Severed

by Peter Laws

  She nodded. ‘Let’s get muffins or something. Pancakes. Something fattening.’

  ‘And consumable coffee.’

  She nodded again, quietly.

  They clasped hands together and looked at each other for a few seconds. It’s amazing really, what those looks between people can do. What they can say. How they can heal, even just a little. Then they pushed through the main arched doorway and into the cold mid-morning air. It was just as he put his foot onto the top step that he froze.

  ‘Aw, crap,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That’s their car.’

  A row of three cars chugged on the pavement. A Ford Focus and a BMW estate had their engines running, but it was the one at the front that had made Matt grip Wren’s hand painfully tight. A dirty-looking Land Rover, with a hefty splash of mud up the side.

  ‘Matt?’ she said.

  ‘Sean’s parents. That’s their—’

  Just as he said it, all three car engines stopped, one after the other and white exhaust mist wisped into the air. The Land Rover door swung open hard and the wild sideburns of Mr Ashton appeared in the gap. Instantly, the other doors clicked open. A fat guy and a few others hefted themselves from the rocking cars. Ashton wore a saggy, woollen jumper and hefty boots, but the others had suits on. Matt could tell right away they were the pastors, and they were carrying their weapon of choice: the Bible.

  ‘We have to go, now,’ Wren tugged him towards the wheelchair ramp. He didn’t budge.

  The fat man had a voice so deep and loud that passers-by stopped to look. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Wren said.

  ‘I said do you know what you’ve done … Professor?’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘What I’ve done?’

  ‘Matt … come on.’

  Mr Ashton stayed leaning against his Land Rover, but the fat pastor started his slow walk towards the steps, two disciples in tow. Though he didn’t really walk as much as he flopped his body forward. When he spoke it was clear this wasn’t conversation. This was a loud, public proclamation in a huge power-voice, trained from millions of hours of standing on street corners, preaching to the lost and depraved. ‘So, you think your books and teachings have no consequence, do you?’ he called out. ‘Do you really think Christ’s gonna sit by and let you corrupt the young?’

  Another tug from Wren. The hardest yet. He ignored it and leant towards the fat guy, whispering, ‘What did you all do to him last night?’

  God … this guy’s expression was so smug. So sure. That was the scary part. He was so sure. ‘We showed love. Tough, real, heartbroken love.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have just listened to him?’ Matt said.

  ‘Listen to what? The spirit of the age? Why on earth would we do that?’

  ‘So, what was it?’ Matt stood a little straighter. ‘An exorcism? Did you throw holy water?’

  ‘There was no need for gimmicks. We leave that to the Catholics. No … it was just prayer … that’s all. That’s all you need to clean the poison out. Just turns out that Satan had his hooks in deeper than we thought.’ For the first time he lowered his voice. ‘Not only was that boy turned into a pervert, he was also filled with the spirit of suicide. He’s got your books to thank for that. Because what else can people like you offer the world except Godless despair?’

  ‘How dare you blame me.’ Matt’s blood was rushing to his fist. Filling it with weight, ready to strike. Just as it had on the day he found his mum’s killer, sitting there in her lounge. He could hear the echo of that old sound. Of the horrible quietness in the room, punctuated only by the quiet slap of skin on skin as Matt pummelled his fists into ribs and stomach, and mostly face. And then the wetness that started to come, under his knuckles, which was the first moment he considered stopping. Matt felt his eyes drift from the pastor to Sean’s dad, and he felt the blood in his fists shrink back. He just looked the pastor in the eyes and shook his head. ‘How dare you blame me.’

  ‘Because all your lies and bleakness let those spirits in. Stopped him resisting his … his interests.’

  Matt threw his hands up, aware that his voice was wobbling. ‘For crying out loud, Sean was normal and decent, and he loved God a hell of a lot more authentically than you do.’

  ‘Says the false teacher. Says the midnight lover …’

  Matt screwed up his face. ‘The what?’

  ‘Oh yes … his poor grandmother heard it all …’ The fat pastor turned his watery eyes to Wren. ‘She says your husband was whispering to Sean on the steps of her house last night. Feeding him instructions. She said it sounded like they’d had a very intimate night together … did you know about this, Mrs Hunter? Do you know who’s in your bed?’

