ARCHANGEL

Garry D. Kilworth

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

(Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Prologue

Nine a.m., Quinquagesima Sunday, 2002 A.D., New York.

Bishop Cates had a human failing: he was afraid of dying. It was not being dead that concerned him, because he felt fairly confident of going to the right place, but dying usually involved pain and stress, and he’d had a sufficiency of both of those in his life. As a chaplain in Vietnam in the 1960s he’d seen pain in plenty and enough stress to warp a nation.

On his way to Kennedy Airport, the Bishop was nervous. He kept staring out of the back window, to see if the cab was being followed. This fidgeting in turn made the driver wary, wondering if he had a member of the Cosa Nostra in his taxi: maybe the guy who had handed John Gotti to the feds? The driver was a Jamaican ex-street gang member who had left his home island in search of a less perilous and more lucrative life and found himself in one of the most dangerous jobs in one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

‘Hey, man, what’s the grif ?’ said the driver, pulling over. ‘You steal somebody’s socks, eh?’

The accent bewildered the Bishop for the moment, but he caught a couple of the words and understood the driver was concerned that the car might be hit by hoodlums.

‘No – I – er, I’m a member of the Church, my son …’

‘I in’t your son, white rum.’

‘No, of course not, that’s just an expression,’ laughed the Bishop, nervously. ‘It’s true that someone might be following me, perhaps to kill me, but it isn’t anything to do with gangsters. It’s terrorists …’

The Jamaican’s eyes opened wide. ‘You mean like them Middle East terrorists, man? Hey, hoist your luggage out of my taxi, man – you got problems I don’t want.’

‘Not Muslims, necessarily. They’re more likely to be from our own Southern states – Christian fundamentalists. I’m on my way to an important conference in London. There are people that might want to stop me getting there. It’s very important – worldly matters.’

A police car drew up alongside them and a cop yelled, ‘Hey, cabbie, get that vehicle moving. You’re stopped in a no-parking zone. Move it.’

The taxi driver did not want trouble with the police. Trouble with terrorists was bad, but trouble with the police meant deportation. His visa had expired and he had no work permit. Smiling a big smile, he waved and pulled out into the traffic again, looking in the rear-view mirror every so often at the Bishop. When they arrived at the airport he flew round to the back of the cab and dumped the luggage on the ground, snatched the proffered fare, jumped in his taxi and drove away quickly.

The Bishop sighed. He wheeled his suitcase through the automatic doors and found himself being accosted by a colleague, on his way back from somewhere.

‘Bishop? Where are you off to?’

‘Oh, Cardinal Jefferson.’ The Bishop laughed nervously. ‘Hello. I’m – I’m on my way to London. I’ve been invited by the Archbishop of York – the old one, you know – to a seminar on, er, Catholic-Anglican Views on Sexual Promiscuity in the Young. Can’t stop …’

He hurried off, leaving the Cardinal looking puzzled. The fact was, Bishop Cates was not allowed to tell anyone, anyone, about the conference. He had told the taxi driver because he couldn’t think of something else quickly enough, but a New York cabbie would not question the significance of his remarks. So a bishop was on his way to London to a conference? So what? The Cardinal, however, would be intensely curious about such a conference and would undoubtedly take it further.

At the Pynchon Conference Rooms in London, there would be representatives from all the world’s major religions and sects, and the Bishop was proud to be one of them.

But he was still scared. There were many who would kill to stop such a conference from going ahead, from reaching an agreement such as the one proposed – the only item on the agenda. The Bishop did not want to be martyred. He was happy being a bishop. He did not aspire to sainthood, not if it meant a bullet through the brain to achieve it.

He found the flight desk, checked in his luggage, and went immediately to the departure lounge where he was able to relax a little. There he chatted amiably with a family bound for a European holiday until he boarded his aircraft.

It was only when the flight neared its destination and was on the approach to Heathrow on the other side of the Atlantic that he again felt apprehensive. But this time it was not a physical threat that worried him. A sense of spiritual unease crawled all over him, like a skin allergy, until he began to sweat feverishly in the same way as he had once on eating a bad curry. Only this was not food poisoning.

