Modern Gods

by Nick Laird

  Stan whispered, “It’s basically kava, which they have in Fiji. Do you know it? They boil the roots of the kava plant and strain the water through muslin. They call it isa here.”

  “Is it alcoholic?” Liz whispered back.

  “Mildly hallucinogenic. It just sends me to sleep, though.”

  “You know, I don’t think I’m going to have any—but Liz, you should try it. So you can talk about it.”

  Margo put her hand up to reject the bowl, but Belef just stood there, waiting.

  “Fine. I’ll just let it touch my lips.”

  “It tastes like shit,” Liz confirmed.

  “I like it,” Paolo said. “Like drinking earth.”

  —

  Finally, the meat was ready. Long dark strips of pig, carved off with wooden blades, were served on banana leafs. Liz watched Stan and Paolo tuck in. She waved the plate away. Belef called Namor and finally he sloped reluctantly across and sat at her feet, chewing his pet. The isa began to work, warmth spreading through her body. Her ears grew very hot. When she turned her head it took a second for her vision to catch up. Eyesight was slowing down just as her brain began speeding up. It was dusk, and the orange tinge was giving way to gray. The first few stars were coming out. The edges of the trees waved like hands, imparting something but she didn’t know what.

  Belef’s followers—maybe a hundred in all—lounged around campfires. Belef, and her surrogates Leftie and Alan, visited each circle in turn and served up the isa, leaving a bowl and a full plastic canister behind for them to keep drinking and serving themselves.

  People lay on their backs and sides, chatted softly, stared into space, fell asleep. Margo was sitting very still and humming to herself. Stan curled up in a ball and put his head on his rucksack. Paolo sat beside Liz and kept saying that it didn’t seem to be affecting him, that it wasn’t working, that he couldn’t feel anything.

  Liz lay back on the grass and looked at the sky. She had the distinct impression she was not looking upwards but was in fact hanging above everything, looking down into space. She felt as if she might fall off the surface towards the starry floor beneath her. She took hold of Paolo’s hand and gripped it like it was the single filament connecting her to earth. She was aware of existing within the frame, within the cage of her body.

  She lay for a while and watched the sky turn. The crescent moon appeared from behind a silhouetted peak and began drifting upwards through the deep arrangement of stars. She sat up. The fires, the people, the trees, the grass—it came with the force of revelation that she herself existed as a wave of energy, and that this wave of energy flowing through her flowed just the same through all these other things. The fires, the people, the trees, the grass. They were all secretly the same thing. They were all one. She was overwhelmed with a sense of the world’s clandestine harmony, and looked at Paolo, and could see by the way he was now grinning stupidly at her that he felt it too.

  CHAPTER 30

  Ian Hutchinson was kept busy by betrayal. Lies were hard work—you had to keep up with them. For example, the night before he’d stayed up at their holiday house in Castlerock, not with his family but with Charlotte, the eighteen-year-old receptionist he was sleeping with, whom he then had to drop off at her hair salon in Portrush before heading back to Ballyglass. He’d already called the office and left a message that he was seeing clients on the road all morning, and timed it all so he got back just after Trish and the kids had left for school. The kettle was still warm; two soggy bowls of cereal sat on the kitchen table.

  Now he lay on his marital bed masturbating; beside him, propped on a pillow, the iPad showed a shop assistant with improbable cleavage getting fucked standing up in a changing room. It occurred to him that the sheer obvious discomfort of her position appeared to be what turned him on. He was efficient, brief, and just wrapping a tissue around the raw head to catch the semen when a small box appeared in the corner of the screen. A sent message from Trisha to Spencer.

  —

  Ian Hutchinson dropped the tissue in the toilet.

  He was neither outraged nor angry. Instead, the knowledge entered as a sadness. The tone of his wife’s message was soft, a softness he recognized as belonging once to him. Even with all the work he himself did with lying, he still felt tender towards Trish, or at least had not moved his old tenderness entirely to anyone else. He just fucked other people, and for a moment now the text had the strange inverse effect of making him feel guilty about that. It took a good ten minutes before he could sufficiently transfer all the guilt, lock and stock, onto her. Lying is work but righteous fury is so easy, can be slipped on like a coat.

  He takes his time. He showers and dresses and drives to Donnellys Estate Agents. He parks outside the office and waves through the glass at Trisha sitting behind the desk. She waves emptily back. When he doesn’t come in immediately, she gets up and walks out to the car and raises one hand to ask what he wants.

  He is very clear about what he wants. He beckons her down to the car window and reaches through and grabs her by the throat.

  CHAPTER 31

  It was dark.

  The dancing had begun again.

  The kunda drums pounded out a beat and feet stamped the ground in time, and Liz lay on her back in the grass and felt it rising through the earth.

  “You have to just give in to it,” Paolo shouted as Liz tried to sit up.

  “Are you going to be sick again?” Stan asked.

  “I wasn’t sick.”

  “Not you. Margo.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m here. I’m right here. Has anyone noticed how the trees are rippling, like flames?”

  Margo was lying on her side behind Stan, next to a puddle of vomit.

  “Those are flames,” Stan said.

