by Peter Laws
He pulled his hand slowly, delicately, out of the sofa’s mouth and seemed to grit his teeth with every movement. It could easily slip out of his sweaty fingers again. But then, peeling through the brown grimy fabric lips of the sofa, came the birth of something plastic and black. She spotted the word Nokia at the top and that’s when her knees have way a little and she had to steady herself against the worktop.
‘Oh, Ray.’
‘You’ve got the charger, haven’t you, petal?’
She nodded and smeared away the tears with the palms of her hand. She snatched the phone and raced back to the hallway. The charger sat neatly on the telephone table, next to the perfectly good landline that Nicola seemed incapable of calling her on to say, Hey Mum. I need you. I’m contemplating the last ever slit of my life.
She rushed into the kitchen, charger in hand and scrambled across the Krispie-covered floor. She slammed the plug so hard and fast into the wall it made the socket spark. She held the connecting end towards the phone.
‘Which hole does it go into? Which one?’ she said, panicked, as though this was some rotten game where the phone might simply vanish in her hands if she wasn’t quick enough.
Ray crunched over and took it from her, ‘Just breathe, okay, love?’
‘Don’t you bloody drop it,’ she said.
‘I’m not going to drop it.’ He plugged it in. Switched it on.
They waited in the quiet and he put his arm around her as they watched the little lights start. She knew that it was perfectly possible that the phone would have no messages on it at all, and that the front door might suddenly swing open and Nicola’s skinny frame would just drift in on the wind like normal.
But somehow they both knew. Sometimes, these things are suddenly obviously. There was a pressure in the air that said that this wouldn’t be fruitless at all.
She jumped in fright as the sing-song Nokia tone echoed in the kitchen. They both stared at the screen. She stiffened against him.
‘It’ll take a minute to collect the messages,’ he said. ‘Just wait.’
As soon as he said that, the phone chimed.
1 new text message.
She had to pull it close to her face and she read the words slowly, chapped lips mouthing each sound and syllable. Her eyes started to blink, three, four times. She took a shallow breath that quivered in her mouth and then she read it again. Her eyes suddenly bulged.
The phone dropped from her hands, yanking the power cord tight until it swung inches from the floor. Janet fell with it.
‘… No … No … No!’ With each no her voice became a deep wobbling moan as if her throat was suddenly flooding with liquid. ‘I’ve killed her.’
Ray grabbed the phone.
‘I’ve killed her. I’ve killed her.’
‘What are you on about?’ He turned the screen to him.
Mum. I jst wnted to let u knw tht I luv u, but I’m going to be with God now. 1 day, I hope u might believe and cm 2. Verecundus Xx Nicola
His mouth fell open a little. Very slowly he set the phone gently on the side and looked at Janet. She saw his face and could tell he didn’t want to look at her. Not like this.
She was hunched over herself, saying ‘going to be with God … going to be with God …’ If he touched her, she wondered if she might die right there on the kitchen floor. He bit his lip instead, like he did when they watched the gory parts of those animal documentaries she loved so much. They’re educational, she always said.
‘Killed her,’ she said. Not crying. Instead she was just scratching her arms over and over with her perfect nails. One of them snapped. She was scratching fast and hard, so that long red streaks pushed themselves deep into the surface of her skin, while somewhere in the street outside, kids were laughing.
CHAPTER TEN
Wren’s boss Mason had always been an epic talker, even more so since he thought each day might be the only one left. But now she’d finally got off the phone to him she told Matt that he’d given her a long list of supposed ‘contract winning’ advice. The most ridiculous and offensive? ‘Whatever you do, do not flirt to get the job, Wren. These are Christian folk.’
Now she was free they all walked in the forest together. Twigs and branches snapped under their feet as Amelia went up ahead, picking up leaves and tearing them into tiny pieces. She kept flinging them over her shoulder. Matt used to do the exact same ritual when he was a kid. Lucy was wandering behind them, earbuds jammed in, eyes to the floor.
