Max Gilbert

  Ruth. I sacrificed our son. The words would have to come out soon. I let him run in here. I waited. Knowing it would blow and that our only son would be killed.

  I sacrificed our six-year-old boy.

  The contract is fulfilled.

  That old god that resides behind our shadows milked me dry of the grief and rage I felt. And took them away to use for its own purposes, whatever they are.

  And it gave me the strength in return to destroy the Saf Dar utterly and completely.

  Something touched his foot. Something soft. For a second he was afraid to look down, guessing it might be-

  He forced his eyes to travel downward, down from the sky now clearing, the blue of early evening showing through, down over the mounds of rubble with their scattering of fires, past the wrecked car, the caravan, with its scorched curtains trailing across the ground, and down to-

  -a flattened, scorched ball. The one David had played with that morning.

  He moved it with his foot.

  The feeling that came over him now was one of enormous sadness. David would never leap onto their bed in the morning, laughing, pulling him out of bed. Asking if he could go and watch a Superman video as they ate their cornflakes together.

  All that had gone.

  He stared down at the punctured ball. Its edges blurred as Chris felt his eyes prickle, as if little needle-points were touching the skin around his eyes.

  "Dad..."

  No ... He wanted to shut off the mind video now. No more.

  "Dad ... I want to go now."

  "David?"

  Ruth's voice.

  Chris looked up. On a mound of stones a figure stood, looking smoky and indistinct against the sun now pushing through the mist.

  "David!" Ruth's voice rose into a piercing squeal.

  The smoky figure jumped down into the courtyard. And became solid.

  David flew toward them.

  "I hid in the cellar, Mum. I went down inside ... and bang! Then I got out again."

  Chris crouched down and threw his arms around his son, hugging him tightly. Ruth wrapped her arms around both of them.

  Chris whispered, "David, I... I'm sorry ... I'm crying ... I'm actually crying. I'm sorry ... stupid ..."

  "It's not stupid," said Ruth, kissing her husband and son. "It's not stupid to cry."

  He held onto his wife and son and wept. The sound that came from his throat was not sobbing. He felt it rather than heard it, as it flowed from him in sweet notes, like the sound of some delicate, mystic music.

  Something inside him had been made new again.

  He held his wife and son close, feeling the animal warmth of their bodies.

  Meanwhile, the sound of the ocean gradually changed.

  The tide had turned.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  "Afternoon, Chris. Running to schedule?"

  Chris looked down from the top of the ladder to where the Major stood with two West Highland terrier puppies which pulled enthusiastically at their leads. The Major shielded his eyes against the brilliant October sunshine.

  "Just about."

  "When you opening?"

  "A week on Friday."

  He chatted to the Major who watched him at work with his keen blue eyes while the white puppies nipped at the laces of his highly polished brogues.

  He found it hard to picture the Major as he had first seen him six months before. Then the old soldier had wandered around the village in crumpled clothes, his eyes sliding out of focus as senility ate at his mind. The old Major had vanished like an exorcised ghost.

  Like everyone else who returned from the sea-fort, he had changed. The Major could pass for a man in his fifties.

  He laughed. "These two are a handful. Nearly called them Donner and Blitzen. You know, Thunder and Lightning. But we're almost house-trained, aren't we, boys?" the Major waved an enthusiastic cheerio and allowed himself to be pulled on down the street by the dogs.

  Grinning, Chris returned to the job.

  "Want me to hold the ladder for you, Dad?"

  David stood astride his new bike, one foot resting on the bottom rung.

  "No thanks, kidda. Nearly done."

  The ladder juddered again as David used it to push himself off, pedalling hard along the curving drive in the direction of the village street.

  Chris's dream was coming true at last. The insurance company had paid up without a murmur for the loss of their car, the caravan, and the sea-fort itself.

  With the money they had bought the redundant vicarage in Out-Butterwick. The builders had carried out the conversion work superbly. Soon the Vicarage Hotel would be open for business.

  "Magic, isn't it?" he'd say to Ruth.

  "Magic it is."

  But then life had been nothing short of magic these last six months.

