Ritual (45 page)

Mme Musette
stroked Martin’s head once more. ‘You see, Charlie? He’s determined.’

‘I’m still
damned if I’m going to sacrifice him for you.’

‘Well, we’ll
see about that,’ replied M. Musette. ‘We do have ways of making people do what
we want. Not painful ways, mind you! We managed to bring you here simply by
making it difficult for you. I could see what an obstinate man you were, right
from the moment I first met you.

Tragedy and
failure usually make people grow obstinate.’

Charlie said
nothing. Robyn came up and took hold of his hand, and said, ‘Come on, Charlie,
let’s leave it for now. While there’s life there’s hope.’

‘You’re right,
my dear,’ said M. Musette. ‘And after death, there is glory.’

Reluctantly,
Charlie allowed himself to be led away. They visited the remaining eleven
disciples, who were housed in what used to be the farm’s feed store. All of
them were already mutilated, some of them severely. Dulled by disgust, Charlie
and Robyn were introduced to a seventeen-year-old girl without legs or breasts
or ears; a twenty-two-year-old boy who had amputated his entire body below the waist,
and who was being fed intravenously; and a stunningly good-looking woman of
twenty-seven, who had cut off and eaten her own feet. The building smelled
strongly of bile and antiseptic, and there were seven nurses and two doctors in
constant attendance, keeping these pathetic scraps of human meat alive and
conscious for one more day.

What Charlie
and Robyn found most disconcerting, however, was the cheerfulness of everybody
in the building, Devotees and staff alike. There was almost a carnival atmosphere,
and most of the disciples were singing hymns and spirituals and laughing as if
to cut
oneself
into pieces was the happiest privilege
they had ever been given.

Charlie stood
in front of the woman with no feet for a very long time, while she hummed

‘Michael, Row
The Boat Ashore’. After a while, he said, ‘Could I ask you your name?’

‘Of course,’
she said. ‘My name’s Janet. You’re Martin’s father, aren’t you? I saw you in
Connecticut.’

‘Janet,’ said
Charlie, ignoring her question. ‘Can you tell me why you’re doing this? Can you
explain to me what it is that has made you mutilate yourself this way?’

Janet’s eyes
were bright. ‘I’m giving myself to Jesus. What better reason could I have than
that?’

‘Do you have a
family?
Parents?
A husband?’

‘I’m married,
with two small children.
A boy and a girl.’

‘And don’t you
think your family needs you?’

‘Jesus needs me
more.’

Charlie talked
to two or three more disciples, but each time he found their devotion to the
Celestines impossible to penetrate. They were like gentle, loving lunatics, who
had discovered a dangerous but different reality, and could never be persuaded
that what they were doing was madness.

Outside the
disciples’ building, Robyn said to M. Musette, ‘They all believe in it, don’t
they? I mean, they all believe in it without one shadow of a doubt.’

‘They believe
in it because they know it to be true,’ M. Musette replied. ‘Besides, what else
does the world have to offer them?
Money, perhaps.
But not much more.
Everybody has to have spiritual goals, if
they’re going to be happy. If you give people a spiritual goal, their life is
transformed, and you can never persuade them to go back to the time when their
ambitions were circumscribed by material greed. Once you have felt Jesus’s
seamless robe brushing against your face while you sleep; once you have heard
Him murmur in your ear, you are won over for ever!’

‘I think
Sergeant Dupree put it all in a nutshell,’ said Charlie. ‘He said you were a
fruitcake.’

M. Musette
smiled. ‘Sergeant Dupree has to do what he is told, by his superiors. As long
as he does what he is told, he can think whatever he likes.’

Now they walked
back across the farmyard towards the main building. ‘The last part of the
guided tour,’ announced M. Musette. ‘Then we must retire to meditate and to
pray, and to prepare everything for tomorrow.’

He led them
back into the corridor, and into the room where the trestle tables were all
laid out.

‘This way.’
He beckoned them, and he took them across the
room and along another shorter corridor. At the end of this corridor, to
Charlie’s deep alarm, there were two stainless steel doors, with circular
porthole windows.

‘The kitchen,’
he whispered.
‘The ritual kitchen.’

