Jago (69 page)

The face was that of the outcast, Susan. Her glazed eye stared out, one last tear starting. The tear grew as Hazel focused on it, disturbing her. There were discords in the music of Heaven.

‘Behold,’ said Beloved, ‘I make all things new…’

* * *

On the stairs, Paul found James’s gun, thrown away. He picked it up, feeling cold reality. It was a tool for killing things.

Waves of light streamed around. He held the gun in his left hand and took the box of drawing pins out of his pocket, shaking a few loose. He made a fist over them, and pain showed him prosaic stairs.

He popped the pins into his mouth, and shifted the gun to his right hand.

Upwards and onwards...

* * *

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ Jago said, voice like gentle thunder, ‘the beginning and the end.’

Susan was on her knees at last, between Allison and Jenny, heart overcome, belief pouring out. Jago was the Lord God, and the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand.

‘He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son…’

Susan saw a shaggy figure at the gates of the city, stalking Beloved with a sword of ice. She opened her mouth to warn the faithful, but her voice would not come.

‘…but the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death…’

Beloved’s face was terrible in His wrath. Red lightning cracked over the city, cellophane skies crackling and crumpling.

The stalker shouldered through the gates and slipped among the Chosen. He was the last of the liars. Susan loved him for it. Ashamed, she kept her silence.

‘Come hither,’ Jenny said to her, delighted, ‘I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife…’

* * *

Terry was changing back, shoulders growing, hair shedding. Teddy stopped scratching his brother’s throat. As he lost wolfishness, he snarled more, became aggressive. No amount of ‘Down, Doug’ would keep him pacified. While he was wrapped in transformation, Teddy threw his brother, fast becoming painfully heavy, aside, and stood. Terry rolled on the grass, backbone shifting. Teddy ran into the darkness.

* * *

Heat was all around Maskell. His sap was swelling, popping and bubbling through his skin. Jeremy, Hannah and Sue-Clare had broken away, and the Light had got too close. He was burning to his roots, the goodness of the soil feeding the fire. The flames ate into him, crumbling his leaves to orange ash, chewing the meat of his limbs. An electric shock shot up through his quirt, striking a killing blow to his heart.

* * *

Jenny was a little girl again. Jesus H. Christ smiled to her, blowing a kiss. His bicycle rested against a wall, chrome polished to burning mirrors. Granddad, who had come to Heaven years earlier, was there, a young man in uniform as he had been in the pictures in the family album, dancing with Grandmother Annie, whom she had never even known. Her mum and dad brought round soft drinks in bright-coloured paper cups. Balloons drifted past, and party poppers went off, jetting streamers of harmless fire into the air. Lisa, her sister, ran past, chasing a winged cat, chortling delight. Cherubic servants circulated with silver salvers of triangular sandwiches. Hummingbirds and bluebirds trilled.

Her throat was hoarse, but a sip of the liqueur Mum gave her soothed the pain—the last she’d ever feel—away.

Beloved and His Sister-Love embraced.

Susan, cleaned and redeemed, sat awkwardly to one side, not believing she’d been judged worthy of the New Jerusalem. Jenny had always known the Lord God was merciful, and Loved even his errant children. Allison, a queen of the fay, twirled in her white dress, darkness gone from her. Joyful music was all around. John Lennon sang ‘All You Need is Love’, strumming his guitar with six-fingered hands.

* * *

The hammer was back and there was a bullet in the chamber. Even Paul, who had never held a real gun before, knew all he had to do was point and pull the trigger. The trick was getting close enough to point.

He had been walking through the light, towards the music. When he found the music, he’d find Jago. And Hazel. He tried to think whether he now loved Hazel or not. It didn’t really matter. He didn’t even know if he was saving a world or destroying one. That didn’t really matter either.

Curtains parted, and he was in the streets of a celestial city. It was vaguely Middle Eastern, like a Technicolor bazaar in an Arabian Nights fantasy, but 1930s science-fiction skyscrapers grew above. He heard Beethoven, Bach, Brahms and Mahler conducting their own posthumous works, setting knee-weakeningly transcendental music to bright new words by Shelley, Keats, Shakespeare and William Blake. Happy people rejoiced, in robes of flowing white that could have been classical or futurist. There was little to do in Heaven apart from rejoice. After a while, he assumed, it would get infernally boring.

