‘Well,’ she replied. ‘I was wondering if you might very kindly pass out for me.’
Fear came then, and he tried to scream, but then the fist hit him again and he had little choice but to oblige.
* * *
The deserter kept a sharp eye out through the windscreen as Gar loaded the unconscious man into the back of the van and climbed in after. The narrow road behind these big properties was dark, and the large trees of their established gardens meant that it had been relatively easy to park somewhere that wasn’t overlooked, but he was determined not to be undone by complacency.
The van doors were eased shut – Gar had been instructed very firmly not to slam them – and Ardwyn climbed up into the passenger seat next to him.
‘All set?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Let’s go.’
He started the engine and drove them to the allotments.
8
TUSK MOON
THE VESSEL HAD BEEN STRIPPED, TIED AND GAGGED securely, so when it woke all it could do was wiggle slightly and stare around at the inside of the shed with wide, terrified eyes. Everett would much rather that it remain unconscious – just as with the swine vessels and the German boy before that, he had no desire to inflict any more distress than was absolutely necessary – but neither he nor Ardwyn had any knowledge of how to keep a human being drugged and Gar could be a bit heavy handed. The vessel already had a broken nose, and there was a very real possibility that if Gar continued hitting it to keep it unconscious he might actually kill it by mistake, and they couldn’t risk that. Dead blood held no power. The big man was currently on sentry duty outside. Fortunately, it seemed that the old woman had decided to behave like a normal human being and sleep in a proper bed tonight, which was a relief. There were enough wrinkles in this new liturgy without the extra complication of unwanted spectators.
Ardwyn was praying, her soft voice soothing him with a sense of peace and the righteousness of this night’s work. It was somewhat undermined by the smell of piss coming off the vessel, which was a lot more pungent in the enclosed space instead of the open clearing above Swinley.
Yes, this was going to take some getting used to.
He took the knife in his right hand and the nape of the vessel’s neck in his left and bent the vessel into a kneeling position over the pit. The shed’s false floor had folded back on hinges to expose the bare earth below, the pit that had been dug in it and the remains of Moccus that had been placed there, ready for his rebirth. The vessel’s eyes goggled as it saw, and it began to weep and scream in muffled bleats from behind the gag. Everett wondered if he should say something to it – thank it, possibly, the way Bill had thanked the German boy. There wouldn’t have been any point when the vessels of replenishment had been swine, but then he thought what would be the point now? Nothing he could say would alleviate its terror. Best to simply get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
The deserter’s elbow bumped against the wall and he had to shuffle a bit to get into a position where his arm could move freely. Then he opened the vessel and held it as it thrashed, angling it carefully so that the blood jetted directly into the pit rather than up the walls because apart from the waste nobody wanted that clean-up job.
‘Moccus, be replenished,’ he and Ardwyn intoned together. ‘Moccus, be renewed. Moccus, be reborn.’
Afterwards they wrapped the empty vessel carefully and put it back in the van, shovelled a foot of earth into the pit and put the floor back over it, then locked up and drove back to the farm. The tusk moon would not rise until after dawn, but they would stay up to toast its appearance as it journeyed out from under the shadow of mother earth and celebrate the first replenishment ceremony of their new church.
Only five more to go.
* * *
3:07
Dennie stared at the display of the bedside radio clock, trying to feel surprised, and failing.
She couldn’t recall waking. It hadn’t been Viggo this time; he was downstairs as normal, shut in the kitchen. As far as she knew she might well still be asleep. It would make sense if she was, because how else was she to explain the fact that Sarah Neary was sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom?
Sarah hadn’t moved or said anything since Dennie had become aware of her. The chair was just a tatty old piece of wicker furniture that she’d inherited from her own mother and which had followed them in the move from Birmingham; it was for dumping rogue pillows and underwear, and she wasn’t sure it would support the weight of a human being. But then Sarah had been dead for a little over ten years. She was wearing the same t-shirt, sweatpants, and pink slippers that she’d been wearing on the one and only visit Dennie had made to see her at HMP Bronzefield – and the last time she’d seen Sarah before she committed suicide. For some reason she was also cradling in her lap an old rag doll that had belonged to Dennie as a girl. Sabrina. She hadn’t thought of that doll since before she married Brian. What was Sarah doing with it?
‘I don’t know what you want,’ she whispered. ‘I helped you as much as I
