“Where’s Danny?” I asked him. “Can you see Danny?”
He lifted his head a little higher over the window-ledge. “There—” he said. “Down in the corner, close to the wall. Brown Jenkin’s got him. He doesn’t seem to be hurt yet.”
“Perhaps they’re waiting for all of these poor kids to be cooked first,” I told him. I was so disturbed by what I had seen that I had to look down at the ground, and press my hand against my forehead. I didn’t know whether I felt frightened or bitter or hopeful or nothing at all.
D-s Miller lowered his head and came up close to me. “Listen—” he said. “The quicker we act, the better. Drugs bust tactics. We’ll both come bursting in together, both screaming our heads off. I mean really let go, it helps to put them off. I’ll veer to the right, as if I’m trying to take out that chap in the white nightie. You veer to the left, and grab hold of Danny. Then you go back out of the door, while I jump through the window. Then run as if your arse is on fire.”
“What about Brown Jenkin?” I asked him.
“Kick the fucker right in the balls. That’s if he’s got any. Don’t hesitate. And keep on screaming. And don’t stop for me, because I won’t stop for you.”
“All right, then,” I swallowed. Lights flickered through the window, and the sagging door, and the ground shook violently. I heard the terrible noise of skulls, dislodged by the earth-tremors, rolling hollow and dry down the mountain of bones.
We crowded shoulder-to-shoulder at the front doors of the chapel. I was so frightened that I could hardly breathe—apart from which, the air was so corrosive that I felt like coughing. I had to get rid of a persistent irritation in the back of my throat by going hermmh, hermmmh, every few seconds.
“Are you ready?” asked D-s Miller.
I turned and looked at him. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have the faintest idea who he was—and yet here we were, in some unimaginable future, risking our lives together against the most obscene creature that I had ever seen.
I said, “Yes, ready—and, thanks.”
He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his finger. “Bollocks,” he said. “It’s my job.”
We both pushed into the chapel together, roaring at the tops of our voices. At the same time, an ear-splitting thunderclap shook the ruins, and we were dazzled by a crackling tree of lightning that struck the chapel floor and sent bones and slates flying like shrapnel in all directions.
I hesitated for a second, confused, but then I started roaring again, and bounded over the slates toward Danny and Brown Jenkin. Brown Jenkin had already stripped Danny of his T-shirt, and was prodding the coals of the nearest brazier with a long piece of iron railing. I could see the tears glistening on Danny’s cheeks.
“Pretty fire, oui? You like the pretty fire?”
I don’t think that Brown Jenkin saw me coming, but Danny did. He dropped abruptly out of Brown Jenkin’s grasp—and as Brown Jenkin scrabbled around for him, he came pelting towards me as if he were running a relay race on sports day.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” screeched Brown Jenkin, and came whirling after us with his black cloak flying, his claws patter-scratching across the slates.
Danny literally flew into my arms. I scooped him up and went running with him, around the braziers, through the filthy smoke of charring children, my shoes smashing through bones and slates and crumbled debris. I forgot to keep on screaming, but since I was carrying Danny in my arms, I wouldn’t have had enough breath anyway.
“Bastard-bastard I cut out your lunch-pipes!” howled Brown Jenkin, dancing and hopping after me. I stopped for a second, put Danny down, and kicked the last of the braziers, so that Brown Jenkin was showered in fiery coals and blazing wood and the half-roasted bodies of his innocent victims. His cloak caught alight and he wildly beat the hem against the ground, cursing and spitting and snarling.
I was away clear now. I was halfway towards the door, and nobody could touch me. I held Danny tight, and I could hear him gasping in my ear as I jolted across the slates. But as I reached the doors, and I was just about to step through, I turned around and saw that D-s Miller hadn’t been so lucky. Mazurewicz had scuttled down from the mountain of bones, and had snatched hold of him. Now he was gripping D-s Miller’s hair, and holding his long-bladed carving-knife close to his throat.
“Go!” shouted D-s Miller. “For Christ’s sake, David, go!”
