Kristin (18 page)

Twenty-seven

The Beast hung in stasis, neither dead nor alive,
as if a greater force was trying to decide where it belonged, where to send it.

Although Kristin hadn’t
attempted to end her own life as she’d threatened and had been murdered by a
bloodthirsty, vengeful traitor, she’d been correct; now that she’d been torn
asunder the Beast felt afraid, very afraid indeed. For the very first time no
new host awaited, and extinction threatened, its spectre standing over the
Beast with a dull, blunt axe.

Pontius Pilate was the sixth procurator of
the Roman province of Judaea. He wasn’t really a bad man but the Beast invaded
his soul in time to ensure he did its bidding and condemned the Christ to
crucifixion. The Beast had been sure, then, that it was rid of the righteous
filth for all time.

Later, the Beast lived within
the body and spirit of the third Emperor of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus, or Caligula, a man of extravagance, sexual perversity, and exceptional
 
cruelty. In the year
AD
41, officers of
the Praetorian Guard attacked Caligula and stabbed him thirty times with long,
sharp knives and the Beast was forced to flee at very short notice. It did what
it always had done in the absence of a new host of power and influence and
dwelt within the souls of a succession of unfortunate ordinary people, waiting
impatiently for the birth of the next great tyrant.

That despot was a
sanguineous, ransacking warlord in the Middle Eastern lands named Genghis Khan,
who needlessly butchered hundreds of thousands.

Much later, breaking with
its history, the Beast simultaneously occupied the souls of two men. One was a
brilliant, but insane chancellor who became a dictator of unparalleled
brutality, usurping and burning much of the European region, whilst dabbling
with
  
an admirable attempt at
genocide.

But the ancient, wise Beast
had foreseen the downfall of Adolf Hitler and moments before the doomed leader
and his sexual partner swallowed their deadly capsules, before he put a bullet
through his brain in his Führerbunker, it vacated his shell and poured the
entirety of its bile into the soul of Hitler’s most hateful of accomplices,
Adolf Eichmann, whose deeds as the architect of the semitic extermination
programme had already cast a titanic shadow over the world.

Eichmann was hunted down
like a dog and executed many years later, having been found guilty of crimes
against humanity, but
   
by the middle period of the twentieth-century he’d lost his potency and
faded into obscurity in lands foreign to him and the Beast abandoned him,
resurfacing in the animus of a tyrannical dictator, Saloth Sar, or Pol Pot, who
murdered one quarter of his people in a relentless drive to reset civilization
to the year zero.

Moments before Pol Pot was
fed poison, the Beast coinstantaneously annexed the spirit of a deluded,
religious zealot, Osama
  
Bin
Laden, who had grand designs on converting the Western World to his own faith
at any cost, and that of a xenophobic megalomanic, Saddam Hussein.

During this era, the Beast
decided to punish humanity for its
  
sexual promiscuity and for an infinitesimally brief period of time it
settled within a creature lacking a mortal soul — a small, insignificant
species of primate dwelling in the region known as Africa. It bestowed upon the
animal a deadly disease; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, and encouraged it
to live amongst, and infect black men.

Throughout history, white
men had treated black men no better than animals, stealing them from their
native lands and enslaving them in much the same way as the Beast would enslave
all of humanity. It approved thoroughly.

The Beast expected that the
careless abandon with which black men engaged in procreative activity would
plunge Africa, and eventually the whole human race into turmoil. Or at least
that had been its plan. But mankind recognized the virus, the threat it posed,
and began to exercise greater caution, embarking upon a worldwide programme of
education, and it survived.

Hussein, who had already
committed acts of barbarity unheard of since the days of Hitler was eventually
dug from his hiding place, a hole in the dry soil, by infamous warmongers,
Americans. He was judged by his own people, suspended by his head, and its stem
snapped.

Several years later,
Americans struck again, firing bullets into Bin Laden’s brain.

The Beast was lost then,
for a short time, before being drawn towards an innocent, sleeping female in
Central Europe. She had no title and so with more than a little irony it
decided to name her
 
Kristin;
Follower of God
.
It had envisioned almost limitless potential with the girl but
now she, too, was
deceased and this time the Beast hadn’t seen it coming.

The Beast new its father
would never let it go home, never let it back into heaven, never give it the
chance to atone for its sins upon Earth. It had no option, it must find a way
of mending the girl’s
 
dismembered
body.
It must
rekindle her
life force or perish.

Twenty-eight

The back of Kristin’s skull clattered to a
standstill close to the base of one of the two hundred and forty-eight marble
columns
  
framing the
ellipsoid splendour of Piazza San Pietro. The remainder of her mortal body lay
strewn over an area of several hundred feet. Her dismembered torso, a naked
chunk of flesh and bone stripped of all femininity and empty of organ had
settled on the lower steps of the red granite Egyptian obelisk. Her footless
leg
 
floated in the water of
Maderno’s ornamental baroque fountain, and the hallowed, white steps of the
basilica were littered with seeping scraps of her internal organs. The remains
of her assassin had vanished entirely.

