Jago (60 page)

He tried to turn away, but the barmaid’s laugh had finally escaped and was swarming around him. There was a bloody hole in the middle of her no-face, ragged where the laughter was gushing out. Screeches of laughter came from the jukebox too. A ewe in a black suspender belt and brassiere and a spade-bearded Welshman appeared from a booth in disarray, and added their braying, bawling and belching laughs to the rest. Dead seals, brains spilling, squeezed in among the babies.

Mike looked at the crowd pressing into the pub, and knew he was to be killed. Pushing away from the bar, he ran through the laughter, mirth ripping his skin like fishhooks. Knocker Bolockoff was guarding the front door, long arms outspread to catch him, so Mike careened past, and slammed into the door of the Gents’.

The urinal was brightly striplit, white glare bouncing back at him from all the enamel surfaces. A condom-vending machine slowly burped rubber johnnies inflated into dick-shaped balloons. There was an inch-thick lake of still piss on the floor. It rippled and splashed under his shoes. The light hurt his eyes. There was a thin window, high on the wall, paned over with chickenwire-inset glass. Stark messages were felt-tip-penned on the walls.

THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD IS IN YOUR HANDS. BEWARE LIMBO DANCERS. MIKE TOAD, EAT SHIT AND DIE.

Mike reached for the window, and thumped. Glass cracked and bent, but didn’t break. The smell rose, stinging Mike’s eyes like teargas.

The door opened, and Knocker Bolockoff, whip thrown aside, came into the Gents’. His chest heaved as he changed, bones shifting under his fur, muscles expanding.

The others crowded in. Pat, face red as a beetroot, eyes squeezed too close together. A farmer’s daughter, ping-pong-ball eyes vacant, bursting out of her too low, too short checked pinafore. A crèche of dead babies, crawling like maggots, mewling for bloody milk. A man with a huge vagina in the centre of his face, displacing all his other features. The sheep, anus red and bleeding, fury in its eyes. Naked men and women without faces but with swollen and disproportionate genitals. Dead astronauts, ferryboat passengers, politicians, football fans.

Knocker Bolockoff bent over as he came for Mike, Terry the Wolf looming out from inside him. The Somerset werewolf’s face pressed out through the Russian’s, snout and fangs emerging from the gap between Knocker’s beard and moustache.

Mike tried to climb the slick wall, and fell. Stinking damp seeped through his clothes. He slid along the floor, face pressed into the wet. A moving weight landed on his back, pushing him down, pulling him along. The taste of piss flooded his throat, and he choked.

Everyone was laughing. The heavy body on top of him eased up and turned him over. He felt the wet through his back and buttocks. Knocker Bolockoff s face was a transparent mask now. Terry was in control, abundant facial hair streaming away from angry eyes and red mouth.

Pat gingerly knelt by Mike, watching as the werewolf played with his food. He was changing too, expanding out of his clothes, skin mottling crimson, jagged and grinding teeth forming in his foot-wide mouth. He popped a lump of granite into his gob, and began to chew it to powder.

‘Ah, Moike, me boy,’ said the Big Red Rock-Eater…

Terry’s claws penetrated his cheeks, and a killing growl built up in his throat. Mike felt death catch in his throat.

‘…Oi bet ya feel a roight tit now.’

‘T
he revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass,’ Jenny read, brass-bound Bible heavy on her knees, as she sat outside Beloved’s rooms. ‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein…’

This morning, the sun had risen on a changed world. Knowledge had been granted Beloved, and He had passed it to His Brethren.

‘…for the Time is at hand.’

She set the Bible down, open to Revelations. Standing, she was nervous, unsure. Knees tingling from sitting so long, her whole body felt funny, on the edge of elation. The waiting was nearly over. She still had last doubts to overcome. The bulk of humanity would be cast into the Pit. Parents, schoolfriends, people she’d known all her life. All doomed unredeemably. Only the Chosen would ascend. On such terms, how could she bear to accept her own salvation?

Today, there had been no regular early-morning services. Beloved remained in His rooms with the Sister-Love. His last Sister-Love. Jenny, their handmaiden, waited. She had come close to being Beloved’s last and most favoured, but there was no disappointment in her heart. She was proud simply to be the handmaiden.

The Brethren were awake, intent on their purpose. Nothing had been said but everyone knew. Few had been able to sleep. Through the night, she’d heard them. They’d be travelling together, but most had taken the opportunity to be alone with themselves a last time. Jenny imagined she heard their thoughts rustling throughout the Agapemone. Hopes and fears, prayers and curses.

