The Power

by Ian Watson

  “And humans overhear. People heed the language of evil time and again. Madness, cruelty, filth, abomination. The beast in the heart! Here is the swamp from which human genius crawled. Here, the source of power and imagination. Life arises from death, the terrible void. It always remembers its way back.”

  Sheri broke in. “All art and achievement starts out from filth and vileness, is that it? And that’s the bottom line?”

  “They certainly ended back there, just a while ago! Where is your precious art now? Floating in the stratosphere. Burnt, fouled, contaminated.”

  “Yeah, well the war was –”

  “Justified? An accident? A misjudgment? Or perhaps the last judgment? Fools!”

  “It sure ought to please Evil!” she retorted.

  “I could turn you inside-out for your folly, Sheri Diamond, and still keep you alive. That would be your true reply, uttered in my own native language. Yes, inside-out! Or I could turn your diamond into coal, a body made of burning coal.”

  “Why don’t you?” she whispered, “Satan.”

  “For the simple reason that the diaboli of the world have awoken, Sheri, and have joined in me – to survive! To call my power Satan is to glamourize. Likewise, to call creation by…that other name, which has no place in my vocabulary. The force of evil is stored in the diaboli of the world. Seals are set upon our locked powers. Certain people can learn to break these seals, with our encouragement. They can be taught the language of evil. Even Satan,” and it mouthed the title sarcastically, “finds a nuclear war…unacceptable.”

  “Unacceptable?” repeated Nell, bewildered.

  “Yes. Unacceptable because nuclear war destroys even evil. Utterly. Even Satan,” and filthy spittle flew from the thing’s mouth like snake venom, “revolts against a nuclear war, which annuls everything whatever. Forever.”

  The temperature in the church had become icy.

  “Therefore I set a seal around this village. Therefore I put forth my power to hold off the storm of fire and poison. Therefore I cause some light and warmth. Therefore I preserve you and this place and its beasts and birds and plants.”

  “Preserve?” cried Jack. “This gang o’ corpses? Ye must be havin’ us on! You’re playin’ wiv us. Jeni tried to warn us.”

  “You fool!” wailed the head. “Jeneeee is the person whom I taught to unlock the seals. She is my agent. Do you not realize this, Jack? Jeneeee is the genie-summoner.”

  “No –!” Even as Jeni opened her mouth to protest, the gates of memory burst wide spewing out ancient silt, sluicing forth pickled bitter brine and fury.

  Fury in the ancient meaning – as in Furies, those bloody avenging demons from hell….She was in Donna’s room again, and time had melted.

  “Let me bring you to orgasm,” the heavy nurse ordered, pinioning her with one hand while the other hand groped between her thighs and pressed flesh into her secret flesh. Fingers stretched the flimsy membrane of her brief lace knickers which she’d bought specially to wear for deflowering by Phil Daniels and had worn again that day; dress light and loose. Donna manipulated her rhythmically, massaging in a way that Phil certainly hadn’t known how to, but which Jeni herself knew so familiarly.

  “I’ll scream,” Jeni had gasped. Panted. Whatever.

  “No you won’t,” murmured Donna. “You’ll enjoy. The armour will snap.”

  Devilishly familiar! Unsummoned by her, images arose of black-uniformed Nazis crowding around a gypsy girl, of black-robed Inquisitioners ripping the rags off a beautiful young witch, hunting for devil-marks on her flesh, poking and prying – and in Jeni’s mind, in a language she didn’t speak yet somehow understood, the witch called out to her Master for assistance to strike her captors and tormentors, to blast them, burn them, hurl them against the stone walls so violently that they would become clinging tapestries. Or else to please spirit her away out of their midst. But please hurry, keep your promises. Not promises exactly. Implied promises, hints, inducements, allurements. Hadn’t the shaggy Horned One shagged her, in her dreams at least? Hadn’t he shown her another land on the backside of the Earth? Hadn’t he kissed her backside hotly, hadn’t she put her tongue into his backside, the key to unlock him?

  Jeni knew this witch utterly. The girl was in rebellion against the powers of the Earth, against the hated dominators with their crosses and swords and tools of torture and their cruel hypocritical goodness and their taxes and bibles and laws to oppress the poor folk and outcast womenfolk.

  No help would reach the girl; not in that life which climaxed in anguish and agony.

