C
ONSCIOUSNESS GATHERED ITSELF
, tightened, struggled up through the darkness.
“Talulla?” a voice said. “There you are. Back with us.”
English spoken by an Italian.
I opened my eyes. I was sitting in a leather chair with restraints around my wrists and ankles. A collar gripped my neck and a strap around my forehead kept me looking where they wanted me to look: straight at them. The chair’s absolute immobility said it was bolted to the floor. I felt sicker than I’d ever felt before—even when carrying the twins, mid-hunger. I was wet with sweat. My skin ached. Giant nausea. And eclipsing all physical phenomena the grinning face of justice: It’s your fault. It’s all your fault. You lost your son. You got him back. You should have been content. You should have preserved what you had. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing is ever enough for you. You
are
nothing. Nothing but dirty, insatiable appetite. For whatever it is you haven’t got. Whether you need it or not.
Facing me, in a small room with bare concrete walls, were three men. The first, nearest me, wearing the lightweight combat gear of the
Militi Christi
, was in his fifties, tall, heavy-limbed, but with a soft, rounded middle and a big, plump, smiling, boyish face. Side-parted glossy brown hair and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked wrong in the outfit the way Idi Amin looked wrong in army fatigues.
“Talulla Demetriou,” he said. “My name is Cardinal Salvatore di Campanetti. I’m delighted to meet you. This is my friend and colleague Daniel Bryce, of whom you may have heard.”
“How are you feeling?” This—native English, resonant, posh—came from the second guy, of whom I had
not
heard, standing a few feet to the Cardinal’s left, wearing an ivory linen suit, sky blue cotton shirt and red brogues that had seen better days. The whole ensemble bore the crumples of a long-haul flight. Late thirties, slight build, bearded, with longish dark
hair and an alert, intelligent green-eyed face. It would be unpleasant to see that alert face shut with passion if he was lying on top of you, fucking you.
“What do you want?” I said. I was very tired. My mouth was dry. Whatever drug they’d shot me with still lolled in my bloodstream. I was shivering. It was an effort to stop my teeth from chattering. That said, a curious little sixth sense told me there was a large window directly behind me—which surprised me—and that we were several floors up—which didn’t. No sixth sense needed to clock the third guy: none other than the angelic androgyne I’d glanced down at mid-flight from the roof. He was the only one visibly armed: an automatic assault rifle the make of which I couldn’t immediately identify. Next to him was a low steel bench with an open laptop on it. Packard Bell logo screensaver.
What do you want?
I don’t know why I asked. You wake up drugged and strapped to a chair, you already know what the people observing you want—or at least what their want is going to involve, namely your suffering. Disgust was a tidal wave waiting to break over me. The face of the youngster at the door was dewy. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. If you were this passionate blank-canvas type with a talent—violin, physics, ping-pong—you became a virtuoso or a Nobel winner or an Olympic champion. If you were this passionate blank-canvas type without a talent, you found stamp collecting or Middle Earth or totalitarian religion. I felt vaguely sorry for him, the misdirectedness of him, the huge, pointless, wrong decision he’d made.
“What do we want?” Salvatore said, smiling—not evilly or madly, but with what looked like tired, earned delight. “We want you to work for us. We want you to become the most famous monster in history. Not for your sake, but for the glory of God.”
“Okay,” I said. My head was a grapefruit balancing on a pipe-cleaner. “When do I start?”
“Immediately,” the Cardinal said. “If you’re ready. But you’re not ready, because you don’t know what the job involves.”
The twins, the twins, the twins. Please let them be safe. Please. Please.
You’re done with God, but the reflex to plead to something endures. To
nothingness, if that’s all there is. But the big face of justice stared. You’ve lost your right to plead. Even to nothingness.
“It’s an extraordinary opportunity,” Bryce said. “You really will be making history. We all will.”
Where are my children? Where am I? Are the others dead?
No point in asking. They control the information. They give you what suits them. You’re living in a manufactured reality. The weight of everything wrong was a crushing atmosphere. I couldn’t even panic. I knew if I looked back I’d see all the choices I’d made since the Curse laid out behind me like a battlefield of butchered dead. And only death to show for it.