The sun was risen. This was the Last Day.

Mick had gathered most of the Chosen in the chapel, but several had their own paths to pursue, and were by themselves, praying intently, searching for something. From her position at Beloved’s door, Jenny saw the stairs and the landings that wound through the house. Marie-Laure was abased two storeys down, forehead to the carpet, arms cast out, wailing. Derek was looking in all the rooms, searching for Wendy. No one had seen Beloved’s first Sister-Love since yesterday. Jenny wondered if she’d been transported by the rapture, removed without suffering to Heaven as a recompense for all she had endured upon Earth.

It was hot with a dry heat that grew as if the heart of the house were an invisible furnace. Cracks spread as if the trapped heat were swelling, pushing bricks apart, straining wood. Plaster dust danced in the sunlight flooding from the cupola. Floorboards complained as they stretched. With a gunshot report, a nail burst out of the floor yards along the landing, force spent in the folds of a carpet. Before the elevation of the Agapemone, the community’s earthly form would have to be smashed. There’d be resurrection in the flesh, but all the other things would be left behind, destroyed. Jenny loved this old building, but knew it would be nothing compared to the palaces of Paradise.

Jenny knew she was summoned to His side. Bowing, she opened the door and entered. She was surrounded by a formless, sourceless Light and, heart pumping, looked up. A warm breeze—light in motion—spread her hair. Beloved stood by His bed, arrayed in white, eyes aflame. Taller, earthly form transcended, He was complete, the Lord God in all His forms. Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Lion and Lamb; Gentle Saviour of the Chosen, and Righteous Scourge of the Damned; Love Everlasting, Mercy Unknown and Wrath of the Lord.

She sank to her knees as if a weight had settled on her shoulders, bending forwards to present the nape of her neck. Even if she shut her eyes, Light was all around, cleansing her soul. She rejoiced in the Light that was Love transformed. She’d been unsteady, fearful that the Light would be too much for her poor flesh, but, in a calming instant, the cares of her body were washed away and she lost all sense of frailty, standing as if floating, the flame of her heart kindled for ever.

Forcing her eyes open and her head up, Jenny saw the Light was a solid thing, shaped around Beloved like a high-backed armchair. There was a rainbow about the throne, the Light split into its elements, then sucked into a mass that was at once black and white, all colours and no colour. Beloved floated above the seat, on invisible cushions. He settled, body blending with the Light. Unconsuming fire burned around Him. The Light, as pure and delighting as an angel’s kiss, didn’t hurt her eyes. Jenny was at the point of rapture.

Hazel was in Beloved’s bed, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, sheets wrinkled over her. She’d become as a little child, Jenny knew. It was her duty to help Hazel through the battle to come, to help the Sister-Love stand by the Lamb.

A thundercrack sounded, and the wall beside Beloved’s bed exploded out, bricks showering into the room beyond. Behind Jenny, the door was hurled off its hinges and over the landing banister, falling four storeys. The doorjamb splintered and burst, tearing chunks of wall with it. The ceiling went concave, beams bending, roof above lifting. Sunlight lanced in through gaps in the tiles and rents in the ceiling, drawn to focal points within the throne’s back, making a halo around Beloved’s head.

Others ventured into Beloved’s rooms. Mick, Marie-Laure, Janet, Kate. All were driven to their knees, crawling forwards to worship. No one spoke, but there was music—trumpets and a choir—coming from nowhere, from Beloved, from everywhere at once. It was like nothing earthly, the music of Paradise. Behind Beloved, a section of the exterior wall dissolved like ice in the sun, and Jenny saw tree branches, blue skies, a white curl of cloud. Sun flooded the room, and was sucked into the Light. Beloved’s halo grew, pulsing like a living thing.

Marie-Laure threw herself forwards, at Beloved’s feet, and babbled in delirium, kissing the throne, face disappearing into Light. Mick sagged against Jenny, eyes staring, lips drawn back over his teeth, heart bursting. Janet kept repeating, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’ Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle, Jenny remembered.

On the floor, seven flames jetted up like geysers from Aladdin lamps in the pattern of the Plough. Most of the walls were gone now, the Chosen crowded into the space, those on the landing pressing close. Beams were broken, but the roof, if it fell, fell outwards. Beloved kept the debris from crushing the Chosen, casting it aside harmlessly. Electrical wires stretched in the wreck of the ceiling, and the shaded lightbulb burst. The whole mess was thrown out through the gap in the roof, clattering out of sight.