  The awkward questions they had expected from the police-two people missing, an old fortress torn apart by a colossal explosion-never arose. They took photographs of the wrecked buildings, made notes, and swallowed everything he told them. Not that they were stupid. It was something about Out-Butterwick and Manshead which altered the way they thought.

  David came pedalling down the gravel drive.

  "When are we going down to the beach?"

  "In about twenty minutes. When I've finished this."

  "Is Mum coming?"

  "If she feels up to it."

  "I'm up to it." Ruth leaned out of the window at his side, smiling. "This doesn't make you an invalid, you know."

  "Mum. ... How did you get that baby in your stomach?"

  "Your dad'll explain later." She grinned at Chris mischievously. "Won't you, Dad?"

  "A lot later."

  "Coffee?"

  "Love one, thanks."

  Ruth shut the window.

  They had not planned another baby just yet, but... it had happened.

  The memory of the day he had set fire to the sea-fort was now oddly flattened. Almost dream-like. After they had stood on the beach to watch the sticky mess, what was left of the Saf Dar, being washed clean away from the beach by the surf, they had walked back to the village. There someone had suggested a beach barbecue. But it was more than that. A wild celebration-euphoric; an ancient exultation.

  Odd images flitted through his mind. The feasting on mounds of steak. The blazing timber on the beach. People had even burnt their furniture.

  And he remembered running with Ruth through the dunes, their bare feet flicking across grass and sand. They were running and laughing. The next image: both naked, rolling over and over in the rough grass. They had never made love like that before. Their bodies had collided like exploding stars.

  Then it was over.

  He had been conscious of a long period of peace, and a sense of quiet satisfaction, which remained with him.

  And when they learnt that Ruth was pregnant they both accepted it as a natural part of the sequence of events.

  A sequence, a magical sequence, that was continuing.

  He looked to his left. The trees that screened off the church were turning gold, those in the orchard bent under the massive weight of apples.

  The village looked a more affluent place than it had done for years, with new cars in the drives. Beyond the cottages the sea, as blue as the sky it mirrored, rolled in over the sandy beach.

  Odd fragments of recent memory ran through his mind. John Hodgson, smiling proudly, leaning over his farm gate, plump fingers knitted together, saying: "Bleeding milk yield's gone through the roof. We're going to do our own cheese with it. Y'can't pour the stuff away, can you? It's not right."

  Rosie Tamworth, the retarded girl, had always called Chris Mifter Th-tainfer. Yesterday, she had sung out, "Hello, Chris," her voice as bright as a silver bell.

  Mark Faust had talked a lot about the Mary-Anne and the loss of his crewmates. Chris guessed that the big American was going through a period of healing. Recently, Mark had been promising to take a boat out, for the first time, to where the ship an
d crew he loved lay on the sea-bed. It was time to say goodbye to them.

  Mrs. Jarvis, who should have been crippled with spinal cancer, walked along the street in the direction of Mark's shop, a basket over her arm. She gave a cheerful wave. Chris waved back.

  "I've never seen a whole community like this," Ruth had said. "I can't believe it. Everyone's so happy."

  "Don't knock it. That's because we live in an enchanted village." Chris had said it lightly. But he believed it. Magical. Enchanted. Yes. A happy enchantment.

  He found it hard to describe. The nearest he could get to putting it into words was to suggest that these couple of miles or so of coast had become sexy. Like the sexy girl who works in the newsagent's. You find yourself going to buy a magazine you don't really want because you know she'll be there. When you see her you get a warm buzz of sexual electricity goosing through you. Compared with the rest of the world the very molecules of the place seemed to dance to a richer rhythm.

  David pedalled down the drive as Tony Gateman strolled toward the house.

  "Hi, David. How's school?"

  "Fine, thanks. How's the pub?"

  Tony laughed heartily.

  Chris came down the ladder. He'd slipped into this relaxed custom of chatting to neighbors. Time was a plentiful commodity in Out-Butterwick.

  They chatted for a while. Then he began to suspect that Tony had come for more than small-talk. There was something on the man's mind.

  After five minutes it came out.

  "Chris, I haven't told you this, but for the last few weeks I've been attempting to put down on paper what happened to us at Manshead over those few days in April."

  "You're not going public?"

