First and Only (29 page)

The corner of a pew caught Steve
squarely on the temple and knocked him out cold.

*

Lucifer rose unsteadily to his
feet. He wiped the blood from his shattered nose and looked down at the body of
the angel. He was not dead but he soon would be.

They both would.

The angel and the witness.

Lucifer spat a bloody mouthful
across his fallen adversary. He bent down over the witness and pushed the hose
back into the bag. Then walked somewhat drunkenly to the side of the church. He
lifted the thick brass crosier from the stand and moved along to the pump. It
was time to take back the breath of life from the witness.

Mindful of the ceremony that was
not yet concluded Lucifer offered up the briefest of prayers before he flicked
the switch.

*

Steve tried to blink his vision
into focus. Psimon lay before him; the polythene bag misted with condensation.
He was still alive, just. As if in a dream Steve raised himself up and crawled
towards Psimon fumbling at the polythene, trying to work a few more mouthfuls
of breathable air into the bag. His senses were dulled, his mind foggy with
concussion but when Steve saw the push-knife, lying not three feet away, his
body found the strength to make a final lunge.

Steve’s fist closed on the handle
of the knife and he settled it in his palm. But when he turned back to look at
Psimon he was horrified to see the polythene bag shrinking in against him, the
slick material drawing tight around his body as all the air was sucked from it.

Steve crawled towards Psimon but
before he could reach him the killer struck him down.

*

Lucifer struck the angel with the
rod. Then he hooked it under his chin and across his throat.

‘
Let him watch as the witness
dies. Let him watch as the breath of life is taken back. Let him watch and let
them die together
.’

The chorus rose up in glorious
exultation. Lucifer had prevailed against the witness and against the angel,
against providence itself. Those in dominion were pleased; he was the vessel of
their righteousness, the instrument of their wrath. He was their servant and
they his gods.

*

Steve watched as Psimon
suffocated before his eyes, right there in front of him, just out of arm’s
reach. He watched but he could not move. The killer held the bar across his
throat. He had managed to get his left hand under the bar but despite this the
killer was slowly throttling the life out of him. Psimon looked up at him, his
grey eyes bulging with fear, his mouth gaping wide for the breath it could not
take, the plastic stretched tight across his bluing lips.

Steve reached forward with the
knife in his hand. If he could just make a few more inches and pierce the
membrane over Psimon’s mouth. But he could not reach. He strained and strained
but he could not reach. Then in one last gesture of aggression he stabbed the
knife into the killer’s hand. And then, as the killer relaxed his grip, Steve
lunged forward stabbing out with the knife but just as he did so the killer
snatched him aside and Steve’s aim went astray. Instead of stabbing the knife
into the gaping hole of Psimon’s mouth Steve stabbed him in the face.

‘NO!’ cried Steve as he felt the
blade slice through flesh and bone.

‘
You stab me in the face with
a short-bladed knife
.’

 ‘NO! Psimon, NO!’ he cried as
the killer struck the knife from his hand and hauled him back, dragging him
away from Psimon so that he could no longer see his friend, the friend that he
had killed.

The killer pulled harder on the
bar across Steve’s throat, his wrist was the only thing preventing his windpipe
from being crushed. But, even with the killer squeezing the life out of him,
Steve thought not of himself but of the young man dying behind him.

‘I’m sorry, Psimon
,’ he
thought as the darkness claimed him.

‘I’m sorry
.’

Chapter 32

There was an eternal moment of nothingness, in which
nothing existed and nothing did. And then Psimon took a breath and the universe
exploded into life.

He woke into a world of pain.

He woke into a world of pain but
not of fear. He had passed through the valley, through the shadows of death and
now he need fear no evil. The worst of all his fears had come to pass and it
had passed. For all the pain that wracked his body Psimon’s mind was clear. It
shone, it burned and Psimon opened his eyes.