“Could I have some water?” I said.
The Cardinal, still smiling the well-behaved schoolboy smile, nodded and turned. “Lorenzo? Some water, please.”
Lorenzo was the androgyne, who hadn’t merited an introduction. He obeyed reflexively. When he opened the door I glimpsed a striplighted corridor, polished vinyl floor, another door opposite, closed. Then for a moment I had to shut my eyes and concentrate on not throwing up.
“The nausea will pass soon,” Salvatore said. “We pumped your stomach in any case, so you won’t have anything to throw up.”
How long have I been here? Why? WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN?
Lorenzo returned with a bottle of Evian and a straw. Salvatore brought it within reach of my mouth. He smelled of the fatigues’ clean canvas and a boozy cologne.
Wulf
remnants caught chilli olive oil on his fingers, garlic and parsley on his breath. We pumped your stomach. An interesting haul that must have been. I had an image of the Cardinal, latex-gloved, poking through partially digested human remains, dispassionately.
“Here,” he said. “Allow me.”
It was wearying on top of the weariness to have to recognise that water, when you’re thirsty, remains good. The hopeless little universe of your body forced to report: That’s good. That’s so
good.
Meanwhile resisting the urge to simply ask if my children were dead was like staying underwater even though you were out of breath.
“The symptoms you’re feeling are just the after-effects of the tranquilizer,” the Cardinal said, when I’d drunk the entire bottle. “I’m afraid we gave you a heavier dose than was perhaps necessary.”
Bryce stepped nearer. His feelings were wildly mixed: fascination, desire, curiosity, ambition. No contempt. As with all straight men the first question he asked himself about a woman was whether or not, given the chance, he’d fuck her. Yes, he would, his eyes said—until the memory of what I was got in the way. They’d filmed me changing back, I could tell. The footage was still running in his brain.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.” The restraints were an irksome friction at my ankles and wrists. The skin is the largest bodily organ, Mr. Cooper had delighted in telling us in high school, as if he’d invented skin himself. I was very aware of my skin right now. My largest bodily organ, wealthy with sickness, loaded with pain.
“What we’re offering you,” the Cardinal said, “is the chance to live out the rest of your days naturally, with your children, in peace—or as much peace as your kind can expect.”
“Do you have my children?”
I hadn’t made the decision to say this. I just found I’d said it. And now it was too late to care whether it was smart or not.
The Cardinal hesitated for a moment—then decided I’d know if he was lying. He gave a little nod and tightened the smile: no secrets between us.
“We have Zoë, not Lorcan. I’m going to give you the facts because they don’t, in my opinion, hurt our case.”
Bryce, I intuited, didn’t agree. An almost disguised flicker in the green roundel eyes.
“The facts are these: Patricia Malloy and Fergus Gough are dead. We have their bodies at a separate facility if you’d like to see them. Robert Walker, Madeline Cole and Lucy Freyer escaped, Mr. Walker with your son. It really doesn’t make any difference. It wasn’t them we were interested in. None of them has your status. I wonder if you’re aware of the extent to which your myth has grown?”
“I want to see my daughter.”
“Yes, I know. That’s not a problem. But be patient, please. I assure you she’s not in any discomfort. The sisters are taking good care of her. If you need a rationale, let me say that her well-being only helps our interest.”
It was hard, in my state, to reach out for a sense of my daughter. My body was full of physical events like planets bumping into each other. So little clear space …
ZOË? ANGEL? IT’S MOMMY.
Nothing. If she was here she was too many rooms away. I had an image of her in a small cage, dirty, bloodied, straw on the floor, a coven of nuns surrounding her, gawping.
Shut it out.
Mr. Walker with your son.
Relief surged, filled me like the goodness of the water when I drank it. Unless it was a lie. Another image of Walker and Madeline together on a couch, his arm around her, his nose in her hair. Lorcan on his belly on the floor, looking through the
Illustrated Book of Aesop’s Fables.
The big face of justice again, the delighted sneer: Serves you right. This is what you get when you congratulate yourself on being bigger than love.
Bryce stepped closer, alongside the Cardinal. “What we’re talking about is a piece of television like no one’s ever seen,” he said. “Scientifically endorsed, up-close and personal. An inspirational documentary, a fucking landmark.”
