Jago (26 page)

‘Well,’ said Hazel, ‘must be going…’

Susan had to try to help the girl. She did not like to interfere, to use her Talent like a puppeteer. But sometimes it was the only way.

‘See you later,’ Susan said, fixing Hazel’s eyes with her own, pressing a mentacle delicately against the girl’s mind. She found it useful to imagine a point between the person’s eyes as a tiny hole, leading funnel-like into their brain, their mind. Susan tried to plant a seed of doubt, to give Hazel protection.

‘There,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’

They parted. Susan watched Hazel wander up past the Gate House. She had not seen James Lytton since last night. She must talk to him later. She hoped the girl would be able to look after herself. Hazel climbed the steps to the front door and pressed the bell button. Susan was reminded of
Psycho.
The Agapemone had an attic window like Mrs Bates’s bedroom, but it was blacked out. Beloved was playing with his Victorian toy. She looked up, imagining neon eyes in the sky. She wondered how much Beloved saw. If she could sense what he was, then he must be able to see through her. Of course, he had disadvantages: he had only Bible stories to justify his Talent, not years of tests and research. And he was mad.

She turned and went on her way.

There was an old red telephone box by the pub, opposite the dead tree, and Susan had a supply of carefully hoarded coins. There was no point calling from the Agapemone. She didn’t think the phone was tapped, but it was on the table in the hall and couldn’t be used in private. That was one of the ways Beloved cut his disciples off from their old lives—parents, friends, expartners, whoever. Mick said the Brethren weren’t prisoners, but that might be because Beloved was a subtle master. Whenever anyone made a call, they had to account for it in a ledger, writing down the number called and the duration. It was one of Mick’s systems to keep bills under control. Susan noticed that if anyone did try to call out, Mick—or Gerald Taine or another of the cabal Susan had tagged as the Agapemone’s enforcers—would find something to do within earshot.

On the other side of the road, Derek and Marie-Laure—nobody’s idea of a dynamic duo—were doing their best to direct traffic, guiding vehicles on to the hard-packed earth track to the parking areas. Susan waved to them, but they didn’t notice. They were fuzzy this morning, too, moving clumsily like astronauts or deep-sea divers. The Sister was prayerfully muttering to herself, eyes fixed on the dirt, while Derek was humming a tune Susan could barely remember being in the charts, ‘Nights in White Satin’. He waved at her, head empty.

The telephone box was useless to most disciples because having small change was a rarely granted privilege. Money was held in common, and every penny spent had to be explained. Only James, useful as a free agent, had any petty cash at all. One effect of this was to isolate the Brethren from the community. They couldn’t go to the pub for a drink or even drop by the garage and buy a packet of sweets. Her own coins had been smuggled in and hidden. Mick and Taine held regular inspections to track down uncharitably retained private property. In theory even clothes and toiletries were communally owned. There were penalties for hoarding. Karen Gillard once had to take a month’s vow of silence because she kept a transistor radio for private use.

Two lads in an open-top car whistled and shouted a ‘Hello, darling’ at her. Seeing red, she turned to look in their direction.

‘While I’ve got a face,’ one of them said, ‘you’ll always have somewhere to sit.’

Before she had time to fight it, her mind swelled, and
reached…

There were four quiet pops as tyres ruptured. The car settled, hissing, and stalled. Cars behind hit their horns. Children bawled. Susan was embarrassed. She had not meant that, but sometimes she could be surprised. She must be more guarded. Walking past the swearing youths, she wanted to make a smart comment but bit down on it. Let them think it was a freak accident. One of the lads was out of the car, gawking at the flat tyres. He was wearing a Loud Shit T-shirt and had an X of baldness shaved into his head.

She smiled at him, claiming responsibility.

‘Witch,’ he said.

‘W
hat youm doin’?’ Terry asked.

‘Makin’ sacrifice.’

Allison held the pigeon in one hand, her other over its head. The bastard bird was beaking into her palm but wasn’t making a racket any more. She’d taken it from a tree, creeping up quiet and clutching fast as a lizard. The small body, warm and bony in her grip, squirted hot shit at her. She held it at arm’s length, so the jet mainly missed. She needed one hand to grip the bird, otherwise she’d have used her cheesewire. She squeezed the bird’s head and wrenched it off. Blood choked out of the neckhole and the thing kicked. She held it up and sprayed blood over the ground. She sloshed some on Terry.