He looked like a bag of pummelled
meat, a grizzly horrible sight. Psimon trembled from the cold and the pain but
he fought against his tortured body and tried to turn. The plastic bag
restricted his movements. His body was beaten and cut and spattered with raw
wounds where the acid had eaten away his skin. Inching round was an exercise in
agony but still he turned.

He turned to see the man who had
saved his life.

The short knife had gouged into
his cheek, just below his eye. It had sliced down through his upper lip and
taken out a tooth. But it had cut through the suffocating plastic and let the
air rush in. Psimon gulped it down and his body tingled with agonising ecstasy
as feeling returned to his flesh. With a Herculean effort he pressed his head
against the stone and struggled to his knees. He blinked the blood from his
eyes and looked out through the slit in the plastic across his face.

There in front of him was the
killer, his childhood terror. He stood with his back to Psimon; his massive
form hunched over as he slowly strangled Steve. Psimon could hear the coarse
decline of Steve’s last breaths, and in the background, the insistent whine of the
electric pump that sucked in vain at the punctured bag.

Psimon swayed unsteadily,
struggling to keep his balance but then he drew a breath and focussed his mind.

*

Lucifer raised his head as the
pump cut out, the familiar, discordant noise fading away to silence.

‘
No matter
,’ he thought.

The witness should be dead by
now. And the infuriating angel was soon to follow. He looked away and bent once
more to the task of killing.

‘No!’

The voice echoed loudly in his
mind.

Lucifer paused to listen. If this
were the chorus speaking then it was louder and clearer than it had ever been
before. Maybe those in dominion had deigned to speak to him at last, in
recognition of this his greatest conquest.

‘No!’

Lucifer froze. The voice was not
in his mind; it was coming from behind him. He felt a strange and unnerving
emotion, an alien sense of fear. With uncharacteristic trepidation he relaxed
his grip on the angel and turned to look back over his shoulder.

The witness was alive.

He knelt there like an apparition
of death. The ghost of all his victims kneeling before the altar, looking up at
him with eyes he had never noticed before; grey eyes staring out through the
blood smeared plastic. They were the eyes of vengeance, the eyes of wrath and
Lucifer was afraid. But his fear quickly turned to fury.

Lucifer let the angel fall.

He turned to face the witness.
His lip curled in an animal snarl and he started forward, the rod raised high
in the air. He would kill him, he would crush him, he would tear his body apart
with his own bare hands. He would rend him asunder and then he would burn his
remains until nothing remained but ash.

Lucifer reared up above the
witness and the rod began to fall.

‘
NO!
’

The voice was like a thunderclap
in Lucifer’s mind and the rod went flying from his grasp. It tumbled through
the air, clattering and clanging against the wall of the chapel.

What was this new manifestation
of evil?

Lucifer looked down at the
witness. A fire burned in those stone-grey eyes. He must quench it, snuff it
out. He reached out with his massive hands.

Silence the witness

Cut out his tongue

Fill his mouth with dirt

‘
NO!
’

The invisible force struck
Lucifer in the chest and sent him reeling back. He stumbled over the body of
the angel and almost lost his footing. He looked up at the shrouded form of the
witness, hunched and kneeling on the floor. He looked into the face of death,
and was afraid, and he faced his fear in the only way that he knew how.

With violence, and with hate.

Lucifer charged forward like a
raging bull but the invisible force struck him again. It lifted him from his
feet and propelled him through the air. It slammed him back against the wall of
the chapel and held him there, his feet flailing six feet from the floor.

‘Abomination!’ screamed Lucifer,
straining to break free of the bonds that held him. ‘Spawn of iniquity!’

Psimon looked up at the killer.
His eyes bored into him, holding him fast.

‘Blasphemer,’ shouted Lucifer.
‘Child of profanity. Accursed witness. The chorus condemns thee. Thou art
abhorrent to those in dominion, a stain upon the land. You must die… confess
your sins and die…’

Psimon had heard enough.

His eyes narrowed as he pressed
the killer’s face against the wall.

