by Kim Newman
‘He didn’t mean to make you drop the cider,’ Jessica said.
Ferg hawked and spat in the disciple’s face.
‘Eeuurgh,’ Dolar said, ‘filthy beast.’
Jessica took a step back. She was out of it, letting her superior take over the fight. The disciple wiped himself with his hand, cold evil in his face. It was incredible he could pass for human. Underneath his plastic skin, you could see the steel skull. His eyes were frozen crystals, machine fluid pouring out of them.
‘Mister, I’m sorry,’ Jessica said, still pretending.
Ferg ran. He ran hard, feet lifting up, slamming down. He had to get away. If they caught him, the Iron Insect would get into his brain, sucking his memories.
* * *
As he ran, Paul’s chest hurt. Gerald had given him a few bruises, and he wasn’t used to running, anyway. A twenty-yard sprint to catch a bus left him with a throbbing head and pained ribs. His feet flapped, and he couldn’t breathe properly. His cursed tooth twinged. He ran after Ferg, and people ran after him. The girl was following, and a couple of others.
‘Gangway,’ he shouted at people.
Mostly they’d already been pushed aside by Ferg, so he had an easier time of it. The kid was younger than him, not that much fitter, and badly spooked. And he was slowing down.
‘Just… want… to… talk…’ he gasped, each word a knife in his lungs.
They were in the village proper now. Ferg put a foot wrong and tumbled, skidding on his hands and face. He fell by the dead tree outside the pub and lay there, branch shadows across him. None of the locals or visitors in the crowded pub garden made a move to help the fallen boy. They barely noticed him, continued with their drinking.
‘Ferg,’ Paul shouted.
He reached the tree and knelt by the dazed boy, helping him sit up. Ferg had cuts on his hands and a scratch down one cheek, but wasn’t badly hurt. The girl was there now. Unable to speak, she sank by the low wall of the pub garden and fought to get her puff back. There were others with her: an Indian or Pakistani boy, an old hippie, a woman with a headband.
‘What’s wrong with Ferg?’ the woman asked.
Paul shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Why chase him?’
He had no easy answer. Ferg, recovered from his knock, kept his mouth shut like an arrested Mafia don waiting for the mob lawyer. This close, Paul realized the boy was scared to the point of paralysis. Holding Ferg’s arm, he could feel steel-cord tension in him.
‘Ferg,’ the girl said, ‘Ferg?’
Ferg looked away, face to the tree. Paul realized something else. What Ferg was terrified of. Him.
* * *
Ferg looked up and saw the Iron Insect’s limbs stretched against the sky. They were coated in gnarled wood, but unmistakable. They curled like fingers making a fist. He knew he was caught. The disciple had him. The others stood around, victorious. It was over. He might be the last human being in England.
‘Ferg?’ Jessica said, carrying on the cruel game. ‘What’s wrong?’
He waited to be changed.
* * *
‘He’s in shock,’ Paul said.
The girl listened to him.
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘No, I’m a PhD candidate.’
‘Then who gives a toss what you think?’
She was angry, protective. She’d hoped for someone authoritative to explain things to her. She sat by Ferg and hugged, hands curving around his face. He cringed as if she were a Martian, bloodsucking tentacles attaching to his flesh, poison-dripping mandibles tearing his skin.
‘Ferg?’
She let go of him, hurt in her face. The boy squirmed against the ground, pulling in his arms and legs and covering his face.
‘Last night,’ Paul said, ‘at the fire, we saw… something.’
‘You’re him,’ the woman said, ‘the man who went up the hill.’
‘Yes.’
‘He wouldn’t talk about it,’ she explained. ‘What happened up there?’
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ he lied. ‘I don’t really know myself.’
The Asian boy looked disgusted and said, ‘You too, huh?’
‘Very sharp,’ Paul told him. ‘Me too. If you weren’t there, you wouldn’t believe me. If you were, you’d be like us. Everything is changed. You can’t go home again.’
