Kristin (21 page)

Thirty-five

Thom Sharman picked his way down the steep, grave-strewn
hillside, his mind overrun with confusion and fear.

At the bottom he wandered
through an open gateway into an ornate garden untouched by the horrors
unfolding upon the world. Olive trees abounded, some thousands of years old. He
stopped by the greatest, whose trunk was gnarled and hollow, then knelt and
prayed, not for his own salvation but selflessly, for that of every other man,
woman and child that lived. Then he drew himself laboriously to his feet,
certain he would never visit the beautiful oasis of tranquility again.

He left the Garden of
Gethsamane and crossed a bridge: The Jericho Road was deserted, littered with
abandoned cars and putrefying human remains upon which vultures and smaller
birds scavenged.

The East Wall towered above
him, its ramparts like the stumps of amputated fingers pointing towards the
blackened heavens. Through the portal of the Lion’s Gate, protected on either
side with carvings of prowling panthers, the city beckoned him once again and
when he didn’t move something took over and sucked him into a vortex, setting
him down in the middle of a narrow thoroughfare beyond the wall.

Intense feelings of
persecution smothered him, memories of betrayal, as though a hundred knives
were being thrust into his back, and he held on to an icy, limestone wall. Then
something fortified his enervated body, galvanized his spirit, drawing him
along the empty street. But when he saw the battered metal street sign, Via
Dolorosa, he buckled. Insufferable pain cut through his back and knees. An
immense weight crushed his shoulders, bent his back. On the crystalline ground
he gazed in horror as blood ran copiously from his nose, merging with sparkling
ice particles bonded hard to the ancient cobblestones. His face burned, his
eyes streamed, his dry mouth filling with bitter mucus:
his body was being altered
,
remodelled.

The extraneous force hauled
him up, urged him on, and at a crossroads he was compelled to leave Via
Dolorosa and turn left into El Wad HaGai Street. The way was even narrower. It
rose and fell, twisted and turned as far as he could see, timeworn, crumbling,
low-slung bridges and decayed steps frequenting its route. On both sides of the
constricted street eyes peered at him from darkened windows. Doors began to
open. The houses’ occupants wandered out and stared at him. A young man cried
out to him, and then averted his eyes.

Near an Armenian oratory he
was beset by raging thirst and lurched to the entrance of a small dwelling. The
door opened and an elderly woman emerged from the darkness and smiled. She appeared
slim and fit for her years and her immaculately groomed, powdery hair was tied
back into a short ponytail. She wore a sheer, loose-fitting, white cotton dress
and sandals offering no protection from the abnormally low temperature, and yet
she didn’t seem to feel the biting cold. A part of him recognized her vaguely.
She was like a faded photograph from a forgotten life:
For
now he could no longer recall his own name.

‘Please, I’m so thirsty,
could you give me a little water?’ he begged.

She turned in silence,
vanishing unnaturally into the impossible darkness of the house, and returned
with an ice-filled, glass goblet. He drank its contents quickly.

‘You mustn’t be afraid,’
she whispered.

Her voice made his heart
race; it was familiar to him, a part of him somehow. ‘You were born for this
day.’

Her words comforted, but
confused him. ‘You have been so kind, thank you,’ he said, and walked away,
replenished.

‘I have always loved you! I
will always love you!’ she called after him.

He climbed back up the
steps and held her close, suppressing tears that begged, but were unable to
flow.

After he’d left the house
he glanced back and saw she’d gone and that the door had disappeared, replaced
by solid, limestone brick. He heard footsteps behind him and turned; several
people were following him at a distance.

At the junction of Via
Dolorosa and El Wad Hagai Street, near a Franciscan chapel, strength left him
once more and an eternally young man rushed forwards to support him.

‘You shall not bear this
burden alone, my brother,’ said the stranger.

‘ ... Thank you. Thank you
for your kindness.
I feel as though I know you
, even if I no longer know myself.’

