The Sacrifice (18 page)

Sam bit his tongue. Tish obviously
hadn’t read the bit about not being sad. For the first day at the Tower
she’d hardly stopped crying, wailing about her dead friends. Particularly Louise,
the girl Ed had accidentally killed. Now here she was, smiling away like she was glad
about it, going along with Matt’s craziness.

Well, whatever Matt said, Tish had lied to
him. And now she was lying to Matt. Pretending she was a true believer, a pure nun,
pretending she hadn’t been sad, pretending that God had planned it all.

As far as Sam was concerned, if this was all
God’s plan then God had made a right mess of things. He rested his elbows on the
table and planted his chin in his hands.

Let them talk
. He wanted to hear
the full explanation.

The Kid was wandering along one of the
choir stalls, studying the musicians. They kept their eyes fixed on their instruments.
Wouldn’t look at him. One boy was banging an old metal waste bin with a wooden
spoon. Another was honking on a saxophone. There was a girl with a cello. Not bad. Not
brilliant. Then there was a boy playing a bent and battered cymbal that made a sort of
dull, clanking noise. He was hammering it rhythmically with a stick, beating it further
out of shape.

‘That don’t sound so well,
Lionel,’ said The Kid, sticking his fingers in his ears.

The boy turned his head and stared off into
space, dull-eyed, in a trance.

‘Let me put it to you, sir,’
said The Kid, ‘that a cymbal should go
tingaling
. It should clash. It
should shimmer. In a nutshell it should shimmy, Jimmy. That cymbal is a dead cymbal. It
goes
whap
.
Whap-whap-whap-whap whap … 
’

Getting no response, The Kid moved along to
the next musician. A girl with long fair hair who was playing the violin. She had her
eyes tightly closed and The Kid could tell that she knew something about her instrument.
There was a sweet tone coming out of it.

‘That’s cool,’ said The
Kid, nodding. ‘You got the music
in you. The Kid loves music.
You’ve played before I’ll warrant.’

‘Shhh,’ said the girl, her voice
a whisper. ‘I’m not supposed to talk to you.’

‘No? You church monkeys are a weird
bunch, Yo-Yo.’

‘Yo-Yo Ma played the cello,’
said the girl. ‘I play the violin.’

‘Who was that other one then? The
Chinese fiddler? Vanessa Doodah?’

‘Vanessa Mae?’

‘That’s her. My granddad said
she could play the angels from out of the sky. But I think he just had the hots for
her.’

‘Shush. Go away. I’m not allowed
to talk.’

‘What’s your name,
Yo-Yo?’

‘Charlotte.’

‘Hi there, Charlotte. I’m The
Kid.’

‘I know who you are and I’m not
allowed to talk to you. If Matt sees me he’ll punish me.’

‘That’s worse than
schooldays,’ said The Kid and he whistled. ‘Oh my word, he is
strict
.’

‘He’s the only one that fully
understands the word of God,’ said Charlotte, sounding like she was reading it
from a book. ‘He gets visions and revelations and he explains them to us. Without
him we’d be godless and lost.’

‘Yeah? Seems like there’s plenty
of other youngers in London who get on just fine and dandy wine without him.’

‘That’s what they
think.’

‘No point in arguing with a church
monkey,’ said The Kid. ‘But why the zipperlips?’

‘Please. Don’t talk to
me.’

The Kid watched Charlotte’s fingers
dancing on the strings of her violin. ‘What grade you at, Yo-Yo?’

‘Six.’

‘That’s good, I think.
You’re good. Not like these other monkeys. I reckon their organ-grinder wants his
money back. I guess Matt, he’s the organ-grinder here.’

‘I don’t know what you’re
talking about.’

‘You’re not the first, Yo-Yo.
Sounds like me and Matt got a lot in common.
You
don’t know what
I’m talking about and
I
don’t know what
he’s
talking
about, but apparently
he
knows what
God
is talking about.
Everybody’s saying something and I can’t hear a word they’re
saying.’

The Kid watched the other musicians for a
while, working away at their instruments. None of them were in the same league as
Charlotte. A trumpeter fell asleep and nodded forward, banging his trumpet on the back
of the bench in front of him and waking himself up with a sore lip. He rubbed his eyes
and stood up. Walked along to where a girl was sitting with a bunch of kids who had no
instruments. He gave her the trumpet and disappeared into the darkness near the great
altar. The Kid spotted a group of boys gathering there, Nathan, the tall one who’d
saved them from the tube station, among them. Giving orders by the look of it. He
pointed at The Kid. The Kid waved to him and turned back to Charlotte.

