Free The Visitation by Frank Peretti Page B

You’re going to disrupt the energy.”
    “There isn’t any energy.”
    “There is. You just have to relax.” Bonnie closed her eyes for a moment and took some deep breaths. “It’s here. I can feel it. You just have to settle into it, let it flow.” She opened her eyes again and looked around the room. “This could be big medicine. The Spokanes could have worshiped on this very spot.”
    The other pilgrims were giving them sideways glances.
    “This isn’t Indian,” said Penny, “it’s Catholic!”
    “It’s all the same, sweetheart.”
    Penny rolled her eyes. “It sure is.”
    “Shh,” came a quiet suggestion from across the room.
    “We’re doing this for you, Penny.”
    “It’s not going to work!”
    Bonnie raised her voice. “If it worked before, it’ll work again.”
    Then she drew a deep breath, settled back in the pew, and tried to settle her nerves, relaxing, relaxing. With her eyes on the crucifix, she drew a deep breath and began to hum, “Ommmmmmmmmm . . .”
    Today Pete Morgan was the lay assistant keeping watch at the ladder. After another minute of Bonnie’s humming he finally set down his psalm book and hurried off the platform to have a word with her. “Excuse me, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to— ”
    Bonnie leaped to her feet and pushed him so hard he stumbled across the aisle and almost landed in a lady’s lap. All around the room, there were gasps and ooohhhs.
    “Way cool!” Penny exclaimed.
    “Come on!” Bonnie hissed, yanking Penny by the arm.
    Pete recovered just in time to see Bonnie racing for the platform, her full-cut clothing rustling behind her like natural, organic flags in a gale, pulling a running, off-balance Penny after her.
    The couple from Moses Lake jumped up from their pew as the young lady gasped and pointed. “It’s crying!”
    Everyone stood, pointed, shouted. “Look at that!”
    “It’s crying, it’s crying!”
    “Saints be praised!”
    Pete stared, aghast. Tears from both eyes now traced thin, meandering streaks down the wooden face of the image.
    He took the arm of the young lady with leukemia. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
    “But —” She pointed at Bonnie Adams, already grabbing a rung of the ladder and pulling at her unwilling daughter.
    “Come on!” Pete insisted, and they hurried onto the platform, followed by an asthmatic man from Ritzville, a lady from Spokane with cancer and the friend who came with her, three elderly folks with arthritis, a Yakima man with a bad liver, and at least ten other people who were either sick or just plain curious.
    “Get up there!” Bonnie yelled, pulling on Penny’s arm. Penny tried to jerk away. “I’m scared!”
    “Make way!” Pete shouted, bringing up the young lady. “Let us come through!”
    “Only in your dreams, bub!” Bonnie started clambering up the ladder, stepping and tripping on her long, full pants legs.
    The crowd stumbled and jostled around the altar and closed in around the ladder, pleading, praying, grabbing at the rungs in order to climb. Bonnie yelled back at them, stomping on any fingers that dared to climb after her. The two women from Spokane began to wail and weep. The man with the bad liver swore and said excuse me, swore and said excuse me. A forest of pleading hands reached toward the crucifix.
    “Calm down now!” Pete hollered above the clamor. His back was against the ladder and some folks were trying to climb him . “I’m sure there will be tears enough for everyone! No shoving!”
    Al Vendetti heard the noise from his office and came running into the sanctuary. My God, they’re going to break something!
    The young woman from Moses Lake began climbing the ladder. Bonnie Adams stepped on her hand, she fell back, and her husband caught her.
    “Please!” Pete begged. “Let her come up the ladder! She has leukemia!”
    Bonnie didn’t hear him. Her full attention was on that wooden face. She brushed her fingers across the wet streaks, gathering the