Dead Souls
Page 23
“I like wearing pretty things.”
I am taken unawares by a wave of grief for her. “I’ll buy you a pretty cross if you promise to wear this one at night until I do, and say your prayers.”
“Do I really have to, Unc—?”
I interrupt her, though the guard appears to be trying not to overhear, by taking the cross from her hand and touching it to her lips before lifting the cord over her head. “Wear it until you get home at least, for His sake.”
She looks rebellious, as children can be. I walk quickly to the lifts and step into the nearest before she has time to argue. Perhaps if my brother or his wife attempts to influence her not to wear the cross she will turn her rebelliousness against them. I say another prayer for her as I pass through the lobby and out of that place.
As I entered it had seemed an anteroom to Hell, but now I find it little different from its surroundings. In less time than it takes me to repeat the psalm, I am in the shadow of chemical factories discharging their poisons into a sky the colour of sin. Behind them, on the bank of a filthy river, chimneys spout flames that dance and struggle, and I think of machines that begin to consume souls at the hour of death. Opposite the tract of factories gaunt terraces like cellblocks extend as far as the eye can see face one another across pinched streets with narrow pavements unrelieved except by tainted plots of grass. Broken glass surrounds every streetlamp, and I see that the denizens of these streets abhor the light. How many of them may be Undead, freed by the shrouding of the sun to walk by day?
It takes me half an hour’s unbroken march to come in sight of the hotel near the factories. I comfort myself by repeating the psalm aloud, and whenever anyone approaches within earshot they pass by on the other side. I raise my voice to let them know they have betrayed themselves. Their dull self absorbed faces are pale as tissue paper — a tissue of lies.
A few cheap shops huddle opposite the hotel, and I buy vegetables from a greengrocer whose hands are calloused with toil and who wears a small cross at her throat. As I enter the hotel’s dim and dismal hall, where the walls are a mass of advertisements for gluttony and other forms of self indulgence, the landlady accosts me. “I’m afraid cooking isn’t allowed in the rooms, Mr Saint,” she says, slowly wringing her colourless hands in a pretence of regret.
“Nor do I propose it, Mrs Trollope.”
“And I still have to charge for meals even if you don’t take them.”
“We must all be guided by our consciences, Mrs Trollope.” Since she has no answer to this I say “If I may have my key I need trouble you no further.”
She thrusts at me the cudgel to which the key is attached, and I climb the shabby stairs to my cheerless room, which smells of must and stale smoke and nights of solitary lechery. I hang my overcoat in the nondescript wardrobe and fall to my knees between the sink and the bed. When I feel I have prayed out the evils of the day I eat half a cabbage and two raw potatoes, savouring the taste of God’s earth and the gritting of it between my teeth. The vegetables are as wholesome as can be expected in this place, and at least they were sold to me by a believer. Anything that is served in the hotel will have been touched by blood.
Night has fallen. The factories howl and glare with evil light. Hordes who have squandered their day in the factories shuffle into the narrow streets as if their shadows are dragging them home, while their neighbours swarm to take their places in the workshops of pollution. Then the land is quiet until the young begin to prowl, quaffing wine and smashing bottles in the roadways, if indeed the wine has not undergone some sacrilegious transubstantiation. After a time the corpse lights of the factories show only lost souls fleeing after their shadows through a lurid icy rain, and I have prayed enough that I crave sleep.
I use the communal bathroom, which is full of warm fog and a suggestive smell of perfumed soap, and then I set about defending my room. I rub garlic around the inside of the door and windows, and employ the cloves to plug the taps and the sink. I hang a cross above the bed and another at its foot, and lay a cross on the frayed carpet at each side. Though thus protected, I am reluctant to switch off the lamp while I sense the land is teeming with corruption. Even the miserly light of the room seems preferable to the unholy glow outside the faded curtains. I kneel to recite Psalm 130, pummelling my breasts and temples as I raise my voice, and when I feel Him answer me in my depths I lay me down to sleep.
