Ritual. Part 30

McLean, just a moment ago. We were saying what a courageous man you are. You have fought harder than any other father we have come across. You were mistaken, of course. Being a father does not ent.i.tle you to own your child's future. But very courageous.'

Charlie could have lashed out with any one of a hundred different retorts. But he knew that this was the moment for keeping cool. He nodded his head in silent acknowledgement of Mme Musette's compliment. At the same time he noticed how incredibly beautiful she looked, in her white silk sheath. She was standing directly under the light, so that her body stood out in shadowed relief - her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her angular hips, the curves of her upper thighs and the distinctive swelling of her pudenda. She could have been a statue, smoothed out of pearly-white ice.

'This way,' said M. Musette. 'Let me show you some of our accommodation.'

He led Charlie and Robyn outside. The afternoon was grey and overcast but very humid. They walked across to a long single-storey building with a corrugated asbestos roof and whitewashed walls. 'This is where our friends from Le Reposoir are staying,' M. Musette explained. 'I'm sure that they'll be glad to see you.' He opened the door, and beckoned Charlie and Robyn inside. 'This church is a family, you know. If we like you - well, we treat you like a relative.'

'And that's what you do to your relatives, is it?' asked Charlie. 'You cut them up and eat them?'

M. Musette looked saturnine and stern. 'Don't mock me, Mr McLean.'

'I'll make a deal with you,' said Charlie. 'I'll stop mocking you if you let me take my son away from here, unharmed.'

'What a word to use, unharmed,' said M. Musette. 'How can he come to harm if his destiny is to become part of the reincarnated Christ? Mr McLean, you son is going to be honoured above all imaginable honour. His life will become 320.

the keystone in the perfect reconstruction of the Mother Church. Tomorrow the world will change for ever, and your son's self-sacrifice will make that change possible. Don't you feel any pride at all? Don't you understand what your son is about to do?'

Charlie said tautly, 'What my son is about to do makes me sick to my stomach, so don't talk to me about perfect reconstructions of the Mother Church, do you mind? Just do whatever it is you want to do, and then leave us alone.'

'You're a heretic, Mr McLean.'

'You're not the first person to tell me that today,' said Charlie.

M. Musette smiled, as if he knew what Charlie was talking about, but he said nothing in reply. He took hold of Charlie's elbow and guided him into the accommodation block. 'Of course, this isn't the Beverley Hills Hotel, but it's clean and it's comfortable - and, do you know, we'll be catering for more than one hundred and fifty people here - Guides and Devotees and advisors. It's very peaceful here, very secluded. Our Lord will be mightily pleased.'

'Mightily, huh?' said Robyn sarcastically. M. Musette ignored her.

They walked along the corridor to the first door. M. Musette knocked, and said 'C'est mot, madame!'

They waited for a while, and then the door was opened. It was Mrs Foss, from the Iron Kettle. She was wearing a beige two-piece suit, with a pleated skirt. She looked at Charlie in bewilderment; but then her face suddenly broke into a smile.

'You earner she exclaimed. 'You actually came! Harriet bet me twenty dollars that you wouldn't.'

Charlie looked back at her, stunned. 'Mrs Foss? I thought you hated the Celestines.'

'Oh, come on now, how could anybody hate the Celestines, when they're bringing back Lord Jesus Christ? You didn't take me seriously, did you? You knew about Ivy going missing?

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Ivy was a Devotee, and I'm a Guide. Ivy's one of the thousand thousand - and you, you lucky man - your son's going to be the onel The thousandth thousandth!'

Charlie said, 'You inveigled me into it, didn't you, Mrs Foss?'

'Oh, come on now - inveigled?'

Charlie was furious. 'You trapped me, you caught me, and worst of all, you caught Martin. You were a Celestine and Harriet was a Celestine, and you knew how close you were getting to the thousandth thousandth. Did the Musettes give you some kind of reward for kidnapping my son? Huh? Money, stocks, something like that?'

'Your son wanted to join us,' said M. Musette calmly.

'My son didn't know anything about you until that dwarf of yours persuaded him to go to Le Reposoir. You know that and I know that, so don't you give me any bulls.h.i.+t about him wanting to join you. He was kidnapped, and then he was brainwashed.'

M. Musette shrugged. 'If you say so, monsieur.'

'You bet I d.a.m.n well say so. In fact, I want to see him now.'

