I'd never seen Blake Frandenburg before. He was one of the original settlers on Pig Island twenty years ago and I knew his name, but not his face. When none of the men in striped polo shirts and canvas hats approached me, I wandered the shop for a while, picking up odd extras I might need for the next few days: no Newkie Brown so a bottle of Stolichnaya in case I was on Pig Island for a long time, a few sticks of menthol chewing-gum (thinking of the smell last night again) and some Kendal mint cake, because you never knew what they'd feed you in those places. These are people who can get by on green tea and glasses of their own urine, don't forget.
I was at the cash desk, half-way through paying, when the shop girl paused. She lifted her chin and looked over my shoulder out of the window and, with a muttered ''Scuse me,' slipped silently out from behind the desk. I turned to see what had got her attention. There was nothing outside, just the neatly clipped green and beyond that bright pennants fluttering on the masts. At that moment a large woman in shorts and a bikini top came barrelling across the grass towards the shop, sweating and ushering in front of her a young boy, both of them casting anxious glances over their shoulders in the direction of the jetty. The shop girl stepped to the door and held it open for the woman to come inside, holding the child firmly, her hands covering both his ears. 'That's it, good boy. Inside. Good lad.'
The shop girl closed the door and raised the blind slightly, so that she could stand with her nose to the door and stare out. The large woman stood next to me, peering out of the window, mopping her neck, the child pressed into her hip. Outside, next to the green, a couple had parked their car. They had both opened their doors and the woman had one sandalled foot resting on the Tarmac when something made them change their minds. First the foot disappeared back inside, then the doors closed. You could hear the distinctive double clunk of a central-locking system engaging. Behind me, other shoppers had slowly turned to see what was happening and now a long silence descended on the shop. I was about to say something when, from nowhere it seemed, a face appeared on the other side of the glass.
'Holy Christ!' blurted the fat woman. 'He's insane.' At the back of the shop a small girl squealed with fear and hid behind her mother's legs.
The face pressed itself into the glass, its nose distorted, the eyes pulled open to show the pink inner rims, the lips pressed away from gums like a skull.
'Booh!' it said. 'Booh! Run! Run from the bogeyman!'
And that was how I met Blake Frandenburg, the first of the thirty or so members of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries I'd encounter over the next few days.
He turned out to be even weirder-looking without his face pushed against a glass pane: he was miniature and suntanned with a very tight, thin skull that looked like it had been squashed sideways in a vice. His skin was rough and scarred, like a shark's, and he was dressed like he belonged halfway between a Florida hotel and a golf course: a yellow shirt and tie, white shorts, his feet in shin-high socks and pale laced-up golf shoes. When he first shook my hand outside the convenience store it was like holding the skeleton of a very dried-up fish.
'Sorry about the bogeyman thing.' He gave me a nervous grin. 'But I really want to impress this on you, Joe, they push you to it. They really do. It's been like this from scratch – they ain't done nothing but be antagonistic.' He was from the States, and when he spoke he smiled constantly with one side of his mouth – like the other side was paralysed – showing those white teeth you only ever get on a Yank. 'The things they say about us. If you want my opinion, it's just plain antagonistic.''
'They say you're Satanists. That's what they say about you.'
His fixed smile didn't waver. He continued shaking my hand, nodding up and down, up and down, nervously searching my face, like he wasn't sure if there was a sly joke going on or not. His palms were sticky with sweat. Just when it seemed it was going to go on for ever, he took a sudden step back, releasing my hand like it was hot. 'Sure,' he said. 'Sure. We'll get to that later.' He ran his palms down the front of his shirt – to smooth it or clean them, I wasn't sure – and shot me another quick flash of teeth. 'All in God's good time, all in God's good time.'
That edgy, noncommittal cheerfulness turned out to be Blake's thing. He kept it up all the way across the firth to the island, giving me cheery facts and figures about PHM: how many people it reached through its website, how they'd built generators and cared for the land, and worshipped daily. 'We live in Paradise, Joe. Thirty of us, living in Paradise. Only five people have left in twenty years and you'll see why. You, Joe, even you won't want to leave.'
