Purged

by Peter Laws

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  When they converted the Bethesda Healing Centre, Chris Kelly oversaw the whole project. Not the nuts and bolts building stuff; he wouldn’t have the first clue on all that. But the important part – the vision for the centre. The idea of how it would be spiritually fuelled. So he specifically requested that as many windows as possible could see the waterfall. It was the water that he wanted to see. He knew it wasn’t weird to want that either, because everyone he’d ever known liked to look at water. Walk along a crowded beach and you’d see families pressing the legs of their deckchairs deep into the sand and anchoring a position so that they could look out. Never back at the shiny promenade, no matter how enticing the arcades and shopfronts.

  Never.

  When it comes to chair layouts by the sea, there are only ever lines and curves. There are no circles or squares. Water is the show and people will pay a surcharge to watch it from their hotel windows, to sleep to its whispering. He knew it wasn’t just because it looks nice, either. Something revelatory is at work in water. Water could cleanse, water could birth. Water could be the living presence of the divine.

  Even in the dark tonight, he could see Cooper’s Force glowing like long curtains fluttering into a big black disc. Churning, constant, unchanging and strong.

  Watching the falls gave him hope. That was why he chose to come here tonight, to kneel at this window, because if Seth’s phone call wasn’t a mistake then he needed the water very much tonight. It helped his doubts. It reminded him that God really was out there, pulling people’s eyes in his direction, that no matter how dark things were about to get, there was always the chance of light.

  ‘Give me the words,’ Chris prayed.

  He stood up from his knees and started to pace the floor of the Healing Centre. He was in the main ground-floor meeting room, with the panoramic glass. Through the doorway, he could see the main entrance, and the window that Matt had smashed the other night. Bless him. He was a silly, confused man, but he was only trying his best. Chris wished Matt was here right now. He could use a friend.

  Earlier he’d pushed most of the chairs to the side, but he kept two in the middle facing each other, for him and Ben to sit on. But that looked a little confrontational, like a job interview, so he pulled a few of them back out again and dotted them around, cafe-style.

  He knew it was trivial and would do little to help, but he scattered some Maltesers in a bowl on a little coffee table because ever since he was a kid Ben liked them more than any other chocolate in the world. They used to lie on their backs, the two of them, when he was little, when Lydia was alive, heads together on the lounge carpet, hovering the little brown balls on the breath from their lips until their giggling broke the flow and they’d try and catch it without choking. Lydia would be drying cups with a tea towel and giggling at them both.

  A million years ago. Old Testament.

  Chris stared at the chocolates in the bowl when he heard the front door clicking open and for a moment he was suddenly, desperately afraid.

  Ben was in the foyer looking around.

  ‘I’m in here, son.’

  ‘Dad?’ Ben pushed the door open. ‘Hey, I got your message. Is everything alright?’

  ‘I’d like to talk, if that’s okay?’

  ‘’Course … hey, I heard about Isabel. Did she jump off?’

  Chris nodded.

  ‘But did she fall in the water?’

  ‘No. She hit the rocks.’

  ‘Oh … that’s a shame isn’t it? That it was the rocks, and not the water …’ He rubbed his eye a little. ‘You look down, Dad.’

  Chris pulled out one of the chairs. It had a slot at the back for Bibles and hymn books, but it was empty right now. ‘Grab a seat.’

  Ben spotted the chocolate. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Go for it.’

  He sat and grabbed one of the little Maltesers and started eating the chocolate off first, leaving a little, light brown ball to crunch on. His usual method. ‘You want one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So, is that why you wanted me to come here? To talk about Isabel?’

  Chris spoke in a tone as gentle as he could make it. ‘Did you know Tabitha Clarke?’

  People smile with their eyes, not their mouths, and the gentle reassuring look that had been on Ben’s face for the past minute never flinched, never changed. But as her name echoed in the air Chris saw his son’s eyes grow strangely fixed.

  ‘Did you know her?’ he said again.

  The smile was fading.

  ‘Did you visit her? You can tell me.’

