When I came in sight of home the Mazda was still on my tail. As I parked beside Lesley’s abandoned car, which I meant to adopt once I sold mine, Farr and Black watched me through the gateway. The Mazda blocked it until I’d opened my front door, and then Farr raised a palm in an adieu. “Catch you soon,” I saw Black mouth.
I was so anxious to check my phone that I divested myself of the icon as soon as I found somewhere to leave it—on Lesley’s desk. As I sat at my own I was suddenly convinced that I’d had no reason not to let Black examine the mobile—that it had failed to record because I’d switched the sound off, or had picked up nothing comprehensible. When I started the playback I heard only silence, and then just a snaky hiss of static. My chest had begun to ache with my held breath when a voice spoke. “Let us reflect on our times.”
Christian Noble was distant but perfectly audible. All the Nobles were, and I was thrown by discovering how much of their sermon I seemed to have missed. “Not the ones you know,” Toph said at last, which I found no more meaningful than I previously had. The audience made their appreciation heard, and then a variety of vague sounds signified their departure. The Nobles were talking among themselves, and a growing silence gradually isolated their conversation. I craned over the phone to hear better, and then I recoiled, almost touching the wrong button in my haste to replay that section of the recording. I had indeed heard what Toph called Christian. I listened to the end and was immediately afraid that the recording might somehow be erased before I could put it to use. I was hardly able to breathe or swallow until I’d typed as brief a message as made sense and forwarded the recording to Bobby and Jim.
7 - A Family Secret
“The Bible comes closest to lifting its veil at the end,” Christian Noble said. “The great truths cannot be contained in language, and so the message that the seven thunders speak is not set down. The sky is rolled up like a scroll, taking back the word the Bible sought to fix in men’s minds and revealing the unveiled universe. Land and water flee an earthquake such as men have never seen, and the primal flux is restored. Chaos incarnate stalks the world to revive its secret forms, and one of its embodiments displays tails like serpents. Who can say what the heads of these serpents speak? Not words as men know them, for the great truths are not uttered but experienced. These prodigies the Bible disguises as angels are three in number, which signifies their unity with Daoloth. Their purpose is to unfix men from their bodies so that they may expand towards the truth. In ancient Greece these guardians went by the single name of Cerberus…”
I still had no memory of hearing this at the Church of the Eternal Three. Instead I recalled tracing the shape of the icon in a rhythm reminiscent of the mantra Toby and Claudine had used to send me into a trance. The recollection felt like a threat of retreating into memories that weren’t mine, and made me acutely aware of the presence of the icon. Despite the sunshine that filled the front room, I imagined I could sense the figurine resting like a sculpted remnant of the night, if it was no more than that, on Lesley’s desk.
“The myth of Cain and Abel tries to hide the truth by admitting part of it.” Tina Noble was speaking now. “Cain was jealous not of Abel’s sacrifice but of his closeness to what the Bible calls God, which is to say the primal state, and above all to their mother. The worm from the garden was within them all, the larva that’s inside the cocoon we call man, but man was already growing fixed and separate. When Adam chose Abel and not Cain to sire the race with Eve, Cain made them three once more. He was cast out from the three to wander, and this has been man’s imperfect and incomplete state ever since…”
I understood too much of this, and should have seen the truth sooner. I was even glad to be distracted by Toph’s next contribution. “Our bodies still remember paradise,” he said. “That’s the truth behind all the talk of original sin. Our primal state is dormant in each of us, but the churches have been trying to deny it ever since there was religion. Hell and original sin, they’re the ways religion tries to frighten man away from rediscovering the truth within himself, but he who came before you shall come after you…”
I did my best not to interpret this as a threat of pursuit, because I was already nervous of yet again hearing the formula that brought the triple sermon to an end. “In the time of the third birth all shall become one in Daoloth,” the trio proclaimed, prompting a large vague response that was the sound of a mass of darkness rising into the air. I remembered elevating my icon, and for a moment my hands felt burdened with an insubstantial chill. “We shall meet again soon,” Christian Noble said.
“In your future.”
“Not the ones you know,” Toph contributed, a prediction I still failed to understand. The audience set about shuffling forth, and the muffled bustling blurred whatever conversation the Nobles had begun to have. I turned the sound up to maximum and held the phone close to my face. This time I was just able to distinguish another mention of a third birth, and Christian Noble’s comment was clearer. “Really one,” he said.
I remembered hearing the words in the field near Bonchamp. He’d never said that anything was really won. I was no nearer comprehending the phrase now than I had been all those years ago, but I had to concentrate on what he and his family were saying. “To the end of time,” Tina said.
“To the ends of the dark,” her father said, “and beyond.”
“To the end of ourselves,” said Toph.
All this sounded like a celebration or a ritual until Tina said “I still remember us.”
“No shame in that,” Christian said. “We may while we can.”
“Soon we’ll have gone further,” Toph said. “We won’t think like that any more.”
Some part of his remark produced a silence that felt secretive, and then Tina said “How long do we think it’s going to be?”