I sat in the bows, facing the island, the cuffs on my shorts rolled up a bit to get some sun on my white, city-boy knees, watching the settlement on Pig Island gradually reveal itself to me: a vague pale line on the north shoreline, slowly blooming into a spit of sand: indeterminate patches of colour above it, which wavered and crystallized into twenty or more cottages huddling together, their windows reflecting back the morning sea like mirrors. Apart from the cliff that rose above the community, crowned with trees, the settlement didn't look very sinister now I could see it close up – not the place of devil-worshippers. Each cottage had once been painted a different ice-cream colour, like the seafront at Tobermory, but they had faded now and stood, like dying flowers, facing a central green. The only God-squad thing was a towering stone cross in the centre of the grass – Celtic, medieval, pagan-looking, and as we got closer I saw just how fuck-off enormous it was. At least forty feet tall. Taller than our house back in Kilburn.
The dory was quick. Even loaded down with a week's supplies it was a little sea rocket – the water slipped quickly away under us, oily engine fumes lacing the air. Blake nosed it into a small gap between the rocks and a jetty. Overhead was a trot-line with a pulley that he pulled down and clipped on to the bowline. He worked quickly, killing the motor and moving the fenders around so the boat didn't jostle against the rock. On the jetty I helped him unload the boat, stacking everything – the tinned stuff and the fresh milk, crates of vegetables and (oh, sweet relief) a healthy stash of Guinness tinnies and gin – into a large handcart. I pushed it for him because that was only fair, big hairy old me and tiny-guy him, and I followed him in silence up the narrow path that led away from the jetty, looking at the way the knotty veins in his calves pulsed black with the effort of climbing.
At the top of the path I dropped the cart and stopped, staring at the huddled settlement. It was like a novelty golf course with its neatly trimmed green and paths running off in different directions – like you'd expect a cuckoo-clock woman to wheel out on tracks any second. Set just behind the front row of cottages, where the land rose, was the roof of a long breezeblock building that looked a bit like the sort of community halls that sprang up everywhere in the seventies. Against it the cottages looked even more run-down, with their weathered roofs, the same greenish-grey as the earth, only freckled in places where a slate had been recently replaced. And it was silent. Not a sign of life except for the two of us.
'Here,' said Blake, pointing to the grass. 'Wait here. I won't be long. Please don't leave the green. For your own safety, please stay here on the grass.' Before I could stop him he headed away up a path, glancing left and right as he went, his golf shirt flapping against his skinny back.
At first I stood for a while in the centre of the lawn, staring at the place he'd disappeared. Then, when I realized he wasn't coming back, I turned and looked around. With the exception of the waves breaking on the beach below, nothing moved. Everything stood still and hot and silent in the midday sun. The curtains in all the windows were tightly closed against the heat, and beyond their roofs rose the highlands, thick with trees. The west coast of Scotland is poxy with midges and I could imagine what it was like between those trees – thick with the fuckers, probably.
I went and stood in the shadow of the cross, pulled the mobile out of the rucksack, looked at it and thought, Shit, Lex, I'm sorry. No signal. Typical. I walked to the edge of the green to s
ee if I could catch anything there. Nothing. I walked all round the grass, staring at the screen, holding the phone at arm's length, standing on tiptoe, standing on rocks, and then, when I still couldn't get a signal, I put it in my pocket and sat down again. I stared back at the mainland for a while, at the Craignish Peninsula, green and foamy and indistinct in the bright sea, a flash of silver where the marina was. Why was Blake making me wait? Probably a test to see if I'd stay where he put me. And, of course, me being working-class, as Lexie would point out, the exam ethic never does come easy: I just couldn't stay still. After about five minutes I had to get up. I had a lot to do in my time on Pig Island.
Weird to think that the letter I got twenty years ago was written on this island. Dove had sold the ministry's assets, given a whack to the IRS and come scurrying back to the UK, a handful of devoted disciples with him. He bought Pig Island and founded the Positive Living Centre.