I slowly put Danny down. “Listen,” I told him. “You have to run back to the house. Don’t stop for anybody. Climb back up the fire-escape and back through the skylight. Go straight downstairs and find Charity and stay with Charity. Whatever you do, don’t talk to Liz. Liz is bad. It’s not her fault, but she’s bad. So stay with Charity.”
“David, do you hear me? Go!” D-s Miller repeated.
“You’re not staying here?” asked Danny, terrified.
“Not for long. Just a couple of minutes. Now, run!”
Danny gave me the quickest-ever peck on the cheek, and then ran pell-mell back through the graveyard and into the sulphurous gloom. At that moment, Brown Jenkin came rushing up to me, his cloak still smoking, slashing his claws from one side to the other, and gibbering hysterically.
“Merde-fucker I rip you to pieces!”
I dodged, ducked, and then swung my leg and kicked him as hard as I could. He screeched, and showered lice. I kicked him again, it was appalling, it was like kicking a dead chicken wrapped in a blanket. Brown Jenkin screeched again, but this time he slashed my leg, ripping my trousers, and opening up a deep six-inch cut in my calf-muscle.
At that instant, as I lost my balance and hopped backward, I seriously believed that he was going to kill me. I suddenly thought of Dennis Pickering and my guts dissolved into water. I didn’t know whether to hit him or kick him or what to do. My whole nervous system seemed to be paralyzed with funk.
“Bueno, bueno, now I cut out your chitterlings, ja?” cackled Brown Jenkin, and slowly came nearer and nearer, yellow eyes narrowed, rattling his claws together like ghastly castanets.
21
Ritual Birth, Ritual Death
But above the thundering and rumbling and clattering of bones; above the sizzling of flesh and the cackling of Mazurewicz, I heard a strong imperious voice. “Jenkin! Stop that! Bring him here to me!”
Brown Jenkin snarled, and slashed at me one more time, out of spite. But it seemed that he had no choice but to nudge me up towards the altar, where young Mr Billings was standing in his long white sheet.
Young Mr Billings looked very different from the last time I had seen him. His hair was completely white, and his face was engraved with the inky lines of exhaustion and moral degradation. He looked like a man who had given everything: body and soul.
He gave me a strange, disassembled smile, and held his hand out as if he expected me to shake it.
“You didn’t take my advice, then, and leave?” he said. His voice was very much harsher than it had been before, although it had lost none of its authority. “I knew you wouldn’t leave, no matter what. And now you’re here, just where I wanted you!”
He tapped his forehead. “Psychology… that was always my strong point. I wanted you here and here you are.”
“How the hell did you know that I was going to stay?”
“Well… of course you stayed,” young Mr Billings told me. “You were in love with Liz, weren’t you, and lovers always do exactly the opposite of what they’re advised to do. Anyway, you’re here. You must have stayed. At least, you stayed long enough for your Liz to become three times pregnant, which was all that she wanted. Of course, sad to say, her offspring didn’t survive. Too nice a year, you know, 1992! You could still breathe the air without coughing. But the witch-entity left her, when she died, and hid itself back in the walls of Fortyfoot House, and eventually found itself another host; a charming lady estate-agent. And so the process went on, until today, when we are ready at last for the final great Renewal!”
He took hold of my unwilling hand and
led me across to the mattresses where the vastly bloated woman was lying. Her tiny face stared at me blankly. Her chins were smothered in grease, and grease was running down into the depths of her cleavage.
“Allow me to introduce Vanessa Charles,” smiled young Mr Billings. “A spinster of Ventnor… and the first witch in human history to reach full-term. That is why she needs so many children, you see! Young flesh, to strengthen her babies! But of course, nobody in 2049 can have children. There aren’t any children. That was why we had to go back to Fortyfoot House… that was why we needed to take them from the past.”
The woman’s tiny mouth opened and closed, and then suddenly she wheezed, “Wotcher, cocker. I knew I’d get you in the end. You caw-baby.”
“Kezia,” I whispered.
“Oh yes, cocker. And Liz too. And all of them. And now the lovely Vanessa. What about a last kiss, cocker?”
She let out a thin, hissing sound that was supposed to be a laugh. But she stopped abruptly as her huge stomach suddenly gave a repulsive double-shudder, and the interior of the chapel was blitzed with lightning.
