Kristin Read online

  Kristin opened her eyes slowly, unwrapped the towel and watched as the tissue of her body repaired itself at astonishing speed: A ridge of skin formed, then a dark scab. She brushed it away. ‘ ... It won’t let me die, Thom. I must live so that it may live,’ she said, and slid to the floor.

  In the evening, at around eight, the clop of hard-heeled shoes sounded on the terracotta tiles of the front path.

  Gritting his teeth, Thom looked down onto the dimly lit porch to see a man of the church, his cassock billowing wildly in the biting wind of a winter that refused to end. He didn’t press the bell, didn’t knock and appeared to be deep in meditation, focused on an old bible in his deformed, arthritic hands.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

  ‘ ... Nobody, it’s nobody.’ He left the room, crept

  downstairs and opened the door.

  ‘Mr ... Mr Sharman ... Thom.?’ the priest stuttered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Father ... Gabriel Meyrick.’ He took Thom’s hand in both of his and smiled warmly, looked deep into his eyes, his own watering, and then lifted his head to gaze fearfully up the dark staircase. ‘I’ve been sent to you by Mother Superior Mary Clayton. May I enter? May I enter your house, my ... Thom?’

  ‘She’s ... it’s up those stairs, across the landing, in the room straight ahead, the cause of everything. You understand, Father?’

  ‘Yes, Thom, I understand,’ he smiled, reassuringly.

  Thom barred his way. ‘It’s powerful. Very powerful indeed.’

  ‘I fully expected it to be.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt her, Father. This nightmare is not of her making.’

  ‘I’m here to help her, Thom, I’m here to help us all.’

  Meyrick’s entry into the oppressive room lifted Kristin from the sofa in a slick motion and she slithered along the wall at shoulder height until she reached the corner, panting like a dog.

  She glared hatefully at the man of the cloth, then at Thom. ‘So ... I cannot even trust my lover?’

  ‘He’s come to help you.’

  ‘She does not need that cunt’s help!’ her possessor exclaimed, gruffly.

  Meyrick removed his spectacles, wiped some condensation from the lenses and replaced them. ‘Tell me, young lady, what is your name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Kristin! ... the whore’s name is Kristin!’

  ‘I’m Father Meyrick. Kristin, may I ask, is there anybody else there?’

  ‘ Nobody.’

  ‘My understanding is that there has been something troubling you, Kristin, something you wished were not present? ’

  ‘Thine understanding is piss!’ A rivulet of filthy saliva trickled from her mouth. ‘The bitch is happy for me to be here.’

  ‘I would like to help you, Kristin ... please don’t be alarmed.’ He stepped forward, withdrawing the bible from beneath the folds of his robe and reached out to lay a hand on her head.

  ‘KEEP BACK ... KEEP AWAY FROM HER, FUCKER!’

  The white collar around his neck tightened and he stumbled, gagging for air.

  ‘Kristin, stop ... you’ll kill him!’ Thom cried, slipping some fingers beneath the band.

  No, Kristin, we shall not stop! rattled the voice inside her head.

  ‘He’s suffocating!’

  Suffocate him, fuckbitch, suffocate the pious cunt! Her face was unrecognizable, misshapen.

  Meyrick grasped his windpipe, fought to get oxygen back into his lungs. ‘Tell me who are you ... why you are here?’

  The windows shuddered violently. The air stank like a sewer and her nefarious eyes glistened with enmity as she threw back her head with a sickening snap. ‘FUCKER OF MEN AND CHILDREN AND ANIMALS!’

  Meyrick hauled himself up. ‘In the name, and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ ... ’

  ‘Cunting imposter!’

  ‘ ... may you be snatched away and driven from the church of God, and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God ... ’

  ‘FUCK HIM! FUCK HIM!’

  ‘ ... and redeemed by the precious blood of the Divine Lamb.’

  ‘She shits upon thee!’

  ‘ ... God the Father commands you, God the Son commands you, God the Holy Ghost commands you to leave the soul of this ... ’

  ‘I command thee to swallow another man’s seed and then die!’ it squealed, like a sow at the slaughterhouse, as Kristin’s emaciated body jerked helplessly in suspension.

