The Darkening (19 page)

It wasn’t a loved park. No one went in there. In fact, people hurried past them. People
knew
, without even entering, that they weren’t friendly woods.

Leave here
, he thought.
Buy a ticket south. Get a job in a design firm in a nice new building and live in a new apartment where there are no ghosts. You can live with that. This place hasn’t changed.

No. Not yet. First, he would go to Gavin Boye’s funeral. He would see Gavin’s widow, and Mrs Boye.

Why?

Because it’s the right thing to do.

Bullshit.

Well, then: to see.

To see what?

He chewed listlessly, staring, but the woods were a sea of shadow.

He didn’t know. Perhaps . . . to look for more signs.

You’re getting plenty of signs
.
Signs telling you that you shouldn’t have come home. Just leave.

He could feel the weight of the woods, huge and drawing as the moon to the tides. Down there, in the green, secret velvet, the Thomas boy was being dragged between dark trees, his face a mask of terror, his last hours or minutes playing over and over, again and again.

You can bring no solace to the dead
, he told himself
. Why not let the departed stay departed?

Because I’m the only one who knows . . .

I’ll leave after the funeral
, he bargained.

He made the herbal tea. It was surprisingly pleasant. He drank it all, folded himself onto the thin fabric of the sofa, and fell into a dark and empty sleep.

10

T
o Nicholas, the sky seemed the same sea grey as the wet slate of the steeply set shingles on the church roof, so it was hard to see where the holy building ended and the heavens began. The rain darkened the rough stone of the church’s buttresses, and the gloom made the green moss on the lowest course of its walls almost black. A fine day for a suicide’s funeral.

He stood under a dark umbrella, listening to the rain strike a slack tattoo above his head as he watched mourners hurry inside like scolded black swans. The hearse - a long, modified Ford - was parked out front, its driver sitting upright and trying not to let passers-by see that he was reading a paperback.

He was among a small grove of she-oaks, waiting for the last of the crowd to enter the church. He smoothed back his hair with one hand, and surreptitiously sniffed at his armpit. Not too bad, considering. His sleep on the sofa had been as long as it was deep. His eyelids had drifted open just an hour ago; he’d been out nearly twenty hours. All traces of his feverish flu had gone. He’d jumped in the shower, but there was no soap. He patted himself dry with the few paper towels the previous tenant had left, pulled on yesterday’s clothes, ran his fingers over his teeth and left for the church. Standing under his umbrella, he suspected that he looked exactly like the kind of rumpled weirdo one expects to see at the fringes of a funeral. The thought was depressing.

A final car pulled up and some elderly mourners slowly alighted. Nicholas turned his gaze to the church’s damp granite flanks. From here, he could just read the lead lettering of the church’s cornerstone. It stated that the Bishop of the Western Diocese had laid this stone to the Glory of God in 1888, the funds donated by an E. Bretherton. Stained-glass windows, narrow and high and lit from within, were the blues and greens of deep-sea gems. Nicholas realised he’d never once set foot inside; his childhood church, two miles away, had been built in the 1960s of sharp, pale bricks and desperate angles determined to pierce heaven whether God wanted them or not. In contrast, this church looked as old as time.

He didn’t want to go inside. The last time he had stepped into a church was for Cate’s funeral, and every moment of that turgid service had felt an affront. The praise of God. The mercy of God. The enduring love of God. Even before the first reading, Nicholas had wanted to stand up and shout: ‘God doesn’t care! Go home! Go home and love each other while you have each other, before God snatches your loved ones away and snaps them on a bath like an unwanted pencil!’ But for the sake of propriety he’d kept his silence and listened to the droning platitudes and tried not to think that his wife’s cold body was in that garlanded, polished wood box at the front.

The rain grew heavier, tapping hard on his umbrella. The wet footpaths were empty. There were no more mourners arriving. He had no more reason to linger out here like a cowardly thief outside a petrol station.

He went inside.

Through the inner swing doors, he could see the casket wreathed in flowers on the front dais. Sprays of white lilies either side of the pulpit were as shocking as ice fountains.

The elderly minister, Reverend Hird, a small bulldog of a man in his late seventies, stood hunched at the side of the nave in discussion with a middle-aged mourner. A younger minister, a man of perhaps thirty with coffee-coloured skin, stood patiently behind his superior.

Nicholas shook off his umbrella, signed the book, and slipped quietly into the church proper.

He had hoped to sit unnoticed in the back pews, but there were only two dozen mourners so to isolate himself in the back would draw even more attention. He joined the fourth row. As he sat, several heads turned to see who was arriving this late and whether they recognised him. Most didn’t, and returned their gazes to their orders of service, their neighbours or the festooned casket. But three women kept their eyes on him. Katharine and Suzette were frowning. Katharine shook her head and returned to chatting to the elderly lady next to her; Suzette’s lips were as tight as a razor slash, and she mouthed, ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Nicholas waved cheerfully and mouthed back, ‘Later.’ Suzette sent him one last furious glare, then turned back to the pulpit. The third woman held her stare at Nicholas longer, puzzled, trying to place him. At other times or in other lights, she would be striking, but the gloom of the church, the ubiquitous black, her shadowing half-veil made her seem carved severely from some cold and unyielding stone. He guessed this was Gavin’s widow. Her eyes narrowed, unhappy that she hadn’t identified this latecomer, and she turned her long neck again to the front. Beside her was a hooked old woman with a shock of white hair, visible under her small black hat.

