Kristin (19 page)

Twenty-nine

Thom Sharman stood slumped against the cold,
steel handrail of the Millennium Bridge, staring at a distant point above and
beyond the towers of Docklands. A gunshot reverberated, there was an explosion,
screams. But they were things he didn’t notice anymore.

How would he live now that she was
dead
,
now that there was no corner of the world in which
he might find her
?
Surely she must be somewhere
?
Surely she was simply lost
,
unable to find
her way home
,
like his father and brother
?
Like his mother
?

He closed his eyes and saw
her rise from the soil once more, saw her body jerk with the ravaging impact of
each cartridge fired from the soldiers’ guns, saw her expression that at first
damned him for his flagrant betrayal but was then accepting, and finally thankful.

“
Get to the Holocaust Memorial in Hyde Park
”,
the text message had read. “
Help us to end this. We
’
ll make it quick
,
she won
’
t suffer
”
.

He’d had done as he was
asked, and he’d carried out her wishes. But it was no comfort to him, he could
still taste the blood on her rent lips as he’d kissed them for the last time.

Another blast made shook
the bridge and pain shot down his leg. Sergeant Wilshere hadn’t tended to his
bullet wound as he’d been ordered to, but screamed at Thom, pushed him aside
and run from the park like a madman.

Later, Thom smashed in a
shop window, took a bottle of whisky and poured some into the hole left after
he dug the bullet out with a piece of splintered wood. After crudely suturing
the wound with a nail and some wire, he drank the rest of the bottle.

A faint vibration passed
through his feet; somebody had started across the bridge, a tall woman with a
dog. She was moving slowly, with caution, the labrador leading her, guiding
her; she was blind. The woman stopped twenty feet from him, removed the dog’s
harness and picked the animal up. She moved towards the edge.

He approached her quickly,
instinctively, and she jumped when he touched her shoulder. ‘Are you sure, in
your soul, that you wish to do this?’ he asked in a voice he no longer
recognized as his own.

‘Leave me alone!’ she
remonstrated. ‘The dog must die!’

‘It will swim to the
riverbank. But how will you find your way without it?’

‘I don’t need it to see for
me anymore, she shows me the way ahead. Her eyes are my eyes.’

‘Her eyes are dead ... I
watched them die.’

‘HERETIC!’ she spat, and
the dog yelped, trying to wriggle free of its once trusted owner.

‘The failings of mankind
are not the fault of this poor animal.’ He soothed the dog’s head as it
whimpered helplessly. ‘See the dog with your own eyes, and believe this.’

‘I’m blind, you imbecile!’

He layed his hand on her
head.

‘ ...
What are you doing
? Let me go, let me do
what she tells ...!’ The lifelong veil of darkness that had hidden the world
from her started to lift. Startling, vivid colours and shapes became visible to
her, a hitherto unknown dimension opening up, and she fell against him,
bewildered by the frenzy of visual stimuli.

‘See life,’ he whispered.

The woman saw her dog, her
friend and saviour, and fell to the steel floor, wrapping her arms around its
neck. She wept as she replaced the animal’s harness effortlessly, and realized
she felt no more anger towards her dog, no more malice towards anybody or
anything. ‘ So wonderful! So wonderful!’ she cried
.
‘
Who are you
? How have you done this, how is it
possible ... I’ve ... I’ve been blind since birth?’

‘I’m afraid I cannot answer
your question.’

She drew herself up and
embraced him. ‘Promise me you’ll try to help others, like you’ve helped me?’

‘I will try.’

The woman turned and left,
wheeling from side to side as if inebriated, then stopped near the south end of
the bridge. She put her hand to her brow, searching for him. ‘You know, you may
be right!’ she called out. ‘I think her eyes
are
dead, I can see that now that mine
live!’ She bent, stroked the dog and then scanned for him once more. When his
image eventually snapped into focus she let out a loud gasp.

