Kristin (7 page)

Desperate to purge the
effects of the siren thousands of pilgrims had descended upon the old town,
abandoning the inundated bathing rooms and
 
drinking wells of the grotto for the river Gave, whose icy
waters they hoped would be equally curative. Some bathed fully clothed, others
stripped to their underwear or swam naked.

The first to feel a change
in the river was an elderly local woman, Jeanne Beauvois, who at five o’clock
that morning had senselessly bludgeoned her twin sister, Mabelle, to death as
she slept, with a rusting iron rod from the back yard.

To somebody in Beauvois’s
state of mind it was barely noticeable at first — a rise in the freezing
temperature of the water, vapour rising into the air, a feint, caustic tingle.
The next thing she knew her melted swimsuit, skin and hair were floating away
from her and she was quite blind. Around her, people thrashed, burning, dying.

Quickly, she tried to make
her peace with Mabelle’s spirit, and with God, before dissolving into the river
of acid.

‘What have you done?’
Meyrick cried.

‘The holy waters are no
more,’ it slavered. ‘I have replaced them with oil of vitriol!’

‘
Oil of vitriol
?’

‘Sulphuric acid, shithead!’

Meyrick felt himself
falling backwards into hell.

Intolerable pain stabbed at
Thom’s hands and feet, around his head, and inside Kristin’s body the Beast
reeled, unable to account for its sudden weakness.

Instinct told Meyrick to
run, just as Mother Superior Mary Clayton had ran to him. It told him to
abandon his responsibility as a servant of God, to leave the tormented young
woman to her fate. But he could not. He stepped towards her and she showered
him with spittle from her elevated position,
 
compressed against the junction of the wall and the high
ceiling.

‘I expel you, primal source
of blasphemy ... !’

‘Va te faire foutre!’

‘Fear and flee, run, leave,
unclean and accursed spirit ...!’

‘Mangez sa merde!’
Malodorous sputum dripped from her dangling, black locks onto his face, his
lips, making him want to retch. He reached out, held her ankle, trying to pull
her down but a hot, heavy force pushed against his chest, forcing him
backwards. Thom grabbed at his cassock but the momentum continued, carrying him
out onto the landing. Something seemed to
  
kick him between his shoulder blades and he cried out
as the stairs became a slow moving swirl of light and shade.

The impact of the hard,
bare timber of the tenth step with the brittle bone of the first thoracic
vertebra in his spine rendered him instantly quadriplegic. It didn’t really
matter, Meyrick knew he wouldn’t survive such a fall, not at his age. But he
could still think; he could never have drawn out the abomination, it was too
strong, too ingrained within her. It wasn’t just an agent of the devil.
It was the devil
!

He continued to fall: How
he would miss the love of his dear wife, the friendship of his children, the
laughter of his grandchildren. He prayed that theirs would be a world still
worth living in.

The edge of the seventeenth
step met the back of his skull with a crack.
  
His mouth filled with blood and darkness engulfed him.

Thom descended the stairs
slowly, sat on the penultimate step and lifted Meyrick’s head. His eyes were
wide open but bore no sign of life. He gazed up the narrow staircase and saw
her apparition materialize on the landing, illuminated by the hard, cross-light
from the bathroom. An icy cloud rose from the front door lock.

‘Now thou knowest,
my love
, what
happened to thy precious, fucking crucifix!’ it spat, scornfully, mimicking her.

‘Kristin ... you’re
stronger than this scum!’

‘So much shit ... there is
no force in the universe stronger than me!’

‘But she’s kept you under
control all her life, limited your mastery of her soul.’

It made her bowels open and
the foul smell spread quickly. ‘She has offered some resistance, but her life
has been brief, she has only just been born
.
As her purpose becomes clear to her, her objective
closer, so my dominion over her spirit grows. Soon she will cease to exist and
I will live within the shell of her temporal body.’

He started up the stairs
towards her. ‘
Never.
’

She vomited a thick
substance onto the floor. ‘Thou shalt not oppose me! Thou canst not stand
against the desire I have instilled within the souls and minds of each fucker
on this Earth, the need to inflict as much pain and misery as possible, a
hunger so pure, one that I shall nurture over centuries to come.’

