Thy Fearful Symmetry

by Richard Wright

  Even here, the crowds gathered, and for the first time she saw exactly what had drawn them out.

  It was as she had foreseen.

  Malachi moved with such implicit menace that the crowd parted at his approach, herd animals shuffling clear of the predator in their midst. Before them, a cultivated moat surrounded a tiny island, fed by the river she could hear bubbling below her . The first thing to strike her was not the deep red of the water, but the ducks sitting on the shore of the island. Bewildered and confused, they huddled in a small group, casting suspicious looks at the treacherous moat. Melissa was no ornithologist, and broke the ducks into two groups. The brown ones looked as though they had been in an oil spill, their feathers tangled and wretched, and it was the way they were drying to a crust that convinced her that the black stains were blood. The white ones confirmed this, and the red staining their breasts made them look as though a fox had been at them during the night.

  Malachi dragged her off the path into a playground. The few children present clung to the legs of their parents, for once not worrying about their independence. Adults chatted and gossiped as though rivers running with blood were a curiosity rather than an omen of doom. Individual conversations were hushed, but as they strode through the crowd the effect of so much muted chatter was like the rumble of distant thunder. Occasionally, somebody glanced up from their huddled state of awe for long enough to notice the tall, dark stranger dragging the exhausted woman among them. Some even looked as though they might step forward, ask him what he was doing and why she looked so scared, but they always thought twice. Melissa was glad. After Malachi had left Stewart Argyle in the ruins with the shadows, she no longer believed he cared for anything but his quest. In her imagination, she heard Argyle scream, heard wet, crunching noises as he died. In reality, there had been only silence behind them as they fled, but her imagination was rapidly blending truth and fiction so that she was no longer quite certain of which was which.

  Tired as she was, so weighted with the need to sleep that the scene around her felt like a bizarre stop-motion animation, she didn't realise Malachi had ceased moving until she lurched into his back, barely making him flinch. They were standing in front of a bench, wooden slats on a Victorian frame, green paint flaking from the metalwork. The varnish had long ago been stripped by the Glasgow weather, leaving unprotected wood to be monikered by kids declaring love forever or sketching obscenities. Three students sat there, talking animatedly to each other until Malachi loomed over them.

  “Move,” he said, and they didn't argue, grabbing their bags and leaving rather than debating the point with this spectre of death. With the one hand that had continuously gripped her arm, cutting off the blood and making her fingers tingle, he swung her round and dropped her on the bench. They were in broad, pallid daylight. The nearest shadows, web shapes made by the bare branches of trees and the hard lines of garishly coloured plastic playground equipment, were too fragmented to allow a shadow-thing to appear. There were witnesses by the dozen, but she knew that not one of them was going to get involved. She might as well be trapped alone with him back in the ruined tenement.

  Malachi crouched before her, saw in her eyes that she understood her situation, and nodded. “I don't want you hurt,” he said, but knowing the difference between what he wanted and what he would do stamped the fingers of what little hope was trying to cling on inside her. “There are things you know that you shouldn't. You're involved in something, same as me, and I want to know why. Give me answers. Now.”

  Looking into his lean, strong face, she wondered how her feelings about him could be so confused. Love? Infatuation? Whichever it was remained powerful, despite what she had seen him do to Argyle. Were her desires actually fuelled by those acts? Did his single-minded determination to avenge the woman he loved cast him as the perfect tragic hero? If that was the case, she was disgusted at her judgement.

  Against the backdrop of the crowded park, the thunder-rumble of conversation, it felt ridiculous to be weighing the matter up, and she blinked the thought away. I'm with a brutal man, who will get what he wants in the most efficient way. Remember that, worry about everything else later.

  Taking a breath, finding no sympathy in his face, no help in the eyes of the strangers beyond him, she realised she might be about to die. “I know what happened to Stacey,” she began, her words quiet, but blunt.

  Malachi nodded.