Unthinkingly, Thom followed the south bank
of the river westwards as far as Vauxhall Bridge and wandered into the grounds
of Lambeth Palace through the arched doorway of Morton’s Tower gatehouse, whose
heavy, sixteenth-century oak door had been smashed from its massive, iron
hinges.

The palace was the official
London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Aldous Waldegrave. But
something made Thom feel that the old man, revered by so many, would never
return.

Against the blackened wall
of the Great Hall Cardinal Pole’s fig tree, the White Marseilles, planted in
1525, had been burned black and the acrid odour of charcoal hung in the damp
air left behind after the rain had cleared away to the east.

Two rabid screams, one
pitched higher than the other shattered the silence. He spun to see a woman and
a child, naked, flying at him, teeth flashing white, eyes like cows’ in a
slaughterhouse.

He snapped off a branch
from the tree and brought it down hard on the back of the woman's head knocking
her unconscious, but the boy leapt at him, straddled his neck, tore at his
hair, bit his scalp. Thom threw his weight to one side and the child lost his
grip, crashed into the blackened tree and was motionless.

He rolled the woman over
with his foot. Her flesh was covered in cuts and bruises, her platinum blonde
hair hacked to different lengths, her uncut fingernails ingrained underneath
with gritty dirt and dried blood. She was almost feral.

The boy was no older than
seven and looked quite harmless as he lay in the debris of the burned tree,
smothered in its sodden ashes, and yet he’d had the physical strength of an
adult.

Without thinking, Thom
rested his hand on the woman’s head. Then he did the same to the boy: When they
awoke, their ordeal would be over.

In the hours that followed
he acted time and again to prevent shocking episodes of violence, depravity and
inhumanity, healing those who, against their will, were ready to murder,
mutilate and debase their fellow human beings. Now, finally, he was able to accept
his ability to aid, and cure the afflicted.
But he wasn
’
t all powerful
; he’d been helpless when he’d
seen an elderly man and woman climb over the edge of a balcony near the top of
Cromwell Tower in the Barbican, kiss, and plummet three hundred feet to their
deaths. Neither did he hold the destiny of humanity in his hands, as his mother
had intimated.

He wandered further and
further afield, a stranger to himself, but began to think clearly for the first
time since the butchery in Hyde Park: If Kristin was dead — if the
terrible presence had died with her, why did London still seem to be held in
its unrelenting grip?

Nothing had changed.

Thirty

The Beast had returned Kristin to the roof
of the basilica and she scrabbled at the lead flashing with raw fingers as it
brooded over its bitter experience in the pontifice’s obscene place of worship.

How it abhorred the pontifice and
his sibling
! Its loathing was incalculable. Fuck
the man of God! Fuck him for his incorruptible strength! Shit on his sibling
for his odious rectitude! Fuck the bitch, Flavia, for the appalling pain she’d
caused its earthly being, for wasting its precious time! If there was another
life, as these moronic beings seemed to believe, it hoped she’d return as a
male and that before he was grown he’d be set upon by another male, get his
arse raped and bleed to death out on the streets. Fuck them! It sought out
Flavia’s spirit, as it rested in heaven above, and cast it into the depths of
hell.

Kristin tipped her head
back, loosed a large glob of black, blood-streaked sputum and spat it out. She
watched it befoul the long, red roof below. Then the Beast made her strike
herself hard in the stomach. Burning, watery vomit surged up her feeding tube,
following the same course, and as the discharge spotted onto the terracotta
tiles the Beast imagined the roof as a symbol for humankind.

Unfortunately the female’s
bowels were empty of waste, otherwise it would have made her remove her lower
coverings and shit a torrent of ochre faeces down upon the roof too. Fuck them!
Fuck them all! It had given them the opportunity to join with it but its
generous offer had been spurned.
It would never give them another chance.

It forced her gaze
skywards, drew upon the sum of its powers and screamed, ‘LET THERE BE NO MORE
LIGHT!’