‘You’re familiar with everything
I once was, and now you know I never really left you. There’s so much for you
still to understand. A life lost young is not necessarily wasted.’

When they reached Ha Dagel
Street he slumped. But there was nobody to help him and he realized the young
man had left his side, that he was alone again, alone apart from his
inexplicable following, which had increased in number and grown more
vociferous.

Shortly, he rejoined Via
Dolorosa and the ancient, shadowy architecture ahead seemed to distort in the
raw air. A tall, dignified-looking man appeared and approached him, smiling
warmly through his breath cloud. He pulled a cloth from the pocket of his
shorts, reached forward, and wiped the perspiration from his brow with the
greatest compassion.

‘You are as I remember
you,’ he said, his blue eyes twinkling with affection. ‘A touch older perhaps,
somewhat shorter of hair, and I can see that you’re burdened with this great
responsibility but you are, and will always be my son, in death as you were in
life. I’m so very proud of you.’

He stepped backwards, the
air rippled and he vanished.

Via Dolorosa ended,
evolving into El-Khanqa Street, and at its intersection with with a cramped
side road he stumbled for a second time, landing heftily on the glacial paving
stones. Again, a power he could neither recognize nor comprehend hauled him
back up, persuaded him to carry on.

At the foot of some steps,
before an atrophied arch denoting the elevated crossing of a narrow way above,
three women huddled against a high wall; they were crying for him. He stopped,
and the masses halted behind him.

‘Daughters of Jerusalem,
weep not for me,’ he told them, gently. ‘But weep for yourselves, and for your
children.’

Later, by the entrance to
an imposing church, terrible memories descended upon him like a veil of death.
The remaining energy deserted his legs and he fell badly. Blood trickled from
his forehead and red holes penetrated his hands and feet. But as a mortal wound
in his side began to drain life from him an ethereal arm bolstered him, lifted
him back up, and he heard the voice of the elderly woman who had given him
water.

‘You should go no further
down this road ... you know the route you must take.’

Quite suddenly he was aware
of the existence of something that burned with utter hatred for all things
— something wicked, impenetrably black, something that meant to terminate
life on God’s Earth,
something that had to be stopped
! He whirled around outraged, his
strength renewed, and retraced his steps, walking at speed and with purpose.
Hundreds followed him, crying, screaming.

‘Meshiakh!’

Some ran forwards and pawed
his stripped body in adoration.

‘Melekh Ham’lokhim!’

But the temperature dropped
lower and lower and ahead of him visibility decreased to a mere glimmer, like
the dying flame of humanity.

Thirty-six

The man remembered by some as Thomas Sharman
left the darkness of a short tunnel and stopped abruptly. Ahead, several
thousand people fermented with anger, dwarfed by a vast curtain of flames.

Some at the back of the
crowd noticed him and word spread quickly. The commotion died and they parted
to let him through, silent in their shock and reverence, and watched in horror
as he headed blindly for the wall of fire.

Inside the fierce inferno
the blue flames licked over his naked flesh but didn’t burn him and he felt no
pain, only the need to pass through them and confront the force that lay beyond
them, waiting.

When he exited the fire he
saw before him the sundered ruins of a large construction. From beneath the
massive, fragmented blocks arms protruded, bent at impossible angles. Legs
without flesh. Heads, mashed to bloody pulp; unidentifiable faces. And on top
of the ruins sat a young girl — wretched, vulnerable, alone.

He quenched the arc of fire
and the masses raced forwards, leaping across the fissure in the ground from
which the flames had sprung. He lifted a hand to halt them, then climbed the
mountain of debris.

She hid her face behind
blackened, trembling knees which her skinny, wan arms clamped tightly to her
chest. Her ebony eyes were glassy, distant, and her naked body streamed with
dirty sweat that the air froze instantly, making her shiver violently. She
seemed unaware of him:
But something about her awakened intense emotion within him.

As if stirred from
a dream, her head turned to face him and her eyes met his. They mellowed. ‘ ...
Thom
?’