“It already has been, mother. Can’t you keep that in your mind? You’re sounding like one of the church.”
“Do try to make her some allowance, Christopher. All the wisdom was in you when you were born, but your parents had to learn.”
“Then that ought to mean it’s in both of you now.”
“You’ve no need to wonder,” Christian said—defensively, I thought. “We are the ageless truth, the three. It’s just that now and then some of us have to remember.”
“Now and then.” With equal contempt Toph said “Words, just like remember is.”
“They can be feelings too.” His mother might have been restraining wistfulness. “Haven’t you kept any memories?” she said.
“I’ve got all of them if I want them.” Perhaps in a bid to placate her, Toph said “I remember being born.”
“We all do,” Christian said.
“And being made. I remember the worm.”
“So do I,” Tina said with a laugh that made me shudder. “The same one.”
I’m afraid I must bow out at this stage,” Christian said. “I’ve no memory of being fathered. The performer was an understudy, one might say. Not one of us and so unmemorable. No more than a conduit for Gahariet and his essence.”
“We said we remember your worm. You’ve no cause to feel left out, father.”
I’d felt threatened with nausea as I listened to the recording once more, and now I had to swallow hard, because it was Toph who’d just spoken. “That’s right, you mustn’t,” Tina said.
“I don’t feel remotely separate. We’re all as close as anyone could be and still stay as human as we are. Only, Christopher…”
“Father?”
“I was about to suggest you might avoid calling me that here, just in case. Call me Christian by all means. It amuses you as much as it does me.”
“I’ll call you father for us both,” Tina said.
“Let’s go up,” Toph said. “I want to see how the church is progressing abroad.”
There was little more than silence after that until a group of sounds reminded me how the Nobles had opened three doors at once. “Were you waiting for us, D
ominic?” Christian Noble said.
After that the phone had picked up nothing of significance by the time I’d retrieved it, and now I switched it off. I was beginning to regret my haste in sending the file to Bobby and Jim. Could I have put them in danger? Suppose my communications were being monitored? As I tried to think how to proceed, I heard footsteps on the front path.
I twisted around so carelessly that pain scrambled up my back. It left me unable to rise to my feet until the doorbell shrilled a second time, and I’d had no chance to see who was outside. I hobbled to open the door and only just managed not to slump with relief at seeing Jim. “This is very serious, Dominic,” he said.
His face confirmed it, but I wasn’t sure if his greeting did duty as a rebuke. “Come in and tell me,” I said, retreating as though we had something to hide.
Once he’d shut the door Jim blinked at the vase that Lesley used to replenish with flowers from the garden. It displayed only dust now, and I thought he meant to remark on it until he said “So you’ve tracked down your old enemies again.”
“That isn’t quite what happened, Jim.”
“Then what did? Your email didn’t say much.”
How often had I tried to persuade him of the truth about the Nobles? The prospect of another struggle felt exhausting in advance—and then I had an inspiration. “I’ll show you something that will,” I said.
As he followed me into the workroom he didn’t bring much eagerness with him. He glanced at the dark screens of the computers and stared around the inert room. “So what—” he said, and then his gaze returned to Lesley’s desk—to the object beside her computer. “Isn’t that the thing they left in the house near Ormskirk?” he said. “Did you go back?”
He picked up the icon but relinquished it so quickly that there was no mistaking his dislike. “This can’t be the same one,” he said. “It was broken.”
“That’s from the church my son and his family are involved with, except you wouldn’t call it a church. I wouldn’t either. You heard one sort of ritual they use that in. At the end everybody holds theirs up, when the Nobles talk about the third birth.”
“I heard a lot of mumbo-jumbo we needn’t waste our time on. Do I have to take it you were there?”
“It was the only way I could find out what was going on.”
“And do you honestly believe none of them could have recognised you?”
“They all did.” As I saw this rouse Jim’s skepticism—no doubt he was recalling how young Toph had been at the time of Safe To Sleep—I said “You ought to know by now they don’t care. They think none of us matter.”
“I wonder how true that can be if it’s put to the test. When did you find out they were involved?”
“After my son and his wife convinced me to join. The Nobles aren’t just involved, they run the church.”
“It’s odd we didn’t know. The organisation is pretty open, you’d think,”
“It has secrets, believe me. For a start they’re calling themselves Le Bon now. That must be one reason Toby didn’t recognise their, the youngest one when he recruited Toby and Claudine.”
“Say son if you like, Dominic. I’m still not clear how you obtained that recording.”
“I really set out to record the sermon. I wanted to compare it with Noble’s journal, and I thought it might be evidence of what the church stood for. Then I realised I could see what the phone might pick up when the Nobles thought nobody would hear them.”
“Where did you have the phone while all that was going on?”
“Here for the sermon.” Having touched the pocket over my heart, I said “And then I left it on my seat.”
“Describe the place to me, Dom.”
“One whole floor of Starview Tower full of folding chairs.”
“You left your phone on one of those.”
“I said so. Are you seeing some problem?”
“You didn’t think it might be too obvious.”
