Ritual (47 page)

M. Musette
touched Charlie’s elbow, and said, ‘We must go back to the feast, my dear sir.
They will be missing us, and we will be missing our appetizer. I hope you have
found this to be instructive.’

Charlie nodded
numbly.
‘Instructive, yes.
I think that’s all I can
say.’

He averted his
eyes from the gory bodies of the eleven disciples as they left the kitchen. The
young girl with the long hair had severed her forearm, and was holding it up in
triumph. The doors swung shut behind them. M. Musette said, ‘Are you all right,
Charlie?’ but Charlie pushed him away and said, ‘Don’t worry about me.’

They rejoined
their table. Charlie sought Robyn’s face and tried to convey with nothing more
than a slight shake of his head the horrors he had just witnessed. He felt as
if his stomach was filled with worms and grease, and his throat was so parched
that he found it almost impossible to say anything.

‘You look pale,
Charlie,’ said the nun-like Mme Musette. ‘I thought restaurant inspectors
weren’t supposed to be squeamish.’

Charlie choked
out, ‘I don’t usually inspect the kitchens, Mme Musette. And I have never
inspected a kitchen like that. That kitchen is a human abattoir.’

‘Well, you’re
right, of course,’ said M. Musette, cheerfully. ‘Look – here is our food.’

Plates of thigh
meat were set in front of each of them.

Charlie kept
his head raised so that he wouldn’t have to look at it; and so that he wouldn’t
have to witness Mme Musette carefully slicing it up with her knife and fork and
putting it into her mouth.

The Guide
sitting next to Charlie tapped him gently on the shoulder and said, ‘Don’t you
want yours?’

Charlie could
do nothing but stare at him. The Guide said, ‘Do you mind if
I
..
.?
’ and forked Charlie’s meat on to his own
plate.

The feast was
slow and leisurely and proceeded with sinister stylishness. Outside, the sky
became overcast and dark, and the clouds that Charlie could see through the
clerestory windows looked like inkstains on wet cartridge paper. ‘Wouldn’t be
surprised if we’re in for a storm,’ remarked M. Musette, with his cheek full of
human liver. ‘Makes it more dramatic, in a way, don’t you think?’

After every
course, there were prayers of hope and thanksgiving, and the Celestines sang a
hymn.

They ate thigh
meat and liver and boneless ribs, and then they were served what M. Musette
called, ‘a selection of delicacies’, which included thin slices of female
breast, some of the best of them tinged with the nipple, and pale pink
sushi-like arrangements of raw marinated labia. Mme Musette laughed a tinkling
laugh at Charlie’s obvious disgust.

‘You sit down
at Thanksgiving and eat the butchered carcasses of living creatures, served
with sauces and herbs and vegetables. This is no different, once you have
accepted the notion that there is nothing blasphemous or illegal in man eating
man. This is a sacramental feast of body and blood. It is God’s gift, and you
should be grateful, not disgusted. Those young people gladly gave their flesh
and their pain – gladly – how can you sit there and feel self-righteous about
rejecting their sacrifice?’

Charlie said,
‘You might be able to persuade the rest of these freaks but you’re never going
to persuade me. Haven’t you heard about something called the sanctity of human
life?’

Mme Musette
smiled, and slipped something into her mouth that looked like a flesh-coloured
oyster, but obviously wasn’t. Charlie turned away, his lips tightened, his
stomach clenched in tightly suppressed nausea.

By eleven
o’clock, the feast was close to its climax. A choir of twelve Celestine guides
assembled solemnly in front of the altar, and began quietly to sing the Kyrie
Eleison
. The kitchen doors were
opened,
and a procession of Celestine cooks emerged, headed by Fernest Ardoin. Between
them, they were carrying in the most symbolic and most openly grotesque of all
the dishes that had yet been served – the dish that showed conclusively that
the eleven disciples were now dead, and that the assembled Celestines were
about to eat their very essence. On a large white dish were heaped, still
steaming, their eleven brains, lightly poached in a stock made from boiling
their lungs and their sweetbreads, served on a bed of red cabbage. The dish was
carried up to M. Musette for his approval, within inches of where Charlie was
sitting. Charlie did nothing more than glimpse the shining fawn-coloured
convolutions of human cortices – did nothing more than breathe in one
nostril-ful of their pale, sweet aroma, and he started to gag. Without excusing
himself, he pushed back his chair and walked quickly toward the exit. Behind
him, M. Musette nodded to the man with the close-cropped hair to keep an eye on
him.