But the Adversary has sent his minions to beset me. As I cried out, my left hand neighbour buffeted the wall in a vain attempt to interrupt my supplication, and now I hear Mrs Trollope’s voice, first beneath my window and then much closer. I think that she has scaled the outer wall, as the Undead are known to do, until I realise that she is at my door. “I hope you won’t be keeping that light on much longer, Mr Saint,” she says.
I hold my peace, hoping that she will conclude I am not to be awakened by trifles. Then she begins to smite the door with a clumsiness which suggests to me that she is the worse, if such is possible, for drink. “I know you’re in there, Mr Saint,” she bawls. “Put that light out or I’ll put you out.”
When I tire of her blustering I grasp the cord above the bed. As I pull it, darkness descends like the outpouring of a cloaca. A muffled discussion ensues in the corridor outside my room; no doubt the Adversary’s minions are plotting further ways to disturb me. Let them seek to enter — they will find me armed. But nothing transpires except the closing of several doors, and so I lie on my back and take a cross in each hand.
In the fullness of time I slumber, as best I can while maintaining a vigil over my hands for fear that the Adversary may endeavour to loosen their grasp and trick them into repudiating the cross. When the sky begins to pale with the dawn I rise and pray that the sun may sear away the pall which darkens the land. Hours later only an enfeebled glow has seeped through the shroud, which I see is the colour of the corpse lights, as though some poisonous exhalation has grown solid overnight to snuff out the day.
I venture to the bathroom in order to do the penance of voiding myself, then I scour my body at the sink in my room. I plan to spend the greater portion of the day in prayer. The Adversary will have none of this, however. I have scarcely fallen to my knees when he sends his trollop to besiege me. “I want a word with you, Mr Saint,” she shouts.
“Have it, then.”
“I can’t hear you. I won’t talk through a door.”
“I thought that was a favourite pastime of yours,” I say, and fling the door open. “Now you see me, madam.”
I have revealed only my right hand side when she falls back and shields her eyes like Eve after eating the apple. “For God’s sake, Mr Saint, cover yourself up.”
“We are all naked before Him.” Smirking at her hypocrisy, I hold a cross in front of myself. “Now I am as clothed as any man need be.”
She stays out of sight and raises her voice. “I’m afraid I must ask you to leave at once.”
“May I ask who requires it of you?”
She stamps her foot, shaking the floor. “Let me remind you this is my house.”
“It’s worthy of your name.”
“I don’t know what this room smells of, but I want it out, and you. I’ve had complaints about the row you made all night, snoring and carrying on like I don’t know what.”
“Why, madam, I took you as my model.”
She stamps so hard that the crosses on the floor spring up. “I’m giving you ten minutes to pay up and get out and then I’m calling the police.”
So the scheme is to have me cast out before I can fulfil my mission. It would be the work of moments to pursue her and cut her down, but how many of her creatures might I have to put an end to, thereby perhaps drawing unwelcome attention to myself? Shall I abase myself and plead to be allowed to stay two further nights? The notion sticks in my gullet, and then I know that He has not forsaken me, for all at once I see where I may take refuge. My cases are packed in five minutes, and in less than ten I am downstairs, jangling the bel
l of ill repute which stands on the counter. When Mrs Trollope pokes her face through the hole in the wall above it I cast my coins before her. “I think you will find that fits the bill.”
“Haven’t you any notes?”
“I thought silver more appropriate. Please count it.”
She glowers and with a Jew’s gesture scoops the coins together so as to pick them up with both thumbs and forefingers and drop them onto two piles. “That seems to be right,” she grudgingly admits.
Can she really not have noticed there are thirty coins? “Wholly,” I assure her, and depart out of that house, shaking off the dust of my feet.
