Ritual (44 page)

It’s very
peaceful here, very secluded. Our Lord will be mightily pleased.’

‘Mightily,
huh?’ said Robyn sarcastically. M. Musette ignored her.

They walked
along the corridor to the first door. M. Musette knocked, and said ‘C’est mot,
madame!’

They waited for
a while, and then the door was opened. It was Mrs Foss, from the Iron Kettle.

She was wearing
a beige two-piece suit, with a pleated skirt. She looked at Charlie in
bewilderment; but then her face suddenly broke into a smile.

‘You earner she
exclaimed. ‘You actually came! Harriet bet me twenty dollars that you
wouldn’t.’

Charlie looked
back at her, stunned. ‘Mrs Foss? I thought you hated the Celestines.’

‘Oh, come on
now, how could anybody hate the Celestines, when they’re bringing back Lord
Jesus Christ? You didn’t take me seriously, did you? You knew about Ivy going
missing?

Ivy was a
Devotee, and I’m a Guide. Ivy’s one of the thousand thousand – and you, you
lucky man – your son’s going to be the onel
The
thousandth thousandth!’

Charlie said, ‘
You
inveigled me into it, didn’t you, Mrs Foss?’

‘Oh, come on
now – inveigled?’

Charlie was
furious. ‘You trapped me, you caught me, and worst of all,
you
caught Martin. You were a Celestine and Harriet was a Celestine, and you knew
how close you were getting to the thousandth thousandth. Did the Musettes give
you some kind of reward for kidnapping my son?

Huh?
Money, stocks, something like that?’

‘Your son
wanted to join us,’ said M. Musette calmly.

‘My son didn’t
know anything about you until that dwarf of yours persuaded him to go to
Le Reposoir
. You know that and I know
that, so don’t you give me any bullshit about him wanting to join you. He was
kidnapped, and then he was brainwashed.’

M. Musette
shrugged.
‘If you say so,
monsieur
.’

‘You bet I damn
well say so. In fact, I want to see him now.’

M. Musette
clapped his hands in genial impatience.
‘All in good time, Mr
McLean!
Give your son a chance to pray and meditate! Give him a chance
to realize his own private destiny!’

‘Let me tell
you something,’ Charlie warned him. ‘My son’s destiny is to grow up, and
mature, and then grow old, with a wife and a family and a house wherever he
wants it – that’s what my son’s destiny happens to be. My son’s destiny is
certainly not connected with chopping off parts of his body and eating them.
Now – do you have that straight?’

M. Musette
turned away. ‘I thought you would understand, Mr McLean. I really believed that
you would understand.’

‘I understand
everything,’ Charlie replied. ‘I understand everything perfectly.’

‘Then come
along,’ said M. Musette, and guided Charlie to the next room. He knocked, and
the door was opened by Mr Haxalt, from the First Litchfield Savings Bank. He
was wearing a bathrobe, and his silver hair was wet and spiky. ‘Yes?’ he asked;
but when he saw Charlie and M. Musette together, he stepped back, confused.

‘Mr Haxalt is
one of our staunchest supporters, aren’t you, Walter?’ M. Musette enthused.

‘I do my best,’
said Walter Haxalt guardedly.

Charlie said,
‘You know something, Mr Haxalt? I’m glad I took your parking place. I should’ve
stayed there all day.’

M. Musette
laughed. ‘Mr McLean is a little upset,’ he told Walter Haxalt. ‘He’ll get over
it, mark my words.’

He guided
Charlie to the next room. There, sitting on the bed, dusting his feet with
athlete’s foot
powder,
was Christopher Prescott, one
of the old men from the green at Alien’s Corners. ‘Why, you made it!’ he
exclaimed. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Where’s your
friend?’ Charlie asked him.

‘My friend?
Oh, you mean Oliver Burack. Oliver T. Burack. He
doesn’t know anything about all this. Better that he doesn’t. He’s back at
Alien’s Corners, where he should be. He thinks I’ve gone to see my sister in
Tampa. Little does he know, hey?’

‘That’s right,’
said Charlie, his voice flat. ‘Little does he
know.
’

A large room at
the end of the block had been converted into a television lounge, and there
Charlie saw several more faces from Alien’s Corners. Clive, the deputy sheriff
who had first approached him when he arrived there, gave him a shy,
acknowledging wave. Then there was the woman who served behind the delicatessen
counter at Alien’s Corners supermarket. All of them were smiling, all of them
were happy. You would have thought they had come for a weekend vacation, rather
than a religious bloodbath.

