‘Peddling meddling,’ he told her.
************
When his wife was settled back in the parlour and wrestling with Jane Austen again, Samuel ventured upstairs to look out. The duo was still there in the dark, standing in silent vigil before his door. Indistinct movements suggested they might now be fully three in number – but only two of them human.
At long last reassuring fury arrived at being besieged 'in my own bloody house'. It sealed off all bar one of the annoying branchways of choice. Trevan went to the kitchen and took a kettle from the range.
Back upstairs in the bedroom he flung open the sash window. Below, two pale discs turned skywards in earnest hope.
‘It's a cold old night,’ Samuel shouted down. ‘Have a hot drink with my compliments!’
They took the scalding water full in the face and were seared. For a few seconds they shrieked - but then overcame and stifled further cries.
Trevan hesitated and stopped the flow. His victims looked up again. They radiated… love.
He didn't want it and so poured again. The recipients, complete master and mistress of their despised flesh, took it and even danced, cavorting under the steaming stream, accepting whatever he might offer without complaint.
U[U[U[U[U[U[U
cHAPTER 4
'His former - and soon to be again, and most solicitous thereto - acquaintances from WELCOMBE, Devonshire, request the pleasure of the company of:
MR SAMUEL MELCHIZEDEK TREVAN
at:
The Sheriff's Room, The White Hart Hotel, High Street, Lewes.
For warm refreshments ( tho' of a differing sort than he lately provided us) and dinner.
5.30 for 6.00. Saturday, January 30th 2021.
Black Tie.
R.S.V.P. c/o Alfred Waterhouse, Proprietor.'
************
'To whom it might concern, c/o Mr A Waterhouse, The White Hart Hotel, Lewes (with apologies for his trouble).
From: S. Trevan Esq. Galen House, Keere Street, Lewes, Sussex. (No callers on business).
The 28th day of January, 2021 A.D.
Sirs: re your recent invitation:
Matthew: ch. 27, v 5.
Luke: ch. 10, v 37.
(And by the by, the lack of 'anno domini' in your missive was injudicious.)
I have no intentions to become, be or remain, sirs,
your obedient servant.
Samuel Trevan'
************
The Gospel according to St Matthew: Chapter 27, verse 5:
'Judas departed and went and hanged him himself.'
The Gospel according to St Luke: Chapter 10, verse 37:
'Go, and do thou likewise.'
************
'A Dinner in Honour of:
SAMUEL MELCHIZEDEK TREVAN.
The 30th day of January, 2021.
The White Hart Hotel, Lewes Town, Sussex.
APPETISER: Snails with black butter and garlic cloves,
or:
Caviar
or:
Black Pudding.
MAIN COURSE: Rump Steak in black-pepper crust.
PUDDING: Prunes in the Greek fashion (with soured curds).
Followed by: TOASTS.'
U[U[U[U[U[U[U
cHAPTER 5
‘You must eat something. The manager will think it amiss.’
That actually made Samuel laugh, though said in all seriousness. It was an incongruous sound at such a party. The ‘Sheriff's Room's Tudor fireplace was ablaze but it failed in combat with the company's intrinsic chill. The best function hall in Lewes' grandest hotel it might be, but this lot made it feel like a crypt.
‘I should imagine he's already suspicious,’ Trevan told the Bogomils, feigning concern for them. ‘You're taking an almighty risk.’
Their leader inverted his usual expression to affect a smile.
‘You are worth it, master,’ he said, from the head of the banqueting table.
‘Don't call me that.’
‘Whatever you instruct.’
‘Is that so?’ said Samuel. ‘Right then: go away.’
‘Apart from that.’
Trevan marvelled. They really had achieved the detachment from the world that they sought. Not one of the dozen gathered in his honour perceived how repulsed he was by their black food and company. There wasn't even any respite to rest your eyes on: they had turned all the oil portraits of eminent Lewesians to the wall.