Darkness descended
instantly, as though a vast, black shroud had been drawn across the world, and
Kristin curled into a tight ball, terrified.

Where was the Christ
,
was
it still alive?
Yes it was, the Beast could feel its presence in the air,
maintaining the equilibrium of the Earth, safeguarding its trees, grass, rivers
and streams, clouds, sky, birds and animals.
And its people
. Now the Beast would burn
everything to a cinder. This, after all, was only what humanity sought for
itself. It would no longer be sidetracked by its personal vendetta against the
Christ — it would follow in any case. The Beast would travel to the very
cradle of Christianity, defile and desecrate the area. Afterwards, it would
rest awhile. Then the Christ would come for it, meet its end. And then the
Beast would end all things.

Thirty-one

The Earth groaned, capitulating, when
darkness fell upon it so suddenly.

Thom stumbled headlong into
a rough, wet, Victorian wall, disorientated. He slid down onto the frozen ground,
sucking in rapid lungfulls of oxygen.
Was it an eclipse
? The light wasn’t simply
subdued, but extinguished. The latter part of the day had produced crystal
clear skies and yet he could see neither moon nor stars.

Exhaustion replaced fear.
He was debilitated, he had to rest, but not here. He picked himself back up.

To his left he noticed a
dark, narrow road and headed down it, feeling his way along the buildings,
running his fingers over freezing glass, sharp, flaking timber mouldings and
more glass until they settled on an icy cold, pitted metal door knob. He turned
it, pushed with his shoulder, and the old door juddered open.

The interior was narrow but
deep. It was lit by a solitary light bulb mounted on the wall towards the back
that revealed the outlines of masses of angular shapes against the walls and in
piles upon the floor. The musty smell was unmistakably familiar; it could only
exist in an old bookshop.

He walked through to the
end of the shop, lay down and pushed three thick volumes under his head. The
back room was very small and the packed shelves surrounding him seemed to
provide insulation from the sub-zero temperature outside. Thom found the old
scent of the books comforting somehow, redolent of a time passed that he
yearned for now more than ever before.

He began to drift. And when
he was midway between the conscious and the subconscious a much loved, often
missed voice startled him with its beautiful clarity.

Thom
?
his brother, Nicholas whispered.
It
’
s time
,
Thom. It
’
s time.

Thirty-two

Within the freezing chamber of ancient
stone inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the pilgrims had broken through
the rope barrier and prostrated themselves before Jesus Christ’s tomb one on
top of the other, in a heaving, moaning mass of humanity desperate for
deliverance. They clung to the sarcophagus in the suffocating, candle-lit
chamber with outstretched arms, praying, hoping, begging. But the Lord did not
hear them.

An old woman with long,
ragged grey hair plastered to her white face disentangled herself from the
horde and climbed up onto the tomb. She raised her thick coat, hitched up three
layers of dress underneath and defecated copiously, caterwauling, shaking her
head from side to side, ‘AIEEEEEEEEEEEEE!’

They pulled her down and
jerked her backwards through the crush, covering her face with spittle,
screaming at her.

‘Kalba!’

‘Mishugena!’

‘Tisaref b’azazel!’

Two men dragged the
delirious hag across the raw, eleventh-century floor slabs by one leg and when
she wriggled free, by her hair, which pulled out in red-rooted clumps. They
took her half way up the stairway to Golgotha and made her kneel. One of them
forced her mouth open and the other removed a small brick from the crumbling
wall. He swung it at her exposed teeth, smashing them out, and then both men
made her perform felatio on them with her gaping, harmless mouth.

When she’d satisfied
their needs the first man battered her to death with the same brick. Then they
returned to the sepulchre, pushed their way to the front and begged Christ for
absolution. But it was not forthcoming.

The edicule shook
violently, throwing the murderers off, and they feared the wrath of God. The massive
lid to the tomb began to slide and the topmost pilgrims wailed whilst those
trapped beneath gasped as the air was punched from their lungs.