  “I know you've been preparing for this for a long time, and how important it is to you. I understand why. I see her every day, Mr Jones. More than you do.” Creases of guilt washed briefly over his face and were gone. “Believe me, I understand why you're here.” There was a certain relief in being able to confess like this, in having the choice taken away from her, but she knew she couldn't tell him everything. Malachi Jones had a mission to complete, and the truth might distract him. “I know it's important that you destroy this Pandora. More important than you think. You see the blood in the water? That's the first sign of many, and then the world ends. Pandora's brought it all forward. Everything's confused.” Malachi was expressionless. If anything was going to cause his single-minded determination to falter, her next statement was going to do it.

  “There are powers who want you to destroy her, because that will stop the world ending. You can stop Judgement Day. I want you to save the world.”

  Malachi blinked. That was all.

  The silence between them shut the rest of the world out as he waited for her to go on.

  Melissa tried not to cry.

  “I can't tell you how I know.” In the background, she heard the ducks quack their blood-soaked misery at each other, and she knew how they felt.

  “Please don't kill me,” she finished, and tried to find some reason to hope in his inscrutable eyes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Ambrose parted the blinds in Calum's office with his fingers, and did a quick head count. Maybe ninety people, suddenly devout, were milling around the churchyard. Some were looking for an open door into the nave, but most seemed happy just to be close to a church. Stepping back, Ambrose wondered how many people Calum saw at an average service. Twenty? Thirty, if he was lucky.

  Nothing like the end of the world to bring an epidemic of piety over humankind. It was frustrating, knowing that those who fled to church in times like these were the most likely to be concerned about their guilts and sins. Perfect fodder for his sort. There was a great deal he was going to have to get used to, now that he was a reformed character. Had it been as difficult as this to switch from saint to sinner, after the Great Fall?

  He couldn't remember.

  Ambrose noticed the blur where his fingers touched the blinds. The effect was quickening. Earlier, it had spread slowly, but the marks he had just left were already bloating up the slat of the blind. It was impossible to look at the floor without getting a headache – it was a solid blur. Demons and angels didn't develop eyesight problems, but Ambrose thought this might be how some people viewed the world when they took off their glasses. Whatever it was, he now considered it a secondary problem. Pandora and he were unaffected by it, so he wasn't going to worry while there were other things happening.

  Like the Apocalypse.

  Except it couldn't possibly be the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse wasn't due for millennia. It was all mapped out, to the last detail.

  As soon as Ambrose had seen the people in the street, heard the first few would-be devotees knocking on the locked doors to the hall and the nave, he had switched the television on and seen the rivers of blood flow. The Great Ending was in process, no question. It just wasn't happening right. It shouldn't be now, and it shouldn't be this way. The Book of Revelation was largely accurate, if clumsily recorded, and the sequence of events was very specifically designed to play out over decades. The rivers of the world should not spontaneously flow with blood, just like that. God was a stickler for detail. Events were being rushed through, and Ambrose had no idea why. It made him nervous, for many reasons
. What was the point of fighting for Pandora, if they had no time left to be together?

  As he wandered out of the office, wracking his brain for a way to get better information, he drew up short at the door to Pandora's room. Rather, he was stopped in his tracks by its absence. The frame stood empty, the hinges beginning to lose clarity as the blurring spread over them like a rash. Ambrose swallowed, understanding more than he had.

  Unmade. The door was not destroyed, it was unmade. Everything he touched was coming apart.

  Perhaps he was more responsible for the imminent end of the world than he had thought.

  Ambrose had no time to ruminate further. Downstairs, a pane of glass cracked. It was probably one of the crowd, frustrated at being kept apart from their God, taking matters into their own hands. On the other hand, the crowd would be the perfect cover for somebody with more malign intentions to get close.

  Moving in utter silence, Ambrose ran along the gloomy corridor. At the top of the stairs, he glanced over the railing to check nobody was waiting for him. The ground floor passage was empty, and he vaulted over the rail, landing so easily on the stone flagstones below that he barely stirred dust. Stepping back into the shadow of the stairwell, he listened.

