Ruin Nation

by Dan Carver

  “I…” I start, but the words stick in my dry throat.

  Elder Adam smiles wide and warm. “You have questions. It’s only natural.”

  “How did I get here?” is my eventual croak.

  “Ah! You’ve found your tongue, child. Well, the good Lord put you on this Earth to glorify him.”

  I nod furiously. I figure it’s best to agree. I’ve heard of religious extremists scoring the soles of a captured nonbeliever’s feet before. Then they can preach all day and he can’t run away. That’s God’s love for you.

  “Er, yes. I… I understand that,” I say. “What I meant is… how did I get here… in this place, with… with you?”

  “You cried for help and we answered. You went to the bridge,” answers the female Elder Paul. “That was your cry!”

  It seems they’ve got me figured for a suicide attempt.

  “You went to the bridge,” Elder Paul trills in her soprano voice, “and you jumped. But we caught you. And we know what you did was a sin, but the Lord forgives those who repent.”

  Obviously ‘caught’ me metaphorically, I reason, or I wouldn’t feel like I’d been hit by a truck.

  “Many of our brethren come from the bridge,” Intermediate Solomon explains excitedly. “It is the duty of those still afflicted with the curse of walking to find souls to save. And what a soul you are! You already wear the wounds of the stigmata! How pious you must have been before your deviation from Jesus!”

  Suddenly, everyone’s studying me. And so I check out my reflection in the polished wooden floor – all wrapped in white linen, with my injured head and hands, and the great gash in my side. I look like I’ve been crucified by work-experience centurions.

  “Yes, it is an auspicious occasion,” confirms the very-pregnant Under Elder Eve who’s clearly been under Elder Adam.

  “God must truly be thanked for bringing you home to us!” says Novice Luke. “You are a sign, my prodigal one, a sign that even the most devout, even those that bear the true, God-gifted wounds of the stigmata, may fall from grace. You are a reminder that we must not backslide. We must slash our devotion into ourselves, lest we forget!” And he takes up some bladed implement.

  “Please!” I say, attempting a calm voice and failing miserably. “Please! Don’t slash anything! Look: I don’t have the stigmata. I’ve never had the stigmata!”

  “It’s useless to deny,” says Novice Peter.

  “You can’t deny it,” says Elder Adam, “the evidence is clear to see, as plain as day; the wound of the crown of thorns etched into your forehead!”

  “It’s acne and a head injury!” I bawl.

  “No!” cries our maniacal collective simultaneously. “It is the wounds of Christ!”

  “As is this!” Elder Adam whispers, unwrapping the swathes of dirty bandage around his hand and letting the loops fall silently to the floor. He takes a pen and jams it through the rot-edged sphincter in his palm, pushing a plug of congealed matter out onto the rug. His expression remains beatific throughout, suggesting that, not only is this perfectly normal behaviour, but a noble pursuit children should be encouraged to emulate.

  “Disinfectant,” I creak, backing as far as the walls will allow.

  “No disinfectant,” says Novice Peter, “because we are pure both in faith and physiology. There was no disinfectant for Jesus, after all. And what right do we have to something denied to Jesus? No, there will be no disinfectant for any of us, including you. For what is rot, anyway, but the slow return of our bodies to the Lord, bit by bit.”

  I don’t like the sound of ‘including you’. Something about it sets me climbing the walls, searching behind the hangings for some kind of window to jump out of.

  “Yes, we are pure,” says Elder Paul in her increasingly high-pitched voice. “As were you – to bear the mark of the crown of thorns. But do not fear. You can be again.”

  “I’ve never been pure!” I scream. “This isn’t stigmata. It’s a great, big spot brought on by drug use and adrenal stress!”

  “Let he who is without sin,” answers Novice Peter with his truly horrible grin. “The straight and narrow path may prove difficult to see at first, but turn it to the side and you will find it to be the broad, shining blade of the Stanley knife.”

  “But I’m really bad! I’m pure hate!”

  “Then it’s a good job we found you.”

  I tear at the Jesi (is that the plural?), ripping down the images, searching desperately for the deity that disguises the door.