‘Yes,’ said Mme
Musette, who was right behind him ‘But why are you hanging back? The kitchen is
the most fascinating part of our tour.’

‘I don’t want
to go in there,’ said Charlie.

‘You must,’ M.
Musette told him. ‘How can you understand what is going to happen here tomorrow
unless you see the kitchen?’

‘I don’t want
to go in there, that’s all.’

Robyn took hold
of his hand. ‘Come on, Charlie, you’ll be all right.’

‘Yes, come on,
Charlie,’ M. Musette mimicked. ‘It’s only a kitchen, you know.’

‘I had a
nightmare about it,’ said Charlie. His legs refused to move forward.

‘We all have
nightmares,’ said M. Musette. ‘The only way to break their spell is to confront
them in reality.’

‘But I saw
those same doors in my dream, those same stainless steel doors with those
circular windows.’

M. Musette
shrugged. ‘In that case, you must have considerable powers of clairvoyance.
Come along now, you mustn’t miss this for anything.’

Charlie allowed
Robyn to drag him towards the kitchen doors. M. Musette deliberately heightened
the suspense by standing with his hands flat on the door, pausing before he
pushed them open. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked. ‘There will be no blood. We
haven’t started the ritual yet.”

He opened the
doors and marched ahead of them into the kitchen. Charlie and Robyn followed,
still holding hands, and Mme Musette came behind.

The kitchen was
almost fifty feet square. It was tiled in white, with a single green band
running around it, and it was artificially lit with fluorescent tubes hanging
from the ceiling. In the centre of the room, there were twelve tables with
stainless steel tops and gutters running all the way around them.

Charlie had
seen tables like that before, in Quincy, They were similar to the tables used
for autopsies, and the gutters allowed the bodily fluids to run off into the
drains.

At the far end of
the kitchen, there was a gas-fired range, large enough to serve a small hotel.

Hanging up over
the burners, there were rows of aluminium pots and pans, bains-maries, woks,
colanders, and ladles.

They walked
between the tables, their faces dully reflected in the stainless steel
surfaces, like people who had drowned under ice. Each table was equipped with a
full selection of Victorinox knives, butcher’s saws, and surgical scalpels.
There was also equipment for medical emergencies: oxygen, dressings, and electronic
resuscitators in case of cardiac arrest. Each table was also provided with a
large tilting mirror, so that the Devotees could see what they were doing while
they amputated their own limbs.

‘I feel sick,’
said Charlie, looking around. ‘This is even worse than my nightmare. This is
worse because it’s real.’

‘I’m amazed
that your Devotees can actually stand the shock and the pain of cutting off
their own arms and legs,’ Robyn remarked to M. Musette. Charlie thought, here
she goes again, once a newspaper reporter, always a newspaper reporter.

M. Musette
trailed his fingertips across the surface of one of the tables. ‘The human body
is a remarkable thing, Ms Harris. You may talk about worms being cut in half,
and still wriggling away. But you can cut a human body down to practically
nothing, you can cut a grown man down so small that you can carry him under
your arm like a dog, and still he survives! And, of course, each time a man is
reduced in size, his heart has less work to do, pumping blood around the length
and breadth of his circulatory system, so the body in actual fact grows
stronger and more capable of survival, right up until the very last coup. You
know, there was a sideshow freak called Prince Randian, born without arms and
legs. He lived until he was sixty-three, and fathered four children.’

‘But how do
they stand the pain?’ asked Robyn.

‘All pain is
relative,’ said M. Musette. ‘These Devotees are reaching for spiritual ecstasy,
they feel very little pain. Some of them revel in it.’

‘And what about
you?’ asked Charlie, looking at M. Musette keenly. ‘You’re supposed to be
transformed tomorrow, aren’t you? You’re supposed to turn into Jesus Christ.
Aren’t you frightened?’

M. Musette
turned to Mme Musette and gave her a smile. ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’
he said. ‘He is more than welcome to live inside of me.’