“A
devotional
landmark,” the Cardinal said, quietly. “The power of Christ at work in the most extreme and undeniable way. The conversion of a monster. And her child. We’re talking about creating something that will change the religious landscape forever.”
I
almost
said: You’re not serious. But I’d been in the world long enough. I knew they were serious. The seriousness of madmen is one of the most exhausting realities. Bryce’s eyes had livened. I wondered if he was on coke. He looked the type. As Salvatore looked the type not to care if the instruments of his purpose were on coke. Or under-age girls. Or murder. Or anything else. There was only the purpose.
“Every month,” the Cardinal said, “you change. You become a monster. Your hunger for killing and eating a human being is unbearable, a compulsion against which no power on earth can be brought to bear.”
Theatrical pause. Me filling in the gaps.
“No power on
earth
,” Bryce said, and actually gave me a wink. Partly in delight at the prospect of “televisual history,” partly in acknowledgement of the Cardinal’s religious lunacy. He, Bryce, had purposes of his own. Unrivalled directorial credit and a slice of the advertising revenue. I wondered if he had something on Salvatore that had got him this gig.
“You will pray,” the Cardinal said, taking a few paces away towards
flushed Lorenzo. “For the strength to overcome the hunger. I will be with you. You will receive the Sacrament. You will have access to a human victim. And you will not touch him. Or her, rather. Sister Carmelina is our first volunteer.”
They were still serious. They were still perfectly serious. Through the roiling sickness my strategist flailed for ways of making this work. Assume Zoë’s somewhere in the building. Assume they’re not lying about the others. Assume—
“I know what you’re thinking,” Salvatore said, turning on his heel and facing me. “You’re thinking there is no such thing as the power of Christ. No such person. No such mystery. No such God.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” I said. “But since you mention it, yes. The major flaw in this show is that if you put Sister Carmelina or anyone else in with me on the Curse, I’ll kill them. And eat them. You can feed me all the bodies of Christ you like. It won’t make any difference.”
A not entirely comfortable pause. The Cardinal moving his lips around a little, looking past me out the window. Bryce was smiling at me. His lips were very red in his beard. With a haircut he could have played D.H. Lawrence. Lorenzo—the other Lorenzo—was at some edge of himself, as if on the verge of transfiguration. At the thought of the power of Christ, presumably.
“I’ll leave Bryce to go over the details,” Salvatore said, turning away again and heading to the door, which Lorenzo opened for him. “Your daughter,” he said, raising his hand. “I know. Very shortly. When you have your sea legs.”
“Now,” I said.
“Very shortly,” he said. Then something quietly to Lorenzo. Then he was gone.
I looked at Bryce.
“You won’t touch Sister Carmelina,” he said. “You won’t need to. You’ll be full.”
He took a softpack of Chesterfields from his pants pocket and lit up with a brass Zippo. Exhaled with deep gratitude, looked down at me. “You with me? You’ll be full because you’ll already have eaten. As much as you like.”
The scam penny dropped. The power of Christ—with an insurance policy. What had I been expecting?
“More volunteers?” I said.
“We have an arrangement,” Bryce said. “Don’t worry. Nobody who’ll be missed.” A pause. “You don’t need me to tell you you don’t have a choice.”
“Let my daughter go and I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Not going to happen. Salvatore’s wedded to the monster Madonna-and-child thing. It’s his
idée fixe.
”
“Not that there’s any point in asking,” I said, “but how exactly does all this square with me living happily ever after?”
He nodded. In terms of our
if
s and
then
s at least, we shared a logical economy. “Lorenzo?” he said, turning to the boy. “Mr. Avery is in the room next to mine. Could you go and ask him to meet me at the car in thirty minutes?”
Very slight discrepancy between the immediacy of the boy’s obedience to Salvatore and this, to Bryce. But with a little nod of the delicate head, off he went.
Bryce looked at me. “No need for bullshit, obviously,” he said. “The Cardinal’s line is that you do your thing—convert, cured by faith in God’s grace—and depart incognito. Plastic surgery, new ID, the whole thing.”
I raised my eyebrows: How stupid does he think I am?