Jesus
, thought Nicholas.
That must be Mrs Boye.

From where he sat, he could just see the corner of her face. Her eyes were fixed on the figure of Christ crucified. Nicholas followed her gaze. The image was carved wood, a century or more old. The raw chisel marks made his limbs seem more wounded, his suffering more pronounced. Something beyond the raw agony of the figure disturbed Nicholas. The setting carved behind him was not Golgotha, but an incongruous forest of Arcadian trees and lush vines. Old Mrs Boye’s expression vacillated between a frown of confusion and a bluff of undisguised boredom; her head bobbed to its own unheard tune, and from time to time she’d look to her daughter-in-law to ask a question that Nicholas could guess:
Where are we?
Senile dementia. Her mildly confused eyes kept returning to the dying son of God.

Reverend Hird limped to the pulpit. He may have looked frail, but his voice was as strong as a Welsh tenor’s. ‘Please rise for hymn seventy-nine: “Saviour Again to Thy Dear Name We Raise”.’

The congregation rumbled as it stood. And so the funeral commenced.

Speakers rose, praised Gavin, lamented the loss to his wife and his mother, opened spectacles, read poems, folded papers, dabbed tears, returned to their seats. The air was warm and still, the voices monotonous. Nicholas fought to stay awake. He did calf raises. Cleaned his nails. Took deep breaths. His eyelids sank, heavy as stones. He sat back in the hard pew and let his gaze trace up the stained-glass windows, across the curved timbers, to linger on the carved timber ceiling boss some ten metres overhead.

Suddenly, his weariness vanished like gunpowder in a flash pan. His heartbeat broke into a brisk trot and the hairs on his arms and neck rose into goose bumps.

The ceiling boss was carved as a face. A face with oak leaves sprouting from its sides and mouth. A face that was chillingly familiar. Nicholas dragged his eyes away, but they kept returning to the inhuman visage: a mouth drawn wide and thick, with vital leaves springing from its corners like fleshy tusks. It was a face he’d seen before, though he couldn’t place where. It scared him.

‘And now,’ Reverend Hird rumbled, ‘I’d like to call on Gavin’s wife, Mrs Laine Boye.’

Nicholas dragged his startled eyes down from the ceiling.

Laine Boye held herself straight and took neat steps. Her black suit and skirt were well-fitted and expensive. She reached the pulpit, glanced at the casket, and then looked over the small congregation.

‘Thank you for coming today.’ Her voice was high-pitched but clear, a neutral accent that spoke of private schooling and careful grooming. ‘Gavin left no children,’ she continued. ‘And he left too soon.’

Her gaze sought and found Nicholas, and rested on him. There was no puzzlement there any more; she’d figured out who he was. He was close enough to see that her eyes, like the dark day outside, were grey and unyielding as stone.

Laine Boye was on her way back to her seat when a scream broke the silence.

Mrs Boye was on her feet; she ripped off her hat and hurled it at the carving of Christ. Her white hair flung out like lightning. She screamed again, a furious shriek, and the congregation was jolted into whispering motion.

‘Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord!’ she cried. Her voice echoed loudly in the transepts and hung unpleasantly on the air.

Laine hurried to Mrs Boye’s side. The man beside the struggling old woman took firm hold of her arm. Hushed-voiced, they tried to comfort her, Laine’s fluttering hands grabbing for hers. But Mrs Boye shook them off, her hair wild. ‘Blood alone pleases the
Lord
!’ She spat the last word like a curse.

Reverend Hird shot a nod to his young understudy, who hurried down to Mrs Boye. Fast as a snake, the old woman slapped the young reverend hard on the face.

‘Fisher of men!’ she cried. ‘What do fishermen do with fish? Haul them from their water, drown them in air, and then gut them! Eat them! Or toss them back dead and empty! Fisher of men!’ This time she did spit, a huge mouthful of foamy saliva that arced through the air to land on Christ’s shin.

Nicholas stared, stunned. The old woman had said and done just what he’d wanted to at Cate’s funeral.

Firm hands took hold of Mrs Boye. She fought for a while, then settled in a grump. Hird nodded to the organist, who started a lively rendition of ‘To Jesus’ Heart All Burning’.

And so the funeral finished early.

Nicholas huddled under his umbrella as the pallbearers loaded the casket into the hearse. Suzette and Katharine came to stand beside him. The rain fell steadily and cold.

‘Nice service, I thought,’ said Nicholas. ‘Colourful.’ His head throbbed. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.