Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  The ground sloped upwards and became tussocky and uneven. He stumbled once or twice, but his captors supported him, keeping him upright. An owl hooted. A fox howled.

  And then Guy heard something else. Faint. Distant. A rising and falling sound, somewhat like the drone of bees.

  It grew closer, clearer, and he realised it was voices.

  Voices chanting.

  In English?

  No, another tongue. Latin, if he didn’t miss his guess. It wasn’t so much the individual words as the shapes of them, familiar to him from his Classics lessons at Scarsworth Hall. All the –um and –us endings. The internal rhythms.

  Men and women, intoning in a dead language.

  Guy was suddenly very afraid. Far more afraid than at any other time during his ordeal so far. The fear went deep, beyond the terror of pain and suffering, down to a more visceral level, a spiritual level even.

  Someone whisked the sack off his head.

  For all that it was dark, he was dazzled. The moon was full, bright and high, and to his unadapted eyes it blazed like the sun. Squinting, he caught glimpses of the scene it illuminated, silvery impressions.

  The skeletal remains of a chapel. Roofless. Broken rafters reaching to the sky. Tumbledown walls. The hollow arches where windows had once stood.

  Within the chapel, people. Perhaps twenty of them. All clad in identical, ankle-length robes. Faces hidden inside hoods.

  Candles by the dozen, black ones, flickering. A brazier throwing up flames and spirals of ember.

  An altar. The chapel’s original altar. Covered in a black cloth.

  On the cloth, arcane symbols. Principally, a pentagram inside a circle.

  Behind the altar, a huge crucifix, inverted.

  In front of the crucifix, a man. Robed and hooded like the others. In his hand, a dagger.

  Guy looked to his left and right. The men holding him were robed and hooded too. Moonlight etched a feature here and there – the tip of a nose, a grimly smiling mouth.

  He tried to wrench his arms out of their grasp, intending to run, but they gripped him all the more tightly. They forced him onward across the grass, covering the final hundred yards to the chapel. Guy writhed. Guy yelled. To no avail.

  His protests drew the attention of the people inside the ruined chapel. They broke off from their chanting and fell expectantly silent.

  Guy was dragged through the entrance where stout oak doors would once have hung. He was beside himself with terror. He could hear himself trying to plead with the men holding him. He could hear how his own sentences made no sense. They were more or less gibberish.

  The celebrants bowed as Guy passed. Their hands were folded inside their sleeves, monk-fashion. They were eerily reverent.

  He was weak-kneed by the time he reached the altar. His heart was thundering.

  He knew what this was.

  Oh, God. He knew only too well, from his researches, his reading.

  It was what Clive Milward had attempted so cackhandedly at school. But here, it was being performed by people who were clearly experienced and well versed in the lore.

  A black mass.

  GUY WAS MADE to kneel before the altar, although in truth he all but collapsed when the men escorting him pushed him down. They ripped his shirt open, baring his chest to the midnight air.

  On the other side of the altar, the high priest, officiator, whatever he was, raised the dagger in both hands.

  An athame. The word surfaced amid the panicked welter of Guy’s thoughts. A ceremonial knife for a Satanic ritual is called an athame.

  The high priest began to recite Latin phrases, which the other celebrants duly echoed.

  “In nomine Dei nostril Satanas Luciferi Excelsis... Introibo ad altare Domine Inferi...”

  He continued with this profane desecration of the Catholic mass in a nasal, singsong voice, not unlike a vicar leading the catechism. He concluded with a cry of “Ave Satanas! Rege Satanas!”

  The rest picked up the imprecation, repeating it at increasing volume, lauding Satan all the way up to the dark heavens.

  “Ave Satanas! Rege Satanas! Ave Satanas! Rege Satanas!”

  They proclaimed their blasphemy joyously until Guy was almost deafened.

  “Ave Satanas! Rege Satanas!”

  Then, at a gesture from the priest, silence reigned again.

  “Please,” Guy murmured. “Please don’t do this. It’s not right. I don’t want to be here. I’ve tried to be good all my life. This isn’t me. This isn’t fair.”

