Sigil

by Aidan J. Reid

  It was all very disturbing, Regan thought, not least because there were so many sites dedicated and contributing to the satanic cults and rituals online.

  He tried a final search:

  Flesh and Blood Devil Worship

  He was guided to a site with a wall of white text on the backdrop of the familiar pentagram with the goat head in the centre. There was a paragraph which stood out from the rest, emboldened on the page and only six lines long.

  Merge as one, foul the stock

  Work together, scatter the flock

  Spread the sickness, sour their kin,

  Feed your ego, chew on sin,

  Drink the blood, seal the knot,

  Bathe in Baphomet, see them rot.

  FORTY-ONE

  Nicola Zubizaretta was standing in the doorway of the chip shop. Above him there was a sign. On it his name filled it in a stylish scrawl. Three lights illuminated the text, bulbs that, combined with the grease wafting from the open door, helped to attract an abundance of curious winged insects. He looked up into the pocket of critters that fluttered in the glare and dragged on his cigarette. He had long since given up crushing them. The blood-marked sign which carried his surname was still coloured with their juices. He was reluctant to use his first name because he felt it sounded like a salon. Nor did he consider using his full surname having felt that it wasn’t catchy enough. Instead, he opted for Zubi’s and was still happy with the decision two decades on.

  He flicked his spent cigarette onto the floor and crushed it under his heel among the many other discarded butts. He looked up and down the quiet street and then at his watch.

  A car pulled over and up onto the pavement. The bump over the kerb jerked the driver against the roof. The driver struggled with the door until it finally burst open with the hinges creaking. He straightened himself before turning to the chip shop.

  “We’re closed you fat bastard.”

  The man continued undaunted. One hand pocketed the car keys in his navy trousers. The other hand smoothed down the red wool cardigan that sloped over his belly which he patted.

  “Why don’t you piss off back to Italy?” the driver said.

  Nicola’s eyes glowered, never leaving the man’s. He stepped down off the doorway and closed the space between them until he was looking down at the smaller man, inches from his face. They stared into each other’s eyes, unflinching. This lasted for several seconds until finally the composure of Nicola left him and he broke into a broad smile.

  “You got me. Never heard you curse before Father!”

  The owner stepped back and offered a hand to the priest. Regan never quite got the code right. Sometimes it was a handshake. Sometimes it was an arm wrestle handshake followed by a pat on the back. Other times it was a fist bump. Like a game of rock, paper, scissors, Regan watched the man’s hand transition to paper which he replicated but his deliberation was too late and he found his paper wrap the other man’s stone in an awkward shake.

  “Nice to see you again Nick. How’s business?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders in a way that only Italians can and turned toward the light of the chippy, trailed by the priest.

  “Couple burgers Marika!” he shouted into a woman in the kitchen.

  Marika was dressed in the same white overalls as the owner, with a blue striped apron down her front. She had been blowing hard on a clump of crumpled tissues and when they entered she stuffed them back into deep pockets and moved to a big freezer at the back corner of the room.

  “It was the usual you wanted, yeah?”

  “Maybe hold the burger. Extra salt on the chips,” Regan said and sat down on the ledge of the large window that looked out onto the street.

  “Been a while father. Where you been?” Nicola had flipped the counter and entered the kitchen. Regan heard the sizzle of the oil as the man dunked the basket of frozen fries into the fryer.

  “Just been trying to eat a bit better. Lose some weight, you know.”

  “You do look thinner,” Nicola said in all seriousness. “Good for you. Bad for business. But good for you!”

  Regan sat up straighter against the ledge, conscious of the overflow on his belt. His buttocks which grabbed the ledge seemed to do so easier this time, but he still struggled to hold himself in the narrow seating position and stood.

  “Things good here?”

  “Hit and miss. We had a good day today. Had the McGregor’s in earlier. Them and their 54 kids.”

  “Nice little payday there then.”

  “Too right. Was going to shut up shop to celebrate,” Nicola said and smirked. “Weird little gobshites with their red hair. Looks like their heads are on fire.”

  Regan laughed and watched as the man pulled a tub of grated cheese from the fridge behind him.

  “I’m serious father. Like something from Children of the Corn. Ever seen that movie?” he asked and got a shake of the head from the priest. “You should. Bloody good. Definitely inbreeding in that family if you ask me.”

  “Not sure about that Nick. They seem fairly harmless to me.”

  “I dunno. You seen them at Mass though, right?”

  “Yea.”

  “When I come down from communion, I look over and they’re standing there, tall and packed together in the aisles, even the kids, and sure they can barely walk. They look like a box of matches.”

  Regan laughed again and walked closer to the counter to see how the chips were cooking but also to suck in more of the grease in the air.

  “Any word on Bernie?”

  The smile had dropped from both their faces at the mention of the woman and Regan scratched his head. Loose skin flakes were dislodged and swam in front of his eyes like a snow globe. He stepped back from it and walked to the window with his back turned to the kitchen.

  “Nothing. You hear anything?”

  “Not a peep. Usually, we’d get drunks coming in and shouting their mouth off or bragging but nothing. Just like she disappeared. Amazing thing for a woman of her size.”

