Vivisepulture (12 page)

“Why?” Abi said. “Surely the whole point is to scour the offender clean?” She doesn’t realize that this isn’t hypothetical, Tom thought, heart hammering.

The inquisitor pointed him at another exhibit, where a scrawny man writhed in agony. The man’s right hand was clamped in a vice while a junior inquisitor methodically inserted red hot needles below his fingernails, watched by a supervisor and a small crowd. Most of them drifted on, quickly bored. 

“Bit old, innit?” Shane wrinkled his nose. “Hot needles went out years ago.”

“That’s just the start of it,” the supervisor said. He was a middle-ranking official whose black robes were speckled with dandruff, more experienced than the young interrogator whose victim had died, but not as polished as Tom’s captor. His eyes glinted with fanaticism. “Look at this.”

His underling yanked the captive’s hand into to an opaque glass box, with wires protruding from one side. The man pressed several buttons. The box hummed and lit up, and for several minutes they watched. Bored, the children wandered away, and his junior switched the machine off and pulled the suspect’s fingers clear, holding up perfect, unscarred fingertips. “We can heal them as if they’d never been tortured,” dandruff-man said proudly. “It’s a step nearer to a Lazarus casket.”

“A what?” Tom asked.

“Something to bring the sinner back to life, so that they can be scoured again,” the supervisor said. “We can resurrect the worst recalcitrants over and over again. At the moment we lose a little quality each time -- the wounds hardly heal at all after ten or twelve operations, but it’s only a matter of time before we graduate from healing flesh to restoring life. Then there’ll be no sneaking away from God’s retribution by dying.” He wiped his mouth. “Some of Satan's agents have lived ordinary, mundane lives for years. Some were even born Godly, before backsliding into the arms of the forces of darkness. They’re clever; they could pass for decent folk to any ordinary test. Not now.”

A trickle of sweat ran down Tom’s spine.
God help any resistance then
, he thought. Between the thought chair and the Lazarus casket, any insurrection will be doomed before it can start. In his mind, he heard the ticking of a giant clock.

The senior inquisitor said, “So many times we almost disbanded our order during the years of False Harmony. There are fools who say we could have peace and prosperity without our order’s protection. But when times get hard, the secularists show themselves for what they really are: Satan's Spawn.” He smiled thinly at Linda as the children returned. “You understand the need for order, Tom; the value of every piece of straw in its place; every piece of reed laying the same way.” He strode away, and Tom wondered if he was going to prepare the equipment himself. 

Tom looked down. He relaxed, emptied his mind of all anger, and leaning forward, kissed Linda on the lips.

“Forgive me,” she said. “It's for the children's sake.”

“I know,” Tom said.
Poor Linda
, he thought. Poor Alice: “I know what I’m doing, fornicating with a married man,” she’d said, proud of her defiance.
No, you didn’t
, he thought.

Tom continued, “They should be able to grow up innocent. It's
I
who should beg forgiveness -- of all of you.”
If only you knew just how much I need your forgiveness
, he thought. There are worse sins than adultery, he wanted to tell her. Better your children’s father is branded merely an adulterer than you bear a darker stain, of sedition.

His knees trembled and his guts knotted with the knowledge of what was to come. He would confess the adultery, but he'd still have to endure stretching and flogging to convince them that he was innocent of anything more heinous, before they would brand him an adulterer and pronounce him shriven. 

Better to let them flush out a small crime than root around in his head for deeper secrets. The Inquisition used only basic techniques for petty sins -- but if they caught a whiff of sedition, the Thought Chair would be wheeled out. 

The others would know when he didn’t attend the Friday meeting that something was wrong; as long as he could keep silent and not give his interrogators any leads. Unless Alice had already betrayed him. Were the Inquisition playing with him? He caught sight of one of his accomplices, and stared a warning at the man as best he could.

Then the constables dragged him away from Linda and the kids, Abi biting her lip and trying to be brave, holding Shane’s hand. Tom waved, and pointed up at the shining silver disc of the moon. The clouds had scurried in from the west, nearly occluding it, and the wind spat large raindrops horizontally across the fairground. Several people raised umbrellas.