‘Watch out,’ he moaned.

She held up the squirming pigeon like a bottle, and sucked blood. Hot and tasty, it ran down her chin like gravy.

‘There, breakfast.’

She dropped the dead thing and wiped her face on her sleeve. The bird’s wings wound down and it quickly stopped kicking. Sacrifice was made. She knew the importance of sacrifice. Badmouth Ben had explained it to her. He had come to Alder because of her sacrifices, because of Mr Keough’s cats. Sacrifices made him stronger.

‘Gor fuck I,’ said Terry, ‘that’s disgustin’.’

Allison stuck out her red tongue at him, and smeared his cheeks with bloody thumbs.

‘Clown,’ she said, ‘like your brother.’

Terry was theirs, marked now by blood and deed. In the end, he’d be proud to be hers and Ben’s. He was the first. Others would come, initiated by blood. More sacrifices would be made. The boy was twenty paces behind mentally, huffing and puffing to catch up. This morning, his beard was heavy and ragged. It was still a kid’s bum fluff, but it gave him a beasty look. Ben had helped Terry change. He wasn’t much of an army, but he was a start. He was just stupid enough to fall in step.

‘Last night,’ Terry said, ‘what bloody happened?’

They’d slept out after the hide-and-seek with Terry’s brother and Lytton. This morning, Ben had got up early and gone about his business, leaving her in charge. She’d woken with dew on her face, cradled in the bushes, lying in a beaten-flat tunnel that protected them. Terry, clothes tattered, was nearby, snoring mouth wide open. He wasn’t used to sleeping in the open. He wasn’t close to the earth the way she was.

‘Al’son?’

She smiled, and he went quiet. There were secrets he didn’t need to penetrate. He was sensibly afraid of her. The lesson, however, had to be reinforced.

She stood near him, licking her lips, and slipped her hands under his shirt, feeling his soft, hairy belly. There was fear in his eyes, but also a little excitement. He thought he knew what he was getting, and raised his arms so she could pull his shirt over his head. She let her hands climb up his torso like thin spiders. She found his pulpy nipples and pinched hard, digging with her long thumbnails. He opened his mouth to shriek, tears welling up, and she quickly kissed him. With a final, flesh-abusing twist, she pushed him away. He was yelping like a dog now, and rubbing his teats.

‘Pain,’ she said, ‘you got to be friends with pain.’

He swore and bit his lips, sucking in air. She brushed the twigs out of her hair and stretched. Terry sat down and complained again, howling like a kid, tears in the fur on his cheeks.

‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘Get up. We’m got places to go, things to do.’

S
he got to the telephone box just before a hefty, beef-faced man with a tweed jacket. He was standing outside, shifting his weight from foot to foot, chinking change in his hand, looking at his watch. She didn’t have to be a Talent to get the message. She dialled the number. The phone was lifted on the third ring.

‘Good morning,’ said a cheery voice. Feminine but faceless, like a machine. ‘Ministry of Defence, Ip-Sit.’

‘It’s pronounced “eyesight”,’ Susan said, impatient with silly games, ‘and put me through to David Cross.’

‘I’m sorry, Dr Cross is in a meeting.’

‘Interrupt. He’ll want to talk to me. I’m in a call box.’

Pip pip pip pip.

It was an old-fashioned pay phone. You couldn’t fill it with money and talk until your credit ran out. The glass was cracked, some squares missing. The directories were shredded and scribbled on, marked with old stains. There was graffiti magic-markered childishly into the list of exchanges,
TEDDY 4 ALLISON. GARY IS A POOF. IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI. AGAPEMMONY GITS. BANNERMAN BURNS IN HELL.

‘Interrupt. This thing is eating my change.’

‘Dr Cross is in a meeting.’

‘Miss, please get him. My name is Susan Ames. Say Susan Rodway. He’ll want to talk to me.’

Pip pip pip pip.

She heard empty air, pencils tapping, muffled voices. Then a rattle as an extension was picked up.

‘Susie, what is it?’

‘David, I’m in a call box. Can you get back to me? The number is… shit, it’s been defaced.’

She shoved another twenty pence in the slot. The booth smelled as if generations of customers staggering out of the pub had used it as a urinal. The one-man queue was fuming, reciting ‘bloody hippies’ over and over like a mantra. If the box was a public toilet, he was desperate to go.

Pip pip pip pip.