The Bishop was an imaginative man, whose mental images of the horrors of evil were as vivid as the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. He could visualize the tortures, the rape of his soul, the agony of an impaled and flagellated spirit. This kind of suffering was very real to him, and he sensed in the situation below a potential threat of this kind, to himself personally, and to the public in general. He was so scared he thought he might vomit.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ said the first-class stewardess, stopping by his seat and looking into his eyes. ‘The sick bags are in front of you.’

‘I’m OK he lied,’ sinking deeper into his seat.

But he wasn’t all right. He sensed something in the city beneath the aircraft. A strong, malevolent presence. It made him recoil within, as if from the stink of evil.

Something was rotten in the City of London.

Chapter One

South of the Thames the clergyman’s wife was out for the evening, visiting her mother, and he was putting the children to bed. The eldest child was Samantha, who slept in her own room on the ground floor of the large semi-detached house. David and Noel shared a room with a dormer window.

‘Shall I read you a story?’ said their father, on tucking them in. ‘How about Flat Stanley? You both like that one.’

‘Pull the curtains more,’ ordered Noel, going under his sheets. ‘I can see the black.’

The priest did as he was asked, closing the gap in the curtains, knowing from experience that if he did not, or tried to persuade Noel otherwise, there would be broken sleep and wails caused by distressing nightmares.

‘Right, now, the story …’

The story was read, the boys kissed goodnight, and the night-light left on.

The priest went downstairs and found his daughter watching television, instead of doing her homework.

‘Have you done your work?’ he asked.

‘In a minute. I just want to see this.’

It was a soap. All the children seemed to watch the soap operas. The priest sighed. ‘Well, the minute it’s finished, I want that off and you doing your homework, Sam – do you hear?’

‘Yes, Dad.’ The eyes did not leave the screen.

Skip, the family’s dog, a golden retriever, lay at the girl’s feet, allowing its ear to be absently played with, occasionally getting a stroke or two and rolling liquid brown eyes in Samantha’s direction whenever this treat was forthcoming.

However, once the programme was over, Samantha dutifully switched off the set and did as she was asked. Her father gave assistance, in between writing his own papers, when requested. Finally, the last line was ruled, the last word was scribbled, and Samantha announced she was going to bed. ‘Can I phone Jacky before I go up?’

‘No, you can talk to her tomorrow, at school.’

‘But I just want to check something about homework.’ The priest sighed again. ‘Are you sure she’s still up?’

‘Course. She’s allowed to stay up much later than me,’ came back the retort.

‘All right, then, but make it quick.’

The phone call, as he had guessed, was not really about homework, but about the programme she had seen earlier.

Finally Samantha came into the room, kissed him on the cheek, and said, ‘Goodnight, Pops.’

‘Father to you.’

‘Goodnight, Dad.’ She smiled.

Skip padded after her hopefully, but was ordered back into the living room by the priest.

‘No dog hairs on the beds, thank you,’ he said severely to the animal.

Skip padded dutifully back to his warm spot on the mat by the chair as if he understood the problem exactly.

Once he believed the children were settled, the priest went to wash the dinner dishes.

After the washing-up was done, he discovered that the stainless steel sink was rather greasy. He took out some cleanser from the cupboard beneath and began to clean it. Half-way through he thought he heard a noise from outside and went to the kitchen window to stare out into the back garden.

The house was in a particularly quiet spot and while the odd drunk or two might occasionally stroll by causing a disturbance, little else unsettled the neighbourhood. There was always the chance of burglars, of course, and this was what was troubling the priest as he peered out into the darkness. Recently he had been considering getting security lights, but was concerned that cats and foxes might set them off all the time and worry his wife.

Seeing nothing outside, the priest went back to finish cleaning the sink. He wondered, as he was doing it, about serial killers. Did they ever wash up the dishes and clean the sink? Did it worry terrorists, for instance, whether their ties were straight, or their shoes shined? All those small, mundane tasks that ordinary people, people who had never committed an offence against humankind, carried out automatically: did the murderers and the rapists of this world worry about them, too? Did they concern themselves about wearing clashing colours, or whether their lawns were cut at the weekend, or their cars washed properly, or that the corners of the pages were turned down on a favourite book, or that they had committed a faux pas in front of the Bishop? Did they ever think about anything, except food, drink and killing?

It was beyond the priest’s ken, but he couldn’t see how someone could worry about getting a haircut and be planning their next murder at the same time. Just as he was thinking about whether he had a clean surplice for the Sunday service and planning what to say in his sermon. He felt that killers had one thing and one thing only on their minds: the killings they had done and the killings they would do.