  “Is something on fire?”

  “The fire is on fire.”

  “I am so high.”

  “Me too.”

  Stan stumbled to his feet and began to dance. His jerkiness reminded Liz of the cassowary. And she wondered for what seemed a long time if he was the cassowary or if the cassowary was his spirit animal and what hers was and why. Now she was in the circle dancing and so was Margo and so was Paolo and there were many grinning faces dancing at them and round them and there was this pounding beat that just went on and on and on. She was smiled at more than she’d ever been smiled at.

  She tried to emulate the way the dancers shifted from foot to foot, but in the end she just stood there and bobbed in the traditional Northern Irish manner like a cork or an aunt at a wedding. There were drums and chanting and a thin reedlike warbling. Maybe it was someone singing, maybe it was pipes or something. She looked around and around but couldn’t see anyone playing anything. The music came out of the earth itself.

  Suddenly the smiles stopped and the dancers got to work with intricate routines—dipping, turning, swaying, barking. She staggered over to the side and sat down by Margo.

  She raised her hand to her face and watched as it aged in front of her. She knew, from reading about it, that this happened to everyone, it was Hallucinogenic Experience 101, but this did not make it any less extraordinary. The hand wrinkled and aged and finally the skin dissolved, the bones, the cartilage fell away. There was only space, trembling space, where her hand had been.

  The dancers formed concentric circles. Suddenly the outer circle crouched, and then the next one and the next one and so on—until only the innermost circle, the decorated dancers, the skeleton men, were left upright. They turned and faced outwards and moaned and pretended to fall down dead. Belef stood there, the center of all circles, the sanctum sanctorum.

  She shook and shivered. She wailed, she stomped. Around her the crouching people chanted, “Amulmul, Amulmul.”

  She raised a hand and pointed it at Liz and shouted, “I see Queen Elissabet. She has the message from Kasinge
n, from my daughter, from the dongen, from all the dead women. What are we to do? Speak to us.”

  Liz found herself lifted and pushed forward. Margo tried to grab hold of her arm, but there were too many hands on her. She floated on a sea of hands. The circles opened for her and closed behind her. Belef’s eyes were ecstatic, hard, and empty.

  “Kaykay! What are we to do?”

  “I’m Liz,” shouted Liz.

  “Kaykay talks in you. What must we do?”

  “No—I’m Liz. Just keep having, just keep on—”

  Belef gripped the sides of Liz’s head and pulled her face into hers. Bodies were all around them. Belef shouted, “You gave your Elisabet coin to Namor. You gave your money away. And we must do the same.”

  “No, there was no—”

  “We must give our money to the dead. So they see we have nothing and send us cargo.”

  “I didn’t mean anything by—”

  “We must follow you. We must open the road like this.”

  The music stopped. The bodies peeled away and Belef released her.

  Liz stumbled backwards, but dozens of strange hands kept her in the circle. She felt panic rise within her. All along she had thought Belef was the gate, the key, the strangeness, the location of the magic, and Belef had thought it was her. She was the alien visitor, the unlikely revelation, named for the most powerful woman in the world, a real queen, a vehicle for the dead daughters, for the dead mothers. Liz tried again to break out of the circle and found herself pushed back in.

  “I have nothing to do with this,” she shouted. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  —

  Somehow a chain of followers formed and began to throw their bank notes and kina into a circle at Belef’s feet. When there was a pile of notes there—crumpled autumn leaves—Belef motioned to Leftie and he retrieved a burning branch from the fire.

  “Queen Elisabet says you must do this! Kaykay says you must do this! You must burn the money.”

  Liz looked around for Margo or Paolo or Stan, but there were only the faces of Belef’s followers—of Napasio, of Namor’s mother, of Leftie and Buggle and Alan.

  “No,” Liz said. “No, I can’t, I can’t do this.”

  She tried to hand the branch back to Leftie, but he stepped away.

  “You must open the road, Lissabeth. Kaykay chose you. Kaykay sent you.”

  Liz felt her own judgment begin to crumble to circumstance, to someone else’s power and personal force. Belef was nodding at her, willing her on, and it made a very real sense suddenly to walk to the little scatter of crumpled orange and green notes.

  They watched her intently. She took the burning torch Leftie offered her and dropped it on top of the money. The paper began to crinkle up and then the whole lot flared into life. The followers roared and the kunda drums began again. Liz found her way back to where her group had been and slumped to the ground. Margo sat with her head between her knees. The rest were nowhere to be seen.

  Then Liz heard shouts of anger, they were coming from the direction of the church, and two of Alan’s army appeared a few feet from her, carrying some large resistant object. The thing twisted and yelped and Belef looked on with vague interest as it was dumped in front of her. The thing got to its feet: Usai, one sleeve of his Britney Spears T-shirt ripped along the shoulder seam.

  “You spying on us? You working for the New Truth?”

  Usai looked at his feet.

  “Mother, you must—”

  Alan stepped forward and efficiently punched him in the stomach. He doubled up and went down on his knees.

  “We found him behind the church, with matches and paper. Going to fire it up,” Alan said.

  Usai looked at Belef.

