Kristin

by Michael Ashley Torrington

  Gradually, the level began to recede and she realized that the residue was sliding away from her, mounding up into a hill that grew until it was more than twenty times her height.

  The Beast stole some wood from the substructure of a blind, cripple’s house in the Armenian Quarter, bringing his home down upon the helpless old man, and built a cross from it, which it erected on the summit of the new Calvary in readiness. But soon it was intuitively drawn to a new location and Kristin screamed in agony as she was transplanted beyond the city walls, near a break in them named the Damascus Gate, to the base of an ominous, natural edifice resembling a human skull.

  Kristin opened her eyes. She was lying on her back in a small, dark chamber. It was incredibly cold, well below freezing, and she shivered insuppressibly as her possessor babbled at her, informed her: The Garden Tomb was venerated by some ignorant, Christian swine as the true resting place of the Christ. The tomb had been constructed by a rich Jew, Joseph of Arimathea, as his own burial site, but after the Christ had been executed its shattered cadaver was given to the Jew, who placed it into a box of stone which had originally occupied the bare, rocky recess in which she now reclined, before rolling another great stone across the entrance. But it was just a fable, a falsehood, and the Christ would soon rest no more, it would see to that.

  She breathed in sharply and sat up. A young man knelt in solemn prayer outside a cage of black bars. He lifted his head slowly when he sensed movement that should never have been and fell backwards, a breathless mute.

  Kristin’s lips moved but her speech followed later. ‘Please, where am I?’

  He wanted to run.

  ‘What am I doing here?’

  He shifted slightly on the freezing floor, sweat streaming from his facial glands.

  ‘Please, can you help me?’

  ‘ ... You lie in the Lord’s grave and ... you ask for my help?’

  ‘ ... The Lord’s grave? Where’s Thom?’

  ‘Thom? Are you lost?’

  ‘Yes, in many ways. But I’m not frightened, Thom will find me, save me.’

  ‘ ... What is your name?’

  ‘Kristin.’

  ‘I am Ahmed.’

  ‘What country am I in?’

  ‘What country? You are in ... ’ He stood and backed away. ‘ ... The Christian Quarter is destroyed. Are you responsible?’

  ‘A part of me is responsible.’

  ‘Is that part here in this tomb?’

  ‘It’s always here.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘All that’s bad.’

  ‘Should I fear you?’

  ‘ ... No. I’m not sure why, but it has given my life back to me for these few moments.’

  ‘I had many friends in the Christian Quarter.’

  ‘ ... I’m sorry, Ahmed.’

  ‘I did not believe in your existence, and now you are before me. How can you live with it as part of you?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Does it own your soul?’

  ‘I thought it, did but sometimes ... ’ She stood and passed cleanly through the iron bars. Her eyes rolled upwards, and gabbling like a turkey she opened her hand and slapped him around the face with savage strength, opening a two inch split in his cheek and fracturing his jaw with a loud crack that reverberated off the frozen walls. Then she straddled him and closed her small, white, shaking hands around his throat, digging her thumbs into his windpipe.

  Ah, yes! her tormentor purred, encouragingly. Choke the life from Ahmed, throttle the cunt, end him! Her tears dropped onto his red, bloated face. ‘It’s not what I want, it’s what you want!’ ... My desire is thine obligation ... murder him!

  It’s irrevocable will flowed down her arms and her fingers tightened. She salivated, crazed with senseless fury, and Ahmed gawped, white-eyed, as she asphyxiated him.

  Hate! Kill! Life began to ebb from Ahmed. ‘Hate? Yes, I hate, but not this man ... It’s you I detest, you I wished I could kill!’ She began to choke the remaining breath from his lungs. Fucking stinking Arab, kill him!

  Suddenly her hands slipped from around Ahmed’s neck. ‘RUN, AHMED, RUN!’ she yelled.

  He scrambled to his feet and fled through the tight, rough-hewn doorway.

  Bitch! Insolent, disloyal fuckwhore!

  She grabbed a jagged rock and struck herself on the forehead. Blood gushed onto the stone floor and her vision blurred. She hit herself again, hard between the eyes and stumbled, then sprawled on the ground in a fast-freezing pool of her own blood.

  Stupid female, thou knowest it is useless! Did thine experience before God’s greatest shit-house teach thee nothing?