‘So, you’re sure it’s the same Chris Kelly?’ Wren said.
‘Oh, it’s him.’ Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out one of Seth’s glossy leaflets.
She took it from him. A picture of the church was on the front with a huge arrow pointing from it to the glowing heavens. And in bold white letters: Kingdom Come Church, This way to THE way!
‘Wow that’s corny.’ Wren laughed and opened it up. It said Meet Pastor Chris under a picture of a trendy-looking guy in his early forties with a dog collar, batting his come-to-church eyes. His expression was pitched somewhere between cool-serious and open-friendly, head on a pre-rehearsed tilt so that three strands of black fringe hung over, just so. He was sitting on the church steps with one elbow propped on one knee. A black leather Bible casually hung from his hand. ‘Looks like an album shot, a catalogue man. I bet there’s another one where he’s looking at his watch and pointing in the distance.’
‘Probably.’ Matt folded the paper and slipped it back into his jeans. ‘I met him in my first year of Bible college. I was nineteen but I reckon he was twenty-seven or so.’
‘He was a student?’
‘Yeah. Almost all of us lived on-site, but he used to travel home to Hemel Hempstead every night on the bus, because he had a wife and son. Anyway, we were on the same ordination course together.’
Wren gave her usual astonished smile, looking at him as though he was some sort of farmyard exhibit. ‘Ah, the righteous years. I wish I could have known you back then.’
‘Oh, you’d have hated me.’ He stretched his fingers out and started to count them off. ‘Firstly, I’d have said you shouldn’t drink from a pint glass. That you did too much yoga. I’d have made you stop buying that More magazine you used to like.’
She held her hand to her mouth in mock despair. ‘No more position of the month?’
‘No more position of the century! I’d have gotten twitchy about your hair colour … I’d have found a verse to back that up. Oh, and I would have definitely insisted you destroy all your Eminem CDs. Our first date would have been tossing them on a big old righteous bonfire while we listened to Matt Redman.’
‘Who?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So you’re saying that you were a tool, basically?’
‘We were all like that, when we started that course. Obsessed with the Church. Suspicious of the world. But Chris Kelly took it to another level. I mean, nobody liked him. He was loud, obnoxious. He’d bring his guitar into the common room and play really old stuff like Pet Shop Boys songs, but with Christian lyrics. West End Girls became,’ Matt paused to remember, then let out a sudden burst of manic laughter as it came to him, ‘Best Friend God. That was it. Best. Friend. God. Da-dum da-dum.’
She was laughing.
‘And he’d stick his foot up on the coffee table like he was playing Wembley.’ Matt reached down and grabbed a long stick. Demonstrated on a log. ‘But the other guys on the course used to roll their eyes whenever he walked in the room. And they’d actually cheer whenever he left.’
‘How Christ-like.’
‘I know. It got me angry, the way they treated him. I mean, he was annoying but I felt bad the way everybody ignored him. So I figured I’d get to know him a bit. I started sitting next to him at lunch. Walked with him to lectures. I was a first year, he was in second, but we still shared certain modules together. I obviously ticked the others off because they kept glaring at me. Like my interest was encouraging him to exist.’
She reached for his hand as they walked and smiled softly at him.
‘I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. I mean, Wren, he sat with me everywhere for the whole first term. Lectures, the bus, the pub. Without fail for the first three months of my course. And he’d just talk and talk. He had all these weird ideas for sermons and impossibly long jokes that weren’t even funny. My jaw used to literally ache from all the fake smiling.’ He gave her the cheesiest grin he could muster. It quickly faded. ‘But after a while we started having disagreements. We’d argue.’
‘About?’
