Andrew McGahan - Wonders of a Godless World

She returned to the main building and found refuge for a while in the catatonic ward. Here at least there was blessed quiet—no minds pushing against her own. There were only the vacant bodies in their beds. It was soothing, at first. She could sweep the floors unbothered as the figures around her stared at nothing. But with time the silence grew deeper. In fact, it wasn’t a silence at all. It was an absence . It came to the orphan that the catatonics were holes into which life and light and noise vanished. They were emptiness. And such emptiness might be even worse than the crowd. She went back out into the hallways.

And, at length, came across the archangel.

It was the glow of him that caught her attention. He was standing at the far end of a long passage. All around him was shadow, but the archangel himself was positioned beneath a window through which daylight shafted, and for some reason, in the light, his clothes and his face were almost shining.

Reluctant, but unable to resist, the orphan edged down the hall towards him. He was reading aloud from his book, the pages held up to the window, his hollow voice resonating. He was still covered in ash from the eruption, she realised, and that was why he shone—the grey powder flared white in the sunlight. His clothes and skin and hair. He might have been carved from cement.

Madness beat against the orphan’s forehead like the wings of birds. The archangel’s eyes were closed in some transport of inner ecstasy, but still he read on. His voice rolled over her with a hypnotic authority. Had it always been so deep? He was hardly more than a boy, but with his hair grey and his face mud-streaked he looked much older. So stern, so grave, so perfect. It occurred to her then that, although she knew he had once attempted suicide with a knife, she had never seen a single disfiguring scar anywhere on his skin.

But coming close now she saw that the perfection was an illusion. A muddy sweat had beaded on his brow, and his body was not merely motionless, it was locked rigid. Pain transported him, not ecstasy. Horrified, she realised that the window he stood beneath was shattered, and that broken glass littered the floor. The youth’s feet were bare, and as he prayed, he ground his soles against the shards.

And then it happened again. Without volition, she was drawn out of her body and into his. But the experience was more complete this time. She was the archangel. She felt the sun upon his face and the book in his hands. She felt his long straight limbs and his broad shoulders. She even felt the fire in his feet.

But she was also in his mind. And in his mind, he wasn’t tall and strong at all. He was hideous to himself, a misshapen bag of skin and bones. His head was corrupt with forbidden thoughts, his belly ached with evil hungers, and in his loins there coiled a damp, snakelike thing, insidious. Indeed, his body was his enemy, and he had put it away from him. The orphan had a strange impression of height, and of a lonely room, where he was held safe by the power of his book and his prayers.

But now he was ashamed, for when the earth had shaken and the sky had rained fire, he had forgotten his book and his prayers. Instead, he had surrendered to his bodily fear and run away to hide. The archangel was mortified by the memory. He was supposed to be beyond fear. And so now, through the pain in his feet, borne willingly, and through his prayer, he was seeking redemption. But only blood would be sufficient. He ground his heels down, and the glass bit more cruelly.

The orphan recoiled. The link between them snapped, and she was back in her own head. The archangel faltered. He licked his lips a moment, then drew a ragged gasp, turned a page of his book, and plunged on. Horrible. It was horrible in there. She wanted to flee from him, get as far from his suffering as she could. But she hesitated, torn between pity and disgust. She couldn’t just leave him. He would injure himself. He’d done little damage so far, but if he went much further…

Blood trickled from beneath his toes.

She drew a deep breath, and lightly took his elbow. This time there was no black gulf opening. The youth shivered, but something in her touch seemed to reach him, because he lowered his book and fell silent. The tension did not leave his body, but he did at least allow himself to be led away from the window.

Slowly, they made their way towards the crematorium. Patients and nurses passed them by, but the orphan avoided their eyes. She could not cope with anyone else. The archangel and his bloody footsteps were bad enough. She would deliver him to his room and be done. Yet with every step, an aversion grew in her. She realised that she was in dread of their destination. Not the entire crematorium, perhaps, but the little furnace room was waiting there, and within it, sleeping…

Ripples ran like heatwaves across her vision, but they were waves of cold, not heat, and she was walking, not through the hospital, but down a deep valley of stone, somewhere where it was night, and freezing. And there was a voice, a voice like no other, a voice she could understand inherently…

The orphan halted, staring about. No one was visible except the archangel, stiff at her side. She pushed forward, down the last passageway. At its end, all seemed black and quiet. There was something unusual about that, the orphan knew. Then they came to the dayroom, and she realised. Of course. There was still no power. The lights were off. And for once, the television was dark and silent.

Nevertheless, in the dimness, the virgin sat before the screen.

The orphan felt her tenuous grip on reality slipping again. She led the archangel to one of the armchairs, and forced him down. His shoulders were taut under her hands, and immediately he bent himself over his book, his fingers moving across the lines, although surely it was too dark for him to read.

The orphan turned back to the virgin. What was the girl doing?

She looked unharmed. Someone had cleaned her up since the eruption, and changed her clothes. And she was merely sitting as she always sat, legs folded, arms resting on her knees, her head tilted towards the television. Yet there was a distress in her so palpable it vibrated through the room like a thrumming wire.

The orphan was helpless to shut it out. She felt her identity melt away, and the virgin’s blindness come seeping into her eyes. Darkness closed in, and panic. Except, no, it wasn’t quite blindness. It was not a loss of vision, but a dulling of it, until everything was pale and distant. The virgin, in her dementia, seemed to be adrift in a world of the utmost dreariness, in which there was no colour or dimension. A flat world. A false world.

But a real world did exist, a place of brightness and life, and the orphan knew this because the virgin could see it sometimes, through a special window. A magic window. That world was wonderful, with every shape the most vivid, vibrant hue. Heavenly people moved there, radiant and beautiful and fascinating. That was where the virgin belonged. That was where she went, whenever the window was opened for her.

But something terrible had happened. She had been taken away from the window, and the false world had roared and thrown her to the ground, drenched by hot rain. Then brutal hands had assaulted her, prying and stripping and scrubbing. Finally she had escaped them to return to her window—but to her dismay it was shut, and no matter how she stared with her blind eyes, she could not open it again. There was no colour anywhere, no light, no reality. She was trapped in the false world, and now a frantic terror was rising in her that she could not stop.

The orphan turned away, nearly frantic herself. Madness. More madness than she could bear. Ever since waking this morning, her mind had been wide open to it, leaving her defenceless. The duke and the witch were bad enough, and the archangel worse…now this shrilling anxiety from the virgin. What was happening? Where had this hypersensitivity to other minds come from? And why had it occurred with these four patients—these particular four—most acutely?