Clovenhoof (7 page)

“Eh?”

“What you want is an exorcism.”

“You mean like a priest?”

Pitspawn shrugged.

Clovenhoof took a quick swig of squash, and pulled a face at Pitspawn.

“You know, you should really ask your mom to get you some Lambrini. This stuff’s terrible.”

He found an Anglican church.

Of course, it was called St Michaels. He’d passed it before, but never got this close.

He walked up to the door and banged loudly. There was a stone carving above the door of Michael standing triumphantly on top of the Great Dragon. At least he supposed it was meant to be the Great Dragon.

“What, you hired a blind sculptor? You made me look like a cat. And as cats go, I’ve seen scarier ones peeking out of flowerpots!”

A blonde-framed face appeared in the doorway.

“Hello,” she said.

Clovenhoof noted the dog collar.

“You’d be Father...?”

“Reverend. Steed. Evelyn. I’m the rector. Are you all right?”

“I need an exorcism.”

Her eyes opened wide in a deliberate expression of scepticism.

“I get people wanting to come in for a quick pray, mistakenly ask for confession, perhaps begging for a place to kip but... exorcism?”

“Do you do them?”

“That would be a matter for the diocesan Deliverance Ministry. Look, come in.”

Clovenhoof extended a tentative hoof across the threshold of the church, wondering if he would burst into flames. Nothing. He trotted onto holy ground, slightly disappointed that it wasn’t so different to the ground outside.

He followed her into the body of the empty church. At the back of the church hung a large modern tapestry, again depicting the Archangel Michael’s victory over the Great Dragon, Satan. At least they hadn’t hired a blind weaver.

“Are you going to come sit with me?” said the Reverend Evelyn Steed.

Clovenhoof joined her on a pew.

“What’s your name?” she said.

“Jeremy.”

“Well, Jeremy, a lot of people experience ‘disturbances’ in their lives but we don’t get much call for exorcisms in the modern church. People don’t fear evil spirits or demons so much these days. In fact there’s debate about whether or not demons really exist.”

“You are kidding me?”

“No. We live in a rational and a sceptical age.”

“Well, if the church doesn’t believe in demons, what about Satan?” asked Clovenhoof.

“Satan represents the idea of rejecting God. That’s very real.”

“But Satan’s not just an idea!”

“No?”

“He’s got horns,” he pointed at the top of his head, “and hooves,” he waggled a hoof at her.

“Well that image has certainly got a strong hold in the popular imagination,” she said and then gave him a shrewd look. “You weren’t watching
The Devil Rides Out
last night, were you?”

“Might have been.”

“This horned devil image has parallels in lots of ancient cultures, and for hundreds of years, there’s been reinforcement of those scary images. But think about this. Satan, Lucifer, was a former angel. If he looked like anything, he’d look like that.”

She indicated the tapestry behind them. Clovenhoof scowled at the image.

“We can’t even imagine what Heaven is like,” said Evelyn. “It’s not all clouds and harps and halos.”

“No,” said Clovenhoof. “It’s all computerised. Even St Peter has a tablet computer.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.”

Clovenhoof gave a small snort as he remembered Peter and his high-tech gadget.

Walking back along the dwindling line of people heading for Hell, Satan spotted St Peter up ahead. He was easily recognised. Sure, there were the keys at his belt, the symbols of his office, but, more than that, there was swagger of a man who was the most powerful mortal in the afterlife and who knew it. Peter – ‘The Rock’ - was turning his well-practised smile on the new arrivals, and either waving them to the right, or giving them a dismissive flick to the left. To the right, a row of rainbow-spangled angels placed garlands of flowers on those bound for Heaven and gently guided them towards a brightly lit portal of sparkling lights. Those that headed left were met by Hell’s demons, guided down the road to damnation and jabbed with pitchforks to both hurry them along and give them a flavour of what was yet to come.

St Peter had a helper by his side. This short, jowly man carried a large ledger, while Peter worked from a state-of-the-art tablet computer.

“You’ve not been here long,” said Satan to the jowly man as he approached. “You’ve still got some colour in your cheeks.”

The man made a disdainful moue with his rather feminine lips and turned to Peter.

“Is this who I think it is, sir?” he asked.

“Yes Herbert.” Peter said. “Don’t worry, I shall deal with our guest. Would you hold this for a moment and keep things flowing?”

“Oh yes, of course!” Herbert scurried off with the tablet.

“Prick,” Satan sniggered.

Peter bristled.

“You’re a long way from home, Lucifer. What brings you out here?”

“I came to see why you’re sending me so many people. Can’t you see they’re backing up?”

Peter gave him a superior
don’t-you-know-I’m-the-rock-on-which-God’s-church-is-built?
look.

“They’re backing up because you’re not processing them fast enough.”

Satan paused, wanting to punch Peter for being smug and superior but holding back because it occurred to him that he might be able to learn something.

“There are problems,” he admitted. “It’s not easy to get them all across the Styx and even the gate’s jammed.”

“You need to expand, modernise,” Peter said.

“We have the ferries across the Styx. They run all day every day and still it’s not enough.”

“I heard you were digging a tunnel, whatever happened to that?”