The lid grated again,
revealing an angled slot of absolute darkness, and a vague,
vaporous
shape slipped
out. It rose to the ceiling and hung in suspension — a barely visible
mist. It started to change, contracting to a tiny nucleus, and then rapidly
expanded to twice its original size. It lengthened, dangling from the rocky ceiling
and began to assume physical form, bone structure developing inside. The
skeleton was quickly encased in muscle and other organic tissue as internal
organs appeared inside the upper body. The vestiges of the vapour soaked into
the outer membrane as if it were a sponge.

Kristin levitated above
the tomb, her eyes partially concealed behind a curtain of lank, black hair,
her head cramped against the low ceiling. The multitude cowered before her,
screaming, weeping.

‘Hayi’ti la’chem b’chira!
... Thou hadst a choice!’ the Beast rasped. ‘All of thee. But thee decided, in
thy wisdom, to continue to follow the teachings of the monstrosity entombed in
this stone box twenty centuries ago.’

A youth opened a razor
and drew it across his throat, spraying her with his blood. The Beast cackled
with laughter, making Kristin rub the red shower into her face and naked arms
like a balm. The mass surged towards the narrow doorway, trampling many of
their number to death.

‘It seems I cannot
reclaim what is rightfully mine — all of thy souls,’ it wheezed, rancourously.
‘So I shall simply break thee instead, destroy thee —
all that thou art
,
everything thou
hast built and nurtured
— with devices of thine own making.’

Two sisters lunged at her
but she thrust them back into the people and severed their optical nerves.
‘Understand, I am merely speeding the natural course of ... ’ Sudden
familiarity stunted its sermon. ‘ ...
Calvary
?’

‘Leave this holiest of
places!’ demanded a muffled voice.

‘Calvary! This location
is known well to me from my past, from an early incarnation:
It is here that
my orders were carried out
,
the Christ put to death
. And here will it perish anew, and for all
time. But these surroundings differ from those images stored in my perfect
memory. Why has this offensive monument to the Christ been erected around its
grave? Where is the elevated point upon which I watched, enraptured, as the
Christ inhaled its final breath, nailed to a cross of timber, its body bleeding
and broken? All this must change!’

The Beast withdrew its
mortal being from the domain of the physical world, just enough to prevent her
falling victim to its deadly action.

There followed a dull
thud of immense power that punched yawning holes in the thin matter of the
pilgrims’ eardrums — a brilliant flash of light, a minute flame that
expanded into a fierce conflagration,
atomizing everything within the sepulcher and beyond.
The blaze radiated outwards in a vast wave, surging through brick, mortar and
human tissue until exhausted of permitted fuel. When it had subsided the
Christian Quarter of the old city had been reduced to a barren, alien landscape
of smouldering dust.

After the ashes had
cooled sufficiently the Beast returned Kristin’s body to the world and she
looked down to find she was standing knee-deep in the embers of two thousand
years of civilization.

Gradually, the level
began to recede and she realized that the residue was sliding away from her,
mounding up into a hill that grew until it was more than twenty times her
height.

The Beast stole some wood
from the substructure of a blind, cripple’s house in the Armenian Quarter,
bringing his home down upon the helpless old man, and built a cross from it,
which it erected on the summit of the new Calvary in readiness. But soon
it
 
was intuitively drawn to a new
location and Kristin screamed in agony as she was transplanted beyond the city
walls, near a break in them named the Damascus Gate, to the base of an ominous,
natural edifice resembling a human skull.