The trumpets sounded, a call to arms. Mick was jolted by Light, and fell, face up, before Jenny. Face red and swollen with blood, rips in his cheeks and around his eyes, he was gone, transported from his body. Just empty meat, he was consumed by Light, the seven flames bursting from his body, every scrap of his flesh gone in an instant.

‘Alleiluya,’ Jenny whispered.

The floor beneath was as glass. She saw into its depths, where fires were trapped. As the joys of Heaven grew near for the Chosen, so did the torments of the Pit for everyone else. Jesus H. Christ had been kindly, sorrowful for those who wouldn’t accept His sacrifice, who wouldn’t be redeemed by His Love. They had forged a sword which would be turned upon them. Multitudes would be tormented for ever. The day she first met Jesus, she’d been with Teddy and Terry. They’d burn, tender-heart Teddy as much as tearaway Terry. They had not come to Beloved. She couldn’t, even now, envision the damnation of all the world save the Brethren, so she fixed on the Gilpin brothers as the emblematic damned. If she could understand their failure, she could appreciate that of all, the great and the good, the meagre and the monstrous.

At the corners of the throne, shapes formed. A lion, a calf, a man’s face, a bird. The creatures worshipped Beloved, singing. The Brethren, schooled in their parts, joined. ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, is, is to come…’

The creatures were part of the Light, concentrations of it, taking shape inside the throne, honouring the Beloved. Beloved’s face was human, eyes still alive within the balls of flame that filled His sockets. He smiled serenely, humbly proud of His servants. For an instant, His face was a lamb’s, seven horns starting from His brows, seven eyes crowding His face. Then He was His human self again, and His Love poured forth.

Marie-Laure was pulled into the Light, vanishing foot by foot into the throne, creatures batting at her with wings. She curled up like a foetus and shrank, Light swirling thick around her. In the heart of the throne, she combined with the creatures of Light. Then she too was gone.

Hazel, innocuously naked, was huddled on the bed, sheet around her, looking on without comprehension, the child who would lead them all.

Jenny stood up and, voice shaking, recited, ‘Thou art worthy to receive glory and honour and power.’

Beloved’s smile broke into a grin, and Light exploded, swelling to encompass all the Chosen.

I
nstantly, eye-abusing light flash was followed by ear-punishing boom. Paul’s first thought was nuclear. Helicopters had dropped something by the festival site that could easily have been a bomb. Blinking furiously, hands over ringing ears, tooth shocking his jaw, Paul realized at once he was wrong. No blast came to flatten him to the ground, no wave of atomic fire to turn him to spray-paint. His eyes hadn’t been melted in his skull, and the boom’s echoes diminished, leaving him shaken but not irradiated. The ground had heaved, but he hadn’t even been thrown off his feet. The pub sign thumped to the ground, the Valiant Soldier falling face down.

Paul saw the Agapemone, surrounded by people who swarmed like Lourdes pilgrims to the shrine, or sacrifices to the furnace in Moloch’s mouth. The explosion had come from the big house, and Paul, shading still-blotchy eyes, looked to see where the damage was. One corner of the building, a tower, was the flashpoint, but it hadn’t been an ordinary explosion. Inside the tower, a blob of light was expanding, pushing out through holes in the walls and roof, sending white searchlights into the blue sky. The blot on reality burned brighter than the sun. Sections of the walls and roof had been displaced, but they weren’t falling to the ground. They hung in the air as if the explosion were a video image on frame-advance, edging away from the building in tiny jumps. The light inside was different again, a cluster of intertwined glowing clouds, growing organically like a germ culture. As the light expanded faster than the slow explosion, chunks of tile and brick were absorbed, lost inside the blobby glow. The light was unlike any he’d ever seen, as if an expanse of emulsion had been melted off the three-dimensional photograph that was the universe.

All around, people were hypnotized. A girl nearby took off her dark glasses and dropped them, the better to stare. Paul bit down on his tooth, jolting himself with the clarity of pain, and scooped up the shades, straining the arm-hinges in cramming them around his head. The Polaroid lenses damped the glare, but everything was still harshly floodlit. Paul turned away, realizing many were intent on looking until their eyes bubbled down their cheeks. The dead tree that was the central point of Alder grew burn patches on its dry bark, ready to explode into a million darts of burning wooden shrapnel. The village was ready to become three square miles of flame.