  She drew herself up, shrieked and ran at the wall head down, and the convergence of bone forming the crown of her cranium impacted with a crunch.

  Kristin!

  She staggered back to the opposite side of the tomb and charged again. This time her skull cracked like an eggshell, a large fragment slicing into the longitudinal fissure dividing the frontal lobes of her brain, causing a devastating haemorrhage.

  Thirty-three

  In the moments after his brother’s words ended, Thom felt his enervated body rise from the threadbare carpet up to the ceiling of the bookshop and beyond. His fingertips felt the rough texture of frost-cracked roof tiles as he was drawn up into the total darkness of the false night. Was he dead, had he passed from this life in the bookshop? His ascent continued. Below him London was an invisible white spectre; the crisscross of streets, St Pauls Cathedral, the winding River Thames. The city shrank as he left it far behind, along with the remnants of his life.

  When he’d reached great height, above the exosphere of the Earth, a brilliant light appeared beneath his body, making the blood inside his translucent fingers glow red, and he looked down to see that the world appeared purged of darkness that had seemingly only existed within the spirit of mankind. From such altitude the world was radiant, perfect, untroubled, as it had been in the beginning.

  He was surely dead, his spirit returning to the stars?

  As he glided silently eastwards the shores of Britain, which he recognized as his homeland, yielded to the continental land mass of Europe. He glimpsed patchworks of golden fields, the forests of Germany, the mountains of Switzerland and Austria. The infinite ultramarine of the Black Sea drifted beneath his weightless form.

  Gradually, the terrain changed to scrubland and then spectacular, orange desert: If this was the last he’d see of this world it had been worth a lifetime’s wait.

  He began to lose altitude. Had he been granted more life?

  He dropped further still, but always controlled, never spinning or tumbling.

  A vast, azure ocean beckoned, in its centre a large island shaped like a tear for the world. To the right of the sea a desiccated, barren landscape, greener along its coast and bearing signs of dense population stretched for hundreds of miles. A mighty river, dividing two inland seas, ran adjacent to the coastline from north to south.

  Lower and lower. He was being returned to Earth!

  A crinkled mountain range defined itself. He was descending quickly now, towards a large city at their feet.

  Lower.

  He saw a steep hillside studded with trees.

  Darkness returned.

  Thom pushed at the pillow of books to find frozen rocks, gritty soil and stubbly grass. He sat up, sensing that he was now far from home. But the stinging cold prevailed here.

  The steep incline was littered with headstones lit by lights suspended from cables in the trees. When he got to his feet a sharp stone cut into the sole of his foot reminding him he’d removed his socks and shoes before lying down to rest. It had been no imagining, he hadn’t died!

  Thom heard screams, chanting, in the distance and looked down the hillside. A massive, ancient wall, burning yellow under floodlight dominated the vista. Beyond the wall was a magnificent golden dome.

  He bent and examined a horizontal headstone. The commemoration was in Hebrew
and he struggled with the transliteration: “Here rests ... my beloved ... wife, Eva ... Ezekiel, who fell asleep on the ... fifteenth day of ... October in the year of ... our Lord ... 156 ... ”. The last number of the date was obliterated.

  Nearby was an even older grave: “In ... memory ... Hieremias Hedvah. Died 2 ... 13 ... May his dear soul ... ”. He could read no more of the inscription.

  Other stones were older still, their epitaphs lost, whilst some were newer, the graves’ occupants remembered with lilies and alstroemeria long ago wilted or dead through the cold, or neglect.

  The hill of graves, the trees; they were olive trees, their branches low, sprawling — everything created a clear picture in his mind. His father had once been here, told him of this place. There was no doubt, he was on the Mount of Olives, the largest Jewish cemetery in the world and below, behind the great wall, lay the old city of Jerusalem.

  He sat slowly on the frozen soil. How could any of this be? He’d been sucked up by an unknown force and transported more than two thousand miles. Why? How had it brought him to the Holy Land? What did it expect of him, hadn’t he suffered enough already? Why hadn’t he died of asphyxiation when he’d ascended above the troposphere? Why hadn’t his lifeless remains then burned to a crisp when they’d skimmed the Earth’s outer atmosphere — had the force protected him? That was beyond even God’s capability.

