Chapter 3: Leviticus (4561)
Duckman, that’s what they called him. He didn’t know it, but that’s what they called him on his road. Duckman because he looked like a duck. Nobody bothered him, and he bothered nobody. He never left his house unless it was to go to the corner shop at the end of the road, or the library up the hill. He went from one to the other each day, with a plastic bag full of messages and a sketchpad under his arm, and the people would say, ‘oh look, there goes Duckman’.
Just another one of Evermarch’s oddities, not leaving his local area enough to be one of the weel kent folk, but well known on his road. He didn’t go to the pub, or take a paper, so when the tower blocks disappeared on the other side of the river, he assumed that they had been knocked down and he had not noticed.
When the corner shop disappeared where he used to buy his morning rolls and was replaced by a warung he assumed that it was just another change that he had to get used to. Afterall, ten years ago, the hairdresser he went to had changed into a financial advisor’s office and that had been even more baffling. Now he got his rolls from the minimarket by the library and his soto ayam from the warung.
He had no idea that God was back. (And bigger than ever before, baby!) He did not read the newspapers or watch the news. He had no friends. For thirty years he had played no part in society and expected nothing from it. He lived off a small inheritance, a meagre pension and whatever form of social security entitlement happened to be in vogue in any given decade.
His best friend was a garden gnome that stood in an overgrown garden at the other end of his road. When a young man had moved in there, he had put the gnome in the front garden ironically, underneath a wild fern. Rain or shine the gnome stood there, under the fronds, a happy smile on his face and his hand raised in a friendly wave. Duckman began waving to the gnome as he went past. This went on for years.
The young man that lived at the house got married and Duckman would see his wife tending to the garden, tidying it up a bit and planting bulbs. She did not disturb the gnome, which made Duckman happy. One day he did a little drawing of the gnome at the library with the words ‘Gnome, sweet gnome’ on it and left it on their doorstep.
Round about the time the tower blocks disappeared, the couple had a baby, which was why, he assumed, the garden went back to being overgrown again. Around that time too, people started wearing masks, at the shop and at the library, so he did too. They gave them away free at the library and since it seemed to be required, he always wore one when out of the house, even though he found them rather uncomfortable. Still, he liked to do his sketches each day, from the library books, of animals and far off places, so it was a discomfort worth enduring.
He had no idea that some of his neighbours used to watch him amble up and down their road, with amusement and speculation on his life. Little did they know that what they saw was all there was.
One day he was dismayed to see that part of the gnome’s hat had been chipped off, he didn’t know how it had happened, hit by a falling stick from one of the trees in the garden perhaps. The gnome still smiled, but he did not look quite so jolly with half of his little blue hat missing.
Duckman went so far as stepping into the garden to look at the damage.
The man’s wife came to the door. She startled him by saying, ‘you know, you need to put tassels on your coat now, hun. You don’t want the muta to get you!’
He was too shocked to reply and ran back to his house. The woman’s comments made him remember a letter, addressed to the ‘homeowner’, that had arrived a couple of months ago. He’d disregarded it, as he did all his mail, but now he re-read it, paying attention this time.
That night he cut the tassels off the bottom of the sofa and sewed them onto his donkey jacket. It looked ridiculous, but along with the mask and keeping a beard, that was what you had to do these days to be considered fit for society.
A week or so later there were people dressed in black in the street. They set up a check point and were talking to people as they went about. One day, when he was going to the library, some of the people dressed in black dragged the man and his wife from their house. The man was silent, but the woman was screaming. They were taken to a van and driven away. Another of the black clad people went back into the house and came out holding a baby. The black-masked man, still holding the baby glanced down at the gnome as he passed. He then stopped to give it a kick, smashing it to pieces.
Duckman, who had been standing right there, ran home as fast as he could, locked the door and didn’t come out again until his food ran out and it was either leave the house or starve to death.
When he went back out, months later, things had changed. There were no more roadblocks or black clad people, but the street was covered in rubbish and two of the houses had been burnt down.
The house where the couple had lived was now occupied by a single man, who liked to sit at the front door on a wooden bench, watching the world go by. He was middle-aged, but his beard was long and white. He wore a blue woollen cap and looked so much like Duckman’s friend the gnome that for a moment he was confused.
‘You’re back!’ gasped Duckman.
The man in the blue cap turned to face him. ‘Eh?’