  Had Jeni once lived that life, which was so real to her while she lay underneath Donna? Did the witch’s dying agony imprint a roving ghost upon the world, impose a signal upon the waves of time which her brain picked up now that it was unbound from time, stripped of its censor filters by the drug? At that moment did she assemble a motley of memories from films and novels and history to make a kind of golem girl in her mind, which was only an image for an unknown power in her, a potential, a way of believing in it, a symbol code to gain access? By that means, by that token, did she empower her body to some feat of Zen Judo where all of her muscles were totally in key, where her apparent strength increased severalfold, where she was capable of uttermost effortless exertion as if hypnotized then triggered to action by a code-image?

  Whatever, the golem or ghost in her mind cried out its conjuration, and she spat the words out too into Donna’s face. Donna was slammed back bloody-nosed half way across the room.

  And then at Kerthrop when the Hunt neared the wire, she had filled with fury again – there at Kerthrop where the diabolus had slumbered sealed and locked but dreaming of the world while it slept, dreaming of Jeni tapping its power in Oxford, dreaming her restlessness in Reading as her fingertip descended on Hobby Hill, perhaps guided there, her finger and her, dreaming her all the while for she had formed a tenuous link which could be strengthened, and she was suitable, dreaming of the USAF base that pressed upon part of its slumbering place where once it had destroyed a village in its play, invited by a monk eager for unearthly power, and whom it transformed, where now nuclear weapons sat close by, which it came to understand, and which appalled even Evil. For evil was of the earth and of human evolution; it was the cruel crazy tormenting dark streak, power-hungry, luring, destroying. And earth and evolution would end, and evil too….

  Sheri whimpered, “Did you…kill my boy?” And Jeni realized that the American woman was addressing her, not the head. “Did you…sacrifice Felix to this? So horribly, because it had to be horrible. And inhuman and filthy. Did you, Jeni?”

  Twenty-eight

  Still down on their numb knees they were all gazing at Jeni, Sheri with awful suspicion in her eyes. Meanwhile the head had fallen silent.

  “No,” Jeni whispered, “I couldn’t have done, don’t you see? Dennis Ainsworth said it was physically impossible! No human being could have killed Felix.”

  “Not even with a devil’s help?” Bert asked softly.

  “No! I didn’t do it. But I know what did. It was a…limb…a limb of the Power that did it! I know because I dreamt that after you found the body.”

  “What do ye mean, a limb?”

  “An arm of the Power. Like a snake. Squirming muscles, soft but so strong.” Jeni was weeping helplessly but this time Mitzi didn’t shuffle closer to touch and console.

  “An’ ye dreamt that?”

  “I didn’t just dream it. I…I gave birth to it.”

  “Ye what”?

  “Days ago, weeks ago, I don’t know….The morning after the Hunt, after the wire exploded, that’s when. I went to the toilet, and it was inside me. It came out…like a long, long turd, only it wasn’t any turd. It swam away before I could even flush it –”

  “Ye gave borth te an arm doon the netty?”

  “Yes!” She stared back at Jack blurredly. “It hid in the drains, and it killed little Felix.”

  Yet in her dream of the boy’s de
ath, hadn’t it been her own arm that killed him? Her arm, mutating into that toilet-thing?

  That dream hadn’t been reality! It had been a message, a communiqué, couched in the language of evil. A statement by the Power. Which, naturally, would twist the truth, and even twist the person it addressed. Contaminate them by association. Befoul them.

  Who could stand witness that she was innocent? Why, Bess the labrador! Who now skulked outside, refusing to set paw in the church. Bess had been with her on her walk that day, approximately when the boy was murdered. Bess would have reacted differently towards her, becoming over-excited and savage – or else shying away, scared.

  A dog, as witness: that’s what you were reduced to in the court of evil. Pray that the Power didn’t warp the poor fat bitch so that she could stand up on her hind legs and speak, and lie!

  “Weel, where’s that arm got off to nowadays, Aa wonder?”

  Jeni shook her head helplessly.

  However, it was Nell who rescued her: troubled, yet solid Nell. “Our friend’s pretty quiet,” she observed, sneaking a look at the cage. “Maybe it’s enjoying this.”

  “You’re reet! Aa think it’s tryin’ to set us at odds. An’ it’s succeedin’.”

  Jeni nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s it. I feel like I’m being trapped. Tied up in knots.”