‘Theology. It was always that. The more time he spent at college the more fundamental he got. Whereas I was getting more liberal as the term went on. Or wet, as he’d say. He got obsessed with hell. It seemed to colour everything for him.’ Matt slowed to a stop. ‘But there was this icy day. December. I remember because there were decorations up. Chris turned up late for college looking really, I don’t know … downbeat. And you have to appreciate, Chris Kelly didn’t even have a down gear. I went for a pint that night and of course he wandered in. But he didn’t sit with me. He sat on his own at the bar, which was unheard of. Just kept sloshing back the pints when his limit had always been one lager shandy.’
‘Let’s sit.’ Wren nodded to a huge tree trunk, resting on its side. She shouted at the girls. ‘You two … we’re parking.’
‘I got worried about him and thought something must have happened so I went over. But he …’ Matt tossed his stick into the wood. The girls went to grab it so they could swordfight. ‘He freaked out. He told me I was on dangerous ground. That my beliefs weren’t sound any more. And then he just started sobbing. Saying I was the only guy at college to give him the time of day and that he couldn’t handle how the only friend he had was going to hell. And he kept pointing at me. The lake of fire, the eternal worm. All of it. He even dropped to his knees and pulled at my jacket. Told me to come back to God and tried to pray for me right there in the pub. Everyone was watching. The locals were pissing themselves laughing.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I pushed him off. Told him to calm down and he just stood up and cried and told us all that life was short. That hell was real. That we never know when death is coming for us. And then he just sort of ran out.’
Wren blew a breath across her lips. ‘Wow. Me and him are going to get on like rabies.’
‘It was odd. The week before he was fine, then that day he was just … I don’t know … crushed. I followed him, just in case he tripped in front of a car or something. And it was snowing, I remember. He pretty much slipped the entire way down the hill. Fell into a bush a couple of times. I watched him praying at the bus stop, freaking some old lady out who was just trying to have a smoke.’
Matt looked off into the trees and through the gaps in the trunks he could see faint wisps of snowflakes and the winter street beyond it, Chris rummaging in his pocket for change, the scared old lady pointlessly trying to blend into a bus shelter poster for MacDonald’s milkshakes. The hiss of the bus door opening and the belch of white exhaust smoke as the indicator flashed the snow orange.
‘I remember thinking then that religion can really screw a person up. It was probably the first time I’d admitted it.’ He blinked. ‘Seminal moment, that was.’
Wren shifted towards him. The log creaked.
‘He just stumbled to the back of the bus and climbed up on the back seats. Started looking out through the back window.’ Matt stared off into the wood again. ‘And that’s when he saw me standing in the snow. Waiting for him to see if he was okay. And he gave me this sad little smile, you know? Like he was going somewhere I couldn’t go and that he was really going to miss me. I remember he put his hand on the glass and then he was gone. And I just kept wondering how awkward it was going to be for him when he turned up at college the next day. Plus, I knew the other students were total gits and were bound to grass him up to the principal for getting so drunk.’
‘And was it awkward. When he came in?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Matt said. ‘Because I never saw him again. Nobody did.’
‘Until tonight …’ Wren waited for a moment before speaking. ‘You don’t think that’s why I’m …’
He turned to her, ‘It’s just a coincidence.’
Silence.
‘Like both of your bosses having strokes in a month. Life seems patterned, when it’s just chaotic,’ he reached over and touched her hand. ‘We’re here for your job and that’s it.’
‘’Course we are!’ she said, snapping her gaze from the floor. ‘Come on.’
He paused for a while and watched her walk to the girls, so they could all pick up sticks and snap them against the trees.
‘Chris Kelly,’ he whispered and shook his head. Then he headed over, snapping twigs under his feet to join them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He wandered through the kitchen and opened the back door. A breeze ran through his damp hair and made it feel cold, which was very refreshing to him. He took a long sniff, but when he thought he could smell Nicola Knox’s fluids on the air he cut it short. He knew that her soul was gone. Happy in heaven. But he wondered if the sinful part of people stick around. Like that’s what ghosts are. Like she was deliberately wandering his house, urinating on his floors and bleeding on the door handles. Just so he’d remember her.