‘Foul malefactor! You… cannot…
be… allowed… to live…’

The killer’s words became broken
and strained as his great jaw was crushed against the stone. Saliva spilled
from the corner of his misshapen mouth as Psimon began to squeeze. The killer’s
curses turned to stifled moans and his dark eyes rolled back in his head but
still Psimon did not stop. He was determined to silence the vitriolic stream of
hate.

‘Psimon.’

At first Psimon did not hear the
soft, croaking voice.

‘Psimon.’

Steve crawled across the
bloodstained floor until he knelt at Psimon’s side.

‘Psimon,’ he said again, reaching
out a shaking hand. ‘Psimon, let him go.’

For all that had happened Steve
could not bear the thought of Psimon becoming a killer. He would not blame him
if he did, no one could. But he knew that if he did Psimon would be forever
changed, diminished, tainted… changed.

‘Psimon, let him go.’

Finally the fire went out of
Psimon’s eyes and with a great shuddering sob he lowered his gaze and the
killer dropped heavily to the floor.

Steve knelt up beside Psimon and
took hold of the bag. He hooked his fingers into the tear that he had made and
tore it back from Psimon’s head.

Psimon turned his wretched face
to Steve, his eyes brimming with tears.

For a moment they just looked at
each other. Then, in a voice of terrible sadness, Psimon spoke.

‘He was just a man,’ he
whispered, the blood still running from his severed lip. ‘All this time… just a
man.’

Steve just nodded, clenching his
jaw in the face of Psimon’s distress.

‘All those people,’ said Psimon,
the sobs welling up in his chest.

‘I know,’ said Steve.

‘All those people who died here
because I...’

‘I know,’ said Steve. ‘I know.’

Steve reached for Psimon. He took
his head in his hands and looked at him intently.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he said
but Psimon’s eyes were unconvinced.

Steve pulled Psimon towards him
and held him, like a child, against his chest.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he said,
his own voice breaking with emotion. Psimon was still naked, still bleeding and
still bound in a grotesque and filthy plastic bag. But there were things of
more importance here, and so he held him while he cried.

He was still holding him some
minutes later when the distant whine of police sirens sounded in the night. And
still yet when the cars skidded to a halt outside.

It did not take them long to find
them.

They entered the ‘chapel’
cautiously, not knowing what they would find. But whatever it was they might
have anticipated fell well short of what they saw. The members of the armed
response team came first, moving with disciplined precision as they secured the
room. They identified Psimon and Steve and went to check the body at the base
of the wall. One of the officers covered the enormous man with his firearm
while the other bent to check him.

Steve turned to watch.

The police officer put two
fingers against the killer’s neck then jumped back as the hulk of a man let out
a moan and made to rise. But nothing of his great strength remained and the
officers subdued him with ease.

‘You didn’t kill him,’ said
Steve, easing back from Psimon.

Psimon did not look at Steve at
first. He just stared across at the large figure dressed in altar clothes and
lying prostrate on the floor.

‘I just cut off the blood supply
to his brain,’ said Psimon, glancing briefly up at Steve, and damn it all if he
did not smile.

Steve looked down at Psimon, a
strange sense of pride surging in his chest.

God but if he ever had a son…

*

Steve dabbed at his mouth and
nose with a wad of sterile gauze while the paramedic strapped up his chest.

Psimon was sleeping in the back
of the ambulance.

They had tended him with
exquisite care, these people whose job it was to help the injured and the sick.
They talked to him as they cleaned the muck and the blood from his body, never
once hinting at embarrassment or disgust. They dressed his wounds and wrapped
his naked body in soft white blankets and laid him down to sleep. And even then
they did not leave him.

Steve looked up as a second
ambulance drove off down the track taking the killer away and out of their
lives.

‘How did you know?’

DI Regan was standing beside
Steve at the back of the ambulance. He handed Steve a plastic cup of water as
he too turned to watch the departing ambulance.

‘It’s not me,’ said Steve nodding
towards the sleeping figure behind him. ‘It’s him.’