Prayer (35 page)

A
s I went downstairs, I had the strongest sensation of there being something unwelcome in the house and immediately noted a trail of very wet footprints that led in from the front door along the parquet floor. Were they mine? I might have said they were except for two things. The footprints led into the sitting room whereas I was quite certain that on entering the house in response to Sara’s scream I had run straight upstairs. The other thing was much more disturbing—these were large, barefoot, Man Friday–style prints and I was wearing shoes.

For a moment, I just stared at them as if doubting the existence of the shoes that were still on my feet, but the very instant that it registered that these could hardly be my own footprints, I drew Sara’s gun from the waistband of my trousers and quietly worked the slide. Was this the man I had chased in Mr. Hindemith’s garden—perhaps Mr. Hindemith himself? The man who had scared the living crap out of me? If it was, I owed him a hard slap in the mouth with the Walther. But suppose the intruder was armed? Suppose he had found the Glock I’d dropped in the garden? Suppose I ended up getting shot with my own gun?

Then three things happened—they were practically simultaneous, but they seemed to occur in slow succession, as if time had decelerated to allow me longer to feel more afraid than I was already—these were accompanied by several missed heartbeats, a prickling on my skin, and a sort of vacuum around my head and shoulders that seemed to suck the sound right out of my ears.

First of all, the power went out, plunging the entire house into darkness; the next instant I knew without any doubt that there was a figure standing by the window in the sitting room; and the third was that Sara screamed again. This time I could guess the reason for her fright, and stiffening myself, I took a step back onto the stair and called up to her.

“Sara? Listen to me. It’s just a power outage caused by the storm. I’ll fix everything just as soon as I find another flashlight and the fuse box. So take it easy, honey, and close your eyes and everything will be cool. I promise.”

I wish that could have been true; but I knew this was now highly unlikely. The air was still as a stagnant pond, and much as I tried, I could hear no clue for the sight that was awaiting me now in the sitting room; at the same time I knew I had to confront whatever it was just to prove to myself that I was still in the real world where a mad evangelical pastor’s prayers did not come true.

As it happened, there was no other flashlight at hand; but being a priest, Father Dyer had left several beeswax candles about the place, and I quickly lit two with the matches in my pocket and very cautiously carried one into the sitting room, where I noiselessly closed the door behind me with my elbow so as not to alarm Sara any further. I hardly wanted her to come down the stairs and find me facing a barefoot intruder. I was a little less concerned about the figure still standing in the darkness and I’d have happily shot whoever or whatever it was just out of sheer annoyance.

“Who’s there?” I snarled. “Speak up, you bastard.”

The candle made little impression on the shadows, and the silent figure remained just a silhouette beside the window, his head jerking one way and then the other for no apparent reason. But this was accompanied by an odd sound that seemed to be coming from the figure itself: it was as if I were listening to someone—a man, perhaps—violently exerting himself to be free from some sort of bond or restraint.

“I’ve got a gun,” I said quietly. “And I won’t hesitate to use it. Now, slowly step into the light so I can see you.”

That might have worked on a real person, but after everything else that had occurred, I already had the impression that this was something different, for wouldn’t a real person have said something by now? And done what they were told? After all, the gun in my hand was clearly visible to whoever was in the shadows.

“I’m losing patience with you. Now who the fuck are you?”

I stepped forward and felt my own jaw drop at least an inch as the yellow light from the candle lit up the intruder’s twisted face. And seeing him, I felt as if some unseen hand had picked me up like an hourglass and turned me upside down, with all the sand inside me now reversing. Everything I had believed—which is to say, everything I had come to believe about belief—was wrong. I was beginning to see that now. You might say that it was the moment when my life changed forever. And the impact of this dreadful knowledge quite literally disarmed me because I put the gun down on the mantelpiece and then covered my mouth, possibly to stop myself from crying out or even puking with terror.

“Holy shit,” I breathed through my fingers. “Holy fucking shit. I don’t believe it. What the hell are you doing here?”

I had not seen the weird little man standing in front of me for years and yet I recognized him instantly. He twitched uncontrollably for several seconds, snarled a silent remark at some unseen devil, and then appeared to calm a little.

It was my mad uncle Bill, hardly changed from when I’d last seen him almost thirty years ago, wearing a pink nylon shirt, loose gray trousers, and thick, ill-fitting glasses that so badly needed cleaning they were almost opaque. He was thin, too, as undernourished looking as he’d always been, eaten up with raw, nervous energy and bughouse madness.