Up by the Agapemone, people started cheering. Din cascaded down the hill, and the cry was taken up by the people in the pub garden. A smile spread on the old hippie’s face, and he joined his voice with the others. The mass emotion scared Paul further. In the moonlight, he saw the outline of the Manor House, stained-glass windows multicoloured pinpoints. He remembered Hazel’s eyes as she failed to recognize him, as she was tugged to the chapel.
The girl stood up and began to caterwaul, her joyous, mindless shout lost in the racket. The Asian boy and the hippie woman joined in. Paul saw that in the pub garden even the resentful locals, red-faced and middle-aged, were taking part. The sound was like a football crowd during the slow-motion replay of a last-second winning goal from the home team. The massed voices were a natural force. He was afraid his eardrums would burst. The people were not screaming or shouting or singing. They were not voicing recognizable words. They were opening their throats and making noise. He didn’t know how many thousands of people were part of the one giant voice, but it was one sound now, impossible to shut out of his head, impossible to resist.
Paul’s mouth was open, and the yell was spewing out. Then he saw Ferg, looking up at him, mouth shut, eyes cool, and the noise did not get past his tonsils.
* * *
The Iron Insect’s followers chirruped in worship. Invisible but obvious, monsters strode among the crowds, exciting commotion wherever they stepped. Ferg saw them all give in, drop the pretence. Dolar was first, but the others followed almost immediately. Jessica joined in. Then Salim, Syreeta, everyone. The disciple began, but stopped. And Ferg realized he was wrong. The man from the fire wasn’t a disciple. He was like him, one of the hold-outs. One of the last real people. The man looked at him. Ferg stood up. The noise of the Iron Insect’s worshippers was hideous, louder than any rock concert he had ever been to, louder than a hurricane. The man’s mouth opened and closed, but there was no way Ferg could have heard anything he said. He shrugged and held out his hand. The man mouthed exaggeratedly, and tapped his chest. Finally, Ferg worked it out. Paul. The man was introducing himself. Paul took his hand, and held fast. Among the ranks of the alien-infested, Ferg wasn’t alone. He held on to Paul’s hand as if it were the only fixed point in a collapsing universe.
10
Susan went with the tide, filing towards the chapel with the rest of the Brethren. Inside, pain was a constant, shutting her senses down one by one.
‘We share Love,’ said Karen, taking up the phrase that rustled, a meaningless wind, through the congregation.
Brother Derek grinned, and nodded towards the postulant. ‘Looks smashin’, doesn’t she?’
Even if she shut her eyes, Susan could sense Jago. He was nearing, swelling large, blotting out all else. Beloved was the pain, a man-sized wound in her mind. In the dark of her head, he stood out like a man on fire, as if her mind were a night sight sensitive to body heat. His heart burned like a candleflame. Tonight, Jago’s Talent was active, reaching out beyond himself, dragging his followers into the world he’d made in his own image. It took all Susan’s strength to hold still, not to be sucked into Beloved’s vortex.
Angels and demons crowded in with the Brethren. Christs in the windows cried red from their wounds. According to David, Jago was a deluded Talent. Nothing more. With powers beyond the ordinary—like hers—and a misguided faith, he was capable of casting himself as his own holy trinity.
She paused on the threshold of the chapel, and looked back. The hallway stretched for a hundred yards, dotted with ghosts. The floor u
ndulated like gentle waves. Taine bolted the front doors and used the big keys in the locks. She thought of Paul, shut out of the Temple, and guessed he was better off. In this struggle. Hazel’s boyfriend was a civilian. She was the good soldier, bound by duty. The chemicals in her brain gave her a responsibility, whether she wanted it or not.
Pain burst behind her eyes, and she had to be steadied by Karen, who held her hand, squeezing. Tottering like an old woman, Susan took her place in the front pew, fighting the explosions inside her. Agony blurted out of her mouth as she coughed. Karen’s hair stood out sideways.
‘Sorry,’ Susan said through pain, ‘not… my fault…’
‘We share Love,’ Karen said, smoothing her hair.
The Lord God came into the chapel and strode in glory down the aisle, Mick and Taine trotting respectfully behind him. Mick was robed in white, a winged band around his forehead, a brass instrument he could not play in his hands. Symbolically, he was the Angel of the Last Trump. Taine’s ponytail was undone, hair hanging to his shoulderblades, and he wore matte black sunglasses. In Jago’s fancy-dress theology, the Brother was Samson, strongest of the Faithful.
