Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  Guy did not see the foot lash out from under a nearby table, catching his ankle. All he knew was that he was suddenly sprawled flat out and his tray had disgorged its contents across the parquet floor. Pork chop, scoop of mash, diced vegetables, ginger pudding and custard – all of it went flying, mingled with shards of smashed plate and bowl.

  There was silence after the crash.

  Then the entire dining hall erupted into jeering laughter. The sound ricocheted off the linenfold oak panelling, scurried up past the stern-faced portraits of former headmasters, and lost itself amid the high, solid roof beams.

  Everyone was guffawing. The entire school, all three hundred boys. Even the teaching staff up on the top table couldn’t hide their sniggers.

  Guy painstakingly gathered up the spilled food and broken crockery onto the tray, then hurried out of the room.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER lights out, they came for him in the dormitory. There were three of them. They dragged Guy from his bed and frogmarched him to the bathroom, both arms twisted up between his shoulderblades almost to the nape of his neck. The boys in the other beds were quiet, those awake feigning sleep. They didn’t want to know.

  A stall had been made ready for him. A freshly laid turd bobbed in the toilet bowl. His three tormentors forced his face into the water. Guy struggled, fought like a cat, but it was no use.

  Someone pulled the chain. Water gurgled and churned around his head. Guy strained to keep his lips above the surface so that he could breathe. Lumps of faecal matter buffeted his cheeks and ears.

  As the tumult of the flush died down, Guy’s tormentors let him up. He sagged against the stall partition, spluttering and gagging. He retched into the clean bowl.

  “You were shit brown before, you choccie cunt. You’re even more shit brown now.”

  GUY CLEANED HIMSELF up, dried himself off, and crawled miserably back into bed.

  He had been a boarder at Scarsworth Hall for a little over a fortnight, and already he loathed the place with a passion. It wasn’t just the bullying. It was also the food, the hard mattresses, the ever-present stink of linoleum polish, the sarcastic, hectoring teachers, the relentless bells and countless rules. The weather, too. Until now, Guy had known only the tropical climes of south-east Asia, where everything was a perpetual swelter relieved by the occasional warm torrential downpour or air-clearing thunderstorm. His father had been stationed all across the region – Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Laos – serving as consul at various British diplomatic missions. For the first fifteen years of his life Guy had gone about in shorts and sandals, often shirtless, baking his skin to the colour of mahogany in the sun. If asked, he would have told you he was English, but he had never actually been to England, not until his first term at Scarsworth Hall. He had never before experienced chilly grey skies, drizzle, breezes that nipped and pinched, a sun so pallid you could almost look directly at it even at noon.

  His mother was a hundred miles away, in London.

  His father was even further away, forever beyond reach.

  It was hell.

  Guy drew the covers over his head and sobbed.

  Springs creaked. Someone had sat down on the bed beside his legs. Guy snapped the covers back and emerged snarling.

  “Fuck off!” he cried. “Whoever you are, just fuck the fuck off!”

  “Hey,” said a low, calm voice. “One: whisper. Don’t want a prefect to come in, do you? That’d be extra fagging duties for sure. Two: I’m not here to give you any grief. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m not okay,” said Guy, whispering. “Of course I’m not bloody okay.”

  “I heard them grab you. Who was it?”

  “I don’t know all their names. One of them’s called Mayflower, I think. The others are Bartlett and – is it Thomas? They’re all in the lower sixth.”

  “Thompson. Those three. Thought so. Utter wankers, the lot of them.”

  “Who are you?” said Guy. The figure at the end of the bed was a dim grey silhouette. He could make out curly hair, narrow shoulders, striped pyjamas, that was all. “Is that you, Milward?”

  “Yes, choccie.”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not black.”

  “You look black.”

  “I’ve a dark complexion and a tan, although it’s starting to fade.”

  “But you’re foreign.”

  “No.”

  “You live abroad, that’s what I heard.”

  “Used to. Not any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay. Only asking. Why have Mayflower and chums got it in for you?”

