Clifton Bush always wanted to write a book, but he never had the time. When his wife, Karen, offered to run their business, Indianapolis Flag and Banner Co., Bush finally had his chance.

At age 61, he published The Third Prophecy.

Age, he says, has not hurt him at all.

"The silver hair is an asset because when I was younger, I knew a lot of this stuff but nobody would listen to me. . . . My age helps me now. It helps me do everything except get up in the morning and move easily," jokes Bush.

What Bush writes is heavy stuff, and he hopes it never comes true.

"It's fiction. I think what I've written is kind of a fear that's in all of us. We think about the coming of the millennium and everybody talks about that, about the predictions of Nostradamus," says Bush.

Bush's fiction is based on fact, as many Catholic historians know. He has studied religion and theology for almost 40 years and believes that if most people were aware of their religious history, they'd be more interested in their religion and beliefs.

He is especially interested in the Roman Catholic Church and the Third Prophecy, of course.

"The Third Prophecy is a real thing," Bush explained in a recent interview at Children's Express.

"In 1917, three little kids went out playing up in the mountains (in Portugal) and they came back and told their mom and dad that a lady, a beautiful lady, had appeared out of the sky and had talked to them. They got in trouble. (Their parents) said, `You shouldn't tell things like that,' and they were punished and all kind of stuff.

"They went back the next month and the lady came back again and told them to come back. They went back and told the same story. This time the parish priest got involved and they were in real trouble then. They would not recant the story.

"This happened three more times, but the fifth time the lady appeared out of the sky to 70,000 people. So it wasn't just a few people (and) a couple of reporters."

Catholics know this as the Day the Sun Danced at Fatima. The vision reportedly gave three prophecies.

"The first two came to pass and they were about World War I and World War II and the ripple effects of these things," summarizes Bush. "The Third Prophecy was ordered locked up in the secret archives of the Vatican."

There it stayed until 1960, when Pope John XXIII reportedly read it, ordered it locked up again, and then became ill because of what he read. Two years later, he passed away, and believers say nobody knows what's in the Third Prophecy.

Bush's novel revolves around this prophecy and what it might contain. At the most basic level, it is Bush's version of how the world might end. It will not be with a big final explosion, like some people believe, but rather something slower and much worse.

At times the novel seems almost anti-religious. But Bush, who has no religion, says it wasn't intended that way.

"I was only relating historical facts that came to us from analysis of various religions of the world," he says. "I have nothing against religion at all. . . . Personally, I have great faith in the Creator."

The book is intended, however, to be a novel of protest. "What we have," says Bush, who is working on a sequel, "(is) a problem worldwide with caring for our children, the problem not only in Third World countries, but in our country, where our own children are starving, going without homes, care. . . . I planted a very definite message there."

Bush's own life is not nearly as bleak as The Third Prophecy. Before this novel, the Indianapolis native's only published works were political columns in local newspapers. He also managed to squeeze in a few short stories, but nothing as time-consuming as a novel.

Once he decided to write more intensely, things did not go so smoothly. After spending three years on the book, he was rejected by at least 30 publishers, a problem fairly common to first-time novelists.

Then, after his decision to self-publish, his editor told him to go back and rewrite the first three chapters.

"Here I was at the very end of the book rewriting those first chapters again. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Hardest work I've ever done in my life," he recalls.

Now that all of the work is finished, Bush is pleased with what he sees and with himself.

"There's so many times you want to quit, you know it seems impossible. It just seems like it's not going to turn into anything. But from that point to this . . .

"A lot of people are going to read this," Bush points out, "and that's good. That's a good feeling."

EDITED BY: Joe Huser, 17.