‘Thom?’ he frowned. ‘Yes, I
was a man named Thomas. In another place, another time.’

‘Where are we?’

‘I am home.’

‘Where is home?’

‘We are in Jerusalem.’

‘Why are we here?’

‘I think I understand now
why I am here.’

Behind him, the horde
shuffled forwards and a sharp stone hurtled from the darkness, catching her on
the cheek, chipping the bone and opening a deep cut. Bile spilled from her
lips, spotting her bare breasts, and she broke the laws of the physical world,
levitating above the rubble. Electricity cracked the air and in the crowd a
young man fell, stones tumbling from his dead hand.

‘NO! YOU SHALL HURT NOBODY
ELSE!’ he decreed, snatching her ankle.

She tried to kick herself
free.

The sensations of physical
change returned and he let her go. His mouth opened in silent agony as he heard
the brittle snap of his own bones, as his physiology altered. His body felt as
it were on a rack, stretching, breaking. He brought a hand to his face: it was
elongating beneath his touch. The bridge of his nose snapped, blood gushing
from the nostrils, then reformed, long and straight. His thin, brown hair grew
rapidly until it touched his naked shoulders. His facial stubble transformed
into a full beard and moustache and his knuckles crunched as his stout fingers
lengthened, became elegant. Then the pain passed. The metamorphosis was
complete.

The people erupted and
rushed at the demolished edifice, clambering up to reach him. He raised his
hand once more.

She fell back onto the
summit, stupefied, heaving with revulsion and loathing. Her lips moved
unwillingly as her overlord spoke for her with unbridled enmity, its voice dry,
damning. ‘ ...
Thou
hast ... thou hast deceived me
,’ it stammered, as spittle oozed from her
mouth. Thou ... hast hidden this truth from me ... this terrible truth. As I
existed within thee ... guided thee ... gave thy miserable life purpose the
Christ dwelt ... within the earthly body of thy lover ... this bastard man,
Thomas. So many days ... so many nights I could have snuffed out its moralistic
flame.
But
thee
...
thee
protected it
! It is the greatest wrongdoing of all time.’

Her eyes drilled him. ‘ ...
Thou hast deceived me too,
brother
, although I expected nothing less of thee! Thou shalt pay a
truly terrible price. I shall prolong the suffering leading to thine extinction
indefinitely. But thou shalt die, and I will have my prize ... didst thou think
thee could cheat me of it?’

She loosed some stinging
sputum and spat it at him. ‘ ...
Lying ... cheating ... cunts
!’ it seethed, and
sucked the blood from her veins until she atrophied, and appeared as if
deceased. ‘Now the bitch is dead!’ it lied. ‘She will never return to this
world or to thee ... brother.’

‘WHY HAVE YOU KILLED HER?
YOU ARE EVIL ... YOU SHALL TAKE NO MORE LIFE!’ He struck her quickly and
sharply. ‘ ...
Brother
?
You are no
brother to me!
What manner of horror are you?’

‘Dost thou not know me?
Dost thou not recall me from memories of thy physical life in this place, now
that we are so close?
I was Pilate
,
fool
! I ordered thine execution, had Roman soldiers hammer thee to
the cross. Thou tookest days to perish as thy disciples bawled and blubbered at
thy bleeding feet. They were pitiful!
But thee ... thee wore thy crown of thorns well
.’

Agonizing recollections of
his protracted death raced through him.

‘When I have ended thee,
nailed thee to the cross of timber high upon the new Calvary, when thou art
truly dead, mankind will serve me.’

‘You would destroy
mankind!’

‘I will be mankind’s
salvation.’

‘I will do my father’s
bidding and protect his children from you.’

‘
Thy
father? I am his sole issue, we both
know this. My father poured his
true
essence into my creation. Thy coming was incidental.

‘You are unadulterated
badness and I shall rid this world of you. You will return to hell, whence you
came and to where you were banished so long ago.’