“Nearly time!” said young Mr Billings gleefully. But then he looked at me suspiciously, and frowned. “You do understand, don’t you, that I had no choice?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, dully. I couldn’t take my eyes off Vanessa’s surging stomach. I couldn’t stop trying to imagine what it was that made it surge so violently. I couldn’t stop thinking that—more than anything else in the world—I didn’t want to be here when whatever it was emerged. “What do I mean? What do I mean? Do you think I wanted to slaughter all those innocent children? They asked me for twelve, that’s all, and so I gave them twelve. I told you why. I told you I didn’t want to give them any more. I felt such remorse! I tried to stop them, I tried! That was why I asked you to leave Fortyfoot House, so that your Liz could never complete her pregnancy, so that her witch-entity would die within her. All three pregnancies must come from the same human source, or else the embryos simply atrophy, and die, and then the witch-entity dies, too. That is why Vanessa here is the only witch left.”
“If I’d known that—” I began.
“Yes, yes, I should have made it clearer, I suppose. I did try, my dear sir. I did try. But you would do what you wanted to do!”
The ground trembled, and more skulls rolled down the mountain of bones.
Mazurewicz, behind his bandages, whispered, “I must feed her more. The time is almost here!”
Young Mr Billings slid back down towards the place beside the altar where he had originally been standing. “Mr Mazurewicz is my midwife, aren’t you, Mr Mazurewicz? He has always been the midwife, when witches come to give birth. Those who know nothing of the Old Ones, and the power they used to exercise… well, they used to be afraid of Mr Mazurewicz. Little did they know what they really should have been afraid of!”
He laid his hand on Mazurewicz’s shoulder, and squeezed it, affectionately but respectfully. “Mr Nicolas Mazurewicz is the character the people called the King of Darkness; or Old Nick; or Old Scratch. Sometimes they called him Satan.”
Mazurewicz said, more urgently, “It’s time, Billings! She needs to feed!”
Young Mr Billings said, “Go on, then,” and grasped D-s Miller by the collar-bone. I don’t know what nerve he pressed, but D-s Miller let out a quick, gasping breath, and his eyes bulged helplessly, and he neither moved nor spoke. Mazurewicz returned to the bulging, churning Vanessa, and immediately cut her off a huge steaming slice of liver and lungs, and crammed it between her podgy lips.
Young Mr Billings said, “I should have made it clearer, yes. There are so many things I should have done, and didn’t. And all those children dead! It’s a terrible pity, sir! A terrible pity! I weep for them!”
Brown Jenkin, just behind me, giggled and tittered.
“Quiet, Jenkin,” Young Mr Billings admonished him. He released D-s Miller quite casually, and raised up his arms as before.
“The trouble was,” he said, his hoarse voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “The trouble was that they offered me something very special, in return for all of my services. If I gave them all the children they needed, for their great Renewal, they would make me part of them. I would have dominion over the world, too. And not just the world, but space and time! I would exist for ever, beyond all human understanding. I would indulge every conceivable sense and many that are inconceivable. I would travel beyond the barriers of infinity.
“Only one human could join them—only one! My father was tempted, of course, but he wouldn’t let them have the children! Only one human in all the world, to give them the knowledge they need to command every other human! At least for the few miserable years which remain to you humans, before we chase you and devour you and use you for whatever sport amuses us.”
Rubbing his neck, stepping away from him, D-s Miller said, “You’re crackers, you are.”
Young Mr Billings waved a hand at him dismissively, and then came close up to me, so close that I could smell his sour-milk breath. “It’s you I wanted, David. Somebody who knows about the Old Ones. A Gauleiter, if you like—a lieutenant. Somebody human who’s been with a witch. So that when I’m one with the Old Ones—you can speak for me in the human world. I will be God, and you will be my Jesus—do you understand?”
I could scarcely speak. I suddenly understood the scale of my own weakness and my own gullibility; but also my humanity.
