Lost in Shadows

by Alex O'Connell

  He handed his ticket to the man who imperiously stood on guard at the exit. He received it silently with a curt nod. As he moved out of the station Doyle was struck by the size of the car park, stretching out in front of him. He watched as two cars searched hopefully trying to beat each other to the last vacant space. He was surprised how busy it was. He shouldn’t have been, the journey had taken him only one hour and ten minutes, Netherton was very much in the commuter belt. It was no longer the sleepy little market town it had once been, dreaming of its past, of its record in the Doomsday Book and of its famous inhabitants, long dead. It seemed as if the spirit of the town was forged in the bloody carnage of the seventeenth century civil war, when the Roundheads beat the Cavaliers back, into the old parish church and there massacred the brave Colonel Arthurs and so many of his men. It had seen its share of adversity, like when poor sweet Florrie Johnson, aged barely eight, was murdered and dismembered in the town’s meadows in 1867. At least Doyle had an alibi for that one. Now the town boasted, it seemed almost as many building societies as shops, and estate agency after estate agency selling houses at prices few can afford. But Doyle would never see this. He would never stroll sedately through the town, appreciating its quaintness, stopping for a drink, perhaps, at the old swan coaching inn. Thinking that its nice, but not really a pretty little town. Maybe it had seen too much of the dark side of life for it ever to be that. He thought he could detect the bitter sweet scent of hops on the air though, from the brewery, the only one left in a town which used to boast several. It was a strange smell, he thought, and he wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not.

  To his right, he saw the station café, decorated prettily enough itself and promising the delights of big breakfasts. Despite the fact that he hadn’t eaten since early the previous morning, Doyle couldn’t face food and the condemned man forewent his right to a hearty breakfast. Beyond that there seemed to be only a large factory unit leading on to smaller ones beyond. These held no interest for him, but as he looked left, passed the waiting busses, he saw over the line of bushes shielding the approach to the railway from the road, a large, light coloured circular building, surmounted by a cross, pointing the way to the heavens. To Doyle, it looked for all the world as if a spaceship had landed. It was the sort of church that could only have been built in the nineteen sixties but it had been constructed with such a subtlety of nuance and a considered delicacy that it was quite beautiful, almost in spite of itself. As soon as he saw it, Doyle knew that he had reached his destination. This was his journey’s end.

  He descended a small, steep ancient looking flight of stone steps that led down from the station approach and crossed the road without looking. A car driver hit both his horn and the brakes at the same moment and pulled up just short of Doyle. He wound down his window, ready to hurl expletives but took one look at the man who stood defiantly in the road, staring intently back at him and decided against it. Doyle turned and crossed the road in safety and walked alongside the yellowish brick wall of the Church’s gardens. Ahead of him, as the road met the High Street, stood a pair of semi detached, tall gabled Edwardian houses. Doyle thought he had once seen something them in a film. Or was it a dream, one that he could not quite remember? He avoided the patch of white paint that had long ago dried solid on the pavement and walked up a small flight of steps, past along the side of the church and paused at a sign that announced he was now standing in the three sided courtyard of St. Catherine’s Roman Catholic Church. He had known from a distance that it was a Catholic Church. The Protestants would have never had the imagination, the vision to build anything quite so sublime. To his left stood the presbytery, square and functional, built of the same yellowish brick. It was adjoined to the church by a utilitarian hall. He turned and faced the main entrance of the church itself, at the top of a small flight of stairs stood a wooden porch with a ramp running off to his right. If he discounted his wedding, and he could do that easily enough, Doyle had not been in a church since he left Ireland. Well, only one. He vaguely remembered going into it in his youth, with a few lads from the estate, they were older than him he recalled, it was coming back to him now. It was him who had broken into the vestry and made off with as much silver plate as he could carry, the others had run off without helping him. It was practically worthless though, or so the friend of his Uncle Jimmy who took it off his hands had told him. He wondered if that counted as a religious experience.

  There was no sign of life as Doyle climbed the steps and tried the door. To his surprise, it was unlocked and it pushed straight open. He set his bag down by the door He carried everything he would need with him now. The church seemed large and spacious to Doyle and he walked carefully and reverently, trying not to make any noise but his shoes squeaked invasively on the polished tiles of the floor which amplified the sound and it seemed to fill the church, rising all the way up to heaven in the glory of God. The whole space was floodlit by a myriad of tiny beams of light illuminating a million motes of dust which whirled and danced like dervishes against the quiet, beautiful stillness of the morning air. The geometric panels of stained glass cast out vivid, brilliantly surreal red and blue shadows across the tiled floor which almost seemed to sing out Alleluia as they crept up over the vacant pews and became the congregation for Doyle’s personal litany. He was struck by the modernity of the church’s interior, although he really shouldn’t have been. It was, he thought, the most beautiful building he had seen and the same sensual appreciation that he had just started to embrace at the Tower of London now seemed to flood his soul with emotions that he could scarcely comprehend, ones that he thought had long been dead to him. He felt a peace and tranquillity that he was sure that he did not deserve. That was enough, he thought. It was more than he had expected and he could ask for no more. But, he felt no hope. If there was life everlasting in the bosom of the Lord, he knew that he would be excluded from it. But Doyle had long ago ceased to believe in God. He knew of the devil, of course. He believed in him. He felt that he had a personal acquaintance with that dark angel. He dwelt within Doyle, deep down, deep in the pit of his belly and he was always with him. Sometimes Doyle was in control, or so he thought, but never for long. His devil was stronger. Be sure your sins will find you out. Wasn’t that what old Father O’Connor had told him back in Galway? He didn’t know what it meant then but he thought that he probably did now.

