Clay (8 page)

eleven

Home was a hundred yards away. Lights burned in the windows. I wanted Dad to come out, or Mam. I wanted them to yell out into the street and send Stephen running back to Crazy Mary’s. But they didn’t come out. Nothing moved. The darkness deepened. Stephen breathed his calming words. He passed his hand before my eyes. And I did relax. And I thought of the angel that had cast Stephen down and raised him up, and I thought of the power that I had seen flowing from him and I told myself that Stephen Rose was something strange and new, something that had been sent to me, something that stood before me as I grew from being a boy into a man. I couldn’t turn away. So I said to him,

“What you after, Stephen?”

He shrugged.

“Just a word or two.”

I looked towards the Sacred Heart medallion silhouetted in our door.
Deliver me from evil,
I said inside.

He touched the weal on my cheek.

“Mouldy did it?” he said.

“Aye.”

“He’d be better off dead, eh?”

I didn’t answer. He laughed softly.

“He would,” he said. “We all know that. Just imagine. No Mouldy. No monster.”

“He’ll be a slob soon enough,” I said. “Just got to keep out of his way till then.”

He laughed.

“You’re not doing very well so far.”

I laughed with him.

“Just imagine if it happened, Davie. Just imagine you’re fast asleep in bed and you wake up and it’s a sunny ordinary morning and your mam says to you, ‘Did you hear that Martin Mould is dead?’”

He grinned.

“It’d be something to celebrate, eh? ‘Martin Mould is dead!’ Go on, admit it. Aye?”

I shrugged.

“Aye,” I said.

“Good. Now listen. My angel came again.”

“Your angel?”

“The one I told you about. Surely you’ve not forgotten her? Anyway, she talked about you. She told me you could help me in my work.”

“An
angel
? Stephen, man. It’s just barmy.”

“I know. It’s mental, it’s barmy, but it’s true. And isn’t it what they tell you in church? We are not alone. There’s precious beings all around us. So why should you be surprised?”

I looked up past the streetlights towards the stars.

“It’s still bliddy crazy,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But mebbe the craziest things are the truest things of all.”

He grinned while I thought about his words.

“Look,” he said. “Here’s a really crazy thing.”

He reached down into the grass verge at the pavement’s side. He ripped the turf open and tugged out a handful of soil. He spat into it. He spat again. He held it in the pale pool of light cast by a streetlight.

“You as well,” he told me. “Spit into my hand. So a bit of you is in it. Do it, man.”

I spat into the soil. He worked it with his fingers. He spat again, told me to spit again. I spat again. The soil was damp and pliable. He rolled it on his palm: a fat wormy thing, a sluggy thing. He raised it to his lips.

“Move,” he whispered. “Live.”

He held it on his opened palm.

“Tell it, Davie,” he whispered. He raised his eyes to me. “You got to,” he said. “Go on. Tell it to move. Tell it to live.”

I felt so stupid. I couldn’t speak; then the words came out.

“Move…. Live…. Move…. Live….”

“Be tough, Davie,” said Stephen. “Command it.”

He passed his hand before my eyes.

I spoke again.

“Move. Live.”

And the thing moved. It started to squirm on Stephen’s palm in the silvery light.

“See?” he whispered while we watched in wonder. “The power is in you, Davie, just like it is in me. You’re one of the special few.” He smiled. “Go on, touch it,” he said. “Touch your creation, Davie.” And I reached down, and I felt the thing squirming beneath my fingers. “This isn’t an ordinary thing for ordinary folk,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you? Do you think your mate Geordie’d be able to do this? Do you think that lass’d be able to do this?” I said nothing. I felt it move like there was life in it, like there was spirit in it. “Course they wouldn’t,” he said. “It’s only you, Davie. You and Stephen Rose.”

He let it fall back to the earth, and it lay there in the gathering dark, a lifeless clod. He wiped the dirt from his hands.

“Really crazy, eh?” he said. “But really true. Do you agree? Do you believe?”

How could I
not
believe?

“Yes,” I said. “But how can we do it?”

