D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

He went back to the house and put his toolbox on the now empty table, separating out hammer, chisels and screwdrivers. He set about carefully dismantling his computers, his laptops and notebooks, removing hard-drives where possible. He carried them outside and set them on the stone flags, sending the hefty hammer smashing into them. Sweeping up the mangled remains he threw them into the centre of the raging blaze, the heat causing the skin of his face to prickle, the smoke to sting his eyes.

He stood staring at the white heat of the bonfire, listening to the cracking banners of flame striking the night, feeling that his very soul had been hollowed out; everything he’d ever been eaten away by the crackling, mocking flames.

He went back to the house, now looking curiously empty, almost unrecognisable as his home, and sat in a chair by the coffee table. He contemplated the memory of his Lunar Club colleagues all those years ago. Like yesterday but over thirty years away now. Howard Baxter the excitable archivist; Carl Wood, the thoroughly decent chap that never had a wrong word to say about anyone. He remembered everyone’s excitement when she first came through that very door the next morning. Remembered how she glanced from one to the other of them, her eyes heavy with suspicion. They fixed her something to eat, which she barely ate, answered a number of her questions, how it had started with Evelyn Carter’s strange disappearance and Thomas Rayne the police officer who had used his detective skills to trace her mysterious life history back — further back than he ever thought possible, till he finally had to admit he was dealing with a woman who had possibly lived many, many years. More than that, how he had uncovered the truth about the strange symbol and the Church of Everlasting Bliss; how Evelyn’s kind had been hunted down by them and destroyed, one by one; how his grandson Charles Rayne had taken up the challenge, had taken it upon himself to trace this Evelyn Carter and to help her; and how Charles had persuaded the Lunar Club members to join him in his search. A search that ended with her rescue from Lambert-Chide’s lab. The reason she sat before them now.

A full three hours passed in this way. She appeared disturbed at first that they seemed to know so much about her but she settled down gradually. And he remembered the chill in her voice when, to everyone’s quiet delight, the woman they had known as Evelyn Carter began to relate her life story in her own words.

‘It begins with a young yeoman farmer called Simon freeman,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘He came from the village of Crewkerne in Somerset. He married in the year 1630. But the marriage was not blessed with children, which pained them both. Yet they thought God smiled upon them, for nine years later they took an orphan girl as their own, whom they named Elizabeth. And so this Elizabeth remained their only child. Simon would have preferred a son, because a daughter brought only problems to resolve, not least in eventually marrying her off. But though her dowry was poor, her good looks went some way in making up the difference and Elizabeth was given away in marriage at the age of fifteen to a man of reasonable means, a rope maker called Robert Franklin from the same area. Robert had a son, also called Robert, by his first wife, who had died in childbirth. The marriage was something of a convenience for them both. But even marriages of convenience can be run through with love and in the early years Robert doted on his young wife.

‘Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye and the son grew to manhood. He married, and he brought his new wife into the house to live, as was sometimes the custom. In an age when all were devout, none were more so than the woman her son had chosen to be his bride. She followed her mother’s example of continued fasting to demonstrate her profound godliness; the fiercer the hunger the fiercer God’s divine presence resided within her, and she insisted that the only meat she desired was that of God’s Holy Crown. She would fall into a semi-trance and praise times past when images, statues and the brilliant colours of stained glass windows were shattered, the country purged of its sin just as her body was being purged of sin.

‘It was on one of these occasions, when she had been in the grip of a lengthy fast, that her eyes rolled into her head and her finger pointed out accusingly at Elizabeth…’

‘The Devil walks amongst men!’ the words gurgled in her throat, and her voice deepened so that it no longer sounded like her at all. ‘His unholy familiar rendered in many guises the better to trick men and thus tempt him down the path of evil…’

Both father and son followed the path of the woman’s outstretched arm; the index finger trembled as it hovered six inches or so from Elizabeth’s chest. She backed away and both men watched her closely, their faces deadly serious.

‘What can she mean?’ said Elizabeth.

‘She is God’s holy vessel,’ said the young man reverentially. ‘Why do you back away? There is nothing to fear in God’s pure truth. Unless there is good reason to fear.’ His eyes lingered just a little too long on Elizabeth’s face to prove comfortable.

‘I must leave,’ said Elizabeth.

‘You must stay!’ her husband ordered in a tone of voice she had never heard him use before.

She looked from him to his son; they shared the same grave expression. ‘Art thou afraid, Elizabeth?’ he asked. ‘Pray, why is that?’

‘I am as afraid of God as anyone,’ she admitted.

‘But more fearful today,’ he noticed.

‘Because the finger points at me,’ she said, ‘and for what reason I cannot know.’

The woman sat on a wooden stool, rocking back and forth, the arm still rigidly outstretched, but the hand now a tightly balled fist that made the knuckles glow white and fierce. ‘See, but a single kiss from the Devil’s mouth breathes evil into the body, to course through the body and to consume the soul. See standing before you the Devil’s handicraft, for behold, why, in the face of time’s passing is her beauty undimmed? Why hast not time chipped away at the thin shell of youth to reveal the ageing woman beneath?’

‘Please do not say such things!’ Elizabeth begged, her hand to her chest. ‘Son, make your wife stop!’

‘When God so wills it so will she stop,’ he said. ‘And I am no true son of yours.’

‘What is it you say?’ she asked.

‘What she says is true,’ said her husband. ‘Thou art still young, unchanged. Many remark upon it behind their hands, behind closed doors. Where are the lines of old age? Where is the skin that sags and hairs of grey?’ he put a hand to his own head.

‘Wouldst thou have me haggard and bent?’

‘I would have thee free from possession.’

She gasped. ‘Possession? I am no more possessed than thee!’

‘Look! Look!’ cried the young woman. ‘She grows horns!’ She covered her eyes with both her arms.

‘That is not true!’ Elizabeth defended.

‘She sees a vision,’ said the young man. ‘A vision sent by God to unmask thy true self.’

Elizabeth rushed forward and put her hands on the woman’s shoulders, shaking her wildly. ‘Stop this! Stop this blasphemy at once!’ she demanded.

It was the young man who struck her. A glancing blow with his fist to her head that saw her reel groggily backwards, her hand to her throbbing cheek. ‘Robert!’ she said, shocked. ‘What is it that you do? Thou wilt strike one that looks upon thee as thine own mother?’

‘I strike the Devil!’ he said breathlessly, standing between Elizabeth and his wife. ‘And I would do the same again if you once more lay your vile hands upon this the godliest of women!’

‘You will leave this house at once,’ said Elizabeth’s husband, ‘for thou hast brought shame upon it.’