by David Haynes
Cavendish shook his head and closed his eyes. He wobbled like a punch-drunk boxer and then recovered, opening his eyes laboriously.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to rest,” he said and turned away again. He trudged back into the house, not like a soldier but like a man who had just been run down by a truck.
Wilson watched him go inside and shut the door before he turned away and walked back down the path.
*
It was a wonder Reverend Cavendish made it as far as the kitchen before he threw up. There was nothing in his stomach except for the coffee he’d sipped earlier. How long ago was that?
The vomit was black and stringy, and against the silver of the stainless-steel sink it looked like an oil tanker had just spilled its load. It smelled bad; an almost chemical tang floated off it, making him retch again.
He gripped the edge of the counter with white fingers and took a deep breath. It crossed his mind that he might be dying.
Hunched over as he was, he could feel the blood seeping down his back, wetting the shirt and adhering it to his skin. He had told that cretin Wilson the truth about the injury. Someone, not one of the enemy this time but one of his comrades, had pushed their tactical knife into his back, just beneath the shoulder blade. It hadn’t penetrated far enough to kill him but it had put him in the hospital for a week. He never got chance to repay the gesture. PFC Lowe took a bullet through his eye socket just outside of Baghdad, killing him instantly. It was too quick an end for him in the Reverend’s opinion but it got the job done anyway.
The stitches had held since then, the scar a puckered reminder of the man, the place and the time. It was a good job it was on his back or he might have spent more wistful hours than he already did thinking about that PFC Lowe.
He heaved again, but didn’t look at what he’d brought up. It almost slithered its way up his throat and out into the world. His legs buckled under the strain but he kept his balance, long enough to spit the last stringy threads into the sink.
Without doubt the effort of vomiting had opened the wound up even further, and his entire back felt warm and sticky. He knew he was losing blood, a lot of blood, but his mind was swimming. It was a maelstrom of hideous images, just fragments of memories but they were vile. He could not have been part of it, not part of that. All of them, men and women, The Deliverers, all fucking each other, all licking, sucking and laughing. All of it in his house, in this room, in his bedroom. And all of it under the watch of Theo Lunn.
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and stumbled out into the hallway, across to the bathroom. He needed to wash himself. His skin, his entire body had been soiled and abused in the worst possible way.
The shirt was sodden. Not just with blood but with sweat too. It would have to be destroyed. He unbuttoned the top two buttons and pulled it over his head. He would burn all of his clothes. Every single one of them.
He pulled the cord on the light above the mirror. It turned his naked torso a putrid yellow color. The skin on his face was glossy with a sheen of sweat. He smelled acrid.
A rivulet of sweat or blood trickled down his back, prickling the skin. He turned his body to better see in the mirror and felt the mirror, bathroom, house and world tilt to the side. Slugs squirmed in his wound, three of them, covered in creamy-white pustules. Simultaneously six antennae turned toward him, six antennae all with miniature faces on them. All with the same face – Theo Lunn.
He screamed and tried to brush them away but they were immovable and each time his hand touched their cold, ribbed bodies he heaved. The pain was intense and excruciating, so why had he got an erection? Why was the pain almost orgasmic? He felt a shudder as the first orgasm swept through his body like a tsunami; engulfing, swamping and drowning all of his organs until there was nothing left except ecstasy.
His legs gave way and he fell to the tiled floor as he had when PFC Lowe stabbed him. There had been no ambiguous feelings then. It was all just anger and pain. They were distinct but they worked together. They were members of the same family. The same genus.
This was different. Everything was unified. All of it the same. Pleasure and pain bound together as they should be. As they were always meant to be. He understood that now. He understood what the world was supposed to be about. They weren’t supposed to be distinct from each other, they were the same. Identical. They were Baphomet.
That word. That name. Where had it come from? His mind turned in on itself when he thought about it. It had always been there. Of course it had.
“Baphomet.” He said it slowly, enjoying the sensation. It was the beautiful name of the new sensations he was experiencing. Pain, pleasure, power, strength, sex, orgasm, rape, murder, torture… it was all there in one name – Baphomet. God.
He pulled himself upright and found his reflection through a swirl of dark and chaotic remnants of this afternoon. He was exhausted and he trembled with the effort of standing upright. His whole body screamed at him to lie down, to stay down, to crawl inside whatever piece of his mind clung to Baphomet and stay there for the rest of his days.
His face grew clearer in the mirror. He wasn’t ready to stay down. He wasn’t ready for that. No, sir. He saluted and in his head he heard Shitler say, “Oh, it’ll come back to you, don’t worry about that. Maybe later on.”
And it had come back to him. Piece by sordid, fleshy piece. But it no longer revolted him. He no longer felt like reaching into his brain and scooping the images out with a spoon. They were there, they were a part of him now and the feeling of bliss he had felt this afternoon would come back to him. He would know them again. He needed to.
“This is just a glimpse, Reverend. Just a glimpse of what’s to come for you. Enjoy the ride, big boy.”
