by Graham Marks
Rafael had been extremely precise about where Gabe should start digging and exactly how large the area should be. It wasn’t very big, and as he heaved earth out of the two metre by one metre wide hole it was clear that this was not to be his final resting place. He hoped what had been buried here wasn’t down too deep as the ground was hard and he could already feel a couple of blisters coming up on his hands.
“Keep going, boy,” Rafael hissed, bending down to whisper in his ear. “You have an eternity of rest awaiting you.”
At about the one-metre level there was a dull thud as the shovel hit something hollow; a few minutes later Gabe cleared the earth away to reveal the flat wooden lid of a metal-bound chest. It was about forty-five centimetres long and some twenty-five centimetres wide, the wood and the metal blackened with age.
“At last…”
Gabe looked up and saw the expression on Rafael’s face. He was ecstatic, almost close to tears. Which most likely meant, he thought, that they had to be on the final stretch. This was the end of the road, for him anyway, and he had a real bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that whatever was in this box was only going to make Rafael even more powerful.
“Get it out, set it free!”
Gabe dug round the edges of the chest until he found the handles at either end. Reaching down he tried to pull on them, but the metal had corroded so badly over the centuries they both broke off in his hand.
“Clear more earth, boy. Use the shovel as a lever!”
Gabe wanted to yell at the man to damn well use it as a lever himself, but the words never made it out of his mouth and all he could do was silently curse as he slid the shovel blade down the gap at one end of the chest and pulled back on the handle. There was a tiny shift, then a small bit more and finally the ancient strongbox was free. Rafael hurriedly knelt down opposite Gabe and between the two of them they heaved the chest up and out on to the ground.
“So long… It has been so long.” Rafael gently brushed away soil caked on to the rusted metal decoration surrounding the keyhole. “But we are together once again…”
Gabe watched Rafael use a small stick to clean earth out of the lock, then stand up and look over his shoulder at the chapel. “Pick it up,” he said, pointing at the chest. “They are ready, take it in.”
Inside the chapel candles and incense had been lit, the air heavy with anticipation. The place was packed tight, with the men and women crowded together into a heaving mass leaving only a narrow gap just wide enough for Gabe to make his way through them to the back, straining under the weight of the old strongbox. The box smelled dank and musty, its surface clammy with the heavy odours soaked up by the wood during the ages it had spent underground since Rafael had originally buried it.
And now he had it back.
There was a sharp intake of breath as Gabe stepped into the makeshift aisle the congregation had created, and all eyes were on him, glinting in the wavering candlelight. Almost as one, the crowd started to whisper and shuffle, the noise rising and falling in soft, chittering waves of sound that echoed dully off the chapel walls.
Gabe wondered what had happened to Father Simon’s body, and the owl’s feathers and carcass, as there was no sign of them. At the back of the chapel, against the rear wall, he could now see the altar, surrounded by candles; there was no sign of the dog Rafael had killed and ripped the heart out of, either.
The dream image of the ritual slaughters he’d witnessed flashed in his head again and Gabe tried to step back, but Rafael shoved him and he stumbled forward. The people on either side caught him, holding him upright, and pushed him on. Multitudes of fingers feeding him towards the altar like he was in the gut of a beast. Like he was being digested.
“Put it on the ground, boy.”
Gabe’s body obeyed the instruction, then stood back up. There was a swell of voices around him, murmurs rustling like cold, dead leaves, as Rafael knelt down in front of the chest. He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a key, which he carefully inserted in the lock.
The noise in the old chapel started to build.
Rafael slowly turned the key, and Gabe saw that he was now wearing the gold rings and bracelets.
The people were becoming agitated, moaning now and crowding forward.
Rafael lifted the lid and yellow candlelight reflected off what was inside, making it glow like embers.
Rafael reached into the chest, picked up the object and held it above his head.
A cry went up, a mixture of joy and pain that turned to a roar when Rafael stood to face the crowd and placed the gold skull mask topped with snakes and feathers on his head. Gabe was stunned. Right here in front of him, his terrible dreams were being made real.