'The only thing to mar my happiness,' he said in the letter, 'is the arrogance of certain members of the press. I remember you quite well, Mr Finn. I remember you in Albuquerque, and that you said you'd like to kill me. You should know that I will be in control of the end of my life. It will be a more beautiful, spectacular and memorable end than someone of your calibre could comprehend. And be glad! You will know when it happens! Because when I take my life I intend to take your peace of mind with me. I will, Mr Finn, in the final hour, run rings around you.'
The Fortean Times was not pleased. 'You'll end up selling space on the hatch, match and dispatch column at the Crosby Herald,' said Finn happily, while the magazine's legal department was girding its loins for a fight. But the summons never came. We waited. We all held our breath. Nothing happened. Weeks went by. Months. After almost a year my curiosity got the better of me. I wrote to the PO box on the letter asking if Malachi was going to pursue the 'conversation raised in your last letter'. No reply. I waited weeks and wrote again. 'Looking forward to hearing from you.' Still no reply. On it went, letter after letter, and nothing but silence from Pig Island. Eventually, after six months, I got a curt little note from the treasurer: 'Dear Mr Finn. Sorry to inform you, but Pastor Dove is no longer with us.'
'No longer with us,' I asked Finn. 'What does that mean?'
'Dunno. Topped himself, probably. And if he's dead I'm glad.'
'He said his death was going to be memorable. Remember? Said we'd all know about it. Me especially. Said he was going to take my peace of mind with him.'
'Well?' said Finn. 'Has he?'
I paused. 'Don't think so. Don't feel any different. I mean, I'd like to know how he killed himself. I'd like to know if he went back on his manifesto, how he made it memorable, cos I always had this idea it was going to be somewhere public, you know? Somewhere everyone would see him. He's a showman.'
'You'll have to find his body. That's the only way to find out.'
'Yeah. And I think it's out on some shag-awful island in Scotland.'
After that I went on for twenty years as a freelance journalist, but I never really took one eye off Pig Island. I did my paranormal work, and hackwork by the yard, but if anything came up on the Western Isles of Scotland, I'd be there. Which is how I came to do the Eigg revolution. And how I got invited, at last, on to Pig Island. Weird to think of Dove's body out there somewhere on this silent island. Weird to think what the Ministries might have done with his body. Built a mausoleum, maybe. Or left it lying in state for people to come and see, like Lenin or Jeremy Bentham. In a glass box somewhere out in those trees.
6
I crossed the clipped lawn in silence and set off along a small path that passed the backs of the cottages. Everything was neat and ordered – wheelie-bins lined up neatly against walls, a large recycling bin with flies circling its opening, and a shed where a ride-on mower sat with its bonnet folded open, piles of yellow gas tanks stacked beyond it. Nothing odd there. The path left the cottages, entered the trees. I could feel in the back of my legs that the land had begun to climb slightly.
Over the years I'd done a lot of work in the States, trailing evangelists, watching mad-haired women in housecoats draw UFOs in trailerpark dust – and that morning on Pig Island I was suddenly reminded of a wood I'd visited on that long trip. It was in Louisiana, just outside Baton Rouge, and I was interested because the local residents had had the shits put up them by someone sneaking into the wood at night and decorating all the trees for a half a square mile with tiny, ruby-eyed voodoo dolls. I only found out later that a killer had been operating in those woods at the same time. A killer of children. No one ever worked out for sure if the dolls were connected with the murders, or if they were completely coincidental, but they stuck with me. From then on I couldn't go into woods anywhere on the planet without remembering the red points of light reflected in their eyes, and wondering if the killer had put them there – or if he'd been watching me that day as I walked around. It all came back to me now, like a shiver: the whisper of Spanish moss and live oak, the faint twang of a stringed instrument.
I hesitated, feeling the hair go up on the back of my neck, and turned slightly to look back. Only a few yards below me Blake had appeared silently on the path. His hand was up in a friendly wave.
'Hi, Joe. Hi. Good to see you.' He flashed me his ratty, lopsided smile. 'Do you recall, Joe, I asked you to wait on the green?' He laughed. 'Didn't I ask you to wait? Didn't I?'