Cavendish smiled and winked at his reflection as it melted away to nothing. Beyond the mirror, beyond his own face, a dark and empty place existed. A place full of loneliness and despair, where corridors full of regret stretched forever into the void, of desolate, forsaken halls that existed in perpetual shadow. A place of pain, of power, strength and death. A place more beautiful than any place on earth. It was his reward.
“Baphomet,” he whispered and licked the mirror.
And in that place he could see those who did not know, did not understand. They did not know Baphomet, they did not know that pleasure and pain were kin. They were the ones he had helped deliver from the hospice. They crawled on their bellies in that wretched place, subjugated for all times. He had helped and now he would be rewarded.
“Deliver them.” A voice that was not his own came from his mouth. “Deliver them,” he said again.
He fell to the floor, his body a deliciously tortured bag of bones. Clarity ruled his mind for the first time in his life. At last he had found his calling. It was his job to deliver the souls. Deliver them all to Baphomet.
It was his calling.
27
Wilson crossed the road and pressed the buzzer on the gate. He recognized Joe on the other end of the intercom.
“Hey, Joe, it’s Frank Wilson. Is Dr Hamilton still in?” he asked, leaning closer to the microphone. Wind whipped a thin drizzle against his cheeks, stinging his skin.
“Sure is. I’ll buzz you in.”
He walked toward the hospice. This afternoon he had been driven around Hemlock Mill in the Sheriff’s cruiser. Five of his deputies had helped search the old mill without success. Wilson had managed to convince himself that John would be in there somewhere. The daylight did little to give the place any cheer. It was still a place of darkness, shadow and stale urine. The rusty chain Lucy Beaumont had attached herself to lay coiled on the floor like an enormous snake. Wilson and the others all gave it a wide berth.
The top stories of the building were unsafe. The floors had all but disappeared. Jagged and splintered boards acted as light wells but precious little sun shone down. It was hideously depressing, and not just because John was nowhere to be seen.
Tomorrow a party of men would be dispa
tched to search the woods for him. He made a false call to the fictional lawyers’ office where he was supposed to work with Donovan and asked the silence to call him back should John make contact.
It wasn’t quite a manhunt but it would be soon, the longer Donovan stayed missing. When that happened, Wilson knew, it would all come crashing down around him. He needed to find him and clear things up before the situation garnered national interest.
He was out of breath as he marched across the foyer to the reception desk. He also needed to find his friend before his heart gave out entirely.
“She’s in her office, go on up.” Joe hooked a meaty thumb over his shoulder.
He smiled and nodded as he climbed the stairs. His encounter with Cavendish had been mercifully brief but nonetheless unpleasant. There was no liking him. It didn’t matter that he was a veteran, or that he was a representative of the Church, of God. Neither of those things gave anyone a divine right to be liked. Or to be a decent person.
He had been odd though. Admittedly he didn’t know him very well but the traits he had seen in the past two days had not been on show tonight. The blood on his back wasn’t copious, nor was it petty, yet to him it seemed an irrelevance. Something was amiss there. Donovan had been right all along.
He glanced toward Frances Pace’s room as he turned down the corridor toward Dr Hamilton’s office. He wished, for maybe the hundredth time that day, that he had never set foot in Hemlock Mill; that Richard Pace had never come to his house and blown his brains all over the inside of his expensive car.
He reached the Doctor’s office and lifted his hand to knock.
“Come in, Frank!” she called.
He opened the door and walked inside.
“Lost the Sheriff, I see,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Not for long I don’t think,” he replied, sitting down. “Do you ever leave this place?”
She sighed. “It doesn’t feel like it. I was just getting my things together.”
“Can I ask a favor?” he asked. He could see how tired she was and he didn’t want to keep her any longer than necessary.
“Shoot,” she replied.
He bit his bottom lip. He hoped she would understand what he was about to ask.
“I’d like to stay the night.” He looked for a reaction. There was none. “With Frances Pace,” he added, wincing at how it sounded.
“Under normal circumstances, I might laugh at how that sounds, Frank.” She tried to smile but it was forced and unnatural. “But things are very far from normal. Aren’t they?”
He nodded. “It’s... it’s... well...”
“It’s fucked up, that’s what it is.”
He might have laughed at her outburst, but he couldn’t, not while Donovan was missing and the cops thought he’d killed Phil Moody.
“I’d like to stay and see if John comes back. We’ve looked everywhere for him and it’s the only thing I can think of trying.”
She nodded, hadn’t blown him out of the water. Yet. There was more to come and what he said next was going to be very difficult.
“I guess,” she replied. “I mean, I can’t see any reason why not. Could you wait in the corridor?”
He shook his head. “If he sees me, or anyone waiting outside her room, he might make a run for it. Is Joe on all night?”
She nodded.
“Can you ask him to just let John through if he turns up? Not to stop him or say anything to him about...”
She lifted her hands. “I’ll tell him.”
“Once he’s inside, I can try and talk to him.”
