The Book of Daniel (17 page)

“Cheer up! It’s not like you’re on the outside yet,” said the man standing in front of me, poking his thumb towards the city gates, “and the speed this queue’s going, you won’t even get to see your sword and armour before curfew, let alone use them.”

“Curfew?”

“Uh-huh. Every now and then, the angels blow their trumpets and there’s a temporary stop to the fighting. All of the Purgatorians come back inside the city, and we shut the gates up for a while, nice and tight. It’s supposed to give us poor suckers a chance to stop and think about our spirituality, but most people are just glad of the rest.”

“But don’t the demons keep attacking? Surely if no-one’s out there holding them back, they just keep coming and coming? If there are as many of them out there as it sounds like, why don’t they just build a human pyramid, or an inhuman pyramid, and climb right over the walls?”

“I’m sure they try. But once the gates are sealed, that’s it; we’re safe. The Temple might be the only thing here that God protects directly, but the angels look after the rest of the city, at least all the while curfew is in effect. Don’t ask me where they get the energy from to defend a place this big; it’s just one of the many great mysteries of the Lord,” he said, wiggling his fingers in the air as if he were casting a spell. “Just be glad that they do. At least it gives us a sporting chance to recover. If we had to keep fending the demons off all the time with no break, we wouldn’t stand the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell.”

“And what happens when curfew’s over? Don’t the demons just wait by the gates and tear us to shreds the second they open?”

“No, because the angels go out ahead of us and clear them away. To them, it’s as easy as dusting off a chair before you sit down on it. Heh, you almost feel sorry for the demons, until the next time you’ve got one trying to bite your head off. Not that the angels’ work seems to thin their numbers very much. By the time the end-of-curfew trumpets have sounded and you’re back at work, there’s no shortage of the bastards to go round.” The queue shuffled forward a few paces. “My name’s Thomas, by the way.”

“I’m Dan. Pleased to meet you.” It was a great feeling to shake the hand of another human again. With that simple act, everything else that had been dumped on me so far seemed more manageable and less unreal. For a moment, I was reminded of my first day back in army training—which I suppose is exactly where I was once again. “So, er, have you been here long?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell, what with the passage of time here being so messed up. But long enough to know that I’d definitely rather be somewhere else.” Thomas grinned, but there was a slight edginess to it.

“That makes two of us, and I’d hazard a guess we’re not the only ones. It’s worse than a bloody prison here. At least back on Earth you’d get a chance to appeal your sentence. Here, it’s life for everyone, no matter what they’ve done wrong, no matter what they’ve done right. How about you? What was your great crime against the Almighty?”

“Careful, Dan. That can be a touchy subject. Me, I’m quite happy to share—it’s my own stupid fault I’m in Purgatory—but like any other prison, there are a lot of people who don’t like to be reminded of their presence here, especially when they’re convinced of their innocence.” Thomas considered. “In some cases, they might even be right. But they don’t have to just suck it up. You were
almost
right a moment ago when you said about there being no appeals procedure for getting out of here; there isn’t… unless you count prayer. Are you a religious man, Dan? Or, should I say,
were
you a religious man, before you came to Purgatory? I mean, a lot of former disbelievers suddenly find that they believe in God a whole lot more once they’re here. It’s kind of hard to deny evidence on this scale, eh?”

“No, I wasn’t religious, not exactly. It’s not that I didn’t believe in God as such, more that He and I had, er, a little falling out.”

Thomas nodded understandingly. “Sounds familiar. ‘A little falling out’ is pretty much the root cause behind everyone being here, one way or another. But I’m not going to pry; like I said, I know it’s something a lot of people don’t like to talk about, especially with someone they’ve only just met. I don’t mind, myself. I’ll tell anyone that’ll listen about how I came to be here, about my life as a vicar back on Earth, on the off chance it will… what?”

My newly reformed face must not have been very good at hiding my reaction to his words. “Let’s just say that I’m not exactly fond of the clergy. Look, no offense, but in my experience, and with only one exception, the more strongly someone claims that God is the centre of their life, the more likely they are to fuck mine up.” All the old hatreds were straining at the leash, but I tried my best not to growl at him.