C
harlie couldn’t sleep at all that night. Apart from his fear of
what was going to happen in the morning, there was constant activity throughout
the church compound as the Celestines prepared themselves for the second
coming. Charlie heard shouting and laughing and hymn-singing, and at about two
o’clock in the morning, somebody started playing a guitar. He stood by the
darkened window of his room, watching the moon slowly slide across the sky. All
he could see was the row of pecan trees and the corner of the building where
Martin was being held. He tried reaching Martin by telepathy – by concentrating
all his thoughts into making Martin wake up and
realize
what he was going to do – but there was no response.

He sat on his
bed and bent his head forward and prayed. He hadn’t prayed like this since he
was a child, sitting next to his father at the Episcopalian Church on Sunday
mornings, smelling the pipe tobacco on his father’s suit, and staring down at
his polished brown shoes.

O Lord, save me
from this predicament. 0 Lord preserve my son. Whatever you want of me, you can
have it. Just don’t let Martin die.

The moon
vanished behind the pecans and soon the sky began to lighten. He had prayed
that time would stand still, and that this morning would never come. But by
seven o’clock the sky was firmly blue and the sun was shining across the
whitewashed buildings. At seven-thirty, the man with the close-cropped hair
brought Charlie a cup of black coffee and two wholemeal breadrolls, with jack
cheese.

‘A happy day for you, huh?’
Charlie asked him, as he set the
food down on top of the bedside locker.

The man looked
at him without expression, and left.

Charlie drank
his coffee but he couldn’t manage to swallow any bread. He went to the window
again to see if there was any activity around Martin’s building, but it
appeared to be deserted. He couldn’t even see Ben, who had been sitting outside
guarding it for most of the night. Perhaps they had taken Martin to the main
building already.

At nine
o’clock, the man with the close-cropped hair came back and said. ‘The rituals
are about to begin. M. Musette wants you to come now.’

Without a word,
.Charlie put on his jacket and buttoned it up. Then he followed the man
outside. In spite of the sunshine, the morning was quite cold. His breath
smoked in the damp air as he walked towards the main building. As they reached
the doors, Charlie could hear singing.

‘0 God, our
help in ages past, our hope for years to come . . .’

The man took
hold of his elbow and guided him into the main room. Overnight, there had been
a transformation. The walls of the room were now hung with yellow and gold
banners, and the tables were set with plates and glasses and silver cutlery,
and beautifully arranged centrepieces of flowers. Every table was crowded with
Celestine Guides, dressed in plain white-hooded robes

–
businessmen
, bankers, musicians, television producers,
fashion models, writers, salesmen, mechanics – men and women from a rainbow of
backgrounds. Charlie recognized several famous media faces as he was ushered
between the tables to the end of the room. He saw at least one well-known
politician,
and a singer whose records he had once bought,
and right at the end of the table next to the kitchen doors, Sheriff Norman
Podmore, his eyes squeezed tightly shut in prayer.

Charlie was
taken to the end of the centremost table, facing the white-draped altar. M.
Musette was kneeling at the altar in prayer, flanked on one side by Mme
Musette, and on the other side by one of the Guides from
L’figlise des Anges
in New Orleans. Sunlight fell from the
clerestory windows high above, and an electronic organ softly played an
inspirational interlude before the next hymn.

The man with
the close-cropped hair said, ‘Wait there,’ and left Charlie standing a little
way behind M. Musette. As Charlie stood there, his hands down by his sides, it
occurred to him that he could jump on M. Musette and seize him around the
throat and strangle him. But he probably wasn’t strong enough to do it – even
if he did manage to fend off the bodyguards -and he wouldn’t have a chance at
all of helping Martin if he screwed up. So he remained where he was, feeling
tense and jittery, while M. Musette continued to pray, and the organ continued
to pour out ‘Jesus Wants Me That I Know.’

At last, M.
Musette stood up, and came across to Charlie. It was uncanny, but he did almost
look as if he were possessed of a great inner light. He was certainly happy,
and at peace with himself. He took hold of Charlie’s arm and led him to the
table. ‘The proud father,’ he said.

‘God bless this
day, and God bless you.’

‘God bless you,
too, you maniac,’ said Charlie. But M. Musette was quite beyond insults now. He
stood at the head of the table, and beamed at Charlie on his
left,
and Mme Musette on his right, and the surrounding company of Celestines.