TH02 - The Priest of Evil

by Matti Joensuu

  ‘This is amazing…’

  ‘I know. Maybe he’s a nice guy after all,’ replied Matti.

  That’s when the music started. It was the same kind of beeping as a mobile phone, but far louder. People started looking around, wondering why no one answered so that the noise would stop.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Old Macdonald had a farm…’

  ‘I know that,’ said Matti. ‘But where is it coming from?’

  ‘Somebody’s got their phone turned up really loud.’

  ‘No,’ said Matti, bewildered. He placed his knife and fork back on his plate. ‘Leena, I think it’s coming from this rucksack…’

  Leena’s mouth stopped chewing. She stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘You’re right,’ she whispered after a moment. All the while ‘Old Macdonald had a farm’ played on and on in the background; the sound seemed to grow louder the longer it rang. ‘It might be an alarm clock. I stayed over with a friend one night and her clock sounded just like that.’

  ‘Do you… Do you think we should have a look inside?’

  ‘But what if it really is some kind of obedience test?’

  ‘How about if I don’t take it off my back, so at least we don’t break that rule. Then you can have a quick look inside.’

  ‘OK.’

  Leena stood up, the legs of her stool scraping across the floor. Some of the people sitting around them realised that they were the ones causing all the noise and looked at them angrily, as if to say ‘Give it a rest!’ Leena was already standing behind him and Matti could hear the bag rustling and feel it moving on his back. ‘Old Macdonald had a farm’ played on and on – until there came a click and the music stopped all at once. Now there was only the sound of Leena rummaging in the rucksack. Then she closed the zip, walked back round the table and sat down.

  ‘I was right,’ she said. ‘It’s the same little white clock my friend has.’

  ‘What else was in there?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘Nothing valuable, just boxes full of rusty bolts and stuff.’

  ‘No wonder it’s so heavy.’

  ‘The box in the middle had some kind of blocks in it, like sausages. Then there were a load of cables going from the clock into the blocks.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Matti. He gave a shrug and picked up his soda, but the glass hadn’t even reached his lips before his expression changed into one of bewilderment.

  ‘Hang on.’

  ‘What?’ asked Leena, her mouth full of pizza.

  ‘Have you read in the papers…’ he stammered, his hands shaking so much that Coke spilled over the rim and he had to place his glass back on the table. ‘Could it be a bomb?’

  ‘A bomb? What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘It was in the papers. The kind they blow up in England and Israel…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Matti breathlessly, as his face and lips began to tremble.

  ‘Matti,’ Leena whispered and placed her hand on his. ‘I’m scared… Let’s leave the bag and get out of here, just to be on the safe side.’

  For a long moment Matti was silent.

  ‘We can’t,’ he stuttered finally.

  ‘Well what then? Should we call the fire brigade?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘The clock wasn’t right. It was ten to twelve.’

  ‘What if it goes off at twelve?’

  ‘I know…’

  They stared at one another with fear in their eyes, and only after many long seconds of silence Matti finally said: ‘But what if we’re wrong? Things like that don’t happen in Finland…’

  ‘Really?’ said Leena, as though she too wanted to believe it, then added stiffly: ‘But what about… Don’t you remember what happened in Myyrmanni? And the car bomb downtown?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Matti, carefully standing up. ‘Let’s go. We’ll leave it on the street. It can’t do as much damage if it’s outside.’

  ‘I’m not so sure it was a bomb after all.’

  ‘We can throw it down a sewer…’

  ‘OK,’ Leena finally agreed, and they began to make their way towards the escalators leading up to the ground floor. Matti was suddenly filled with an urge to ditch the rucksack there and then and run away, but it was as though Leena had sensed this and she grabbed his hand, holding him tightly.

  There were still crowds of people and the escalators were so packed that it was impossible to walk up past the queue. All they could do was stand and wait, wait and suffer as the escalators edged slowly upwards. Matti wondered what would happen if it really was a bomb and if it exploded right now. At least a hundred people would have been blown into oblivion; Leena amongst them, and him too. Would he have time to register anything? Pain? Or would it be as though someone had simply switched off the lights?

  They arrived at the main door and wove their way outside among the thick throng of people. Matti could no longer control his fear; he had already slipped his hands beneath the straps on his shoulders and broke into a run, but he only managed to take a few steps before Leena grabbed him by the sleeve.

  ‘Don’t leave me!’

  ‘I won’t,’ he panted. His upper lip was moist with sweat and a few drops started to trickle down his neck.

  Then he saw the priest, and Leena clearly saw him too – as impossible as it seemed in such a crowd. He was standing on the other side of the street staring up at the shopping centre. Then he noticed them, there was no mistaking it. For a moment he didn’t move, then he turned sharply and took a few quick steps towards the corner. He stopped still and raised his hand as if he were looking at his watch. Immediately he started waving at them, gesturing as if to say ‘Come quickly!’ And although the distance between them was great, Matti could feel his electric gaze sizzling and boring into him.

