'Hey,' I said, when we'd been walking for more than half an hour. My voice sounded very loud. 'Are you nervous?'
'No,' he said, in a whisper, not looking at me, keeping his eyes on the woods. 'No. Why would I be?'
'Because of what's on the video.'
He glanced at me. 'That video is all a big misunderstanding.'
'A misunderstanding? I've seen it. There's some weird fucking creature on it, walking through these fucking forests. What kind of misunderstanding is that?'
At first he didn't answer. We kept walking and I was about to ask him again when he stopped, switched off his torch and looked up at me. 'Listen,' he whispered, standing very close. I could smell something bitter on his breath – like his fear was coming out as ketones. 'Let's get this straight. It was Malachi on the video.'
'Malachi?'
He held a finger up to quieten me. 'Yes. Malachi himself. Doing – I don't know, but doing something that means nothing to us, but everything to him.'
'What? In some fucking pantomime-cow costume with a— ?'
'The idea—' he interrupted, casting glances up and down the path. 'The idea that you can – can conjure Beelzebub, or Pan or Satan, is garbage. You know that and so do I. It was Malachi in the video.'
'Except not everyone agrees with you. Do they?'
'Please,' he hissed. 'Keep your voice down.'
'Why are the Garricks so scared?' I whispered. 'Susan's crapping herself, thinking I'm going to start something, tempt something. Now, Blake, you might think it's Malachi on the video – but they don't. They think he's brought Satan to Cuagach, don't they?' I raised the torch briefly and shone it off into the tree-trunks, the beam distorting and making strange shapes and shadows. 'They think—'
'Sssssh!'
'They think there's something unhuman out there.'
'It was a big decision inviting you on to the island,' Blake put a hand on my torch and pulled the beam gently away from the trees. 'Some people are very superstitious – Benjamin and Susan and some others. They think that the less said about what is happening on Cuagach the better – that to talk about it to anyone outside could be ... provocative.'
'Yeah. I got that bit.'
'Believe me, Joe.' He pushed his face close to mine. 'Believe me, there have been times today when I have questioned ever getting you involved. Now,' he switched on his torch again and aimed it down the path, 'let's get this over with.'
He began walking again, a bit faster now, like he wanted to put distance between himself and the words 'Beelzebub', 'Pan', 'Satan', like they'd hang there in the branches behind us – proof he'd uttered them.
I went after him down the silvery path, and had caught up and was about to speak again when I registered something pale and small sitting in the centre of the path ahead.
'What the—' I came to a halt and quickly swung the torch beam on it. It was small and hunched, stood about two feet high and wasn't moving. It had a shape like a very small human with its back to us. 'What the fuck, Blake?' I murmured, approaching carefully. I walked past it, turned and shone the beam into its face. 'A gargoyle?'
'Yes,' he muttered impatiently. 'They're supposed to—'
'I know what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to ward off the ...' I let the sentence trail off and turned to look along the path ahead. It continued for a few yards, then was swallowed by the trees. Somewhere beyond it lay the gorge and Dove's house.
'I see,' I said, turning back to the gargoyle. It had weird glass eyes, like the voodoo dolls in Louisiana. 'It's blocking the path. The Garricks put it there. It's to stop the devil coming along this path, isn't it?'
'Leave it,' Blake whispered. 'We need to keep going. We're nearly there.'
He started off again, leaving me standing staring at the gargoyle, picturing Susan or Benjamin coming up here, positioning it to face the south, blocking the path. Christ, I thought, shooting a look into the dark trees, Dove had done a cracking job of convincing someone in the community the devil was real. Good enough to get them so scared they'd turned their church into a fortress in case they ever had to take shelter there.
I clicked off the torch and headed off after Blake, imagining the gargoyle's eyes watching my retreating back. The path descended for a while, the land on either side of it rising steadily, until I was walking in a narrow ravine. Then the path ahead opened dramatically to show the sky and the moon, swollen and drenching everything in its icy light, Blake standing in front of it, waiting for me. I came down the last few steps and stopped next to him, staring at Cuagach spread out below us.