  On his right was the annexe, and to his left the nave. For several long seconds, he waited, his eyes closed and his body wound tight and ready. It couldn't be a demon, not on consecrated ground. An angel would simply appear in the church, with little need for the breaking of glass. Whoever was with them in the building, if they had entered at all, was human, so probably harmless. More worrying was who might have sent the intruder. Heaven and Hell both claimed human servitors aplenty, and all it would take was a moment for somebody to send a message and render this hiding place worthless.

  There, on the right, a muffled cough, with shuffling footsteps heading his way. Ambrose could smell meaty, nervous sweat on the air. With a second to decide how to proceed, he chose to bluff it out. Why change the habit of an eternity? Fingering the dog collar he had taken to wearing whenever Calum left, a single white strip providing as much disguise as he needed, he stepped forward and pulled open the door of the hall.

  The look of honest fright on the man's face was all Ambrose needed to tell him this was no spy. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his expression far fiercer than he felt. “We don't have any money, if that's what you’re looking for.” The last he spat out with contempt, and was pleased with the righteous indignation underwriting the words.

  “I… sorry Father… I…” The intruder was a large man, sweating heavily beneath his unfortunate tracksuit.

  “You apologise as though it was an accident. Is that what I'm expected to tell the police? You accidentally put a brick through God’s window? You inadvertently fell all the way inside?”

  “No Father, it isn't like that, I…” By the mounting panic layering his nasal Glasgow accent, this was a good Catholic boy, advertised further by the hint of a green Celtic football shirt beneath the tracksuit top. Ambrose had never quite understood how religion and football had merged into one in this city, but the violence and bigotry that supporters of Celtic and their protestant opposition Rangers displayed to one another was a demon's wet dream. “I… eh… is Father Baskille about?”

  “He is not. He is on a sabbatical, contemplating his immortal soul.” Ahhh Ambrose, he thought, the truth shall set you free. “Others might be wise to follow his example.”

  “Aye, but Father, we want to pray! Have you seen the Clyde? You've got to help us!”

  Sympathy creased Ambrose's face. “There's no help I can give you, my son. Your fate is in better hands than mine. As for the power of prayer…” Ambrose trailed off, struck by an idea. It was risky, but why not? Where better to hide, than in a crowd? Pulling the large steel key to the heavy front doors from his pocket, he held it out for the man. “What's your name, boy?”

  “Bob, Father.” It came out Boab. “Bob Miller.”

  “Robert then. In these dangerous times, a proper Christian name is a defence against evil, Robert.”

  Bob's eyes lit up with hope. “Aye Father.”

  “The doors are closed because we fear looters, Robert. We fear that the sins of mankind will be unleashed upon God's house.” With his free hand, Ambrose clasped Bob's shoulder. “I shall place my faith in you. Take the key, Robert. Open the doors. Let them come to pray. I ask only that you dissuade those who would leave the nave from doing so. They have no business in the private areas of the church. Will you do this for me, Robert?” Doubt clouded the man's eyes, so Ambrose gave him a final nudge. “I have no earthly payment for you, Robert, but know that you will be rewarded in Heaven.” Leaning close, he whispered in the man's cauliflower ear. “You will not be waiting long, for that reward.”

  Nodding eagerly, his chins puffing in and out like an accordion, Bob snatched up the key and waddled towards the nave, the weight of responsibility looking odd on such unlikely shoulders. Ambrose watched him close the door to the nave behind him, and then glanced upstairs. “I've found us a guardian, love,” he whispered with a smile. “Reassuring, isn't he?”

  The heavy front doors scraped the stone floor, and the buzz of voices followed, as the crowd piled in. No longer the only closed church in Glasgow, St Cottier's had blended even further into the background. It was as much as he could do to hide her, and he ignored the little flash of guilt at abusing Calum's former position. It was an odd, unfamiliar emotion, and he didn't understand its significance.