  The traffic lights would not change. Matti didn’t dare cross. Cars sped past like sharks or piranhas, their tyres thundering along the road, and the lights continued to shine red at the waiting pedestrians; they shone so insistently that he began to feel as if the little man were never going to change, but had been painted permanently red.

  ‘Dear God,’ Leena mumbled, but Matti couldn’t manage even that. Only an indistinct sound passed his lips. Perhaps it was a whimper.

  55. Tinkerbell

  ‘Why won’t it change?’ The words pounded through Leena’s mind, almost as fast as her heartbeat. There wasn’t room in her thoughts for much besides the priest whom, despite the crowds of people, she could see as clearly as if she had been looking through a telescope, and a desperate hope that it wasn’t a bomb after all, that nothing bad was going to happen, that there would be something good that she could look forward to in the future, something she could live for.

  And in a flash it became clear to her what that thing was, so clear in fact that she no longer had to think about it, and she clung even tighter to Matti’s hand. She turned and looked at him; the expression on his face was that of a scared child - he was crying, without making a sound, tears simply running one after the other down his cheeks. And there amidst the chaos and the danger he suddenly asked: ‘Do you like me?’

  ‘Ye–yes.’

  ‘Are we going out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The crowd split around them and began flooding across the street, shoving them backwards in the process. The cursed little red man had disappeared and had now been replaced by a sprightly green one. Leena managed to urge her legs into action and dragged Matti behind her. They were soon in the middle of the street, on the tram tracks, only one platform and another lane of traffic separating them from the pavement opposite. It wasn’t a very long journey, it just seemed long – all the more so because the distance was being measured by the little alarm clock in the rucksack on Matti’s back. It didn’t tick as such, it whispered: ‘tih, tih…’ And although he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help thinking how many times it still had to say ‘tih’ b
efore it was too late.

  Finally they arrived at the other side of the street and stepped on to the pavement. The priest ran towards them at an incredible speed; he didn’t say a word, but spun Matti around by the shoulders and began almost tearing open the top of the rucksack. He was hampered by the glove on his left hand, and something at the side of his mouth was quivering so intensely that, amidst all the commotion, it resembled a fish tugging at a worm on the end of a hook.

  ‘Sabre delicatus helveticum!’ he growled, almost like a wild animal. It had to be a curse of some kind. Eventually he managed to undo the top of the rucksack and open the strings, ripped the neck open, shoved his hands inside and began fiddling with something. He clearly succeeded in what he was doing, took a deep breath, removed his hands from the rucksack and let it fall to the ground. His posture seemed to collapse, he slumped and whispered: ‘Cum sabateum…’

  ‘What?’ asked Leena. Speaking was something of a relief, as for the last few minutes her tongue had seemed paralysed. ‘What exactly is going on?’

  ‘Pons asini…’

  ‘Enough of that gobbledygook. I think it’s time you explained exactly what’s going on. You have the nerve to ask us to carry this machine of yours… It started ringing.’

  ‘Vox Mamolae.’

  ‘Well?’ Leena pressed him. She couldn’t understand where she had suddenly found such courage. But the priest didn’t even look at her. He tore the rucksack from Matti’s back, slung it on his arm, left it there dangling and looked around a number of times, as if he were waiting for someone – or rather afraid that someone might appear.

  ‘I asked you to explain what this is all about!’

  ‘It is nothing. It was merely a test that you two wretched children have failed miserably. Now – go to hell! I never want to see you again!’ the priest snarled. His voice was now as rough as a lump of steel wool. Then he simply turned and ran off as quickly as before, and before they knew it he had turned the corner into Kaivokatu.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Leena, but Matti was still so disorientated that he seemed not to hear her. ‘Let’s go after him and cause a scene until he tells us what’s going on.’

  She grabbed Matti by the hand and started running, and together they wound their way in between all the people walking along the street. The priest had to be running very fast. He had already passed the Seurahuone building and was running flat out, his shoulders hunched, towards the steps leading down to the upper level of the underground station. All they could make out were his shoulders and his baseball cap, and from beneath the cap crept a few strands of loose silver hair.

  ‘Faster Matti!’

  ‘I can’t. My legs feel like they’re numb…’

  ‘You’ve got to! I want some answers from that freak!’

  She strained even harder, all but dragging Matti like a weight behind her. Soon they had reached the steps and began nimbly making their way downwards. She had guessed correctly. The priest had turned left, and there was only one place he could be heading: towards the compass mosaic and the underground.

  ‘Come on, we can’t lose him. He could blow the whole place up…’

  They struggled their way through the crowds down to the compass level, and just before they reached the ticket machines Leena realised that she ought to go on by herself after all, if only because of what she had originally planned to speak to the priest about, and now more than ever before she didn’t want Matti to overhear. She stopped, grabbed Matti by the shoulders and tried to catch her breath. Looking past him she could see that the priest was almost there. It looked as if he were afraid of something; he looked almost shy as he peered around, pulled up the collar of his raincoat and drew the cap even further down on his head.

  ‘I’ll go by myself,’ she gasped, turning to look Matti in the eyes.

  ‘No… what if he does something to you?’

