2009 - We Are All Made of Glue (18 page)

I had a wash, cleaned my teeth, put my nightie on, and went back to bed. I tried to call Ben, but his mobile was switched off. I suppose he didn’t want his mum ringing to embarrass him. I drifted off to sleep wondering where he was, and thinking of New Year’s Eve in Kippax in 1980, when I’d snogged Karl Curry, and wondering where
he
was now.

I woke up again just after dawn and wandered across the landing to see whether Ben was back. The curtains were drawn and the light was out. The air had a musty smell of sleep and old socks. But he wasn’t in his bed. A red light was flashing on his computer—it was the screen saver whizzing about—a garish geometric vertigo-inducing pattern of white-and-red swirls. I went to shut it down, and as I touched the mouse, the screen he’d been looking at came up.

I remembered it was the same red-on-black text as before. This time, the single word flashing in red on black in a circle of dancing flames was
Antichrist
. What was this rubbish he was looking at? Out of curiosity, I hit the ‘back’ button, and found myself in some sort of chat forum. There were only two names: Benbo and Spikey.

Spikey:

hey benbo happy newyear this is the year of antichrists rein watchout

Benbo:

who do you think is the antichrist putin or bush?

Spikey:

putin is the king of the north who will join forces with the king of the south at the battle of armagedon daniel 11:40

Benbo:

where is armagedon?

Spikey:

its in the north of isreal

Benbo:

phew quite a long way from highbury who is the king of the south?

Spikey:

gadafi or sadam hassain or osama binladin take your pick

Benbo:

do you think obi is still alive?

Spikey:

check out
http:⁄⁄www.dramusic.com⁄endtimeprophesies⁄obllives.html
he has gout in his toes but is ok apart from that

Benbo:

i think saddam is still alive did you notice something wird about those hanging photos the angle of the head is wrong and the eyes when someone is hanged their eyes bulge out from the pressure but saddams eyes look normal

i think the head has been copied and pasted from a different photo

Spikey:

your right if the pictures are fake mybe the execusion was fake too have you seen
http:⁄⁄www.saddamhusseinlives.com?

Benbo:

i read somewhere that prince Charles is the anitchrist because of the duchy of Cornwall bar codes

Spikey:

666 is the mark of the beast check this link
Antichrist

Benbo I supposed was Ben. How did he know so much about hanging? But who was Spikey? Whoever he was, I didn’t think much of his spelling.

I clicked on the link, which took me to the webpage of someone who called himself Isiah. He was a middle-aged man with a crew cut, drooping eyelids and a chunky wooden cross on a chain around his neck. Beneath the picture was a banner heading:

WHO IS THE ANTICHRIST?

 

Many Christians used to believe that Communism was the Antichrist, and
Armageddon
would be nuclear war between Russia and America. However, it seems that now the forces of Islam and Christianity are lining up for a definative battle before the third Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem and Christ comes back to rule the earth in all His power and glory.

Infact all the signs are that Antichrist, Satan the great Deceiver, is already stalking the earth. “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.” (Matthew 24: 4-5)

In the Book of Revelation the
Mark of the Beast
is revealed as 666.

I rubbed my eyes. It was too early in the morning for this sort of stuff. But I was curious about how Ben spent his hours cloistered up here. There was a list of names, each underlined with a link and marked with a little flaming crest.

Osama Bin Laden

Saddam Hussein

Pope Benedict XVI aka Joseph Ratzinger

Vladimir Putin

Prince Charles of Wales

I opened the last link.

This English aristocrat is a surprise candidate—but look at the evidance. His full official name both in English and Hebrew adds up to
666
as described in the ancient Hebrew Gematria, and his heraldic symbols are based on the
beasts
of Daniel and Revelation. Also, he really is a prince, as predicted in Daniel 9. Rome is obviously the new Babylon, and the evil
European Union
is the new Holy Roman Empire. It’s constitution is under discussion, and Prince Charles could one day be it’s ruler. Infact the fact that he seems unlikely is the strongest argument in his favor, because as the Bible tells us in Revelation 12: 9 The Devil and Satan deceives the whole world.” Check out
www.greaterthings.com⁄News⁄PrinceCharles⁄index.html.