‘Where’s my
son?’ asked Charlie.

M. Musette laid
his arm across Charlie’s shoulders. Charlie didn’t attempt to lever it away.
‘He’s a very special boy, your son. We’re keeping him someplace special.’

They left the
accommodation block and walked along a shadowy avenue of pecan trees, until
they reached a small breezeblock building surrounded by a low whitewashed wall.
A young man with the oval, pimply face of a halfwit was sitting on a chair
outside the door, reading a Super Friends comic. As M. Musette approached, he
stumbled up off his chair and let out a hoot of enthusiastic welcome.

M. Musette
ruffled the boy’s awkwardly cropped hair. ‘Ben has his uses, don’t you, Ben? If
I tell Ben that nobody gets in or out of here, excepting me and my wife, then I
know that nobody is going to get in or out of here.’

He produced a
key from his robes and started to unlock the building’s green-painted door.

Robyn said,
‘All those people back at the accommodation block – did they actually conspire
to lead Charlie to the Celestines?’

M. Musette
raised one eyebrow. ‘‘Conspire is a very media kind of a word, my dear lady.
But you could say that once young Martin had been observed by Mrs Foss, there
was a certain concerted community effort to induce Mr McLean to come into the
fold. It is not often that you find a boy of the right age travelling alone
with his father, as Mr McLean was.
Especially when the time
of the thousandth thousandth is imminent.’

‘You mean
everybody at Alien’s Corners knew?
said
Charlie.

‘Most of them,’
replied M. Musette. ‘They knew, and they rejoiced. There were, of course, one
or two exceptions, like Mrs – what was her name now?’

‘Kemp,’ Charlie
told him. ‘That woman you told your dwarf to hack to bits.’

M. Musette
tutted. ‘She was being very obstreperous. But come on in. Your son is here,
he’s waiting for you.’

M. Musette
opened the door and led the way into the building. There was only one room,
with one corner of it partitioned off as a shower and toilet. The walls were
white, the floor was scrubbed oak blocks. Against the far wall, there was a
hospital-style bed, covered with a white sheet. Martin was lying on the bed, wearing
a simple white habit. His head had been shaved, and he looked waxy-pale, with
circles around his eyes that could have been stained with beetroot juice.

‘Martin,’
whispered Charlie, and stepped forward with his hands held out.

‘Dad,’ said
Martin, and managed the faintest hint of a smile.

Charlie sat on
the bed and took Martin in his arms and held him close. Martin.felt different,
thinner,
and he smelled of the same herbs which permeated
all of the Celestine buildings.
Fennel,
and something else
unidentifiable, something bitter.

‘Are you all
right?’ Charlie asked him quietly. ‘They haven’t hurt you?’

‘No, Dad, I’m
fine. I’m really fine.’

‘Have they been
feeding you properly? They haven’t interfered with you, anything like that?’

Martin prised
himself free from Charlie’s embrace. ‘You mean sexually?’

‘I mean in any
way at all.’

Martin looked
towards the doorway where Mme Musette was standing with her arms folded, the
ice queen in silky white. ‘They’ve been treating me good, Dad. They brought me
down here in a private plane. It was neat.’

‘You don’t know
how good it is to see you,’ said Charlie. He was so choked up with emotion that
he could scarcely speak. His eyes were filled up with tears. Martin touched his
shoulder, and said, ‘It’s good to see you, too, Dad. It really is.’

Charlie cleared
his throat. ‘You know why you’re here, don’t you? You know what they’re
planning to do?’

‘I’m all
prepared for it. I’ve been praying and fasting and now I’m all ready.
Tomorrow’s going to be fantastic.’

‘Martin, if
these people have their way, tomorrow you’re going to die.’

Martin smiled
again, a little dreamily. ‘Am I supposed to be afraid of dying? Is that it?’

‘Martin,
they’re going to kill you. Don’t you understand? They’re going to kill you, and
that’s going to be the end of your life, period.
No life
hereafter, nothing.’

Martin shook
his head. ‘Tomorrow I’m going to do something for which most people would give
their lives ten times over. That’s what Edouard says. Tomorrow I’m going to
become part of the living saviour. Tomorrow I’m going to be part of our Lord
Jesus Christ.’