Samuel prodded at his nigh carbonised steak but made no headway. No one had asked him how he wanted it done: it just arrived that way. His companions seemed to relish theirs just as little, toying with the food's outer edges - although that was most likely some statement about appetite rather than good taste.
‘I wish to God I knew why I came.’ Samuel pushed his plate away and blood gravy slopped over its edge onto the fine linen.
‘Then wish and he may tell you,’ instructed one of the company in prissy tones, like a sanctimonious Sunday-school teacher. ‘We call it prayer. You should try it.’
‘There is no God!’ Trevan flared - and was again glad this was a private dining room. Infidels were semi-tolerated now but that didn't mean they could be blatant. And no amount of official forbearance was any help against an angry mob of believers.
Their spokesman looked even more funereal and set down his fork.
‘You heard him and yet you still doubt?’
Samuel fixed the man with his best pre-assault gaze. It was easily met and matched.
‘I heard a voice - from a cave wall you've carved like an eye. That doesn't make it God.’
‘Doesn't not make it God,’ countered a hard-faced woman in a mourning crinoline. Her harsh bark detracted from a reasonable point.
‘Your friends, the Elves, said otherwise,’ Samuel taunted them.
‘Ex-friends!’
‘Betrayers!’
‘False prophets!’
The denials sprang vehemently from all round the table. Samuel was curious that such passion persisted. It was clearly still a live issue.
‘They also said to burn you out,’ he told the angry silence which ensued. ‘But I never heard whether-....’
‘Many brethren died,’ confirmed the spokesman, meanwhile playfully smearing shiny black sturgeons' roe up and down his forefinger. ‘Just as we gathered in strength to seek you, fiery hell descended.’ He thought on that briefly, not actually sad but saddened. ‘The word of God was lost to us for a space.’
‘How did you manage?’
There was growing confidence in Samuel's mockery. These skull-faces needed him: revered him almost.
Spokesman's finger was taken up by his female neighbour and slowly fellated clean; but his deep-set eyes never left Trevan all the while.
‘As well as we could,’ he answered eventually, ‘adrift in an enemy world, with only memories for solace. But never fear for us, Mr Trevan: like Jews returned to Zion, we are back.’
Despite himself, Samuel was surprised.
‘What? There?’
‘Indeed. We again speak to our god and are guided. Once more there is a Master of the Dark for below, and a Master of the Revels – namely myself - for relations with the upper world.’
The tone alone said it was true: there was no need for evidence. And thus no choice. Trevan took delivery of the bad news.
‘But how comes the Church allows-...?’
‘Truth seeps in, Sam-u-el. Like water it is an implacable force, not to be denied forever, not even by greek-fire and sicarii.’
For the first time in years Samuel was tempted by wine. Some of the heady purple Lebanese stuff provided might admirably soften a few edges. He overcame that urge but the arid triumph made him tetchy.
‘In my experience, error's likewise persistent,’ he told them. It wasn't rewarded with offence.
‘That is the difference between you and us,’ replied Spokesman, now sounding like an annoyingly tolerant missionary priest. ‘Between what we profess a
nd both your past and present creeds. You once believed in a libel and now believe nothing, whereas we are in essence optimistic. That hope is our choicest possession.’
Death and everlasting oblivion were concepts that had jeered at Samuel from life’s sidelines for some time now. They required regular stamping upon using reason or distractions. He therefore didn't care for other people's quiet confidence in such matters to be waved in his face. It made him want to snatch it from them.
‘‘Hope’, eh? Is that a fact? I suppose that’s what keeps you all so cheerful….’
Samuel scanned his fellow diners. Not one wan face flickered or took the bait.
‘The kindest favour we can pay the world,’ said a handsome young man, ‘is to look calmly on its degraded games.’
‘Though there is the temptation to snigger,’ added a woman, perhaps his wife, close beside him. Her faultless, pallid, visage did not look at risk from laughter-lines.
‘But we resist,’ her partner concluded.
Then Trevan noticed their restraint wasn't absolute. The man's hand was at and up her, working away under the table.
‘For pity's sake!’ Samuel protested. ‘If anyone walks in….’