Up to this point I’d been reading with a kind of fascinated horror, but the bit about Prince Charles made me laugh out loud. Poor lad, I thought. And the spelling. How could anyone take seriously anything spelled infact, definative, evidance? I must definately (ha ha) pull Ben’s leg about this. Out of curiosity, I clicked on the 666 link.

The Mark of the Beast may already be in your home. Take a look at the bar code which is on every product you purchase. You may have bought goods marked with the Beast’s sign 666 including products sold from Prince Charles’s own sinister Duchy of Cornwall brand. Check out
www.av1611.org⁄
666⁄barcode.html.

Smiling to myself, I clicked on Start, Shutdown, then I went downstairs and put the kettle on. When I took my coffee through to the front room, I found Ben there, asleep on the sofa, clutching a large traffic cone to his chest, dead to the world. He stirred and opened his eyes.

“Happy New Year, Mum.”

“Happy New Year, Ben. What’s with the traffic cone?”

He looked down at his chest, and shook his head in surprise.

“I’ve no idea, Mum.” He grinned sleepily. “Absolutely no idea.”

Before I could ask him about the webpages, he’d drifted off to sleep again, his feet sticking over the end of the sofa, the traffic cone cradled in his arms.

The light was flashing on my answering machine.

“Georgia. It’s Nathan. Tati says sorry about last night. He gets a bit carried away when he’s had a drink. Hope you got home all right. Happy New Year.”

I was going to ring him back, but I would probably end up making a fool of myself. Quit while you’re ahead, I thought. Instead, I phoned Penny and left a message on her answering machine.

“Great party. Thanks.”

That was it, then: Christmas and New Year, the Festive Season over. I’d survived.

Changing the locks

O
ne of the hardest things I found, after Rip left, was sleeping by myself in that great empty bed. In the day I could keep myself busy, but at night the hours seemed to swell and expand, losing their definition. It wasn’t just sex I missed, it was having someone warm to cuddle up to, a solid presence beside me on the cruel nightmare ride from dusk to daybreak. Sometimes I would wake to find myself snuggled up to the spare pillow, my arms and legs locked around it.

About three weeks into the New Year I came downstairs very early in the morning to make myself a cup of tea after a restless sleep. I’d woken up before dawn to find my pillow wet with tears. I could remember nothing about my dream except a faceless malevolent shadow dragging towards me. Somewhere in the still-dark streets a siren was wailing, a persistent, unsettling call like a sinister bird of the night. It was cold, the central heating hadn’t come on yet. I shivered as I poured the tea, and was about to go back to bed when the phone rang. It was Mrs Shapiro.

“Georgine—please come quick. There is a burglary. Door is brokken.”

Feeling mildly irritated, I got dressed, put on my coat and went around straightaway. It had started to snow—not proper snowflakes, but miserable powdery stuff flaking down out of the sky like frozen dandruff. Mrs Shapiro answered the door wearing her pink dressing gown and
Lion King
slippers, her hair dishevelled, lipstick smeared on hastily. Violetta was hanging around, miaowing at her feet. She led me through to the kitchen. It was bitterly cold. One of the pretty Victorian blue glass panels on the back door had been smashed and an icy draught was whistling through. The key on the inside had been stolen. Nothing else seemed to be missing.

“Maybe it was your Peki. Maybe he is a teef.”

“Why would it be him?” I couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “He didn’t even charge you for coming out last time. He didn’t steal anything, did he? You should be grateful, Mrs Shapiro, but all you do is moan.”

Okay, I know it wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but I wasn’t feeling very nice.

“Hm. But if not the Peki who can it be?” She gave poor Violetta a petulant little kick and shuffled across to put the kettle on.

“It could be anybody. A burglar or anybody.” I saw the look of terror flit across her face, and wished I’d held my tongue. I hadn’t told her that Mr Ali had already changed the lock once—I hadn’t wanted to alarm her. But now I was alarmed myself.

“But why they want to frighten me? Why they don’t come into the house? Why they just tek the key?” She looked as if was working herself up into a state.

