Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

“I’m afraid this road’s closed,” said the policeman.

  “I’m here on official business,” Ernst stammered. Then, the voice of the Harbinger ringing in his ears, he thrust some papers into the policeman’s hand. Confused, he took them to a colleague to study. Ernst began to tap on the steering wheel. He felt the rash spread across his neck and over his face. The urge to dig into the wound was irrepressible but he resisted. He had to keep it together. This was the hardest bit, the Harbinger had said.

  The policemen were studying the papers carefully. They kept looking up at the car and then back down again. They weren’t buying it! Ernst glanced behind him. If he put the Ford into reverse he could get to a gap in the hedge and turn quickly enough before they could react.

  But that would mean failure. And the wrath of the Harbinger.

  He bit down hard and turned back to the policemen. To his shock, one of them was standing by the window again.

  “Mr Stranger?” he said suspiciously.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re from the Home Office?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is a government car?”

  “Yes.”

  The policeman clicked his tongue. “I’m going to make a call.” He pulled a mobile out of his pocket and walked a few paces from the car but not far enough to stop Ernst from hearing one end of the conversation. “DI Casper, please. Yes. No, now please. Guv? Yes. Yes, just arrived. But it’s strange, guv... yes? But...? If I could... yes, sir.”

  The policeman took the phone away from his ear and studied it for a short moment. Ernst got the feeling the recipient had hung up. He looked back to the clapped out old Ford and inspected the plate one more time. Ernst shrank into the seat.

  He breathed a sigh of relief as the officer waved him through.

  Chapter 87

  There was a soft breeze on her face. It was comforting, familiar. Like that feeling when the sun breaks through the rain clouds.

  And there were birds, too. Tiny chirps everywhere.

  The ground was soft and earthy and the ends of her fingertips could feel grass. She was momentarily taken back to a day a long time ago, shortly before Ash had become a DS. They had spent the afternoon together in the park, lying on their backs with their eyes shut, the sunlight flashing across their eyelids. There was music playing from an old wind up radio nearby and the sound of kids kicking a football around. It was one of the most peaceful afternoons she had ever had. They didn’t talk but it didn’t matter. The silence created a bond between them, something they shared together. And when it was over, Alix felt warm and content, knowing that whatever happened after that day, no one could remove that memory.

  But then her stomach lurched and she feared she had died; feared she had died before she had undone her mistakes.

  She sat up. She was lying in a soft meadow, nothing but green valleys around her fading into the distance. The sun high in a cloudless sky. Daisies grew everywhere, along with daffodils at the edge of the field before a wooden fence that surrounded it. There were gates at differing intervals with large poles next to them and signs with numbers on. She saw three and four quite close to her and seven on the other side.

  Unafraid, she got up and inspected the landscape closer. There were nine gates on the outskirts of the enclosure, each gate leading to a path of dirt and stone that meandered up the valley and over the ridge of the surrounding hills. On a collection of large rocks piled high on each other sat an old man inattentively puffing on a long, wooden pipe from which emanated a trail of thin purple smoke which rose high above the rocks before dissipating into the air.

  He wore a brown coat that fell about his knees and was holding something that looked like a Shepherd’s crook. His face was weathered but kindly and, as she approached him, she saw a pair of bright green eyes dazzle in the sunlight.

  She stopped within a few feet of the rocks, not sure how to address the elderly figure who looked like he belonged to a different time from her.

  “Hello, Alix.” The old man spoke without looking up. Instead he took another puff from the pipe and gazed out over the valley, as if looking for something that had evaded him for a very long time.

  “Hello,” she said, standing a little awkwardly with her thumbs in her jeans pockets and her legs crossed over each other.

  The old man looked at her.

  “You’ve come a long way,” he observed. Then back to the horizon and his pipe.

  “Yes,” she agreed. Then, after some time had passed in silence, “this is the Inter-World, isn’t it.”

