The Darkening

by Stephen Irwin

  Jesus, thought Nicholas. That must be Mrs Boye.

  From where he sat, he could just see the corner of her face. Her eyes were fixed on the figure of Christ crucified. Nicholas followed her gaze. The image was carved wood, a century or more old. The raw chisel marks made his limbs seem more wounded, his suffering more pronounced. Something beyond the raw agony of the figure disturbed Nicholas. The setting carved behind him was not Golgotha, but an incongruous forest of Arcadian trees and lush vines. Old Mrs Boye’s expression vacillated between a frown of confusion and a bluff of undisguised boredom; her head bobbed to its own unheard tune, and from time to time she’d look to her daughter-in-law to ask a question that Nicholas could guess: Where are we? Senile dementia. Her mildly confused eyes kept returning to the dying son of God.

  Reverend Hird limped to the pulpit. He may have looked frail, but his voice was as strong as a Welsh tenor’s. ‘Please rise for hymn seventy-nine: “Saviour Again to Thy Dear Name We Raise”.’

  The congregation rumbled as it stood. And so the funeral commenced.

  Speakers rose, praised Gavin, lamented the loss to his wife and his mother, opened spectacles, read poems, folded papers, dabbed tears, returned to their seats. The air was warm and still, the voices monotonous. Nicholas fought to stay awake. He did calf raises. Cleaned his nails. Took deep breaths. His eyelids sank, heavy as stones. He sat back in the hard pew and let his gaze trace up the stained-glass windows, across the curved timbers, to linger on the carved timber ceiling boss some ten metres overhead.

  Suddenly, his weariness vanished like gunpowder in a flash pan. His heartbeat broke into a brisk trot and the hairs on his arms and neck rose into goose bumps.

  The ceiling boss was carved as a face. A face with oak leaves sprouting from its sides and mouth. A face that was chillingly familiar. Nicholas dragged his eyes away, but they kept returning to the inhuman visage: a mouth drawn wide and thick, with vital leaves springing from its corners like fleshy tusks. It was a face he’d seen before, though he couldn’t place where. It scared him.

  ‘And now,’ Reverend Hird rumbled, ‘I’d like to call on Gavin’s wife, Mrs Laine Boye.’

  Nicholas dragged his startled eyes down from the ceiling.

  Laine Boye held herself straight and took neat steps. Her black suit and skirt were well-fitted and expensive. She reached the pulpit, glanced at the casket, and then looked over the small congregation.

  ‘Thank you for coming today.’ Her voice was high-pitched but clear, a neutral accent that spoke of private schooling and careful grooming. ‘Gavin left no children,’ she continued. ‘And he left too soon.’

  Her gaze sought and found Nicholas, and rested on him. There was no puzzlement there any more; she’d figured out who he was. He was close enough to see that her eyes, like the dark day outside, were grey and unyielding as stone.

  Laine Boye was on her way back to her seat when a scream broke the silence.

  Mrs Boye was on her feet; she ripped off her hat and hurled it at the carving of Christ. Her white hair flung out like lightning. She screamed again, a furious shriek, and the congregation was jolted into whispering motion.

  ‘Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord!’ she cried. Her voice echoed loudly in the transepts and hung unpleasantly on the air.

  Laine hurried to Mrs Boye’s side. The man beside the struggling old woman took firm hold of her arm. Hushed-voiced, they tried to comfort her, Laine’s fluttering hands grabbing for hers. But Mrs Boye shook them off, her hair wild. ‘Blood alone pleases the Lord!’ She spat the last word like a curse.

  Reverend Hird shot a nod to his young understudy, who hurried down to Mrs Boye. Fast as a snake, the old woman slapped the young reverend hard on the face.

  ‘Fisher of men!’ she cried. ‘What do fishermen do with fish? Haul them from their water, drown them in air, and then gut them! Eat them! Or toss them back dead and empty! Fisher of men!’ This time she did spit, a huge mouthful of foamy saliva that arced through the air to land on Christ’s shin.

  Nicholas stared, stunned. The old woman had said and done just what he’d wanted to at Cate’s funeral.