  “How should I know? I haven’t done anything to piss them off, not that I know of. I’m new, I suppose. And brown.”

  “Doesn’t take much, does it? For a bully to hate you.”

  “Apparently not.”

  From the far end of the dormitory someone hissed, “Keep it down, you pair of homos. Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  Milward lowered his voice further, leaning conspiratorially close to Guy. “Listen, Lucas. Those three bastards had it in for me too. Made my life a misery all last year. In a way, I’m glad they’re picking on you now. Takes the pressure off me. But I still haven’t forgiven them, or forgotten. How do you fancy getting your own back? Giving them a taste of their own medicine?”

  Pain pulsed up from Guy’s bad hand. He caught a vague excremental whiff from his hair.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. What do you suggest? Report them to the Head?”

  “Christ, no. At best, old Haemorrhoid Hemingway will give them a stern talking-to, maybe a detention, and then they’ll come after you in revenge and you’ll be even deeper in the shit. I’m talking about something cool. Something we’ll never get caught for and they’ll never see coming. You in?”

  Guy hesitated. He didn’t really know this Milward fellow at all. They were in the same year, but different academic streams, so they shared no classes together. Could he trust him? Was this some kind of trick?

  Then again, what did he have to lose? Milward appeared to be offering him the hand of friendship. Rude to refuse. More than anything, Guy needed a friend.

  “Yeah, all right. I’m in.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Milward. “Meet me at the clock tower during short break.” And he stole back to his bed like a wraith.

  AFTER A PAINFULLY protracted double maths lesson, Guy made their rendezvous. Milward said nothing, just beckoned him to follow. He led Guy across the playing fields to the cricket pavilion. The door was kept locked and only the groundsman had the key, but Milward levered up the shutter covering the opening the scorekeepers looked out from. The gap was just large enough for a slender boy to slither through.

  Inside, there was gloom and the smells of dust, leather and linseed oil. Stumps and bats lay about in untidy piles, awaiting summer, along with the stacks of rectangular plates with numbers on for tallying runs and overs on the scoreboard.

  Milward bent and rummaged under a heap of leg pads, uncovering a small tin box hidden there. From the box he produced candles, a book of matches, some chalk and a carton of Saxo salt.

  “What is all this?” Guy asked. “What are we doing here?”

  “Over the holidays I did some reading,” said Milward. “Research, you could call it. Tell me, Lucas, do you believe in God?”

  “I suppose.” Guy’s mother kept saying that his father was with God now, and in the arms of the Lord, so he didn’t want to not believe in the Almighty. It would imply that his father’s soul did not live on; that there was no such place as Heaven. He couldn’t be so disloyal – either to his mother or to the memory of his father. “There must be a God, mustn’t there? Millions of Christians can’t be wrong.”

  “Ever pray to Him?”

  “Not really.”

  “Me either, not any more. It doesn’t work. Last year I asked Him time and time again to get Mayflower and Co. off my back. Almost e
very day I’d go down on my knees and say, ‘Please, God, do something about them.’ He just bloody ignored me. So I decided to ask the other fellow instead.”

  “The other...? Who do you mean?”

  Milward rolled his eyes. “What sort of education did they give you in bongo-bongo land, Lucas?”

  “I went to some pretty decent international schools,” said Guy defensively. “And I had tutors.”

  “I don’t care. I was just being rude.”

  “Oh.”

  “You must know who I’m referring to. The other fellow. God’s opposite number. The chap down below.”

  “The Devil?”

  “Light dawns. Yes, the Devil. A.k.a. Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Prince of Lies, Lord of the Flies, and a lot of other names besides. I begged him to deliver me from my oppressors, and guess what? He did. He sent me you. You turned up at the start of this term, and all of a sudden Mayflower and his cronies had a new target. I was free.”

  “Well, great. That’s nice. Glad to be of service.”