  It wasn't going to be enough. If everything they touched was dissolving to nothing, the universe itself unravelling in abhorrence at their continued survival, how long would it be before the stone and mortar of the church was gone? How long before the phenomenon was obvious from the outside, and drew attentions they wanted to avoid? Every step forward he took sent him backwards, all because he had chosen to trap himself there. Wondering what was keeping Calum, needing the thing he was retrieving more than ever, Ambrose gritted his teeth and set about looking for the shattered window, so he could seal himself more securely into his self-made prison.

  Calum snapped awake, lurching from deep nothingness to full recall in the space of a second. Before he had a chance to open his eyes, the swollen pain throbbing through the side of his face brought the memory of the swinging golf club, and he managed to keep them closed. The pounding of his head was not the only pain afflicting him. Imagining how he might have fallen (how long ago?), he pictured himself collapsed amidst the rubble, and the sharp press of plaster fragments on his flesh confirmed that he was probably right. His hands and feet were bound.

  Footsteps on the far side of the room, accompanied by the sound of drawers dragging open and being rummaged through, told him his attacker was still present. He felt the absence where the small rectangle of the box had filled his pocket. Was there nothing that he could be trusted to get right?

  “I know you're awake,” the man said, conversationally. “I’m not sure how. Just a feeling. I can’t describe it any better.”

  Calum opened his eyes. The man was kneeling before an ornate cherry wood cabinet with oriental designs swirling over it. His back was to the fallen priest, and he didn't bother to turn.

  “What do you want from me?” Calum was surprised at the fierceness in his own voice. Going from God's slave to God's burned up adversary within twenty-four hours, having been threatened by archangels and demons, after considering suicide and watching blood flow through the heart of his city, he was tired of being the universe's whipping boy.

  The man glanced over his shoulder. “Sorry. We haven't been introduced. My name's Clive Huntley. Ambrose might have mentioned me?” A smile of mad hope blossomed over the man's lips. Calum stared at him, determined to let nothing slip. Having already told the man that he was housing Ambrose, he had to do everything in his power to reclaim control of the situation. On the floor near his head was his wallet, but he knew he had no ID with his address on. As he had been unable to wear his dog colla
r, and unwilling to try picking up a crucifix, there was nothing that might connect him to the church.

  “There's nothing to worry about you know. I'm on the side of the angels.” The smile died on Huntley's face. “If you really do know where Ambrose is, you have to tell me. The angels know he's being hunted. They want to protect their own. They've sent me to find him, so they can get there before Satan. I'm a little bit against the clock.”

  Calum was only partially listening. Whoever this man was, he certainly wasn't there at Heaven's bequest, or Calum would be recognised for who he was. The fact that he seemed to think Ambrose was an angel was confusing, but not something to worry about now. Outside, the light was failing, which meant he had been unconscious for at least five hours. Though he strained to hear past Huntley's ramblings, there was no sound of the woman who had sobbed earlier. That stubborn silence fuelled his rage at the impotence he felt. A speck of worthlessness in a vast universe, he was tired of contributing to events only through his mistakes.

  Clive rose to his feet, and smiled down at Calum. The ex-priest paused at the sight of that face. Dangerous, yes. Deranged, certainly. Beneath though, lurked a tragic, hunted fear, and Calum wondered for the first time who this man had been before gods and monsters became part of his life. Was this the fate awaiting Calum, a fractured reality reshaping moment to moment? Was he just a tool through which others could meet their goals?

  Clive sighed. “It would be much easier if you just tell me where he is.” His hands twitched, and suddenly his eyes were full of tears. “I've become quite good at getting people to tell me things.” With that cryptic morsel, he stepped into the bedroom. Calum heard him rattling through the chest at the end of the bed, and imagined him tossing that small skull aside with contemptuous disrespect.