Charlie went
outside and bent double under the oak tree and vomited coffee. The man with the
close-cropped hair stood on the steps watching him. Charlie’s stomach went on
convulsing for two or three minutes, but at least he managed to stand up
straighter and lean against the tree, his throat sore and his eyes watering.

‘You done now?’
the man asked him.

Charlie nodded.
He raised his head and looked around. Clouds had gathered above L’figlise des
Pauvres, and over towards Ville Platte and Evangeline County lightning was
flickering all along the horizon like the tongues of electrified snakes. A cold
wind began to stir the dried oak leaves that were scattered on the dirt, and
the cypress trees dipped and swayed.

There was an
extraordinary feeling in the air. Excitement, fear, the sense that something
incredible was about to happen. Charlie looked at the man with the close-cropped
hair and for a moment they both shared this sense of oncoming apocalypse.

‘We’d better
get ourselves back inside,’ the man suggested, his white robe ruffled by the
wind.

But at that
instant, a blinding artery of lightning ran down into one of the abandoned
cotton fields only a quarter-mile away, with a sizzling crack, and from inside
the main building Charlie heard a deep, low moan, all the Celestines chanting
at once.

Charlie wiped
his mouth with his sleeve, and pushed his way quickly back into the feasting
hall.

The room was
almost completely dark now, and assistants were going from table to table,
lighting candles. M. Musette was standing at the head of the dining table, his
arms outstretched, and he was reciting the Celestine Creed, while his followers
chanted their responses. Thunder burst over the rooftop with a noise like a
collapsing bridge.

‘It is time!’
cried M. Musette. ‘It is time for the second coming!’

Charlie quickly
checked that Robyn was still at her place, and then walked purposefully up to
M. Musette. ‘This is it,’ he said adamantly. ‘This is where the game finishes.
I’m taking my son and I’m going.’

M. Musette
stared at Charlie and his eyes didn’t even look human. ‘This is the hour of the
second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will not deny Him your only son.’

Charlie made a
quick move toward M. Musette but the man with the close-cropped hair was
quicker. He grasped Charlie’s arm and whipped it painfully behind his back in a
half-nelson.

‘Keep still and
I won’t break it for you,’ he murmured, almost apologetically.

M. Musette
raised his hand. ‘Bring the sacrificial lamb!’ he cried out. ‘Bring him here,
for the moment is upon us!’

Charlie
shouted, Wo!’ but four Celestines rose from their table and went to one of the
side rooms, their hands crossed over their chests.

Through the
clerestory windows, Charlie could see more flickers and flashes of lightning.
Rain began to beat against the glass, and patter on the corrugated roof like
dancing cats. He turned almost hysterically to Mme Musette, who was sitting
upright in her seat, her face rigid and incandescently beautiful.

‘Don’t let him
do it!’ he yelled at her. ‘Don’t let him murder my son!’

Mme Musette
said nothing, but gave Charlie a wan, mysterious smile, and turned away.

The four Celestines
returned to the room, walking with their heads bowed. In the middle of them
walked Martin, completely naked except for a white headband. Charlie struggled
against the man who was holding him, but his arm was jerked upwards until his
hand was almost touching the back of his neck, and there was nothing that
Charlie could do to break free. Charlie looked desperately at Martin’s face,
hoping for one last breakthrough of normal feeling, hoping for one last sign of
love and recognition, but Martin was smiling the same idiotic, accepting smile
that Charlie had seen on the face of so many Celestines. Happiness is
obedience. Nirvana is an empty mind. Heaven only comes to those who surrender
their private will to live.

