Kristin (20 page)

Thirty-three

In the moments after his brother’s words
ended, Thom felt his enervated body rise from the threadbare carpet up to the
ceiling of the bookshop and beyond. His fingertips felt the rough texture of
frost-cracked roof tiles as he was drawn up into the total darkness of the
false night.
Was he dead
,
had he passed from this life in the bookshop
? His ascent continued. Below
him London was an invisible white spectre; the crisscross of streets, St Pauls
Cathedral, the winding River Thames. The city shrank as he left it far behind,
along with the remnants of his life.

When he’d reached great
height, above the exosphere of the
  
Earth, a brilliant light appeared beneath his body, making the blood
inside his translucent fingers glow red, and he looked down to see that the
world appeared purged of darkness that had seemingly only existed within the
spirit of mankind. From such altitude the world was radiant, perfect,
untroubled, as it had been in the beginning.

He was surely dead
,
his spirit returning to the stars
?

As he glided silently
eastwards the shores of Britain, which he recognized as his homeland, yielded
to the continental land mass of Europe. He glimpsed patchworks of golden
fields, the forests of Germany, the mountains of Switzerland and Austria. The
infinite ultramarine of the Black Sea drifted beneath his weightless form.

Gradually, the terrain
changed to scrubland and then spectacular, orange desert:
If this was the last he
’
d see of this
world it had been worth a lifetime
’
s wait.

He began to lose altitude.
Had he been
granted more life
?

He dropped further still,
but always controlled, never spinning or tumbling.

A vast, azure ocean
beckoned, in its centre a large island shaped like a tear for the world. To the
right of the sea a desiccated, barren landscape, greener along its coast and
bearing signs of dense population stretched for hundreds of miles. A mighty
river, dividing two inland seas, ran adjacent to the coastline from north to
south.

Lower and lower.
He was being
returned to Earth
!

A crinkled mountain range
defined itself. He was descending quickly now, towards a large city at their
feet.

Lower.

He saw a steep hillside
studded with trees.

Darkness returned.

Thom pushed at the pillow
of books to find frozen rocks, gritty soil and stubbly grass. He sat up,
sensing that he was now far from home. But the stinging cold prevailed here.

The steep incline was
littered with headstones lit by lights suspended from cables in the trees. When
he got to his feet a sharp stone cut into the sole of his foot reminding him
he’d removed his socks and shoes before lying down to rest.
It had been no imagining
,
he hadn
’
t died
!

Thom heard screams,
chanting, in the distance and looked down the hillside. A massive, ancient
wall, burning yellow under floodlight dominated the vista. Beyond the wall was
a magnificent golden dome.

He bent and examined a
horizontal headstone. The commemoration was in Hebrew and he struggled with the
transliteration: “
Here rests ... my beloved ... wife
,
Eva ... Ezekiel
,
who fell asleep on the ... fifteenth day of
... October in the year of ... our Lord ... 156 ...
”. The last number of
the date was obliterated.

Nearby was an even older
grave: “
In ...
memory ... Hieremias Hedvah. Died 2 ... 13 ... May his dear soul ...
”. He
could read no more of the inscription.

Other stones were older
still, their epitaphs lost, whilst some were newer, the graves’ occupants
remembered with lilies and alstroemeria long ago wilted or dead through the
cold, or neglect.

The hill of graves, the
trees; they were olive trees, their branches low, sprawling — everything
created a clear picture in his mind. His father had once been here, told him of
this place.
 
There was no doubt
,
he was on the Mount of Olives
,
the largest
Jewish cemetery in the world and
below
,
behind the great wall
,
lay the old city of Jerusalem
.

He sat slowly on the frozen
soil.
How
could any of this be?
He’d been sucked up by an unknown force and
transported more than two thousand miles.
Why
?
How had it brought him to the Holy Land
? What
did it expect of him, hadn’t he suffered enough already? Why hadn’t he died of
asphyxiation when he’d ascended above the troposphere? Why hadn’t his lifeless
remains then burned to a crisp when they’d skimmed the Earth’s outer atmosphere
— had the force protected him? That was beyond even God’s capability.