  Where was his mother? Where was his father and his brother? Where was Kristin?

  Jerusalem called him.

  Thirty-four

  Kristin awoke on the uppermost of forty-five courses of meleke limestone blocks that formed the Western Wall of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. Her head throbbed with muted pain and she felt nauseous.

  Sixty-two feet below her a mountain of men, women and children writhed and moaned. The recesses between the gargantuan blocks were crammed with their desperately scrawled prayers for the return of daylight. They didn’t look up, didn’t notice her.

  ‘JEWS!’ the Beast snarled impatiently, its voice distorted, alien. ‘Thou art the worst of creeds! Self-important, self-appointed messengers of God! Thou art aloof, obsessed with thine own kind! I shall murder thee for thy piety, thy collusion!’

  They retreated from the foot of the wall, trampling the fallen amongst them in their desperation to escape the atrocious anathema high above them.

  On a flat roof adjacent to the wall a battered red door burst open and a camera crew rushed out. Hurriedly, they extended the telescopic legs of a heavy tripod, brushed ice from the casing of a camcorder, uncovered its lens and mounted it on top. A thick, red cable that trailed back through the open door and down steep stairs to an outside broadcast van in the street below was plugged into a socket on the camera whilst a thin, Asian woman removed a microphone from a protective box, attached it to the end of a boom and swung it over the edge of the roof. They started to film.

  The producer, a prematurely white-haired man, was fractious, distracted as he yelled instructions, his face screwed up with confusion and pain as he dragged the fingernails of his right hand through gashes on his left forearm so deep they’d exposed the muscles underneath.

  ‘Well have I considered thy fate, Jews!’ the Beast resumed.

  Throat-tearing screams dissipated in the bitter air.

  ‘Now I dictate thy future! I will bring wholesale destruction upon thee, upon all mankind! Thy suffering will be unbearable, but thou shalt bear it, as the Christ bore its heavy cross!’

  A frail man stepped forward, returned to the wall and looked up.

  ‘I will strike thee down first!’ the Beast proclaimed.

  ‘Then strike me down, what do I care?’ he cried. ‘I’m an old man and I choose not to live in the repulsive world you have created!’

  ‘So, how shall I despatch thee? Shall I sever thy shrivelled prick, make thee chew upon it and laugh as thee chokes thy way to hell? Or ... thou art indeed old ... yes, thou shalt know emotional pain, pain will cause strain and strain will end thee, halt your organ of circulation!’

  ‘You may do as you wish with my mortal body, Tayvl, and with the flesh and bones of my family and friends, but you will never have our souls, you hellish witch, for we are the chosen race and they are out of your reach!’

  ‘CHOSEN RACE? FUCKING ARROGANT JEW! Chosen by whom? Not by my father, not by God, for he chose me to lead thee all towards a new dawn!’

  ‘You’ve led us to the brink of oblivion!’

  ‘I am thy deliverance, thine only hope ... retarded, ungrateful yidshit! Thou wilt not survive unless thee first accept the hatred in thy soul for all things!’

  ‘My soul is not hateful!’

  ‘Then how dost thou think of me?’

  ‘I feel ... sorry for you, I don’t envy you your futile half-life ...!’

  ‘FUCKING JEW!’

  ‘This woman is just a husk, a brutalized remnant of her former self. You do not exist in any true form ... there is no you!’

  The Beast’s unearthly cry resounded over a decaying world. It forced its host to the very edge of the wall, like a gargoyle, made her remove her lower coverings and release a cascade of stale, brown urine down onto the old man.

  ‘I piss on thee, Jew!’ it guffawed, before spotting something it could use to increase his misery. ‘A female sibling ... there amidst the Jewish infestation!’ it shrilled, making Kristin point towards the crowd.

  The woman squealed as something gripped her soft, shoulder-length silver hair and pulled her head first from the periphery of the throng. Her thin canvas shoes were stripped from feet that trailed across the rough, frozen stones, skinning, shedding blood.

  The Beast dragged her to her brother’s side. ‘Now, fuck this!’ it commanded.

  The man met his sister’s bewildered gaze and in her eyes saw unconditional love, absolute trust that had lasted all of their lives. But now that love, that trust, was misplaced.