“Come on now, Dan. You can’t really tar everyone in the Church with the same brush. You’ve just said yourself that there was an exception.”

“Yeah,
an
exception. One.”

“Okay. But don’t you think it’s possible that if there’s one, there might be others, too? I mean, if I hadn’t just told you I was a vicar, you wouldn’t be any the wiser, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to upset you so far, right? And just because I
was
a vicar, it doesn’t mean that I still am. Our former occupations count for little here. Once you’re reborn into Purgatory, you just join the rest of the helpless souls all trying their best to make it through to the other side safely. That’s the only job any of us have now.”

In the face of his earnestness, I did my best to bury my instincts. For the moment, I succeeded. “So tell me, then, what did you do that was so terrible? Even if you’re not a vicar anymore, I thought you guys had the whole ‘getting into Heaven’ thing pretty much sewn up.”

“Ah, but just because a child knows it’s wrong to steal from the biscuit tin, it doesn’t mean that he won’t do it. That’s human nature for you.”

“So go ahead, spill the beans. Or the biscuits. I’m all ears.”

Chapter 11

“W
ell, like I said, I used to be a vicar, for thirty-six years, almost right up until I died. I think I was a pretty good vicar, too, for most of those years, at least as far as I can tell. It was only towards the end that things fell apart. After I moved to Tiverly. You ever hear of Tiverly, Dan? Probably not. It’s one of those small villages tucked away in the English countryside, just the kind of place you dream about when you’re training to be a priest, and just the sort of place you want to be as you’re approaching retirement, like I was. I was over the moon when I found out I was being stationed there. The only downside was that the church building itself was fairly run down, and after a few months it became clear that it wasn’t big enough either; like I said, I was a pretty good vicar, and attendance at Sunday service was rising.

“No big deal,” Thomas shrugged. “We just started a redevelopment programme, like any other church would. Imaginations ran wild, lots of ideas were thrown around, and by the time the plans came back from the architects, we were looking at something costing more than half a million pounds. That’s a lot of money in a place like Tiverly; but church communities like nothing more than a good, faith-affirming challenge. All kinds of fundraising activities quickly sprung up in the village, and six months later, we already had nearly a third of the money we needed. Ah, you don’t how exciting that was, seeing such abundant provision from God in response to our prayers… but then it began to tail off a bit. Everyone had already given as much as they could afford, and there are only so many jumble sales you can hold. The project began to languish, and morale began to flag. Attendance started to wane a little, too. Nothing obvious at first, but people soon began to avoid coming to church, knowing they would be asked to dig deep into their pockets yet again, and feeling laden with guilt if they didn’t or couldn’t.

“And then one morning I had an idea—why not use the money we had already raised to help generate the rest? They always say you need to speculate to accumulate. But the problem was that every sound method of investing the money I could think of would take years, maybe even decades, to come to fruition… and I couldn’t wait that long. Not if I wanted to get things sorted before I retired. Out of sheer frustration, I started to consider other ways of putting the money to work. It was just in my head at first, but before too long, I found myself thinking quite seriously about gambling. Well, not exactly
gambling
as such; I mean, can you really call it that if there’s no risk involved? What if you
know
you’re going to win? The way I saw it, if it was God’s will that His church flourish in Tiverly, then surely He would make certain that any bets I put down would pay off—and the more I thought about it, the more I was absolutely positive that that
was
His will. But like any good Christian, I also wanted to be sure; after all, the idea could just as easily have come from Satan as from God. In the end, I decided to test whether or not I was right by placing a small bet—out of my own pocket—on an upcoming horse race. I know it says ‘thou shalt not test the Lord thy God’ in the Bible, but I had to do something.

“That Saturday, I got up early, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and caught the train to London, somewhere I was sure I wouldn’t bump into anyone from the local congregation. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain myself to someone I knew, and maybe that should have been warning enough that what I was doing was wrong. But I wasn’t thinking of anything other than the bet. I didn’t have to look around too long before I found a betting shop, although I didn’t have the courage to walk in there straight away. Instead, I found a bench in a nearby park, sat down, and prayed. Partly I prayed for protection against sin and that what I was doing was the right thing… but most of all I prayed that God would guide me to pick a winner.