Where was his mother? Where
was his father and his brother?
Where was Kristin
?

Jerusalem called him.

Thirty-four

Kristin awoke on the uppermost of forty-five
courses of meleke limestone blocks that formed the Western Wall of the Jewish
Quarter of Jerusalem. Her head throbbed with muted pain and she felt nauseous.

Sixty-two feet below her a
mountain of men, women and children writhed and moaned. The recesses between
the gargantuan blocks were crammed with their desperately scrawled prayers for
the return of daylight. They didn’t look up, didn’t notice her.

‘JEWS!’ the Beast snarled
impatiently, its voice distorted, alien. ‘Thou art the worst of creeds!
Self-important, self-appointed messengers of God! Thou art aloof, obsessed with
thine own kind! I shall murder thee for thy piety, thy collusion!’

They retreated from the
foot of the wall, trampling the fallen amongst them in their desperation to
escape the atrocious anathema high above them.

On a flat roof adjacent to
the wall a battered red door burst open and a camera crew rushed out.
Hurriedly, they extended the telescopic legs of a heavy tripod, brushed ice
from the casing of a camcorder, uncovered its lens and mounted it on top. A
thick, red cable that trailed back through the open door and down steep stairs
to an outside broadcast van in the street below was plugged into a socket on
the camera whilst a thin, Asian woman removed a microphone from a protective
box, attached it to the end of a boom and swung it over the edge of the roof.
They started to film.

The producer, a prematurely
white-haired man, was fractious, distracted as he yelled instructions, his face
screwed up with confusion and pain as he dragged the fingernails of his right
hand through gashes on his left forearm so deep they’d exposed the muscles
underneath.

‘Well have I considered thy
fate, Jews!’ the Beast resumed.

Throat-tearing screams
dissipated in the bitter air.

‘Now I dictate thy future!
I will bring wholesale destruction upon thee, upon all
 
mankind! Thy suffering will be
unbearable, but thou shalt bear it, as the Christ bore its heavy cross!’

A frail man stepped
forward, returned to the wall and looked up.

‘I will strike thee down
first!’ the Beast proclaimed.

‘Then strike me down, what
do I care?’ he cried. ‘I’m an old man and I choose not to live in the repulsive
world you have created!’

‘So, how shall I despatch
thee? Shall I sever thy shrivelled prick, make thee chew upon it and laugh as
thee chokes thy way to hell? Or ...
thou art indeed old
... yes, thou shalt know
emotional pain, pain will cause strain and strain will end thee, halt your
organ of circulation!’

‘You may do as you wish
with my mortal body, Tayvl, and with the flesh and bones of my family and
friends, but you will never have our souls, you hellish witch, for we are the
chosen race and they are out of your reach!’

‘CHOSEN RACE? FUCKING
ARROGANT JEW! Chosen by whom? Not by my father, not by God, for he chose me to
lead thee all towards a new dawn!’

‘You’ve led us to the brink
of oblivion!’

‘I am thy deliverance,
thine only hope ... retarded, ungrateful yidshit! Thou wilt not survive unless
thee first accept the hatred in thy soul for all things!’

‘My soul is not hateful!’

‘Then how dost thou think
of me?’

‘I feel ...
sorry
for
you, I don’t envy you your futile half-life ...!’

‘FUCKING
JEW!’

‘This woman is just a husk,
a brutalized remnant of her former self. You do not exist in any true form ...
there is no you
!’

The Beast’s unearthly cry
resounded over a decaying world. It forced its host to the very edge of the
wall, like a gargoyle, made her remove her lower coverings and release a
cascade of stale, brown urine down onto the old man.