‘Martin!’
Charlie appealed to him. ‘Martin, this is your father! This is Daddy! Martin,
listen to me, don’t let them do this to you!
Martin, for
Christ’s sake!’

‘Yes,’ murmured
Mme Musette.
‘For Christ’s sake.’

And M. Musette
added, ‘Amen.’

The four
Celestines brought Martin in front of the altar, and then turned him round so
that he was facing the assembled company. He was the twelfth disciple, the
final sacrifice. M. Musette approached him, walking all the way around him, and
then stepped up to the altar, where he knelt down and bowed his head and spent
a moment or two in silent prayer. Then he rose up again, and turned to the main
body of the hall, and spread his arms wide in conscious imitation of the
crucifixion.

‘Almost two
thousand years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed His body and His blood in
order that we might live. Now, we have repaid the debt; and we are about to
return to Christ that body and that blood which He so freely gave to us.’

There was yet
another crackling lightning-strike outside. Charlie jerked his head up. He felt
sure that it had hit the crucifix on the roof. There was a strong smell of
ozone and burned metal, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck
lifted up by the huge charge of static electricity in the building.

M. Musette
nodded to his wife, and she left her place and walked up to Martin. She touched
his forehead, she touched each of his nipples,
she
touched his navel. Then she drew out of her robes a long steel-bladed knife
with a handle fashioned out of gold and silver.

‘The
sacrificial knife,’ said M. Musette. Charlie watched in fascinated horror as
Martin accepted it from M. Musette, and lowered it between his thighs.

‘You said you
had to have my consent!’ he screamed at M. Musette.

M. Musette
turned to Charlie in acknowledgement. ‘Of course; but only when it comes to
giving his life. And I am sure that by the time he has finished sacrificing his
arms and his legs and his genitalia to the Saviour, you will be quite prepared
to give your consent in order to release him from his earthly suffering,’

Charlie found
himself unable to speak. He looked
away,
he couldn’t
bear to see Martin hurting himself. But then he found that he had to watch.
Martin was his son, his responsibility. He had to know what agony Martin was
going to go through, or he would never be able to redeem his own guilt for it
in the
future.,
If he had a future, of course. The
Celestines were probably planning to kill him, too, once this ritual was over.
Especially when it failed to produce a second coming.

M. Musette
pressed his hands together and prayed. ‘All flesh is as grass, and all the
glory of man like the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower
thereof away falleth, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.’

As he spoke
these words, Charlie alone in that company of Celestines, raised his eyes.
Directly above the altar, suspended only a few feet below the ceiling, he saw a
white light, soft and radiant and steady. He thought at first that it must be
static electricity, something like St
Elmo’s Fire
, but
it remained calm and steady and unblinking.

M. Musette
continued to pray, and while he did so, the light very slowly descended,
growing brighter and larger as it neared the top of the altar. ‘Do you not know
that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of
Christ and make them members of a harlot? It shall never be! Or do you not know
that the one who joins himself with a harlot is one body with her? For He says,
‘The two will become one flesh.”‘

‘But the one
who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.’

One by one,
then more quickly, the praying Celestines raised their eyes. A ripple of
astonishment ran all the way around the room. Only M. Musette remained as he
was, with his hands pressed together and his eyes closed. Charlie had to admire
his faith. He knew what was happening, he believed in it, and by God it was
actually coming to pass.

The light
hovered a few inches above the altar and it was now as dazzling as phosphorous,
and impossible to look at directly. Charlie used his one free hand to shield
his eyes, although the man with the close-cropped hair gave him a sharp tug on
his other arm to remind him that he was still held captive.

Martin hadn’t
moved. His eyes remained bright. He held his knife ready. All he was waiting
for now was the word from M. Musette that would begin his self-sacrifice. The
first cut, which would instantly change him from a young man to a eunuch.

The light above
the altar seemed constantly to shift and change, as if it were a living spirit.
M. Musette at last turned around to face it, and he genuflected and crossed
himself and cried out in a voice choked with tears, ‘Oh, Saviour! I know that
my Redeemer liveth!’