Charlie was
shaking. He gripped hold of Martin’s hands, and said, ‘I’m begging you, Martin.
I’ve never begged you for anything before. But I’m begging you
now,
please don’t let them do this to you. Give yourself
some time, think it over,
then
decide.’

‘It has to be
tomorrow,’ said Martin. ‘Tomorrow is the day.’

‘Martin,’ said
Charlie, ‘if I mean anything to you at all, please
think
this over.’

Martin wrapped
his arms around Charlie’s neck, and pressed his forehead against Charlie’s
forehead. ‘Dad, you don’t seem to understand at all. I love you. You’re my
father. If you hadn’t given birth to me, I never would have been able to serve
Jesus this way. Don’t you know how proud and grateful that makes me?’

Under his
breath, Charlie said, ‘You won’t be serving Jesus, Martin. Maybe you won’t be
serving anybody at all, except those Celestine yo-yos. It’s even possible that
you’ll be serving the Devil.’

Martin stared
at him, their eyes only inches away from each other. ‘The Devil?’ he whispered.

‘What do you
mean?’

‘I mean that
this ritual tomorrow, this Last Supper, it could have completely the opposite
effect to what you believe. Instead of bringing down our Lord and Saviour from
heaven above, it could raise the Devil himself from out of hell.’

Slowly, very
slowly, Martin began to smile again. ‘The Devil,’ he repeated.
‘From out of hell?’

Christ, thought
Charlie, Tve gotten through, fve actually made an impression on him. Maybe now
he’s going to turn around and start doubting what the Celestines have been
telling him.

Maybe now, at
last, he’s going to set himself free.

Martin smiled
even more broadly. I’ve done it, thought Charlie, fve done
it,
I’ve done it, Fve done it!

Then Martin
began to laugh. He threw back his head and laughed and
laughed,
a weird high-pitched laugh of total mockery. He grasped his bare feet and
rocked from side to side, looking, with his shaved head, like some hilarious
young Buddha.

‘The Devil!’ he
gasped. ‘You really believe that we’re going to raise the Devil!’

‘It’s a
possibility,’ Charlie snapped. ‘You only have to read the Celestine Bible. It’s
a mixture of voodoo and Roman Catholicism and cannibalism and all kinds of
ridiculous mumbo-jumbo.

Martin – a million
people have died for this moment, over the years.
Men, women,
and children.
A million people have died in agony, for the sake of some
twisted superstition. It’s practically genocide, this so-called religion. Do
you seriously think that Jesus would have condoned genocide?’

Martin stopped
laughing, and stared at his father with distant, lambent eyes. ‘Jesus said,
“Take, eat, this is
My
body. Drink... for this is
My
blood of the new testament, shed for many, to the
remission of sins.’“

Mme Musette
came forward, stood beside the bed, and laid her gloved hand on top of Martin’s
shaven head. Martin glanced up at her with a quick smile, like an obedient
pupil, or an adoring pet. Charlie got to his feet and looked down at Martin and
couldn’t think what else to say.

‘There is one
thing more,’ Mme Musette told him. ‘When your son goes to the altar tomorrow,
it is you who must willingly give him as a sacrifice.’

Charlie stared
at her. ‘You expect me to offer up my own son;”

‘It is his
destiny, Mr McLean. You cannot deny him his destiny.’

‘I can and I
will. You must be cracked.

M. Musette
said, ‘It is necessary for the completion of the ritual. The father must
willingly sacrifice his son. Do you remember what God said to Abraham when he
offered to sacrifice Isaac?
“ You
have not withheld
your son, your only son, indeed will I greatly bless you.”‘

Charlie said,
‘I seem to remember that God spared Isaac’s life.’

‘In those days,
God had no need of it,’ M. Musette replied. ‘But now that His only Son has been
crucified, He requires such a sacrifice in order for Jesus to live on earth
once again.’

‘This is
complete bullshit,’ said Charlie. ‘If you don’t let me take Martin out of here
right now, I’m going to break your face.’

‘Dad!’
interrupted Martin.

Charlie turned
to him.

‘Dad,’ said
Martin, more quietly. ‘I’m not leaving. I’m staying here. I’m happy. This is
what I want.

Dad – this is
what I want more than anything else in the whole world.’