  ‘With all these people around? He wouldn’t dare. I’ll start screaming and say that he was trying to touch me up. The security guards or the police will arrest him.’

  ‘Still…’

  ‘I’m going after him!’ she snapped. She shook Matti by the shoulders – they were running out of time. She couldn’t let the priest get on a train without her. ‘Remember what you promised me. You said you’d make yourself scarce so I could talk to him in private.’

  ‘OK… I’ll wait here. But promise me that you’ll come back.’

  ‘Of course I’ll come back,’ she said, and with that she was on her way. She didn’t care that she didn’t have a ticket.

  The priest had already arrived on the platform and turned left once again – he was waiting for a train heading east, unless he knew of a secret door or some other way of escaping unnoticed. Leena had also made it on to the platform. She pushed her way between two men and almost tripped over a pram, but managed to regain her balance in time. The priest was some twenty metres away from her. He was standing behind the mass of people on the platform, waiting for the train like everyone else. Leena inched her way forward, further and further, until only a few boys stood between them.

  She walked around them and stopped right beside the priest. Only now that she had stopped running and her breathing had finally returned to normal did she realise how painfully the feeling of anger and disappointment stung inside her. She grabbed hold of the priest’s sleeve and pulled sharply. He turned, but now his expression was utterly calm, as if nothing had happened, as if they were old friends who had accidentally bumped into one another.

  ‘Oh, it is you, my girl,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in mock surprise.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. And now you’re going to explain a few things.’

  ‘Lower your voice. Do not shout.’

  ‘I asked you to do something to Matti’s Dad so that they wouldn’t move away…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And you… You tried to kill him. You pushed him in front of a train. And now today you tried to blow me and Matti to smithereens – and hundreds of other people too. What’s going on? Are you some satanic priest or what?’

  ‘I do not have the faintest idea what you are raving about.’

  ‘Raving? Do you know what’ll happen if I start screaming that you groped me?’

  ‘And that, little wretch, is something you will not do,’ the priest growled, raising his right hand in a trembling fist in front of his face. Leena somehow sensed that he had no intention of hitting her. He then spread his fingers as far apart as he could. ‘Look at me!’ he commanded her.

  Though she didn’t want to look at him, in some strange way she felt that she had no choice. Her anger had disappeared, and she suddenly felt as timid as she always had in the presence of the priest. He stared at her through his outstretched fingers, unflinchingly, not even blinking, and she felt the full power of his gaze; like the pull of water through a drain, it sucked out her own will and left her with nothing.

  ‘What are you?’ he asked quietly, though he clearly did not expect her to answer and continued almost straight away. ‘You are a fat, ugly slob that nobody could ever truly love… Answer me: what are you?’

  ‘A f-fat, ugly… Slob that nobody could ever truly love,’ she whispered. She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, for it was true – she was exactly as the priest said; Matti must have been mistaken. She could have burst into tears, but managed to stifle her sobs to a mere whimper.

  ‘But what would you like to be? What could you become?’ wheezed the priest, and he bent down so close to her that she could smell his breath. ‘You would like to be beautiful and slender. You would like to float in the sky in a bell skirt with nylon tights on your legs. You would like to be Tinkerbell. Tell me: am I right?’

  ‘Ye-yes.’

  ‘And you have already experienced it once. Your life could be like this forever… But you have gravely offended both me and Maammo. First you must make amends. Would you like to do so?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered softly. Once again the priest had
her in his power, and all the people around them seemed to have disappeared. She could no longer hear the crowd’s faint murmur; she and the priest were all that existed. Or rather, all that existed was the priest.

  ‘Then you shall accept the holy kiss of Maammo.’

  ‘Wh-what?’

  ‘Maammo’s hallowed kiss. Can you see the yellow rail on the other side of the tracks?’

  ‘Yes, but… There are people standing in the way.’

  ‘Go over to it. Kneel before it and place your hand inside – the underside is open.’

  Leena was breathing heavily. It was as though she were drunk, but she could still clearly remember how incredibly beautiful it had felt to be thin and slender, pretty stockings on her legs, floating between the rooftops with nothing in the world to fear; it was then that she realised she truly was Tinkerbell.

  ‘But… It says DANGER…’

  ‘Of course, that is because of the tracks. A train might come along, but you can see from the screen up there how many minutes are left before the next train is due, so that you will have enough time to walk across.’

  ‘What… What is the holy kiss of Maammo like?’

  ‘It lies inside the railing, just to the left of that sign. It is a round stone, and when you bring that stone back to the platform you will notice that it is filled with silver grooves. And whenever you clasp it in your hand, then you can be Tinkerbell again.’

  A train pulled into the station and people began to cram inside. Almost immediately the signal to close the doors rang out and the motors revved up again: Phuii-phuii… More commuters instantly flooded on to the platform; it was as if Leena saw them through a veil of mist. The only thing she saw clearly was the yellow rail running along the ground on the other side of the tracks.

  ‘Now!’ commanded the priest. ‘Go and receive the holy kiss of Maammo and you will be saved!’