Kristin (4 page)

‘The mother superior is now
in recovery, she has no living relatives but St Magdalene’s Convent and the
police have been ... ’

The receiver fell from
Thom’s hand. He walked down the stairs and out the front door, leaving it
swinging.

Thom lay awake for most
of the night, watching her chest gently rise and fall. She had intoxicated him,
and despite everything he knew if he were to wake in the morning and find her
gone it would gradually eat away at him like a cancer, until nothing was left.
He couldn’t live without her now. It would be the end for him.

Seven

At ten-fifteen in the morning, whilst Kristin
bathed, the doorbell chimed. He slid the bolt, turned the knob and tugged the
door towards him. Mother Superior Mary Clayton stood on the step. A minute
elapsed. Neither spoke.

He turned and started back up, stopping half
way, where the steep, uncarpeted stairs turned sharply to the left, to check if
she was following, to make sure she was really there.

They sat at the dining
table facing one another, as the sun streamed into the room in elongated, dusty
shafts.

‘I don’t understand what
happened, Mr Sharman,’ she said, puncturing the silence.

‘Thom, please.’

‘I’m seventy-two, Thom, but
I’m in good health and I have no history of heart trouble and ... ’ Her head
dropped forwards and she clasped her hands tightly together. ‘
I died
.
I was pronounced
clinically dead
. They tell me I’m something of an enigma.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Death
had
taken me. But now I’ve seen what
happens after one departs this life I’m not afraid of it anymore, in fact I
welcome it. Everything seemed so clear.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘I walked out of the
darkness into a beautiful flower garden, with cherry trees in full blossom and
small stone bridges crossing turquoise streams.’

He smiled.

‘I was no longer wearing my
habit and I was younger — much younger. I passed under the shade of a
tree, looked up and saw my mother, my father and two sisters sitting on the
daisy-covered grass. They were all much younger than they’d been when they died
too. We embraced, we cried. But this wasn’t imaginary, it was
real
, it was
happening
, I
could feel the warmth of their bodies, the sun on my skin, the gentle breeze in
my hair.

‘But just as I’d almost
accepted this new existence ...
I saw your face
.

‘My father, especially,
begged me to stay but I knew that my work in my earthly body wasn’t complete and
that I had to return, and so I told him that although I loved him dearly and
longed to join him he’d have to wait a little longer. And then I woke up
— in that metal box.’

She stalled, dabbing her
eyes with a tissue. ‘I know that just before I collapsed, outside your home, I
was aware of something unimaginably evil close by and ... ’ The blood left her
face. ‘ ...
I
am aware of it now
.’

A door opened. Kristin
walked into the room and glared at the mother superior. She shivered wildly and
her face discoloured, deforming with repulsion.

The nun reeled, and
stumbled to the floor, paralyzed. She grasped the small cross that dangled from
a thin silver chain around her neck, squeezing it until her knuckles turned
white and pushed herself backwards through the open door, flooding the carpet
with urine. ‘My dear God!’ she gasped, tripping to the stairs. ‘
It
’
s inside her ...
inside
her
!’

At their foot she turned to
face him. ‘This
monstrosity
,
this
... thing
you’re sharing your life with,’ she whispered, clutching his shoulder. ‘Its
soul is damned beyond all redemption. I’ve seen the evil of man at work first
hand, but never have I felt anything so vile, so sinister as the presence
inside that room. I fear for you, for me, for all of us, but now at least I
understand why I had to return — to pray for its victims. It will create
hell on Earth — nothing can prevent that now. The church has dreaded its
coming for time immemorium and now it’s upon us ... and we only have ourselves
to blame.’

As fast as her habit would
allow she rushed from the building. ‘Promise you won’t ever go back in there?
Leave here at once! Never return!’

Eight

A second sleepless night plagued him. Why had
the mother superior been so terrified? Why had she run? What had the she meant,
that Kristin’s soul
was beyond redemption? Kristin was irascible, enigmatic, plain
weird, maybe, but evil? That was absurd. He was too good a judge of character
to have let someone who was essentially bad in to his life. He placed trust in
the intrinsic goodness of the human spirit. He trusted Kristin. He loved
Kristin; he loved Kristin like he would never love another woman.

The crucifix, the
claw-marks, the fingernail, the nun — they'd made his flesh creep, toyed
with his sanity, but he'd satisfied himself they were anomalous aberrations,
incomprehensible occurrences that had no place in the natural world, incidents
that could never be attributed to the will or actions
 
of any human being. He couldn’t explain them because they
were inexplicable, and so he’d simply accepted them:
Maybe they were all just part of one of his
nightmares
?
Maybe he
’
d
never met anybody called Kristin
?
Maybe there was no threat of nuclear war
?
Maybe he was
steadily descending into a state of madness from which he would never recover
?

The barrage of sirens tore
him from his contemplation. He stumbled into the lounge, raised the blind and
wiped condensation from the window. A pall
 
of dense, black smoke was rising into the steely, early
morning sky.

‘ ... The church burns,’
breathed a repelling voice.