When Duckman fled, the man did not rise from the bench. He had a lot on his mind. His name was Ray Lorric, and he had just learned that his ex-wife had sold herself into slavery.
The letter read:
‘Dear Ray,
I got your address through the Red Cross. I’m here in Evermarch! When the world got all jumbled up, our bit of Perth ended up not so very far away. Near Norway I’m told. It was hell there and we had to get away, there was constant trouble, bodies in the street, you wouldn’t believe it. We paid people-smugglers to take us to Strake, but they took everything. Then when we were trying to get across the border they wanted more. So twat-face Gary sold me to the church! He promised to get a job, earn money and buy me back, but God knows what’s happened to him. Now the church has sold me to a farm in a place called Goldengreens. The Red Cross lady told me they are still ways to free slaves in Evermarch. Ray, you’ve got to help me. Last night one of the other slaves was shanked in their sleep. I can’t survive this. They told me you work for the church? Or something? Remember me and help me,
Helen’
Lorric folded the letter and went indoors. What did all this mean? The last he’d heard she’d ended up north of the Artic Circle, he remembered from the news at the time, back when people were trying to figure out what had happened and work out the new geography that that was where a lot of Australia had ended up. The thought of her and Gary freezing their arses off had given him pleasure, until he had found out that the climate followed along with the land, you just had to drive down to the Delta to realise that. Lorric put the letter down on the piano in the living room. He never played it, it had been here when he moved in, he used it as a narrow desk and dumping ground for mail.
He wasn’t working today, so spent half an hour choosing a VHS tape to watch. There was never anything on the TV and video recorder would be confiscated by the muta if they found it, but as long as he was kept the TV turned away from the window and the sound low, he was fine. He put Die Hard on, but after ten minutes he realised his eyes were resting on the letter.
‘Stuff her,’ he muttered. ‘Stuff her and that fud, Gary. Stuff the pair of them. God’s sake.’
Lorric didn’t work for the church, she’d got that wrong. Admittedly he was on good terms with them though, through his job with the call centre. Having a direct line to God did have its advantages.
For the rest of the day, he rattled about, trying to ignore the letter, but the next morning, when he was working, he had a call to make to Merric College anyway, so he decided to have a word with the bishop. After all, what was a phone call? It was no big deal.
‘Is that Bishop Thorman?’
‘Yes, it is, how can I help you?’ came the emotionless reply.
‘Aye, it’s Raymond here from the call centre. I was just wondering if you had a moment.’
The bishop cleared his throat. ‘Go on.’
Lorric briefly explained the letter he had received from his ex-wife and the bishop listened patiently, checking his computer as he did so, but when Lorric had finished, he said, ‘there is nothing you can do Mr Lorric. She did it herself, handing herself over to the church. We then sold her. There is a note here in her file, that it was either that or be burned as a witch.’
‘You’re kidding me!’ exclaimed Lorric. She hadn’t mentioned that in her letter. She was always a liar.
‘They are a bit keener on that sort of thing in Goldengreens I’m afraid. Still, I could arrange a meeting for you. Goldengreens is part of our diocese, on paper at least.’
‘Oof, you mean go all the way into the jungle?’
There was a pause.
‘Ah yes I see,’ said Thorman. ‘Your ex-wife isn’t it? I could arrange a call then?’
‘Thank you, Your Grace.’
***
It was probably nothing. After all, Bishop Thorman didn’t care overly much about one daft witch who was a step away from the faggots. It was Lorric though, who was one of the good ones, as the bishop saw it, and this was far from the first sinister thing he’d heard about Goldengreens. It was eighty miles deep into the jungle though, and not many people went there these days. Stories came out, none of them pleasant, but there were so many stories these days it was impossible to know what was real and what wasn’t. Things were bad enough in Evermarch, Thorman didn’t need to go eighty miles into the interior looking for trouble when he had trouble enough. And yet… It wouldn’t do any harm to scratch the itch. There had been no reliable reports from Goldengreens in months, perhaps he should send someone down there?
Towards that end Thorman arranged a meeting with Father Nimite. The Father was an ebony-skinned priest from the Delta, a priest from Georgetown before the reditus and rendered parish -less, just as Thorman had, by the Splintering. As a result, they had both started at the temple at the same time, and while they were hardly friends, Thorman secretly found that he liked the younger man.