'Jeee-sus,' I breathed. 'Jesus.'
We were standing on a long ledge about twenty foot from the top of an escarpment. The land dropped straight from our vantage-point about a hundred feet to what had the look of a very wide, dry riverbed studded with boulders as big as houses. About a third of a mile away it rose up again, marked by a distant line of trees. The gorge between the two slopes was as barren as a desert, unmarked by any shrub or tree, as otherworldly and lonely as a distant planet. Scattered among the boulders were odd brown shapes, reflecting an occasional glitter as clouds scudded across the moon. It took ages for me to understand what I was looking at.
'Barrels? Drums?' I said. 'Is that what they are?'
'This land was a chemical dump before we came here.'
I shot a few photos, then looked left and right along the ledge we stood on – at the ghostly squatting forms. 'More gargoyles.' They were planted at intervals of ten feet, all facing bravely across the gorge, their glass eyes glittering expectantly. Behind the ledge we stood on, the upper part of the escarpment formed a wall, and along its length ten-foot-tall letters had been sprayed in red paint that had dripped.
Get thee behind me, Satan. Get thee behind me, Satan. Get thee behind me, Satan.
'Jesus,' I said faintly, pulling out my camera, staring at the letters. 'Jesus fucking Christ. Someone here is really scared.' I squatted and fired off a few shots. Then I stood and faced across the gorge. The letters were so big they were difficult to understand this close up – they weren't designed to be read from the place we stood. They'd only be clear from a distance. Like if you were to stand in the tree-line on the other side of the gorge.
'That's it,' I said, staring at the trees. 'He lives over there, doesn't he? That's why you've got all this – this shit lying around up here.' I went to the edge of the gorge and squinted down into the darkness. 'Can we get down there? I want to go nearer.'
'No. The only way to get to Malachi's side of the island is in the boat and – don't lean over, please.'' He plucked at my shirt, trying to pull me back. 'Joe – please – this is very dangerous. If you went down there you wouldn't make it back alive. And any-way—'
I turned. 'Anyway what?'
He hesitated. His face in the moonlight was pale. He knew he'd said too much. 'Nothing. It's very dangerous. Very dangerous.'
'No.' I straightened and looked at him, a bit amused. 'No. You weren't going to say that. What were you going to say?'
'Nothing.'
'Yes, you were.'
'No,' he said firmly.
I sighed. 'Well, if you're not going to tell me I'll have to find out for myself.' I started off along the ledge, dodging the gargoyles, shining the torch at the edge, trying to find a place to clamber down the escarpment.
'Stop!'
I looked back at him. 'Only if you tell me what you were going to say.'
He paused, biting his lip, his eyes lowered, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. 'A non-harassment order,' he muttered, not meeting my eye.
'What? What was that?'
'I said a non-harassment order. Malachi took out a non-harassment order on us. He went to court for it.'
'He went to court?' I echoed. 'Oh, Blake,' I leaned a bit closer to him, giving him a faint smile, suddenly enjoying this, 'what did you do to deserve that?'
'Nothing. Malachi is very unwell. We've done nothing wrong.'
'So why'd he get a
restraining order on you?'
'Because he is insane! Insane. We've done nothing wrong!' He paused, breathing heavily, wiping his face like it was difficult to control himself. He ripped his binoculars off his head, thrusting them out to me. 'There. Look. His place is a fortress.'
I let the camera dangle on my chest and lifted the binoculars, focusing, moving them through a kaleidoscope of landscapes: the side of a boulder, a pile of rusting drums, the yellow flash of a hazardous-substance label. The opposite escarpment was of a darker rock: it looked geologically totally different from the land we stood on – blacker and more compact. I raised the binoculars and found a consistent line at the point where the trees started and, above it, a faint impressionistic cross-hatched pattern.
'What's that? Another fence? He's got a fence just like you?'
'Yes.'
'And when did he put up that little beauty?'
'Two years ago. Can you see the video cameras? They're trained on us now, Joe.'
I moved the binoculars slowly. The fence ran the length of the top of the escarpment, and mounted in front of it, like H. G. Wells's tripods, were at least forty video cameras, all pointing out across the moonlit gorge, glinting at us like silent, unblinking eyes.