  An unbitten half-sphere dropped from Ben’s hand and both of them watched it bounce on the floor, landing on the carpet like an earth-rise. An entire minute passed before either of them spoke again.

  ‘I know her,’ Ben said, not looking up. ‘Actually, I was praying down here one night. She left a message for you on the answering machine but you were busy with your healing stuff, so I thought I’d meet with her instead.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In her house, up on the hill. She needed help. You should see how messy she has it up there.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  A deep, throb of silence.

  ‘Ben, you can tell me. What did you do?’

  ‘I picked her up and I kissed her head. She was dying and falling into hell.’ He looked his dad in the eye. There was no malice there. No deviousness, or madness even. Just a terrifying gentleness. ‘I helped her.’

  The carpet started to move and swim, and Chris had to blink to make it stop. ‘She’s dead?’

  ‘She was dead. But she’s not any more …’ Ben cracked a smile that sent an instant creep through Chris’s skin. ‘She’s more alive than ever now.’

  He could hear the sound of his son’s breath. Both of them seemed to be breathing in the same quick rhythm.

  ‘Why are you suddenly asking me this, Dad?’

  ‘Because Seth went into the hayloft to pray today and—’ He suddenly couldn’t speak. It felt like an invisible hand was clutching at his chest.

  ‘Heeeey,’ Ben sounded like a schoolteacher, calming a frightened pupil. ‘You don’t have to get upset about this.’

  Chris closed his eyes, trying to fight the mad panic scratching and scraping his brain. He was trying so hard to be calm. ‘I don’t think Seth realised that you sometimes go up in the hayloft to think. And he found her … her things.’

  ‘I don’t know why I kept them. I shouldn’t have, I suppose. I burnt the rest of her paintings. They were pretty sinful, Dad. But one of them was different and it reminded me of Eve in the Garden, so I kept it.’

  ‘Do you really think God wanted this?’

  For the first time, there was a flash of something fierce in Ben’s eyes. ‘I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think God wanted it.’

  ‘But you killed someone.’

  ‘She was dying.’

  ‘You killed her.’ Chris heard himself saying the words and the sound of it sickened him. But there was some rabid morbidity in him that wanted to ask the details. How did he do it? Did it take a long time? Where was the body?

  Ben’s face grew cold. ‘Sometimes, I think I’m the only Christian alive who understands the Great Commission.’

  ‘Ben. Is it because of what me and Seth did? Is that—’

  ‘Heaven’s healing. Isn’t that what you and Seth taught me? What … don’t you believe in heaven any more?’ Ben slowly rose to his feet. ‘Tabby’s there right now. With Jesus. I bet she’s painting with colours we’ve never even heard of, now. And I made that happen.’

  ‘And Nicola? Is she with Jesus now, too?’

  ‘U-huh.’ The way he nodded, slowly and with the smile of a child, froze Chris to the chair, clamped him to it with a horror and dread that felt utterly unreal. Like the walls were starting to quake and blur. Like the room was filled with water, pulling him back. When Ben slowly walked towards him and put a gentle hand on his shoulder he
was unable to react to the insect prickle rushing through his body, so he just watched his son, standing there, and Ben’s—

  … chewing like a rat on his own thumb. Peering through the gap of the bathroom door, in 119 Kellaway Heights. While his mother writhes in the bath. Pink water is spilling over the edge, and darkening into red.

  They have no idea that he’s there, watching through the crack in the door. But he sees them. And there’s Daddy, collapsing against the toilet, crying like a crazy person as he calls the ambulance on the cordless phone, white plastic splattered with red, trying to get the address of his flat out of his mouth and finding it impossible to remember the sequence. While Seth clamps towels against Mummy’s wrists and throat, pressing against the hot and hopeless gush of blood. The white towel turns pink, red. He has to drop it to the floor with a slap, and grab another. There’s too many cuts to cover up.

  Then the blood stops jetting out, and it’s slowing to a pulsing trickle.

  ‘It’s too late, Chris.’ Seth’s weeping voice. ‘She’s lost too much blood.’