He took one last look at the moon, before the clouds gnawed away its perfection. Even at night it obscured the orbiting Valhallas that twinkled like tiny beacons of freedom, but he was glad of that in a way.
Sometimes
, he thought,
you have to hide your light to do what’s right
.

Despite his fear, the sight of the moon uplifted him, filling him with love and steely determination. He too would do the right thing, and when he had paid his punishment, and returned home to the loving arms of his family, he would do his utmost to ensure that the Knights Inquisitor rooted out any minor wrongdoers, whatever the cost. Until the real Day of Judgement, when it would no longer be necessary.

Better to sacrifice a few pawns, so that everyone could be free. Alice understood that. 

Linda and the children would understand, in time.

CAUGHT IN THE SHADOW

by

VINCENT HOLLAND-KEEN

Wayne Todd, aged nine and three quarters, lay on his back staring at the sky. The heavens above were an endless pristine blue, save for a solitary white cloud. This cloud might have been interesting if it had bothered to form itself into suggestive shapes – maybe a face, maybe an animal, ideally a comedy penis – but it did not. Wayne’s imagination could just about transform it into ball of cotton wool, or, at a stretch, a sheep with its legs chopped off, but even that was an effort. It’s just a boring cloud, he told himself. He would continue to believe that for another six minutes.

Around him, the picnic crisis had already lasted twelve minutes and showed no signs of abating. Wayne’s father accused his mother of forgetting to bring napkins, while his mother charged his father with failing to remind her to bring napkins. Either way it didn’t matter; they argued and Wayne tuned them out.

He couldn’t tune out Levi. Wayne’s brother was aged zero and three quarters – a lifetime spent practising the scream currently knotting Wayne’s insides.

“Wayne, get Levi’s nappies from the car,” said his mother.

He ignored her.

“Wayne, your mother told you to get Levi’s nappies from the car,” said his father. “Of course, this assumes your mother remembered to bring them.”

She sighed. “Unfortunately we have to rely on the vagaries of my memory when the man of the family refuses to take responsibility for remembering anything.”

Wayne made a big deal of getting to his feet. He huffed loudly and stomped over to the car. He fetched the bag of soon-to-be-soiled underwear from the back seat and returned to the picnic. Levi’s face was bright red and screwed up – angry lines replacing eyes, with a gaping, toothless hole instead of a mouth. Wayne wanted to take one of the nappies and shove it in there, muffling the cries until a deathly peace stole over the baby’s face. But he knew he couldn’t do it. His parents would probably shout at him for a whole year if he did, because they didn’t understand how rubbish life had become since Levi turned up.

 Wayne petulantly threw the bag of nappies at his mother’s feet. She was too busy attending to his squealing brother to notice, while his father was too busy trying to work out which cellophane-wrapped pack of sandwiches didn’t contain those evil cucumber slices that caused him to break out in hives.

Wayne wandered off.

During the drive to the remote picnic site, his father claimed this was God’s own country. Wayne could see no sign of God here, just verdant meadows and purple heather carpeting gently rolling hills. Maybe God had been in attendance, once upon a time, a long time ago, but then got bored; forsaking this land to go home and play video games. Wayne wanted to do the same. Trudging across picturesque peak and dale was no match for shooting monstrous invaders and fleeing explosions in a brown and gray industrial dystopia. The only game played here was by competing breezes that sent rippling waves chasing back and forth across the oceans of grass. 

“We’ll be eating in a minute,” called his father.

“Yes, don’t go too far,” added his mother.

Wayne started walking again. He crested a rise and continued down a slope until his family was lost from view. Levi’s cries grew fainter.

A dry stone wall lay at the bottom of a valley. Wayne headed toward it, intent on dismantling the masonry until he saw a flash of light just beyond. He held up a hand against the glare and squinted. It was a puddle reflecting the sun, except… it was moving.

He cantered down the hillside and scaled the dry stone wall to stand on top. Some fifty feet distant, a small pond slid slowly across an unkempt field. It left no sign of damp in its wake. The bumps and mounds of the terrain disappeared as it passed over them, only to reappear once it had moved on.