'If he picks us up on those video cameras then we're in breach of the order and we'll never get power of attorney.'
'This is your Gaza Strip wall? This is where it all happens?' I was about to drop the binoculars when they swept past something I couldn't put a name to. I quickly moved them back, the cross-hatching of the fence blurring with the movement, and—
'Blake? Blake, this is fucking weird shit.'
I was looking at a pair of eyes. Smeared and hollow. Below them a snout. A pig's head. Mounted on top of the fence. When I moved the binoculars to the right I found another – the same pushed-in features, the same hatch-like eyes, lolling tongue. I dropped the binoculars and stared out at the tree-line. Now I could see them – faint blobs of light, one after the other on top of the fence, lined up like heads on medieval battlements, one every ten feet or so just like the gargoyles on this side – stretching away into the distance. 'Where the fuck have they come from?'
'I told you – Malachi's very sick. He wants us to be scared.'
'And if I asked Benjamin Garrick, what would he say?'
Blake let his gaze drift out across the gorge. There was something resigned about his voice when he spoke. 'If you asked Benjamin he would say that Pan put them there. He would say that Pan can tear a living pig apart with his bare hands.'
9
The Garricks, it seemed, had a small following. They had convinced at least fifteen other members of the community that Pan was living on Pig Island, under Malachi's control. Or worse, not under it. Blake knew I wasn't going to be put off so the next morning he took me over to their cottage to speak to them. The storm he'd promised had arrived: overnight the island had been caught in a grey squall that sat like a cartoon cloud above it, circling it in grey mists and humid rains. When we set off at eleven, it seemed like the village had disappeared, only the dim orange glow of electric lights on in the cottages coming through the mist.
The Garricks lived at the end of the path that led down to the jetty. Once, their cottage had been painted peppermint green, but now it was faded almost to white, patched in places with grey filler and wet with condensed mist. It was the only cottage with a television set and the aerial rose, spidery, into the mist above the roof. We sat in the well-lit kitchen, with its cheerful gingham blinds, drinking steaming mugs of coffee and eating Susan's home-made brownies. Sovereign sat on the arm of the sofa in the adjacent room. She didn't speak but I was conscious of her watching me, an amused, knowing smile on her face. She was wearing a black Avril Lavigne T-shirt and a buckled, pleated miniskirt. Her long thin legs kept jiggling up and down, like she was dancing to a tune in her head.
I settled back and opened my notepad. The only way I can help you is if you tell me everything,' I said. 'We're going to talk about Malachi – and you're all going to tell me what you know.'
Susan Garrick flushed a very bright red. She looked from me to Blake and back again. 'I don't like this, Blake,' she said. 'I don't like this attitude. What happened to our agreement of March 2005?'
'Susan, there wasn't an agreement,' he said levelly. 'You said you wouldn't talk about it to outsiders, but I didn't make that promise. I'm acting in the interests of the whole community.'
'Well, I can't help it,' she said, running her hands over her arms where goosebumps had risen up. 'I can't help thinking that if Malachi knows we've talked about it he'll send that – that thing over here again. I'm not happy about provoking him.'
'Mr Oakes,' Benjamin said to me, 'do we have to do this? All we want is for you to tell our story. To tell how difficult it's been on Cuagach – but how devoted we are to it. We just want Malachi off the island so we can go over there and exorcize whatever it is he's tempted into living there.'
'Benjamin, Susan,' Blake put down his coffee and leaned across the table, taking their hands in his, 'Susan, Benjamin, this is important. Joe has told me that he won't do the story unless we talk about it.'
Susan stared at me. 'Is that true?'
'It's important to get the readers' interest,' I said, Joe-diplomat wise. 'They need to be drawn into a story.'
She looked at her husband, who shook his head and shrugged. 'Blake always does get his own way,' she said sullenly, dabbing at the few brownie crumbs on her plate. 'It's always been the same.' She turned her eyes to him. Her parrot-blue shirt made her face look old. 'If I speak, Blake, please try not to undermine me. I know you only do it because you're scared, but it wounds me.'