  Jack eyed her doubtfully. “Ye’ve still told us some funny old things, hinny.” He snapped his fingers. “It said ye unlocked the seals. But ye didn’t, did ye? Ye locked it in that cage!”

  “Yes, yes, that’s true – I did.”

  Jack shouted at the head, “Ye liar! They talk aboot seven seals in the Bible, divven’t they? There’s one seal left at least! You’re locked in that cage. So bugger yor shenanigans.” He stood up defiantly.

  “Wrong,” said the head. “You came here freely and opened up the church. That is all I needed. This cage is my place of honour, my pulpit. Thanks to the holy throat bone with which Jeneeee provided me” – her name was a wind from hell – “I have a human voice.”

  “Eh?”

  “I stuffed the relic in the vicar’s mouth,” confessed Jeni. “It seemed…the right thing to do at the time. I was in shock. The warhead had just detonated.”

  “Such nonsense, about my being caged! Has it not penetrated your thick skulls? My power is already extended. It already encloses Melfort thoroughly. So you shall not close the church door again. You shall find the hinges far too stiff. Stiff as a sword stuck in a stone. I need to be available…to my congregation. There are certain rituals yet to perform.”

  Bert groaned, perhaps involuntarily, a groan of dread.

  “Stand up, little man. Your joints are creaking. Stand up, all of you. But do not hurry away!” (For the others had all scrambled up.) “Not yet. If you do not come here every day…to commune…then I shall be obliged to communicate in the language I know best, that of happenings such as your son’s death, Sheri. I might even need to animate Felix – to have him claw his way out of the grave to re-enact that death.”

  Sheri went white. Her fingernails bit into her palms.

  “You would not enjoy that greatly; though it would add some vivid variety to your present grey monotony. ‘Suffer little children to come unto me!’ Yes, that might be the most appropriate event.”

  “No,” gasped Sheri.

  “It might fit the pattern. The pattern feeds the power, you see. The pattern determines the outcome. Well, a pattern can be made in more ways than one. From roast toad and virgin’s blood at full moon, from dancing widder-shins round a pentacle of silver rods made from stolen altar plate, whilst cackling such-and-such….How ludicrous most conjurations have always been! They must needs be ludicrous as well as hideous, since evil comprises nonsense and lunacy. It’s the reign of the absurd, my dears, of disorder so strong it becomes a new, unstable order – of triumphant discord and ugliness.

  “Equally, a pattern can be made from a noose of wire, a holy relic, a dead horse, a virgin boy whose entrails are drawn out of him. Once a particular successful pattern starts to form, the initial elements constrain the later elements. They select as increasingly inevitable those later elements which will complete it.

  “Such is magic, my children, such is witchery. Such as the summoning of the diabolus. Every child knows this principle when it assembles its collections of fetish objects – a victory conker, a dead mouse, a broken bracelet of Mummy’s, a sparkling stone it found – and injects cunning cruelty: the spider with its legs torn off. That child is lisping in the language of evil. Most children lose the knack as they grow up. If only babies had more skill! There’s nothing more savage in the world than a baby human child. It tries to grab everything it wants. It screams with rage when it can’t get it. But most patterns go askew. Most people haven’t enough knack. Unlike Jeneeee.”

  “Aye, ta for the lesson,” sneered Jack, “but what’s aal this leadin’ up to?”

  The lips and cheeks of the head twisted in a smile.

  “A final ingredient remains.”

  “What would that be? A beauty contest o’ the corpses? With us presentin’ a golden delicious apple to the ugliest?”

  “Not exactly, Jack.”

  “Hey, if your power’s aaready extended, why do ye need another ingredient?”

  “To maintain and cement. Otherwise this sanctuary might fail. Then you would all be dead as doornails. I’m all that you have left now. Equally you are all that I have left, to sustain the life of evil. So I shall not let you fail me. If necessary I shall open the boy’s grave, and we’ll see what we hook out.”

  Sheri moaned.

  “What is this ingredient?”

  “Dead Gareth will show Jeneeee. It is up to him and her.”

  “Whatever it is,” cried Sheri, “you got to do it, Jeni! You got to! I don’t know if you did hurt Felix, but you mustn’t do this to him too! You mustn’t let him be pulled out of his grave and…and butchered all over again. Whatever does come out of his grave, whatever mad bad mockery.”