  ‘Wow,’ Matt shook his head. ‘Just, wow.’

  Wren stopped tugging, and now she spoke. ‘You might be a pastor, but you sound like the absolute polar opposite of Jesus. Do you know that?’

  Thankfully, Mr Ashton still wasn’t joining in. He was leaning against the driver’s door, as if it was the only thing holding him up. His eyes were puffed and circled with redness. A small crowd had started to gather on the pavement, on the other side of the road, watching it all.

  ‘So, we’ve come to pray for you, Professor, and lay our hands on you,’ he said.

  Matt yanked his shoulder from the pudgy fingertips. ‘Touch me and I swear I’ll knock you out.’

  The pastor shrugged and turned his colossal head to shout back to the Land Rover where Mr Ashton now had his huge hand across his face, sobbing against the car. ‘Come on, Barry. Come and pray for your child’s killer … let him know you forgive him.’

  Matt saw Ashton’s tears, and dropped his voice to a reasonable, tone. ‘Pastor. Just let them grieve, please.’ Then he turned away. He and Wren both hurried down the wheelchair ramp, heads down.

  ‘Maybe I should offer my condolences,’ Matt whispered, as they headed down.

  ‘Absolutely not. They’re crazy. You need to just give them space.’

  It was just before they turned towards town when they heard the screams. They sprang from those gawkers across the street, outside the pizza place. They’d seen something from their angle that couldn’t be seen on this side. It all became shockingly clear, soon enough.

  Matt saw her head first, moving along the other side of the cars. It was Sean’s mother, Mrs Ashton, clomping her feet directly down the road. Two cars and a van screeched to a halt, but she kept on stomping. And in her hand was something long and black.

  ‘Oh, shit, oh, shit.’ Matt pushed Wren back towards the police station. ‘Move.’

  ‘What’s—’

  ‘Move.’

  He shoved Wren towards the ramp, but she still turned back and gasped. Which was when he saw the reflection in the police station’s window, telling him it was too late to run. He turned slowly and saw Mrs Ashton emerge from between the two cars. She was carrying an old, rusty rifle and was weeping bitterly, her fringe dancing in a sudden wind.

  She lifted the barrel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  There were only two rows of stools in the chapel, and Ever always sat in the back. But when he went to sit down this morning, Prosper got all flustered and shook his head. He dragged Ever’s chair and plonked it right on the platform. Now he was facing out and could look at what Prosper saw from his little pulpit: a perfect, freaky-eyed view of everybody’s faces and expressions.

  At one point, the groans were so loud that he wanted to put his fingers in his ears but Prosper had caught him doing that once before. He’d yanked both of Ever’s hands from his head. ‘Lament, boy!’ he’d yelled. ‘There’s power in lament.’

  That’s what everybody was doing right now. They always started their services with lament, which he knew was important. But hearing (and now seeing) them let out their pain was a strange and sometimes upsetting thing to watch. Especially when his mum’s tears turned to screams, as they did now. She was on he
r knees, tearing at her scarf till it slid off like a ribbon. It was one of the only times she ever took it off. He saw her crying and shouting up at the ceiling, chin cocked so he could see the full stretch of those horrendous, twisted lines, all bumpy and shining around her throat. Every now and then she’d claw at them, and if she drew beads of blood it meant her prayer was deep.

  Pax was on her knees too, only she kept scratching at her scalp, and the faulty brain beneath it. She had a little wire brush that she kept up here, just for this purpose. She used to use a fork, but she got a little too carried away with that once and tried to dig in way too deep. She hurt herself, so the fork was banned. The wire brush was too small and flat to really dig in, but sharp enough to hurt.

