CHAPTER 1

 

In the edgelands between the town and the flat farmland of eastern England, Matthias Jase watched from his hiding place in the trees. The bishop and his party had arrived in a Range Rover, coming through the twisted back roads around the reservoir and parking in the muddied yard in front of the church. The ceremony would be an informal affair. No grand robes or mitres, just the bishop in civvies, his private secretary and the parish priest.

The secretary unlocked the padlock on the door and they all went in. Jace waited for a few moments and then stepped out of the cover of the trees and strode towards the church, black leather coat spreading its tails behind him. He stood just inside the porch. It wouldn’t be a long ceremony. Any valuables would have already been removed; the building and land sold. This was just the final ritual of abandonment.

He sat on one of the little wooden benches that nestled in a niche within the porch. Sidling up the inner door he inched it open so he could hear what was going on inside.

The bishop was speaking.

“Lord God, in your great goodness you have accepted to your honour and glory this building, now secularized. Receive out praise and thanksgiving for the blessings, help and comfort which you bestowed upon your people in this place.”

Someone said amen.

And with that, God was banished and Jase could bring the children here.

Jase could hear them all chatting inside as they made ready to leave so he walked out of the porch back to the trees. He squatted down in shadows, the tails of his coat spreading around him and waited until they got back into the Range Rover and it had driven back down the muddy path through the woods past the reservoir. It would cross various little bridges over brooks and sluices, then over the canal before finally meeting a tarmacked road that would take it back to the town of Upper Horelow. That’s where they all belonged. Their god was much more at home there.

He carried a pair of bolt cutters over to the church and cut the padlock and went in. It wasn’t a large church. It had lost its parish long ago during the cutting of the canal. They’d even moved the bodies and headstones from the graveyard then.

Inside the church Jase stood in the nave and looked around. He was a young man, with a shock of unruly fair hair and delicate facial features. He noted that the pews were still intact, four little rows each side of the aisle. The windows still contained some stained glass, but it was not top quality, Victorian gothic that wasn’t worth saving in a country that could barely look after its medieval stuff. The light they let in was muted rose red and emerald filtered through the grimy bodies of saints and disciples. Jase took out the small electric torch from inside his coat pocket and switching it on walked down the aisle noting the hymn books still left on the pews that would make good kindling. The altar was a functional affair, just a large wooden table really. It would do.

When he left he secured the place with the new padlock he had brought.

***

Jase had heard the children calling from across the waters of the edge land. He had been scouting along a path where a little brook ran behind some railings. It wasn’t a natural waterway but some sluice or relief channel.

Out in the water was an island formed by an accumulation of debris, driftwood, pieces of plastic sheeting and a rusted oil drum. All had come together and been cemented by river mud. Grass had sprouted in places and pond weed gathered around the edges.

The voices were like soft wind through a glass tube. He could almost, but not quite, make out words. He pressed closer to the railings gazing out at the island, entranced by the alteration in scale that transformed this river rubbish into a greater place, a fabled island like the Isle of the Dead of Arnold Bocklin’s painting, a rock in the sea covered with cypress trees. 

They were watching him from their hiding place within the foliage of the island, their golden, eyes peering out at him. They sang their haunting irresistible song.  He fell forward onto the railings clutching them, trying to squeeze through the gap between the bars.

He found himself on the island. He began to wander through the dense weeds and shrubs around the shore, then over the solid platform of driftwood and into a tangled forest. Everything smelt of brook water, its inky density of mud, choking pondweed, pollutants from the refuse that had been tossed in. There were trees all around him now, their branches hung with offerings, voles, bats, even a sable cat still wearing its collar studded with faux diamonds.

In a clearing the children gathered around him and falling to his knees he sank into the foliage. They were naked, flesh smooth like dollies. Only their golden eyes lived. They looked at him and he could hardly bear it, holding his arm over his face, wanting it to stop.

Later he was on a stair, stone steps of a ruined city up through the forest, towards where the broken ruins dominated the wooded summit of the island.

As he climbed he reached a passage formed by the stubs of eroded walls and columns. A figure stood there, her body lit by the moonlight. Not a child but a grown woman, yet no less doll-like, breasts smooth and without nipples, featureless between the legs. She beckoned him by raising her arm, stiffly bent at the elbow.

He wanted to rush forward yet at the same time flee. Go back down the path to the jetty where there would be a little boat waiting, ready to take him away from the island. Then he was holding the railings, face pressed against them. Looking out towards the accumulated rubbish in the brook.

He realized he was desperate to urinate and undid his flies before spurting out a great whoosh of piss between the railings into the water. The golden eyes watched him and he heard a sound that might have been laughter.