Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (17 page)

“No. God will not abandon us. And Sin is not real.”

“But you said,
these things deserve respect
.”

“And they do. There are those that do not believe in God at all, my son. There are those who believe in multiple Gods. They are wrong, but their ideas deserve respect nonetheless.”

“Did the boy say that Sin will destroy us?”

“Yes, but not without some help, it would seem.”

“What do you mean?”

“The boy said that the coming of Sin would begin with the birth of two young girls. Twins. He gave me their names, the date upon which they would be born
and the place where they would grow up. He told me that they would be responsible for allowing Sin to enter the world to destroy it by the time they were nine years old.”

“But such young children could never... I mean...”

“There is another, the boy mentioned. A man. A man with an incurable lust for power who would use the girls to bring Sin into the world. A man who would willingly see us all burn so that he could sit on the right hand side of the new God of a dead world.”

“What did the boy say this man’s name was, father?”

“He didn’t. He simply said the man would be referred to as
the Harbinger
.”

IV

“But I still don’t understand what this has to do with the Russian boy,” said the Harbinger, half walking and half running over the cobbles, struggling to keep up with Father Ireland’s long strides. The weather had turned and waterfalls of rain cascaded off rooftops all around them as the priest lead his pupil through Whitechapel to a four storey end terrace surrounded by high iron railings.

“The boy said that the coming of Sin would be preceded by the return of an ancient demon named Belial,” the priest called back, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the rain pelting off the street. “The woman in this house is said to be possessed by the very same demon and I strongly suspect those that have instructed me are well aware that the name of Belial would make this case irresistible to me.”

“But I thought you said you didn’t believe...”

The Harbinger followed the priest through the doors to the terrace and into a large hallway. The whole place felt like the interior to one of the spooky castles the Harbinger had read about in the gothic novels the priest had taught him to enjoy so much: flagstone flooring; a long, sweeping stairway; tapestries of ancient wars draped over the walls and even a suit of full English armour in the corner.

Father Ireland was met by the two men the Harbinger had seen the other night: the porky man with no hair and the taller one with the Devil’s beard. There were others too. A large, black man who looked like an African shaman, garbed in a black cloak and sandals. He smiled at the Harbinger uneasily. Yellow, crooked teeth. Two other men
, too. Priests, like Father Ireland. Anxiously looking about the room, as if the walls were about to come alive and eat them. And a dwarf-man. No, two dwarf-men, perhaps. They looked the same. Portly little men with funny suits bustling around the others. Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Everyone seemed to be in a high state of agitation. People were running around, consulting books, carrying boxes of things from one side of the room to the other. The two priests were throwing white sheets over the furniture. Tweedledum and Tweedledee seemed to be overseeing everything.

“Who is this?” he heard the taller man say.

“This is my apprentice,” replied Father Ireland, putting a protective hand on the boy’s shoulder. It did nothing to calm his nerves.

“Ah.” There was something about the way the tall man peered at him that made the Harbinger uneasy. The space between them was a couple of feet but he made it seem like an unending chasm.
“See that he stays out of the way, father,” he said. He was already walking away before Father Ireland could respond.

The Harbinger set the priest’s bag down on a nearby table and opened it. The priest pulled out his glasses and two tatty, leather-bound books. The Harbinger recognised St John’s inscription on one of the books but the other was seemingly blank. The com
motion around them was mounting, fuelled by the rain battering against the windows, shaking the glass in the lead frames, the wind howling past like some angry demon.

“What’s that?” The Harbinger asked, motioning to the coverless book.

“The Lesser Key of Solomon,” he replied. “A Grimoire – a book of magic. It contains lists of demons that have haunted man since the beginning of time and, more importantly, details of how to banish them, Belial included.”

The Harbinger
shuddered. He felt like he had entered a new and dangerous world.

The sound of breaking glass stopped him staring at the book. The wind
had blown one of the windows in, dislodging a vase from the sill which had smashed on the floor. Tweedledee and Tweedledum were attending to the window, climbing over each other in their rush to shut out the wind and rain.

“We must go now, father!” somebody called from the landing but the Harbinger couldn’t see who.
The witchdoctor, maybe. He followed Father Ireland and the procession up the stairs. Everyone seemed to be moving as one down the landing into the dim lights and long shadows towards a door outlined by an intensely bright light.

“The woman’s name?
What’s the woman’s name?” shouted the Harbinger above the commotion.

“Eliziah.”
It was the tall, bearded man who called back. Then something else, her surname maybe, but the Harbinger did not catch it.

He
felt someone barge past him, knocking him off his stride, then the back of one of the midgets pushing his way to the front, grunting for people to stand aside. The other followed shortly after and then a boy of about his own age. The Harbinger mistook him for a man at first because of his height but as he passed their eyes met briefly and the Harbinger was able to deduce from the stranger’s youthful face that he was no man. His eyes were set deep in their sockets behind dark rings chiselled into an expressionless and sallow face.

The priest’s hand on his shoulder
made him jump.

“Now, boy,” he said. “The blasphemy in this room is not for the witness of someone so young.”

“But I’ve just seen-”

There was
a tremendous crashing noise, no less than could have been summoned by the roof being lifted from its frame and left to drop back down onto the house. Then the wailing. The terrible, repugnant noise of distress, or rage, or extraordinary sorrow - the Harbinger could not tell which – emanating from the room at the end of the corridor. A fear rippled through the Harbinger that he had never before felt. The voice seemed not to have an exclusive quality to it, like it was many voices layered on top of each other, but whether it was the utterance of man, woman or beast, the Harbinger could not be sure.