M. Musette clapped his hands in genial impatience. 'All in good time, Mr McLean! Give your son a chance to pray and meditate! Give him a chance to realize his own private destiny!'

'Let me tell you something,' Charlie warned him. 'My son's destiny is to grow up, and mature, and then grow old, with a wife and a family and a house wherever he wants it - that's what my son's destiny happens to be. My son's destiny is certainly not connected with chopping off parts of his body and eating them. Now - do you have that straight?'

M. Musette turned away. 'I thought you would understand, Mr McLean. I really believed that you would understand.'

'I understand everything,' Charlie replied. 'I understand everything perfectly.'

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'Then come along,' said M. Musette, and guided Charlie to the next room. He knocked, and the door was opened by Mr Haxalt, from the First Litchfield Savings Bank. He was wearing a bathrobe, and his silver hair was wet and spiky. 'Yes?' he asked; but when he saw Charlie and M. Musette together, he stepped back, confused.

'Mr Haxalt is one of our staunchest supporters, aren't you, Walter?' M. Musette enthused.

'I do my best,' said Walter Haxalt guardedly.

Charlie said, 'You know something, Mr Haxalt? I'm glad I took your parking place. I should've stayed there all day.'

M. Musette laughed. 'Mr McLean is a little upset,' he told Walter Haxalt. 'He'll get over it, mark my words.'

He guided Charlie to the next room. There, sitting on the bed, dusting his feet with athlete's foot powder, was Christopher Prescott, one of the old men from the green at Alien's Corners. 'Why, you made it!' he exclaimed. 'It's good to see you.'

'Where's your friend?' Charlie asked him.

'My friend? Oh, you mean Oliver Burack. Oliver T. Burack. He doesn't know anything about all this. Better that he doesn't. He's back at Alien's Corners, where he should be. He thinks I've gone to see my sister in Tampa. Little does he know, hey?'

'That's right,' said Charlie, his voice flat. 'Little does he know.'

A large room at the end of the block had been converted into a television lounge, and there Charlie saw several more faces from Alien's Corners. Clive, the deputy sheriff who had first approached him when he arrived there, gave him a shy, acknowledging wave. Then there was the woman who served behind the delicatessen counter at Alien's Corners supermarket. All of them were smiling, all of them were happy. You would have thought they had come for a weekend vacation, rather than a religious bloodbath.

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'Where's my son?' asked Charlie.

M. Musette laid his arm across Charlie's shoulders. Charlie didn't attempt to lever it away. 'He's a very special boy, your son. We're keeping him someplace special.'

They left the accommodation block and walked along a shadowy avenue of pecan trees, until they reached a small breezeblock building surrounded by a low whitewashed wall. A young man with the oval, pimply face of a halfwit was sitting on a chair outside the door, reading a Super Friends comic. As M. Musette approached, he stumbled up off his chair and let out a hoot of enthusiastic welcome.

M. Musette ruffled the boy's awkwardly cropped hair. 'Ben has his uses, don't you, Ben? If I tell Ben that n.o.body gets in or out of here, excepting me and my wife, then I know that n.o.body is going to get in or out of here.'

He produced a key from his robes and started to unlock the building's green-painted door. Robyn said, 'All those people back at the accommodation block - did they actually conspire to lead Charlie to the Celestines?'

M. Musette raised one eyebrow. ''Conspire is a very media kind of a word, my dear lady. But you could say that once young Martin had been observed by Mrs Foss, there was a certain concerted community effort to induce Mr McLean to come into the fold. It is not often that you find a boy of the right age travelling alone with his father, as Mr McLean was. Especially when the time of the thousandth thousandth is imminent.'

'You mean everybody at Alien's Corners knew? said Charlie.

'Most of them,' replied M. Musette. 'They knew, and they rejoiced. There were, of course, one or two exceptions, like Mrs - what was her name now?'

'Kemp,' Charlie told him. 'That woman you told your dwarf to hack to bits.'

M. Musette tutted. 'She was being very obstreperous. But come on in. Your son is here, he's waiting for you.'

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M. Musette opened the door and led the way into the building. There was only one room, with one corner of it part.i.tioned off as a shower and toilet. The walls were white, the floor was scrubbed oak blocks. Against the far wall, there was a hospital-style bed, covered with a white sheet. Martin was lying on the bed, wearing a simple white habit. His head had been shaved, and he looked waxy-pale, with circles around his eyes that could have been stained with beetroot juice.

'Martin,' whispered Charlie, and stepped forward with his hands held out.