  ‘I exorcize thee, o’ every clean spirit, satanic power, infernal invader, wicked legion ... ’

  ‘Yes!... yes! ... yes!’

  She hoisted him, hurled him back against the opposite wall, her jugular vein swollen and black. ‘ ... Will not leave!’

  ‘O Lord, defend us in the day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares ... ’

  ‘ ... Can not leave!’

  ‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Thom pleaded. ‘Stop it ... stop this!’

  ‘ ... of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray and do thou, o’ prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God ... ’

  ‘SHITSTUFF!’

  ‘ ... cast into hell Satan, and all the other evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking the ruin of souls, Amen.’

  ‘Prayers ... prayers ... prayers! Ora pro suus!’

  ‘Apage, Satanas, hostis humani generis! A cruce salus!’

  ‘Caro putridas es!’

  ‘You shall have no power on this Earth!’ Meyrick groaned, groping for his smashed glasses.

  ‘No power? Naive piece of shit ... I show thee my power!’ She glared at the television and it switched on. Immediately, the programme was interrupted by a white-faced presenter.

  ‘ ... Reports are coming in of an horrific incident at Lourdes, in France. The pictures you’re about to see were taken by a member of the public and may prove disturbing.’

  The camcorder images filled the television screen. They were shaky, amateurish. There were screams of anguish. People pushed. They ran. They prayed.

  Desperate to purge the effects of the siren thousands of pilgrims had descended upon the old town, abandoning the inundated bathing rooms and drinking wells of the grotto for the river Gave, whose icy waters they hoped would be equally curative. Some bathed fully clothed, others stripped to their underwear or swam naked.

  The first to feel a change in the river was an elderly local woman, Jeanne Beauvois, who at five o’clock that morning had senselessly bludgeoned her twin sister, Mabelle, to death as she slept, with a rusting iron rod from the back yard.

  To somebody in Beauvois’s state of mind it was barely noticeable at first — a rise in the freezing temperature of the water, vapour rising into the air, a feint, caustic tingle. The next thing she knew her melted swimsuit, skin and hair were floating away from her and she was quite blind. Around her, people thrashed, burning, dying.

  Quickly, she tried to make her peace with Mabelle’s spirit, and with God, before dissolving into the river of acid.

  ‘What have you done?’ Meyrick cried.

  ‘The holy waters are no more,’ it slavered. ‘I have replaced them with oil of vitriol!’

  ‘Oil of vitriol?’

  ‘Sulphuric acid, shithead!’

  Meyrick felt himself falling backwards into hell.

  Intolerable pain stabbed at Thom’s hands and feet, around his head, and inside Kristin’s body the Beast reeled, unable to account for its sudden weakness.

  Instinct told Meyrick to run, just as Mother Superior Mary Clayton had ran to him. It told him to abandon his responsibility as a servant of God, to leave the tormented young woman to her fate. But he could not. He stepped towards her and she showered him with spittle from her elevated position, compressed against the junction of the wall and the high ceiling.

  ‘I expel you, primal source of blasphemy ... !’

  ‘Va te faire foutre!’

  ‘Fear and flee, run, leave, unclean and accursed spirit ...!’

  ‘Mangez sa m
erde!’ Malodorous sputum dripped from her dangling, black locks onto his face, his lips, making him want to retch. He reached out, held her ankle, trying to pull her down but a hot, heavy force pushed against his chest, forcing him backwards. Thom grabbed at his cassock but the momentum continued, carrying him out onto the landing. Something seemed to kick him between his shoulder blades and he cried out as the stairs became a slow moving swirl of light and shade.

  The impact of the hard, bare timber of the tenth step with the brittle bone of the first thoracic vertebra in his spine rendered him instantly quadriplegic. It didn’t really matter, Meyrick knew he wouldn’t survive such a fall, not at his age. But he could still think; he could never have drawn out the abomination, it was too strong, too ingrained within her. It wasn’t just an agent of the devil. It was the devil!

  He continued to fall: How he would miss the love of his dear wife, the friendship of his children, the laughter of his grandchildren. He prayed that theirs would be a world still worth living in.