‘I like your style, Yo-Yo,’ he
said. ‘Reminds me of home, my old granddad. The sounds that came out of his old
record spinner. Whoo. The Kid liked them sounds. I’d like to hear you play a solo
sometime, Yo-Yo.’

‘This is all we’re allowed to
play, the Great Song; all other music is evil. We have to open our minds and just play
what God tells us.’

The Kid leant over and whispered in
Charlotte’s ear. ‘You don’t fool me, Yo-Yo. I can tell what
you’re playing
there. That’s Beethoven. That’s the
old Kreutzer Sonata.’

Charlotte blushed and scraped her bow over
the strings, making a discordant racket.

‘It’s OK. Your secret’s
safe with me,’ said The Kid. ‘I like you, Charlotte. When you stop that
sawing, you come and find me; we’ll be friends. Any girl can play like that
I’d like to get to know. If you want you can even be my girlfriend.’

Charlotte suddenly opened her eyes and
glared at The Kid.

‘Go away!’

The Kid winked at her and strolled off.

‘I am
in
there,’ he
said to himself, snapping his fingers.

He didn’t notice Nathan give a signal
to his group of boys, who nodded and set off after him.

‘I still don’t get it,’
said Sam. ‘Why would you even want to send Tish to get me? Why’s it so
important to you? Why am I guest of honour here?’

‘Because you are special, Sam,’
said Matt. ‘I told you we are only here because of you. You are the
Lamb.’

‘No I’m not,’ said Sam
stubbornly.

‘The truth is inside you,’ said
Matt with one of his horrible smiles. ‘We need to free the truth. At the moment
you are being held back by your shadow. Your dark half is hiding the truth from you.
Only when we free you from your shadow, from this human realm, will you fully understand
who you are and then you can show us the way to salvation, and we will bring God’s
kingdom to the earth.’

Sam wasn’t listening. He had spotted
The Kid going over to look at a big statue of a soldier. There was a large square
structure next to it, covered with a green cloth. Sam vaguely wondered what it might be.
Something stupid probably, like everything else here. A group of boys seemed to be
following The Kid. He looked very small and alone. Sam wanted to go to him, to be with
his friend. He’d had enough of Matt and his nonsense. He felt hemmed in,
suffocated, wanted to run around screaming and yelling and telling them all to shut up
and leave him alone.

‘I’m tired,’ he said,
standing up. ‘I want to go to bed. Where do you sleep? If you ever go to
sleep.’

‘It’s important that you
understand about –’

‘No, it’s not!’ Sam
shouted. ‘None of it’s important! You’re making it all up. I
don’t want to hear any more about it, OK? You think I’m something that
I’m not.’

He took a few steps into the darkness that
surrounded the table, feeling sick and dizzy. Matt’s voice stopped him.

‘You have one dark shadow. The Goat,
the demon, the dark one. It must be cut from you. You will never be free until we make a
sacrifice.’

Sam forced a laugh.

‘You’re a mentalist,’ he
snorted. ‘I don’t want you to kill some poor animal for me.’

Matt came over and put his bony hand on
Sam’s shoulder.

‘You are the Lamb,’ he said,
‘and when we sacrifice the Goat, you will know the truth and we will all
rejoice.’

‘Please, I’m tired,’ said
Sam, Matt’s words washing over him. Just so much noise. ‘I want to go to
bed.’ He glanced over at The Kid. Nathan’s boys were all around him now and
Nathan was saying something to him.

‘We will sacrifice the Goat to the
great demon, Wormwood,’ said Matt. ‘Wormwood will eat the Goat and will be
destroyed by it, and we will be free of him, and the light will enter you and you will
understand the truth and you will show us that truth.’

‘What are you talking about?’
said Sam, struggling to pull free from Matt’s grip. He couldn’t see The Kid
at all any more and his mind was racing, trying to make sense of what Matt was
saying.

Scared of making sense of it. Didn’t
want it to mean what he feared.

Another group of kids was moving the
cloth-covered structure into the middle of the cathedral. It must be on wheels.

Matt was talking again. Sam had missed some
of it.

