This Is How You Die Page 20

  I didn’t like the feel of church. I never had. If my life were a horror film, no doubt I would be naturally deterred by churches and would burst into flames or erupt with buboes of biblical proportions just by crossing the threshold. But in reality they just felt cold, empty, and dead.

  I took a seat in the center of a middle pew and drank in the dead surroundings and the religious symbolism. At the foot of the church, down the aisle where many men and women had begun a journey on the long road to divorce, there stood a large statue of Jesus, looking like a holy Vitruvian Man.

  The image of Christianity. A man who capitulated under the efforts of a malicious army and a malignant friend. The symbol of the ultimate sacrifice, enough to win the respect of future generations, yet if he’d have killed his captors by shooting spears out of his ass he would have won more respect and followers. Even I would follow a man capable of such heroics, although I’d still have a hard time believing it just by reading a two-thousand-year-old book.

  I have no problem with religion, nor do I have an issue with the people who practice it. It keeps them out of my way, out of society’s way. They usually hole themselves up in big empty buildings, singing, preaching, and following rules laid out for them hundreds of years ago by people they’ve never seen but who definitely existed.

  I do have a problem with the people who sit on the fence. If you believe in God and an afterlife, then good for you, just keep it to yourself until the question arises. But if you don’t go to church, don’t follow any dogma, and don’t count yourself as religious, don’t continue to sit on that fence when faced with the question of your belief. These people don’t want to refute His existence on the off chance that He does exist and will smite them for not believing. Where’s the sense in that? As if He suspects you don’t believe but is waiting for you to vocalize your doubts before He strikes you down. “It would be stupid to think an omnipotent being exists who controlled the world and made everything, but fuck me if I’m gonna say he doesn’t in case he unmakes me.” These people need to get a fucking opinion and learn how to use it. They piss me off. If ambiguity isn’t the death of them, then I fucking will be.

  A middle-aged woman with a solemn expression entered the church with two meandering teenagers in her wake—probably her sons—their faces grim enough to indicate a recent bereavement. They looked old enough to be thinking on their own and living on their own, yet they seemed to follow her every step and her every word, still under her thumb, still following her rules and her commands. Their father had probably been mown down in the middle of his life, no doubt his own doing—a heart attack brought on by years of stress, the annoyance of raising two ugly kids with an ugly wife he couldn’t stand, and a diet of cigarettes, beer, and animal fat. Death had probably been an escape for him, a way of getting away from a controlling, obsessive, and neurotic woman who was always one misplaced text message away from making a broth from his pet rabbit or chopping off his penis while he slept.

  The trio slumped down the aisle. One of the boys looked up at me as they passed, an attempted smile on his ugly little face. I smiled back, feigned a look of understanding and pity. He trudged on.

  They settled at the front of the church, kneeling before the statue of Jesus. Their savior, their God; the man who gave his life as a symbolic gesture to the human race but couldn’t stop their loved one from eating one bacon sandwich too many.

  They say people are sheep; not true. Sheep are smart. Sheep follow a black and white dog that clearly exists. Humans follow an invisible man in the sky that does not. I think when I was a kid, I may have entertained the idea of God—until a certain age I’m confident I did believe in him, falling for the dogma taught to me through a Church of England education and the half-assed religious ideals preached by early era children’s television presenters. I also believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, but I grew out of those beliefs around the same time I realized religion was also a crock of shit. Maybe the rest of the world has yet to grow up.

  The vicar appeared from one of the back rooms with a smile of spiritual contentment on his face. He flashed a sympathetic look at the woman and her ugly kids. They all smiled back, their smiles forced, hers genuine. His eyes crossed to the empty congregation, and his eyebrows raised slightly when he saw me. He smiled and nodded, and I pretended I hadn’t seen him. He wouldn’t recognize me, there was no chance of that. Although, maybe if my face were covered in blood and I was being pummeled by half-witted hooligans he would.

  I watched him meander around the front of the building. He placed a book down on an altar, calmly walked up to the single-parent family, said a few hushed words and hugged them in turn, his eyes on the mother’s flat backside as it waddled to the first row and plonked dully onto the wooden pew. The vicar watched as her children joined her and then he turned away.

  He disappeared into the confessional, ducking behind the curtain. There was no one on the other side, the velvet fabric split to reveal an empty seat in the dusty box. I contemplated slipping in. I had plenty of sins to confess, and no doubt I would enjoy listening to his reaction while I did so, but life was too short.

  I looked around the church. The mourning family sat slumped on the first row, their heads in their chests, their hands in the praying position. I could see tears streaming down the woman’s face, silent expressions on the faces of her sons. At the back of the room, an elderly man cradling a cane had entered the church to collect a leaflet and leave some coins in the collection plate. He was already on his way back out.

  I had been seen by the family, the kid in particular, but it wouldn’t matter; he wouldn’t recognize me. He had other things on his mind. Keeping one eye on the mourning family and one on the feet of the vicar below the curtain, I clasped my hands around the handle of a screwdriver in my pocket, a six-inch steel shank comforted by a rubber easy-grip handle. Easy to carry, excusable if discovered, and much more precise and clinical for what I had in mind. It wasn’t the only weapon I carried. In the case was a set of chef’s knives, sharp and strong enough to sever steel. They were a little less convenient, a little harder to carry in my pocket, but they would come in handy later on.