Susan looked for Hazel. Tied up inside like a knot, she knew she would have to sit through another Great Manifestation. Hazel was kneeling before the altar, waiting. A lamb, a kid. Oh, child, Susan thought, child…
* * *
Jenny looked at Hazel’s profile, and helped her fix her hands together in prayer. Hazel’s face, side on, cut in half Sister Kate’s, face to, making one moon-face, noses meeting. Hazel’s exposed eye looked at the altar, while Kate’s looked at Jenny. The combined face was cross-eyed. Hazel trembled, not sure what to do.
‘Bow,’ Jenny said, kindly.
Jenny’s nose touched her pressed-together fingertips. Kate held the postulant’s hand and stroked her back.
‘It’ll be all right, Sister-Love,’ she said.
‘All right,’ Jenny echoed.
The temptation to turn to Beloved was enormous. Jenny could feel His presence as He came down the aisle. She could hear the Brethren’s breath held in awe. She felt the Heat, saw the Light.
She flashed back to her own Great Manifestation, with Janet holding her hand, the thrill of the Divine Touch, the Coming of the Light, the acceptance into the community. Only then had she understood the name. The Abode of Love. She remembered Beloved’s face, filling her field of vision. She remembered becoming the vessel for His Love, the channel for the redemption of all. For Jenny, it had been a rebirth.
The postulant was unsteady, uncertain. That was the lot of all the unsaved, confusion and despair. Soon, Hazel would share in such wonders. All confusion gone, all despair past.
She knew her part in the ritual, had learned the words by rote, rehearsed them when alone, poring over her school Bible. She remembered how Janet had said her piece when Jenny had been the postulant. Janet’s voice had been lovely, firm, perfect. Everything about her elevation had been perfect. It was down to Jenny to give Hazel the gift that had been given to her.
She drew breath, almost bursting with excitement. Kate took the veil, a transparent silk square threaded through with silver, and placed it on Hazel’s face.
‘Look up,’ she said.
Hazel did, and Kate set the veil in place, slipping a circlet around her brow to pin it. The veil sparkled.
To herself, Jenny thought, ‘The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s…’
Kate turned Hazel around to face the flock, to face Beloved.
Beloved shone.
‘Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth,’ Jenny said, finding strength in her voice, ‘for thy love is better than wine…’
‘Because of the savour of thy good ointments,’ Kate joined, ‘thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins Love thee…’
* * *
‘Draw me,’ Jenny Steyning said, attention split between Hazel and Jago, ‘we will run after thee. The King hath brought me into his chambers…’
Susan wasn’t hurting so much now. Jago was focused on the ceremony, and there was less loose power floating around. She could almost get some peace in her head. Now, the tinnitus was outside. At first, Susan thought the noise was a gale-force wind, battering the old roof of the Agapemone. Then she realized it was a crowd chorusing with one voice. It was as if the whole village, population swelled by the festival, were howling doglike at the moon. In the chapel, the flock were engrossed, hypnotized. If they heard the wailing, they paid it no attention.
‘I am black but comely, oh ye daughters of Jerusalem,’ Kate Caudle continued, ridiculously, ‘as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon…’
As far as Susan understood, the Song of Solomon got into the Bible by mistake. With its mix of erotic, mystic, dramatic and twaddlesome, it was a natural cornerstone for Jago’s selfserving religion.
‘…tell me, oh thou whom my soul Loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon…’
Susan looked at Jago, rejoicing in the glory of himself. Central to his church was that he got all the good parts: the Lord God, Ezekiel, King David, John the Baptist, the Messiah. He was Lion and Lamb, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Handsome and dignified in Old Testament magnificence, he was now Solomon the Wise, the Young, the Virile. Beneath the embroidered robe, he was naked, barefoot to show humility. He stood arms out, the gold and silver threads of his sleeves catching light. If things had been otherwise, Susan thought, he could have lived a perfectly useful, harmless, fulfilling life as lead guitarist of Status Quo. Slowly, solemnly, a churchful of necks craning to keep eyes fixed on him, Beloved ascended to his spot behind the altar, robe rippling and throwing off light.
