking at the rug, the curate said, "I don't know. Perhaps in my childhood. See, this might not have anything to do with my crisis of faith. The two things might beprobably areunconnected."

Stefan shook his head. "Two unusual and serious afflictionsa loss of faith and a recurring nightmaretroubling you at the same time, and you want me to think they've no relation? Too coincidental. There must be some connection. But tell me, at what point in your childhood would you've been menaced by this unseen, gloved figure?"

"Well, I had a couple of serious illnesses as a boy. Maybe during a fever I was examined by a doctor who was a little rough or scarylooking. And maybe the experience was so traumatic that I repressed it, and now it's coming back to me in a dream."

"When doctors wear gloves for an examination, they use throwaway white latex. Not black. And not heavy rubber or vinyl gloves."

The curate took a deep breath, blew it out. "Yeah, you're right. But I just can't shake the feeling that the dream's not symbolic. It's crazy, I suppose. But I'm sure those black gloves are real, as real as that Morris chair, as real as those books on the shelf."

On the mantel, the clock struck the hour.

The soughing of the wind in the caves became a howl.

“Creepy,” Stefan said, referring not to the wind or the hollow striking of the clock. He crossed the room and clapped the curate on the shoulder. "But I assure you, you're wrong. The dream is symbolic, and it is related to your crisis of faith.

The black hands of doubt'. it's your subconscious warning you that you're in for a real battle. But it's a battle in which you're not alone. You've got me beside you."

“Thank you, Father.”

“And God. He's beside you as well.”

Father Cronin nodded, but there was no conviction in his face or in the defeated hunching of his shoulders.

“Now go pack your suitcases,” Father Wycazik said.

“I'm leaving you shorthanded when I go.”

"I've got Father Gerrano and the sisters at the school. Now, off with you." When his curate had gone, Stefan returned to his desk.

Black gloves. It was only a dream, not particularly frightening in its essence, yet Father Cronin's voice had been so haunted when he spoke of it that Stefan was still affected by the image of shiny black rubberclad fingers reaching out of a blur and prodding, poking....

Black gloves.

Father Wycazik had a hunch that this was going to be one of the most difficult salvage jobs upon which he had ever embarked.

Outside, snow fell.

It was Thursday, December 5.

4.

Boston, Massachusetts

On Friday, four days after the catastrophic fugue that followed the aortal graft on Viola Fletcher, Ginger Weiss was still a patient at Memorial Hospital, where she had been admitted after George Hannaby led her out of the snowy alleyway in which she had regained consciousness.

For three days, they had put her through exhaustive tests. An EEG study, cranial X rays, sonograms, pneumoventriculography, a lumbar puncture, an angiogram, and more, repeating the several procedures (though fortunately not the lumbar puncture) for crosschecked results. With the sophisticated tools and processes of modern medicine, they searched her brain tissue for neoplasms, cystic masses, abscesses, clots, aneurysms, and benign gummatous lumps. For a while they concentrated on the possibility of malignancies of the perineural nerves. They checked for chronic intracranial pressure. They analyzed the fluid from the spinal tap in search of abnormal protein, cerebral bleeding, a low sugar count that would indicate bacterial infection, or signs of a fungus infection. Because they were physicians who always gave their best to a patient, but especially because Ginger was one of their own colleagues, her doctors were diligent, determined, thoughtful, thorough, and firmly committed to pinpointing the cause of her problem.