  I sidled on my backside to the edge of the row and rested the case on the floor, kicking it underneath one of the pews and making a mental note of its location for later. I took one last look around the church—the mother now muttering between her sobs, her children bearing the burden of her whispered regrets—and walked down the aisle, toward the confessional.

  I ripped open the curtain with enough nonchalance to imply innocence should the situation not immediately suit me. The vicar hopped to his feet with a broad smile. No doubt he was preparing to tell me I had the wrong end, or that the toilets were further down, but it didn’t matter—the situation was perfect.

  I pulled the screwdriver out of my pocket, clenched a tight fist around the cushioned handle, and then thrust it upward. He didn’t see the flash of steel as it skimmed the tip of his hyoid, realizing what was happening only when the delicate flesh of his throat sliced open like a ripe tomato.

  The first thrust took it through the edge of his throat, where it drilled through the back of his tongue before boring up into his skull, cracking and wedging in the bone. A gurgle of desperation and surprise escaped his mouth. A trickle of blood ran down from the corner of his lips, tainting and staining his white dog-collar. A bubble of saliva, infused with a frothy drop of blood, grew out of his mouth like cherry bubblegum, popping when he tried to talk.

  He was incapable of speech, but I doubted he had anything useful to say anyway. I drove the screwdriver further, to the hilt, the tip of my thumb touching the wound that the weapon had created, my nail plunging into the open flesh. A torrent of blood had already snaked down my hand, painting my clenched fist and my forearm.

  He slumped against the back wall of the confessional with a hollow thud, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. He was finished. He was with his God now.

  The s
crewdriver made a sucking sound as it popped out of his flesh. The wound sprayed fresh blood and I just managed to duck out of the way, watching as it coated the inside of the curtain.

  I pulled him off the bench and shoved him underneath it. His body tucked nicely into the space there. His head was already beginning to drown in a pool of blood. I removed a cover from the bench—a thick nylon sheet—and stuffed it up against his lifeless face. The blood immediately soaked in. It was enough to hold it for now, but before long the blood would begin to seep out and leak toward the bottom of the curtain.

  I heard the curtain next door being pulled closed, followed by the sound of a body sinking into creaking wood. There was someone else in the confessional.

  “Bless me father, for I have sinned.”

  I didn’t want anyone to discover the body. Soon the church would empty; I would have the time and the room to do what I had gone there to do.

  I sat down, my calves pressed up against the dead vicar. There was a small wooden shutter between the two rooms. I peeled this back, keeping my head pressed up against the wall, out of sight. Behind the shutter was a corrugated mesh, thick enough to obscure my face from whoever happened to be looking.

  The ugly kid who had smiled at me a few minutes ago was staring forward. I could see the side of his face, his huge nose, pointed chin—the profile of a kid who’d had all his respect for life bullied out of him at primary school.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have to give the ugly little fucker any advice. He looked no older than sixteen, around the same age as me when my own father had died, but he clearly wasn’t heading down the same path and wasn’t anything like the person I became. I doubted I could tell him to do as I did. He barely looked capable of tying his shoelaces.

  “It’s been three years since my last confession,” the voice beyond the mesh continued.

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Well, I, I have been busy.”

  “Too busy for God?”

  It’s not every day you get to judge someone through the eyes and actions of a respected authority figure.

  “No, no. Of course not.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “I—I’m sixteen, sir.”

  “And you still live with your parents?”

  “Just my mother, sir.”

  I grinned. “Of course. Silly me.” I shifted in my seat and twisted my face as the stench of death tickled the hairs at the back of my nostrils. “Do you think it’s normal to live with your mother at that age? Do you think it’s normal that you still do everything for her, that she still has you running around like her little slave?”

  He seemed confused. “What do—how do you know?”

  “Doesn’t the bible say that He knows everything.”

  “Well, yes, God knows everything, but—”

  “Are you a faithful child, my son?”

  “Yes, of course, of course I am.”

  “Do you touch yourself at night?”

  “What?” The ugly kid shot a look across at the mesh. I had snuck a peek, but I ducked back out of sight when I saw him flinch.

  “Well, do you?” I persisted.

  “No more than normal.”

  “You consider that to be normal?”

  “Well, I suppose. I mean, I guess other kids my age—”

  “And if other kids your age jumped off a cliff would you follow?”

  “No, God no.”

  “Please don’t use the lord’s name in vain.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So, would you jump off a cliff with your friends?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But you’d happily indulge in mutual masturbation with them?”

  “I don’t under—” He popped his head closer to the mesh. I pinned my head against the wall. The stench of coppery blood and evacuated bowels was beginning to work its way up from my seat. I didn’t have long before the kid figured something was wrong.

  “What do you want to tell me, son?” I asked.

  I felt his eyes flashing inquisitively through the mesh for a moment longer, then he settled back into his seat with a reflective sigh.