“Hello, Gil,” he said, in a strong Glasgow accent. “How are ye, son?”

“Bill.” I shook my head. “Jesus, it can’t be you. You’re five thousand miles away. You’re in Scotland.”

“Not anymore, son,” said Bill. “As a matter of fact, I’m dead. Just a few minutes ago, as it happens.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as if I were in a dream.

“No, no. Don’t be sorry, son. Wis nae your fault. I’ve had more enough of the fucking Dykebar Hospital. Had enough of myself, too, if ye ken what I mean. There’s so much of that shite you can stand; fucking psychiatrists and other mental cases who’re in the bin with you.” He started to twitch again for a moment and then addressed the invisible figure near him, just like always. “Stop it. Let me fuckin’ tell him my own way.”

“Bill,” I said. “I just wish there was something we could have done. I wanted to visit you. Really I did, but—” I sighed. “This can’t be happening.”

“No problem, boy. Really. I was never one tae hold a grudge. I wasn’t what you’d call a people person, know what I mean? Your father tried his best, but he could nae cope and so he did what he thought was best. Which was put me in the hospital. To be fair to him, he did try to get me out of there again, but it was no good; by that time I was what they call institutionalized. And that was me fucked, right enough. I don’t suppose anyone thought I’d last this fucking long. Least of all me. Matter of fact, that’s why I offed myself with some pills. I’d been saving them up for a while so that I could do it properly.” He shrugged. “That and a large injection of methadone, just to make sure. Can’t beat it, son.”

“Bill,” I said, closing my eyes. “This isn’t real. You can’t be in Texas. I hear what you say and some of that makes perfect sense but you can’t be in this house. Not now. I must be imagining all of this. Yes, that’s it. Something must have happened to me.”

I closed my eyes and opened them again, but Bill remained in front of me, as clear as the picture of the angels on the wall.

“Oh, I’m here all right. Wherever the fuck here is. That I don’t know and don’t ask me to explain it. Awright, fair enough, I’m not real in the way you or that nice wee lassie upstairs would understand, son. No, you could nae say I was real like she is. By the way, son, that’s a nice bit of cunt you’ve got there. Nice one. Wouldn’t mind stuffing that bird myself.”

I looked away. “No, no, no. This isn’t happening. It can’t be.”

“You’ve said that already. Repeating yourself is the first sign of madness. Take it from one who knows. You know what I am. And why I’m fucking here, son. It’s no good listening to your head with this one, Gil. That isn’t going to help. You have to listen with your heart. That wee still voice that we all have inside our heads. The one that gets drowned out by the all the shite that we learn in life about what’s real and what isn’t. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve heard that fucking voice yourself, Gil. You just stopped listening tae it for a while, that’s all.”

“This isn’t real.”

“Aye, it’s difficult. I’ll admit that. But think of it like this, if you will. I’ve returned to this world from the depths, not exactly alive but next best thing, to say just this: that what you hear is true, Gil. And you can speak and believe it all without being shamed, forever and ever, amen.”

“Speak and believe in what?” I demanded. “I don’t understand.”

Bill grew angry for a moment and, lifting his fist, he seemed to beat the air for several seconds before he could speak again.

“In God, Gil,” he said. “What else would I be here to talk about? Almighty fucking God. But there’s not much time. For either of us. And I just slipped away to give you this warning, see? That you’re fucking dead unless you can get yourself back in with him. His angel of death has got you marked out, Gil, and believe me you do not want that bastard to come and get you. You’ve met him already, I think, so you must know what I’m talking about. He’s more demon than angel if you know what I mean. Look, son, it’s just best you do as I say. Make your peace with the big man. Everyone gets a second fucking chance. But not everyone is wise enough to take it. Those other poor bastards who died—the ones who got you started down this road—they didn’t have a way of seeing the truth that was right in front of their noses. But you do. You’ve got me. Frankly, I think a lot depends on the messenger. On who gets the fucking job to come back and say hello. Despite all that happened, you and I were once close. That could be it. Aye, that’s right. I was always fond of you, Gil boy.”