  They all lamented, in their own way. Uncle Dust had a funny way of doing his. He sometimes filled his mouth with sand. That’s what a Hollow did to him once, he said. When he was a teenager. It just dragged him into a school playground and filled his mouth with dirt, while all the others laughed and chanted. Ever always paid special attention when Dust did that, just in case he choked and Ever had to slap him on the back. But Dust was wise, and he always had a glass of water just in case. He wasn’t doing the sand thing today. He was just rocking back and forth on his knees, pressing his knuckles into the floor. And Milton, good old Milton, he would scrape his cheek across the corrugated metal walls. He found places that were rougher than others, with little tears in the metal. Not so sharp that it’d tear out an eye, obviously. But ragged enough to make the lament feel real.

  All this was vital to their purity, Prosper said, and he’d often point out that this was precisely what the Hollow churches didn’t do. Not only did they have a twisted view of Jesus, they also didn’t lament because they were empty creatures, terrified of honesty. They’d shuffle in and out of church on Sunday mornings, and the vicar – that was what their leaders were called – the vicar would give out handshakes and say things like, ‘How are you today, Fred?’ And Fred would say, ‘I’m really fine, Vicar. Thanks for asking. And you?’ And the vicar would smile and say, ‘I’m really fine, thank you for asking. And your wife?’ And so on and so on.

  This was all completely insane. A bizarre sort of dance they did. Because Fred was desperate to cry about his dead wife and the vicar still had cancer in his belly. They just thought God would prefer them to be happy about it. It was madness but Prosper said the Hollow churches lived on these lies all the time. ‘Dishonesty is the air they breathe,’ he said once, ‘because they hate to look weak.’ Even though Jesus specifically said that his power was made perfect in weakness, and that honesty was vital.

  The Hollow churches were never truthful places because they didn’t allow their people to scream, and in time, those lies turned them into something less than human. Ever wasn’t sure when Jesus let the world revert to demon form, but Uncle Dust reckoned it was about five years ago, which was when they moved here. Up till then, the world had a chance to change. That chance was gone. Now, they weren’t people any more – not deep down.

  His family, though … they were the only real people left, because they never hid their agony. So what if their screaming was scary. At least it was real. Which crucially meant they understood the real horror of the cross too. There were one hundred and fourteen crosses on the walls in here, hanging upside down from pegs and nails. Quite a few were black, smeared with the soot from the birds and rabbits they’d killed and eaten.

  Prosper said that if they ever found a cross that was accidentally hanging the way the Hollows liked them to hang, they must immediately turn it upside down. It was a clear way of rejecting what that disgusting symbol stood for. The thought of the Hollow churches turning crosses the other way up, so it became a happy sign … now that was dishonest and scary. And deeply offensive too … to celebrate a torture device. How hideous.

  Prosper finished dragging his arm across his special beam of splintered wood, then he took his place behind the rusty music stand, just next to Ever. The shrieks died down and people wiped tears from their cheeks as they settled into chairs.

  As always, Prosper was straight to the point. ‘All our lives we’ve been hurt, abused, betrayed, forgotten …’ He pointed at the grimy little window and the others followed his finger. ‘We’ve all got the scars from living out there.’

  They stared at the rectangle of glass, riddled with awful memories. Ever knew what some of those memories were. Pity made him close his eyes and pray for them.

  ‘But let’s never forget,’ Prosper raised the volume a notch, ‘we don’t serve a God that sat on some cloud just observing the mess down here. No … our God rolled up his sleeves and got his hands dirty.’

  ‘And bloody,’ Milton said from the floor. ‘He got his hands very bloody.’

  Someone groaned in empathy.

  ‘Very true, Milton … he saw the world in honesty. He saw it how it actually is.’ Prosper raised a preaching finger. ‘He didn’t stay safe in the comfort of heaven. The Son came down and walked our paths on earth. A master come as scum. Born in a stable. The lowest.’

  ‘The servant king,’ Mum said, to ripples of agreement.

  ‘That’s right. Which means Jesus has been where you’ve been. In the gutter. In the piss of cows and donkeys.’ Prosper crouched and scooped up dust and fluff from the floor. He rubbed it between his hands and showed his dirty palms to the crowd. ‘He refused to stay in heaven, all cosy and clean. He crawled right into the mud to set us free. And how many of us have walked in his shadow?’ Prosper started pacing. ‘Haven’t we been beaten and snapped and lied to? Haven’t we been used, just like he was?’