“The demon calls us, father!” shouted the bearded man, throwing the door open and flooding the landing with light.

The Harbinger looked at the priest, but his eyes were averted. He waited but there were no words of comfort, no soothing hand on his arm. The priest was making his way across the corridor already, avoiding the Harbinger’s pleading gaze. The others filed into the room, one-by-one swallowed up in the glorious radiance. The noise from the room – the unfathomable sounds of madness – engulfed the Harbinger, pulling him to the floor.

“Father!” he cried but even his own voice was suppressed by the noise to nothing more than a
muffled whimper. He looked up, furrowed his brow as much as he could to block out the intense light, and saw momentarily the priest’s face break through as if it had floated upwards through a pool of water. He mouthed something. A word. But the Harbinger could not see what it was. He was gone in an instant before the Harbinger could react.

The sound of the door slamming brought complete, impenetrable silence.

The Harbinger waited. The room had turned icy cold. The rain had stopped. The lights flickered uncertainly. This wasn’t right. He shouldn’t be able to see his breath in June. At the end of the corridor, the light seeping through the cracks around the door burned fiercely, as if there was a fire blazing on the other side. Perhaps there was? Perhaps that was why the noise had stopped so suddenly. They had all trooped into the room only to be consumed in the fiery pits of Hell.

The Harbinger didn’t know what to do. Father Ireland had left him no instructions but he had tried to say something to him at the end before he went into the room. What was it? The Harbinger tried to recall the movements of the priest’s lips, trying to form a word. One word, he was sure of that. Something short.

He took an uneasy step away from the door; his foot felt something on the carpet. He looked down. The tatty leather cover had come away from the paper a little. There was a picture of a funny looking sun and an inscription but the words were too difficult to read. The sun was yellow: a small circle with nine uneven rays of light branching outwards from the centre. He picked the book up and a thought struck him: perhaps Father Ireland had dropped it accidently and needed it. Perhaps he was at this very moment scrambling through his bag in desperation, searching for the text.

He looked at the door again. The outline seemed even brighter, but there was no sound coming from the other side. The horrible wailing had stopped. The Harbinger found himself moving forward
timidly, driven by some subconscious compulsion. He must give the book to his teacher, he was sure of it.

He put a hand to the door, lowered his head to the wood, listened hard. Nothing. The handle was brass, heavy and ornately shaped. One sharp tug and it would give. Less than two inches of wood separating him
from... from what? Two worlds sprung to his mind but he knew it was just his overactive imagination. Like Alice, teetering on the precipice of the burrow, he thought.

He touched the handle. Felt something, some small vibration; pressure from the other side? He hoped not. The handle clicked easily, light streamed into his face from where the door had opened a little. He couldn’t see into the room but he was committed now. He pushed the door further, stepped onto a soft, crimson carpet, clutching the book under his arm like it was his
most prized possession.

He had meant to just open the door a little way and peer round, hoping everyone in the room was too preoccupied to notice him but the hinges were too well oiled and the door slipped from his grasp, swinging wide open away from his trailing hand and he was left stranded, staring straight into the room.

Eyes turned on him. Lots of eyes, that’s what he noticed first. Those who had been downstairs to greet him: the bearded man, his portly companion, the dwarfs, the pale boy, the witchdoctor and others. They lined the sides of the room, heads turned towards him, bodies turned away. Like toy soldiers, they stood, rigid and erect. Like they were waiting for something.

Like they were waiting for some
one.

The room was small and the parade members were crushed together awkwardly. There was no furniture save for a chair at the end on which sat a woman he had not seen before. Behind him, he heard the door shut.

“I-” he began, but he couldn’t find the courage to speak. Every nerve in his body tingled, every muscle flexed. He could hardly breathe. He concentrated instead on suppressing the urge to wretch as he scanned the room furiously, looking for his teacher. Surely Father Ireland would be here; surely he would step forward at any moment, put his hand on his shoulder, smile, say everything was okay and lead him away.

But nothing. The priest
was
in the room: hunched up against the far corner, hidden almost entirely behind the witchdoctor, whose massive body seemed to take up the space of two.

“Father-” he choked. But the priest didn’t answer. Father Ireland was the only member of the parade to be looking
away
, straight at the wall.

“I’m afraid he won’t respond to you.” The voice was the unknown woman. The Harbinger hadn’t looked at her before but he did so now. She sat crossed legged, perfectly properly, in a pale blue summer dress that flowed to the floor. She had mousy brown hair that hung loosely over her shoulder and a heart shaped face that bore just the slightest beginnings of weather lines, making her actual age difficult to determine. Her white skin – bare shoulders and arms – glistened so mystifyingly that the Harbinger wondered whether
she
had been the source of the light that had bled so strikingly through the cracks in the door.

For
a moment, the Harbinger forgot his fear, embraced as he was in her captivating beauty.

“We’ve been waiting for you-” She said his name. How did she know his name? Her voice was soothing and low, nothing more than a whisper, like the wind rustling through the trees.

“I-” Still he couldn’t speak. His throat felt as though it had closed up, the last tiny airway fighting for breath.

“It’s ok,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. Just look at me. This is the most important day of your life.”

“Who... are you?” he managed.

“My name is Eliziah. I am the Demon Keeper.”

“Demon? Belial?”

“Yes. Belial. And others too. But, for now, Belial. I see you have the Key.”