  The edge of the seventeenth step met the back of his skull with a crack. His mouth filled with blood and darkness engulfed him.

  Thom descended the stairs slowly, sat on the penultimate step and lifted Meyrick’s head. His eyes were wide open but bore no sign of life. He gazed up the narrow staircase and saw her apparition materialize on the landing, illuminated by the hard, cross-light from the bathroom. An icy cloud rose from the front door lock.

  ‘Now thou knowest, my love, what happened to thy precious, fucking crucifix!’ it spat, scornfully, mimicking her.

  ‘Kristin ... you’re stronger than this scum!’

  ‘So much shit ... there is no force in the universe stronger than me!’

  ‘But she’s kept you under control all her life, limited your mastery of her soul.’

  It made her bowels open and the foul smell spread quickly. ‘She has offered some resistance, but her life has been brief, she has only just been born. As her purpose becomes clear to her, her objective closer, so my dominion over her spirit grows. Soon she will cease to exist and I will live within the shell of her temporal body.’

  He started up the stairs towards her. ‘Never.’

  She vomited a thick substance onto the floor. ‘Thou shalt not oppose me! Thou canst not stand against the desire I have instilled within the souls and minds of each fucker on this Earth, the need to inflict as much pain and misery as possible, a hunger so pure, one that I shall nurture over centuries to come.’

  He stepped onto the reeking landing. ‘I’ll find a way.’

  ‘FUCKER!’

  It tried to corrupt his mind, to destroy his soul, strike him down.

  ‘You can’t get inside my head, hurt me, kill me. Kristin’s love for me, her human passion, is greater than your malice.’

  ‘Her love? The bitch slaughtered thy friend.’

  ‘No, you did, and God knows I’ll make you pay for it.’

  ‘God? God will not help thee. God has forsaken thee all. The righteous have none to guide them now, none but me, and I will slowly suck them dry of morality, eat them up and shit them back out.’

  ‘You will not win. Humanity will retain its faith, its integrity.’

  The sullen face leered at him from the shadows and ejected a glob of saliva into his face. Then she flew at him, her mouth gaping, and fused her lips to his. Her sour, caustic spittle met the taste buds of his tongue as hers washed it into his mouth, flicking in burning, erotic circles. Then she pulled away with a violent jerk. ‘Hold me, Thom!’ she pleaded. ‘Hold me tight! ... Insolent fuckbitch, slap her, how dare she defy me!’ She felt the mess on her legs, under her naked feet, and felt nauseous. ‘I’ll wash, I’m going to wash ... Thou art indelibly stained by my animus! ... Make love to me, Thom, make love to me now, my love ... Ficken sie, sie bedeutet! Fuck her in her arse! Fuck her good and hard, draw the harlot’s blood! Fuck her! Fuck her! Fuck her! ... LEAVE ... ME … ALONE!’

  A wolfen howl mutated into a scream and she passed from the conscious world.

  Twelve

  Reverend Terence Lowrie stepped up into the pulpit of St Vincent-in-the-Field Church, Battersea, and surveyed his meagre Sunday morning congregation solemnly, searching for those who were no longer welcome in the house of God.

  ‘Our situation this day is so very grave, I will begin the service with a short prayer,’ he said.

  But not everyone present bowed their heads.

  ‘Lord, please give us strength in these darkest of days, that we might resist the evil in our midst, seek it out and banish it from this world. Amen.

  ‘I would like to read now from the Book of Revelation, chapter fourteen, verses nine to ten.’

  ‘If anyone worships the Beast and

  his image, and receives his mark

  on his forehead or on his hand,

  he himself shall also drink of the

  wine of the wrath of God, which is

  poured out full strength into the

  cup of his indignation. He shall be

  tormented with fire and brimstone

  in the presence of the holy angels

  and in the presence of the lamb.’

  ‘All of you here, all of God’s children, should study this prophecy and be sure in your hearts that you have no association with ... ’

  A vociferous altercation started at the front of the gathering and he paused, uncharacteristically angry, scanning the assembly again.

  ‘ ... Be sure in your hearts that you have no association with the Beast that now walks among us. We shall now sing Won by Dying Love.’