Satan sighed. “That didn’t go too well. It flooded and we had to fill it in with the bodies of executive engineers from Union Carbide. We started a bridge, but it’s never easy getting that lot to work on a project. They’re all too busy trying to stab each other in the back. Literally.”

“It sounds to me as though you need some modern management techniques.”

“New pitchforks?” Satan asked.

“No, a framework to ensure everyone is working to their best ability. You need to delegate some responsibility.”

“You do this stuff in Heaven?”

“Oh yes,” Peter said, “we’ve been doing it for some time, and you can see that things are working pretty smoothly.” He indicated with a sweep of his arm that the Heavenly process was working as smoothly as ever.

Satan looked at him shrewdly, waiting for the catch.

“But why would Heaven want to help Hell? We’re not exactly on the same side.”

“
We
,” said Peter and by ‘we’ he meant ‘God and all the angels and me, that most beloved of all mortals.’ “
We
have responsibility for all of the afterlife. We want to see it running as efficiently as possible, and we’re getting a lot of negative feedback at the moment.”

“Negative feedback?”

“Complaints,” Peter explained.

Satan rolled his eyes.

“So God has responsibility for all of this. I suppose there’s something in that. Where is he anyway? I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“He won’t be going out of his way to see
you
now, will he? I think it might be an idea if I send someone round to see you. Just a little chat, see if we can work something out.”

“That’s very decent of you,” said Satan.

Peter smiled.

Clovenhoof realised he was staring with fury at the tapestry of Michael.

He looked at Evelyn.

“Can you exorcise me or not?” he said. “I’m pretty sure it’s the only answer for me.”

“You are? Tell me what’s troubling you.”

“I’m being forced to live amongst cushions and kittens.”

“Right.”

“I met a bloke who claims to worship me.”

“That’s nice.”

“But he didn’t even recognise who I was.”

“So this a relationship issue?”

“The police arrested me twice.”

“Oh.”

“But your mate off the tapestry got me out.”

“Er.”

Evelyn’s brow creased with confusion.

“I can’t say that I understand your troubles – not all of them - but you’re obviously feeling them very deeply.”

“Is that a yes to the exorcism?”

“Perhaps you would like to talk to me some more about these problems.”

“So it’s a no.”

“Jeremy. I’m here to listen, if you would like that.”

Clovenhoof shook his head and walked out of the church.

He stopped outside the door to flick a bogey at the stone Michael and headed for home.

The fox had been dead for some time. It lay matted and muddy in the gutter of the Chester Road. Clovenhoof stopped to look at it and sniffed the pungent smell of decay. He lifted the corpse and turned it over in his hands. The crumpled bloody mess on its underside indicated that it had been hit by a car. The eyes were collapsed and he wondered how long it would be before the fox’s head became a skull. He thought back to the décor in Pitspawn’s attic room and decided that he would take Michael’s advice and give his flat some homely touches. Skulls would be cool. The smell itself was so interesting that it reminded him of the old place. He inhaled deeply and carried the carcase back to the flat.

He spent the rest of the day looking for other skulls. He’d walked the streets and found a roadkill cat, but the mother lode was among the scrubby area by the garages behind the house. Three rats, bloated with poison had expired near to some fragrant sacks of rubbish. Clovenhoof thought the whole scene had a certain poetry to it, and it almost felt wrong to remove the rats from the tableau.

He arrived back at the flat with his collection and found a small basket outside.

He read the card:

To our new neighbour,

Do pop up and say hello when you’re settled.

Love Nerys.

X

He uncovered the basket and tried one of the mince pies. The pastry was dry and the mincemeat content was like squashed bugs sprinkled with sugar.

They weren’t crispy pancakes, but that couldn’t be helped.

He set to work taking the skulls from the bodies. It was harder than he’s imagined. He went into the kitchen to find something to help him. A corkscrew shaped like a fish was handy for reaming out the eye sockets, while a large pair of scissors was handy for de-skinning and trimming off the bits he didn’t want. Try as he might though, he couldn’t get the skulls to look properly shiny and skull-like. They had bits of icky gore stuck all over them.

He held them over the gas flames that had been burning since he moved in, and although it made a strong and not unpleasant odour, the bits remained firmly attached to the bone. He picked at them with a fingernail, but that was quite hard work. It did taste better than mince pies though, he reflected as he sucked his finger. The thought of Nerys and her peculiar pies made him sit up straight. She had a machine in her kitchen for cleaning things. He’d seen it before. Surely, that would work on these skulls.

He went upstairs, cradling his flesh-encrusted skulls and knocked on the door.

There was no reply. He gave the door a hefty kick to see if it might just pop open. He had to kick it a few more times quite hard before the frame splintered and the door did indeed pop open.

In the kitchen, he opened the dishwasher and lodged his skulls in between the plates and cups that were already in there. Nerys’s little rat-dog creature, Twinkle, had yapped at him ever since he had entered the flat and seemed intent on hauling Clovenhoof’s prize goodies from the dishwasher. Irritated, Clovenhoof scooped up the long-haired beasty and put it in the fridge where its barks were muffled to bearable levels.

Clovenhoof closed the dishwasher door and pressed buttons until something happened. The sound of water filling the machine satisfied him that it was doing its work. He decided to explore the flat while he waited for the skull cleansing to be complete.