  “And now I want to do the same for you. I know how it feels having those bastards gunning for you all the time. You’re always on your guard, never knowing what they’re going to do next. And I warn you, it’s only going to get worse. Last year, Mayflower cornered me in the showers. It was only me and him there. I swear, I thought he was going to try to bugger me. He had this look about him, like he wanted to, and he was talking about how he was going to duff me up and he was getting a stiffy as he did so. I just barged past him, all covered in soap and shampoo. Didn’t rinse off or anything, just grabbed my towel and scarpered. Do you want that to happen to you? Do you want Mayflower sticking his cock up your arse?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So we have to stop him.” Milward lit one of the candles, dripped melted wax onto the floor, and planted the candle in the spatter of wax so that it stood upright. “And this is how we’ll do it.”

  “You’re – you’re going to perform some kind of ritual?”

  “Durrh, what does it look like? Yes, I’m going to perform some kind of ritual. It’s called a black mass. Now, you light the rest of these. I’m going to draw the pentagram.”

  Guy stood with the candles and matchbook in his hands, numb, uncertain. He couldn’t help but feel that this was profoundly wrong. He didn’t know much about Devil worship but he knew that it was something you ought not get involved with. It was tampering with sinister, dangerous forces. It was going against God. It was blasphemy.

  “Umm, I’ve got a history lesson to go to.” He realised, even as he said it, how banal it sounded, how pathetic. He carried on anyway. “With Poxy Cox. You know how cross Poxy gets if you walk in late. He made me copy out a whole page of the Encyclopedia Britannica the last time.”

  “You won’t be late if you stop dithering,” said Milward. “We can have this finished in five minutes. Light the fucking candles, would you?”

  Guy wasn’t sure why he stayed put, why he complied. He wanted to leave. But instead he struck a match and applied it to the wick of a candle. It seemed easier to go along with Milward’s demands than continue remonstrating. He told himself that this was just a game. This wasn’t a real black mass. This was just two teenagers messing about in a school cricket pavilion, playing at Devil worship. Nothing would come of it, good or bad.

  Milward completed the pentagram – a five-pointed star inside a circle. He positioned a lit candle at each of the star’s points. Then he poured the salt out in a broader concentric circle, surrounding himself and Guy.

  “Do not, whatever you do, step outside the salt circle,” he said. “Not until the ritual is over. It’s a protective barrier.”

  “What happens if I do?”

  Milward gave him a look as if to say, Do you really need me to spell it out?

  Guy felt a chill. All at once he was conscious of how many shadows hung inside the pavilion, how thick those shadows were, how dark it was in here, how silent. Cobwebs lifted and fell, blown by subtle draughts, wafting like phantoms. The daylight he could see through various chinks seemed impossibly dim and distant.

  “I really don’t like this.”

  “Tough. Too late to back out now. I repeat: do you want Mayflower sticking his cock up your arse? No? Then show some balls.”

  Milward grabbed Guy’s hand. He was holding a penknife. Guy hadn’t seen him draw it. He sliced the blade across Guy’s fingertip. Guy yelped in shock and outrage. Milward flipped his hand over and squeezed drops of blood out onto the pentagram. At the same time he said, “Satan, dark one, ruler of Hell, fallen angel, punisher of the wicked, we come to thee in supplication, thy humble servants Frederick Milward and Guy Lucas. We come to thee craving that you will visit just retribution upon Daniel Mayflower, Jeremy Bartlett and Angus Thompson, all of whom are unworthy wretches who – who have abused us cruelly and – and been really shitty towards us.”

  To Guy’s ears these words didn’t sound like a formal invocation, more like something Milward was making up as he went along. That comforted him somewhat. It gave the ‘black mass’ an amateurish feel, suggesting the whole thing might not be valid. Strict protocols were not being observed. Milward was not calling on Satan properly, therefore Guy had nothing to worry about.