  Firm hands took hold of Mrs Boye. She fought for a while, then settled in a grump. Hird nodded to the organist, who started a lively rendition of ‘To Jesus’ Heart All Burning’.

  And so the funeral finished early.

  Nicholas huddled under his umbrella as the pallbearers loaded the casket into the hearse. Suzette and Katharine came to stand beside him. The rain fell steadily and cold.

  ‘Nice service, I thought,’ said Nicholas. ‘Colourful.’ His head throbbed. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate.

  ‘You might have called,’ said Katharine. ‘Your sister and I were worried sick.’

  Suzette simply punched him hard on the arm. ‘Fuckwit.’ She leaned close and whispered harshly, ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Okay. What, now?’

  Suzette smiled primly. ‘No.’ Of course not; not with their mother right there.

  ‘Later, then?’ Nicholas suggested helpfully.

  The church sat on a corner block, and graceful movement there caught his eye. Laine and the man that Nicholas now guessed was Gavin’s cousin were shepherding Mrs Boye into a dark sedan. The old woman was hunched and docile, as if the outburst in the church had never happened. Before following her mother-in-law into the car, Laine hesitated, straightened and looked around. Her eyes lit on Nicholas. She said something to the driver, then strode over to stand squarely in front of Nicholas. They watched each other a moment. Then, deliberate as a chess tutor, she turned to Katharine and extended her gloved hand.

  ‘Laine Boye, thank you for coming.’

  Katharine took it. ‘Katharine Close. I’m so sorry for your loss. This is my daughter, Suzette, and my son, Nicholas.’

  Laine returned her steady, grey gaze to Nicholas. ‘Would you be so kind as to excuse us, please, Mrs Close? Suzette?’

  Nicholas smiled pleasantly at Suzette. ‘Chat soon?’

  ‘We’ll see you at home this afternoon.’ Suzette took Katharine by the arm and they walked away.

  With them gone, the air between Nicholas and Laine seemed to chill. Nicholas found himself looking again into her cool grey eyes. Dark shadows at their corners betrayed the stress she’d been suffering since Gavin’s death. But her face was without expression as she stared hard at Nicholas. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘What happened?’

  Something lurked beneath her fine features. Not fury. Not disgust. What? Nicholas watched her.

  This is why you came, he told himself. To find out what happened.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ he said.

  Laine’s face was inscrutable, her features motionless as a portrait’s, something from another time.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ she asked. This time, there was accusation in her tone, and Nicholas felt a burr of anger.

  ‘I know the modern woman lives a full and vigorous life, but did you pick up any little hints that Gavin wasn’t perfectly happy? The crazy stare? Lack of sleep? Love of firearms?’

  She watched him, testing his eyes. After a long moment, she nodded curtly and turned away.

  ‘I thought he was going to kill me!’ said Nicholas, loudly. She kept walking. ‘Mrs Boye!’

  She stopped. Droplets of rain collected like glass beads on her shoulders. She turned. Her mouth was held tight. She lifted her chin and met Nicholas’s gaze.

  ‘How did he know I was back?’ he asked.

  He could see now what the emotion was, brewing behind her eyes. The knowledge surprised him. She was embarrassed.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Close.’

  She turned, again with a grace belying her weariness, and hurried to her car to follow her husband’s casket.

  Nicholas looked around for his mother and sister, but they were gone.

  He watched the remaining mourners drift away in twos and threes. In jus
t a few moments, he felt awkwardly exposed, like a desperate adolescent still standing on the dance floor that all others have vacated at the first beats of an unpopular tune.

  ‘I saw you looking.’

  The unexpected voice behind him made Nicholas jump.

  It was the young reverend. Nicholas saw he had misjudged his age. He was probably closer to forty than thirty.

  ‘Looking at what?’

  ‘At our Green Man.’

  Nicholas steadied himself. ‘At your what?’

  ‘Our Green Man. Jack the Green. Green George.’ The minister extended his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Pritam Anand.’

  ‘Nicholas Close.’

  The reverend inclined his head; he knew who Nicholas was. ‘News travels fast. Bad news travels fastest.’

  ‘I’m bad news?’ asked Nicholas.

