Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (16 page)

“No one is asking you to abandon your flock, Father.” Another voice, a younger man, arrogant and disrespectful. The Harbinger tensed, ready to intervene, but he knew his teacher would be displeased if he interrupted something unnecessarily, so he stayed where he was for now.

“There are few that have your...
experience
, Father,” said the gruff voice. “And there are no other options. We have fought to contain what is happening but we must find a resolution quickly if we are to avoid a scandal.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s close by, in the city.”

“And how long has this been going on?”

“A week. Maybe two.”

“And what of her doctors?”

“Several have been. They are not in conflict. There is no
organic
problem. It is a possession, Father.”

“No one has performed an exorcism i
n this country for decades. Why is this child so very special?”

There was silence for a moment. Voices dropped and even with his ear right at the door, the Harbinger could not make out what was said above the sound of the beating of his heart. An
exorcism
? He shuddered at the word.

There was movement heading for the door. The Harbinger backed away, retreated under the stairs, quickly blowing out the candle before the door swung open.

“You will perform the Rite tomorrow night at this hour, Father,” the gruff voice told him. The Harbinger looked at his teacher. He looked old now; defeated, and mute. The two men glanced back one more time, as if ensuring there were no further objections, before disappearing into the rain.

III

The next morning the Harbinger found Father Ireland in
a sombre mood, hunched over his breakfast, chewing slowly and thoughtfully. Unusually, he barely acknowledged the young man’s clattering with the teapot and found more interest in the crumbs that had accumulated in the grains on the old wooden table.

“Tea?” asked the Harbinger tentatively, offering the pot after spilling some on the floor.

The old man waved his arm away in dismissal and the Harbinger caught a glimpse of his red eyes and cheeks.

“No, t
hank you, lad,” he said quietly. That strange accent seemed all the more prominent when the Priest choked his words out so painfully. The Harbinger knew now that it was Russian. It wasn’t the country of the Priest’s birth but the country where he had been brought up, where he had spent the first twenty years of his life: an experience which had engrained itself in his voice.

“Father, I-” The Harbinger sat opposite his teacher bu
t dared not look at those bloodshot eyes again.

“I know, son. I know you heard. And I am not angered. Curiosity is not a sin.”

“Eavesdropping is, father.”

The priest managed a smile: “Ah, you stay so true to the virtues I have instilled in you that sometimes I forget how far you have come. But sins are forgiven and I am, fortunately for you, as merciful as He is.”

The Harbinger didn’t laugh, wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to, but cupped his mug of tea in two hands, feeling the heat radiate up his arms, through his wrists until his hands stung. He would never admit to his teacher that he liked the sensation.

“Why do they burden you, father, with this...
task
?”

“They want me to perform an exorcism. There is nothing to be gained from shying away from the terminology that is used to describe the ritual. The word has existed for as long as people have lived in fear of evil.”

“But why
you
, father?”

Father Ireland studied his pupil carefully. He was still too thin, gaunt round the cheekbones, but his skin had lost most of the unhealthy yellow tinge it had had when he had plucked him out of Officer Crab’s cell. But
the boy’s mind was sharp, sharper than he had anticipated, and he chose his words carefully.

“There are few who have performed the Rite. Of those that have, few have performed it for a second time. The human soul is not sufficiently insulated to endure such punishment. I suspect that those that have determined that the young girl in question requires an exorcism have come to me because I have some limited experience of these matters and they judge me as sufficiently weak minded to accede to their requirements.”

“You are not weak minded, father.”

“But I am. And although it fills me with all the dread of Hell, I have agreed.”

There was silence for a while. The Harbinger sat with pursed lips, his face bathed in the morning light, his hands tightening round the cup, anger burning hotter than the tea, while the Priest hung his head low as if in shame. Outside, the birds chirped their merry tune and there was the sound of the city awakening. The sort of morning on which it would be so easy to assume that evil didn’t exist in the world.

“They could find someone else,” the boy spat but the Priest just laughed and turned over another layer of soggy oats.

“No. They won’t find anyone else stupid enough to do their bidding, I’m afraid. Besides, something draws me to this case which I feel unable to ignore.”

The Harbinger looked at the priest earnestly, his eyes searching his face for understanding. But all he saw was a tired old man. He opened his mouth but Father Ireland was already out of his seat.

“I have said too much already, my young pupil. This is not your burden and I regret that you are even aware of my misfortune. There is a list of chores for you on the side. Be sure to be back for seven.”

“Father, wait! I-” he struggled to know what to say, words seemed so elusive, but something about the way the priest rose so uncertainly, so tentatively, said to him that he might tell him more. “I can help. I want to help.”

Father Ireland hesitated, rested his hand on the table, shuffled his weight from foot to foot.

“We are not alone in this life, father,” the boy said. “
You
taught me that.”

The priest sat down, put his hands flat on the table, purposefully. When he spoke, he spoke
so softly that the boy had to lean forward just to hear him.

“Not so very long ago, I was a servant of His Holiness. I thought of myself as one of God’s foot soldiers
, but in reality I was just a sheep like the rest of them. I was a member of a small office of the Vatican known as the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. Have you heard of them, boy?”

“No, father.”

