The Cure of Souls

Gerard Stock had nodded: whatever the priest thought best.

Stewart’s book on hop-growing still lay on the table. Merrily was unsure about this. Perhaps it should have been taken away; it represented his work, part of his attachment to the earth which it was now necessary to break. His other known attachment had been to young men; how strong was that now? The pull of earthly obsession: weakened, but not necessarily severed by death.

In the otherwise-silence of the kiln, the growling refrigerator was an unstable presence; its noises varied and fluctuating, as if it were trying to tell her something.

‘Our Father…’

It remained the most powerful prayer of all, an exorcism in itself. This was how they all should begin.

How you took it from there… well, there was always an element of playing it by ear, by sensation, by perception – always remembering that, in the end, it wasn’t you doing this; you were only the monkey, you didn’t have any powers. You could only respond to signals.

In the kiln-house kitchen, the sun shone through as best it could; the fridge still shivered. The timing seemed about right: nearly noon, the time of no shadows. Nothing sinister.

Merrily offered the prayer conversationally, with only a little extra stress on the crucial line ‘… and deliver us from evil.’

Us.

Four of them in a semicircle in this half-lit brick funnel. Gerard Stock with shoulders back, eyes closed, lips invisible in the beard. But she knew now that those moist, rosebud lips were clamped tight on Gerard’s hidden agenda – oh, there was one, something raging inside him, like the fire in a brick furnace. Merrily was sensing anger and frustration made unbearable by fear. Even Fred Potter, the journalist, had picked up on that. But fear of what, exactly?

‘For ever and ever. Amen.’

‘Amen.’ An echo from Gerard Stock and Lol.

‘Sorry.’ Stephanie giggled. ‘Amen.’

Convent girl, huh?

There was – and face it, it could be relevant – almost certainly a problem in Stock’s marriage, no concealing that. Stephanie’s eyes were wide open, the twist of a smile on her lips – not taking this seriously and not caring who knew. There were perhaps twenty years between her and Gerard. Maybe he’d been slim and successful when they’d met – glamorous parties, cool contacts. Now he was looking florid and finished – career-wise, anyway.

Stephanie was standing between the two men, but closer to Lol than to Stock, their shoulders sometimes even touching, and Stephanie’s was bare, her strap slipping, and Merrily felt a stirring of—

Whatever the emotion was, she squashed it. She was the priest here.

All right: the metaphysics.

Had the transition of Stewart Ash simply been too sudden? Merrily caught a cold, shocking image of the spirit flung out, flailing and struggling, as the skull went crack, crack, crack, crack on the flags, an implosion of shattered bone and dying brain cells. Huw Owen again: Most hauntings are imprints, caused by the atmospheric shock of sudden death. Your imprint is no great problem – a tape loop, a magic-lantern show. It’s with the insomniacs and the sleepwalkers you need a bit of one-to-one.

Or was there, as Gerard Stock had suggested, a powerful, residual sense of injustice because the nature of the crime had been misunderstood, the wrong people convicted?

Merrily prayed silently to understand, to get a feeling of what was needed, and then intoned aloud: ‘O God, forasmuch as without You we are not able to please You, mercifully grant that Your Holy Spirit may, in all things, direct and rule our hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

‘Amen’ – Stock and Lol. Nothing from Stephanie – she looked hazy, suspended in the column of the midday sun. Next to her Stock seemed dense, leaden. Was Stephie already building another life for herself, away from here? And where would Stock be if she left him? This was, after all, her house.

‘At this point, we’ll have… a period of quiet,’ Merrily said. ‘If that’s OK.’

‘Sure.’ Stephanie’s voice was crisp, and Stock glared at her, like a disapproving father, but said nothing. Merrily turned her face away from a collision of light beams emanating from the tiny trinity of windows, and looked down at the flags where Stewart Ash had been taken down, and then closed her eyes.

Greyness.

Stewart…?

Careful not to reach out for him or call him back. It was about being receptive. She kept her eyes shut, allowing any unfocused thoughts to drift away. There was a metallic shudder from the fridge, then comparative quiet.

In her head: Stewart… don’t be afraid to let go. I know it’s very confusing for you. You must have been utterly terrified – and outraged. You must have felt, along with the pain, a terrible sense of betrayal. Perhaps you’re still feeling that. But there’s no progression without forgiveness. Try to release your resentment, the sense of injustice. We’re with you. God’s with you. Let go. Please.

She lifted her face towards the central window, now framing the full sun, an orange glow through her eyelids. Appealing now to Jesus Christ to come into this place, because it was always better to welcome in the light than simply drive out the darkness.

‘Jesus, we ask that Stewart might be free of all earthly bonds. Free to go into the light and the warmth and the sublime reality of Your eternal love.’

She bent her head.

The commendation came next: a call to the spirit, in the name of its creator, to leave this world. An appeal to God to send His angels to meet Stewart, guide him home. Something told her to omit the prayers of penitence for the killers. Keep the killers out of this, whoever they might be.

Next: the cleansing.

‘Father, You have overcome the power of death, strengthen us now with Your spirit and make us worthy to perform correctly the blessing of this home. Let evil spirits be put to flight and may the angel of peace enter in. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

Lol thought, This has to be a scam. But who’s using who?

He watched the priest, his friend, through half-closed eyes – her hands together, the tips of her fingers parallel with the bridge of her nose, the pectoral cross catching the sun through the inverted V of her black- sheathed forearms.

Doing her best for these people: no scam, no sham.

Merrily. If there was only…

Stephanie Stock’s bare arm slid up against his own, again. He tried not to think about it.

Merrily opened her eyes to a light lancing through the central window, was momentarily blinded and felt an intense heat all around her, as though there was still a furnace in here and the doors had been flung open.

She felt sweat on her forehead and a harsh rawness at the back of her throat. She fought the urge to cough.

Oh God.

It had caught her off guard. Until then, there’d been nothing: a growing sense of anticlimax, no sense at all of Stewart Ash. Now the kiln seemed claustrophobic, suddenly stifling, and when the fridge grated like a passing container lorry she realized what she’d forgotten to do.

She saw Lol watching her, a flaring of alarm in his eyes. She put a hand to her throat, swallowed. Her throat was burning. She was gasping on a stench of gunpowder and rotten eggs and the smell of cheap fireworks from when she was a kid, fierce and searing as a jet from a blowlamp, hot breath of hell.

21 The Brimstone Tray

SULPHUR?

As she struggled for breath, she was asking herself Is this real? and turning to