He knew she hadn’t followed
him to the window. From the bedroom he heard her groan, and he turned … she was
standing behind him. He stared at her half-lit face.

‘The worshipers are nothing
but deluded fools,’ she rasped, her black eyes glinting malignantly.

He shuddered as the hideous
voice left her lips.

‘Will prayer prevent the
armageddon thou hast spoken of? It will not. Devotion to this
son
of God is
misplaced. There will be change soon, great change.’

She moved forwards and
looked out at the church. ‘
This burning was meant to be
.’

He went to the back of the
room and stood silently in the enveloping darkness: Kristin was no longer
anyone, or anything he recognized. She’d become much more than the cold-blooded
woman who chilled him to the bone, the enigmatic stranger to him. Now she
represented something from another dimension, a terrible, alternative reality.

‘Thou shalt all receive
what thee deserve,’ the voice croaked, as she swayed from side to side. ‘Thou
shalt all receive what thee deserve ... thou shalt all receive ... ’

He backed against the wall,
‘ ... I found marks ... on the bedroom door.’

She caught her breath.

‘ ... And a fingernail.’

Her head turned slightly,
her eyes narrowing to suspicious slits. ‘So now she stands accused of
scratching at the door like an animal?’

‘ ... I haven’t lost a
nail.’

‘Neither has this bitch!’
it yowled, making her splay her fingers.

‘ ... Where did it come
from ... ?’

‘I DON’T KNOW!’ Kristin
shrieked, regaining control, her bones cracking. ‘ ...
Fucking Shannon
’
s
?’

‘ ... Shannon didn’t use
nail varnish.’

‘Shannon! Shannon! Fuck
Shannon, I tire of that name!’ it rattled, vitriolicly. ‘What about me ... her
... what about this whore, Kristin?’

He picked up a heavy book
and hurled it at her, catching her in the chest and she sprang forwards, her
teeth coruscating in the dawning light.

‘PAIN! FUCK YOU ... LEAVE
HER ALONE!’ She slumped into the sofa and dug her nails into a cushion.

‘ ... I’m going ... to see
if there’s anything I can do.’ He dressed quickly, threw on a coat, and left
her.

St Mary’s Catholic Church was built in 1573.
Thom’s parents had married there on a bright, spring morning thirty-six years
earlier. Both Thom and
 
his
brother, Nicholas, had been christened at its font and Nick’s funeral service,
attended by more than a hundred, had been conducted at its altar. Now it was
gone.

Within half an hour the
fire crews had brought the blaze under control. When the smoke and steam
cleared he saw that the great walls of flint and mortar were largely intact.
But the beautiful stained glass windows were no more, blown out by the intense
heat that had built up inside the church,
  
and through the chasmal holes the devastation inside
was evident.

‘Two people,’ an old man
said.

Thom stared at him.

‘Two people died in there.
The vicar, and his daughter. Just a little girl. I saw it go up. No explosion,
just burst into flames.’

An urgent message came
through on the two-way radio and the chief firefighter bellowed instructions to
his men.

‘What’s going on?’ Thom
asked, approaching him.

‘St Magdalene’s Convent!
The roof has fallen in ... suspected fatalities!’ He pushed Thom aside and
jumped up into the cab. The wail of sirens restarted and most of the engines
sped away.

He
’
d
never heard a
sound like it before ... so highly pitched ... almost above his range of
hearing
... quickly, it developed into a piercing whistle that filled the
air, penetrated the ground, the trees, the buildings, permeating and poisoning
everything around him. Screams ripped through the inert air. The monotone
overcame him, deafening, unbearable. He covered his ears, fighting to prevent
the evil, latent commands concealed within it from entering his mind. The sound
forced him to the ground and he buried his face in the cold earth.

When he regained
consciousness, several minutes later, the world around him was not the same.

His hearing was reduced to the sound of his
own breathing, the muted thump of his footsteps. Thom tried to orientate
himself; he was no longer by the church. Ahead, a middle-aged woman sat on the
kerb, her bruised legs in the road. When he got closer, he saw that her head
was bald, burned black, as if it had been overloaded with something it couldn’t
absorb. He touched her on the shoulder and her head crumbled to dust. He
retched violently.

Thom passed into the shadow
of a railway bridge and when he came out into the light he saw two children in
school uniform copulating hard against a wall. She, red-faced, frightened, in
pain. He, embarrassed, confused, unable to stop — controlled by an unseen
force.

At last he recognized one
of the roads — The Rise, a short, excessively steep hill lined with
enormous evergreens whose leafy branches scattered the sunlight in dappled
patterns across the frosty ground. A heavily pregnant woman headed towards him
and as they passed she stopped, smiling warmly, as if he were an old friend.

‘Thank you ... for all that
you’ll do,’ she whispered, in a soft, Irish brogue. ‘We’re going home now, my
baby and me.’

He watched her leave.

Another figure, a sharply
dressed young man, appeared at the foot of the hill. Gasping for air he doubled
over, hands on knees. Then he straightened, saw the woman and ran at her. ‘YOU
FUCKING BITCH!’

