Jago (68 page)

Lightclouds broke above the crowd, raining down insubstantial but sticky gold spray-thread. Some were on their knees, praying and begging. Many were on their faces under the others, dying or dead. Paul slipped through, fighting where he had to. The crowd was thinning a little. He didn’t like to think of reasons for that. Finally, he was far enough back to be able to see the whole of the house. Inside, things were happening. James and Susan should have reached Jago. The upper quarter, where the roofs and gables had been, was swelling like a dome. There was quite a congregation inside the bubble. Paul assumed that was where Jago was.

There was a human shape up there, feet up, head dangling. From the hands and torso, red squirted into the gold, staining the Light. Red grew around the hanged man, filling mortar cracks that had been invisible. It was James Lytton, a burning sign on his forehead, the 666 of the Anti-Christ. Upside down, it was a 999 distress call. That was what you got for defying the Lord God. The body was tossed out of the light. Arms still stretched, James’s corpse seemed to swan-dive into the crowd. He landed nearby, and Paul had to struggle to avoid the knot that immediately gathered to kick and spit and rend and tear. Everyone made it clear how they felt about the dead man’s heresies.

The door hung open in the face of the Agapemone. The Green Man grew like a bushy shroud around it, faces in his bark, woman and children, eyes moving. The face of Maurice Maskell, set in an afro of leaves, was carved and stiff, fury knitting brown brows, mouth set in a grim crescent. A pile of the dead littered the stairs. The door itself, splintered and bent, was left over from the old world.

An elbow jammed into his mouth, and pain showed him the dark front of the house as it really was, windows broken and bloodied, corpses all around, mad people shrieking in the late afternoon, Maskell family clumped together in a pained embrace.

Light came back, the skies above starless black. Knowing only that he wanted to be near the centre at the end of it all, Paul sprinted towards the door. He hoped the Green Man was in a dormant phase. He was scrambling up the stairs, bodies rolling beneath his feet, when the branch wrapped around his neck.

* * *

Susan was in her own body, lying in a pool, confused and wet. Falling into the Pit, she had fastened on something stretched out in the dark, and found herself in another body, another place, another time. The details were jarred and bewildering, fading as fast as dreams dreamed the instant before waking. She remembered silk against her unfamiliarly ample bosom, heavy hair on her shoulders, tickling feathers around her throat. And two faces; the man, asking questions that baffled and distracted her; the woman, telling her what she must do, what must be done. Irena, Edwin, Catriona. The other place had been uncertain, the people fearful, but there had been a serenity, a calm sense of balance. That was how the world had been before there was an Anthony William Jago in it.

James was dead. And she was thrown aside, left for dead. Jago was working up to the destruction of the world and the creation of an exclusive Heaven for all who followed him.

It must be stopped.

Angry, mentacles stretching out to hold and hurt, she sat up, wet hair trailing down her neck like a ducked witch’s, heart thumping like a cannon, defiant shout escaping from her throat.

‘Jago!’ she shouted.

The man on the throne turned to look at her. For a moment, she had his attention.

* * *

Jeremy was uncomfortable so close to Daddy, bound to him by gummy strips of bark, not able to move by himself. Hannah was the same way, fixed to Daddy’s other leg. And Mummy was near. Even Jethro was twisted in a basket fixed to Daddy’s back. Paul, the man who’d tried to help, was being pulled into the Daddy Tree, creepers and vines twining around him. Daddy was going to hurt Paul. Jeremy felt a thrill in Daddy’s quirt and recognized it as the way Daddy felt before he hurt someone. It was funny, feeling what Daddy felt. Jeremy had feelings he couldn’t understand, didn’t know what to do with. Daddy had been right. Becoming part of the family made him stronger. Muscles in his arms and legs growing wood-hard. Daddy looped a branch around Paul’s arm and pulled as if wrenching a wing off a roast turkey. Jeremy didn’t want to let Daddy hurt Paul.

* * *

The Whore of Babylon had crawled back from the Pit, unconsumed by the lake of fire. This gave Jenny pause. It wasn’t in the prophecies. The Whore stood up, foul in her defiance, summoning the demons of the Pit for one last assault on the Citadel of the Beloved. Apollyon, the demon queen who served ultimate good, strode to face the Whore, but was knocked away from the unclean woman by an unseen force.