  “Yes. And I see you chose to come here. Like Orpheus searching the Underworld for his beloved.”

  “I’m sorry, who?”

  “Orpheus? You must know of Orpheus. Oh, well, I suppose ancient Greek isn’t your thing.” The old man cleared his throat and turned to her oddly, so he could appraise her from over his shoulder. He smiled. Too much gum, she thought.

  “Orpheus was a Greek poet and musician. When he found his wife killed by a viper, he played such sad music that the gods wept and urged him to travel to the underworld to retrieve her. He did so and was permitted by Hades to bring her back to the upper world on the condition that he should lead her back through the underworld without looking back at her.”

  “Did she make it?”

  The old man looked away from her again and back out into the distance.

  “This isn’t the Inter-World of my dreams,” she said.

  “No. The Inter-World is like oil drifting through a river, forever changing pattern and form. It is never the same no matter how many times you visit. I’m equally as baffled as you are half the time but there is a certain tranquillity about this place that has, I think, the evidence of intelligent design about it, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I’m sorry,” she shuffled her feet. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Well, the green fields, the Shepherd’s crook, the lovely birds and the warmth. It’s a far cry from buildings made out of the organs isn’t it?”

  “I guess. Why is that?”

  “I suppose it’s for your benefit. Well,” the old man suddenly laughed, “it’s not for mine!” It seemed as though somehow he wasn’t just here, but he was a part of what here was. Like he had grown up through the earth and blossomed on this pile of rocks like the vines and ivy that surrounded him.

  “You suppose?” she said.

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  She perched herself on a rock near the old man and looked out over the valley to where one of the lanes wound up the hillside, shrinking into the distance. She thought that in the very distance, where the colours softened and everything became less certain, things moved. Cattle grazing maybe. She wasn’t sure and the sun was bright that she had to squint to see beyond the fence.

  “So, am I dead?” she asked.

  The old man sighed and looked away, as if the question caused him pain to answer.

  “Is it necessary to think of everything as either alive or dead?” He said. “Can’t there just be different forms of existence?”

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose?”

  “Yes. I suppose.”

  “Well then, your body has suffered a fatal injury on the Ether but you are not your body. You are you. And you are now here. As the Forty Nine Laws provide.”

  “In the Inter-World?”

  The old man shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  “In a field. On a fine day,” he said.

  “The nine gates represent the Nine Great Worlds,” she said, nodding to each gate in turn but the old man didn’t look.

  “If you say so.”

  “Can I go through them? The gates, I mean. Into another World?”

  “All gates can be opened. If you know how.”

  “Which one is the Void?” she asked.

  He shrugged again. “Seven?”

  “For the creator of the Worlds you don’t seem to know much about your creation.”

  “Who s
aid I was the Maker?”

  “You are Cronos.”

  “I am an old man in a field.”

  She blew out air from her nose and pushed herself up off the rock. The old man took another puff on the pipe. He didn’t really seem to be enjoying it, she noticed.

  “So if you’re not Cronos, who are you?” she said, allowing just a fraction of annoyance to creep into her tone.

  He smiled again, like he was done playing with her but it had been amusing while it lasted. “A messenger,” he said.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Gabriel?” he suggested, but he didn’t seem certain. Like he had no name but had just picked one this minute to appease her.

  “Gabriel. Should have known really, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s nothing. There’s a religious connection to... well to everything. They had the Spear that was supposed to have killed Him. You know: Jesus. That’s what sent me here, I think. And they kept going on about the Ancient Travellers and the Book of Enoch or something and it was all to do with the Bible. Weirdly I think Baron actually said that Jesus had a Necromire but I was quite freaked out by that point and not really listening.”

  “Oh.”

  She offered her hands to him, trying to encourage something a little more helpful than, “oh”. “So the Gabriel thing kind of fits with the general pattern that’s emerging out of all of this.”

  “Or perhaps it’s just what you want to hear? Anyway, what pattern?”