  He clung to this hope as Milward continued: “Grant us this boon and we shall be forever in thy debt, o great one. We commit ourselves to thee, Satan, Eternal Adversary, bequeathing you all that we have and promising to respect and venerate you for as long as we shall live and beyond. Show us a sign, Satan, that you have heard us and acknowledge our request. Prove that you are listening.”

  At that moment, a strong gust of wind struck the side of the pavilion. The thin wooden walls rattled and shook. All the candles were snuffed out simultaneously.

  Guy’s scrotum stayed scrunched up with fear for a good hour afterwards.

  DAYS PASSED, AND Guy alternated between dread and despair. What had he done? He had damned himself, surely. Willingly or not, he had struck a bargain with the Devil, sealing it with his own blood, and the Devil collected on pacts like those in one form of currency only – your immortal soul.

  At chapel each evening, as the school chaplain led the prayers, Guy desperately tried to recant. While everyone else intoned the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, he sent up his own silent imprecation to the heavens, begging to be pardoned, to be redeemed. He had erred and strayed. He had trespassed. Have mercy on him, Lord. It had been a mistake, a terrible lapse of judgement. Please don’t let him pay the full, awful penalty for it.

  The bullying continued, with Mayflower as prime instigator. A snide word here, a surprise kick up the backside there, the occasional ugly prank like a fish head in Guy’s bed or a dog shit in his tuck box. This in itself was perversely, ironically reassuring. As long as Guy continued to suffer, it meant Satan was holding off. The bargain was not being fulfilled.

  But it was only a matter of time, he feared. Only a matter of time before something dire happened to Mayflower, Bartlett and Thompson, and he would then have to face the consequences.

  He avoided Milward as much as possible. Milward had suckered him into participating in the ritual, against his will. Milward had abused his trust. Milward could go fuck himself.

  HALF-TERM EXEAT ARRIVED, and a London-bound hire coach ferried Guy and a couple of dozen other boys down to the capital. Home for Guy was a mews house in Chelsea, just off the King’s Road at World’s End. It was quite a comedown from the consular residences he had been used to, those colonial clapboard mansions with verandahs and louvre blinds, ceiling fans and servants. The mews house had a small bricked-in back yard, rather than an expansive garden filled with ferns and lotus bushes where exotic birds hooted and snakes roamed. The hot water tank groaned like a sleeper trapped in a nightmare, and the other taller buildings crowding all around meant the windows let in precious little direct daylight.

  It was lunchtime when Guy walked in through the front door, and hi
s mother was already drunk. She sat in an armchair with the morning’s Daily Telegraph on her lap and an empty tumbler in her hand. She was overjoyed to see him. She tried unsteadily to get up, and he gently pushed her back down into her seat. She wouldn’t have made it.

  He knelt and let her kiss his forehead. She smelled of gin and Guerlain. Her contour-cut hairstyle was looking a little ragged today. He brushed a stray ringlet away from her eye.

  “My boy,” she slurred. “My little Guy. You look so pale. How’s school?”

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell her the truth. Her heart, so harshly broken by her husband’s death, could only handle so much.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I’m settling in.”

  “Bad business in Vietnam.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the newspaper. “President Johnson’s sending yet more troops in, as if that’s going to solve anything.”

  “Mum, you shouldn’t read those bits in the paper. You know they upset you.”

  “And that’s not all,” she continued. “I heard the other day from Margery Crisp. You know, married to the assistant attaché at the Bangkok embassy. Remember her? With the huge wart on her upper lip? She said in a letter that there’s been some awfulness up in a place called My Lai. An entire village wiped out by US soldiers for supposedly harbouring Viet Cong fighters. Hundreds dead, including women and children. Happened last spring and the Yanks are denying it, but the rumour mill is grinding.”

  “It’s not our concern. We don’t live there any more.”

  “Your father was right. Maurice, bless him, he was absolutely right. The whole of Indochina is going to go up in flames, I can just see it. American boots on the ground. How long ’til the Russians are there too? A flashpoint waiting to happen. It could start there, like it nearly did in Cuba. The war to end all wars. The war to end everything.”