“If anyone had noticed I’d have said I’d left it by mistake. They wouldn’t have been able to see it was recording when they didn’t know my password.”
“Suppose someone spotted it and the Nobles decided to play up to it? You said yourself they didn’t care what anybody thought of them.”
I felt close to betrayed. “Are you really suggesting they made all that up for fun?”
“I’m saying their defenders might claim that if it came into the open.”
“If.” When this and my stare didn’t earn an answer I protested “Only if.”
“I’ve told you how serious I think it is. It would be worse than a scandal. God knows what it would do to this church of theirs.”
“You’re not proposing we should keep it to ourselves.”
“Too late for that. Have you heard from Bobby? I saw you emailed her as well.”
“I haven’t yet. I’m not sure how she may have taken it when she used to be so impressed by Tina Noble.”
“She’s had days to get in touch. Do you think you ought to call her? I’ll speak to her if you like.”
“We both can,” I said, “if we need to.”
Bobby’s phone could barely have had time to identify mine before she spoke. “Dom, I was going to ring you. I’ve been dealing with what you sent us.”
“I have as well,” Jim said.
“Jim, good, talk later. Dom, is Christian Noble behind this church?”
“All the Nobles are.”
“And you can absolutely guarantee that’s the three of them we hear talking at the end.”
“No question whatsoever. They were the only people in the room.”
“All I wanted to know. Writing now. Speak to you later too.”
“Hang on, Bobby,” Jim said. “Bob, I should say. Just—”
“Bobby’s always fine from both of you. Can’t talk right now. Ring you back.”
When Jim extended a hand to the deserted phone I thought he was about to ask for it, but he said “You’d better call her again.”
“She doesn’t want anyone disturbing her at work, Jim.”
“If she’s writing about the Nobles, and it sounded like she was, we ought to find out what she’s said before it goes any further.”
Rather than argue I made the call, only to see it fail. A second call brought up the same message. “She must be blocking calls,” I said.
“Let’s hope she rings back as soon as she’s finished her work.”
I would very much have liked not to need to say “What are you scared of, Jim?”
“What makes you think I am?”
This sounded like an adult version of our old bravado, and not too mature either. “I’m wondering if you want to keep it quiet,” I said, “what we’ve found out about the Nobles.”
“You did the finding.” Before I could decide whether this was praise Jim said “I just want you to realise they’ve got everything to fight for and we’ve got very little on our side.”
I could imagine Jack using much the same words in a tale of the Tremendous Three. “We’ve got their own admission,” I protested.
“Which might very well be ruled inadmissible in court with the legal contacts I suspect they have.”
I tried to find some hope in this. “You’re saying it should come to court.”
“I’m saying we’d have to proceed extremely carefully.”
“But you mean we’re going to.”
“Not you, Dom. Not even me. The boys heard what you sent and they’re very strong on investigation.”
“You’re talking about the police.” As Jim blinked slowly at me I realised “You mean your sons. They’re on the force. They’ll be investigating.”
“We won’t know yet if either of them are. Robert’s put in a report. Someone will want to interview you. I hope you’re ready for this, Dom.”
“I feel as if I have been since we were at school.”
“Let’s hope we can finally put it to rest. I need to head off, but do you want to try callin
g Bobby again?” When her phone still proved unreceptive he said “When you speak to her, ask her to let me see what she’s written before she sends it anywhere. You could have a look as well.”
“I’ll see about persuading her, but remember we’re talking about Bobby. I can’t imagine her letting anybody tell her what to write.”
“I just don’t want any of us taking risks when there’s no need,” Jim said, a concern that lingered once he’d gone. While I suspected he had only mundane dangers in mind, I wondered what revenge the Nobles might take. So long as it was aimed at me, I told myself, I had nothing to lose any more. Rescuing my son and his family from the influence of the Nobles had to be worth any risk, so long as it didn’t rebound on them. Just the same, I’d grown nervous enough that I clutched at my chest when my phone sounded its old-fashioned bell.
“Dom, I’m sorry I was so abrupt before. I’ll blame you, though.”
I was glad to hear Bobby, but not her last remark. “Why do I deserve that?”
“You made me want to write, and that’s the way I do it.”
“In that case I’ll be a bit proud of myself. I take it you’ve finished your piece? Jim was saying—”
“It’s finished and sent to my editor.”
“Ah.” In a way this made it easier to tell her “Jim rather wanted to vet it first, I think.”
“She’s refused to publish it. Says it’s too risky without better evidence.” I felt slighted and yet relieved.
“Might you like Jim to look it over before you send it somewhere else, if that’s your plan?”
“He can read it whenever he likes, and so can you. The world can.” With a defiance I remembered from our childhood Bobby said “I’ve put it online on my blog, and nobody can kill it now.”
8 - The Second Way
This is the hardest piece I’ve ever had to write. it tells some truths I’d rather not be telling, and some of them are about me. It was meant to be my latest column In the paper, but the editor wouldn’t let it go in. I can understand why she disliked it so much. I don’t like it myself.
The Way Of The Worm Page 9