“Don’t let anyone ever tell you that prayer doesn’t work, Dan. By the time I was finally ready to go and place the bet, I felt invincible, that I was like David going out to meet Goliath, that I couldn’t fail. And I didn’t. The horse that I picked finished two lengths ahead of the others, and before I knew it, I was holding better than three hundred pounds in my hand. I went back to the park bench, intending to offer up prayers of thanks, but I couldn’t focus on the words. All that kept rushing through my mind was how God had blessed me. Me! Here was a clear indication that He would provide us with the means to build His church. I was so excited that I just had to try again. I exercised common sense for possibly the last time in my life and only allowed myself to bet another fifty pounds, but for the second time, I picked a winner, and from then on, I think I was lost. I can’t remember how many more races I bet on that afternoon, but by the time I returned to Tiverly, I was carrying almost a thousand pounds in my pocket. It was all I could do not to run laughing through the streets, and as soon as I got home, I had to have a drink to celebrate; and that was the beginning of the second problem that led to my downfall.

“That’s how it went for the next few months. Every Saturday I would go into London, taking larger and larger sums of money with me, and when I came back home, it was always with more than I set out with. The celebratory drinks became a little more frequent, and I wouldn’t always wait until I got home—or even the weekend—before indulging myself. But I didn’t see it as a problem; after all, Jesus Himself told us to drink wine in remembrance of Him. And I
did
remember Him. I never once skimped on my part of the deal: all my winnings would go right back into the project fund, and every Sunday I was able to tell everyone in the congregation that another anonymous donation had come in, inching us closer to our goal.

“I think you can guess where this is all heading, Dan; I started to lose. One day, I suddenly found that instead of putting money back into the fund after a day of doing the Lord’s work, I was taking more out to cover my losses. And that panicked me, not because I was worried that I would be found out, but because I was afraid that God’s blessing had gone, leaving nothing but a horrible, empty void in its wake. I should have stopped right then, should have recognised that I was going off the rails, but I had become addicted to an unholy trinity of gambling, alcohol and a misguided sense of spiritual reward, and my judgement was shot to pieces. Instead, I tried harder and harder to compensate for the losses. Before I knew what had happened, the project fund was down to less than half of what had been there when I’d first started gambling. Much less.

“When I realised the state it was in, the first thing I did was to have a drink. The second thing I did was to have another drink. And then I did the most stupid thing you could possibly imagine: I took all the rest of the money with me to London. Some part of me knew this was wrong, of course, that I should just put the money back and confess; but by then I was in the grip of something more powerful than common sense. I really believed that this mess was just caused by Satan trying to derail our plans, that God was merely testing my faith, and that all I needed was one last win with the remainder of the money to fill the pot back up again. Even if God Himself had appeared next to me on the train that day and told me to put the money back, I would probably just have dismissed Him as an alcohol-induced delusion and carried on regardless.

“I must have been quite a sight when I stumbled into the bookies that day. Everyone eyed me suspiciously as I made my way over to the man behind the counter, or at least it seemed that way to me. It was only when I went to place my bet and the clerk said ‘I hope that’s not the collection money, Father,’ that I realised why I was getting so many funny looks: I had forgotten to take my dog collar off. I mumbled some half-baked excuse about having been to a fancy dress party the night before, but to be honest, I think the alcohol on my breath did most of the convincing, and the clerk took my bet without further comment, not even when he saw how much it was for.

“The race began and I held my breath, watching as my fate was determined by eleven animals running in a circle, hundreds of miles away from where I sat. I couldn’t even tell if it was the pounding of my heart or of the horses’ hooves that drowned out the prayers I muttered under my breath. And then, just like that, it was all over. The horse I had bet on didn’t even finish. The amount of money I had riding on its shoulders was so much that it tripped and fell under the weight of it all. And as the reality of what had happened sank in, I couldn’t take any more, either. The suspicious looks of my fellow gamblers turned to disgust as I threw up all over the bookies’ floor, and I was still muttering my apologies when a nearby police officer came in to see what all the fuss was about.