  To his left, a nickering sound. Another celebrant appeared from what had once been the north transept, dragging a billy goat on a rope. The goat peered around, perturbed, but far from alarmed. It bleated again as it was brought up to the altar.

  The priest handed over the athame to the celebrant with the goat.

  Guy could only watch, mesmerised, numb.

  “To you, Satan,” the priest said, “we offer this sacrifice of one who bears your likeness. With its death, we pledge ourselves once more to you and ask you to welcome to your bosom a new member of our unholy congregation, this young man, Guy. We offer him unto you as a future loyal servant, sealing the profane compact between you and him with the blood of the beast you have claimed as your own.”

  The priest gave a nod, and the celebrant with the knife bent and put the blade to the goat’s throat. Gripping its horns with his other hand, he drew the athame swiftly from left to right. The goat bucked and writhed. Skin parted. Blood came out, first a trickle, then a tumbling, spattering flood. The goat shuddered, its legs buckling, its bowels loosening. Its eyes, with their curious rectangular pupils, seemed to go blank, and its tongue lolled from the side of its mouth.

  Then it was just a dumb, limp carcass. The celebrant lowered the goat’s body to the flagstone floor and passed the dripping athame back to the priest.

  The priest came round the altar, holding the knife carefully as though it and the blood on it were immeasurably precious. He approached Guy, who strained away from him in a paroxysm of horror.

  “No,” Guy gasped. “No, I won’t. You hear me? I won’t. I am not Satan’s servant. I don’t belong to him. You can’t make me.”

  “Whether you like it or not, Satan wants you,” said the priest. “There’s nothing to be gained by resisting. Accept your destiny. You are meant to be his thrall. Ave Satanas. Rege Satanas.”

  “No.”

  “Say the words. Say them!”

  “No!”

  The tip of the athame hovered at Guy’s exposed chest. A drop of the goat’s blood splashed onto his breastbone and dribbled down his sternum. It was still warm. Guy let out an involuntary shriek of revulsion.

  The priest sprinkled more of the blood onto his skin. Then, with a fingertip, he drew an inverted pentagram onto Guy’s chest, using the blood as paint.

  “Ave Satanas. Rege Satanas,” he said. “Acknowledge the Dark One as your true lord and master for evermore. Step onto the left-hand path. Allow him into your life, give him your heart and soul, and you shall be rewarded with all the many blessings and bounties that are his to bestow.”

  “No... I don’t want...”

  “Don’t fight it, Guy. Just repeat after me: Ave Satanas. Rege Satanas. That’s all. Then it’ll be over.”

  Guy’s resolve was weakening. He could feel the blood congealing on his chest, tightening his skin as it dried. Maybe it would be best to do as the priest said. Admit defeat. Bow to the inevitable. Satan had been pursuing him for nearly a decade, flirting with him, trying to ensnare him. Or perhaps it was the other way round. Unwittingly, Guy had been chasing Satan. Milward’s black mass. The Ouija session with Molly. Koh Maan. All along, Guy had been looking for the Devil as much as the Devil had been looking for him. He just hadn’t realised it at the time. Why would Satan have singled him out, of all people, if it wasn’t what Guy secretly desired? Satan must know what was going on deep in his heart. They were drawn to each other; they kept meeting; they were even rela
ted now, after a fashion, by marriage. Now, at last, was the moment of consummation. Why not, like a lover, submit?

  “Where is he, then?” Guy said feebly. “Tell him to show himself. He must be here. If I’m going to pledge myself to him, I want to look him in the eye.”

  The priest reared back slightly, visibly flummoxed.

  “We know each other,” Guy went on. “Might as well do this in the open, face to face.”

  The priest darted a look across the chapel. Guy had his first clear sight of the man’s face. It was oddly familiar. Those arched eyebrows. That neatly trimmed goatee. He was certain he knew this person, had seen him somewhere, and not that long ago either. A younger version. On television?

  Something was wrong. All at once, things weren’t adding up. The priest’s hesitation. His vaguely recognisable features.

  “Hang on a second,” Guy said, bemused. “You’re... him. From a film I saw.”

