The Healing (6 page)

They must have been waiting for him to get out of the tractor. They must have been standing in the hedgerow, watching and waiting for this moment. They both walk across the ridged furrows of grass, moving steadily, not running. He sees them before his father does, but he looks at them with only slight curiosity. When his father registers them they are close enough for their faces to be seen. In his dreams their faces change so often he no longer remembers what they look like and in his dreams something happens to time. Everything slows and freeze-frames – his father staring and then tightening, shouting at him to run, but his words are strangled in his
throat as the first shots hit him in the chest. But no sound from their handguns, only the flapping of the birds' wings as they scatter skyward in a sudden black cloud, as the two men run forward, firing more shots, their feet kicking up grass. Shooting into his father's body as it jerks as if in a fit, and then crumples like a child's on the bed of sharp-spiked stubble. Shooting until the guns are jammed or empty. Only one of them looks at him, and only for a second, looks at him with nothing in his eyes, then they both turn and run to the hedge bounding the road. He falls to his knees beside his father's head, afraid to touch him, and his hand feels the warm blood seeping into the grass. Blood on the grass, red as the setting sun being swallowed by the dark ridge of the horizon. He screams, a raw scream of pain and terror. Screams and screams, until every part of him is locked rigid in it.

The scream was still in his throat when he jerked upright in the bed, his eyes wide and staring. Every day for the rest of his life – eyes with nothing in them, bloodied grass in his father's hair, a black cloud of birds beating across the dying sky. His whole body still shuddered as he felt the warm stream of his urine spread slowly across the plastic sheet.

He heard the scream. It pierced the silent house like a sudden stab of pain. He knew it was the boy. He stood still and listened – but there was nothing more. A sudden jolt of fear shook him. Perhaps something had happened to him . . . perhaps he had been taken from him. But he calmed himself, rebuking himself for his lack of faith, the constant weakness which left him doubting the fulfilment of the appointed plan. He drifted round the darkened house like a shadow, moving slowly from place to place, fingering familiar objects like signposts on his journey, looking into empty rooms as if searching for some faded memory of the past.

He carried the scream in his head, pondering its meaning, stopping at regular intervals to listen to the tremulous silence which held everywhere, tense and expectant. Part of him wanted to stretch out his arms to the boy and claim him but he knew he must do nothing on his own direction, only wait and listen. He had been patient for a long time and he could not risk interfering with what
would surely come to pass. He climbed the stairs slowly, occasionally pausing to look down into the gloomy well of the hall. The scream told him there was a battle raging for the soul of the boy, that the powers of darkness were mustering their forces. They would not lightly relinquish their hold on the boy, because they knew too well the importance of the part he would play in bringing healing. He knew, too, that the same powers still sought to sow doubt in his own conviction, confuse the clarity of his vision with broken and distorted images. Sometimes he heard whispers in his head, urging, beguiling, pretending to be the true voice, trying to deceive him, but he knew them to be false messengers, borne to him on wings of evil.

Time was short. He thought of the names listed in the books – the great catalogue of the smitten, the host consumed by the creeping sickness spreading out and infecting more and more. Every day, more names to be added, filling the crowded pages. Every day, more tumbling into the pit. Affliction settling like a plague and brooding on the land, infecting the souls of men and women. Soon, with God's grace, he would no longer have to record and preserve the names of the dead, soon it would no longer be necessary.

At the top of the stairs he looked towards the half-opened doorway of his son's room, hesitated, then pushed it fully open. Orange street light seeped into the room and beyond that stretched the glittering frieze of the city below. He did not go in but absorbed it all – the garish posters on the wall, clothes and possessions strewn across furniture and floor, drawers open with parts of clothing
trailing out. A world of time away, he had hoped that his son would be the one who would grow in grace and be given to him as his helper, but now he knew it could never be. His own son had been smitten by the sickness and was slowly sinking in sin. Could the healing come in time to save him? If only he could look up in faith then it was surely possible. But deep inside himself he felt that his son was already lost. The pain of that knowledge was his burden, the festering wound he must endure unto the end of his days.

Yet he had always loved the boy, loved him even when he had chastised him. He had done everything possible to secure the boy's salvation, but always it had gone wrong, some tare in the wheat, some blight rotting his soul. Even when he had loved him most the boy had turned his back, gone his own way and spurned his guidance. He knew his son hated him but did not know why. Sometimes it was almost as if the sins he committed were intended to hurt him, to punish him for something he did not understand. It had grown worse after the death of the boy's mother, as if the last few years of her life had suppressed parts of him, and when she died some anger or bitterness had burst open and spread the poisonous spores through his being.

He turned back to the landing and suddenly his thoughts turned to the wife who no longer shared his life. Her face formed in the shifting gloom – not the shrinking, tightening face of a pain-wracked body, her dark-ringed eyes deep pools of pain but that of a young woman, alive with laughter. Her face formed so clearly that he stretched out his hand to touch her hair, her dark rich tresses, but as he did so, shadows ebbed into his memory
and he felt only the dry, brittle coils of grey which lay lifeless on the hospital pillow like ash. He drew back his hand and stumbled to the top of the stairs. They swam before his eyes. The coils of ash tightened about him, the memory choking him. He swayed gently, rocked by other moments from the confusion of the past. He stretched out his arms towards her and as his feet moved to the edge of the top stair he called out to her, but suddenly the echo of the boy's scream silenced his own voice and the boy's face replaced all others. As if waking from a dream, he pulled back and his hands gripped the wooden banisters. Sitting down, he hugged them like a child, stroking their worn smoothness over and over.