He stepped onto the reeking
landing. ‘I’ll find a way.’

‘FUCKER!’

It tried to corrupt his mind,
to destroy his soul, strike him down.

‘You can’t get inside my
head, hurt me, kill me. Kristin’s love for me,
  
her human passion, is greater than your malice.’

‘
Her
love
? The bitch slaughtered thy friend.’

‘No, you did, and God knows
I’ll make you pay for it.’

‘
God?
God will not help thee. God has
forsaken thee all. The righteous have none to guide them now, none but me, and
I will slowly suck them dry of morality, eat them up and shit them back out.’

‘You will not win. Humanity
will retain its faith, its integrity.’

The sullen face leered at
him from the shadows and ejected a glob of saliva into his face. Then she flew
at him, her mouth gaping, and fused her lips to
 
his. Her sour, caustic spittle met the taste buds of his
tongue as hers washed it into his mouth, flicking in burning, erotic circles.
Then she pulled away with a violent jerk. ‘Hold me, Thom!’ she pleaded. ‘Hold
me tight! ...
Insolent
fuckbitch
,
slap her
,
how dare she defy me
!’ She felt the mess on her legs, under her naked feet,
and felt nauseous. ‘I’ll wash, I’m going to wash ...
Thou art
 
indelibly stained by my
animus
! ... Make love to me, Thom, make
love to me now, my love ...
Ficken sie
,
sie bedeutet
!
Fuck her in her arse! Fuck her good and hard
,
draw the harlot
’
s
blood
!
Fuck her
!
Fuck her
!
Fuck her
!
... LEAVE ... ME … ALONE!’

A wolfen howl mutated into
a scream and she passed from the conscious world.

Twelve

Reverend Terence Lowrie stepped up into the pulpit
of St Vincent-in-the-Field Church, Battersea, and surveyed his meagre Sunday
morning congregation solemnly, searching for those who were no longer welcome
in the house of God.

‘Our situation this day is
so very grave, I will begin the service with a short prayer,’ he said.

But not everyone present
bowed their heads.

‘Lord, please give us
strength in these darkest of days, that we might resist the evil in our midst,
seek it out and banish it from this world. Amen.

‘I would like to read now
from the Book of Revelation, chapter fourteen, verses nine to ten.’

‘
If anyone worships the Beast and

his image
,
and receives his mark

on his forehead or on his hand
,

he himself shall also drink of the

wine of the wrath of God
,
which is

poured out full strength into the

cup of his indignation. He shall
be

tormented with fire and brimstone

in the presence of the holy angels

and in the presence of the lamb.
’

‘All of you here, all of God’s children,
should study this prophecy and be
 
sure
in your hearts that you have no association with ... ’

A vociferous altercation
started at the front of the gathering and he paused, uncharacteristically
angry, scanning the assembly again.

‘ ... Be sure in your
hearts that you have no association with the Beast that now walks among us. We
shall now sing Won by Dying Love.’

While sleeping careless on the

Brink
of an eternal woe
,

I felt the touch of Jesus’s love
,

And
,
oh
,
it charmed me
so.

I
hear thy voice in tender love

So
sweetly calling me
;

Thy dying love has won my heart
,

I yield
,
O
Lord
,
to
thee.

I
wake with horror from the spell

Of
Satan
’
s dread control
;

My sins were sinking me to hell
,

Oh
,
Jesus
,
save my soul
!

I
know my sins have pierced thy

Heart
oh
,
Jesus crucified
;

And now thy love is breaking

Mine
,
I bow to him who
died.

How dark my prison house of sin
,

Entombed in misery;

But Jesus
’
s
love is shining in
,

Sweet rays of hope to me.

Shall
I with heaven
’
s offer blest

Lie bound in sin
’
s
domain?

No
,
I
will enter Jesus
’
s rest
,

And
,
crowned
,
a
conquerer reign.