  “I’m being trapped,” Jeni repeated in misery.

  “Swear to me you’ll do it! You caused all this. You made it happen. I wish I was dead. I wish we all were. I wish the war had wiped out everything. But there’s this instead, this hell. Because you’re a witch!”

  “Wey, that’s not a very amiable way to ask a favour, Sheri. We must keep friends. After aal, the war was more yor doin’ than wor fault – ye might say that.”

  “Her people shot Mai,” muttered Mitzi.

  “Whisht, pet. Under the corcumstances we best forgive an’ forget. Nay use cryin’ over spilt milk.”

  “Sour milk,” said Nell. “Very sour.”

  “We’re aal in the same boat.”

  Sheri smiled in a tight, brittle way. She looked close to hysteria.

  “That’ll be the bottom line, hmm? I caused all this – not her. I’m to blame because I’m American.” Desperately she controlled herself. “I’m losing it, aren’t I?” She went to Jeni. “I beg you, by everything you hold dear. I didn’t think I could be hurt any more; but it’s thought of a way. It doesn’t matter about me. Beat up on me. Go ahead, I won’t fight back. Punish me all you like. Disfigure me. Just leave my baby’s grave alone. In peace. Maybe I oughtn’t to use words like peace.” She jutted her jaw. “Take a swipe at me for saying peace. Knock my teeth out. Hurt me. I’m only begging peace for my boy.”

  “Yor gannin’ a bit over the top, pet.”

  “Can’t do anything right, can I? Cain’t say anything.” Sheri sagged. “Maybe that’s what Jeni and Gareth gotta do anyway, between them. Maybe that’s the last line of the recipe. Tie me to the altar and…do things. As a sacrifice to that.”

  The head in the cage chuckled.

  “Oh fuck you!” she screamed.

  “Not exactly, Sheri. But close.”

  “Let’s get oot o’ here, Sheri. An’ you, Jen. Let’s lowse worsels over to the boozer. Aa could do with a liquid lunch. An’ if we bump inte Gareth
, well, we’ll see what’s cookin’. Once we knaa, we can make wor minds up. Ye canna promise blind, Jen. She canna, Sheri – though Aa see your point.”

  “Oh I can;,” declared Jeni, haunted by her dream. Haunted by the threat of that dream repeating itself, wide awake, when the American boy’s grave might break open like the crust of an oozing scab, when her own arm might melt into inhuman yellow boneless muscle. “I can. I promise you, Sheri.”

  “That’s reckless talk, pet. Though Aa respect ye for it.”

  “Why should I care?” And Jeni also shouted at the vicar’s head, “Fuck you!”

  “Getting warmer,” came the reply. Smarmy, gloating.

  Twenty-nine

  The shambles of Gareth was waiting in the churchyard. He was idling by Felix’s grave, poking the soil with one rotten-socked foot so much as to say: It’s me – or him. It’s the boyo or else –

  Or else Sheri’s boy, resurrected as a bewildered parody carrying his guts in his hands until he could be destroyed disgustingly again. Jeni heard Sheri catch her breath. Mitzi slipped an arm around the American, whispering reassurance.

  Jack was making to accompany Jeni, but Gareth jerked a gangrenous hand to dismiss him as well as the others.

  “Jeneeee. Only Jeneeee.”

  She asked, “Wait for me in Church Lane, will you?”

  “Aye, pet.”

  She wasn’t sure whether she was better off being alone with Gareth, or worse off. Better, on account of what he might say or do to drive an alienating wedge deeper between herself and her only friends. Worse, because she would have no witnesses. None of her friends would know for certain what ghastly bargain Gareth forced her to make – or even whether she made one at all.

  Only when the others had gone did she continue towards Gareth.

  This, surely, was part of the game of evil: eventually to isolate each survivor in his or her own hell. Although she knew that she hadn’t, couldn’t possibly have murdered the little boy, the Power made it seem even to herself that she had done so. Only Bess still fully trusted her; the labrador had nuzzled her hand for comfort on the way out of the church. Jeni had flinched from that wet snuffly reassurance in case she brought harm to the pooch by association. If she seemed to rely on Bess as a steadfast point of reference she might cause the dog worse havoc than any road accident. Bess had wagged her rudder once and capered aside, almost in friendly complicity, accepting the minor rejection as no rejection at all.