Wayne looked around for an explanation. There was no sign of life; the wind whispering in ears drowning out the distant Levi and any birds that may have been singing. There was no sign of mirrors or machines or anything made by the hand of man in the last hundred years. His only company was the solitary white cloud drifting overhead.

Wayne stared up at it, then down at the itinerant pond. They looked to be moving at the same pace. It was as if the water lay in the shadow of the cloud and as the cloud drifted across the sky…

He jumped down from the wall and walked cautiously after the peculiar shadow. It approached a hillside. Wayne half-expected to see the water flow upwards, but instead steel-grey rocks rose up the slope, while the water remained on the flat, becoming grass once more when the shadow moved on.

Wayne followed.

A gusting breeze swept down the hillside. When it reached the shadow, it became a swarm of huge black insects that buzzed straight at Wayne.

He squealed and threw up an arm. A gust of warm air washed over him.

He lowered his arm. No sign of the insects remained.

The shadow reached a small copse of trees. Branches and leaves became the gnarled limbs and hairy tufts of alien animals grazing on dark red shrubs.

Wayne froze. The creatures didn’t appear to notice him. They were too busy grunting and snuffling and jostling amongst each other to get their snouts to the best feeding.

And then they were trees again.

Wayne ran up to the copse and pushed his way through the tangled wood. The bestial noises ahead stopped shortly before he broke out onto another empty field.

Breathing hard, he surveyed the grassland. There were no anomalous rocks ahead, no displaced water and no unearthly animals.

Wayne frowned and looked up.

The cloud hung overhead, motionless.

He looked around and saw the door for the first time. It stood off to his left, at the edge of the trees. Dark wooden planks were held together by heavy iron brackets. A thick black ring served as a handle and hung over a star-shaped keyhole. The ground in front of the door was a circle of black dirt that extended for about eight feet before giving way to the grass of God’s own country. Surrounding the door was a frame of black marble formed out of thorny bramble. The veins that ran through this stone pulsed and flowed and Wayne fancied they might even be ghostly worms tunnelling through the inside. He moved closer, keen to investigate further, then abruptly choked back his curiosity. The line of black dirt was barely an inch from his leading foot.

He scurried back into the shade of the trees and returned with a large stone. He hurled it at the door.

When it passed into the shadow, the stone exploded into a cloud of parasol-like seeds that floated aimlessly for a few moments before a gust of wind blew them back again. A dozen tiny pebbles dropped out of the air and onto the grass.

Wayne picked up one of the stones and rolled it between a finger and thumb. He tossed it back at the door and again it became a floating seed.

More experiments were needed. Twigs, berries and fallen leaves were gathered up. A worm trying to escape into the ground almost joined the collection when a sound caused Wayne to turn toward the door.

A key was turning in the lock.

Wayne scrambled away, finding cover in the undergrowth. He peered out past the leaves of the thicket, heedless of the scratches it had left on his bare arms and face.

The thick black ring swung clockwise and the door opened. Beyond lay darkness. From the darkness stepped a man. He had a lop-sided beard and badly-cut hair that appeared to shiver when he looked around. His clothes were deeply worn and patchwork, but a pristine gold watch bound his wrist. A glance at this watch removed the frown creasing the man’s face. Reassured by whatever time it was, he closed the door, lay down on the ground, rested his hands behind his head and closed his eyes for a nap.

For a fleeting second Wayne wondered if this was God, back from playing video games. But surely God wouldn’t look like this?

A minute or two of watching the stranger lie there caused Wayne to grow restless. He moved slowly and quietly, daring to venture up to the edge of the trees. Comfortable he could duck back out of sight if need be, Wayne held up one of the collected twigs and threw it at the man.

It fell short. The tumbling stick landed on black soil and immediately expressed displeasure by stamping tiny feet on the ground. Wayne did a double-take and craned his neck forward for a closer look.

The twig now possessed a thin, lizard-like body, with five stumpy legs jutting out at random points. It had a tail that forked into twin barbs and a pointed head sporting beady eyes and a flicking red tongue.