‘I piss on thee, Jew!’ it
guffawed, before spotting something it could use to increase his misery. ‘A
female sibling ... there amidst the Jewish infestation!’ it shrilled, making
Kristin point towards the crowd.

The woman squealed as
something gripped her soft, shoulder-length silver hair and pulled her head
first from the periphery of the throng. Her thin canvas shoes were stripped
from feet that trailed across the rough, frozen stones, skinning, shedding
blood.

The Beast dragged her to
her brother’s side. ‘Now, fuck this!’ it commanded.

The man met his sister’s
bewildered gaze and in her eyes saw unconditional love, absolute trust that had
lasted all of their lives. But now that love, that trust, was misplaced.

He felt a tide of lust
charge through his body. ‘Please, Ruth ... my dear Ruth, please forgive me but
I must do this,
I
must fuck you
, it tells me to.’ His dry mouth watered as he reached out and
tore her clothes from her. Weeping, he ran his leathery hands over her aged
body, cupped her sagging breasts. She tried to scream but instead choked on
salty tears as her brother’s hand slipped between her fat-laden thighs.

‘NO, RUEBEN ... NO!’ she
cried.

‘You don’t understand,
Ruth, I
want
to fuck you!’ He pushed her back against the wall, lifted her right leg and
slid into her bestially, making her scream with pain and horror.

‘INCESTUOUS SACKS OF SHIT!’
it screeched, rabid with pleasure.

Ruth sank to the gelid ground
and her brother landed heavily on top of her. Their eyes were shut fast against
the nightmare.

Kristin’s lips curled into
a macabre smile, but her master had already tired of the perverse entertainment
and it used her eyes to look elsewhere for its satisfaction. ‘There ... there
is the offspring of the offspring of the brotherfucker!’ it announced, and
plucked the terrified young girl from the masses. It lugged her roughly to the
wall and forced her head downwards to look at her grandmother and grand uncle. ‘
See them? See
them
? They are brother and sister and yet they have fucked each other half
to death!’

The girl felt dizzy, sick.

‘Remove the offspring of
the offspring’s lower coverings!’ it instructed the old man. Weeping, he hooked
the fingers of his left hand into the waistband of his grand-niece’s jeans,
feeling her hot, firm stomach flinch at the touch of his rough skin. With his
other hand he undid the shining steel button, slid the zipper and yanked her
trousers down to her white ankle socks.

‘To the flesh!’ it
demanded, impatiently.

He wafted his hands over
her slender hips and her pants were gone. Immediately, the flesh around her
vagina began to bubble and she screamed with pain. The delicate tissue swelled,
doubled in thickness, quadrupled, and the opening nature had provided her was
permanently closed. She tipped her head back and cried at the deceased sky,
racked with pain, as her relatives held on to one another, transfixed, their
faces white.

‘STOP IT YOU FOUL BASTARD
... STOP IT!’ Kristin bawled.

But the girdle of flesh
continued to grow until it resembled a haunch of stinking, raw meat between her
skinny, lily-white thighs and she bent forwards, choking on her vomit.

‘Thou shalt not know
pleasure!’ it dictated. ‘Neither shalt thou spawn!
Thou shalt not even pass piss
!’

But the old man struggled
to his feet, reached out his hand and helped his sister up, dressing her as
best he could. Together, they made the girl decent and helped her away from the
wall defiantly, physically compromised but spiritually unimpaired.

‘FUCKING JEWS!’ it screamed
after them. ‘Now I will despatch thee all!’

The crowd rushed at the
wall. Some attempted to scale it. The Beast stared at the ground before them,
polarizing its power, and the paving stones began to heave. Then they blew
apart and a vast arc of blue flames leapt thirty feet into the air.

The Western Wall liquified,
wobbling like a pile of wet sand. Massive breaches opened along its length,
until it could withstand no more of the merciless shaking, and the enormous
blocks toppled to the ground amidst dense clouds of choking dust, crushing hundreds
to death beneath.