‘Take that, bitch,’ the Whore swore.

Apollyon’s head twisted, hair waving Medusa-snakes around her. She screamed as the Whore forced herself into her head, tearing and scratching with her witch mind.

‘Beloved,’ Jenny said.

He stood, towering over His throne, and looked wrath at the Whore. The wanton, seized by the Beloved Glance, was paralysed, and Apollyon wriggled free. She wiped the spittle of her scream from her chin.

Beloved and the Whore faced each other. Jenny felt invisible forces clashing around them as the Divine and the Damned locked death grips. Gasping, the Whore broke the look-lock, turning her head aside, covering her eyes. The harlot was defeated. Utterly. Jenny chided herself for the momentary faltering of her faith. She found her voice. ‘And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison…’

* * *

His shoulder lurched out of joint. The more it hurt, the more Paul seemed in the grips of a maddened farmer, not a walking tree. But it didn’t matter. Real or not, the Green Man would kill him.

The pain stopped, and the Green Man stiffened. A shape had climbed Maskell’s trunk and fixed twiggy branches to his head, pulling and shaking.

Jeremy!

Paul slithered through the Green Man’s grip, and had to hold on to prevent himself from falling. Jeremy was wrapped around his father’s head, stopping up the bung-hole of his mouth. The boy’s branches twirled and wound tight about Maskell’s head, shoulders and arms. The vines parted, and Paul let himself drop, pushing away from the Green Man so he fell through the door, on to the welcome mat of the Agapemone. Shoving the floor with his feet, he sledged on the mat, away from the gaping doorway.

Maskell wasn’t fighting Jeremy off, because the Tree was coming apart. Sue-Clare Maskell’s head peeled away from her husband’s chest, face pink in the green. Paul slammed the door into its hole. The Green Man was too busy with his family to pursue him further. He was home, if not free. Before him, the staircase rose, a stepped spiral disappearing into the light. He began to climb towards Heaven.

* * *

Susan understood the torments of the Damned. She faced Jago, and it was worse than she could have imagined. The Lord God penetrated her mind as easily as she would crumble a fortune cookie, and sucked her whole being up in a single swallow, spitting it back out again into the cup of her skull. Physical pain was the least part of it.

She tried, but couldn’t get a mental purchase on Jago. It was like trying to hold the core of a nuclear reactor with bare hands. Jago knew all about her—about her Talent, about
IPSIT
, about her snake duties—and always had. He had never bothered with her. There had been no reason to. Like James, she was never any real threat. They hadn’t even irritated him enough before now to be worth the trouble of swatting.

Allison came close, and slapped her cheek. The palm blow was nothing compared to the pain inside her mind. Susan laughed at the petty hurt, and Allison hit her again, in the stomach, with a knuckle-knotted fist. She doubled over as a reflex.

‘Whore,’ Allison spat.

The Brethren called her names. Whore, harlot, wanton, slut, unclean, filth, shit, dirt, cunt. That didn’t hurt either.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

Great,
Allison thought back at her,
we’ll use sticks and stones.

She fell down, and faces loomed. Jenny and Allison.

‘We fixed your lover,’ Jenny said, righteous but spiteful. Susan realized she meant James. ‘We crucified the Anti-Christ. Upside down.’

That hurt, but only a little.

‘Goodbye, Jenny,’ Susan said.

The angry saint was struck by her own name. For a moment, Susan saw the girl she had known these last months. Pretty, smart, lost.

‘I forgive you.’

Jenny looked the other way, and Allison spat again. She had sticks in one hand, and stones in the other.

* * *

As he climbed, the stairs became less earthly. Patched carpet gave way to levels of light. Stained banisters became marbled curves. The air was thinner here, suggesting that angels conversed with helium-strangled voices. The Manor House was still the base, but the construction was mainly candyfloss fantasy. Paul’s anger died, fear bubbling in the back of his throat. The noise of the outside dimmed. The faint chinking that accompanied his upward steps was, he realized, the box of drawing pins in his pocket.

* * *

His brother was on his chest. Terry dipped his snout and clamped jaws around his neck. Teddy waited for teeth to sink in, to tear his windpipe loose, to puncture his arteries. Terry snuffled and took his snout away, leaving warm wet on Teddy’s neck. Terry licked his brother’s face with scary affection, eyes shining like Allison’s.

