Severed

by Peter Laws

  ‘Take my hands, Lord Jesus, let them work for you. Make them strong and gentle, kind in all I do.’

  ‘Will it hurt?’ Ever asked, as Milton lifted him up.

  Hope said. ‘Sing. Just sing.’

  So he did, as the doors boomed, and the storm raged on.

  ‘Let me watch you, Jesus, till I’m gentle too, Till my hands are kind hands, quick to work for you.’

  When they’d all climbed up they thanked each other for the helping hand. They stood together in the Crooked Church and kissed one another, then they all hugged for one last time, before leaning their heads forward to help each other with the ropes. There was no lament. No weeping or wailing. The time for that was over. Just a sense of rightness that the weakest one of them all, Pax, was now singing like an angel, leading them home.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Matt smacked his fists off the side door. Hard enough to send shooting pains through his wrist and forearm, but especially his shoulder. Then he slammed a boot against the wood. The door creaked and strained, but it was stuck solid. All he got for the effort was a searing pain through the gash in his shoulder. He was about to try the door again when he heard Wren shouting. ‘Use the side door. The choir vestry.’

  He nodded and hurried around the church, scraping his foot from gravel to grass. The police had abandoned their cars now, and were finally running closer on foot, but even a minute away still felt like the world.

  When he turned the curve outside of the chancel, an ice wind slammed into him with a force he hadn’t experienced in years. In his entire life, actually. It was astonishing really. The power of the gale, the way it screamed through the gaps in the church stone, and all that relentless rain from a flashing, End-Times sky. He could see the headlines tomorrow: STORM OF THE CENTURY HITS BRITAIN! No wonder they thought it was the end of the world, in there. It sure as hell felt like it was out here. The wind pushed him into an unexpected, jogging stumble. He planted his hand on something to steady himself. A gravestone. Lightning flashed. He almost laughed. If God was up there, he was getting zero points for subtlety.

  He found the door easily because a thin strip of light glowed from under it. The wind made it rattle wildly against the door frame. He thought it might be locked, but he just turned the handle down, and the wind wrenched it inwards with a loud snap. The rain hushed to a low white noise, once he was inside. The choir vestry was a mess, with a wooden chair on its side and a mass of broken glass on the floor. The chair was bent and smashed, and … odd. One of the legs had been wrenched off. It lay in a wet circle on the carpet, the splintered, spiked end soaked with blood. A stake for a vampire – a sword for a Hollow.

  God, he thought, as he scooped it up, they must have beaten Dust with this. Stabbed him with it too, from the looks of it. Gripping the dry end, he loped towards the door that led into the church, then paused before going in, just to catch some breath.

  He pushed through.

  The first thing he noticed, when he creaked the internal door open, was how quiet the place was. No more shouting, like before. As he slouched past the pillar and planted his hand on a pew, he saw them all, and realised that his instincts were right. These groups might embrace the most preposterous and illogical world views, yet at least they knew when it was time to quit. Especially when the end wasn’t really the end to them. Just the end of the beginning.

  He looked down the aisle at the sunken chancel and shuddered.

  They were holding hands, standing on top of the Communion table. With songs and strange smiles, they reached out their arms to help the others up. Six of them. Prosper and the big guy Milton stood next to the young woman Pax. She was singing, while Verity and Ever stood beside her. And finally, Miriam stood at the right edge of the altar with her blood-drenched eye blinking, and her arm in the air worshipping the storm.

  He knew instantly what was happening. When he saw the ropes under the altar earlier, he’d assumed they were for him, but of course, they never were. He was the first path … but this … this was the other.

  He saw Ever, the little boy, lean forward, politely waiting for his noose.

  ‘No!’ Matt’s shout sounded pathetic, flat and pointless.

  Ignoring the pulsing throb in his side he slouched down the aisle, surprised at how they didn’t seem to notice him. They were oblivious to anything except this moment. Matt had to step over a massive heap in the middle of the aisle. It was Dust. Blood pumped from a few ragged puncture wounds. He’d bet money they’d match the splintered tip of this chair leg he was carrying. He patted his pocket for the Stanley knife. Still there, and ready to use.