There was a scratching sound outside, as if someone were climbing on the roof.

His heart beating fast, the priest opened the back door and went out into the garden. He always told his wife to call the police if she was in the least suspicious of anything, but he failed to follow his own preaching, afraid of making himself look a fool. He crept to the back of the garden and looked up.

He could see the boys’ bedroom night-light, glowing through a chink in their curtains. His eyes scoured the V-shaped valleys in the roof, looking to see if a cat was up there. It was quite a dark night, however, and though there were stars out, there was no moon. He wondered about going inside and getting a torch and shining it up there, so that he could put his mind at rest, but in the end decided he was being silly. It might have been a pigeon, or some other bird, since flown.

Going indoors, the priest decided to let the dog out into the garden. He was not a bad watchdog, as dogs went, though he tended to bark at cats and other dogs, which nullified his use outside.

Skip barked a little on first being let out, but after a while fell into the occasional growling and whining in the back of his throat, as if complaining about his treatment.

The priest locked the back door and went to his desk in his study to finish the piece of writing he had started earlier in the evening. It concerned Sunday prayers for the successful outcome of the Meeting that was taking place below the City of London. The priest was excited about the Meeting, as were most of the clergy, and eagerly awaited the outcome. He was sick of the violence in the world perpetrated in the name of his God, in many countries including his own. It served only one purpose: to feed the corrupt with human blood. There was no excuse for such carnage and he hoped that the condemnation of united world religions would be enough to stamp out the fanatics and extremists for good and all.

At about ten o’clock he heard a terrible yell from the boys’ room. He left the study quickly, to find that his daughter had woken up and was wandering through the hallway.

‘What was that?’ she said.

‘Go back to bed, dear,’ said the priest. ‘I think Noel’s having a nightmare.’

Samantha did as she was told and the priest continued up the stairs to the boys’ room. On going into their bedroom he found Noel bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat, crying. His brother was still fast asleep in the adjacent bed.

‘What’s the matter, son?’ said the priest, gently. ‘Bad dreams?’

Noel didn’t answer at first, he just sobbed while he was being cuddled.

Finally the little boy stared fearfully towards the window and said, ‘Daddy, someone tried to get in.’

The priest glanced at the window, then said, ‘I’m sure it was just a dream, Noel. Just a silly dream.’

The priest got a towel and wiped his son down, stroked his brow for a while, and fairly soon the little boy lay back on the pillow and fell asleep again. The priest sat there for a while, looking at him. Then he stared at the dormer window. He got up and pulled the curtain aside, looking out into the blackness. Although he could see nothing, he sensed something.

This troubled him: his psychic hackles were standing on end. He was sensitive to things that troubled his spirit. Of course, he told himself, there was a lot of evil in the world, it wasn’t surprising that occasionally one’s spirit was troubled. Such a man as himself, who dealt with the metaphysical side of life every day, and was sensitive to changes in the psychic atmosphere, was bound to receive twinges occasionally, especially so close to an inner city with its night hawks.

But even as he sat there, persuading himself that all was well inside the house, his concern deepened. He had the distinct feeling that something was above him, lying in the crevice between the two roofs, resting. Whatever that something was, it was not a real man.

The priest had never been one of those clergymen who believed in the Devil as a corporeal being, a person of flesh and blood, walking the streets and carrying out evil deeds. He was a man who believed that evil was an inherent part of human nature, that the evil was within humankind, and that men and women had to be wary of themselves, rather than some supernatural creature abroad, creating nefarious acts.

Yet, as he sat there on the edge of his youngest son’s bed, he felt this proximity of something dire, something frightful, above the place where his family slept. Mental images flitted through the priest’s mind, first seen as illustrations in old holy books, kept in the library of the college where he had taken his theology degree. He could not get over the idea that between his two sons and an iniquitous entity were a few roof tiles and some loft rafters.

He had the feeling that only one force was keeping the thing outside the house and that force was his own presence. He was a priest, a man of God, and therefore repulsive to any diabolic creature with heinous intent.

The feeling was so strong, he might have tried to carry out an exorcism there and then, on his own household, had he known exactly what was required. As it was, he was a fairly unexceptional rector, with three churches in the district, and his mystical side had never been pandered to beyond ordinary prayers and administering the sacrament.