  “Mother, that isn’t true. I came to tell you, you need to come back to Christ. Come back to the real church. They will put you in jail.”

  “This man betrayed all of us. Kasingen and me and the Story. It is time Usai is stopped.”

  “We have to do something.” Liz wiped the hair away from Margo’s face.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Snap out of it.”

  “They’ve found Usai in the trees and they’re hurting him.”

  “I need to lie here and never move again.”

  Margo rolled onto her side and curled up in a ball, hiding her face in her hands.

  “Margo!”

  “What!”

  “They’re going to hurt him.”

  “I hurt.”

  Liz stood up. Her vision was still unsteady. Everything flowed. She couldn’t see Paolo or Stan. She stepped towards the circle. The ground moved up to meet her feet.

  “Belef, please, let him go. He’s your son.”

  The woman grinned diabolically.

  “No. He betrayed us.”

  “Please let him go.”

  “Lizbet, you are soft like water. We should tie him to the flagpole. We should raise him as our flag and slit his throat.”

  “Please. He’s terrified.”

  Usai’s face was bleeding. He knelt in the firelight.

  “He wants to burn the church and stop the cargo.”

  Usai stared at the ground. Belef raised her hand.

  “He must be punished by Amulmul.”

  “You have to let him go. He is your son. He is Kasingen’s brother.”

  Belef waited. She made her thinking face, squinted. Scratched her chin.

  Liz hesitated, then shouted, “Kasingen says she wants you to let him go. Kasingen says you have to.”

  Belef grinned, a huge grin bloody with betel nut. Liz had the impression suddenly that Belef had been waiting for this.

  “All right, all right, you have come to open the road and we will learn from you.” She turned to Usai. “Go,” she said softly. “Run away, little one.”

  Usai got up and walked through the followers, pushed and jeered at but granted passage. His silhouette was swallowed by the forest.

  —

  She lay between Margo and Stan now in front of the fire. She was still high, and the sensation came and went, came and went. Had she killed someone, saved someone? Neither. She had not added her weight to the wrong side of the scale. Perhaps that was the best any person like her—not brave, not a God, not a leader—could ask for. She felt she had been thrown out of the universe and hauled back in. Staring into the flames, surrounded by bodies, by the slowly rising and falling sounds of breathing. Galactic time, nighttime, deep time, the time of stars, time of the moon. She must have fallen asleep.

  CHAPTER 32

  Alison ushered David Boyd into the living room. He wore a sports coat and a pair of green corduroys, and he carried a brown briefcase. With the thick glasses and the wiry red hair and the tall-thin build, he was exactly what she’d always thought a professor would look like. In his late forties, or thereabouts. He wouldn’t meet her eye and she thought of a boy who was like that in school. They’d called it shyness then; now they’d say he was on the spectrum. She helped him along: “Come in the car, did you? Will you have a cup of tea?” She left him and went into the kitchen to split and butter a few scones while she waited for the kettle to boil. Stephen stood by the fridge, and she could see by his face he was having second thoughts. She gave him a quick hug and asked him was he OK. He turned and hugged her back.

  “You’ll go out, won’t you?” he replied. “I don’t want you in the house.”

  She nodded and called through to the academic.

  “You from Coleraine, David?”

  “From Derry. Londonderry.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She arranged the tea things on a tray and handed them to Stephen. “I’m just going to pop out and leave you to it. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. D’you reckon that’ll be enough time?”


  “I’d expect so,” Stephen said. His voice faltered and he said it again. She knew it was stupid but didn’t she feel a little proud? Here was this man from the university to talk to her Stephen. To let Stephen explain.

  —

  Thanks for agreeing to meet. I’m sure this can’t be terribly easy for you.

  The interviewer, this fella Boyd, kept rearranging himself on the sofa, and his discomfort put Stephen more firmly back into himself. It was not easy to talk about that night—partly because it had been hardened into certain details by the police and the courts and by his own telling and retelling of it, and those details, while not exactly false, didn’t give a wholly true or representative impression. The evening was not to be caught in words or conveyed in them. The hurry and the panic, the slip of the moon appearing and disappearing over the hedges as they roared along the back roads towards the bar. All the wild excitement. How cold the steel felt as he lifted out the semi-automatic from the Adidas holdall. The solidity. The grip of it. The dry mouth. The fear of it. The long walk to the door. And then the punters in the bar ignoring them as they entered and a few of them laughing at the masks. And then the fresh rage coming down—once the first shot went off. Once the first one was fired. Once the thing began, it all turned so unreal so fast. It was getting the first one off. Then: easy. A crumpling. The brief song of each shot. Casting madness into the crowd. Pop-pop-pop and how they dropped and crumpled. How they went. How they disappeared like that. Click. Whole beings discontinued. How his ears had rung. He couldn’t hardly hear the boys in the car afterwards at all. They’d been whipped up to a frenzy, whooping and laughing. Only when the two police cars hurtled past them, sirens going, heading to the Day’s End—the place of the dead, the place they drove away from, the mess that they had made—did the chatter stop for a second, did Stephen think what has been done, what have we done, what have I done.