Many in the piazza lay
dead. Others staggered, blood streaming from their ears. Some prayed. There
were wails of despair and tears of joy as the temperature began to rise.

But then Kristin
’
s
bloody torso rolled over.

Gradually, from all over
the square, pieces of her disintegrated corpse mobilized, sliding in unison
towards the skull. Limbs, fingers and toes, the mangle of vital organs stopped
short of the skull, arranging themselves into physiological order. They closed
in, began to connect. Intestines re-entered the torso, curling concisely into
the correct shape. Veins, muscles, skin and bone repaired at astonishing speed,
leaving little more then superficial scarring. An opening appeared in the torso
just to the left of centre and her inert heart slipped in, the surgically
precise incision sealing behind it.

The fragments of Kristin’s
brain knitted together and the organ regained a natural hue. It levitated an
inch or so and entered the clamshell of the rear and front of the skull, which
then closed softly, bonding with a ridge of fresh bone. Strands of perfect,
silky, raven hair sprouted from the remade flesh of her scalp, beneath her
arms, between her legs.

Moments later two brilliant
black jewels appeared from nowhere and pushed their way gently into the eye
sockets, the lids closing over them.

Time passed. The
temperature dropped again.

Kristin gasped, drew oxygen into her lungs
and reopened her eyes to the world.

Inside her head, the Beast
screamed insanely.
Hurt them
!
Punish them
!
Strike at their heart of their faith
!

She drew herself to her
feet unstably, like a child standing for the first time, ripped the clothing
from a dead woman and re-entered the tunnel, her destination clearly defined.

Her substance reformed on
the roof terrace of a large building
  
adjacent to the basilica. The area of peace and
reflection had trellises on both sides of its walkway and above, on which
nasturtium and honeysuckle had climbed in abundance, but now hung, shrivelled
and lifeless.

Kristin shuffled slowly
along the terrace, her inner evil magnetized by something that ate away at its
core. Then she gagged;
the cause of its revulsion lay directly below her naked feet. It was
humane
,
righteous
,
vile
!
She descended through the concrete and steel of the structure, alighting on the
immaculate, cold, marble floor of a small chapel.

The place of worship was
narrow and dark, illuminated on the right hand side by a single, elongated
stained glass window. At the far end of the chapel an old man dressed in white
robe and cap was bent forward in silent prayer before the small altar, his bony
knees cushioned by a gold- trimmed, emerald green hassock. He didn’t appear to
be aware of her. But when she took one pace forwards he lifted his head sharply
and a shadow crushed his soul.

‘Pontefice!’ the Beast
belched.

He turned slowly. ‘ ...
Tu
!’

‘Pray, atrocious Christian
pig, pray.’

‘ ... I can pray no more,
my body aches.’

‘ And I ache for
reclamation of thy soul. Pray! Let me hear thy pitiful pleas for salvation.’

Pope Alexander IX turned
and continued.

‘
I come to you
,
Jesus
,
as my deliverer. You know all my problems
,
the things that
bind me
,
that torment me
,
that defile and harass me. I now loose myself from every dark spirit
,
from every evil
influence
,
from every Satanic bondage
,
from every spirit in me that is not the spirit of God
,
and I command
all such spirits to leave me now
,
in the name Jesus Christ.

‘
I now confess that my body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit
,
redeemed
,
cleansed and sanctified by the blood of Jesus. Therefore
,
Satan has no
place in me
,
and no power over me
,
through the blood of Jesus.
’

‘Has God listened to thee,
Pontifice?’

‘God always listens to
those who need to be heard.’

‘He will not listen to me.’

‘Do you ever wonder why?’
he asked, turning to face her. ‘After everything you’ve done?’

‘Dost thou think I should
pray, Pontifice, beg my father for forgiveness?’

‘Your prayers would fall on
deaf ears … ’

‘I should slay thee now,
hang thy carcass out the light aperture for all to see!’

‘Kill me too, do you think
...?’

‘
Think
? I never think, just act. In any
case, death would be too good for thee, and Christianity, humanity, must know
that nobody is immune to my influence, especially thee.’

‘You will never destroy my
faith.’

‘
Thy faith
!
How canst thou still believe
? Look how
mankind has abused, violated my father’s most precious creation, threatens to
annihilate it.’

‘Some goodness remains,
some morality. You know this, you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it too.’

Pope Alexander struggled to
his feet and approached her. She smiled darkly. ‘ ... And whilst some goodness
remains you cannot win.’

‘I have already won! I have
humanity by the throat. I have
  
raised the houses of God to the ground, forced Christianity’s top order
to butcher one another ... ’

‘Others will continue God’s
work.’

‘ … I have turned rivers to
acid, infiltrated government, made fathers rape daughters, mothers murder sons.
I have spread avarice, loathing and misery, promoted warfare. I have ... ’

‘You have encountered
opposition.’

‘ ... Hesitation,
reluctance.
None
dare oppose me
.’