  “Ah! The Devil is once more within him,” observes Elder Adam. “See! See how he desecrates our home; our faith! Seize him gently, brethren, and scourge him til he sees the Bright and Shining Light.”

  Now call me old-fashioned, but I don’t fancy being scourged. Fair play, it was nice of them to lend me the Jesus y-fronts, but I don’t intend being razored to within an inch of my life for the privilege. It’s just not cricket, kids.

  What are my options? Well, I don’t stop to consider them. I see Elder Adam’s huge, serrated knife waving about and I decide I’m taking it off him and sticking it into the first freak who comes near me. It doesn’t matter that it’s still imbedded in his forearm.

  So I dive forward and the next moment’s like something out of The Sword in the Stone, only with an old man replacing the chunk of rock. And I’ve got my foot on his shoulder. And I’m yanking the knife handle, and he’s screaming at me. And there’s this almighty ripping sound, a fountain of arterial spray and…

  Well, Elder Adam may love God, but I doubt the Good Lord returns the sentiment with the same degree of intensity. Because I extract the knife, but not without removing one of his ears in the process. I slip and slice the thing clean off. It arcs through the air and lands in Novice Peter’s lap with a big, wet plop.

  “My God!” Peter cries.

  “Sweet Jesus!” croaks Elder Adam, spewing blood like a fire hydrant. “His knife work is outstanding! Though the Devil may be upon him, it is clear he was sent here to set us on the Lord’s path! Mutilate us, brother Hugo! Maim us for Jesus! Kill us, good Christian and send us back to our God! Truly(!) we’re all going home in an ambulance tonight!”

  My stomach gives out. Everywhere.

  “Debase us, Knifeman Hugo!” bawls an orgiastic Novice Peter. “Vomit upon us! Defile us so that we may be humble before God!”

  I clamp my hand over my mouth. It doesn’t stop the retching, just redirects it sideways.

  “Cut my head off and throw up down the stump!” pleads Under Elder Eve.

  Now I’m not used to being taken so literally. So when they ask me to kill them, I tell them no, if they really want to die and, I mean really, then they’re going to have to do it themselves… Well, you can say I’m surprised when they take me at face value. Suddenly I’m standing in a pool of guts.

  I’m in the street. I’ve escaped. Crowds again. Everywhere. I guess the human race must’ve reached the top of the evolutionary arc and slid down the other side. I mean, how many thousands of years have we been in existence and we still haven’t worked out how to walk round each other? But I tell you one thing: everyone moves out the way for the man in the Jesus Christ underpants.

  “I thought you’d defected,” Calamari growls.

  “We lost ‘im on the bridge, Sir,” Elton interrupts.

  “You lost him on the bridge? How can you lose someone on a bridge? A bridge is three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end, and each one of those parts is clearly visible from any two of the others.”

  “An’ then there’s the bits that go upwards, Sir: the supports. Well, these bits that go up… ‘e went up ‘em. We don’t understand what ‘appened next. We fink…”

  “I don’t care what you think. I suspect you don’t think at all. I’ll find out myself. You, Jupiter, standing there in your blasphemous knickers! What happened to you?”

  “I fell, Sir. Then I was held captive by religious maniacs. They disembowelled themselves and I escaped.”

&
nbsp; “At least somebody’s showing some bloody initiative!” Calamari snaps.

  We’re behind schedule. There isn’t time for full recriminations so he herds us straight onto the bus. I risk his wrath and ask a question.

  “Mr Calamari?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! What?!”

  “How did you find me, Sir?”

  “I’ve had unpleasant devices implanted under your skin. Whilst you slept.”

  We offload Elton. The next stop is Cobleigh On The Wold and a grand, gala fundraising ball. Funds for what, I don’t know.

  So, how best to describe Cobleigh? Well, half’s a beautiful, bucolic paradise of gently rolling hills, wildflower meadows and tiny, tucked away cottages you can barely see from the road. Then there’s Hangman’s Wood, which is every bit as horrible as it sounds. And then there’s Battencross Manor. Which is worse.

  I don’t know what it is with rich lunatics and architecture. Imagine the Houses of Parliament eaten and then passed out as a stool by some colossal camel. Add turrets and Alzheimer’s for the full effect. When dusk falls, its crooked spires cast brutal, serrated shadows the breadth of the village. Mention its name and the locals go white and mutter about full moons and missing children. They speak of a beast. They speak of many things, but little makes sense.