  He gripped the weapon but didn’t raise it. Not yet. He moved forward instead, feeling that familiar pressure of going down a slope. Welcome to the Crooked Church, he thought. Har-dee-haar. The altar sat on the other side of the knee-high Communion rail, where the penitent knelt for their weekly bout of spiritual cannibalism. A gulp of flesh, a swig of body. Nothing barbaric about that, until you spend three seconds thinking about it. This was a fitting place, then, for these poor, brainwashed seekers to make their sacrifice.

  The wooden beam was just a little bit in front of the table. A perfect stride’s width. Like it was all meant to be and written in their stars. The Communion rail had a gate on it, which they’d closed now. He called to them, as gently as he could manage and said, ‘Please … please don’t do this.’

  Only three of them looked at him. Prosper, Milton and Pax. They already had their nooses in place and Pax smiled when she saw him. It was a pretty, happy face she had. He noticed the curve of their shoes were already peeking over the edge of the thick heavy table, like divers set to leap. He saw a pair of muddy black boots, brown shoes, purple pumps, grey pumps and blue trainers.

  ‘This won’t work.’ Matt spoke so quietly that it came out as a whisper.

  ‘I see paradise … I see the end of lament …’ Prosper said, smiling. ‘I see home … I see a vast—’ He dropped.

  Matt’s eyelids slammed shut. But the sound got through.

  A deep, heavy thud, and somewhere hiding in that thump was a soft crack, which could have been the wooden beam or could have been Prosper’s neckbone. A conundrum that could drive you mad, if you considered it for too long. Matt opened his eyes again and saw Prosper swinging forwards and back, forwards and back. His feet and arms twitched like a mad, dancing puppet. His swollen eyeballs, rolling up. The others kept looking forward.

  Matt rushed forward, desperately hoping to reason with them but knowing they could all just step off at the exact same time. If they did that, he could grab at least one of them, maybe two. He’d keep them up while the others dangled. It was like a gameshow from hell.

  Choose one to save, and four to swing!

  Actually, I’ve had a great day. I think I’ll just go home.

  He knew full well what his choice was: Ever and Pax, but what about the others? Weren’t they all children once? Perhaps they still were. He had a vision of himself bunching all their legs together and holding them up before the police arrived, like a bizarre, fumbling Atlas. He knew that wouldn’t work. Matt started to climb over the rail.

  Verity already had her noose in place, pressing down against the ugly scars from the bike chain, but she was having trouble with Ever’s. It seemed like it was too big for him, so she was yanking it tighter. Sensing his moment Matt shot forward, but just as he did it, Milton tearfully said, ‘I’ve loved you all.’ He dropped too.

  Matt’s eyes were open this time and as Milton’s bulk stepped forward the knees buckled, and his hefty weight knocked the table back an inch. The whole altar wobbled and then Verity slipped off. Matt saw her turn her head to her son. He saw her open her mouth to say something meaningful, just as the rope snapped taut with the loudest crack of them all. That crack was louder than humanly possible, until he realised it was the beam itself starting to buckle. Prosper, Verity and the heavy Milton danced and dangled. Arms, chins and toes pointed down in spasm. Ever’s
raw eyes were locked forward, but now they were fighting, fighting the urge to slide right and look at his mum.

  When Miriam saw Verity fall she moaned, then she looked at Matt. ‘Does this please you, Hollow? Does this feed you?’

  ‘Mummy, don’t look at it,’ Pax said. ‘Wanna be clever. Wanna fall now.’

  ‘Ever first.’ Miriam went to finish what Verity had started. She tightened the noose around the boy’s neck.

  Matt lunged forward and grabbed Ever’s legs.

  ‘It’s got him,’ Pax shouted. ‘It’s got him!’

  ‘Then jump, Ever!’ Miriam screamed, and when he hesitated, she started shoving him off instead. But Matt was smacking her arms with the chair leg. She winced and pulled her hand back. Matt reached up to drag the rope off the boy’s throat, then he yanked it over his chin where it snagged hard and stuck against his teeth. Ever’s eyes were shut tight now, and his shoulders rocked with sobs.

