The Shroud Codex - Jerome R. Corsi [123]
A purple ribbon bound the contents in wrapping paper Castle recognized from one of the shops he and Anne had visited in the past few days along the Via Condotti, just below the hotel on the Spanish Steps, at the Piazza di Spagna.
He opened the package with haste, finding within it a letter and a photo album. The letter was from Anne.
“By the time you read this, I will be gone,” Anne wrote. “What you must know is that I am and always was Paul Bartholomew’s mother. After his car accident, when we were reunited before God, I promised that if Paul would accept the mission to return to life, I would return as well, to accompany him. So, you see, I invented Paul’s half sister in order to explain my presence back in his life. Seeing me in the hospital, Paul recognized me immediately. But when Paul and I spoke with one another privately in the hospital, I explained to him how it had to be. I could not come back as his mother. Everyone knew I had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
Castle took a drink of his wine, struggling to grasp what Anne was telling him.
“When the authorities investigate Anne Cassidy in Canada, they will find that Anne Cassidy never existed. Obtaining documentation such as a passport these days is unfortunately easy to do.”
Reading this, Castle motioned the waiter over to the table and asked for a double scotch, no ice. “Please bring it immediately,” Castle told the waiter. “I need it now.”
“Subito,” the waiter said compliantly in perfect, crisp Italian, as he rushed off to bring Dr. Castle his drink.
The waiter rushed back with the scotch, as ordered. Castle took a strong swig, then another.
He resumed reading.
“The photo album is Paul’s photo album, from when he was a baby. You will see there is no father for Paul in any of the photographs. You will see that the woman you knew as Anne Cassidy is the same woman that appears in the photos as Paul’s mother, Anne Bartholomew. There never was a Vietnam War hero named Jonathan Bartholomew who returned mysteriously from being missing in action. What I portrayed about being Paul’s sister also required me to make up the story about Matthew Cassidy. There also never was a father who took me to Canada when he learned my mother had always loved the soldier who never existed. When you find Paul’s birth certificate, you will find the father is listed as unknown. You can search for Paul’s father if you want, but that is a secret I plan to share with you in the afterlife, when we are reunited in the presence of God.”
Castle finished the scotch and ordered another. It was beginning to look to him like he might end up drinking his dinner that night.
“I know you do not believe in God,” she wrote. “I am sure it will take you time, maybe even years, to sort out and understand the events of the last month. I only wish I could be there to assist you.”
Thanks a lot, Castle thought, reading that. When he had accepted Paul Bartholomew as a patient, Castle truly had no idea what he was getting himself into.
“Paul’s destiny was to decipher the Shroud codex for the world. Paul struggled to find God in an equation, until he gave up the idea and decided to be a priest. Professor Gabrielli will try to convince the world that my disappearing with Paul was an elaborate trick. Dr. Bucholtz will understand that we transitioned through what she calls an ‘event horizon’ to another dimension people have called ‘Heaven’ for millennia, dating back to the writing of the Bible. You will have to decide for yourself what you have seen with your own eyes, from the first moment you met Paul in your office.”
For Castle, the idea was beginning to settle in. Anne was either delusional or the entire experience with Bartholomew would have to be explained in mystical terms Castle considered suspect by nature.
“Had things been different, we might have been lovers,” she wrote. “If you believe what Dr. Bucholtz told us about parallel worlds, in another time in another dimension, we might yet be lovers. The care you took to include me and provide for my comfort was noticed and appreciated. The