‘In these times we find ourselves caught up
in a universal battle of apocalyptic proportions. Indeed, we face the dual
spectre of extermination by the weapons created by man’s own hand, and eternal
damnation from the evil forced upon us by the devil incarnate. We must pray to
God ... ’

‘Fuck God!’ shouted a young
woman, pitching a bottle at him that smashed against the pulpit.

‘Who has perpetrated this
terrible sin in the house of God?’ he demanded to know. ‘Who was it?’

‘He’s deceived us all!’
exclaimed a man in a forward pew.

The reverend narrowed his
gaze. ‘Leave this house, and never return.’

Rain began to fall in a
noisy torrent onto the slate roof slates, drowning his voice, as William
Tyndall, a lifelong member of the congregation, pulled himself up with his
stick. ‘Jesus Christ is an impostor, he is not the true child of God!’ he
proclaimed. ‘There is another!’

Lowrie felt his blood begin
to boil. ‘You will also leave this assembly, and may God forgive you for this
blasphemy!’

The old man shuffled toward
the exit and then turned, brandishing his stick,
 
‘You will learn soon, all of you! Fuck you, Reverend Lowrie,
fuck you!’

Lowrie watched as the
conduct of people he’d known for a decade degenerated rapidly. Ardent
disagreements broke out between rival parties on opposite sides of the nave.
Fists flew. When his pleas for order were ignored he climbed down and, quite
contrary to his nature, began pushing people towards the doors.

After he’d expelled the
last of them he stepped out into the downpour and locked the doors, his hands
shaking badly. But as he turned to leave he was struck violently across the
base of the skull and fell to the sodden ground. A hard boot waded in to his
abdomen, another met his kidney and as the rain lashed his bloody face he heard
the laughter of his assailants.

The laughter continued. The
pounding blows persisted.

On the same morning another man of the
cloth, Reverend Colin Gilbreath, left his cottage and began the quarter-mile
walk to his parish church, St
  
Anne’s, near Banbury,Oxfordshire.

Sundays was always a quiet
day in the village — the church was often the busiest place, and although
he’d worked hard over the years to increase its number, the congregation seldom
totalled more than forty.

He passed Kendrick’s Farm,
turned left at the crossroads and made his way up the steep incline of Windmill
Hill. The bitterly cold, bright morning felt different to him:
something about
it wasn’t right
, and inside, Gilbreath dreaded the migration of the
sinister events from London.

At the top of the hill he
saw the first evidence that things were not as they should be. Bins had been
overturned, their contents emptied onto the normally tidy road. Large objects
glistened in the morning sun —
animal carcasses
. A pig’s head lay in the
gutter, and in the centre of the road the remainder of its body trickled the
creature’s blood downhill, where it ran around the soles of his shoes. The
remains of mutilated chickens littered the thoroughfare. He glanced into the
hedges on his right and balked —
a decapitated horse
! Foremost, he was a servant
of God. Secondly, he was a lover of
 
animals and he offered up a prayer of forgiveness for those guilty of
the heinous acts of butchery.

Gilbreath continued,
quickening his pace, and turned right onto Newgate Street. He opened the gate
to the public footpath through the fallow crop field, rounded the bend that
afforded the first view of St Anne’s and halted, dropping the slim, leather
case containing his sermon.
The church had been defaced — daubed with black paint
that all but
obscured the ancient
,
Norman brickwork
.

He left his his case in the
road and approached the disfigured place of worship. A stillness hung over the
building like a halo of death. No cars were parked outside, nobody waited,
there was no need, the large, oak doors were wide open. He passed beneath the
arch and whimpered, grabbing the wall —
St Anne
’
s Church had been desecrated beyond all
recognition.

Irreplaceable tapestries
lay shredded on the cold floor slabs. Mosaics had been hacked out of their
frames. The white marble figure of Christ had been smashed from its wooden
cross and lay in pieces at his feet. In the east transept rare triptychs had
been plastered with what looked, and smelled, like human faeces.