  "No, perish the thought. Everyone in the village agreed to keep it secret. I'm certainly going to abide by that. No, it's ... it's just that I want to get this thing straight in my mind. Call it intellectual conceit, but I want to work out what happened up there."

  "Perhaps there's no need. Any more than you really need to know why the sun rises each morning. It happens. It's beautiful. That's all we need to know."

  Tony smiled. "Humor me, Chris. What happened on that final day?"

  "In a nutshell, some kind of sacrifice took place.

  Whatever came here-god, cosmic spirit-took what was offered and paid us in return."

  "And the result was that the Saf Dar were destroyed forever. And there was enough left of that payment, that burst of supernatural power, to heal everyone that was sick in the village and leave us with an uncannily happy and prosperous community."

  "True."

  "But what was sacrificed?" Tony smiled. "You know I keep recalling what I read in my history books. That in ancient times the greatest, most valuable sacrifice was self-sacrifice. In some cultures, the men and women who sacrificed themselves in times of acute danger became gods themselves. Or so the legends ran." Tony looked hard at Chris. "Chris, what happened to David that afternoon, when he ran back to the burning sea-fort?"

  "Tony, I don't want to think about it. Really I don't."

  "Humor me, Chris. Let me put this into words for you. Then stick it in the back of your mind and get on with your life." Tony Gateman pressed his hands together. "David did this. He knew what he had to do. Even if he wasn't completely aware of it consciously. He had to make you believe he had died. So that it would release within you that tremendous outflow of emotion-not just grief, hatred, anger, but an emotion so deep, probably so primal, that it has no name. He knew he had to break that barrier between your higher mind and that reservoir of emotion that burned deep down inside you."

  "So ... out it all came," Chris whispered. "This eruption of pure emotion. Whatever it was took it. And paid us with some of its own power." He stood up, rolling the words around his mind. He looked out to sea. Moving away from the jetty across the ocean, shining in the October sunlight, was a rowing boat. Chris knew who the giant figure at the oars was. With each slow pull of the oars, Mark Faust moved further away from the shore.

  "But how could David know all this? He was only six years old."

  "David's special. You know that. The things he tells you. Tell me this, Chris. Do you ever go out to Manshead?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Notice anything?"

  "Yes. And I think I know what you're going to say."

  "David told us that when he ran into the burning building he hid in the cellar. And that the cellar protected him from the explosion that demolished the sea-fort."

  "Yes."

  "But you know that's not possible, Chris. It wasn't exploding gas bottles which destroyed the sea-fort. The detonation came from within the cellar itself. Perhaps a natural build-up of methane gas-who knows. Anyway ... The building collapsed into the hole created by the detonation. The cellar is full of rubble. No one could have survived in there."

  Chris nodded slowly, trying not to allow his imagination to show him pictures of what might lie beneath that mound of butter-colored stone.

  As they talked, David came pedalling toward them.

  "You know what happened now, Chris, don't you? To David?"

  "Yes."

  "Right. I'm ready, Chris. Oh ... hello, Tony."

  Ruth walked as quickly as the new bulge in her stomach would let her. She smiled. "Someone tells me they saw you out walking with Elizabeth again."

  For the first time ever, Chris saw Tony blush. "Ah ... That'll be Mark. The old gossip ... Yes. It's true."

  Chris grinned. "Something you're not telling us, Tony?"

  "Time for the beach, Dad? called David, catching hold of Chris's leg to steady himself on the bike.

  "Sure is, kidda. Coming, Tony?"

  Tony laughed. "Love to. But I have ... er ..."

  "An appointment with Elizabeth?" Ruth's smile broadened.

  Tony colored again. "I'll, er, walk part of the way with you."

  "Can I go down on my bike, Mum?"

  "I expect so. Come on." In the warm sunshine, mother and son walked ahead, Ruth waddling slightly, David on the bike wobbling a lot.

  Chris did not bother to lock the door. There was no need to be security-conscious in Out-Butterwick.

  "So ... Chris." Tony spoke in a low voice as they followed. "You know what happened to David, don't you?"

  "Yes, I do, Tony."

  I do know. I know that on that afternoon in April my six-year-old son returned from that place to which we all ultimately travel. And now I know he will grow into a man the world has not seen in centuries, if not thousands of years.

  "Chris?"