“That was just a little bit of easy magic. We can do lots more together. Lots more true and crazy things. That’s what the angel was on about.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that my strength and your strength isn’t enough. She said we’ll also need the strength of the Lord to help us.”

I met his eye.

“The strength of the Lord?” I said. “How the Hell do we get that?”

“You get it for us, Davie. You get the body and blood of Christ and bring it back here. It’s your task.”

He smiled.

“You’re the good altar boy, Davie. You got to steal the body and blood of Christ.”

“An angel told you to tell me to do
that
?”

He shrugged. He looked at me dead calm, like he was daring me again to believe him.

“Aye,” he said. “She did. Angels work in mysterious ways, Davie.”

“And what good will it do?”

“It’ll help us make a…”

“A what?”

He studied the sky, the thickening stars.

“A creature, Davie. A thing that will stand up and walk beside us and protect us.” He laughed. “A monster!” He breathed the words into my ear. “A bliddy monster. A thing that’ll terrify Mouldy and brutes like Mouldy. A thing that would even kill him for us, if that’s what we told it to do.”

I glanced at the house.

Come out,
I said inside myself.
Get me away from this.

“When’s your next Mass?” said Stephen.

I searched my memory.

“Sunday,” I said.

“You got to do it then.”

He slid something cold and metallic into my hand.

“Put them in this,” he said, “and keep them safe.”

It was a small round silver locket.

“Will you do it?” he said.

He looked into the sky.

“The precious beings is looking down on us,” he said. “Mebbe one day they’ll show themselves to you as well, Davie. Will you do it?”

I laughed. I laughed at Stephen, at me, at dreams of monsters and angels and illusions of moving clay. Stupid, all of it. Crazy.

“Will you, Davie?” he said.

“Why not? Yes.”

“Good,” he said. “They’ll be very pleased with you.”

Then Mam’s voice called from our garden.

“Davie! Davie!”

“You can go now,” Stephen whispered, and he disappeared into the dark.

twelve

Inside the house, Mam touched the wound on my cheek.

“Fighting again!” she said.

I tried to shake my head.

She stared into my eyes.

“It’ll end in something
awful,
” she said.

She shook me again. She chewed her lips, she peered into my eyes.

“You’re in a dream. You’re scared stiff.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you
are
. Who hit you? And how hard?”

She was nearly in tears.

“Nobody,” I said. “It’s nowt, Mam.”

I tried to pull away but she wouldn’t let me go.

“Nowt?”

“Nowt.”

She gave me some aspirin and some tea. She opened a bottle of Lourdes water and dabbed my head with it.

“I’m taking you to the doctor,” she said.

“No.”

“Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel sick?”

“No!”

She watched me.

“It’s got to stop,” she said.

“It will.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“You promise? You
promise
?”

“Yes!”

I drank my tea. Soon Dad came home. She told him about it.

“Who was it?” he said.

He knew I wouldn’t tell him. He put his arm around me. He turned me away from Mam.

“Looks like things are going a bit too far,” he said. “Things can start off as a game, but pretty soon…”

“I know that, Dad.”

“Promise me you’ll try to put an end to it.”

I said nothing.

“Promise me, Davie.”

“I promise.”

All evening they watched me. Mam kept asking.

“Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel sick?”

“No.” I kept answering.
“No.”

“I’ll put an end to it,” I lied.

“I promise,” I lied.

thirteen

I stole the body and blood of Christ at Mass that Sunday. I knelt below the priest on the altar. He had the round communion bread in his hands. He murmured the magic words,

“This is my body.”

He held the chalice of wine and murmured,

“This is my blood.”

The bread still looked like bread. The wine still looked like wine. But a miracle had happened. They’d turned into the body and blood of Christ. Christ himself was with us on the altar.

The priest ate the body and drank the blood.

Geordie and I opened our mouths and stuck out our tongues to receive our own communion bread.

Then the congregation left their seats and headed for the altar rail. Maria was there, and Frances, and my mam and dad, and Crazy Mary, and loads of our family, friends, neighbors. They knelt at the altar rail. I got my little silver tray and went down with Father O’Mahoney to them. They closed their eyes, stuck their tongues out. The priest pressed a communion wafer onto every tongue. “The body of Christ,” he murmured. “Amen,” they said.