‘My malevolence is mightier
than thy benevolence. See how the world around thee decays, falls into my
hands.’

‘You shall do no more harm
... ’

‘I
SHALL DO AS I WISH!’

The Beast cranked her
corpselike head until she stared upwards and eastwards. It concentrated all of
its power and malice upon an arid region of northern Afghanistan, near its
border with Tajikstan, and forced her exanimate lips to smile in recognition of
a wilful act that would precipitate a holocaust.

‘There is a powerful
weapon,’ it eructed. ‘Powerful and final. It is in the eastern lands and points
towards the west. It’s journey has begun.’

On the rooftop the
television crew stopped filming and exchanged fearful glances before opening an
urgent dialogue with their base in the south of the city.

In the crowd those who’d
understood the words of the Beast relayed them, and the sound of hysteria
spread across the plaza. They pleaded with him, their arms outstretched.

‘Yishu ... opgebn undz fun
shlekht!’

‘We beg of you Lord... end
this nightmare!’

He rounded on her. ‘I will
not allow this atrocity!’

‘
Too ... fucking ... late
!’

‘You may have broken my
body on Calvary but my spirit endured, living on within each and every mortal
soul, like a seed that has germinated.’

‘My slaves now.’

‘Damn you!’

‘I am already damned!’ It
respired deeply and breathed out into his face, removing most of the epidermis,
but he closed his eyes and felt little pain, just sorrow for the torment the
woman had suffered within the clutches of his evil sibling, and fury at the
horrors it had wrought upon the Earth, upon humanity.

Without warning her foot
lashed out, catching him behind the knees and bringing him down beside her, but
as he fell he lunged, closing a hand around her throat. ‘LEAVE HER!’ he
commanded.

‘SHE ... IS ... DEAD! Thy
precious Kristin is ... gone forever!’

‘
Kristin
?’

‘Thy ... lover!’

‘ ... I did not take a
wife, did not lie with a woman.’

‘Dost thou ... not recall
the black well of creation, rising from ... beneath the place of conception ...
an irresistible tide, as was thy ... seed to the female?’

He stared into the nefarious,
pitch pools of her eyes.

‘Dost thou ... not remember
thy love, brother, thy
... Kristin
?’

He delved into the deepest
recesses of his addled mind, seeking the smallest scrap of memory that might
correlate with its repulsive, strangled utterance. And he began to remember. He
remembered a dark stairway. A small dwelling in a large, modern city, in an age
unfamiliar to him. He remembered loss, grief, death. And he remembered blissful
sexual union from which he had meant to abstain.

He focused on her remains
as the Beast slavered caustic bile over his tight grip. Although she had just
lashed out at him he felt certain she was dead; an exploited, exhausted husk.

But she had been his lover.

‘
Kristin
?’ he whispered. ‘Yes ... I
remember her now.’

‘It will ... hurt thee,
then, to learn that she was ... with child?’

A tear welled in his eye
and trickled down through his wiry, brown beard until it reached the end of a
long strand of hair at the tip of his chin. The tear was for all mankind. It
was for the beautiful world his father had created. And it was for the woman,
Kristin, his forbidden love upon Earth, and for his unborn child.

As he cried the Beast
started to laugh — crazed, abandoned laughter that echoed through the
remains of the old city, across its modern counterpart, and for miles beyond;
across the whole world.

The tear sagged, and unable
to defy gravity any longer dropped into her mocking mouth. She swallowed
involuntarily, her eyes aflame, protruding with inexpectation, and fell silent.
Then she began to shriek, her naked, emaciated body thrashing, convulsing, and
keeled backwards onto the rubble, motionless.

He drew himself up and
stood over her: From somewhere inside her being a terrible sound whistled
loudly and then faded. Her lids opened slowly to reveal perfect eyes, the most
beautiful, sparkling green eyes he’d ever seen, their whites like virgin snow.
She smiled at him, sighed and the lids closed again as her wasted, white body
stiffened and died.