Teddy wondered how long Terry’s good mood would last. They were occasional, and never stayed long. His brother’s weight shifted, and he was able to sit. He experimentally slipped his fingers into the fur of Terry’s neck, and scratched in the way their dog used to like when he was alive. Doug Dog, Teddy called him, which always struck even Terry as comical, although their parents never saw why it was funny.

Terry grinned, showing white teeth and red gums.

As little kids, Teddy and Terry had pretended Doug Dog had his own cartoon series on television. In a funny American accent, Teddy would announce, ‘Gilpin Productions Ink Preeeeesents…
The Adventures of DOUUUUG DOGGG!…
in Superhypermegadoggovision with Stereoscopic Doggy Farts… Innnn
Collar…
Tonight’s Episode,
Bone Free…
Guest Starring Woof Barking, Pete Pinscher and A1 Satian…’

Terry growled when Teddy’s scratching slowed, and snapped at the air. This could not last.

‘Down, Doug,’ he tried, and Terry’s tongue lolled again, steam coming out of his mouth. Teddy kept scratching.

* * *

On one landing, Paul found Brother Derek, face painted in psychedelic stripes, crying and hugging something.

‘Wendy,’ he said, over and over. ‘Wendy, Wendy, Wendy…’

Paul saw the dead Sister’s calm face, and realized it was attached to the black-and-red rag bundle Derek was clinging to. She’d been flayed from neck to waist. The blood had clotted, but she was still leaking.

Derek had found her in a room, and dragged her to the landing. There was a rust-red trail to mark her path.

‘She’s dead,’ he said, gingerly touching Derek’s shoulder.

The Brother whirled, and rounded on him.

‘I know that,’ he mewled, hurt. ‘I’m not mad. But Wendy isn’t supposed to be dead. None of the Chosen are supposed to die. We’re supposed to be judged, every man and woman, according to our works.’

It was impossible that Wendy be judged and found wanting.

‘She was a saint. She passed her life atoning.’

Wendy was an empty thing, no longer interested. Derek rocked her.

‘This isn’t supposed to happen,’ he said. ‘Not to Wendy.’

‘Not to anyone,’ Paul agreed.

He left them, aching legs carrying him up more steps. He must be near Jago’s Paradise now. He was sure he’d covered Clouds One through Eight.

* * *

Allison hit the woman, trying to prevent her escape into senselessness. It was important she be aware of what was done to her. With the Anti-Christ, it had been over too soon. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. The Whore of Babylon would suffer all the torments. New torments crowded into her brain, whispered by the last of Badmouth Ben, and her hands were impatient to try them. There was time. As Apollyon, in the service of the Lord Jago, she’d have an eternity.

* * *

‘I saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of Heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.’

Hazel didn’t know where the words came from, but as she spoke, they were true. Spires shot up like skyrockets, cupolas expanded like mushrooms, glittering bridges and walkways spanned turrets and towers, bobbing aircars passed through glass and steel canyons, choirs and orchestras made music in many plazas, saints and angels strolled upon the mezzanines. There were shops, concert halls, schools, galleries, parks, gardens, statues, fountains, trees, ice-cream parlours, bandstands, showrooms, cinemas, discotheques, night clubs, zoos and pavement cafes.

‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,’ Beloved said, almost quietly, so only she could have heard, ‘and He will dwell with them…

‘His whisper filled the Heavens, and all the faithful heard. Hazel saw her handmaids, Jenny and Allison, on their knees, giving thanks. Even the outcast looked up with worship in her face, a last convert. Their praises rose and entwined around Beloved and His Sister-Love.

‘God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death. Neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.’

Slowly, they floated down towards the streets. All around, citizens were celebrating. It was carnival. Confetti blew on the warm breeze. Children laughed. Wild animals roamed among the people, letting themselves be petted. A little girl hugged a smiling tiger. A bear with a pink heart in his fur capered in baggy pants, to a tune played by a long-legged mountebank in a multicoloured coat. New Jerusalem bustled around them, market stalls open, musicians and dancers performing, potters and sculptors displaying their wares. Among the pots laid out on a long trestle, Hazel saw her own plate, with the face of the sorrowful woman, made whole again.