  Reverend Anand laughed, then looked around to check there were no mourners he might have offended. ‘News of what happened to Gavin Boye, I meant. A tragedy.’

  Nicholas nodded, and looked at Anand’s red cheek. ‘Not a bad right hook for an old bird.’

  Anand touched the spot where Mrs Boye had slapped him. ‘Some people get upset when a loved one passes.’ He inclined his head again, a very Indian gesture that Nicholas was sure induced parishioners to share secrets they’d rather keep.

  The rain, which had been politely holding off, started falling again.

  ‘You’re getting wet,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Then join me inside.’

  ‘There,’ said Reverand Anand, pointing. Nicholas followed his finger. Below the angular capital of the column was carved stonework: ivy leaves, fernery and a long face with oak-leaf tusks sprouting from the corners of its mouth. ‘And there,’ he pointed out another on the pillar’s twin. ‘And there.’ In the carved forest curling ripe behind Christ crucified, another.

  He sat on the front pew, drinking white tea. Nicholas sat beside him, drinking his black. The church, empty of everyone except the two men, felt to Nicholas suddenly huge and much colder. Hardly any light came through the tall, narrow stained-glass windows. The sheaves of stone of the roof killed the sound of the rain. This is what it must feel like to enter an Egyptian tomb, he thought. Familiar, yet foreign. Cold and stony. And a sense of being watched by eyes ancient and not quite human.

  ‘What are they? These Green Men?’ he asked.

  Anand smiled. ‘He is one entity, Jack the Green. Have you been to Europe? You’ll find him in lots of churches there. Many, many in England; but also Germany, Poland.’ He sipped his tea and looked over the cup’s rim in a way that reminded Nicholas of his mother. ‘But go further and you’ll find similar images of this face — part man, part tree — in Nepal, India, Borneo.’

  ‘It’s not Christian?’

  Anand laughed. ‘Oh, no. His origins long predate Christ. His is a pagan image.’ He smiled with barely disguised delight.

  ‘I’ve seen it before,’ said Nicholas.

  Anand nodded, but said nothing for a long while.

  ‘It is a disturbingly familiar face.’ He cast his own gaze upward to the Green Man on the carved ceiling boss, then down to Christ crucified. ‘The timeless man who dies each year and is reborn. Who symbolises triumph over winter and death.’

  ‘Which? Jesus? Or the Green Man?’

  ‘Exactly,’ replied Anand. He turned to Nicholas, a small frown on his smooth forehead. ‘A man killed himself right in front of you, Mr Close. Maybe he tried to kill you, too.’ He shrugged, as if to say, not my business. ‘But how are you feeling?’

  The sudden change of tack caught Nicholas off guard.

  ‘I have a shitty headache,’ he said before he had a chance to think. ‘Not as bad as Gavin’s, perhaps. But still. .’

  The young reverend nodded, but said nothing. The men drank their tea in silence a moment.

  ‘Where’s that slack black bastard?’ called an older voice. Reverend Hird bustled into the room. ‘There!’ he roared accusingly. ‘Slacking!’ He looked to Nicholas as if to a fellow witness of gross injustice.

  ‘When are you going to die?’ asked Anand pleasantly.

  ‘Never! And when I do, I’ll haunt you anyway,’ replied Reverend Hird. He looked at Nicholas. ‘You the chap that Boye shot himself in front of?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bad business,’ said Hird, then gestured for his colleague to come along. ‘We have an evening service to prepare for, you slack, slacking savage.’ The old man entered the rectory.

  Anand smiled at Nicholas. ‘Reverend John Hird. He was in Korea. His approach to death is somewhat matter-of-fact.’ He stood and extended his hand to Nicholas. They shook.

  ‘It’s a funny thing, Christianity.’

  ‘An Indian Christian pastor certainly is unusual,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘Reverend,’ he corrected. ‘Next time we meet, call me Pritam.’ He smiled and followed his superior, calling over his shoulder, ‘And India has well over twenty million Christians. More than the entire population of this country.’ He smiled again and closed the rectory door behind him.

  Nicholas sat alone under the carved eyes of Christ and the Green Man.

  Blood is the only sacrifice that pleases the Lord.

  Their stony stares unnerved him.