  ‘She can’t die. She doesn’t believe any more.’ Daddy flinging himself to his knees and cupping his hands around the splitting seams in her wrists and throat. Hands sliding all over. And this shuddering, sobbing voice, that sounds like an animal. ‘Suicides go to hell. They all do. We have to help her!’

  Mummy’s gasping body in violent spasm, bubbling for a few seconds before Seth finally does it. He plants a hand on her forehead, and though he speaks through tears, he says the words loud. ‘Lydia Kelly. I baptise you in the name of the Father …’

  A pause, to say – should I do this? – then a nod from Chris to proceed.

  And down she goes.

  Daddy and Seth say it together the second time. ‘And the Son.’

  Ben sees Mummy’s naked body, the curve of her knees, and the bulge of her hip. She looks so vulnerable. She goes under white and comes up pink.

  And then they speak the final time, only this time, Ben’s tiny, little, unbroken sparrow voice joins in with them. ‘And the Holy Spirit.’

  Daddy spins his head round first, then Seth. And for the first time the two men see a seven-year-old standing in the corridor. Door now open, watching the whole thing.

  Then everyone’s aware of each other. Father, son and friend. Ben even thinks Mummy has opened her eyes a tiny fraction, to see him before she leaves. Looking down her cheeks at him.

  Once they’re all together in it, everything changes.

  Because she isn’t gasping any more. Her eyes close and her mouth’s no longer twisted and deformed. She looks as at peace as any of them have ever seen her. The depression that dragged her down is now gone. The water isn’t red now, either. Now it’s filled with roses that are falling and scattering across the steps of heaven to guide his mummy home. He’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life. It’s the moment he knows God exists.

  ‘Heaven is healing,’ Daddy says with the voice of a madman. Laughing or crying, it’s impossible to tell which. Then he rushes over to fling his wet arms around his son—

  ‘Heaven is healing,’ Ben said.

  Chris could feel the chair he was sitting in. As if his body had its own gravitational pull and was dragging things toward it. Tugging his ribs inward.

  ‘I know I’m going to get caught. In fact, God told me I would,’ Ben said, matter-of-fact. ‘But it’s okay. Because you brought Matt here. He knows the police and he understands what I’m doing. I’ve been sending him clues. Signs.’

  ‘What signs?’

  ‘He’ll tell them that I’m not a bad person. They won’t listen to you Dad, sorry, but they will listen to him. People are going to ask where the girls are and he can tell them. They’re in paradise now.’

  ‘Where …’ Chris could barely bring himself to say it. ‘Where’s Tabitha’s body, son?’

  ‘Oh, she’s all gone.’

  ‘How?’

  Ben waited for a moment before answering, ‘Stephen took care of it.’

  Chris frowned. ‘Who?’

  Another pause. ‘I said Stephen took care of it.’

  ‘Stephen?’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten about him, have you?’

  ‘Stephen?’ That was the moment, really. The second when all resolve truly dropped through his body and Chris slipped right off his chair and onto his knees with a crack. The plate of chocolate tipped and fell to the floor too, rolling like marbles on the carpet. And Chris Kelly started sobbing like a child, completely unrestrained. He covered his face with one hand and reached out like a blind man for Ben with the other. He grabbed his boy’s hand, pulled him down to the carpet and cradled his head against his. ‘Oh Ben, my son. My poor, poor son.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Matt’s car lurched to a stop and he stepped out into the glare of flashing blue lights. They made the edges of Chris and Ben’s house flicker against the trees. It was a huge beast of a home, with withering vines clawing at the walls. The neon cross shone against the now-black sky, like an ecclesiastical McDonalds.

  By the time he ran up onto the wooden porch, Miller and Taylor were already kicking the door in. Each impact made a groaning creak against the wood.

  ‘Good. You’re here,’ Miller said before pounding his boot again. ‘Any news on your daughter? Your wife and little girl came to the station.’

  ‘I know. She says Lucy’s bike’s gone.’ There was a desperation in Matt’s voice that he made no attempt to disguise. ‘Is he inside?’