“It might be someone who’s planning to come back.” It was hard to imagine the sheer malevolence of someone who would terrorise a defenceless old lady in her own home. “Listen, you’d better get the glass mended and the lock changed today. You should call Mr Ali. Unless you know of anybody better.”

She started poking around in her disgusting cupboards looking for the pond-water tea. Her back was turned towards me.

“He is a clever-knodel, this Peki,” she muttered.

Irritation and concern vied for dominance in my mind, and irritation was getting the upper hand. She poured the hot water into a jug and dangled a limp greyish tea bag in it by its string. After a moment, she looked up at me and said, “But I think I will ask Mr Wolfe. My Nicky.”

Then she gave me a sly little grin as if to say, I may be eighty-one but I can still wind you up. And she succeeded.

“That’s fine. Just the job. You and your Mr Wolfe can sort it out. I don’t know why you bothered to call me at all.”

All of a sudden, my annoyance overwhelmed me. I stood up abruptly and made for the door. I’d had enough of her constant demands and her petty prejudices and her silly mysteries. I couldn’t stand the stink in her house a moment longer, and I certainly didn’t want to sit there in the cold, drinking her weak pondy tea when I’d left my own cup of tea to go cold in the kitchen. Let her sort herself out, I thought. I wanted to get back to my bed.

Once home, I heated the tea up in the microwave and climbed into my bed fully clothed. Outside the window, a feeble dawn was just breaking through a bruised purple sky, with long red streaks like bleeding cuts smearing the surface of the clouds. I pulled down the black knickers over my eyes to keep the light out, and tried to will myself back to sleep, but I was too wound up to drift off, and too tired to get up. That dream or nightmare that had woken me was still pushing at the edges of my consciousness—the malevolent figure with a blank eyeless face. I shuddered. For some reason I remembered the website Ben had been looking at—Antichrist, the deceiver, stalking the earth unrecognised, spreading evil and fear. It didn’t seem quite so funny now.

Then the phone rang.

“Don’t be engry mit me, Georgine. I am only jokking. I am an old woman. Please, telephone to Mr Ali. I heff lost the number.”

“Okay, okay.”

She phoned me back a few hours later to tell me that Mr Ali had been and boarded up the back door and changed the lock. He had put a new mortise lock on the front, in addition to the Yale, and had fitted bolts to both doors.

“You will be as safe as prison,” he’d said.

“How much did he charge you?” I asked.

“I give him ten pound. Plus he mek me pay full price for locks and bolts.”

She said it with a grumble in her voice, as though she felt she’d been overcharged.

“You should be grateful,” I said, though she clearly wasn’t.

“You are still engry mit me, Georgine, isn’t it? Don’t be engry. You are the only friend I heff.”

“No. I’m not angry, Mrs Shapiro.”

And it’s true, I wasn’t angry with her any more. But I had other things on my mind.

Rip had returned from a business trip and had phoned around lunchtime to say he was coming to pick Ben up after work tomorrow. Even after all this time, his phone calls still agitated me. I needed time to get myself into the right frame of mind to face him on the doorstep. Upstairs I could hear the thud-thud of footsteps followed by the thud-thud of music—Ben’s morning getting-up rituals, though it was well past midday. That boy could sleep for England. Something else—I still hadn’t found out what had happened at Holtham at Christmas.

§

The doorbell rang a bit earlier than I’d expected on Monday afternoon. I went to answer it with my ready-for-anything smile fixed on my face. But it wasn’t Rip on the doorstep, it was Mark Diabello. His black Jaguar was parked by the gate, and he was smiling a ready-for-anything smile, too.

“Hello, Mrs Sinclair. Georgina.” The deep creases in his rugged cheeks crinkled craggily. “I hope you don’t mind my dropping round like this. I’ve been following up on some of the concerns you raised in our last chat, and I wanted to bring you up to date.”

Maybe if I hadn’t been expecting Rip to appear at any moment I wouldn’t have asked him to come in. But it seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

“That’s kind of you, Mr Diabello. Can I offer you a coffee?”

“Call me Mark, please.”

He followed me inside, looking around him as I led him through to the sitting room.

“I showed a client round this place when it was first on the market. You’ve done wonders to it, if I may say so. Added all your little feminine touches.”