‘And to think,’ said Spokesman, somehow shouting him down with a voice not much above a whisper, ‘that this man – this mere prude - is the vehicle for a new age!’ He wasn't expressing scepticism, but wonderment at the ways of fate.
‘A conduit for our deliverance,’ purred the stick-thin schoolmarm type alongside Samuel. She began to caress his arm, affection swiftly transforming into exploration.
‘I am not!’ bellowed Trevan, shrugging her off. She pouted a little, shook her bonneted head at his wilful obstinacy, but never once wavered in her look of love.
It ought to have been enough that they didn't want revenge, but this long-term interest now seemed just as worrying. He'd come, he admitted it, against all better judgement, to face them eye to eye like he'd always faced up to every enemy. He'd wanted a resolution that evening, kill or cure. What wasn't envisaged was that they might twine themselves round him, like poison ivy, in life-long embrace. Even he couldn't keep up a fight that long.
‘I'm really not,’ he concluded, rather weakly even to his own forgiving ears. ‘I just live quietly, off my own means, debarred from anything else. Can't you accept that? Like I do?’
Spokesman looked at him a moment before silently mouthing: 'No.'
Samuel stood to leave. No one tried to stop him. It transpired they could deputise that to an unseen ally by the door.
Trevan felt its grip, could even glimpse it for random split seconds: a mannequin made up of frantic agitated particles. He most certainly perceived its hunger and antipathy.
The briefest of encounters revealed there was no point in struggling. It was his previous 'blurred vision' made manifest and it was stronger than he. Samuel fell back and was - reluctantly - released.
‘The god gave it to us,’ Spokesman explained, deriving no unkind pleasure from Trevan's fright, ‘in order to hunt you down. We think it is an earth elemental.’
A number of lips curled at mention of such sordid origins.
Samuel's voice stumbled. ‘I've seen - half seen - it before.’
Spokesman nodded. ‘It located you some weeks ago and sent word. He or she has been your faithful companion ever since.’
That was a concept Trevan refused to toy with. He resumed his seat before speaking.
‘I thought it was the virgin suicides who found….’
‘Emissaries, not scouts,’ said the manipulated woman, in-between ecstatic gasps. ‘A beautiful gesture to flush out our quarry.’
Samuel wondered at the choice of words: she was fairly flushed herself.
‘They now tup in Heaven,’ her partner reassured Trevan - as if he could care. ‘Do not worry for them.’
‘You... should not have known me,’ said Samuel, trying desperately to think things through. ‘Steps were taken....’
‘And most thorough ones,’ agreed Spokesman. ‘We were put to great pains. All mention of you seemed gone from this world.’
‘And a sicarii nipped off our enquiring fingers,’ said the digital lovemaker (appropriately enough).
‘So - we grew - our own – Samuel - Trevan.’
The young woman was approaching climax now and spoke in short, breathless, bursts. She just assumed he would understand - or perhaps she had better things to think about.
‘Show him,’ said Spokesman, indulgently.
There was one figure at the feast, heavily shrouded and stock-still, who'd not spoken yet. Samuel hadn't queried that, only wishing they were all so amenable.
‘Stand!’ ordered Spokesman - and for a moment Trevan thought he meant him.
In a way he did. The quiet figure rose and allowed itself to be unwrapped. Samuel saw that even the Bogomils were sickened.
It was him - more or less: mostly less. Removal of the coat and hat hinted at it; loss of the muffler made things crystal clear.
Samuel Trevan was in there somewhere, alongside bits of many others: all sorts of others; carelessly mixed. Numerous false-starts were either sterile-shiny or sealed off by cysts. Granted, all the correct features were present - but as if thrown on from a distance. The creature seemed crushingly sorrowed to be alive.
‘Speak!’ Spokesman commanded harshly.
The pseudo-Trevan flinched. Then its crooked mouth split. There were teeth and gums but all misaligned. A thick tongue played over them.