He knew he would not sleep now and he moved down the darkened stairs slowly and carefully, still holding onto the banisters with both hands. At the bottom he switched on the hall light, his eyes blinking wildly with the sudden shock. He opened the cloakroom door and searched through the musty garments until he found his overcoat. It felt heavy but he knew it would be cold outside and then, without locking the door, he slipped into the night, pulling the black coat tightly about him. As he closed the front gate he looked up at what he knew was the boy's room. The curtains were closed but the light was on. He stood looking up at it for some time but in his heart he knew the boy was safe, watched over by his own angels. He would come to no harm. Then he turned away and started to walk. He often walked late at night, a dark solitary figure, unnoticed by the world, following wandering, random paths through those parts of the city which were familiar to him.

He walked for a long time, keeping to the main roads, watching everything, recording carefully all he saw, pausing from time to time to get his breath back. The neon world trembled like a cold night star. He watched it from a distance, frightened that if he went too close it might suck him into its vortex, consume him in its fiery furnace. All about him men and women hurtled headlong towards destruction – young people intent on only the moment's fleeting pleasure. He peered into fast-food shops, the yellow tunnels of video shops, staring at the people inside like a deaf man watching people dancing to some mysterious tune. As he moved from place to place he felt as if he was invisible to the teeming mass of self-absorbed humanity. He hugged the dark laneways of shadow, stopped in unlit doorways and turned his face away from the lights of passing cars. Soon, though, he would make himself known. Make himself known, not as a scourge but as a servant and instrument of light. Flashing signs dazzled his eyes. A drunk staggered towards him then lurched away again, oblivious to his presence. Two girls skipped by, engrossed in their own conversation. A dog sniffed at his heels, then vanished.

He turned off the main road into the web of narrow streets, where television sets transformed the narrow ornament-lined windows into grey grottoes of light. Sometimes he registered broken voices, snatches of conversations, fragments of curtained lives. Past breeze-blocked houses waiting for demolition and open walls where tattered remnants of wallpaper fluttered forlornly like failed dreams. Past painted walls where sprayed writing choked the bricks, like overgrown vines
competing for space. On a stretch of waste-ground a bonfire climbed into the night sky, a heaped tumble of meshed rubbish knitted together by the discarded fabric of the world. A flag jutted out of its apex, and somewhere inside its base glowed the red tips of lighted cigarettes where its custodians sat entombed in all-night vigil. He felt a burst of sadness in him. So many lost, so many smitten, untouched and unhealed, stumbling blindly to their fate. Then it was replaced by a deep spring of love for the suffering seed of humanity which huddled all around him in these crumbling streets. He longed to shout out, to gather them close to him, shelter them from the storm. Soon it would be time. His eyes explored the star-studded sky which arched over him and awed him into worship, and his walk took on a trance-like quality as he wandered, indifferent to the direction he was following.

Eventually, tiredness brought him back to a consciousness of where he was. He turned back and followed the embankment, then sat down and watched the shimmer of light glitter the blackness of the water. He rested himself, aware for the first time of how far he had walked and of the growing coldness of the night air. As he pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck a police landrover drove slowly past, decreasing its speed to look at him, then continued on its way. His head dropped onto his chest and his eyes closed in a fitful drowse. Strange images danced before him – three great white swans bursting from the darkness of the water with flapping wings dripping silver beads of light; all the bonfires of the city merged together
in one giant, burning bush which burned but was never consumed; the still, small voice of God speaking to him from the heart of the flames; a spectral figure walking on the water then sinking into its blackness.

Suddenly, a hand touched his shoulder. He jerked upwards with a start.

‘You all right, Mister?'

He turned to see a young man standing behind him, dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans. He nodded his head in reply and rubbed a hand across his eyes, trying to focus with greater clarity.

‘Here, take a drop of this – it'll keep the cold from biting,' the youth said, holding out a wine bottle towards him.

Standing up, he shook his head in refusal, then placed his hand on the young man's shoulder and looked into his face. He wanted to say something from his heart, but the words slipped away like fish out of a net. The youth stared at him with puzzled eyes, then stepped back a tittle.

‘You all right, Pops? You're not thinking of going for a midnight swim – you'd sink like a stone in that coat.'

He took a slug of wine and offered the bottle again, wiping its top with the palm of his hand.

‘Whosoever drinketh of this shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.'

He spoke the words gently, then turned away on his homeward journey. As he walked away, he heard the young man shouting something after him, but already his mind was fastened on other things and the words were
lost. His step took on an urgency. It was the early hours of a new day and the roads were almost deserted, apart from a few taxis shuttling across the city on their final journeys. A man cycled past him on an unlit bicycle, a satchel slung over his shoulder. From some undefined spot he heard a man and woman curse each other in high, bitter voices, then as they faded a gradual calm seeped into the night, quietening the pulse that had raced so fiercely throughout the day. Streets slipped into sleep and a brooding stillness settled on the world. He continued on his way, stopping from time to time to rest, a dark veiled figure unperceived by the world.

A long time later, he began the final climb to his home, his breathing heavy and his steps laboured. He was almost there, his house finally in sight, when suddenly he pulled himself into the pool of shadows from an overhanging tree. A car was stopped outside his house, and in the light from the open door he could see his son get out, then pause to talk to the two men in the front seats. He was close enough to see their faces. His chest grew tight and he could hear the loudness of his breathing. He felt unsteady on his feet and leant against the hedge for support. He looked at his son again but this time he saw him in his memory – standing with him at the bedside as they looked down on the shrunken face, the cheekbones pushing through the drawn skin, dull braids of grey coiled coldly like serpents on the pillow. He closed his eyes, held onto the hedge for support, as the slamming of the car door brought him back to the present moment. He turned his face away as the car sped past him. He waited for a few moments before slipping into the house. It was as silent
as he had left it. He climbed the stairs slowly, knowing without looking that the square of yellow light filtering into the garden came from the garage.