‘Oh, it’s a bad down there, from what I hear,’ said Father Nimate, when they stood together in Grayfriars Church tower, watching the foot-traffic of the people below as they entered and exited the Temple. It was early evening and getting dark. The streetlights had flickered on, and people were starting to hasten their steps, trying to get home as quickly as possible. There was no curfew, but the muta were a law to themselves once the sun was down and it was better to be indoors.
‘Hundred women dey got down theh. Some Committee ting. They let in the Red Cross, but not the church. Dey burning them. That’s what dey say down in the Delta.’
‘That doesn’t sound good at all. Would you like to go down there?’ asked Thorman. ‘You can take one of the pool cars and a driver. I just want to know exactly what’s going on, not just rumours on the Delta.’
‘Oh sure, I know the parish priest, Father Dekulos.’
‘I remember him, yes,’ admitted the bishop. ‘See how hard he’s been trying to get access. If not him, then try the Red Cross.’
‘Yes, Your Grace.’
‘Well, that’s good then… there is something else?’
Nimite was in the process of taking a folded-up bit of paper from his pocket. Once he had it in hand, he waved it at the bishop.
‘You seen this?’
‘What is it?’ asked the bishop.
‘Another letter from the Committee,’ cried Nimite. ‘Dey send it to me house! To me own address. And me a priest at the Evermarch Temple!’
Thorman took the offered paper, unfolded it, and gave it a cursory glance although he had already guessed what it was.
‘Just ignore it, William.’
‘Easy ting for you to say,’ said Father Nimite, then remembering himself he added, ‘Your Grace.’
‘It’s because the pickup for circumcision has been so poor in the Delta. They are sending them to everyone.’
‘What do they expect?’ whined Nimite. ‘The Delta, they just go hide in the jungle. In the hills. Even before, they did that. The clansmen be at me door next, just like last time. I’ve got better things to do with me time, I’m telling you… Your Grace.’
‘I don’t know, William,’ sighed Thorman. ‘Why does the Committee do anything? They’ve got it worse in Estola and Feuro, or so I hear.’
Nimite was tugging at Thorman’s sleave now, smiling and laughing, what would have been a most inappropriate display from a priest back before the reditus, but which was very much standard behaviour for Father Nimite.
‘We lucky we splinter with you clansmen, eh?’ asked Nimite conspiratorially. ‘And not the hablas or the spaghettis, eh?’
‘Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof,’ quoth Thorman.
‘When you put it like that, we got lucky, like you say,’ said Nimite, although it had been he himself who had voiced the sentiment.
‘I’ll talk to them William. You can leave this letter with me.’
‘Of course, Your Grace,’ replied Nimite with a bow. ‘Me naw care anyway. They can stick it where Polly put the nuts for all me care.’
***
A couple of days went by and Lorric had nearly forgotten about his ex-wife and the phone call to Bishop Thorman. Lorric worked as the manager of a call centre, a job that he did at home and usually he only kept the call centre workers in line, but occasionally, if they were short staffed or whatever he would take a call. Today was one of those days, and he was logged into the system, dealing with a recent backlog.
‘Mrs Jarvis?’
‘Aye love, who’s that?’
‘Hello Mrs Jarvis, my name is Raymond. I am calling on behalf of the Evermarch Temple. I am a layman, which means I am a non-ordained member of the Church. I am in no way affiliated with The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. I am calling to ask you a few questions about God if you don’t mind and have a moment. If now it not a good time, we can arrange a later date.’
‘Och well, I’d better get it over and done with.’
Mrs Jarvis knew the score, reflected Lorric. If you put off these tracer calls, you’d eventually end up with a uniformed church policeman at the door, or worse, a Committee representative. Usually even just mentioning the muta was enough to keep people on the line.
‘Thank you,’ continued Lorric. ‘I’ll just crack on with the questions. Firstly, what is your Splinter status?’
‘Glasgow, post. Evergreen,’ she replied as she had many times before to similar questions since the reditus.
‘Any Splinter viruses?’
‘Just the blue tongue, back in April last year.’
‘Good, good,’ said Lorric, getting into it. ‘And during the reditus, did God speak to you?’
‘Well aye,’ she wheezed, evidently lighting a cigarette as she spoke. ‘He did aye. He told me - Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God : I am the Lord. – seemed a bit random to me.’
‘It’s Leviticus, Mrs Jarvis.’
‘Aye well, I know that now. I think about it a lot, ken? Seems odd to me. What a bunch of jokers those Hebrews must have been, eh? Always tripping up the blind, doing it so much in fact that God had to tell them not to.’