  More groans and shaking heads.

  His mum was rocking back and forth, lips quivering with prayer. She kept stroking her thick and terrible marks.

  He knew her story best of all. She got that scar from a Hollow man in an alleyway. He wrapped a chain around her throat and tried to choke the life from her. ‘I should have died that night,’ she often said, ‘but here I am … and here you are.’ She called that moment one of her miracles.

  ‘But Jesus was there first, wasn’t he?’ Prosper’s pacing creaked the platform. ‘The man of sorrows suffered like you, but much, much more.’ He opened his arms, ‘Crucified!’

  That was their cue. With a scratch of chairs on the wooden floor, the others stood to copy the gesture. Ever saw them fling their arms wide, then at the same time they hung their heads to the side like a bunch of broken dolls. They started swaying, as the mumbling one-word prayer grew in intensity.

  Kataltani. Kataltani. Kataltani. Kataltani.

  Which he knew meant ‘murdered’, in Jesus’s language.

  Prosper’s eyes rolled across the room and landed on his. Telling him to rise and do the same – especially now that he was at the front. Ever gulped and pushed his chair back, so he could be murdered on a cross too. He opened his arms and lifted them to the side. This part always hurt shoulders.

  ‘And Jesus was betrayed, in the worst way,’ Prosper shouted. ‘Slaughtered on a filthy, wooden cross. While his Father looked down from his cosy kingdom, laughing.’

  Uncle Dust broke his own crucifixion for a second, just so he could screw up a fist and slam it into his hand.

  ‘The King of Kings … the Son.’ Prosper shouted so loud, it sounded like something in his throat ripped. ‘Slaughtered like a fucking peasant!’

  Milton let out a roar of anger and glared at the chapel ceiling. They often did that, whenever talk turned to the Father. They’d fire up glares because heaven was up there … the lair of the beast. All those arms dropped from their crosses. Now they were clawing upwards and Ever watched the usual little fountains start to appear. The beads of spit springing up from mouths and dropping in an arch to the floor. One day, he hoped the spit wouldn’t come back down … that it would smash through the roof, and ride on their lament and would keep on going till it broke down the Father’s door and drowned him in saliva, right there on his throne. Though knowing him, he�
��d probably hide behind the couch and pretend he wasn’t in.

  ‘Your time’s coming, Pop,’ Milton shouted and Prosper cheered, which meant laughter was now allowed in the chapel. ‘Jesus won’t be dead for long, so fuck your cross … we’re doing our own version … okay? And it’s going to split the world in two.’

  Prosper was chuckling, eyes straight up. ‘That’s right. Thought you could knock us off course, did you? With Micah? When the real answer was with us all along … ha!’

  The lament was well and truly over now. Now came the better part, the dancing part. The moment people hooked arms and skipped around with chuckles and whistles. Then as Ever went to join them, he got a shock, but a good one. The grown-ups rushed over and scooped him up. His trainers left the dust, and suddenly he was on their shoulders, bouncing towards the ceiling. This had never happened before.

  ‘Here he is,’ they said. ‘Here he is!’

  And at some point, Milton called up, ‘You’re a gift, lad. A gift from Christ. You’re going to be a hero, Big Man.’

  Part of him wanted to laugh, but he was terrified too because it was all so confusing. So, he just let them bounce him up and down, and their cheers were so booming that it felt like the sound itself was carrying him. He tried to laugh, like they were laughing, but he didn’t like the way they kept bouncing him nearer to the ceiling. Springing him up and down like he was another globule of spit. For a terrifying moment he felt himself leave their grip and hover in mid-air. He thought the roof might crack open, and he’d see the Father’s huge, manic eye pushing through the gap. Maybe this would be the one time he bothered to leave heaven, just to scoop Ever up with his monstrous claw and stick him on a cross for real.

  They whooped and sang, and he found himself pretending to smile.

  Pretending? Hmmm?

  You’re pretending to be happy?

  The thought made him gulp in panic.

  Everyone’s rejoicing and you’re smiling and laughing with them, when actually you’re just terrified, and all you want to do is cry?