  Suddenly, a crashing sound came from above them. Even Ever looked up to see it. Another small panel of stained glass blew in with the wind, leaving a wild, flashing hole. And something else came too, from up above the beam. A shower of powder that poured like sand. They all looked at it, transfixed. Then Matt blinked and knew.

  It took all his strength, both physical and emotional, to force that rope over Ever’s mouth. To rip the skin of the boy’s top lip away, and try to pull it over his nose, while whacking Miriam across the fingers as she shoved and pushed at them both. But she soon gave up when he pulled out the Stanley knife, and she turned back to Pax who was unable to sing any more, because she was crying. From the corner of his eye he saw them hug one another, and Miriam whispered the kind of loving, reassuring words Matt said to his own daughters, before a hard exam or a tricky appointment. Then finally the noose was over Ever’s now-bleeding nose, and once that happened it was off the boy completely. Matt yanked him off the altar. He expected a scream but Ever had nothing left. The stones above him cried out instead. They started to moan and creak.

  Despite the agony, Matt held the boy and started to run, though it was more of a gasping stumble back down the aisle.

  ‘Close your eyes, Ever,’ Matt said. ‘Don’t look.’

  They were halfway up the aisle when Matt heard the two thuds. They hit at almost the exact same time. And soon after, he heard what the powder had promised would come. A horrendously deep, pirate-ship creak that shot through the wooden beam and burst into a splintered explosion. He couldn’t see it, but he heard the beam collapse and smash to the floor. He could picture them all and their attempt at a graceful death, sliding off like curtain rings into a grotesque heap.

  The kid was trying to push his head up.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t look.’

  The back of the church suddenly swarmed with mud-soaked police, wet and panting, and when he reached the end of the aisle he saw their faces drop in horror at what they saw in the chancel. Matt couldn’t resist it any more. Ever still buried, he joined the police in one last look. The beam had cracked in the centre then dropped. It made a stark and clumsy V at the end of the church. The silly hope that Matt had, that Verity and Pax might be getting up and just rubbing their necks after sliding off, vanished when he saw the heap of arms, and Miriam on top. He saw her fixed stare, the vile angle of her neck.

  That was when the stones started to fall, and a voice shouted, ‘Everybody out. Now!’

  But Matt didn’t move, even as he saw the statues smashing onto the chancel floor. He didn’t move because Ever was pointing at a shadow in the far corner of the church. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘The Hollows.’

  The police strained to see but saw nothing but darkness. They tugged at Matt to leave, dragged at him in fact, but he waited for a single second because it was simply impossible to look away.

  Ever said, ‘You can see them too?’

  And Matt thought, Yes. Though he refused to say it. But he did think it. He thought, Yes. I see them too.

  He saw tall shadow things, animal things, insect things that walked like people and stepped from the corners of the church like ballet dancers, like puppeteers after a show. He saw them stride towards the bodies on the floor to crouch and touch and sniff the broken necks, while the other shadows stood tall with arms open wide in pride and achievement. Then the one squatting on the altar, the one that Matt recognised, turned to face him. It lifted its twisted rabbit arm and opened its mouth to tell. Because there were two people here who could see.

  A hand slammed onto Matt’s shoulder and dragged him back. It was Bowland. ‘Move!’

  Matt looked away, too shaken and confused to cope with it. So, he buried it. He locked it away in a box marked ‘hallucination from blood loss’ and he set it from his mind. He let unseen hands drag him and Ever into the rain.

  They all gathered a good distance away, standing by the stone wall in the muddy road and together they waited for the Crooked Church to fall, just like it had always wanted to. At one point someone gasped because the building let out this God-awful groan, and he assumed it might topple completely. But it didn’t, so people put their phones away and stopped recording. And soon Matt was shouting at the medics to get back inside, as if there might be hope. Wren clambered out of an ambulance, just then. He saw her a little way down the road, and beyond her shoulder he saw three paramedics trying to restrain the screaming little girl.

  ‘Merit …’ Ever reached out a hand. Then the ambulance door slammed shut.