“You like the idea of that, don’t you?” said young Mr Billings. “Run, I told you! But you didn’t run. Not you! Too curious. Too easily tempted. Now—stay close—wait till you see what happens now. Jenkin—guard them, don’t you dare to let them go!”
“Ach, merde,” spat Brown Jenkin. With one claw, he hooked me aside.
Young Mr Billings began chanting again. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” The ground shook so violently that huge lumps of masonry dropped off the chapel walls, and bounced across the slates. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
Even Brown Jenkin backed away as Mazurewicz raised one hand and screamed out, “It’s happening! It’s happening at last! The Renewal, Billings! The Renewal!”
Thunder bellowed over our heads. The natural forces that this Renewal was stirring up were cataclysmic. But this was hardly surprising, when you realized that this grossly distended Vanessa Charles was just about to give birth to a species of creature which had once commanded both time and space.
Mazurewicz, dancing like some terrible bandaged scarecrow, lifted the knife with which he had been slicing up meat. He whirled it around and around, and then he thrust it deep into the soft glistening flesh of Vanessa’s belly.
Vanessa’s eyes pigged in agony. One of her fat arms was helplessly flung up. But she must have known from the very beginning that she had to die. Mazurewicz began slowly to draw the knife upwards, cutting her wide open in a grotesque parody of a Caesarean section, when the thing that had been gestating inside her decided to force its way out now.
“Oh, Christ,” breathed D-s Miller. The whole chapel shuddered, and the sky was split with lightning from side to side.
Vanessa’s stomach tore, and out of the gaping hole protruded waving tentacles, like those of a gray shining squid. More and more of them writhed out, until her whole stomach was alive with struggling arms.
“The son of saliva!” screamed young Mr Billings. “The son of saliva! Ia! Ia!”
I stared in horror at Vanessa’s face. She was still alive, still sensate—and God alone knows what pain she was suffering. But then there was a moment of extreme tension, in which I heard her ribs cracking apart, and the huge tentacled beast rose up, and swelled.
Vanessa’s eyes opened, and streams of brilliant light shone out of them from the inside. Her mouth stretched wide, and light poured out of that, too. Then her skull exploded, and a quivering globule of shining protoplasm, a kind of shimmering gaseous jellyfish, poured out into the gloom, followed by three or four more.
“The son of seed!
” screamed young Mr Billings.
There was another soft, bloody, violent explosion. Vanessa was blown apart into ribbons of flesh and shattered bone. A huge black amorphous shadow rose out of her remains, a shadow which carried an aura of intense cold and infinite evil.
“The son of blood! Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
The three hideous sons of the Old Ones hung suspended in the air above the grisly altar of Vanessa Charles’ body. After thousands of years in concealment, they had returned at last to re-establish their rule over a barren and poisoned world. I didn’t really understand what they were, or where they had originally come from; but I had the coldest feeling that they believed this Earth to be theirs, rather than ours, and that they would show us very little mercy when they reclaimed it.
Mazurewicz wiped his knife on his coat, and stepped away, bowing his head. But young Mr Billings approached the three floating entities, his arms outstretched, and greeted them as if they were gods.
“I brought you back!” he shouted. “I brought you back! Son of seed and son of saliva and son of blood! I brought you back! Now you can join together! And now I can join you, too!”
I sensed a dark turmoil between the three creatures. The squid-like thing began to roll up its tentacles, and the shining globules began to pour liquidly together. Above them, the cold black shadow hung in the sulphurous sky, like a conjuror’s cloak at the beginning of a mystifying act of magic.
And I suppose it was magic—the original pre-human magic that over the centuries had given us witches and faith-healers and psychics.
Without any sign of fear, young Mr Billings stepped into the bloody center of Vanessa Charles’ remains, one foot on her shattered spine, and threw back his head.
“Now you can join together!” he cried. “And I can join you, too!”
It occurred to me then that I was witness to a genealogical event as critical as the moment when the first two single cells had divided; or when the first fishlike creature had dragged itself out of the primeval swamps; or when an apelike creature had first haltingly uttered words. The future of the whole planet pivoted on this one devastating moment: not only its future, but its past. We had brought ourselves here, willingly or carelessly or both. Was there still enough time to say no?
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