  The priest bowed his head, trying to hide himself in the shadows of his hood, but it was too late. A guilty flicker in his eyes said he knew the game was up.

  “A Hammer film. An old one. You were the baddie. BBC2 showed it the other day. You were... you were doing something like this.”

  Guy couldn’t put a name to the face, but the man was a character actor, not terribly famous but remembered for a couple of suave-villain roles in the ’sixties. In the Hammer film, he had played a dissolute Edwardian aristocrat who used dark forces to seduce young virgins and steal their life essence in order to keep himself youthful and virile. He was eventually defeated by Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, one or other of them, or possibly both, and his body withered and rotted away to dust while his soul went howling down to the deepest pit of damnation.

  “Does this mean you’re... really...?”

  No. That didn’t make sense. The actor wasn’t a genuine Satanist. The more plausible explanation was that he was just an actor and this was a part.

  Therefore...

  Applause sounded from a corner of the chapel: a pair of hands clapping.

  “Enough, ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice – one which Guy had no difficulty whatsoever identifying. “We have been, as they say, rumbled. Our excellent, if rather elaborate, imposture is at an end.”

  One of the celebrants had stepped forward from the ranks. He lowered his hood, revealing the handsome, sleek and oh-so-self-satisfied head of Alastor Wylie.

  Wylie smiled at Guy with all the lofty delight he could muster, which was a lot.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t twig sooner, to be honest,” he said. “Didn’t this all seem remarkably stagey to you? Contrived? No? I would have thought an astute, savvy young fellow like yourself would have seen through it in no time. This sort of thing never happens in real life, does it? Only in fictions. Or perhaps you believe it does, and that is why you were so readily taken in.”

  Guy could only gape. A part of him was wishing he could come up with some snappy riposte. Most of him, though, was too stunned to do anything cogent or clever.

  “You’ve all performed admirably, my friends,” Wylie said to the other celebrants, who were adopting relaxed, casual postures, their work done. “I appreciate your efforts. We’ve had some fun tonight, have we not?”

  There were murmurs of assent and a ripple of self-congratulatory laughter.

  “And you,” Wylie said, addressing the ersatz priest. “A fine piece of thespianism. You still have what it takes, whatever anyone else might say. I will, as agreed, put in a word for you with a certain TV director-general of my acquaintance. Your career is far from at an end. And you.” This to the celebrant who had slit the goat’s neck. “I very much appreciate you bringing your agricultural expertise to the proceedings, and surrendering an item of your own livestock as well.”

  “Pleasure,” said the man, posh-sounding but with a touch of a Gloucestershire burr. “You must try and get to the shoots more often, Alastor. We hardly see you these days.”

  “So busy, my dear chap.” Wylie turned to the men who had made Guy their detainee. “And you, gentlemen of the Met. I hope this wasn’t too arduous an exercise.”

  “Not at all, Mr Wylie,” said their spokesman. “Prisoner couldn’t have been any easier to handle. Trust me, we’ve dealt with far worse.”

  “I’ve no doubt you have.” Wylie’s gaze finally alighted on Guy again. “Well, dear boy. I hope you’ve learned your lesson. You’d do well to remember this, next time you contemplate humiliating me in front of my friends. I am not a man to be crossed lightly. Nor am I a man who forgives readily. You have got off relatively unscathed today. Were you not my beloved Beatrice’s son, I might not have been quite as lenient. Test me again, and I definitely will not be.”

  He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a hiss.

  “You seem to have got it into your head that I am some sort of Prince of Darkness,” he said. “I am not. But what I am may be far worse. I am real, I have influence, and my reach is long and powerful. Better men than you have opposed me. Better men than you have lived to regret it.”

  He straightened again.

  “Now go, Guy. Get out of my sight. And do not dare breathe a word of this to your mother. She wouldn’t believe you anyway, and it would only make her think you are more of a fool than she presently does. Go.

  “I said go!”

