Ritual (35 page)

Robyn knelt
down beside him again. ‘Maybe they decided you were beyond conversion.’

Charlie gave
her a wry smile. ‘They believe in the second coming. That’s what all this
cannibalism is supposed to be leading up to. They think that if you eat
yourself, and then somebody else eats what’s left of you, then that person
acquires your soul. So when they eat themselves, and somebody else eats what’s
left of them, two souls get passed on, and so forth, until they reach the
divine number of a thousand times a thousand.’

‘That’s what
that leaflet was all about,’ said Robyn.

Charlie nodded.
‘The last of the Last Suppers.
The
final communion.
And according to Mme Musette, it takes place Friday, in
the town of Acadia. They’re all going to be there, all the Celestines.’

Robyn looked at
Charlie closely. His eyes were brimming with tears. ‘There’s something else,
isn’t there? Tell me.’

Charlie
swallowed. ‘It’s Martin. I guess I should be glad that they haven’t harmed him
yet. But the way it’s worked out, he’s going to be the thousandth thousandth
soul. “Great good fortune”, that’s what Mme Musette called it. On Friday, her
husband is going to kill him and eat him, and that supposedly is going to make
M. Musette into a fitting vessel for the second coming.’

‘I don’t think
I understand that,’ frowned Robyn. ‘Me neither. The whole
Goddamned
lot of them are only playing with half a deck. But the trouble is they believe
in it. They believe in it so Goddamned sincerely that they’ve even managed to
persuade the U S government to turn a blind eye to what they’re doing.
According to Mme Musette, the administration is more than willing to give them
a shot at bringing Christ the Lord back to earth, because it’ll be such a boost
for America’s international standing, not to mention the tourist trade.’

‘Can anybody be
that cynical?’ asked Robyn.

‘What do they
care?’ said Charlie bitterly. ‘A few missing kids stay missing, that’s all.
Serves them right for running away from home in the first place.
The police don’t mind. If they know for sure that the kids have been recruited
by the Celestines, they don’t have to waste time and manpower looking for
them.’

‘What are you
going to do?’ asked Robyn.

‘I don’t know
yet,’ said Charlie. ‘I want a drink first,
then
a
bath, then I’m going to have this hand fixed. It hurts like all hell.’

‘They actually
made you eat it?’ said Robyn.

‘Yes, they
actually made me eat it. Why? Do you want to know what it tasted like?’

‘I’m sorry,’
Robyn told him, ruffling his hair again. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Charlie touched
her cheek. ‘I’m sorry, too. I guess I’m over-tired, that’s all.’

‘Maybe we could
get some help, a private detective or somebody like that,’ Robyn suggested.

‘They have
agencies that specialize in snatching back children from divorced fathers,
don’t they? Maybe one of them could snatch Martin back. Have they brought him
down to Louisiana yet?’

‘Yes. Mme
Musette told me. They’re holding the Last Supper at L’Eglise des Pauvres, in
Acadia.’

‘All right,
then. Let’s get you fixed up. Then let’s see if we can find one of those people
to help us. There’s bound to be somebody in the yellow pages.’

Charlie lowered
his head. He started to laugh; but his laughter quickly turned to sobs of
exhaustion. ‘God, you’re so practical,’ he told Robyn. ‘Who would have thought
of looking in the yellow pages to find somebody to save my son from being eaten
alive?’

‘Come on,
Charlie, rest,’ said Robyn. ‘They’ll be up with your drink in a minute.’

Charlie eased
off his plastic sandals and lay back on the bed. ‘I have to admit, I feel
dreadful,’ he said. ‘Do you want to turn on the television? I could use some
light relief.’

Robyn went
across and switched on The Flintstones, and then changed channels to a local
news bulletin. A black woman was complaining about teenage dope dealers in
Audubon Park. Robyn said,
Til
run your bath, okay?’

Charlie closed
his eyes for a moment, and said, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without
you.’

‘You would have
survived. You’re a survivor.’

There was a
quick knock at the door. Robyn
called,
‘Coming!’ and
she came out of the bathroom. ‘That’ll be room service.’

She opened the
door and instantly it was banged wide. In came a wide-shouldered half-caste
with tight curly hair and a face like pitted oak. He was followed by M.
Fontenot, in a crumpled, fawn summer-weight suit; and behind him, wearing a
silky white gown, came Mme Musette.