  While sleeping careless on the

  Brink of an eternal woe,

  I felt the touch of Jesus’s love,

  And, oh, it charmed me so.

  I hear thy voice in tender love

  So sweetly calling me;

  Thy dying love has won my heart,

  I yield, O Lord, to thee.

  I wake with horror from the spell

  Of Satan’s dread control;

  My sins were sinking me to hell,

  Oh, Jesus, save my soul!

  I know my sins have pierced thy

  Heart oh, Jesus crucified;

  And now thy love is breaking

  Mine, I bow to him who died.

  How dark my prison house of sin,

  Entombed in misery;

  But Jesus’s love is shining in,

  Sweet rays of hope to me.

  Shall I with heaven’s offer blest

  Lie bound in sin’s domain?

  No, I will enter Jesus’s rest,

  And, crowned, a conquerer reign.

  ‘In these times we find ourselves caught up in a universal battle of apocalyptic proportions. Indeed, we face the dual spectre of extermination by the weapons created by man’s own hand, and eternal damnation from the evil forced upon us by the devil incarnate. We must pray to God ... ’

  ‘Fuck God!’ shouted a young woman, pitching a bottle at him that smashed against the pulpit.

  ‘Who has perpetrated this terrible sin in the house of God?’ he demanded to know. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘He’s deceived us all!’ exclaimed a man in a forward pew.

  The reverend narrowed his gaze. ‘Leave this house, and never return.’

  Rain began to fall in a noisy torrent onto the slate roof slates, drowning his voice, as William Tyndall, a lifelong member of the congregation, pulled himself up with his stick. ‘Jesus Christ is an impostor, he is not the true child of God!’ he proclaimed. ‘There is another!’

  Lowrie felt his blood begin to boil. ‘You will also leave this assembly, and may God forgive you for this blasphemy!’

  The old man shuffled toward the exit and then turned, brandishing his stick, ‘You will learn soon, all of you! Fuck you, Reverend Lowrie, fuck you!’

  Lowrie watched as the conduct of people he’d known for a decade degenerated rapidly. Ardent disagreements broke out between rival parties on opposite sides of the nave. Fists flew. When
his pleas for order were ignored he climbed down and, quite contrary to his nature, began pushing people towards the doors.

  After he’d expelled the last of them he stepped out into the downpour and locked the doors, his hands shaking badly. But as he turned to leave he was struck violently across the base of the skull and fell to the sodden ground. A hard boot waded in to his abdomen, another met his kidney and as the rain lashed his bloody face he heard the laughter of his assailants.

  The laughter continued. The pounding blows persisted.

  On the same morning another man of the cloth, Reverend Colin Gilbreath, left his cottage and began the quarter-mile walk to his parish church, St Anne’s, near Banbury,Oxfordshire.

  Sundays was always a quiet day in the village — the church was often the busiest place, and although he’d worked hard over the years to increase its number, the congregation seldom totalled more than forty.

  He passed Kendrick’s Farm, turned left at the crossroads and made his way up the steep incline of Windmill Hill. The bitterly cold, bright morning felt different to him: something about it wasn’t right, and inside, Gilbreath dreaded the migration of the sinister events from London.

  At the top of the hill he saw the first evidence that things were not as they should be. Bins had been overturned, their contents emptied onto the normally tidy road. Large objects glistened in the morning sun — animal carcasses. A pig’s head lay in the gutter, and in the centre of the road the remainder of its body trickled the creature’s blood downhill, where it ran around the soles of his shoes. The remains of mutilated chickens littered the thoroughfare. He glanced into the hedges on his right and balked — a decapitated horse! Foremost, he was a servant of God. Secondly, he was a lover of animals and he offered up a prayer of forgiveness for those guilty of the heinous acts of butchery.

  Gilbreath continued, quickening his pace, and turned right onto Newgate Street. He opened the gate to the public footpath through the fallow crop field, rounded the bend that afforded the first view of St Anne’s and halted, dropping the slim, leather case containing his sermon. The church had been defaced — daubed with black paint that all but obscured the ancient, Norman brickwork.