I held the tray below each face, to catch the falling crumbs. They fell like tiny grains of dust. They lay there on the gleaming silver tray. A tiny fragment fell as Father O’Mahoney gave the bread to Crazy Mary. Another fell below the lips of Noreen Craggs. We moved from upturned face to upturned face. The voices murmured, the faces shone, the dust and fragments fell. Then it was done, and the last of the communicants went back to the seats.

I followed the priest up the altar steps. I tilted the tray, I quickly took a pinch of the fragments and dust. I pressed it into the strip of Sellotape in my cassock pocket. I quickly took another pinch. At the altar, I handed the tray to the priest. He ran his own finger round the tray, and licked away the fragments of Christ’s body. He did it again till none was left. Then he slurped the last of the wine. He wiped the inside of the chalice with a pure white linen cloth and put it on the altar.

He said the final prayers. He told the congregation to go in peace, the Mass was over. Thanks be to God, they said.

fourteen

I stole the wine-stained cloth in the sacristy while the priest was taking his vestments off. I swapped it with a clean cloth from a drawer. Father O’Mahoney put this into a little basket of things that would be taken away to be washed by nuns. I stuffed the cloth and the Sellotape into my pants pocket. Geordie saw me. He looked at me. I glared at him.

Father O’Mahoney stretched and sighed.

“What a grand morning it is, lads!” he said. “Did you see those great shafts of sunlight blazing through the church?”

“Aye, Father,” we said.

He took an imaginary golf club in his hands. He mimed swinging at a golf ball.

“Oh, to be in Kerry on a day like this!” he said.

He looked into the far distance, indicated a huge imaginary landscape with his hands.

“The mountains, the beaches, the ocean, Dingle and the Blasket Islands and the Skellig Rocks, the call of the curlews and the sound of the surf…You should see it, boys! Ireland! The ball flies straighter there, and oh so true, and the greens are truly green and the ball drops down into the hole with a lovely little…plop! It’s God’s own land, that’s what it is.”

He grinned.

“But that’s enough of that. The little course at Windy Nook’s a grand substitute.” He rubbed his hands in excitement. “So. What shenanigans have you two planned for today?”

Geordie shrugged. I said nowt. Father O’Mahoney grinned again.

“Getting too old to share it now?” he said. He winked. “Specially when the girls might be involved.”

He put his arms around our shoulders.

“You’re a good pair. Always were. Good straightforward lads. Now go on. Off to your adventures. And I’ll get looking for those clubs of mine.”

As we left, he called after us:

“You know, boys, I often think we’re already living in the borderlands of Paradise! Good day to you now!”

Outside the church, Geordie said,

“What you doing with the cloth?”

“Nowt,” I said.

I tried to move away from him.

“What’s up with you?” he said.

“Nowt,” I said.

“You’re always nicking off,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I said.

“Yes, you bliddy are. It’ll be that lass again.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Who you calling daft?”

“Nobody. You.”

“That’s right.”

“What do you mean, that’s right? You mean it’s true you’re daft?”

“I must be, hanging out with you.”

“Nick off, then.”

“I will. And you nick off as well.”

“I will.”

So we both nicked off. I ran up the High Street, across the square. I came to a halt. I stared at myself in the Blue Bell’s window. There I was, an ordinary kid. This was home, an ordinary town. I’d stolen the body and blood of Christ and I wouldn’t give them back. I’d go further into the darkness with Stephen Rose. I’d make a monster if I could. I closed my eyes, tried to feel the power in myself, but I still just felt like me. I moved closer to the window, I looked at myself more closely. I was just the same as ever, ordinary, just ordinary.

“Is this what going crazy’s like?” I whispered. “Is this what being under a spell is like?”

Then I tore myself away and ran again.

fifteen

I inspected the Sellotape in my bedroom. The dust and fragments of Christ’s body were still stuck to it. I folded it and put it into the locket. I cut out the little wine-stained pieces of the altar cloth. I put them into the locket as well. I looked at what I had. A few shreds. Almost nothing. How could there be a power in things like this? I stared hard at them, willing them to do something marvelous.