“No. Few have. They are the people of God who verify the existence or otherwise of miracles. They are responsible, among other things, for deciding whether individuals should be beatified. In other words, whether they have performed at least one miracle. Those that have performed at least two miracles are considered for sainthood. But I was not important enough to be entrusted with such immense decisions. As I say, I was a foot soldier. The first on the scene in many cases; a vanguard for the real decision makers.

“Six years ago I was dispatched to a remote village in Siberia near Tyumen. I received orders to investigate rumours of a boy living there alleged to have been blessed – or cursed – with the gift of foresight. They say he had foreseen his father’s death. I do not think that the rumours would have been given any proper consideration at all were it not for the fact that the village was called Pokrovskoye, and it happened to be the place where Rasputin was supposedly born. But orders were orders, especially for sheep, so I wrapped myself up and spent many days trying to find the village.

“When I eventually got there I made enquiries of the boy but was told he had left with his mother to live in St Petersburg but I was not so sure. The people I spoke to clammed up at the sound of his name – Grigori – that was it. I went from welcome stranger to unwanted guest very quickly when they realised where I had come from. But I persisted and eventually a young school mistress told me the boy still lived with his mother on the outskirts of the village but whether she did this out of kindness to me or fear of the institution I represented to her I never knew.

“I found the boy. I found
Grigori. A scrawny mass of bones and pale skin: like you were when I picked you out of that prison cell. Nothing more than a ghost. He’d be about your age now, boy, if he was still alive. His mother was a portly woman, not like the rakes from the village who had dismissed me so easily. She spoke in a thick dialect difficult for me to understand. But I gleaned that the village had made them outcasts. They feared her son was possessed by some demon but evidence of that I saw none. He was small. And scared. But honest, I believe. He said that he had dreams of foreign places in which things were told to him by others about matters that had not yet taken place but which did later take place in accordance with the way he was told.”

“You didn’t believe he could really see the future, father, did you?”

“What I
believed
, was irrelevant. I was there to investigate. And that is what I did.”

“But what has this to do with the exorcism they want you to perform?”

“I’m coming to that. You see, I conversed with Grigori for several days, making notes of everything he said. I intended to test everything and I wanted to be sure I had it all correct. But throughout the whole process, Grigori repeatedly told me the same story, a story that I have never, and will never, forget. I cannot believe it, nor can I dismiss it. It is contrary to my teachings, and yet consistent with it in many ways. But it wasn’t
what
he was telling me that captivated my imagination so forcefully. It was the
way
he
was telling me. He hadn’t made it up. He
had,
without doubt, witnessed the events he described to me and it was his cogency that gripped me so tightly.”

“What did he say, father?” The Harbinger leaned
further forward, as if the closer he got the better he would understand. The priest satisfied an itch on the back of his neck before carrying on.

“He said that he had frequently dreamt that he was standing in a pool of water shielding his eyes from a bright light. The water was warm and went up to his waist but it was thick and difficult to move in. Around him, there were nine docks, each with a small rowing boat moored to it. The boats had names on them which he did not understand. He stood there for a while until, out of the water in front of him, rose a gigantic creature, taller than the pine trees on the shore, with the head of
a fish and the neck of a snake. He was not afraid. The creature spoke to him, in English, but he understood it despite not having ever studied the language. And the creature told him-”

Father Ireland looked around the room, uncomfortably, as if looking for something to relieve him of the burden of the story; he looked as though he regretted ever having mentioned it. The Harbinger leaned so closely that he nearly toppled from his chair.

“What?” he asked. “Told you what?”

The priest sighed heavily.

“The creature told him how the world ends.”

The Harbinger swallowed but his throat was dry and sticky. Everything seemed very still all of a sudden. The noise of the commuters outside finding their way to jobs died, even the rustle in the
trees outside the window seemed to have temporarily ceased. The air in the room felt sterile, arid. He felt anxious but desperate for the priest to go on.

“How does the world end, father?”

“The Russian boy said that many thousands of years ago God was not alone. There was another divine power, whom God called
Sin
.”

“There is only one God!” The Harbinger was incensed. “This is blasphemy, father!”

The priest held up his hand. “It is not what the Bible teaches us, my son. And it has been dismissed as heresy by those few who knew of the boy’s prediction. But that is no reason to ignore it and for many years I have looked through our sacred texts looking for some consistencies. Not to support what was said, but to try and understand it.”

“You surely don’t believe it, father?”

“No, I don’t. I know my God, and I know my God to be inimitable, which means there is only one. But I also know what I saw. I saw a young, uneducated boy from a backward and damaged part of our world tell me in lucid terms stage by stage how the world will end using words even his elders did not understand and... well, those things deserve respect. To some degree.”

The priest looked into his pupil’s troubled eyes, but saw only confusion.

“Go on,” said the Harbinger quietly.

“The boy
, Grigori, said that God became displeased with Sin, and regarded him as the negative of God. Where God was compassionate and merciful, Sin was callous and unforgiving, ruthless and vengeful. God knew that, if he created Adam and Eve, Sin would destroy them and so God imprisoned Sin for ten thousand years so the world could evolve without his interference. The boy told me that the ten thousand years would expire in his lifetime and when it did, Sin would swallow the world whole.”

“God would not abandon us, would he?”

The priest chuckled softly but felt the lump in his throat rising slowly.