  “Nick.”

  “On the bright side, her young one will probably sleep better. Some of the lads who have been in here scaled that mountain and said she only had one bed in her flat. The poor dote must normally share a bed with her Ma. Could you imagine that rolling over you in the dead of night?”

  “Nick!”

  The priest had turned again and Nicola threw up his hands and stretched his lips wide across his face. His hair was dark and thicker at the sides, but on top it had thinned considerably. A little island had broken off from the continent that was his head of hair and continued its lonely drift away from the mainland but the man’s expression pushed some currents back on his forehead that almost reconnected the land masses again.

  “You seen Larry Doe about?”

  “Not since that day in Mass. You know what Larry’s like, he’ll go missing for weeks and then appear out of the blue, tanning himself and supping on a beer, watching the cars go by. I’ll tell ye. For the amount of stick he gets, who’s got a worse life, eh?”

  Regan was thinking about the man sitting in his usual spot on the little rocky bridge entrance to the village like some misplaced garden gnome, silently watching the traffic flowing in and out. Empty cans of cheap cider would be littered around him like some sort of protective force field to ward off the locals and there he would sit for hours rolling his dirty tobacco.

  “Anyone else been in lately?”

  “No one out of the ordinary. Things are slow but they’ll pick up now the nights are getting a bit colder.”

  “How about last night? Anyone come in after the pub?”

  Nicola stood back, hands on hips and looked up at the ceiling. He was standing in thought so long that Regan began to worry about the chips.

  “That policeman.”

  “Tommy?”

  “No. Tommy hasn’t been in here since he was a kid. Far too healthy. The other one.”

  Regan remembered the scene from last night and
the drunken companion of the officer.

  “Anything unusual?”

  “Nah. He was hammered. Barely stand up. He only had a bag of chips. Bloody vegetarian. Don’t know what the world’s coming to sometimes. Loads of salt and vinegar, yeah?”

  The chips were scooped out onto the metal tray, the oil dripping off through the grating. Nicola grabbed a stocky salt shaker and a bottle of vinegar which had a knife prick in the lid. He sprinkled the chips with the liquid before sneezing the shaker over them, stirring it in to the chips with his spatula.

  “Want to know a secret?” Regan’s eyes narrowed on the man and moved over to the counter again to watch his movements closely. “Vinegar first, then the salt. Vinegar wets the chip skin so the salt can dissolve into it. You heard it here first.”

  Regan smiled and collected the brown paper bag, said goodbye and walked to his car. A car horn beeped at him and he raised his hand to wave. Caught red handed he thought. When he was seated, he pulled off the kerb and drove the short distance to the clinic car park where there were a couple of parked cars. He pulled up the handbrake and tore the wrapping off his meal like a kid at Christmas.

  The first chip burned his mouth so he screwed a crack in the window to let the air cool them. He surveyed the landscape. Everything was quiet. Then his eyes rested on the parked cars around him. There was no one in either of them. Automatically he was drawn to the grand car, silver and expensive. As he speared a plastic fork into the chip pile again, his eyes narrowed on the little emblem. It was a Mercedes.

  FORTY-TWO

  Donald Spence cursed under his breath at his forgetfulness. The big double doors were already unlocked. How could he have forgotten to lock the doors? Anyone could have just walked in and done, well … anything. Maybe they had? He pulled on the handle bar until they stretched as far as they could on the hinge, sliding bricks in place to hold their position. He held his breath and looked inside.

  The sun was low behind his back, the dying embers of its glow stretching far enough inside to light the hall and to convince him that his error hadn't been punished. The lines of tables still neatly filed in order and facing the stage where his duties for the night awaited. He had arrived an hour early, plenty of time to prepare everything. There was expected to be a strong turnout considering it was a rollover weekend. Seeing everything in order, the sense of panic left him and he relaxed.

  Head of the choir and a recently-recruited Bingo caller, he had replaced Mitch Brundle, whose rising age and declining faculties made his role untenable. The loss was deeply felt by the pensioners, who usually accounted for 95 percent of the attendance, given the unwavering, loyal service the man had given over two decades.

  An extension of the Church’s reach, a sliver of the bingo proceeds helped to maintain the hall and contributed directly to the weekly collection. Fr Regan's first port of call, when faced with the task of replacing the aged announcer, was to ask internally, namely to the clergy and laymen and women if they were interested in taking on the role. Spence, a trivia and crossword buff, had never dabbled in bingo, mainly because he was a decade off retirement age and hadn't the inclination to spend two hours in a freezing cold hall on a Sunday night blotting a book of sheets in the hope he'd win a jackpot of £20, the prize for the last House.

  However, hearing the urgency in the priest's voice and with an assurance that it would be a short-term gig, Spence volunteered and, much to his surprise, found that he enjoyed the task enormously. So much so that, he offered to continue the role indefinitely. There were perks too. Holding the keys to the community hall allowed him to indulge in a favourite guilty pleasure, trawling through his vast collection of B Rated Slasher horror movies. Movies so bad they were good. On his first shift, he was surprised to discover an old movie projector gathering dust in the cupboard, which he had managed to restore.