  If the Stemset Building is the entrance to Hell then Battencross Manor is its exit.

  But it’s not the architecture that bothers me, or the coterie of freaks that stalk its hallways. It’s the memory of what we did there that haunts me to this day.

  So picture the scene: black night; our great whale of a tour bus winding along a narrow, twisted road – little more than a dirt track gouged through a Brothers-Grimm forest of gnarled, acid-bitten trees. There’s no light save for our dim headlamps and the flickers of marsh gas. We’ve bogland to our left and collapsing rockface to our right. We dodge quicksand, falling rocks and something large and fast-moving that I’m sure should be extinct. It leaves its claw-marks along the length of the bus.

  “Battencross Manor survived the Civil War,” a big goon tells me, ashen-faced, “because no one dared go near it.” And I shiver.

  We exit the woods past the cemetery, where flame-torches up-light ungodly stone angels and Death watches us with empty eye sockets from his perch above the gatehouse. And I swear he moves. Just a little.

  The Manor rises up to meet us, a dark arachnid abortion wreathed in fog. The floodlights would guide our way up the winding gravel driveway, but the floodlights appear to be exploding. A smartly attired man with a waxed moustache and smoking jacket is smashing them with a log. He salutes as we pass.

  An upstairs window flashes cyan blue as an unknown individual attempts to reanimate pig carcasses with an electric generator. I can’t help thinking he’d have more success with animals that still have heads. Furious-faced, he hefts their lifeless, decapitated torsos to the window and launches them into thin air. He adopts a joyless smile as they hurtle downward, exploding on impact with the patio furniture on the Italian terrace. An old woman shields herself with an umbrella. She has meat in her hair. I look left and see a man beating his wife with a stuffed dog. This is not as weird as it gets by any stretch of the imagination. There’s more. There’s always more.

  We approach the great front entrance. The family crest shows two goats copulating. The male has three testicles. And when a female visitor points this out to her immaculately dressed gentleman companion, he drops his trousers to reveal a similar arrangement. I don’t get to see what lies beneath her turquoise ballgown, but the man does and points at it with furious enthusiasm.

  It’s unusual to see Calamari stuck for words. His rugged jaw line thrusts its way into my field of vision.

  “During the conflicts, because of the Republicans and the danger in the cities and all that sort of thing, the Battencross clan chose to isolate themselves. They became self-sufficient in, er, all sorts of ways. Ways you or I might find a little… over-familiar.”

  “Small genepool stuff?” I suggest euphemistically.

  “Erm? You could put it that way. So… so don’t be surprised if you encounter people you might consider a little, er…special.”

  “Inbred?”

  “Special,” says Calamari coldly.

  “I’m sure they’re all very nice people,” says I. I don’t condemn folk till after I’ve met them. Speaking of which…

  I’ve been observing the goons over the course of the journey. They’ve got a hierarchy and a leader in the form of a huge, cauliflower-eared brute called Spencer. I doubt we’re ever going have a conversation about Art or classical music, but as far as belching and leering at women go, we get along fine. They follow Calamari’s directions to some loose degree, but there’s clearly no love lost between the factions.

  “We usually take our orders from Mr Durham,” Spencer tells me. “Old Beetle Bollocks.”

  “What kind of orders?” I ask.

  “Oh, dishin’ out a few right-handers on an as-and-when basis,” he says, rearranging his knuckles. “Guess you could call us freelance troublemakers.”

  “Oh,” I say. But I’m wandering off the point. Let’s backtrack a little:

  “Inbred?” I say.

  “Special,” says Calamari.

  “I’m sure they’re all very nice people, Sir,” I say.

  “Are you ‘special’, Sir?” asks Spencer, insolence etched all over his face. “You look ‘special’, Sir.”