The railway station where I arrived is five minutes’ forced march distant, up a steep hill between extravagant windows choked with finery. The flesh of the crowds around me seems no less discoloured and artificial than that of the cheap sculptures modelling luxury in the stores which steep the pavements in alluring light. In the station the voice of a false oracle echoes through the vault, sending the lost fleeing hither and thither. As I slide my suitcase into a locker I am reminded of the ungodly practice of cremation. The thought fuels my anger as I set out on the first stage of my task.
The churchyard crowns a hill ribbed with mean streets. While the spire still points to Heaven, many of the gravestones have been overturned, perhaps by the revels of the Undead. Stone angels display mutilated wrists, as thieves in heathen countries do, so that I wonder if this may be yet another symptom of the undermining of our Christian ways by the influx of the heathen. Let it never be forgotten that the Undead originated in lands less Christian than ours.
A few mourners, if that is what they are, loiter morosely near wreaths, and a pair of silent workmen are spading out a grave. Rather than draw attention to myself by enquiring of the labourers where I should go I play the aimless visitor, wandering the stone rows, at whose junctions wire baskets are piled with empty bottles and withered flowers. I am halfway across the churchyard when a funeral arrives at the new grave, and I watch the mourners weep more copiously than is Christian. By the time I reach my goal, a family grave near the top of the churchyard, a vicious wind has cleared the place except for myself.
The Beynon plot is marked by a granite obelisk. Gilded names and dates are etched on the shaft, and the lowest name is Bernadette. As I would expect of a family which allowed her helpless body to be violated, no prayer has been inscribed on her behalf. Her yearning to be hallowed is as clear to me as though she is murmuring a plea in my ear. I kick the pharisaical wreath away from the obelisk and grind the flowers underfoot before falling to my knees on her mound. “The Day of Judgment shall find thee whole,” I vow, and immediately I sense her gratitude. I grub her mound open with my hands and bury a cross as deep as I can to keep her safe.
I stay at prayer until the hellish lights of the town begin to waken; then I make for the church. I know that tonight the Undead must exert all their powers against me. I pass through the porch and open my flask to collect holy water from the font, and my heart quails within me. The church is starkly furnished with thin pews and an altar. How shall I go unnoticed when the priest locks the church for the night?
As I stopper the flask I hear footsteps on the gravel path outside the porch. I run to the sole refuge the place affords and crouch behind the altar. The inner door opens, and footsteps approach. Should I not declare myself and my mission, and crave sanctuary against the Undead? If the priest doubts my mission he is no priest, and I must strike him down before the altar he has desecrated. Yet I have little stomach for such an act in God’s house, and breathe a prayer as the footsteps halt at the altar.
In a very few minutes the priest, having presumably breathed a perfunctory prayer, retreats along the aisle; then I hear him stop at the font and mutter what sounds all too like profanity. How can a man of the cloth let slip such a word, above all in church? I prepare to follow him and cut him down like the fig tree that beareth no fruit but cumbereth the ground. But darkness falls inside the church, the inner door closes, and I hear the false priest lock the outer door.
At once the church is no longer dark. A faint evil glow rises from the town, transforming the saints in the window above me into swarthy heathens and encrusting the pews with a dimness that appears to crawl. I should be safest where I am, guarded by the altar. I grasp two crosses and lie down on stone with my case for a pillow, and try to pray myself to sleep in order to be ready for the morrow’s task. Out of the depths have I cr—
A crash of glass! I leap up, brandishing the crosses, and stumble against the altar. The sainted window is intact. I have slumbered; was the sound only in my dream? No, for there comes an outburst of bestial yelling beyond the window, and the thump of gravestones on the earth. The Undead are abroad to trouble my sleep.
When I begin to pronounce an exorcism with all my voice the clamour falters momentarily, then redoubles. The Undead dance and jeer while their hands, if hands they are, belabour the wall of the church. More glass shatters, and I replace the cross in my right hand with my blade. If anything enters the building I shall shed its foul gore.