'I won't undermine you, Susan. Just tell yourself that if the public knows about Malachi's madness it can only strengthen our case.'
'But that's just it,' she said, appealing to me. 'He's not mad. He's evil. He's dabbling in things that no Christian should be in involved in and everyone, even Blake, knows it.'
'Dabbling?' I said. 'What's he dabbling in?'
She fixed me with her pale green eyes. 'Where there is light, Mr Oakes, there is darkness in equal measure. Let me put it simply: this is no madness. Malachi has learned how to summon the biforme.'
'The biforme?'
'Half man, half beast.' She lowered her voice and leaned a bit closer to me, searching my face accusingly. 'Why? Don't you think it's possible? Where do you think those mine shafts in the south lead to?'
I opened my mouth to answer. Then I closed it. Basic hack rule: never express doubt or ridicule. When someone says they've seen Elvis's face in the roof insulation, don't laugh. 'Mrs Garrick,' I said carefully, uncapping my pen and writing 'biforme' on the pad. I could feel Sovereign in the other room eyeing me, waiting to hear what I'd say. 'Blake suggests that the – the biforme on the video is Malachi himself. Disguised, maybe. He thinks that—'
'I know what Blake thinks,' she said crossly, 'but he hasn't seen that monster. And I have.'
'You've seen it?'
'Ah,' she said, pleased with herself. 'You see? I told you to take me seriously.' Smiling now, she got up and went to a drawer in the painted dresser that stood against the wall, returning to the table with a sheaf of papers. 'Almost three years ago, long before that wretched video came out.' She placed the papers in front of me. 'It was late. Everyone was already in bed and it was my turn to get the laundry from the kitchen. I was walking down that path over there ...' She leaned forward and pointed out of the window in the direction of the refectory. The mist outside was rolling in thin spirals. '... when I had a feeling ...' She hesitated. 'I had this dreadful feeling that I was ...' She put her hand to the back of her neck, like she was reliving the moment. Grey shadows of raindrops on the window dribbled down her face like tears.
'Yes?' I murmured. 'You had a feeling that you were ... ?'
She coughed and shook her head. 'That I was being watched. All the hairs went up here – you know – on the back of my neck and I l
ooked up and I saw it. Sitting in a tree, like a lion or something.'
'OK,' I said levelly. I put down my pen and picked up the top sheet, unfolded it and flattened it on the table. 'And this is ...' I was looking at a charcoal drawing, slightly smudged and creased in places, but kind of skilfully drawn. Most of the paper was filled with sketched leaves, but a few branches showed through, and on one of these a carefully sketched human foot gripped the branch with the prehensile strength of a monkey. Squashed in next to it was a buttock and ... Oh, Christ, I wanted to smile ... a tail. Dangling down at least two feet below the branch.
'Can you see how it was sitting?' She lowered herself to a squat next to my chair, holding on to the table for balance. In the other room Sovereign blew air out of her nose, disgusted by her ma. 'See? Like this.' Susan lifted her blouse so that I could see her haunches in the brown leggings pressed down against the hiking boots and tweedy socks she wore. 'I could see all of this part.' She drew a vague circle round her foot and buttocks. 'From here to here. I couldn't see here – where the tail joined to the body – because it was hidden in the trees, but I could see the tail itself.'
'How long was it in the tree?' I picked up the next sheet. The same image, a slightly different scale.
'Not long after I screamed. It scuttled away.'
'We searched the whole of this side of the island,' said Benjamin. 'Couldn't find it. And, believe me, we looked.'
I riffled through the sheets, seeing the same image over and over again. 'The feet are human.'
'Yes – and all of it's got skin like a human, even the tail. Quite brown – you know, a sort of leathery brown. I saw it close enough to know.'
'It's latex. A clever costume,' said Blake. 'Malachi must have his reasons.'
'Well,' Susan said, straightening and putting her hands on the table, leaning forward to look Blake in the eye, 'answer me this, Blake. If it was a costume how did he make the tail move?'
'It moved?' I asked. 'What do you mean, it moved?'