He shuffled up the nave.
The altar had been doused with red pigment. When he stood before the ceremonial
table he realized the awful truth —
the altar was awash with blood
! It dripped from
the corners of the white, silk altar cloth, collecting in the hollows of the
large flagstones. He rushed back down the nave, ducked into the pews and
vomited, then wandered outside in a daze. Rectangles of paper blew in swirls
around the headstones in the
 
small
graveyard.

Gilbreath pushed open the
gate and caught one: “
St Luke, 21, Destruction
 
of Jerusalem
”. He gathered each and every bible page and slipped
them into his jacket pocket. Then something else caught his eye. From the muddy
mound of an eighteenth century grave something glinted. He squatted and dug the
magnificent gold and silver altar cross out of the frosty turf. Gilbreath
gritted his teeth in fury and re-entered the church. He marched briskly back up
the nave and returned the cross to its rightful place. Then he turned, locked
the doors and left.

Reverend Colin Gilbreath
would not see St Anne’s Church again.

In Colchester, Essex, a well-dressed man in
his thirties mounted a frost-covered bench and bellowed for attention.

‘All of you, listen to me!
As we have known since the emitting of the siren there is an alternative to the
liar, God, and his bogus son, Jesus Christ!’

Two passers-by stopped.

‘One who doesn’t lie, or
deceive, one whose teachings are pure and true!’

More gathered.

‘We should worship her, do
her bidding! We should cheat, steal and lie in her name! We should rape,
murder!’

The impromptu oration
sparked the growing crowd into a frenzy. But two exceptions were a mother and
her young daughter, standing mournfully on the periphery of the crowd.

‘You know of whom I talk,
you’ve felt her hunger, her presence! And as our faith in her grows, so does
her power! Some have chosen to retain their belief in Christianity! We will
find them, convert them, or kill them!’

The horde screamed
deliriously as he unfurled a tapestry of Christ and set it ablaze with a petrol
lighter.

The speaker’s attention was
suddenly drawn to the motionless, weeping
 
women. He pointed at them. ‘For example, take this pair of Christian
slags!’ he jeered. ‘Look ... they still believe in their saviour, their Jesus!
We should teach
them a lesson
,
don’t you think
?’

His proposal met with howls
of approval, and the rabble turned on them like a pack of wild dogs. Their
clothes were torn from them and they were positioned facing each other in the
centre of the crowd.

The speaker stepped down
from the bench, pushed his way through the masses and grinned lecherously at
the daughter. He unzipped his trousers, moved between her slender, callow legs
and thrust feverishly to climax as her mother screamed for help. Then the mob
took over —
teaching
,
slashing
,
raping
,
murdering
.

From the windows
overlooking the street a cultured man noted the events unfolding below as he
sipped his brandy. Then he closed the book he was reading and went to get
something more interesting from the shelf.

The rising sun cast its light upon the
decaying walls of the run down apartment block midway up Rua Miguel Pereira.

On the twentieth floor,
Carlos Almeido awoke on his stomach. He sat up, stretched, and looked at the
fat woman beside him. He would let his wife, Juanita, catch up with her sleep.
It had been a long night, and both of them had drunk too much Merlot.

Unrest had been growing in
the city over the last few days. There was a sense of unease that Almeido had
never experienced before, and couldn’t explain. He’d listened to the radio
reports of course, watched the television, heard people talking about the
things that were happening in Europe, but
  
he didn’t believe any of it. And he was convinced that
the pictures of the carnage at Lourdes were nothing more than a sick hoax. But
when his brother, Ricardo, had turned up with his wife, Lucia, recounting
stories of beatings and murders at the waste disposal plant where he worked
they’d started drinking and hadn’t stopped until the small hours.

Brazil was experiencing the
coldest weather in recorded history, and it was with great reluctance that he
slid from the bed and padded barefoot to the tiny bathroom. He pulled the light
cord and prepared to do what he’d done more or less every day for the last
twenty-two years — drive a taxi around the busy streets of Rio de
Janeiro.

Almeido was a creature of
habit, and when he’d washed he followed his routine and crossed the sitting
room to open the tatty net curtains covering
  
the north-east facing window. Dazzling sunlight
flooded into the utilitarian apartment, making him squint, and he heard Juanita
groan.