Two of the congregation stepped forward, bent down and together brought something else out of the chest. They pulled it up, centuries of dust billowing out from the still-colourful fabric as it unfolded, floating lazily in the air. Reverently they placed the floor-length cloak over Rafael’s shoulders.
The crowd bellowed and Rafael raised his head to look at the roof.
“It is the time!”
Gabe saw the skull had a hinged jaw that moved when the wearer spoke, which somehow made this scene even eerier. Dead man speaking.
“Get him!”
Get him? Gabe braced himself, thinking he was about to be grabbed and dragged to the altar. He tried not to let the pictures flash in front of him, wanted more than anything not to remember the other boys he’d witnessed being sacrificed. Tried and failed to forget what he knew was going to happen next.
But nothing happened.
He stayed where Rafael had left him, unable to move or even turn his head a little to see what was causing the disturbance he could hear. Those of the crowd that he could see were expectantly peering behind them towards the entrance to the chapel, and he could hear the scuffling and muffled grunting noises getting nearer. And then four men appeared, carrying between them a desperate boy, writhing, thrashing and kicking. It was the same as in his dreams, each man was holding a limb, so their unfortunate victim looked like he’d been caught, twisting, mid star jump. This was the person who was going to be sacrificed to whatever depraved gods Rafael worshipped, not him. Not yet, anyway.
Gabe forced himself to look at the boy’s face; the only thing which stopped him collapsing to the ground when he did was that he couldn’t move.
It was Anton.
Gabe felt tears well up in his eyes and fall unchecked down his cheeks. The shock of seeing his best friend here, being taken like an animal to the slaughter, took the breath out of him. He was going to have to stand, helpless and pathetic, and watch Anton die in the worst possible way.
“You will not watch, boy.” Rafael appeared right in front of Gabe, blocking his view of the altar.
Gabe stared at him, unable to think straight, not really hearing a word he was saying. All he could think about was Ant… What was he doing here? How had these crazed people caught him? Was it somehow his fault? Had Rafael chosen Ant because he was Gabe’s friend?
“He put himself in our hands, offered himself to us, in a way, by trying to help you.” Rafael slid a hand out from inside his cloak. “And now it is your turn to offer us something… To repay the debt you owe to me for your ingratitude.”
Gabe felt something being pressed into his chest and his hands automatically moved to hold it.
“Take this.” Rafael stepped back. “Handle it with care, treat it with the respect an instrument of the gods deserves.”
Gabe looked down and saw he was holding the gold knife, its wide, curved blade shining like a vicious grin. For a moment he thought he must be imagining what was happening. And then he looked up and saw Rafael, smiling at him, move to his right and bow slightly, like he was welcoming him somewhere. As he stood aside he revealed the altar and Gabe saw Anton, pinioned like a butterfly, his T-shirt ripped apart to expose his chest. He was being held down by the four men. A fifth person, a woman, had a rope around
his neck, so all Anton could do was stare at the ceiling of the chapel.
“You have seen this, you know what must be done,” Rafael whispered in Gabe’s ear. “So, do it…”
Gabe’s hands locked around the knife handle, and he found himself walking towards the altar, arms raised high above his head.
Chapter Forty-Four
Gabe could hear his heart thundering, feel the sweat joining his tears as it poured down his face, the salt making his eyes sting. Inside he was screaming to himself that in any other reality he would be spinning round and lashing out at Rafael, splitting his ribcage open with the knife blade, reaching in and pulling out his beating heart. Not about to do it to Anton.
He was being used to kill his own friend, who hadn’t known the danger he was getting himself into – how could Ant have known that he would be risking everything by trying to help? Of all the grim and appalling things Rafael had ever done, in all the times he had been alive, this had to be the worst. There was no reason to it… How could a person be so twisted? How could Rafael be making him do this? Yet here he was, about to make a sacrifice of someone he’d grown up with, known since he was four years old!