Kristin opened her eyes.
She was lying on her back in a small, dark chamber. It was incredibly cold,
well below freezing, and she shivered insuppressibly as her possessor babbled
at her, informed her:
The Garden Tomb was venerated by some ignorant
,
Christian swine
as the true resting place of the Christ. The tomb had been constructed by a
rich Jew
,
Joseph of Arimathea
,
as his own burial site
,
but after the Christ had been executed its
shattered cadaver was given to the Jew
,
who placed it into a box of stone which had
originally occupied the bare
,
rocky recess in which she now reclined
,
before rolling
another great stone across the entrance.
But it was just a fable, a
falsehood, and the Christ would soon rest no more, it would see to that.

She breathed in sharply
and sat up. A young man knelt in solemn prayer outside a cage of black bars. He
lifted his head slowly when he sensed movement that should never have been and
fell backwards, a breathless mute.

Kristin’s lips moved but
her speech followed later. ‘Please, where am I?’

He wanted to run.

‘What am I doing here?’

He shifted slightly on
the freezing floor, sweat streaming from his facial glands.

‘
Please
,
can you help me
?’

‘ ... You lie in the
Lord’s grave and ... you ask for my help?’

‘ ...
The Lord’s grave
?
Where’s Thom?’

‘
Thom?
Are you lost?’

‘Yes, in many ways. But
I’m not frightened, Thom will find me, save me.’

‘ ... What is your name?’

‘Kristin.’

‘I am Ahmed.’

‘What country am I in?’

‘
What country
? You are in ... ’ He stood
and backed away. ‘ ... The Christian Quarter is destroyed. Are you
responsible?’

‘A part of me is responsible.’

‘Is that part here in
this tomb?’

‘It’s always here.’

‘What is it?’

‘All that’s bad.’

‘Should I fear you?’

‘ ... No. I’m not sure
why, but it has given my life back to me for these few moments.’

‘I had many friends in
the Christian Quarter.’

‘ ... I’m sorry, Ahmed.’

‘I did not believe in
your existence, and now you are before me.
How can you live with it as part of you
?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Does it own your soul?’

‘I thought it, did but
sometimes ... ’ She stood and passed cleanly through the iron bars. Her eyes
rolled upwards, and gabbling like a turkey she opened her hand and slapped him
around the face with savage strength, opening a two inch split in his cheek and
fracturing his jaw with a loud crack that reverberated off the frozen walls.
Then she straddled him and closed her small, white, shaking hands around his
throat, digging her thumbs into his windpipe.

Ah, yes
! her tormentor purred, encouragingly.
Choke the life from Ahmed
,
throttle the cunt
,
end him
!
Her tears dropped onto his red, bloated face. ‘It’s not what I want, it’s what
you want!’ ...
My
desire is thine obligation ... murder him
!

It’s irrevocable will
flowed down her arms and her fingers tightened. She salivated, crazed with
senseless fury, and Ahmed gawped, white-eyed, as she asphyxiated him.

Hate
!
Kill
! Life
began to ebb from Ahmed. ‘Hate? Yes, I hate, but not this man ... It’s you I
detest, you I wished I could kill!’ She began to choke the remaining breath
from his lungs.
Fucking
stinking Arab
,
kill him
!

Suddenly her hands slipped
from around Ahmed’s neck. ‘RUN, AHMED, RUN!’ she yelled.

He scrambled to his feet
and fled through the tight, rough-hewn doorway.

Bitch
!
Insolent,
disloyal fuckwhore
!

She grabbed a jagged rock
and struck herself on the forehead. Blood gushed onto the stone floor and her
vision blurred. She hit herself again, hard between the eyes and stumbled, then
sprawled on the ground in a fast-freezing pool of her own blood.

Stupid female
,
thou
knowest it is useless
!
Did thine experience before God
’
s greatest shit-house teach thee nothing
?

She drew herself up,
shrieked and ran at the wall head down, and the convergence of bone forming the
crown of her cranium impacted with a crunch.

Kristin
!

She staggered back to the
opposite side of the tomb and charged again. This time her skull cracked like
an eggshell, a large fragment slicing into the longitudinal fissure dividing
the frontal lobes of her brain, causing a devastating haemorrhage.