  ‘There’s a light on upstairs and we thought we just heard a voice.’

  Just as Miller said that, the door crunched in its frame under his boot. With another kick from Matt, it splintered itself open.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for help?’ Taylor said, which was pointless. The other two were already in the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Chris pulled his head away from Ben’s then pushed himself back up onto the chair again. He never let go of his son’s hand. ‘Ben. Stephen’s gone.’

  He frowned and shook his head. ‘What a peculiar thing to say.’

  ‘He’s dead, son. He drowned in the canal. You remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he’s dead.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s around. You’ve always known that.’

  Chris pushed his fingers deep into the corners of his temples. He thought of all those times that Ben had spoken about Stephen, the seven-year-old dead boy who wasn’t even at his school, boys who shared nothing more than being the same age and living in the same town. A kid who was trapped under ice and dragged down the Grand Union Canal, until he was caught by the trees, dead. Drowned two weeks after Lydia’s suicide.

  Those weeks after Lydia killed herself were horrendous. The inquest, the funeral. The bathroom refitting where those council men turned off the water and unhooked the death-bath. Then they carried it on its side and scraped the walls with it, while Ben sobbed and told them to put it back, put it back!

  And those terrible nightmares Ben had about his mother, where she’d crawl on all fours from the bathroom, naked. Her split wrists dripping, searching for his room. Calling for him. Those dreams only stopped when his invisible friend turned up one morning. It was as though Ben’s delicate psyche had sent down a helper, a friend who pored over his homework with him and played with him in the park. It was the only thing that calmed Ben after that terrible night of blood. And didn’t all kids have friends who weren’t really there?

  A sudden thought hissed in his brain, in Matt’s voice: Isn’t that what your God is, Chris? Isn’t that exactly what he is? An imaginary friend. For a dangerous moment, that sounded very plausible.

  Back then, God help him, Chris went along with it for a few months. At dinner, Ben said, ‘Stephen wants the salt,’ and Chris passed him the salt. ‘Budge up, Dad, Stephen can’t fit in,’ and Chris would shift up the sofa to make room, so all ‘three’ of them could watch Power Rangers on TV.

  And even
when they sat in the kitchen one night in those cold months after Lydia killed herself and they ate Pot Noodles (which Chris had poured out onto plates to make the meal feel more special), when Ben said that his friend was the little boy with the red jacket who used to live where the water was coldest, Chris just sat there with his fork stuck in his mouth putting two and two together.

  The boy who drowned in the canal, the one Seth knew from the farm’s youth programme who he’d prayed for at the funeral: that boy was called Stephen.

  Chris remembered saying the words, ‘It might be better not to play with invisible friends,’ but it was the only time such a sentiment ever left his lips because as soon as the suggestion was out Ben’s mouth began to tilt and his chin contracted, started to tremble. Then he just stared at the scrapes on the walls where they’d removed the bath, shaking his head because he couldn’t handle any more loss.

  So it just felt easier to go along with it.

  It seemed to work itself out, too, because when winter left, so did Stephen. Like Jack Frost he vanished with the thaw of the ice. When winter came back, the following year, Ben was eight and different. Older. And he never mentioned Stephen again.

  As far as Chris knew, the dead boy was gone. Or perhaps, and this was the thought that had always chilled him most, perhaps this wasn’t an imaginary friend at all. And certainly not a ghost. Because didn’t the devil sometimes send his demons out, masquerading as the ones we have lost? The dark presence that had ruined Lydia’s faith. What if it had slipped out of her body after the baptism, and settled its eyes on Ben instead? Or was Stephen all in his mind?

  These questions. they were overwhelming.

  ‘We need to get you some help,’ Chris said.

  ‘Huh? I don’t need help.’

  ‘I think you need to talk to someone.’

  ‘I talk to you, Dad.’

  ‘I … I mean someone qualified.’ Chris’s heart, like a wine glass deep inside his chest, started to break. A tear trickled down his cheek. ‘Maybe there’s anger there about your mum leaving us, that they could help you with—’