  Wren ran close and put a hand on both him and the boy. Matt saw the fear and shock in her eyes. She saw the fear and shock in his. Two medics rushed behind him, with a small torch firing into Ever’s face. ‘Can you open your eyes, son? We need to see your eyes.’

  Matt felt the vigorous shake of his head.

  ‘Wait. Your shoulder.’ The medic looked at Matt. ‘You’re bleeding.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘Then set him down, please.’

  ‘He won’t let go.’

  The medic slapped a piece of material on Matt’s shoulder, just as Ever spoke. He heard a little whisper settle in his ear. ‘Are you my dad? Or is that a lie, too?’

  ‘I’m not. Your mummy made a mistake.’

  Ever waited. Said nothing. ‘Then what are you?’

  ‘Set him down, now,’ the medic said.

  Matt said, ‘I’m your friend. And I promise I won’t hurt you. None of us will.’

  The boy shivered against him, but Matt felt the arms hug tighter.

  ‘Matt.’ Wren grabbed his arm. ‘Look!’

  He squinted through the rain, and for the first time in hours a bright smile filled his face, engaging muscles he thought were long gone. Matt span the boy around to see. More paramedics were coming from the church, carrying a stretcher through the rain, and one of them was talking to the man lying flat on it. The man was talking back.

  ‘Uncle Dust?’ Ever’s manic grip vanished, and Matt set him gently into the mud. Before running off, Ever paused and caught Matt’s gaze. The boy held this look for what felt like a very long moment. Then eventually, with a nod, Ever spun on his feet and rushed to the stretcher, where Dust was reaching out for him.

  Matt jerked in shock at the feel of so many fingers on him, but it was just the paramedics, hurrying him to the ambulance. Somebody pressed a fresh piece of material hard into his shoulder while Wren held his other hand. They climbed into the back and he winced at the sharp, interior light. The two men got to work, cutting his shirt. They lay Matt down on his side. The cuts weren’t deep they said, and that was good. As they fixed him, he noticed Wren’s arms and elbows were wrapped in tight bandages too.

  He looked at her from the bed and said, ‘Best date night, ever.’

  She smiled at him, and it was heaven to see it, but then her chest shuddered, and she kissed the back of his hand. He pulled her hand close and did the same to her. They never lost sight of each other, even as the medics leant and tugged and lifted.

  At one point he saw her lips pre
ss together. She was trying to keep it all in.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth. Embarrassed. ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘It’s okay, Wren,’ he squeezed her hand.

  ‘What’s okay?’

  ‘It’s over … so it’s okay to cry now … if you need to.’

  Her eyes filled, and she laced her fingers into his. ‘And you too.’

  So they did.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Matt and Wren sat at their dining-room table, watching Bowland set out three teacups and a bright orange teapot made of cast iron. This teapot was crazy expensive, but it always seemed to impress guests. He’d won it at a posh raffle. Some black-tie uni dinner. He watched the honey-coloured tea falling from the spout. Listened to the gentle glug and trickle as it fell. It made him think of rain.

  Bowland was pouring the tea because this super-pricey teapot was also super-heavy. It wasn’t easy to lift, when you had wounds. So, when Bowland arrived and saw all their bandages and steri-strips on sides, shoulders, elbows, chins and knuckles she insisted that she serve. So here she was, all power-dressed and perfect skin, with her sharp sculpted grey hair pointed, getting milk from their fridge. They sat and watched her in silence.

  The kitchen window was wide open. Amazingly it’d been wonderfully warm for a while. After the ‘storm of the decade’ pummelled southern Britain two nights back, newspapers warned there’d be more rain on the way. But the heavens seemed too traumatised by it all. They’d given all the drama they could muster in that one, apocalyptic night. Now it was an exquisitely sunny day for January. He wondered if Bessie might be out in her front garden today. He’d heard she was okay after the attack at her house. Shaken but unhurt. He’d go up and check on her soon. Take her a massive bunch of flowers and a pile of cowboy paperbacks too.

  Bowland’s spoon clinked against the cups as her earrings swayed, then she finally broke the silence. ‘So, Wren. How are you doing? I hear you were pretty bruised after that tussle with Miriam.’