  “That all of this is something to do with God.”

  “God? Which one?”

  “The Christian God.”

  “Why that God? Why not Ala? Or Zeus? Or Hod? Or Angus Og? Or Juichimen? Or Qadeshtu?”

  “Okay, point taken.”

  She sensed that the old man wasn’t too impressed by her. He seemed more interested in the view. Alix looked down at herself. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing in the Church of Our Virgin St Mary but there was no evidence of her trauma. The holes in her wrists and feet were gone. There weren’t even blood stains on her clothes. Most obviously, though, was the familiar sound of blood rushing through her head; that hollow sound that one hears when all around is silent, disturbed only occasionally by the warm breeze. It was an odd sensation. Like finding something that was lost; like smelling or tasting something that reminds you of your childhood. She tried to think why the noise should sound so familiar and yet so distant.

  Because she hadn’t heard it in a while.

  It was a sound that had been taken away from her in Innsmouth.

  “Azrael,” she murmured.

  “Who?” Gabriel choked a little on the smoke and looked round at her quizzically. “Oh, right. The Necromire. No, she can’t cross with you. She’s bound to the Ether unless destroyed, in which case she goes- now let me see- actually, I’m not sure.” He turned back to his pipe, tapping the end to get the burn going again.

  “Is she okay?” she asked, suddenly worried.

  “Fine. I think. I’m not sure what sort of existence a Necromire would have inside a soulless body. I’d imagine it’s quite dull.”

  “But she said that if I was destroyed, she would be destroyed. That’s why she transposed to me when Anwick was killed.”

  “True but you’re not destroyed. Obviously. You’re here. You are here because there is a Portal opened between the Ether and the Inter-World. Weren’t you listening earlier?”

  She thought back to what Gabriel had said earlier. Perhaps there is no death; just different stages of existence.

  Ash.

  “Do all souls destroyed in the Ether end up here?” she asked, looking around. Straining to see if the figures she saw in the distance were people or something else. They seemed not to be there anymore.

  The old man thought for a while.

  “I’m pretty sure that’s right,” he said finally.

  “What about souls whose bodies aren’t destroyed by the Spear of Destiny?”

  “Oh, no, the Spear doesn’t make any difference. The point about the Spear is that it enables a soul to get back to the Ether.”

  “What? So if a body is destroyed and travels through a Portal to the Inter-World it can only get back if the body was destroyed by the Spear of Destiny? Like me?”

  Gabriel chewed his tongue thoughtfully. Her heart was in her mouth. The thought that Ash was trapped here, in this world and she couldn’t bring him back cut deep into her, twisting itself into her mind.

  “No,” he said at last. “The point is this: you have been sent to the Inter-World to bring back Sin. There is nothing you can do to prevent that from happening. You can return to the Ether because your body was destroyed by the Spear of Destiny. When you return, your body will be revived automatically. That’s Law nine. Or eight. I’m not sure which. But you are a Vessel because you are a descendant of the Ancient Travellers so you can bring anything you want back with you if you can obtain it and provided also that you return with Sin.”

  She took her time thinking about this. It seemed so unnecessarily complex. After a while, she realised she didn’t understand most of it and she still wasn’t sure whether the old man did either.

  “Jesus wept, why is everything so fucking hard? What about Ash?”

  “Ash? He’s here. Somewhere. Along with Katelyn and Megan. They’re all here.”

  “But Katelyn and Megan weren’t killed in the church.”

  “That’s correct. But all souls come to the Inter-World upon release from one of the other worlds. Initially at least. The Laicey children were fated to end up here. I’m afraid that was their purpose.”

  “They’re purpose?”

  “Yes. We all have purpose, after all, although few ever get to recognise what it is. At least they had that privilege.”

  “They were children. Innocent children. And they died for what exactly? So I could come here and take back an evil creature to the Ether to destroy it?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel shrugged his shoulders again.