Perhaps the church is secure against evil, however, because the Undead content themselves with lupine baying in a vain bid to blot out my exorcism. When I grow so hoarse that I can barely whisper, their uproar subsides. I hear them shambling away, toppling gravestones as perhaps they seep back into their graves. I am seized by a fit of coughing, and when at last I am able to contain myself I strain my ears, distrusting the silence. Much later I sink to the floor behind the alt
“Who’s there? Is someone there?”
The voice is in the church. The door has been unlocked. I have slept longer than I meant to, until a snore wakened me. Too late I understand that the Undead have achieved their purpose after all. I try to remain absolutely still, praying silently that I need not use my blade, as the priest comes up the aisle. He is almost at the altar — he has only to lean over it to see me. Then he turns on his heel and trots away, and I hear him on the gravel that surrounds the church.
I drop the blade into my case as I run on tiptoe to the porch. The priest has yet to reappear around the building; he must be searching among the graves beyond the far end of the church for the sleeper he overheard. I dart over the grass and crouch behind an angel, only to be overwhelmed by the sense that I am in a position for my bowels to betray me. I hear the priest marching over the gravel, muttering and rubbing his hands together, having presumably righted the gravestones. As he arrives at the porch, a loud and lengthy noisome wind escapes me. The pollution of the land must have inured him, for without hesitation he re-enters the church.
I compose myself and follow him. I mean to spend my time in prayer and fasting until I must be about my mission. The priest is replenishing the font, and gives me a sharp glance. “God be with you,” I bid him as I cross myself.
Perhaps he recognises that I feel it to be more appropriate that I should wish him this than the reverse; he can hardly bring himself to respond, “And with you.” I make my way to the foremost pew and kneel, scorning the luxury of the kneeler. I shall pray silently until the priest says Mass, and th—
Something is thrust between my ribs. The Undead have invaded the church and turned my weapons against me. “Retro me, Satanas!” I scream, and find myself surrounded by churchgoers, one of whom has elbowed me. All of them, and the priest in the pulpit, are staring at me. If his sermon and his celebration of the Mass had been sincere I would not have slumbered. “Pray continue,” I say with a wave of my hand.
When he tires of striving to force me to avert my gaze he recommences prating to the congregation on the subjects of forgiveness and tolerance. In this land there is far too much of both, and almost all of it misdirected. I keep myself awake by gripping crosses so that their corners dig into my palms, though the false priest appears to frown on crosses. The Mass ends and the congregation straggles out while I remain on my knees. I have by no means done praying when the priest sidles up to me. “Are you in n
eed of help, my son?”
“Psalm Twenty eight, verse seven.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not too familiar—”
“The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in him, and I am helped.”
He scowls at the rebuff or at having revealed his ignorance, and stalks off to gather prayer books; then he loiters about the church until I finish praying although I continue until it is almost dark. It seems that, like the landlady, he is being used to drive me out and rob me of a day’s grace, and there are moments when I have to struggle to contain my wrath. When at last I succeed in relaxing my grip on the crosses and return them to my case I perform a solemn obeisance before the altar; then I glare so fiercely at the priest that he feigns a sudden interest in the contents of a hymnal as I stride out of the church.
The grubby light is draining into the vile landscape. As I make my way downhill through the blackened furtive terraces the tethered flames jerk above the soiled roofs, and I see I am descending into Hell. The sight of a telephone box diverts me along a terrace whose windows are shrouded with net curtains like the dusty webs of a dozen or more enormous spiders. The box is derelict; holes gape where its instrument and light should be. No doubt the denizens of the land are anxious to prevent anyone less irredeemable than themselves from communicating with the outside world, though surely I saw telephones in use when I arrived at the railway station.
As I enter its vault the voice of the oracle proclaims the name of the town where I live. This is so transparently intended as a temptation that I scoff aloud. Few are there to hear me, and most of them are supine on benches after some debauch. I walk to the nearest telephone and dial the number of my brother’s house before turning my back to the wall.
The bell ceases its measured tolling. “Vincent,” says Paul’s wife.
“It is I.”