‘And yet still you cannot
bring humanity to its knees.’

‘It is only a matter of
time. Thy demise will end all hope.’

Her eyes burned with hatred
as the Beast tried to turn him against all he held dear, all he believed in. He
cried out, bent over in terrible pain. Then he straightened himself and struck
her with great power, sending her sprawling to the icy stone.

She rounded on him. ‘And
now I shall hurt thee, Pontifice! But not in the way thou wouldst expect. This
pain will live with thee forever.’

Vincente Leopoldo Guonçallvez sat at a
heavily scarred, teak table in the family home on the slopes of the Vale Verdi
Vineyard, in the Douro Valley, Portugal.

He sipped some red wine and
looked out through the imperfect, rippled glass of the window at the sea of
frost-bitten vines that rolled down the hillside to the banks of the frozen river
far below.
  
Then, quite
suddenly, he was overwhelmed with pain. It was the pain of his twin brother,
Alexander, Pope Alexander IX, many miles away in Rome.

Vincente Leopoldo had
always felt Alexander’s pain, had instinctively known if he was suffering, and
Alexander had always felt
 
Vincente
Leopoldo’s pain. It was a phenomenon not uncommon amongst twins.

The old man left the table,
made his way, falteringly, through to the bright, south facing conservatory and
picked up the phone. He started to dial. Then he heard a Satanic voice inside
his head and stopped. He turned, opened the sliding doors and stepped out into
the daylight, passing around the building until he reached the shed. Inside the
little outhouse he fumbled in the darkness until his hands settled on the
weathered, wooden handle of a garden fork.

In a clearing between some
Acacia trees near the water’s edge, two discoloured stone crosses rose from the
rich soil. He stared at them for a moment then wielded the fork and dug madly
at the graves of his parents. He’d removed little more then the topsoil of the
burial mounds when he heard his mother’s cry.

‘VINCENTE LEOPOLDO, STOP!
You can stop, my darling, you can stop this.’

‘ …
Mama
?’ he choked. ‘ …
Mama
?’

‘Don’t listen to the
voice.’

‘But it’s so strong, Mama,
so strong.’

‘You are stronger, Vincente
Leopoldo.’

‘ ... Where is Papa? May I
speak with Papa?’

‘Papa has moved on, passed
to the other side.’

‘ ... Why are you still
here, Mama?’

‘I couldn’t pass on without
you. I shall wait. Wait for you and Alexander, then we shall join Papa
together.’

The madness returned. He
screamed wildly, his eyes ablaze, and hacked at the soil once more.

‘VINCENTE
LEOPOLDO!’

The evil dictation inside
his head ceased. He tossed the fork aside and lay atop her mound. ‘I do not
think you will need to wait very long, Mama. The world is beset with a plague
of the soul from which it would seem not to be able to recover, and we are now
very old men.’

‘Vincente Leopoldo, listen
to me. Your spirit remains unsullied,
 
as does Alexander’s and countless others. Humanity will ... ’

‘ ...
Mama
? ...
Mama
?’

As the old man slept, the
Beast raged.

Pope Alexander stared at
the young woman before him through wet eyes. ‘ ... You are truly despicable.’

‘A great compliment,
shit-eating Christian pig.’

‘And also a fool.’

It sulked.

‘Did you believe you could
pollute the soul of such a good,
 
gentle man with your sinful bile, force him to commit such a cruel,
unintelligible deed?’

‘I had thy bastard sibling,
Pontifice.’

‘And you lost him. Love
overcame hatred, as it always does in the end.’

It reached into his body,
behind the protective cage of bone,
  
and tried to rend his heart in two, but he resisted stoically and struck
her down again. This time she was severely winded, the blow had somehow hurt
her more then being blasted to bits. The Beast measured the level of pain as
being at least equal to the punishment meted out by its father in Koreans.
Something told it that its father was not at all happy it had come to the Vatican
space, attempted to hurt the pontifice

The holy man had proved to be a
tricky
,
Christian cunt
! He’d been stronger, much
stronger than the Beast expected. It could not lay its darkness upon his soul,
nor that of his sibling. It could not take life from him. And he was able to
hurt the female very badly. Its power in the space was greatly limited. And
still it had not found the Christ. It was time to leave.

She turned to find Pope
Alexander IX sitting on the steps of the altar, recovering. He raised his head
wearily. ‘I never imagined I would one day meet you, talk to you. Now that I
have I pity you, as much as I pity the wretched woman you have overwhelmed.’

‘Just the latest in a long
line, Pontifice. And pity thyself, not
  
me, for thy virtue will not save thee from the
inevitable.’

‘You are correct, Diablo.
Now that Christ our Lord is risen again,
he
will save me. He will save all of us.’

‘The Christ will perish, I
will kill it, and thou knowest I will always walk amongst thee in one form or
another.’

Pope Alexander watched in
astonishment as she slowly became something that had no place in the world
around him, something
   
he had imagined only in his darkest moments, and then faded from sight
altogether.