Soon he was upon her,
battering her around the head with his case. The sharp, steel corners caught
her again and again, gashing open her scalp, showering the pavement with her
blood. ‘FUCK YOU! FUCK THAT THING INSIDE YOU!’ He drew back his leg, aiming a
kick at her unborn child, but Thom rushed forward, lifted him and threw him
onto an iron railing.

The blunt, black spike
erupted from the man’s throat, punching his larynx into the open air, and his blood
spurted into Thom’s face, doused the prostrate woman. The young man jiggled helplessly,
his distended eyes staring down at Thom as his body weight caused the wound to
stretch and open into a gushing cavity that deluged his grey suit with blood.
He grabbed at his throat, gargling, choking, lashing out with his feet. And
then he was still. A house door opened. They saw the body, the blood. Thom ran.

A quarter of a mile away he found a small
patch of wasteland between two Victorian houses, thrust his head over some
rusting, chain-link fencing and emptied the remaining contents of his stomach
into the thicket. Then he fell onto his haunches and wept.

He had killed a man with his bare
hands.

He hadn
’
t
meant to kill him
,
just stop him
...
the siren had made him do it
,
forced him to go too far. But he was a murderer;
he would always be a murderer
,
for as long as he lived. And yet he felt no
remorse
,
no pity
.

The
man’s frenzied assault seemed
symptomatic of what appeared to be happening everywhere since the siren. Would
he otherwise have had the volition, the capability to carry out such a
senseless, brutal act? Thom visualised the woman, lying in a pool of her own
blood — badly wounded, childless, but still alive, still saveable. What
if nobody had helped her?
He had to go back
. But when he tried to get up the energy drained
from his legs and he fell back against the fencing, slipping into
unconsciousness once more.

Two hours later, Thom opened the door to his
home and slammed it hard behind him. A scrap of pink paper had been stuck to
the banister. He pulled it free: “
tom in parc same playse cristen
” read the
barely literate scrawl.

He climbed Maze Hill and entered Greenwich
Park. When he reached the observatory he saw her sprawled upon the grass, staring
at the London skyline. The day was bright and the azure sky was decorated with
white cumulus clouds. She didn’t look up, didn’t speak, didn’t notice him. He
sat down beside her on the hilltop and darkness engulfed him like the lid being
closed on his coffin. She felt his fear.
‘Something’s altered,’ he said.

‘What has altered?’

‘Everything. You must feel
it?’

‘All I can feel is my love
for you.’ She leaned forwards and kissed him.

‘There are things that have
happened since we met that cannot be explained.’

‘What things?’

‘
What things
? Are you stupid ... have you
forgotten yesterday?’

She glared at him, wheezing
abnormally.

‘I saw a five hundred year
old church burn this morning. It just combusted. And the roof of the convent,
the mother superior’s convent, collapsed. Old buildings, well made structures,
don’t do that. People are dying. A little girl lost her life in that church today.’

‘Do you think I’m capable
of killing somebody by looking at them? That I’m able to destroy buildings
through pure willpower? What, precisely, do you think I am, Thom?’

‘After this morning I’m not
sure what you are.’

She began to glisten with
tiny pearls of unnatural, milky perspiration as the wind blew, bringing a
chorus of screams from all corners of the park.

‘Did you here the sound?’

‘What sound?’ she sneered.

‘A piercing sound ... like
a siren?’

She didn’t reply.

‘I saw a man attack a woman
today, a pregnant woman. He wanted to kill her ...
he tried to kick her to death
, and so I
... ’

She locked her pitch eyes
onto his, ‘Yes Thom, tell me, what
did
you do?’

‘I stopped him ... I killed
him.’

‘
Is that all
?’ she laughed, tossing her
head back. Then she turned on him, ‘So you think I made the sound? … What do
you think I did, put my lips together and whistled? … Do you think I can get
into people’s minds, turn them bad? … One day you’ll make me really angry, then
you’ll see what I can do!’

An explosion, somewhere in
the city rocked the ground beneath them.

‘ ... It was as as if
something had invaded their minds, made them do terrible things.
You must have
heard it
?’

Sinew, tendon, stretched
and snapped inside her slight frame, ‘HEAR THE SOUND?’ she shrieked, standing.
‘I AM THE SOUND!’ She stood and took several paces forward, facing down the
hill.

The gently undulating
grassed slopes of the park combusted in a fiery wave that swept down their
length and he watched in horror as scores of men, women and children, dazed
from the siren, were helplessly caught in the inferno and incinerated,
crumbling into the smoking ashes one after another, like a defeated army.

As she presided over the
carnage she’d wrought something else took her attention and she glanced
upwards. High in the crystal sky, thousands of feet up, an airliner sparkled in
the winter sun like a tiny, translucent fly.

He heard a crackling noise
like electricity discharging. Microseconds later the plane exploded in an
immense fireball and he saw her salivating with satisfaction, her arms held
aloft in triumph.