‘Not for me to say, Mrs Jarvis.’
‘Did he speak to you, love?’
‘He did not,’ admitted Lorric. ‘He spoke to only one in ten people, and most of it was Bible verses. Some of it was more interesting though.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘But you speak to him now, aye? That’s where all this goes, right?’
‘Not exactly, Mrs Jarvis. It’s true that tracers do make calls directly to God from time to time, but that’s not where these reports go. We transcribe them and send them to Merric College.’
‘Then what?’
‘As you have indicated that God spoke to you, you can expect a follow up call in the next six to eight weeks.’
‘Or, right. I dinnae get off that lightly then?’ she joked.
And so it went on, Lorric took down her details and as he had told her, the information was all entered into a computer system on the Temple network. Lorric had no great interest in what happened after that. His job was just to make sure the fifty or so tracers that worked under him kept on making their allotted amount of calls each day.
After a few more calls he went and put his feet up for a bit. A few minutes later the phone rang, and he assumed it was work, so he was surprised to hear the voice of his ex-wife at the other end of the line.
‘Hi, Ray?’
‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘I mean, it’s you. How are you?’
‘You talked to the Temple?’ she countered.
‘I did yes,’ evaded Lorric.
‘Well, what did they say?’
‘They said they’d look into it,’ which was hardly the truth and Lorric knew it.
There was a pause while (what it sounded like to Lorric anyway) Helen spat out the nail she had just chewed off.
‘What’s it going to take Ray? You want me to beg? I’m dead if I stay here. You want that on your conscious?’
‘Why don’t you try and find Gary instead of pestering me?’ snapped Lorric, startling even himself with his lack of patience.
‘The muta must have got him. I don’t know. He could be anywhere. Every night three men sit on me and speak in tongues for an hour. How can I go on like this?’
‘Why?’
‘They are trying to get the demons out of me.’
Good luck with that, thought Lorric.
‘Ray,’ she went on. ‘I’m dead if I stay here. I don’t care if…’
She was suddenly sobbing. Lorric began to soften.
‘Hey,’ he soothed. ‘I’ll figure something out.’
‘They burn people here,’ she hissed. ‘I’ve seen it! They do it here. It’s not like in the films, where they burn Joan of Arc or something, and it’s all kind of majestic and noble. It’s not. They scream and scream, then choke to death on their own smoke. And the smell!’
‘Right, I…’
‘I’ve got to go. The Red Cross just give us a few minutes. Help me please, for God’s sake!’
And with that she was cut off.
It took a while for Lorric’s nerves to settle after that and he poured himself several whiskies in the kitchen, something that he rarely did. He hated Helen for everything she had done to him, but it was a long time ago now. The truth was, there wasn’t much he could do. He could call the bishop again he supposed. Thorman seemed like a decent enough sort, but not very effective, a typical old school clergyman. Lorric did have a direct line to God, but it was such a codified and arcane process he’d probably have more luck with a message in a bottle. After his third drink he decided to wait before doing anything else, after all, she had always exaggerated or down-right lied. Perhaps if he just left it, the situation would sort itself out, one way or the other.
***
‘It’s only going to get colder,’ said Avon, pulling the ratty old dressing-gown around him that he had taken to wearing. He scratched himself, he was sure he had fleas.
‘We can ask for more blankets,’ said Yates, his fellow occupant of the cold attic room they had been inhabiting for the last six months.
‘Bah,’ muttered Avon, as he silently padded over to the room’s only chair, always stepping on the beams, and sat down on its sagging cushion. ‘I’d rather they bought us a mobile phone.’
‘They don’t work anymore,’ said Yates, from where he sat, propped up on the bed, reading last week’s newspaper.
‘You always say that. You’re utterly hopeless. It’s what, November now? I’ve not spoken to any of my family since then. We can’t go on like this. It’s intolerable.’
‘I know darling, I know.’
Avon rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t darling me. We could still be in England you know. We could still have been at home if it hadn’t been for you.’
Yates sighed. This was a familiar reframe, old ground that had been trodden and re-trodden many times since they had been confined in the attic. The same old recriminations, the same old arguments, the same old tears.
‘There is no England anymore,’ he said patiently. ‘They don’t even know where half of it is.’
‘Our part of it is still there,’ growled Avon. ‘We could try to get there. We could at least try.’
Yates put down the paper and took off his glasses.