  He stood and quickly left.

  11

  Nicholas entered the house through the back door, carrying a posy of store-bought flowers. Suzette watched as he gave them to Katharine and told her he had moved out into a flat. Katharine nodded, put the flowers on the kitchen sink, went to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  Nicholas looked at Suzette. ‘I know they were cheap flowers, but honestly. .’

  Suzette narrowed her eyes at her brother. Katharine was angry with Nicholas, and Suzette couldn’t blame her. The two women had spent hours after dinner last night arguing over whether or not to telephone the police and report Nicholas missing. Suzette had had the final word, saying that enough police had been to 68 Lambeth Street in the last week, and Nicholas was probably out on a bender and that might be a good thing. But she’d never guessed he’d gone and found a flat without telling anyone.

  Nicholas explained about seeing Gavin’s suiciding ghost every time he opened the door, and Suzette’s anger ebbed a little.

  ‘I know you couldn’t tell Mum that. But you could have told me.’

  ‘I’m telling you now. Besides, Mum never seemed too keen about having me back.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Did you consider it might not be you that’s worried her? The night you get back, a child goes missing and is murdered. A couple of days later, a face from the past knocks on her front door and blows his head off. Can you blame her for being a little fragile? Anyway. Here. .’

  Suzette reached into her bag and pulled out her notebook. She flipped it open to the page on which she’d copied the rune that they’d found faintly carved into the health food store’s doorframe. She looked up. Nicholas was staring at the sketch with an odd expression on his face. ‘It’s the mark from Mrs Quill’s old shop door.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said quietly.

  ‘It is a rune. I looked it up.’ She flipped to the next page and read from her scribbled notes. ‘The third rune, Thurisaz, takes its name from the god Thor, from which is derived the old English word Thorn. But the rune has other meanings, including Protection and Devil. It’s not a rune to be trifled with. Thurisaz is the most difficult and potentially dangerous of the runes of Elder Futhark. Only a strong will can control it; it will control the weak. It is a war rune. It is associated with the colour red for blood.’ She looked up at her brother. He was staring out the window. ‘Did you hear that? Was it a bit boring for you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well? It’s a dangerous rune, Nicky. What do you think we should do?’

  Nicholas looked at her, then he smiled. There wasn’t a hint of happiness in it. He reached across for her notepad, flipped to a new page and started writing. ‘I don’t think we should do an
ything.’ He stood, his chair scraping on the floor. ‘That’s the address of my flat. I’m going to get my stuff and go home. You should go home, too. Get home to Bryan and the kids.’ He kissed her on the forehead.

  Suzette was so surprised that she said nothing, simply watched Nicholas as he walked to the hall doorway, where he shrugged. ‘So, it’s a rune. It’s old. Anyone could have put it there. But thank you for looking.’

  He smiled again at her, and in a moment was just the sound of footsteps echoing in the hall.

  Katharine could feel the stillness in the air of her house as Nicholas let himself out the squeaking front gate. She went to her bedroom window and watched him walking down the street carrying his suitcase. Afternoon sunlight cast a long, thin shadow behind him, and she watched it till he was around the corner and gone.

  She cursed herself for her foolishness, locking herself in her room like some jilted debutante. But when Nicholas had handed her flowers and said he’d moved out, thirty-odd years cracked like some fragile ice bridge and fell away, and she found herself stranded back in time, staring at a man who looked so much like Don, hearing him say almost exactly what Don had said the night he finally listened to his wife and moved himself out. Katharine felt her eyes clouding with tears again, and angrily wiped them away. Christ, she’d told Don to move out. Screamed at him to go. He’d begun drinking and she had every reason to see him out of her and the kids’ lives. But when he actually did it. . And did she run out into the street and call him back? No. And now her son had gone, again, what did she do? Nothing. She dried her eyes and shoved the damp tissue in her pocket.

  She went to the door and carefully opened it a crack. The kettle was starting to sing. Suzette was still in the kitchen. Katharine had heard Suzette’s voice as she spoke with Nicholas; although she couldn’t make out the words, she’d heard the urgent tone. What were they talking about? Why did the thought of having her children back here in Tallong knit her stomach into a tight ball of worry?