  “Fine,” Alix huffed. “But I’m not taking anything back to the Ether. I’m not leaving here without Ash and without Katelyn and Megan. I’m not going to abandon them.”

  “Is that because you’re in love with Ash and you feel guilty about the children?”

  He said it so casually the words caught her by surprise. She stared dumbly at him. The words in response eluded her.

  Gabriel smiled and ran his hand through his beard. He found something wedged between the hair. A crumb perhaps. He examined it for a while and, satisfied it was not an integral part of him, threw it behind the rocks.

  “Do you like cards, Alix?” he asked, producing a pack of what looked like old playing cards, but larger than a normal set. The corners were bent and the patterns faded, pastel browns and yellows. Alix didn’t respond. She eyed him suspiciously.

  “The truth is: I hate Fate. Those matters that are predetermined – things seen by prophets, people lucky enough to be told by Cronos what is going to happen – they bore me. Sin will be delivered to the Ether. That is the end of it. I can’t stop it.”

  “But would you if you could?” she asked quickly.

  “I’ll let you decide that in time. But I am not Cronos. I am, like you, his servant. But I am a puppet who has learned to pull his own strings from time to time. Do you see? And I believe in Chance.”

  He spread the cards out in front of her face up. Each had a different picture on it. She saw at a glance a few of them, but not all: a skeleton, a key, a grave, an old woman, a tower, a frog.

  “On the Ether they’re called tarot cards. There are 78 of them. Traditionally they were used in the same way that normal playing cards were used but, as you may know, they are often used to tell something of a person’s future.”

  He flipped the deck back over and shuffled. She quickly lost track of what was where. Then he fanned the cards out again but face down this time and offered them to her.

  “Choose. It may be the most importa
nt choice of your life.”

  She surveyed the cards, looked up into the old man’s green eyes but they gave nothing away. Then, without looking, picked a card and gave it to him. He turned it over and she looked at it. A picture of a jester, complete with yellow and red tunic and holding a flower.

  “The fool!” said Gabriel excitedly.

  “Great. The fool.”

  “But of course! The fool. Who is liminal. Like you. Neither here nor there. Not at the beginning and not at the end. But caught here, in the Inter-World.”

  “But what does it mean?” she asked, exasperated.

  Gabriel looked at her and there was a terrible look in his eyes, a glint that was not there before. Something at odds with the old man’s benign features.

  Something dark.

  Something altogether unpleasant.

  Smiling, he handed her the card and took another puff on his pipe.

  Chapter 88

  Alix felt the change in the air. The warm breeze had turned cooler and the sun had begun its descent into the valley, lighting up one side of the sky with a blaze of purples and reds. Nothing about this place seemed real. Everything had a twinge of artificiality to it: the sun had set a little too quickly, the grass was a little too green; the rocks a little too jagged. More like a Hollywood film set than a field in the middle of nowhere.

  Gabriel had changed as well. He looked frail all of a sudden, fatigued by some mysterious burden. He put the pipe down for the first time on a perfectly sized ledge and turned to her, his green eyes more grey in the failing light.

  “I told you I was a messenger,” he said. “That is true and I have a message for you.”

  “From whom?”

  “From the Original Maker. The one who is responsible for all of this.”

  “I don’t understand why the Maker would allow one of his worlds to be destroyed by Sin.”

  Gabriel sighed heavily, leaned back against the rock and stared out into the sunset.

  “Spectacular, isn’t it?” he said. “As are all of Cronos’ creations in one form or another. But they are just that: creations, albeit the creations of a higher, omniscient being.” He turned to her. “Do you remember, Alix, when you were a little girl your father made you a miniature pantheon theatre from cardboard? It was a box set he bought for you in London. You helped him colour in all of the little figures and attach them to lollypop sticks and you would play for hours and hours, making stories for your characters to act out, giving them names, personalities, fears, hopes and achievements. Sometimes, you even made them do bad things, didn’t you?”