‘We are here because of you,’ he stated. ‘This was your idea!’
‘I know, I know,’ muttered Avon. ‘But let’s see Scotland you said. We’ve never been north of Manchester you said, we’d…’
‘And you loved it!’ interrupted Yates. ‘It’s not my fault the whole bloody… thing happened.’
Avon stood up, tip-toed over the beams again and lay down beside Yates.
‘It’s so cold.’
‘In the summer you did nothing but complain about the heat,’ Yates scolded mildly.
‘She used to bring us ice cream then at least, now I think she’s doesn’t care about us.’
Yates put his arm around Avon’s shoulder. ‘Nonsense.’
‘Don’t touch me, I stink,’ said Avon. ‘I can’t stand it when we both smell so bad.’
‘We could ask for more wet wipes.’
‘I’d rather they brought us a mobile phone.’
Yates pushed Avon on the shoulder. ‘You’re impossible!’
‘Just a couple of old impossible poofs,’ sighed Avon. ‘Just a couple of smelly old impossible poofs, hiding from the muta in a friend’s attic.’
‘We could just leave,’ said Yates, pointing at the newspaper. ‘Things are a lot calmer since last year.’
‘Shush!’ replied Avon, pressing his face into the pillows. ‘Don’t remind me. All that…’
‘I know, I know.’
Avon looked up. ‘Where did they all go? Agatha, where did she go? All the boys from Barkley’s? In the back of the black vans. And the night they came for us, I’ll never forget it. The car with its engine running, you shouting at me to get a move on. Then the Committee at the door and us just fleeing, fleeing for our lives! How can I go back out there? You might be able to blend in, but me? I’d stick out like a sore thumb. Even your father said, before we were married - “that Phillip Avon is more bent than a nine-pound note”. I’d be picked up in minutes.’
‘Just put on a hoodie and keep your head down, you’d be fine,’ but Yates laughed as he spoke. At the absurdity of it, of Avon who has once been so finely dressed and dashing, dressed like a chav or whatever they called them these days.
‘Look at me!’ demanded Avon. ‘Look at me! What do you see? I’ll tell you. I’m old, Ben. I’m starting to look like a withered old woman. I’ve got dishpan hands and swollen ankles. I’m a complete and utter state.’
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘It wouldn’t kill her to bring up some moisturiser, or some hand cream. I’m wasting away, I can’t eat. Look at the size of you, you eat all the food you monster. I eat morsels. I’m malnourished. I’ve not seen daylight in six months. We can’t go on like this.’
‘Keep your voice down, will you?’ said Yates, finding his near-infinite patience was beginning to wear thin. ‘The Hartley’s will be home soon, then you’d better put a sock in it. For God’s sake, we can leave, or we can stay and wait it out. Either way, we are safe for now at least; it could be worse. Maggie is helping us, we are safe, we are loved.’
‘Don’t say “for God’s sake”, darling,’ murmured Avon. ‘Never say that.’
Yates made a harrumphing sound and picked up the newspaper again. ‘Let that be an end of it then.’
‘I love it when your strict with me,’ said Avon demurely. ‘When Maggie comes up then, we’ll ask for more blankets, and wet wipes, and hand cream.’
‘Sure.’
Avon slowly rose and picked up a glass from the floor and walked over to the far wall. He then pressed the glass to the wall and then his ear to the glass. This was his entertainment, his soap opera. The Hartley’s were a young noisy family, the wife was loud, and the husband was a drunk. Some nights the fights were so loud Avon didn’t need the glass and even Yates could hear every word from over on the bed where he rustled his newspaper and tutted.
‘She’s back first,’ muttered Avon.
‘I don’t care,’ mouthed Yates in replay.
Avon listened for a few more minutes. ‘She’s calling one of his friends, trying to find out where he is. She’ll be angry the children were left alone…’
Then after a long pause he went on, ‘she’s getting cross. She’s in the bedroom yelling at one of the kids. The eldest daughter, I think… The little one was never fed…’
Yates could hear the voices next door getting louder. With a sigh he picked up and old pair of headphones and put them on. He then turned on the aging mp3 player they were attached to.
Avon gave him a dismissive wave and turned back to the wall. He’d get a good few hours of entertainment tonight, with a fairly explosive grand finale when the drunken bastard of a husband finally made it home, or so he hoped. He dragged over a cushion and sat down on the floor, getting comfortable for the evenings show.