  Now Calamari may be intelligent and deeply political but let’s not forget that he’s also a man-mountain prone to violent rages and bouts of impromptu teeth-extraction. I’m expecting a violent reprisal, maybe something testicular loosened with a blunt penknife. Maybe the rules have changed, or the insane monster’s switched to a more effective medication, because he just laughs his horrid laugh and claps Spencer on the back. Spencer seems confused. Calamari just smiles. Spencer looks wary. Calamari adopts the tour guide position at the front of the bus. We’re all waiting for something nasty to happen. But it doesn’t. Not yet.

  “Okay,” says Calamari. “Now, I think we all know why we’re here. This is a two-pronged mission: Jupiter, you’re to spike the drinks with surgical spirit, wait until they’re all half-poisoned and then roll Former Prime Minister Bactrian out. See if you can get them to pledge some money. Be polite – these are a better class of inbred. And, if Lady Battencross propositions you, you're to give her whatever she wants however she wants it.” And he points to the door. “Now, Spencer,” he continues, “you and the Brownshirts: You’re to locate young Lord Battencross…”

  “Sir…” I start, about to ask something important – can’t remember what it was now.

  “That’s all you need know!” he barks. And he presses a jar of ethanol into my arms and shoves me down the steps. But the briefing’s still audible through the window so I listen in.

  “…And deal with him,” Calamari concludes.

  “Brutally?” Spencer asks.

  “I’ll leave that to your professional judgement,” says Calamari. “Just keep it quick, quiet and clean. Keep that in mind and you can do whatever you want.”

  It sounds like they're planning to kill Lord Battencross, so I decide to stay in full public view the entire evening. I wouldn’t put it past Calamari to frame me. And I straighten my tie and stride purposefully into the manor.

  Right. Imagine blocks, great stone blocks, piled in the halls, stacked haphazardly in the walls and slipping silently from the vaulted ceiling and almost braining me. Whatever money the estate generates, it clearly doesn’t go into maintenance. I'm inside the building now, but the moss, mould and toadstools say different. Pull back the ivy and you’ll see the family portraits; fifty variations on the Hapsburg-jaw.

  I survey my fellow guests, all beautifully dressed and all deeply, deeply weird. Darwin would weep. Take a photograph and you’d have all you need to disprove evolution forever.

  We push through the throng, past someone who may be Malmot
in disguise, and there’s seething old dowager, Lady Digitalis Battencross, in all her cacky-fingered glory.

  Okay. I want you to picture Lady Battencross. She’s an interesting looking woman. She used to travel to Africa to shoot endangered species and enjoy the last vestiges of institutionalised racism. On her last trip, she’d caught a particularly vicious stomach bug and lost two thirds of her bodyweight in the form of violently-evacuated excreta. What’s left no longer fits the epidermis. She looks like she’s been deflated. Her empty skin hangs in huge fabric-swathed folds, from armpit to ankle, like a flying squirrel. You’ve heard of ‘Dowager’s hump’. Well, this is ‘Dowager’s rudimentary wing membrane’. Throw her out the window and she’d glide.

  You’d think looking like an airborne rodent would dampen her social standing. But you’d be wrong. You see, it’s what’s inside that counts. And what’s inside our Lady B. is a fully-functioning reproductive system. In a social circle that’s been inbreeding itself toward total sterility, a fertile woman’s hot property. Even a widowed old gorgon with a face like a bag of spanners can be a goddess.

  She surrounds herself with arselickers, aspirants and dirty old toffs who want to impregnate her. It’s all too much for her son, Lord Timothy Battencross, eighteen years old, and currently skulking round the buffet with a scowl on his face.

  Young Timmy is going through a rebellious phase, “searching for truth and honesty in a life hitherto characterised by bourgeois privilege.” His words, not mine. Like all teenagers, he likes to sit back and pass judgement on people, which is why he’s thrown his hat in with the Socialists. They love redistributing his trust fund for him. There’s talk he may become their next leader. He’s certainly ugly enough. Perhaps this is why Calamari wants him dead.

  A drunken cellist counts his drunker ensemble into an unrecognisable piece of music and I gather the ball has started. Time to disguise my humble origins and work the room. And I try, but all I meet with are blank faces and quickly-turned backs. I could let it bother me, but I prefer to remain philosophical. After all, surely it’s better to be rejected by people who don’t know you than people who do. And I content myself with the knowledge that, however bad I’m doing, Elton would be doing worse.