  Since then, Spence pursued archived reels of long-forgotten movies on specialist websites. In the dead of night, he'd pull the projector screen out and pitch it against the wall, carefully loading the reel in the box, lay back and watch the images play out in his own personal cinema.

  He made his way onto the raised stage. Better check that my projector is OK, he thought. In the corner beyond the table with the microphone and the bits and pieces needed for the Bingo, stood a tall storage cupboard containing his precious projector and one or two reels he had yet to watch.

  As he approached, Spence looked around nervously to reassure himself that he wasn't being watched. As he reached for the cupboard’s door he saw that they were tied shut with a knotted black cord, the kind used in gardening. It fastened the door tight, barely a crack within visible.

  “Where did that come from?”

  Spence searched his pockets for something sharp to cut the plastic cord and pulled out a key. Using its serrated edge, he sawed at the fastener until, finally, it broke.

  No sooner had the tag snapped off than one of the doors swung open, almost hitting him in the face. The shock was complete when the big arm of a woman flopped out striking the stage floor. Spence looked in horror at the crumpled body inside, her large frame squeezed tight like she had been buried in a standing coffin.

  FORTY-THREE

  It wasn't until the he saw the first star in the sky, that Fr Regan felt comfortable leaving the security of his car. It was well tucked in off a rarely used country lane, behind the neatly cropped but dense hedgerow that hid the car’s horrible yellow paint job. He had hoped that the EchoSeeker would pick up the signal of the receiver from his location but was frustrated, although not surprised that it was out of range.

  Fr Regan stepped out onto the gravel lane which was sprouting in places with grass. Still unwashed, tired and suddenly feeling all fifty-four calendar years stack on his shoulders, he crossed the road, ears tuned for traffic, eyes wary of lights. About half a kilometre ahead he could see the big semi-detached house of Joe Boyd, the two barns beyond, barely visible. The building he wanted to visit was behind them.

  As he hurried along the road, Regan began looking up and down for traffic. Up ahead he saw two headlights wave around a bend and disappear.

  He passed the path that led to Boyd's house and kept walking until he was level with where he believed the third building to be. It was guesswork at this point. He looked over the hedgerow and saw the little knoll which was sloped in such a way that it gave a slight rise above the building and farm yard but he realised that he would be exposed to cars or pedestrians on the road. Calculating the risk, Regan figured that it was worth the gamble and anyway, he would be camouflaged against the dark fields and sky.

  The field was empty of animals. He paced up and down the roadside looking for a little break in the hedgerow to leap over the barbed-wire fence. Suddenly he heard the sound of another car approach. The fear of getting caught – how could he explain himself? – trumped his fear of pain, and with adrenaline pumping, he threw himself sideways into the lowest part of the hedge, shielding his face with an arm until the momentum carried his hip to the springy fence. The noise was approaching faster and as he looked across to the road, saw that he was exposed, the low hedge wouldn’t hide him. As the light beams threatened to catch him in their full glare, Regan dismissed all fear of pain and grabbed the waist-high barbed fence and swung in a heap onto the other side.

  His shoulder took most of the hit and the well grazed grass didn't give any sponge effect with the pain shooting up his collar and tingling his hand. He lay still and prostrate in that position until the car shot past. Sitting back up, he winced, inspecting the hand and rotating the shoulder cuff until the sound had faded into the soft breeze again.

  The limbs moved easily despite some superficial pain. His chest and back felt the worst with the deep bites from the thorns and trailing twigs and barbs stabbing him in the ribs with their sharp fingers.

  He half expected Big Joe Boyd to come running straight for him with a shotgun levelled at his chest. Regan suddenly felt foolish for being there. But there he
was. Trespassing in the man's field and itching to get to the knoll so he could survey the courtyard from his raised platform.

  Regan navigated in a fairly straight line in a half crouch, half walk until he had reached his destination and then lay on his belly. A grass stained shirt was the least of his worries tonight. From his back pocket, he hooked out the remote control device and held it in his hands. His elbows, which propped his upper body, begin to sink slightly under the soft terrain. From his viewpoint, he roughly counted a distance of 100 metres from Boyd’s house, which was quiet except for the living room where he watched the unmistakeable large shadow of the man drain a cup before slipping back inside to what Regan predicted was a comfortable chair and television. He was well within the advertised range needed to transmit the signal and turn on the recording device.

  There was complete silence, which despite a cool curious wind licking on the fresh thorn cuts on his side, Regan appreciated.

  After forty-five uneventful minutes lying on his belly, and having identified four different nocturnal bird melodies Regan sat up and felt the ache in his stiff body and the growing chill in his bones. He decided to call off his mission for the night. He hadn't anticipated how cold it would get sitting in one exposed position for such a long time. His shirt was so thin he imagined it would fold easily into an airplane which he could throw down the gentle slope to land at the front door of Joe Boyd.

  A nocturnal call filled the air as if it's carrier wanted to offer a final swansong to the patient listener. The noise continued to grow in volume until Regan realised that it was the sound of an ambulance siren. Turning around, the priest faced the roadside again, leaning on an elbow, trying to decode the direction from which it was coming, watching the empty road for the first hint of colour.