He shrugged the smell away and even laughed, because he knew ghosts didn’t exist.
But demons do, he remembered.
It made him pause to pray. ‘Lord, may Nicola be having the time of her life, right now, at your feet. Because that’s where she is. Amen.’ Those last words were said louder, as an announcement to any evil that might be eavesdropping.
He could hear the quiet but unmistakeable sound of the falls, rumbling from the other side of the village, across the hills and streets towards him. Always seeking him out, they were. Always saying hello.
Stephen was leaning against the wooden beam of the porch, arms folded. He had his boots on, and a pair of jeans and a tight white t-shirt, as usual.
‘I’m looking at the clouds,’ Stephen said.
He craned his head up. ‘Sun looks big.’
‘That’s cos it is big, idiot.’
‘Don’t be like that.’
Stephen unfolded his arms and slipped them into his pockets, barely fitting the fingers into his tight jeans. ‘I’ve been listening to the falls.’
‘Oh? And what are they saying?’
‘They’re saying that God’s hungry again. That he wants another.’
‘You make it sound like he’s a monster.’
‘Isn’t he? Sometimes?’
‘No!’ He shook his head fast and a few drops sprang against each side of the door frame. It made him feel like a dog.
Stephen held a calming hand up. ‘I just think he might be calling you again.’
The breeze returned, freezing his wet hair, making the trees around his house make a pleasant shhhhhh sound.
He stepped out from the doorway, down the steps and leant against the opposite pillar to Stephen. ‘I do find it scary, you know,’ he said. ‘Doing it.’
‘I know you do.’
‘I’m not as brave as you are.’
‘Oh, I know that.’
‘But I’ll keep going. If that’s what he wants. I’ll take up my cross.’
‘That’s exactly what he wants. You know it is.’
They listened to the hiss of the trees for a long time.
He finally turned to Stephen. ‘I saw a pig this morning stumbling in the field. I’m pretty sure it’s dying.’
‘That’s a shame. I kind of like pigs.’
‘Yeah, me too. That pig reminded me that life is short.’
Stephen smiled. ‘Yes, it is. Very short.’
They stood for a few minutes more. There was no pressure to speak or to fill in the gaps.
‘I can hold my breath for over one minute now, you know?’
&
nbsp; Stephen joined with the trees, clapping his hands together. But his was a slow, laboured applause. ‘One minute? I could beat that.’
His eyes fell a little and he felt the sudden urge to scratch his balls. He never realised being shaved down there would be so itchy. But Stephen was watching so he didn’t dare do it.
‘I’m going inside,’ he said. ‘You coming?’
Stephen shook his head. ‘Nah. Not yet. I like it out here. Good air.’
‘Suit yourself.’
‘You did get her teeth out? Didn’t you?’
‘The golden ones?’
‘Obviously.’
‘They’re both in my room.’
‘Right. You should bury them or something. Throw them in the lake. Just get them out of the house, at least.’
He looked down at the floor and nodded. ‘When my hair’s dry.’
‘What? Your hair’s never dry. You’re always washing it.’
For some reason he felt himself shrink at that.
‘Just don’t forget,’ Stephen said, shaking his head. ‘Get rid of them.’
‘Okay.’ He sighed and went inside and read a psalm while the kettle boiled, scrubbing his head with a tea towel. Then he sank into the couch, coffee in hand and flicked the channels of the TV. Seeing if he could make it through a whole advert break without catching his breath.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kingdom Come Church was a colossal old gargoyle crouching on the top of the hill. Its centuries-old spire crumbled at the edges, threatening to topple over at any point and spike someone in the heart. Its stained-glass eyes, dirty and dull, glared over the iron railings and down the swooping fields to the forest-filled valley below.
‘I don’t get it.’ Wren leant her head out of the car window as they approached, hair quivering in the breeze. ‘Why would anyone build a church way up here? It’s two miles out of town. Don’t tell me they had a decent bus route in the 1700s.’