  He felt a tide of lust charge through his body. ‘Please, Ruth ... my dear Ruth, please forgive me but I must do this, I must fuck you, it tells me to.’ His dry mouth watered as he reached out and tore her clothes from her. Weeping, he ran his leathery hands over her aged body, cupped her sagging breasts. She tried to scream but instead choked on salty tears as her brother’s hand slipped between her fat-laden thighs.

  ‘NO, RUEBEN ... NO!’ she cried.

  ‘You don’t understand, Ruth, I want to fuck you!’ He pushed her back against the wall, lifted her right leg and slid into her bestially, making her scream with pain and horror.

  ‘INCESTUOUS SACKS OF SHIT!’ it screeched, rabid with pleasure.

  Ruth sank to the gelid ground and her brother landed heavily on top of her. Their eyes were shut fast against the nightmare.

  Kristin’s lips curled into a macabre smile, but her master had already tired of the perverse entertainment and it used her eyes to look elsewhere for its satisfaction. ‘There ... there is the offspring of the offspring of the brotherfucker!’ it announced, and plucked the terrified young girl from the masses. It lugged her roughly to the wall and forced her head downwards to look at her grandmother and grand uncle. ‘See them? See them? They are brother and sister and yet they have fucked each other half to death!’

  The girl felt dizzy, sick.

  ‘Remove the offspring of the offspring’s lower coverings!’ it instructed the old man. Weeping, he hooked the fingers of his left hand into the waistband of his grand-niece’s jeans, feeling her hot, firm stomach flinch at the touch of his rough skin. With his other hand he undid the shining steel button, slid the zipper and yanked her trousers down to her white ankle socks.

  ‘To the flesh!’ it demanded, impatiently.

  He wafted his hands over her slender hips and her pants were gone. Immediately, the flesh around her vagina began to bubble and she screamed with pain. The delicate tissue swelled, doubled in thickness, quadrupled, and the opening nature had provided her was permanently closed. She tipped her head back and cried at the deceased sky, racked with pai
n, as her relatives held on to one another, transfixed, their faces white.

  ‘STOP IT YOU FOUL BASTARD ... STOP IT!’ Kristin bawled.

  But the girdle of flesh continued to grow until it resembled a haunch of stinking, raw meat between her skinny, lily-white thighs and she bent forwards, choking on her vomit.

  ‘Thou shalt not know pleasure!’ it dictated. ‘Neither shalt thou spawn! Thou shalt not even pass piss!’

  But the old man struggled to his feet, reached out his hand and helped his sister up, dressing her as best he could. Together, they made the girl decent and helped her away from the wall defiantly, physically compromised but spiritually unimpaired.

  ‘FUCKING JEWS!’ it screamed after them. ‘Now I will despatch thee all!’

  The crowd rushed at the wall. Some attempted to scale it. The Beast stared at the ground before them, polarizing its power, and the paving stones began to heave. Then they blew apart and a vast arc of blue flames leapt thirty feet into the air.

  The Western Wall liquified, wobbling like a pile of wet sand. Massive breaches opened along its length, until it could withstand no more of the merciless shaking, and the enormous blocks toppled to the ground amidst dense clouds of choking dust, crushing hundreds to death beneath.

  Thirty-five

  Thom Sharman picked his way down the steep, grave-strewn hillside, his mind overrun with confusion and fear.

  At the bottom he wandered through an open gateway into an ornate garden untouched by the horrors unfolding upon the world. Olive trees abounded, some thousands of years old. He stopped by the greatest, whose trunk was gnarled and hollow, then knelt and prayed, not for his own salvation but selflessly, for that of every other man, woman and child that lived. Then he drew himself laboriously to his feet, certain he would never visit the beautiful oasis of tranquility again.

  He left the Garden of Gethsamane and crossed a bridge: The Jericho Road was deserted, littered with abandoned cars and putrefying human remains upon which vultures and smaller birds scavenged.

  The East Wall towered above him, its ramparts like the stumps of amputated fingers pointing towards the blackened heavens. Through the portal of the Lion’s Gate, protected on either side with carvings of prowling panthers, the city beckoned him once again and when he didn’t move something took over and sucked him into a vortex, setting him down in the middle of a narrow thoroughfare beyond the wall.