‘What in hell
are you doing here?’ Charlie demanded, sitting up.

Mme Musette
closed the door behind her. ‘You will have to forgive us, Charlie. It was the
only way.’

‘What do you
mean, “
the
only way”?’

‘The only way
in which we could quickly locate your lady companion,’ said M. Fontenot, with
the same benign smile that had disturbed Charlie so much in the Church of the
Angels. ‘We had her under observation yesterday evening, but she disappeared,
and so obviously the most expedient way of finding her was to let you find her
for us.’

‘Who are these
people?’ Robyn wanted to know.

Mme Musette
closed and opened her eyes like a cat. ‘Charlie will introduce us, won’t you,
Charlie? Although you haven’t yet met Henri, have you? Henri is what you might
call my argument of last resort.’

Henri patted
his bulky seersucker sports coat, to indicate that he was wearing a shoulder
holster.

Mme Musette
said, ‘Sometimes even the most persuasive of words are not enough.’

‘What do you
want?’ Charlie asked her.

M. Fontenot
said, ‘
You
must return with us now to Elegance |
Street. The Last Supper is too important to us for it to
be ;
jeopardized in any way. You are still not persuaded, you see, of the truth of
what we believe, and you are still intent on j taking your son away from us.
This lady is your accomplice. And so, you see, we must insist that you remain
with us until after the second coming.’

‘I’m not going
anywhere,’ Robyn insisted.

‘But my dear,
it is imperative,’ said Mme Musette.
‘Not only imperative, but
in your own personal interest, too.
There i is an F BI warrant out for
your arrest, as an accessory to first-

:
degree
homicide, and as an accomplice to interstate kidnap.
And a stolen vehicle has been found at your parents’ home
in
]
Connecticut, and you are wanted for questioning in connection with
that.’

‘You’re
completely cracked,’ said Robyn.

Mme Musette
smiled. ‘You will never forgive yourselves if you miss the second coming. And
we will never forgive you if you do anything at all to interfere with it. You
must be there, 258

Charlie!
Imagine it! And your own son will be the final sacrifice to restore the Lord
Jesus Christ to His throne on earth.’

Charlie gave
Robyn a sideways glance, but said nothing.

Robyn said, in
a challenging voice, ‘Does it have to be Charlie’s son? Can’t you see what
you’re putting him through?’

Mme Musette
came up to Charlie and gently stroked his cheek with her one finger. ‘Charlie’s
son is already numbered and blessed in preparation for the Last Supper. It is
an honour, not a punishment. Charlie will understand that soon, when the Lord
Jesus Christ reappears in front of us, and so will you. I told you that you
would kneel down before me and kiss my
feet,
didn’t I,
Charlie? And so you shall.’

Charlie jerked
his cheek away and looked up at Mme Musette defiantly.

She pretended
to be offended, and then laughed. ‘I’m offering you everything, Charlie.
Purpose, meaning, success.
If you stay with the Celestines,
who knows? –
you
could become an executive of the
church. You could be an administrator, an overseer, spreading the word of the
Celestine order all over the world. You could be the kind of man people
admire.’ She turned to Robyn.

‘As for you, my
dear, we always have vacancies for trained communicators.’

‘Stick it in
your ear,’ said Robyn. ‘I’m not going anywhere, not with you, and neither is
Charlie.’

M. Fontenot
said, ‘I regret that you have no choice. I am quite prepared to give Henri the
instructions to do away with you. Of course, I would rather not.’

Charlie eased
himself up off the bed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll come.
But
on the strict condition that you don’t hurt Miss Harris here.
No
finger-chopping ceremonies, do you understand me?’

Mme Musette
bowed her head. ‘Nobody at the church of the Celestines has ever had even the
smallest morsel of their body removed without their full consent. Remember,
Charlie, even you cut your finger off voluntarily. If you had admitted that you
were not genuinely interested in joining us, we would not have obliged you to
do it. Every act of self-amputation and self-ingestion is done willingly and
joyfully.’

Charlie lifted
his left hand. ‘Do you call this joyful?’

‘I call it
appropriate,’ said Mme Musette.
‘A sort of poetic justice.’

‘Now, let’s
go,’ put in M. Fontenot.