I wanted to grin back, laugh, maybe slap him on the back like a buddy and say, 'Yeah, but you didn't really expect me to wait, did you? You set a test like that, what do you expect?' and that was nearly what I did. But the professional came back at me: Don't bollix it up, Oakesy, old mate.
'I thought you'd forgotten.'
He wagged his finger. 'You'll find we're very friendly, very friendly folk here at the Psychogenic Healing Ministries, Joe, but please believe that we have rules for your own protection.' He raised his eyebrows and flashed me another smile. 'We do it because we care, Joe. We want you to enjoy your time here, not regret it. Now, won't you join me for lunch?'
He led me back towards the cottages, his hands outstretched to show me the community – like he was trying to sell it to me. 'We'd like to get to know you,' he said, grinning over his shoulder, as we came back to the green and crossed it. He slipped down a path that led along the side of the breezeblock building, still speaking over his shoulder. 'We'd like you to stay with us and to get to know us. We want you to feel you're part of our family.' At the head of the path he paused, holding out his hand with a theatrical flourish. 'This way,' he said, with a wink – as if to say, 'I just know you're going to LOVE this!'
I stepped forward and turned the corner and saw, arranged at two trestle tables, thirty faces gleaming up at me. Dove's followers. One or two of them half rose from their seats, grinning broadly, not sure what the etiquette was – and from somewhere at the back someone applauded timidly. The tables were loaded down with food; a breeze moved among it, lifting festively coloured napkins and tablecloths, ruffling blouses and rocking the massive enthusiastic sign strung above their heads: 'WELCOME TO CUAGACHEILEAN!!!!'
'Joe,' Blake said, holding out his hand to indicate the diners, 'Joe Oakes. Meet the Psychogenic Healing Ministries. Welcome to our family!'
It was probably only then that I really believed no one on Pig Island had linked me to Joe Finn of twenty years ago, the great nemesis of Malachi Dove.
Everyone knows the story about Aleister Crowley, right? The one about when the 'Great Beast' Crowley tried to raise Pan? Well, it's dead simple. It goes like this: Crowley's disciples locked him and his son, McAleister, in a room at the top of a Parisian hotel, promising that under no circumstances would they re-enter the room until morning, whatever noises they heard. They waited downstairs, huddled together and wrapped in blankets because the hotel had gone inexplicably cold. All night they listened in horror as the ritual upstairs unfolded in a series of bangs, shouts and splintering of wood. Usual shite. At last, at daybreak, when silence had fallen, they
ventured cautiously upstairs to find the door locked, the room silent. When they broke down the door they saw Crowley's ritual had been a success. His son McAleister lay dead at one side of the room and on the other crouched Crowley, naked, bloodied and gibbering. He needed four months in a lunatic asylum before he could speak again.
Well, it's famous, as stories go. Only problem is, it didn't happen. It's just a myth, just part of Crowley's impulse for self-promotion and showmanship. That's what Satanists are, in general – a bunch of theatrical types whose main aim, IMHO, is to get a crafty shag. So what was I expecting of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries? I can't remember exactly – but probably the usual shite: Gothic robes, altar rites, chanting in the trees at sundown. What I didn't expect were these ordinary, mostly middle-class people, dressed, on the whole, like they were off for a spot of shopping on a Saturday afternoon.
'You see, Joe, we're quite normal,' said Blake, showing me to my seat. 'We're not going to eat you!'
'No,' laughed one of the other diners. 'Or try to convert you!'
And that was supposed to be the first impression I got – normality and sunny wholesomeness through and through, from the gingham tablecloth to the homey food: thick-crusted quiches sprinkled with chives, misshapen pork pies, large institutional metal bowls of potato salad. There was even wine in cloudy-looking carafes placed at intervals down the table, and everywhere I looked I saw pleasant-faced people grinning back at me, sticking out their hands and saying, 'Hi, Joe!' But no matter what they did, I couldn't help it, that REM song kept chuntering away through the old grey matter: 'Shiny happy people'. Something a bit sinister about anyone that happy ... 'Shiny happy people'. And the fucking sunshine, too. Sunshine in a bottle. That was what they wanted me to think.