‘SAM-U-WEL,’ it mumbled, with botch-constructed chords, the very sound of cat-gut under torture. ‘SAM-U-WEL TREE-VAN.’
‘Enough!’ ordered Spokesman.
Again it cowered. Samuel realised they must have had to educate their creation from scratch - and not been patient teachers.
Spokesman left his seat and crossed to behind the facsimile. He then looked across at the real thing as he massaged the travesty's shoulders. It clearly wished to shrink away from him but dared not.
‘Even the most transitory of visits leaves calling cards,’ Spokesman explained. ‘A brush against stone equals a flaking of skin; sweat or tears contain a certain essence of the self. Not even your Church's dousing of fire could expunge them all, not when a puissant god directed our swabs and tweezers. Flesh from others could then make up the great defect. Eventually, encouraged and fed with blood, these scraps of... you predominated. In time, you could even be coaxed to speak - and you said….’
He applied all his height and power to a cruel squeeze of the muscles beneath his fingertips. The mock-Samuel bucked and lisped:
‘SAM-U-WEL! SAM-U-WEL TREE-VAN!’
Each word equalled agony. The real Trevan didn't doubt old wounds were thus reopened. He even felt empathy - but directly stamped on it. Far better to be callous then admit kinship betwixt himself and... that.
‘Which was sufficient for our supernatural hound,’ said Spokesman, moderating his grip. ‘A name, a - rough and ready - likeness: it was enough. Thereby you were at last found. We thought you might care to admire our handiwork.’
Samuel had that glass of wine now. Lost Holy Land summers came back to life in his mouth and revived him.
‘You thought wrong.’
‘Oh well, no one is perfect,’ said Spokesman. ‘At least, not till they take the vow. In any case, we no longer need this poor copy.’
And then he said something indistinct. The guardian of the door sped forward in a shimmering of sparks struck from the air. It started to devour the second Samuel.
At first, the creation shrieked out its torment, but then a curt order compelled silence. Trevan sought to avoid both watching and cowardice but failed on either count. Each time a large chunk was torn away by unseen teeth he had to turn aside, but then the sounds of consumption drew him back. At the end his doppelganger turned pleadingly to him/itself, so Samuel was there to see the light die in it/his eyes. Then they too were plucked out and went down into the electric maw. Finally, the demo
nic thing moved on to a noisy lapping up of the puddles and smears it had made.
Strangely, all Samuel found to think about was the mess and how it might be explained. It was his name on the invitations and menu.
‘Mr Waterhouse, the manager, is a convert,’ Spokesman informed him: though Trevan had not said a word. ‘He will not complain.’
And that was the most frightening thing of all. They had apparent access to his thoughts.
‘You asked, albeit rhetorically,’ Spokesman ploughed on, smirking at Trevan's dismay, ‘why you were here. I shall enlighten you. Destiny moves beneath your feet and propels you along like a tide. One may, of course, align oneself and swim with it, and so arrive faster. Or, as with you, one may even deny there are such things as tides....’
That got a group response from the devotees, too perverse and gloating to properly be called laughter.
‘But you are swept along all the same.’ Spokesman enounced each word very clearly, most anxious that Trevan should understand.
‘To where?’ It happily occurred to Samuel that he'd spent his life swimming against the tide. A few more years wouldn't hurt. But then he suppressed the rebellious thought lest it too should be read.
‘You are the enemy of our enemy,’ answered Spokesman, albeit indirectly, ‘and therefore our friend. You will bring Hell to Earth - oh yes you will - and thus encourage souls to our god.’
‘And if I don't - won't? What then? That?’ Trevan indicated the remnant traces of the constructed him.
The very notion seemed to horrify them.
‘No indeed,’ said the post-orgasmic woman, now coiled languid and content in her chair. ‘You are our promised one; our future. We would hardly abort you!’
Spokesman somehow curtailed their demon's dinner and had it re-attend the exit. The double doors were sullenly flung open and crashed against panelled walls. Samuel's would-be masters (whatever they might say otherwise) were dismissing him.
The Two Confessions Page 29