He wandered through the city, knowing Jago would be its centre. Turning a corner after a mosque carved from Italian ice cream, he bumped into Janet. She didn’t have wings any more, but was still an Angel. Smiling, she embraced him with lung-puncturing force, and he clung to the gun, hoping it wouldn’t go off.

‘We share Love,’ she said, her tone suggesting she was willing to share one variety of Love here and now.

Paul gulped, drawing pins rattling against his teeth.

Janet let him go. Paul hoped there’d be a good deprogramming service available for her after this was over. Once she’d been counselled for five years, he might even try to get her telephone number. He saluted her, touching the sight of the gun to his forehead, and she giggled at how silly he looked. He left her rejoicing.

* * *

Jeremy watched his father burn, and cried. Daddy had changed, had been mean and cruel, but he was still his daddy, and Jeremy somehow knew none of it had really been his fault. When they were close together, Jeremy had been surprised to find out how much Daddy hurt. They were both afraid of the dark, but of different darks. There was fire all around, and Jeremy was huddled with his sister and mother. As he screamed and shook, Daddy became his old self again, and Jeremy could not watch. He pressed his face to Mummy, and she held him tight, whispering comfort through her own tears. Jeremy could still hear his daddy. As he burned, leaves and branches fell away, showing the actual daddy underneath.

* * *

Allison was washed clean in an instant. Her greasy skin cleared up, her hair was newly shampooed and combed out. Her other life had been a dream, and this princess was her true self. There’d been blood on her hands, but it was cleaned away. She was at Jenny’s party, surrounded by flattering boys who weren’t afraid of her. Soul II Soul was playing. Ben was gone, cast aside like an old snakeskin, no longer necessary. He was outside now, handsome and cool and tall, face fixed, machine gleaming. She drank the cordial of Heaven, and felt she had earned her reward. For the first time, she laughed genuine laughter, feeling it tickle her chest and throat as it came out. As she laughed, she was aware she was coming, gently. The pleasure made her weak, then strong again. Someone brought her a new drink, and she sipped, trying not to giggle.

* * *

Paul found Jago in the town square of Heaven, standing on his pedestal, surrounded by a street party. His heart glowed a fond red in his breast, shining through transparent flesh like a billion-watt rosebulb. His own heart kicked as he saw Hazel, robed in white, standing on a pedestal just beneath him, her face turned up to his, his head dipped to kiss her.

The first stab of pain let him see the dusk and the attic.

Then, Heaven was back, stretching into the forever distance, pillars of Light rising, fountains of golden milk spurting. The moon belonged to everyone, the best things in life were free. Happy days were here again, the skies above were clear again. Troubles melted like lemon drops way above the chimney tops. The corn was as high as an elephant’s eye.

An Angel handed him a snowdrop for peace, which melted in his hand. He looked around the square. Estate agents owned platinum skyscrapers, bristling with inviting signs. Newspaper stalls sold nothing but the
Reader’s Digest.
Burger restaurants were got up like primary-coloured plastic cathedrals. Pearly kings and queens break-danced in front of the Christian bookshop. The quadruplex cinema was showing
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,
A
Room with a View, Three Men and a Baby
and
Steel Magnolias.

A three-storey flag with Jago’s face on it was gradually unfurling down the side of one monolith. Paul wanted to puke.

While Jago kissed Hazel, he was not paying attention to the fraying edges of his pretend Paradise.

With his tongue, Paul jostled a drawing pin into his jaw, point up, scraping against his broken tooth. He fixed Jago’s place in his mind, so he could walk up and shoot him with his eyes closed. The point of the pin slid into his cavity, nudging the nerve with a brisk shot of agony.

He had a glimpse of the attic as it was, dusty and cramped, tiles smashed away from the roof. It was sunset in the real world. The Brethren were crowded in, bent over, slumped in corners.

It was only a glimpse. The weight of the fantasy was too much. The pain would have to be incredible to give him enough time to get close. As incredible as the pain of a pin jabbed into an exposed dental nerve. Paul bit down on the drawing pin, hard.

* * *

The scream distracted Susan from her Heaven of forgiveness. It was a yell of pain and defiance, cutting through the cotton-wool fog that had descended, deadening her Talent. She came alive again, and was in a dark, hot room, with a lot of other bodies. Someone brushed past her purposefully, and his red-hot agony lanced into her.