He did think about performing the Eucharist in his study below, but found it difficult to move from his sons’ bedroom.

He might have stayed where he was indefinitely, had not the front door slammed.

Getting up and going downstairs quickly, he found his wife had come home. She was taking off her coat and scarf in the hallway and hanging them up on the hooks beneath the stairs.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked, not looking at him, and expecting his usual answer.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

She turned to stare at him. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’

‘Oh,’ he muttered, then decided not to frighten her. ‘Noel’s had a dream.’

She looked relieved. ‘Well, poor love, he’s a bit coldy at the moment. He gets feverish when he’s got a cold. I’ll go up and have a look at him.’

She went up the stairs and the priest watched her go, wondering if he should accompany her. Then he decided he was being over-imaginative. There was much of Noel in him – or rather, much of him in Noel. They were both fairly sensitive, close-to-the-edge people, when it came to atmospheres.

The priest sighed and went into the living room to tidy up some magazines his daughter had scattered on the floor.

Then he went to the back door to let Skip back in for the night.

‘Skip?’ he called. ‘Come on, boy.’

There was no answer.

‘Skip?’

It was then that the priest felt an unmistakable wave of nausea strike him like a soft blow. He shut the door quickly and gulped down several breaths. The stink! It had robbed him of air. It made him gag with fear. Something was out there: some creature from another plane. The priest leaned back against the door, wondering what to do about it. What did it want from him and his family in the first place?

It was then that he remembered a passage he had read recently in an old religious work written by a monk in the eleventh century, on the island of Lindisfarne.

He ran to his desk, took the book from the bookcase, and found the relevant passage: ‘… if a demon is sent to earth by Satan, the first act of that demon is to eat the bloodfilled heart of some innocent creature, such as a child, in order to satiate its hunger and thirst after its journey from the regions of Hell.’

The priest stared at the passage for a long second, his stomach turning over. He felt the bile rise to his throat, threatening to choke him. Panic and shock held him there until he suddenly ran out of the room and along the hall, straight to his daughter’s bedroom. Wrenching open the door he yelled, ‘Samantha?’

‘Daddy?’ cried the girl, sitting bolt upright in bed.

She looked terrified, her eyes round and wide – but she looked whole and well.

‘It’s all right, dear,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry.’ He stared at her for a moment more then ran frantically upstairs to the boys’ bedroom. He rushed into their room to find his wife picking up a few scattered toys in the gloom of the night-light. She looked up, startled.

‘Thank God!’ sobbed the priest, seeing his two sons still fast asleep.

The priest returned downstairs, grabbing a cross from a window niche on his descent. With no thought now for his own safety, he went out into the back garden. Half-way across the lawn he tripped over something. He looked down and in the half-light from the kitchen window he saw Skip. The dog’s golden form was stretched out, cold and stiff, on the grass.

Skip’s chest was like a grisly cavern, empty, the heart missing. It was as if someone had grabbed his front legs, pulled them apart, splitting him down the middle, then reached in and scooped out the main organ.

The priest stepped back, his mind swimming, and then he was sick on the grass.

Recovering from the giddiness which had overcome him, he went back inside and bolted and locked the back door. He picked up the telephone in the kitchen, dialling 999.

‘The police,’ he said to the operator. ‘There’s a … there’s been a … my dog’s been … please, I need someone here, immediately.’

The priest sat by the telephone and waited for the police to arrive. They came about ten minutes later. He let them in and thanked them for responding so quickly. ‘It’s my dog,’ he said, ‘outside the back door.’

He led the way and showed them the mutilated carcass on the lawn and they told him they would have a look round.

They used the priest’s ladder to check the tiles on the roof by torchlight and they found bloodstains and bits of gristle scattered in and around the gutter. One of the policemen remarked that it looked as if something had been having a picnic up there: a wild beast or a bird of prey.

His friend below, thinking he was joking, told him not to be so sick.

‘I’m not,’ the first policeman told him, ‘I’m serious.’

More disturbingly, there were deep scratches like claw marks in the corner of the dormer window, as if something had been trying to get in at the children and had abandoned the task.

When they told the priest, he waited until they had left and immediately performed the Eucharist, after which he sprinkled holy water around the house and prayed throughout the night to drive the evil away from his home.

The next day he piled his family into their car and drove them up to Derbyshire.