‘ … he goes by many
names,’ he was saying. ‘The Goatlord, Abaddon, the First Beast, the Whore of
Babylon, but you know him as the son of the Goat – The Kid.’

‘Not The Kid, no,’ said Sam. And
at that moment his friend broke free from the ring of boys and made a mad dash down the
aisle towards the cathedral doors.

‘Run!’ Sam cried. He leapt to
his feet to go after him, but Matt reached out and held him fast.

‘He’s a trickster,’ he
said, leaning close to Sam’s ear. ‘A master of illusion. He’s a demon
with a thousand faces. He speaks in tongues and carries a broken sword. He has tricked
you and fooled you into thinking he is your friend.’

‘He
is
my friend!’ Sam
shouted. He struggled against Matt as he watched Nathan catch up with The Kid and bring
him down. Hot tears stung his eyes.

‘He is the Goat,’ said Matt,
signalling to the kids by the square structure. They pulled the cloth away and Sam saw
that underneath it there was a big cage.

‘And only when he is killed will the
final revelation be shown to us.’

Shadowman struggled back into
consciousness. He was covered with blood. Lying in a pool of it. He realized he was face
down, his face twisted to the side so that his cheek was on the ground. The bottom half
of his body was raised. He could feel something soft beneath his legs and hips.

It was dark, but a shaft of moonlight picked
out the blood and a scattering of broken glass. That was all he could see. He felt
light-headed, starved of oxygen. Tried to take in a deep breath and winced in pain.
There was a terrible pressure on his chest.

He couldn’t move. Had no idea where he
was. How he had got here. His head was filled with a cold ache making it hard to think.
He closed his eyes and instantly found himself falling asleep. He couldn’t think
straight, but he knew enough to know that if he fell asleep now he might never wake
again.

He forced his eyes open. Saw the jagged
lumps of glass. The blood.

He struggled to move again. Felt something
sharp digging into his ribs. Something else pressing down on the back of his neck.

He stopped moving. It was hopeless. He was
stuck here. Thirsty. Breathless. Hurting all over. Lost. Slowly memories
began to form. Dull flashes that slipped and slithered and flipped
about inside his head as if he was dreaming.

Come on, focus … 

A squirrel … 

He laughed, despite himself, and felt a stab
of pain.

A squirrel … 

But there
had
been one,
hadn’t there? Hopping across the road. It had led him to the three kids. The girl
and the two boys.

Yes.
He felt a bitter taste in his
mouth and his memory came roaring back, full of blood and noise and pain. He almost
wished it hadn’t returned. Wished he’d stayed in ignorant bliss.

The last few hours had been a nightmare. It
had started badly and got worse. If only those kids hadn’t shown up. So cocky.
Knew it all, didn’t they? Weren’t scared of strangers.

Not them.

He coughed, releasing a gush of blood from
his nose.

He saw the grown-ups again.

It was very vivid. That first moment, when
they’d appeared from either end of the street, and time had stopped for a beat.
Shadowman and the other children had frozen where they stood and the reality of their
situation had utterly changed.

Shadowman was back there now, hiding behind
the wall in the overgrown front garden, opposite the tyre centre, his brain turning.
Trying to add up this new set of facts. Trying to work out how he’d got suckered.
Trapped here.

How had the strangers got out of the
tyre centre without any of them noticing?

Another entrance obviously, another way in
and out.

How many of them were there?

Maybe ten in each group? So there was a
chance. If he and the other three kids could stick together, work together, fight side
by side, they might be OK. They had to be quick, though. If The Fear were on to them
then they’d soon be streaming out of the tyre centre.

Another eighty of them.

Shadowman vaulted over the wall.

‘We have to get out of here,’ he
shouted and the girl threw him a pitying look.

‘We’ve dealt with worse than
this, you noob.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘We don’t run. We lock them
down. End of.’

‘We’ve been following these
creeps all day,’ said the crossbow kid. ‘Ever since we first eyeballed them
up in Willesden, near the Jewish cemetery.’

Shadowman tried to make sense of this. How
could these kids have seen The Fear near Willesden earlier? The grown-ups had been
asleep in the tyre centre all day. And in all the time he’d been following them
they’d never gone anywhere near Willesden. He could picture the route they’d
taken since he’d joined them by the Arsenal stadium. He’d followed it
carefully across the pages of his A to Z. Unless some of the strangers had sneaked out
while he was dozing in the lorry, he couldn’t see how they could have been spotted
in Willesden.