OH JESUS OH GOD OH FUCK OH JESUS OH JESUS OH GOD OH GOD OH HAZEL OH FUCK OH GOD OH THE PAIN OH CHRIST OH LORD OH MAN OH KILL OH JESUS OH FUCK OH GOD OH HAZEL OH KILL KILL KILL OH HURT OH PAIN OH CHRIST OH LORD OH FUCK OH JESUS OH PAIN OH GOD OH HURT OH BLOOD OH AGONY OH FUCK OH JESUS OH LORD

A doubt troubled Allison, and the admirers melted away. Across the square, she saw Jenny. They were the only two real people at the party. The rest had been mannequins.

Someone was running towards Beloved, towards Jago.

‘Stop him,’ Jenny shouted.

* * *

Soldier ants eating his skin. Hot copper needles in his eyes. Crocodile clips shocking his scrotum. Football-size swellings in his bowels. Ground glass shifting under his foreskin. A hypodermic directly into his heart. Worms crawling tunnels through his brain. A rat burrowing into his entrails. Strips of flesh sloughing off. Vinegar rubbed into all his wounds. His nerves drawn out and plucked like harpstrings.

* * *

Jenny saw the last of the apostates run by her, sword in hand, intent upon doing Beloved harm. If his purpose were achieved, then the New Jerusalem would fall into the Pit, and the eternal night would descend.

* * *

The pain was so much that he didn’t see the reality it tore him back to. Eyes screwed shut, he stumbled across the floor. The pain had its nucleus in his tooth, but spread throughout his body, throbbing in his every atom. He held the gun so tight he was sure it had discharged.

* * *

Allison got to him first, and took hold of his arm. He was stronger than she’d thought. She was unable to prevent him lifting up his gun. The weapon went off, incredibly loud, under her collarbone, and she felt a used cartridge tapping her face like a hot coal. Jenny had him too, but he fought with the strength of the damned. A stab of pain pierced her, and she knew she’d been shot. The world revolved and Heaven shrank, darkened, pressing in, strangling her. She tasted blood in her mouth, and felt as if she were transfixed by a bar of white-hot iron.

* * *

The painwave broke, and he opened his eyes. Allison and Jenny were on him, tearing his face. He let them. The pain helped. He’d fired once, wild.

Above, perched on an old chair, Jago watched, unfeeling as a statue. Susan said he was dead anyway.

He got the gun up, fighting the full weight of Allison hanging on his arm, and had the barrel pointed at Jago’s face.

He thought his elbow would give way, and his arm would dangle useless. Allison would wrestle him to the floor. She was hurt, but the stronger for her pain. Pain brought her close enough to him to drag him down.

He began to pull the trigger. With a slowness that was beyond belief, the hammer eased back.

The pain in his mouth was subsiding, shrinking away. Behind Jago’s head, a halo grew. It spread, bringing with it the buildings of the city. He saw the Lord God’s heart glowing in his chest, radiating peace and harmony. Paul could not feel the hand holding the gun. Allison crawled along his arm, her grip fastening. There was blood on her chin and in her eyes.

Jago’s face, impassive until now, began to crack a smile. The thin line of his mouth curved, flashing teeth. The light grew, and the waves of gold washed around him…

* * *

Susan saw the struggle at the centre of the square, and tried to run towards it. Paul was in the middle, with Allison and Jenny on him. He had James’s gun. Jago was unconcerned, not part of the untidy scuffle, but something was getting through to Hazel.

* * *

She was tugged from her pedestal, pulled away from Beloved’s side. The assassin struggled with her handmaids. Allison had been hurt, but was soldiering on. Hazel raised a hand to strike him, to push him away from the Lord God. But she saw his face, a face she didn’t recognize, and could not land the blow. The ground beneath was snatched away, and she hung in space a million miles up, waiting for gravity to pull her to the jagged ground. The moment was drawn out, and she heard a voice from far away...

* * *

The warmth was all around, easing his pain. It would have been simple to go with the warmth, to allow the Spirit into his heart. The women holding him weren’t fighting now, but soothing, stroking his face. Allison picked at his fist, trying to free the gun from it. Jenny was speaking in his ear, trying to convince him that he was Loved, that the Lord was with him. Jago’s heart was a beacon in Paul’s darkness, lighting his way to salvation.