‘If thou know not, oh thou fairest among women,’ he said, words familiar, ‘go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents.’
The first time, with Janet as postulant, Susan had been tempted to giggle at the nonsense about shepherds and the Queen of Sheba. But even then she’d known more or less what to expect. It had been hard not to feel sick. And since then, she’d watched Jenny’s elevation. Sometimes virgin blood spilled before the altar.
* * *
It was a dream, and Hazel let herself go with it. It was draughty in the chapel, her skin goose-pimpled under her thin dress. Her nipples were tight, pleasant knots. The flagstones were ice under her knees.
‘I have compared thee, oh my love,’ Kate said, ‘to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots. Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold…’
As Kate spoke, she took a necklace from a wooden box by the foot of the altar. Hazel instinctively dipped her head and the Sister slipped the necklace over her, resting the heavy jewels on her chest.
‘A bundle of myrrh is my well-Beloved unto me,’ Jenny said. ‘He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.’
She looked up, veil clinging to her face. Everything was beautiful. Candleflames sparkled. A white face in a window shone, moon behind it. Hazel didn’t understand the words, but Love welled inside her, surrounding her, taking in the Brethren, wafting towards the Beloved Presence.
‘Behold, thou art fair, my Love,’ Jenny said, standing, helping Hazel up too. ‘Behold, thou art fair.’
Hazel’s knees tingled after so long kneeling. Her robe, pressed into her skin, came free like a sticking plaster. Kate, made awkward by her child, stumbled, and Hazel had to put an arm around her to help her up. Together, the handmaidens stood before the altar. Jenny put her head close to Hazel’s and lifted her chin, raising her eyes. She saw the Beloved.
‘Thou hast doves’ eyes.’
Looking at Him, Hazel saw it was true. His eyes were the gentle, golden, peaceful, wise eyes of doves. Behind, radiating through His robes, phantom dove-angel wings spread wide, the points reaching towards the roof.
‘Behold, thou art fair, my Beloved…’
This was Love in the Flesh.
The handmaidens s
tepped back, respectfully. She was alone before the altar, before Beloved.
* * *
‘I am the Rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys,’ Jenny continued, ‘as the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the wood apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved among the sons…’
This was Hazel’s night now. Who stood before the altar was the vessel, the representative for them all, for all the Sister-Loves, for all the Brothers and Sisters of the Agapemone, for all the world.
‘…stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of Love. His left hand is under my head and His right hand doth embrace me.’
Having come out from behind the altar, Beloved took Hazel, slipping a hand under her hair, and another around her waist. The memory of His touch was enough to make Jenny falter.
‘…I charge you, oh ye daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till He please…’
Beloved bent His head down and kissed the postulant, touching His lips to her veiled forehead. Everyone felt the pleasure.
‘…the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land…’
Jenny had thought when Beloved kissed her at her elevation that she would swoon and be unable to go on. But she had managed. She saw Hazel go limp in Beloved’s embrace, and willed strength to the postulant.
‘Oh my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,’ Beloved said, lifting the veil, ‘in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice, for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely…’
Hazel’s eyes opened as the veil slid off her face.
‘My Beloved is mine,’ Hazel said, voice clear, ‘and I am His.’
‘He feedeth among the lilies,’ Kate and Jenny said.
Beloved kissed Hazel.
* * *
Lips touched her mouth, then fastened. A jolt of pure energy shot through her, and she felt the pleasure would never end. Every muscle tightened, every nerve sang. She convulsed, but He held her close, tongue in her mouth, closed eye next to her cheek. Gently, Beloved withdrew from her and smiled. Her heart was overflowing. She became a true vessel, loose-limbed and pliant to His purpose. He eased her back, lifting her off her feet until she rested on the altar. It was surprisingly comfortable, and fit the contours of her body. She felt a touch at her wrists, and saw her handmaidens had come forward. Jenny and Kate held her tight, keeping her from sliding off the altar. Beloved touched her body, and the Light came down from Heaven, entering into her.