  As Doyle walked passed the two small, delicately lit chapels on either side of the entrance, he involuntarily dipped his index and middle finger into the holy water stoop and made the sign of the cross. He felt a little ashamed of himself, it was almost as if he had given way to an irrational superstition, like refusing to walk under a ladder or throwing spilt salt over your shoulder. It couldn’t be force of habit that had caused him to do it. He hadn’t done it since they made him when he was a child. It went deeper than that. It was an older compulsion. Maybe it was something in the psyche of a man who stood at the end of a line of generations of Irish Catholic peasant stock. Perhaps it was genetic, even. A lot can, after all, be blamed on genetics. He circumnavigated the church, walking slowly around its circular interior, communing with each plaque of the stations of the cross in turn. Doyle was enduring his own Passion. All the time he kept his eye on the altar, the sacrificial table of the High Mass. It stood, proud and resplendent in the very centre of the church, almost as if it were a stage in a theatre in the round. He walked slowly, deliberately, as if trying to prolong his inevitable fate, as if he were trying, one final time, to savour life at last. Having completed the circuit he sat down – he would not kneel – on the front pew and tried, for an instant, to pray. But he knew that there was no one there, just like he knew that a prayer from Francis Doyle would be a prayer forever unanswered. He tried, once more, to let his mind take in the beauty of the church, of the swirling, whirling grain of the rich red mahogany pews, of the passive, benign face of the crucified Christ staring accusingly at him from the crucifix behind the altar. As he watched, the
face began to change, to mutate. The left eye closed and the nose became flattened and distorted. Doyle watched as the thick scar, blue with age etched its way down from just below the right eye, across the lips and ended on the chin. No longer was this the peace giving lamb of God. This was the hard, vengeful God of the Old Testament. The God who would smite down his enemies with fire and with brimstone. The God who demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Doyle knew that his time was now.

  He stood slowly and, taking care, he made sure that he did not genuflect as he left the pew. That would be a little too much obeisance for him to pay. His muscles ached from deep within and he felt a tiredness that no sleep could ever exorcize. He felt sick to the very pit of his stomach. He was tired of his life, of who he was, who he had always been and of what he would become. All he could hope for now was relief. Respite.

  He walked up the steps and ran his hand over the fine linen altar cloth. Apart from this cloth it was bare, all of the accoutrements of the Mass were safely stored away, under lock and key. The parish priest was a trusting man to leave his church unlocked – even a quiet market town on the fringes of the commuter belt has its share of unsavoury elements – but he wasn’t stupid. It didn’t matter. Doyle was now the celebrant, he was the Mass, he was the sacrifice. He turned and looked towards the door but the sun was now directly in his line of vision and he couldn’t see out. For a moment he was blinded and he dropped to his knees. Reaching behind him, he felt for the Desert Eagle gun and pulled it out from the waistband of his trousers. He caressed it gently as he slid off the safety catch. The barrel tasted sharp and acrid in his mouth and he heaved and retched as he forced it back, deep into his throat. He angled the gun upwards, as far as he could, and felt the bitter kiss of black steel as it bit into the roof of his mouth and seemed to cleave his pallet in two. He felt no fear of death. It had been his constant visitor and he had seen too much of it to ever be afraid. His hand remained steady, firm and un-shaking. With no thought of regret or of apology or of explanation to himself or to anyone else, he pulled the trigger. The Magnum’s bullet ripped through his hypothalamus, traversed that tiny area of the brain that is responsible for hearing, passed through his cerebral cortex and exploded out of the back of his head. Doyle fell forwards and his arms extended from his now prone body. The altar cloth was instantly stained a bloody greyish red as fragments of bone and what used to be Doyle’s brain mixed with his blood. The back of his skull was shattered, torn open. His head looked, for all the world, like a crown of thorns.

  The blood flowed freely. It was the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It was shed for Mel, Scott and Frankie Wheeler. It was shed for Charlotte and Steve Ashworth. It was shed for Rosie Case. It was shed for Don Bellini and for Tommy Windsor and for Kurtis Robinson. It was shed for you and me. It was shed for the saints and sinners alike, but mainly for the sinners. Such is the way of the world and, after all, they are the ones who need it most. Maybe just a little of it was even shed for Francis Doyle himself.

  It was shed so that sins may be forgiven ….. perhaps ….. perhaps not. After all, isn’t this the twilight of the gods?

  The End.

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