  “It’s my father,” he said soberly. “I miss him.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I feel so lonely. I mean, things were never great for me, ya know? But with him around, it helped. He put a smile on my face at the end of the day. He fought away the bullies and the tears, and now what? I’m never going to see him again, am I?”

  I ducked forward, opening the curtain and peering down the church. As I suspected, the youngster’s family had gone. He had snuck in unannounced, probably ashamed to let his mother know he was seeking help from someone other than her.

  “The bible says that we will meet our loved ones in the afterlife, does it not?” I said, closing the curtain.

  “I guess,” he replied.

  “And you believe that you will see your father again, right?”

  “I suppose so. In time.”

  “You could always speed up the process.”

  “What do you mean?” I sensed his huge nose pushing up against the mesh. The smell was beginning to become overwhelming and with his huge snout poking around, he had to be able to smell it, as well.

  I forced the steel end of the screwdriver through the mesh. It crunched the wire and punctured through, straight into the inquisitive teenager’s eye. It popped like a fat grub, squirting opaque fluid onto the steel.

  He recoiled with a croaking sound and tumbled backward. I sensed my heart quicken and my world momentarily slow. I had taken a risk; there was a chance he had been heard. A chance this would be seen.

  I pulled the screwdriver out, darted out of the confessional, and turned toward the other side of the wooden death box. Bloodied hands were grasping at the curtain, pushing the material outwards like disembodied hands of velvet. I opened the curtain for him and stopped him from stumbling onto me by placing the sole of my foot onto his bloodied forehead and pressing him backward.

  He was begging for his life. “Please, please, please.” Repetition always suits the doomed and the frightened.

  With his good eye, he sensed the daylight behind me and tried to dash through. I pushed him down again, watching him tumble into the corner where he promptly curled into the fetal position and began to pray to his God.

  I closed the curtain behind me and silenced his prayers. His God wasn’t going to help him. His God wasn’t capable of stopping anyone, let alone me. God works in mysterious ways, and very few of those ways are helpful. God does have one thing going for him though: He is a vengeful, vindictive, brutal tyrant, and that God would have appreciated the work that I did in his house.

  The scene I left in the church was a thing of beauty and one I knew would be appreciated and understood by the right people.

  There was a storm coming and I was going to be at its center.

  PART 4

  1

  Lester sensed the activity around him, that the world hadn’t stopped turning and the chaos that fed through the hazy mesh in his mind came not from inside but from out. There was panic, shouting, questions. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. They were unlikely to see anything like it ever again and as Lester stared, lost inside his own thoughts, he couldn’t help but think that he was to blame.

  This was all his fault.

  He hadn’t been dumb enough to tell the press about his theory, but it was still his theory, and if not for that then this might not have happened. He didn’t know who gave the information to the press, didn’t know if it was one of the dimwits at Whitegate Police Station or one of his own back home, but it didn’t matter. He had known they would find out, and he had been certain that someone somewhere would leak his theory.

  “It’s spectacular, isn’t it?”

  Lester angrily turned to face the police officer next to him. He was a local by the name of Tenant, a cocky little prick who Lester had had the displeasure of meeting earlier. He fa
ncied himself, was always checking his hair, grinning into mirrors. The sort of man who hit on every woman he saw and assumed they were lesbians or frigid when they turned him down.

  “Spectacular?” Lester spat. “Are you fucking shitting me? Two people are dead, in a church, their bodies strung up like meat in a fucking slaughterhouse. This is not spectacular.”

  The officer gave a nonchalant shrug. “To be fair, only one of them is strung up like meat.” He chuckled at that and Lester felt like punching him. If he were a more violent man, a man more like the one who had done this, then he would have caved his smug face into the back of his skull and then stomped on it until the blood stopped pouring and the screams stopped curdling.

  “It’s not easy to do that,” Tenant continued.

  Lester frowned at him, for a moment wondering if he was talking about the images that had just been going through his head. “Excuse me?”

  Tenant nodded toward the mess at the front of the church and Lester followed his gaze and nodded.

  The vicar had been skinned, every inch of skin peeled away from his body, leaving nothing but muscle, blood, and bone. The crime had seemingly taken place in the confessional, because its floors were pooled with blood and spotted with chunks of flesh. He had been nailed to a large crucifix that had once belonged to a fiberglass model of Christ. It was positioned so that whoever entered the church, walked down the aisle, or sat in the congregation would face the figure of their lord, and that was what made this human replica so striking and so terrifying. They hadn’t found the flesh yet, but they would, and Lester didn’t really want to be around when they did.

  At the vicar’s feet, curled into the fetal position, was a young boy in his teens. He was naked and he looked vulnerable, almost infant-like. He had been positioned that way after death, that much was obvious, but why he had been posed like that wasn’t clear. Lester hadn’t walked down the aisle yet. He had tried, but the further he walked, the more his legs felt like they weren’t going to support him. Walking toward the figure of the skinless vicar held aloft on the cross was one of the most terrifying things he had ever done. It activated a primal fear, a sense of foreboding he had never felt before and knew he would never feel again. This was a set, a piece of theater, one that had been orchestrated by the hand of the devil himself and one that succeeded in its mission to strike fear into the hearts of everyone who looked upon it, giving them a memory that would haunt them until their dying day.