“Do something,” I whispered.

They did nothing, of course. My heart sank. I snapped the locket shut.

The sun blazed into my bedroom. A crystal-clear sky, nothing in it but a few small birds nearby and the sparrow hawk that spiraled over Braddock’s garden. Lunch was on downstairs: the lovely scents of beef and vegetables and a boiling pudding. Somebody yelled jokes on the radio. Dad roared with laughter. Mam sang along with the radio’s daft songs. She yelled that the food would be on the table in five minutes. I sat there on my bed. I slid the locket right under my mattress.

“Davie!” yelled Mam. “Davie!”

I went down.

Everything was dried out and tasteless.

Mam kept asking if I was all right.

“Aye,” I told her.

She reached out to touch me.

“I’m all right, man!” I snapped.

She flinched.

Dad’s eyes narrowed and he raised his finger at me.

“That’s enough of that, lad,” he said.

He shook his head. We ate in silence. I stuffed a lump of suet pudding into my mouth.

“Lads,” he muttered.

Afterwards we put the TV on and an ancient black-and-white film of
Frankenstein
came on. We watched the monster lumbering about. Mam laughed at how clumsy it all was.

“Remember when we saw it first?” she said to Dad. “All them folk in the Corona fainting and screaming and running out? What on earth were we so scared of?”

Dad lurched about the room for a bit with his arms stretched out and his legs dead stiff and he grunted and groaned and pretended to attack us.

Then Maria and Frances walked past and Frances stared in at the window.

“Aha!” said Mam.

“You’ll be off out now, I suppose?” said dad.

“No,” I said.

Frances waved. I ignored her, turned my face back to the TV. From the corner of my eye I saw her link her arm into Maria’s and lead her away.

“You’re sure?” said Mam.

The monster growled.

“Aye,” I snapped. “Aye, man!”

“Davie!” said Dad. “That’s enough!”

“Stop me then!” I said. “Go on, bliddy stop me!”

He dropped his Frankenstein act, glared at me.

“Get to your damn room,” he said.

I rushed upstairs, back to the body, the blood, the fear. I climbed into the cupboard in my wall. I clambered over toys and games to find my earliest things: rattles and building blocks and crayons and board books, and I found my ancient tub of plasticine. All the colors had blended to earthy gray. The stuff felt hard as stone but as my fingers worked it softened. I remembered making animals, fish, birds, little models of my beloved mam and dad. I made a beast and whispered time and again and time and again, “Live and move. Live and move!” I made a little model of myself and hated it and turned it to a four-legged stupid thing with a heavy head hanging down towards the floor. “Live and move,” I told it. “Live and move.” As dusk came on, the air outside seemed filled with angels, which hovered over the streetlights and peered in at me with disappointed, disapproving faces.

There was a knock at the door and Mam slipped in.

She smiled.

“Plasticine!” she said. “Remember how you used to love it?”

“No,” I said. “Well, kind of.”

She smelt a little piece of it.

“Takes me back. Remember when there were lovely little creatures everywhere?”

“Dunno,” I said.

“You were so brilliant at making things. Would you like to come downstairs?”

“Dunno.”

She put an arm around me.

“I’m sorry, Mam,” I said.

“Is it something to do with a girl?”

“No. Dunno, Mam.”

“Or is it Geordie mebbe?”

“Geordie!”

She laughed gently.

“Whatever it is, it’s not nice when somebody you love turns on you like that,” she said.

“Aye. I know. I’m…”

“That’s OK. Say sorry to your dad as well and that’ll be an end to it.”

I did go down again and apologize to Dad, and he too said that was an end to it but nothing stopped. I spent that night awake, making plasticine creatures, breathing prayers and incantations and commands on them while the moon shone down at me. I didn’t dare to open the locket and try to use the power of the body and the blood. Nothing moved, till 4 a.m. “Please move,” I whispered, and a fragment of the plasticine did seem to come to a kind of life, did seem to slither on my palm, but by then I was fighting sleep, I was probably dreaming, or it was just another sign that I was going mad.