  Guy scrambled to his feet and ran. He ran out of the ruined chapel, out into the grounds of the stately home which the chapel belonged to, out across greensward and estate, out into the open countryside, fields and woods, racing along with hot tears scoring his cheeks and shame and rage boiling in his chest, beneath stars whose twinkle openly mocked him, beneath the moon’s lambent, scornful laugh.

  1978

  IT COULD HAVE been any south coast seaside town, and it could have been any fish and chip shop, and he could have been any youngish man working behind the counter, serving up battered cod and saveloys, dressed in white apron, checked trousers and embarrassing paper hat. It was an absolutely anonymous job in an absolutely anonymous place, and Guy was more than happy with that.

  The routine was dull and unchanging, reassuringly so. Clock in every morning at eleven. Clean out the fryers. Set the cooking oil to heat up. Scrub the floor and the melamine tabletops. Dig a fresh catering-size bag of chips out of the freezer. Wait for the first customers to amble in. Work until late. Close up. Go home to bed. Repeat ad infinitum.

  His boss was Mr Fernandinho, a Portuguese man who had come over to the UK after the war on a tourist visa and stayed. He was a squat, frog-faced man, bad-tempered but fair. Possibly he had imagined himself doing more with his life than doling out fried food for thirty years in a dilapidated English resort town that only came to life – and then just barely – during the summer months. But, if he felt he was a failure, he was philosophical about it, and when he was sharp with Guy he usually apologised soon after. Guy was a hard worker, conscientious and reliable, and there were far too few of his type around, so Mr Fernandinho couldn’t afford to alienate him.

  For Guy, it was all about the safe monotony of the job and the pleasure of never having to think. He lived in a first-floor bedsit a few streets inland from the promenade, and he had bought himself a portable colour telly and a kettle, and there was a second-hand bookshop close by, and this meant he had all that he needed. No one bothered him. No one much cared who he had been or where he had come from. To his neighbours, he was just a drifter who had breezed in last autumn, found himself lodging and employment, and wanted to be left alone.

  He had lived in the town for over a year, and it was beginning to seem that he might remain permanently – a victim of inertia like Mr Fernandinho, an accidental fixture, someone who had, in every sense, settled.

  Then Petra the Punk walked into his life.

  Strictly speaking, she walked into his workplace.

  It was an October evening, midweek, blustery out, a very slow night clientele-wise. The only other customers on the premises were an elderly cou
ple – Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot, or Armstrong, something like that – who dined out at the chip shop once a week and always ordered the same, him haddock with mushy peas, her scampi and about a pint of vinegar on her chips. Both of them winced in disapproval when a girl with glue-spiked hair, Siouxsie Sioux eyeliner, bondage trousers and cherry-red Doc Martens clumped in through the door. News of the punk movement had reached even this bygone backwater, but an actual fully-fledged fan of the music was a rarity. It was a quiet town that didn’t go in much for that sort of thing. The locals would probably have been less shocked by the sight of a Zulu tribesman in full war paint and battle regalia marching down the high street, brandishing his shield and assegai.

  The punk girl sidled up to the counter and plonked her elbows on it. Her hands were sheathed in fingerless lace gloves. Metal studs rimmed one ear. The obligatory safety pin speared her nose. She wasn’t tall, but she held herself as though she was, rising on her heels, her head and neck posturally correct. Guy was expecting her to affect an angry nasal drawl, just like Johnny Rotten, and was surprised when the voice that came out of her sounded polite and, well, normal.

  “Large chips, please.”

  Instantly – and he couldn’t for the life of himself tell why – he was smitten. With those three very mundane words, the punk girl somehow endeared herself to him and stirred the dormant ashes in his heart, kindling a glow.

  “Er, yeah. Sure. Coming up.” He poured a scoopful of chips onto a Styrofoam tray, and added a second scoopful. It was a bigger helping than Mr Fernandinho formally prescribed as “large,” but as he wasn’t present at that moment, it didn’t matter. Guy bunged in a wooden chip fork and a sachet of tomato ketchup, then asked her about salt and vinegar.

  “Nah,” she said. “I like them au naturel.”

  “A chip purist,” he said, parcelling the portion up in newspaper.

  “You what?”