Bill shook his head, which seemed to produce another fit of twitching and silent shouting before he added calmly: “Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s just that it takes a fucking loony to make any of this sound sensible. Know what I mean? Aye. Maybe that’s it, son. That it takes a fucking loony to make almighty God’s message sound sensible.” He nodded. “Aye, looking back on it—the whole religious thing—I think it probably always did. When you consider it objectively, all of the great religious leaders have been crazies like me, son.”

“This is crazy,” I said. “That’s true at least.”

“One last piece of advice, son. Don’t think about this too long. There are three stages in your re-integration into God’s plan for mankind, Gil. There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance. You’re still at the second stage. But there’s less time than you think to get to the third stage. By my reckoning, you’ve got rather less than twenty-four hours. And it might get very rough before it gets better. God’s a vindictive bastard, Gil. That’s one important truth I’ve learned already.”

“You’re not my uncle Bill. I must be mad.”

“Look, I’ll spell it out for you and then that’s me done and away from here. You’ll be on your own after that. God doesn’t want to destroy you, but he will if he has to.” Bill snapped his fingers; it sounded like a thick twig breaking. “Just like that. Only it won’t be as quick as that. It’ll be something horrible. The way God likes these things done. See, he wants your compliance, your obedience, Gil. He wants you back on his side, genuinely, heart and soul, but especially your soul. He wants you back in the fold like he did the lost sheep or the prodigal son. Because it is intolerable to God that unbelief should exist anywhere, but especially in one who has believed, like you. The seed that fell on the stony ground, so to speak. You have to take it to the Lord in
prayer
, as soon as possible, Gil.
Prayer
. Read that daft woman’s fucking book, if you doubt me. Esther Begleiter. She’ll tell you the same thing as I am.
Prayer
. That’s your only possible recourse. Sorry to sound all fucking preachy, son, but that’s how it’s got to be. No deviation is permitted. Not anymore. Not now that Pastor Van Der Velden has called this shit down on your head. God is not reasonable, Gil. God is God. He’s terrible, just like it says in the bloody Bible.”

Bill glanced out of the window. I closed my eyes and let out a long sigh.

“My time with you is almost up,” whispered Bill. “If you don’t do it out of obedience, Gil, then do it out of fear. And I mean fear because that’s how it will be. I would nae be in your shoes, son. Not when that fucking angel starts to plague you. Gil, you’ve no idea what Azrael is capable of, the terror he can inflict. He’s a demon, Gil. A real fucking demon. Shit, I’ve always known that. When people thought I was a loony, that’s what was disturbing me. God and all that comes with him.”

Bill still looked like a lunatic, but the earlier ferocity of his words had gone and his voice had grown almost dreamy. That might just as easily have been me, however. And when I opened my eyes again, he had disappeared and I stood there facing a great emptiness as if there were some sort of space behind the air in front of the window where he had been standing. I reached out and put my hand into the dead silence in front of me as if to make sure that he was no longer there.

“Holy shit,” I breathed. “What’s happening to me?” I felt such a rush of goose bumps across my whole body that I had to grab the blanket Sara had dropped onto the floor when I had first made love to her and wrap it around my shoulders to stop me from shivering. Was it the kava that made my heart feel enlarged? Or my breath so short?

“Holy shit.”

I don’t know how long I stood there. After what I’d seen—or what I thought I’d seen—I wasn’t sure that time had any real meaning, but when I glanced at my wristwatch, I saw that I couldn’t have been there longer than a minute or two. I was still holding the candle in my hand as if it were a heretic’s taper. Sara’s gun was on the mantelpiece where I had placed it. Everything except my loudly beating heart was now quiet. It was the quiet that made everything now seem more horrific to me. Even the rain had stopped.

Surely I had imagined it all. Like Bill, I had become the victim of my own crazed mind. Wasn’t the clue to that the very fact that I was on leave to see the FBI psychiatrist? I was nuts. This was beyond OCD and playing solitaire with sugar packets. This made me almost certifiable, within the meaning of the law. I was the one—not Gaynor Allitt—who needed to obtain a magistrate’s order for emergency mental health protection; for all I knew, it wasn’t just me who was at risk of harming myself in some indefinable way, it was the poor beautiful woman upstairs. Assuming Sara really was upstairs and was not, like Bill, a figment of my own imagination. Yes. Hadn’t there been a certain wish fulfillment about the way she had arrived and jumped into bed with me? And a dreamlike quality about the perfection of our lovemaking?