Alex Preston - The Revelations

He saw Maki and Philip come next, then a group of nervous-looking girls, then Sally and Neil. Lee and Abby hung back with the Earl and David. The cows continued to stare at the priest. He had adopted an aggressive stance, one arm holding the stick poised ready to strike in the air, the other raised in a kind of salute, a universal gesture of thou shalt not pass . It was the success of this macho pose that undid them. For as soon as the Earl and the girls had passed, David dropped his arms and turned to follow the others. The cows, as if released from a spell, charged.

‘Look out,’ yelled Marcus, standing up on the fence.

Abby was at the head of the group, her long legs eating up the ground, bounding over tussocks of grass, leaping blackberry bushes. Next came Lee. Her face was set in frightened concentration. She had gathered up her skirt in her fist and ran with her legs splayed, the pink boots swinging out sideways as she charged forward. The Earl moved very swiftly, his head lowered bullishly. David brought up the rear. Perhaps to save face, he was trying to drive the cows back as he retreated, turning every so often and lashing out with his stick, yelling furiously at these beasts of the field who were conspiring to challenge his authority. Marcus could tell that Sally, who was perched on the gate beside him, was holding her breath.

Abby reached the gate first. Marcus held out an arm and helped her over, taking care that she didn’t tear her jeans on the nails sticking out of the wooden gate. When he looked up, David had fallen. Lee and the Earl reached the gate and turned. Lee held her hand to her mouth. Sally let out her breath in a yelp. The cows charged towards the priest, who was struggling to get to his feet.

‘His foot’s trapped,’ said Mouse, a kind of fascinated horror in his voice.

Without pursuing his thoughts far enough to reach a conclusion, Marcus leapt from the gate and ran towards David. The cows had slowed somewhat as they approached him, and reduced their pace further as they saw Marcus’s sprinting form heading towards them. But still they moved towards the priest, who was now curled in a ball, unaware of the approach of his putative saviour. Just as they were about to close over him, Marcus arrived, throwing himself down over the priest. With his arms up to cover his own head, Marcus felt David’s bony body beneath him, could smell the priest’s woody aftershave, feel the coarse wool of his tweed jacket against his cheek. The earth thundered around them, and Marcus found himself praying, mouthing the Lord’s Prayer through gritted teeth as mud and grass flew over them. He heard the thump of flesh against flesh as the cows crowded around them. Then silence. Hot, sour breath. A wet muzzle against his ear. Marcus looked up to see the cows trotting away from them. He was suddenly embarrassed to be sprawled over the priest. He rolled away from David and then helped him to prise his boot out of the rabbit hole that had trapped it. They made their way together over to the fence. David smiled bashfully as Sally ran to embrace him. Lee and Abby surrounded Marcus. The others cheered.

‘What a hero!’

‘That was amazing.’

Marcus batted away their praise and, taking Abby by the hand, set off along the footpath. There was energy in the air, a sense of celebration, of danger averted. David hurried to catch up with Marcus and laid a matey hand on his shoulder, rephrasing the incident as a moment of shared danger met face-on. The others crowded round as the priest spoke.

‘I heard you praying, Marcus. Even with the noise of those animals charging towards us, I could hear your prayers. Did you feel God there? Did you feel Him coming down and placing a barrier around us, something those dumb beasts couldn’t break through?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘I guess. I wasn’t really thinking. I just did it.’

‘But you know that is when God is at his most visible, when you’re in a moment of emergency. That’s when He’ll show Himself.’

The path brought them out on the other side of the footbridge above the motorway where they had stood the night before. Marcus hung back with Abby. David walked ahead with Mouse to the centre of the bridge, and the two of them leaned far forward over the rail, looking down on the traffic roaring past below. There was a classic car rally taking place at Silverstone, and Marcus could see drivers in open-top vehicles gripping their steering wheels as their cars plunged through the cut in the hillside. Their eyes were narrow slits behind old-fashioned driving goggles. As Marcus and Abby made their way over the bridge, Mouse shouted across to them.

‘Look! Look, it’s Mr Toad! Poop-poop!’

They followed David up through the wood. Birds called out in the dark shadows around them, unseen creatures scuttled across the red earth, the wind caused the trees to groan. Marcus put his arm around Abby’s shoulders. Mouse and David had disappeared up the hill, seemingly racing each other to the house. The rest were far behind. They came out into a clearing by the lake. Lee caught up with them and the three friends stood by the choppy water and looked up at the large, dark house. The turret pierced the low clouds. At the narrow window halfway up, Marcus saw Mrs Millman’s bony face pressed against the glass, sharp eyes looking down at them. She edged away into darkness.

Marcus looked at Lee and there, behind her, was a sight that dried his stare. Above the green cylinder of a pheasant feeder, suspended on a wire from the lowest branches of a tree, hung the rotting body of a rook. Hanging by its claws, the rook’s wings still stretched outwards, feathers clinging to the spindly bones. It spun slightly in the breeze. Lee turned and let out a muffled scream.

‘Jesus,’ Marcus said. Abby gasped.

Lee stumbled back and he caught her. He could see that along the side of the lake there was a line of the grain drums that the gamekeeper used to feed pheasants for the shoot. Above each one hung a dead rook, feathers falling from breasts and wings, eyeless, their bodies slowly growing to resemble the bone grey of their beaks. They all rotated eerily in the gloomy light under the pines, stirred by the fingers of the wind. He could follow the path of each gust in the quivering dead birds. Marcus led the girls hurriedly away from the water.

Back in the house, they took off their boots and made their way up to their rooms. They met Mrs Millman coming down the stairs. She smiled when she saw them.

‘Hello, young ones. Did you have a nice walk? You just missed the weather. It gets into my bones when it’s like this. I wish it would just break and be done with it. There’ll be tea and scones in the hall at four thirty, if you fancy it.’

Marcus and Abby left Lee at the door of her room. The hem of her skirt was black with mud and she looked very tired suddenly.

‘Have a sleep, love,’ Abby said, hugging her friend.

‘I will. I’m done in.’ Lee smiled at them and closed the door behind her.

Marcus and Abby lay on their bed reading for an hour as the light faded outside. Recently there had been a number of books published by high-profile academics and journalists attacking Christianity specifically or religious belief in general. Abby had a high pile of these books beside her bed at home and was currently working through one that had a picture of the author in the centre of the back cover, fixing the viewer with his notoriously piercing gaze, the high sweep of his equally famous hair barely contained within the photograph. Marcus put down the novel he was half-reading and nuzzled into the soft skin of Abby’s neck.

‘Don’t you worry about reading those? That you might be persuaded? I can never pick them up.’

Abby laid the book down on her lap and reached over to stroke Marcus’s hair, pulling his head onto her chest and running her nails across his scalp.