Behind him Gabe was aware of the assembled company of Rafael’s followers standing in silence, a hushed, eager quiet hanging in the air like a hawk waiting to fall on its prey.
“They await,” Rafael said quietly, inside Gabe’s head. “They have been waiting for so long, boy, and now is their time… It is now the Next Time, and you have the honour of spilling the first blood, the first of so much blood! Everything is ready, a sickle moon hangs over us and nothing can stop this great day from dawning! Do it now!”
The hideous thing was that Gabe could feel his mouth twisting into a ghastly impression of a grin… Rafael was making him smile as he looked straight down into Anton’s panic-stricken eyes, bloodshot from crying, wide with abject fear and full of disbelief. The last thing Ant was going to see would be the person he trusted most smirking as he was about to kill him.
Gabe fought against the pull of his muscles, trying to override Rafael’s instructions, but it was no use. Then, as his arms pistoned down, he made one final, violent effort to alter the course of the knife. It coincided with Anton’s last-ditch attempt to escape, surprising his captors by jerking sideways like he’d been hit with a thousand bolts of lightning. The two events were only milliseconds apart, but that was all it needed for the knife to miss its target. Instead of crashing through Anton’s sternum and splitting it apart, the razor-sharp blade merely glanced off the lower side of his ribcage and landed with the full force of Gabe’s downward thrust on the stone altar slab.
The crowd still saw blood and roared its approval. They thought the job had been done. Next they expected to see the final cut and they were all holding their breath for the long-awaited sight of a still-beating heart held up high. It had been promised to them.
Gabe turned and found himself looking straight at Rafael. Direct eye contact. Locked on, like a laser-guided missile. And then the strangest thing happened. Behind the gold mask Rafael blinked first.
For a moment, a precious few seconds, as Rafael tried to take in the wholly unacceptable truth that events had not gone as he had planned, his hold over Gabe momentarily slipped. The survival circuit in Gabe’s brain sensed this and kicked into action. It was involuntary, his spirit’s last desperate attempt to cling to life. The deep, feral urge to exist took over and Gabe swung round like a crazed dervish, the knife held out horizontally at neck height.
It sliced open the jugular of the man holding one of Anton’s arms, a massive gout of arterial blood pumping out and spraying across the chapel.
It caught Rafael’s left arm at the elbow as he unthinkingly tried to defend himself, severing the joint completely.
And as Gabe spun full circle, the blade’s journey ended as it embedded itself deep in the head of the man still holding one of Anton’s legs.
Harrowing screams filled the air, as the herd instinct Rafael had created to control the congregation dissolved into a mindless panic. Trapped in this small, cave-like space, ancient fears bubbled up to the surface, made all the worse when first one person, then two more, got pushed too close to a cluster of candles and their clothes caught fire.
In the middle of the spiralling mayhem Gabe saw Anton, still lying on the altar even though no one was holding him down any more.
“Ant!”
Scared witless, holding the bloody rags of his T-shirt against his wound, Anton shrank back.
“We gotta get outta here, guy.” Gabe glanced over his shoulder at the hellish chaos behind him. “We gotta go!”
“You … you…” Anton shook his head as he pointed an accusing finger at Gabe.
“No, no! That wasn’t me, Ant, it wasn’t!”
“It was you, boy!”
In the growing pandemonium, Gabe had forgotten about Rafael. Bad move. He looked round to see the man weaving unsteadily behind him, the gold skull mask shimmering as it reflected the flames that now licked at the wooden rafters of the chapel roof.
“You did this!” screeched Rafael, and seemingly oblivious of what had happened to him, he swung what was left of his arm out, blood flying. “All my plans, so carefully laid… All gone, because of you, boy!”
Behind Rafael, Gabe could see a screaming, hysterical mass of people, more and more with their clothes and hair ablaze, all crammed together as they fought manically to get out. Except for some reason the doors were refusing to open. If there was ever a vision of Hell, he thought, this was it. And he and Anton were trapped in it too.