‘I’ve fed this thing enough to call Singapore for an hour, but it keeps wanting more.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘It’s Jago and Alder. There seems to be a crisis coming. I’m observing an increase in phenomena. There’s some kind of spiral effect.’

‘I have a note on my desk about a fire last night.’

‘That may be connected. I’m not sure.’

Pip pip pip pip.

The waiting man knocked on the door and shook a fist. Susan turned her back to him, but he just stepped around the corner and knocked again. She let her hair fall over her face and kept her head down, bracing her back against the door, telephone cord half wrapped around her.

‘David, close this down.’

‘I’ve tried recommending that before, and got nowhere. This is Sir Kenneth’s favourite spook show.’

‘I think Jago is becoming more dangerous. There are a lot of people here. For the festival. I think we could be talking cataclysm. This thing goes back beyond Jago. I think it goes back centuries.’

‘Susan, you’re rambling. We’re parapsychologists, not ghostbusters. Are you well in yourself?’

Pip pip pip pip.

‘Fires. They keep cropping up in the history of this hill. There’s a perennial ghost called the Burning Man, and a World War Two bomb story.’

‘Do you still have the headaches?’

‘David, this is not about me.’

‘When were you last looked at by our people? Have you had any unusual physical symptoms? Increased poltergeist activity during your periods? Apparitions? You may be throwing the experiment out by your presence.’

‘David…’

Pip pip pip pip.

Her last coin jammed.

‘David…’

Pip pip pip pip… buzzzzzzz.

F
irst, Wendy decided she just wouldn’t get out of bed. Badmouth Ben couldn’t get her if she stayed under the duvet. She could still feel where he had gripped her, hear his whispered words, smell his burned-out stench.

Somehow, she’d got back to the Agapemone last night and, with medical help, gone to sleep. She wasn’t supposed to have pills, but she’d got some on her last shopping run to Bridgwater and hidden them from Brother Mick. Luckily Marie-Laure, her partner on the run, was only notionally aware of what went on outside her head. She’d bought first aid supplies, slipped the pills in on the tally, then spirited them to the room she shared with Derek, hiding them inside a tampax container to get through inspections. The bottle, evidence of her guilt, was half-empty on the bedside table. She could not remember how many she’d taken. Even with pills, she slept badly. The nightmare started before she got to bed, and it was not over now she was awake. Hard sunlight filtered through the gable window. Dust shapes formed and dispersed in the beams. Derek was long gone.

The pills made her slow. She pulled the duvet tighter. The clock told her it was past eleven. She should have been up for hours. She’d missed the breakfast ceremony. Her sense of community was weak now. She’d come to the Agapemone for that safety, and it was slipping away. Safety, and Beloved. She tried to pray, but couldn’t. If Ben was back, she’d have to see Beloved, have to get His help. Only He could face the dead-alive monster. Only He could save her.

‘The good thing about a sheep,’ she remembered Ben saying, words twisting like little scalpels, ‘is that you can
fuck
her…’

His teeth were sharp in the remains of his face. He had polished metal studs set into the burned leather of his forehead, cheeks and chin.

‘…
kill
her…’

Bone showed through at his knuckles, but his fingers had been strong, painfully digging in,
LOVE
and
HATE
biro-etched blue on yellow into his knucklebones.

‘…
eat
her…’

His eyes were glittering evil olives, horribly alive in his dead face.

‘…and
wear
her.’

His hands had been all over her, tearing memories from her flesh, memories of Ben when he had been alive.

‘Sheep,’ he had said to her, ‘go
baaa-baaaa!’

It was too much. She gave up. Ben could come and have her. It was too late to fight. She lay back like a corpse, hands over her chest. She sucked in her stomach and looked up at the ceiling. The windows were tall and thin. Reflections played around the light fittings. She arranged her hair on the pillow, smoothed the duvet lightly over herself, and recomposed her hands. She was laid out, waiting for the funeral, waiting for Badmouth Ben.

Time passed. The electric clock’s hands moved silently. She heard the small sounds of the house, traffic outside, far-off voices. She waited. Ben didn’t come for her. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine the worst. Then she thought of Beloved. She began to pray like a child, remembering everyone she knew and appealing for the Lord God’s mercy on them. She tried to find the Love in herself and dispense it. She tried to order her soul as she had done her body. She wanted to be a pure martyr, to go to the next world as a credit to her Saviour.