‘I don’t have
any shoes,’ Charlie reminded him.

‘You have the
plastic sandals you wore to walk here. Besides, our limousine is right outside.
You won’t have to walk far.’

Charlie sat
down on the edge of the bed and picked up the sandals. ‘It’s a pity about Mrs
Kemp,’ he said, as he tugged them on, one-handed.

Mrs Kemp,
thought Robyn. What on earth is he talking about Mrs Kemp for?

‘Mrs Kemp lost
everything,’ Charlie went on. M. Fontenot and Mme Musette weren’t really
listening.
‘Her niece, her boarding house business.
Her car.’

As he said
this, Charlie looked intently at Robyn, almost as if he were trying to transmit
his thoughts by telepathy. ‘She lost her car,’ he went on, ‘and then she lost
her life.
Poor Mrs Kemp.

All she has now
are the keys to heaven.’

Robyn suddenly
realized what Charlie was trying to say to her. The car
keys,
make sure you take the car keys with you.

‘Are we ready?’
asked M. Fontenot impatiently. ‘The last thing I want is another parking
ticket.’

‘May I take my purse?’
asked Robyn. ‘It’s there, on the bedside table.’

M. Fontenot
picked up her small, red-leather purse, opened it up, and quickly rifled
through it to make sure that it didn’t conceal a gun or a canister of Mace.
Charlie heard the keys jingling in the bottom of it, and lowered his head a
little to hide his tension. M. Fontenot passed the purse to Robyn, and said,
‘Now perhaps we can go back to Elegance Street.’

They left room
501 and walked along the corridor towards the elevator. Apart from Charlie’s plastic
sandals, they could have been delegates to the Pontiac Dealers of Illinois’
Fall Convention, which was taking place at the Hotel Ponchartrain all this week
– executives and secretaries. They went down to ground level without speaking
to each other, although Henri kept clearing his throat.

Together they
crossed the lobby, making their way through a milling crowd of
over-enthusiastic motor-dealers. M. Fontenot went through the revolving door
first, followed by Robyn and Mme Musette. Charlie hesitated, but Henri said to
him. ‘Go on, you go ahead,’ and the expression on his face wasn’t the kind of
expression that gave him much leeway for argument.

Charlie pushed
his way around; but just as he reached the street he suddenly forced himself
backwards against the glass behind him, arresting the door’s momentum. Then he
quickly knelt down, preventing Henri from pushing forward by keeping his back
against the glass, snatched off one of his plastic sandals, and wedged it
underneath the bottom of the door. Henri shouted out loud, and tried to heave
the door around further, but all he succeeded in doing was wedging the shoe
more tightly, and imprisoning himself in his own section of the door.

‘The car!’
Charlie shouted, hopping across the sidewalk.

M. Fontenot,
seeing what had happened, rushed to the revolving door and tried to drag the
sandal out, but Henri kept on pushing the door, not realizing what was holding
it. Several convention delegates tried to turn the door, too, and one of them
started arguing with M. Fontenot and telling him to get out of the way.

Mme Musette
rushed up to Charlie and clung on to his jacket with her mutilated hands.
‘Charlie!

This is
madness! You can’t go! Stay, Charlie, don’t be such a fool! What kind of a life
can you possibly have without us?’

Charlie tried
to pull her away from him, but she held on. Robyn came up behind her, hooked
her arm around her neck,
stuck
out a leg behind her,
and ju-jitsued her on to the sidewalk, flat on her back. Mme Musette screamed.
M. Fontenot, turning around, jostled his way through the conventioneers and
approached Charlie with his fists raised. Charlie swung his arm around and gave
him a stupefying open-handed slap on the side of the head.

Charlie kicked
off the other sandal and he and Robyn ran along the sidewalk, dodging
passers-by. They collided with two elegant young black men in matching berets,
and knocked over a sack of trash that was waiting for collection. ‘Where’s the
car?’ Charlie hollered, as he sidestepped a woman with a baby buggy.

‘Basement!’
Robyn panted. ‘Just down here!’

They reached
the entrance to the hotel’s underground parking lot, and ran down the dark
concrete ramp. Charlie’s feet stung but he scarcely noticed. When they reached
the bottom of the ramp, Charlie looked around wildly, and said, ‘Where is it?
Where did you park it? I don’t see it anywhere!’