“And then what? Call the Sheriff?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I know he didn’t do it. No way would he do anything like that. Whoever did that to Phil Moody was an animal.”
“People are capable of some strange things, Frank. I don’t know John the way you do, but I’ve seen people do things you wouldn’t...”
It was his turn to interrupt. “No,” he said. “Not John.”
She took a moment and then sighed. “Well, you work with the guy, you know him better than anyone.”
Wilson winced again. “Which brings me on to my next point.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Which is?”
He looked over her shoulder, at the cloak of darkness beyond. “I’m not a lawyer,” he said. “And neither is John.”
She closed her eyes. “I know,” she replied. “At least, I suspected.”
His eyes widened. “How?”
“Intuition and research. One usually leads to the other . I would’ve called the Sheriff but after the last few days, a couple of...” She raised her hands in the air. “Pretend lawyers wearing my old clothes seems to be way down on my list of priorities. The only thing I know about you for real is that you’re not here to hurt anyone. The way John was with Lucy the other night, the way you both were when Thomas killed himself, that told me I could hold off with the call to Taylor. I know what you’re not, I just don’t know what you are.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been quite so amazed at how she saw through their pathetic attempt at subterfuge. At best, the whole episode had been ill-planned. At worst, it had been a dangerous deception. Someone even half as shrewd as Dr Hamilton would have seen through it before long. Taylor wasn’t far behind her. The difference being, he wanted to find the proof and Wilson wouldn’t be confessing anytime soon. Not unless there was no other choice.
“We thought we were helping,” he said. “We thought we owed someone.” He paused and bit his lip. “Someone dead.”
She frowned but said nothing.
“Richard Pace killed himself about a minute after he left my house, after he spoke to John and me. He came to ask me to find something for him.”
“Last week on my driveway. He put a pistol in his mouth and...” He didn’t need to finish. “John was first there. We saw what was happening from the window and John tried to reach him but it was too late.”
“Shit,” she whispered. “A week and three people try to take their lives around you. Two successfully.” She stood up. “My God, Frank.”
“And John’s had front row seats for all of them.”
“Shit,” she whispered again, walking around. She shook her head as if trying to make sense of it all and sat on the edge of the desk. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, looking away. “I’m in over my head and now John’s paying for it. We shouldn’t have come here.”
“So why did you? What could Pace have asked you to do that was so impossible to ignore?”
He looked back at her. “He asked us to find his mom’s soul.”
She threw her head back, laughing. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any weirder around here.” She looked back at him. “Another priest, just what we need! I didn’t have you pegged for the clergy, Frank, neither of you. Jesus.”
He almost laughed too. “I’m not a priest, a reverend or a vicar. I don’t even go to church. I find things for people, that’s all.”
He could feel her scrutinizing his face, his expression.
“I’m telling you the truth. This time.”
“What does find things mean? It’s vague.”
He told her about his job, what he and John did. To his ears it sounded vaguely tedious and in some ways it was, but Dr Hamilton’s body language and facial expressions told him she was interested and perhaps a little impressed.
“Listen,” he started. “I know we lied to you about being lawyers and that’s inexcusable but something’s going on here. There’s something about this whole town, something that isn’t normal. You know I’m right about that, Doctor... Louise.”
“Besides the Reverend, you mean?”
“He’s as screwed up as the rest of town. There’s something odd about him. I can’t shake the feeling he’s involved somehow.”
“You meet some people who give you the heebie-jeebies along the way, and I bet you’ve met more than your fair share,
but he’s...” She slid off the desk and walked back to her chair. “He scares me.”
Wilson nodded although he knew she couldn’t see him. Cavendish didn’t frighten him, not in the way she meant, but he did make him feel uneasy and the sensation was getting stronger. He decided against telling her he was a veteran. It would only make her feel more nervous.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
“About? Don’t ask me to tell you what I think about what’s happening around here… the suicide, the attempted suicide, the murder. Not to mention you two turning up. I wouldn’t know where to start. I’m a doctor and in comparison, it’s a simple existence.”
“You’re still happy for me to stay with Frances? After what I’ve told you?”
She waved a hand. “The only thing that’s changed is that I know what job you do. If you can call that a job.” She smiled.
It was a sentiment he had heard before. More than once from his family. He let it go.
“But if Taylor finds out I let you stay, I’m finished. Or Cavendish and his cronies. It’ll just go straight back to the organization.”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“And I don’t want to know what you intend to do with John either.”
Wilson nodded. He couldn’t tell her that because he didn’t know himself.
“I’ll get Joe to bring you a blanket.”
“Thanks.” He stood up. “Thank you for everything.”
“Have you had the prescription I wrote out made up yet?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
He couldn’t argue with her. The clock on the wall showed it was approaching ten-thirty. He wanted to let her go home but he had one last question.
“Ever heard of Baphomet?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Should I have?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, nodding toward her computer. “Could I take a look?”
She shrugged. “Help yourself.” She stood up and stepped to the side.
He walked around the desk and sat down in her chair. He moved the mouse and the screen flicked into life.