“I promised you would die!” Rafael yelled above the din, bending down to yank the sacrificial knife out of his dead follower’s head. “And you will… Both of you will! Rafael Delacruz has always been a man of his word!”
As Rafael raised the knife a small, overweight man, ablaze from head to toe like a vast tallow lamp, staggered by, screaming hysterically. What happened next wasn’t something he’d had time to think through, it was an unconscious, reflex action, pure and simple. Gabe kicked out wildly at the burning man, who reeled sideways, arms flailing, into Rafael. The ancient fabric of his cloak, tinder-dry, caught fire instantly, going up with an audible whoomp and enveloping Rafael in a deadly cocoon of flames. Gabe reeled back from the heat, mesmerized by the roaring inferno in front of him. Rafael was gold all over now.
Unable to drag his eyes away, Gabe couldn’t believe it when he saw the man, his flesh now melting to the bone, pull his shoulders back. Knife raised, he was ignoring reality and somehow going on the attack again.
Which could not be happening because he was on fire… But instead of killing Rafael, the flames seemed to be feeding him, giving him even greater power. Then Rafael’s chest rose, as if he was about to hold his breath, and it looked like the fire was being drawn deep inside him, making it appear that his heart was glowing a fierce orange.
The attack never came. Instead, quite suddenly, Rafael collapsed on to the chapel floor, the flames dying with the man. Gabe stared at the lifeless body, not quite able to take in what had happened… The man who had promised to kill him was dead.
“What the hell is going on?”
Gabe looked back at Anton, who was watching him cautiously. “I’ll tell you when we get out of here.”
“And how exactly are we gonna do that, bro?” Anton slid awkwardly off the altar as burning debris began falling from the roof.
“Guess we could try busting a window, right?”
“Guess we could,” Anton said, staying just out of reach of Gabe.
“I told you, it wasn’t me doing that thing with the knife, Anton. Honest to god…”
“Sure looked a whole lot like you, dude.” Anton shook his head. “We are toast, man… I mean, literally, we are toast if we don’t shift our asses.”
The only thing Gabe could see that he might be able to break a window with was the old strongbox. Bending down to pick up the chest, he stopped. “You hear t
hat?”
Ant frowned. “What?”
“Sirens?”
“Could be… Let’s not wait and see, man. Right?”
“Yeah, right…” Gabe picked up the chest, lighter now that the solid gold mask had been taken out, ran towards the nearest window and threw it…
Chapter Forty-Five
Gabe scrambled to his feet coughing, helped up by Anton who he’d insisted got out first. He looked back in through the busted window at the inferno – a complete nightmare scene he’d probably made worse by letting more air in – and knew they had just made it out before it was too late. He couldn’t stop staring, stop feeling he should at least have tried to get someone else out.
“Them or us, man.” Anton pulled him back. “It is what it is. There’s nothing you coulda done.”
In the distance the sirens were getting closer.
“What were you—?”
Anton and Gabe both started talking at once, Anton nodding for Gabe to go first.
“How did you, you know, get caught up in all this, Ant?” Gabe could smell burning and saw all the hair on his forearms had been singed off. “I had a fit when I saw you being dragged in.”
Anton moved further away from the chapel, wincing slightly and holding his side as he walked. “See, it was all over everywhere, that you’d got yourself arrested? So I went down to that house near the church.” Anton looked at the blood on his hand and absentmindedly wiped it off on his jeans. “Saw you roll up with this guy, you acting like you were all kinda spaced out, and wondered what was up… It was weird, like I was sure there were gunshots from inside the house? But the cops outside ignored it, and then you come walking back out like nothing’s up. Like I said, weird. So I followed you.”
“You did?”
“Sure.” Anton glanced at the approaching squad cars, lights going, sirens adding to the wailing from inside the chapel. “Like, at first I just wanted to see you were OK, which you were. And second, I thought the guy was a cop. Then I figured maybe he wasn’t a good cop, when he drove out to this place.”