'Dad,' said Martin, and managed the faintest hint of a smile.

Charlie sat on the bed and took Martin in his arms and held him close. Martin.felt different, thinner, and he smelled of the same herbs which permeated all of the Celestine buildings. Fennel, and something else unidentifiable, something bitter.

'Are you all right?' Charlie asked him quietly. 'They haven't hurt you?'

'No, Dad, I'm fine. I'm really fine.'

'Have they been feeding you properly? They haven't interfered with you, anything like that?'

Martin prised himself free from Charlie's embrace. 'You mean s.e.xually?'

'I mean in any way at all.'

Martin looked towards the doorway where Mme Musette was standing with her arms folded, the ice queen in silky white. 'They've been treating me good, Dad. They brought me down here in a private plane. It was neat.'

'You don't know how good it is to see you,' said Charlie. He was so choked up with emotion that he could scarcely speak. His eyes were filled up with tears. Martin touched his shoulder, and said, 'It's good to see you, too, Dad. It really is.'

Charlie cleared his throat. 'You know why you're here, don't you? You know what they're planning to do?'

'I'm all prepared for it. I've been praying and fasting and now I'm all ready. Tomorrow's going to be fantastic.'

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'Martin, if these people have their way, tomorrow you're going to die.'

Martin smiled again, a little dreamily. 'Am I supposed to be afraid of dying? Is that it?'

'Martin, they're going to kill you. Don't you understand? They're going to kill you, and that's going to be the end of your life, period. No life hereafter, nothing.'

Martin shook his head. 'Tomorrow I'm going to do something for which most people would give their lives ten times over. That's what Edouard says. Tomorrow I'm going to become part of the living saviour. Tomorrow I'm going to be part of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

Charlie was shaking. He gripped hold of Martin's hands, and said, 'I'm begging you, Martin. I've never begged you for anything before. But I'm begging you now, please don't let them do this to you. Give yourself some time, think it over, then decide.'

'It has to be tomorrow,' said Martin. 'Tomorrow is the day.'

'Martin,' said Charlie, 'if I mean anything to you at all, please think this over.'

Martin wrapped his arms around Charlie's neck, and pressed his forehead against Charlie's forehead. 'Dad, you don't seem to understand at all. I love you. You're my father. If you hadn't given birth to me, I never would have been able to serve Jesus this way. Don't you know how proud and grateful that makes me?'

Under his breath, Charlie said, 'You won't be serving Jesus, Martin. Maybe you won't be serving anybody at all, except those Celestine yo-yos. It's even possible that you'll be serving the Devil.'

Martin stared at him, their eyes only inches away from each other. 'The Devil?' he whispered. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean that this ritual tomorrow, this Last Supper, it could have completely the opposite effect to what you believe. In- 326.

stead of bringing down our Lord and Saviour from heaven above, it could raise the Devil himself from out of h.e.l.l.'

Slowly, very slowly, Martin began to smile again. 'The Devil,' he repeated. 'From out of h.e.l.l?'

Christ, thought Charlie, Tve gotten through, fve actually made an impression on him. Maybe now he's going to turn around and start doubting what the Celestines have been telling him. Maybe now, at last, he's going to set himself free.

Martin smiled even more broadly. I've done it, thought Charlie, fve done it, I've done it, Fve done it!

Then Martin began to laugh. He threw back his head and laughed and laughed, a weird high-pitched laugh of total mockery. He grasped his bare feet and rocked from side to side, looking, with his shaved head, like some hilarious young Buddha.

'The Devil!' he gasped. 'You really believe that we're going to raise the Devil!'

'It's a possibility,' Charlie snapped. 'You only have to read the Celestine Bible. It's a mixture of voodoo and Roman Catholicism and cannibalism and all kinds of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo. Martin - a million people have died for this moment, over the years. Men, women, and children. A million people have died in agony, for the sake of some twisted superst.i.tion. It's practically genocide, this so-called religion. Do you seriously think that Jesus would have condoned genocide?'

Martin stopped laughing, and stared at his father with distant, lambent eyes. 'Jesus said, "Take, eat, this is My body. Drink ... for this is My blood of the new testament, shed for many, to the remission of sins.'"

Mme Musette came forward, stood beside the bed, and laid her gloved hand on top of Martin's shaven head. Martin glanced up at her with a quick smile, like an obedient pupil, or an adoring pet. Charlie got to his feet and looked down at Martin and couldn't think what else to say.

'There is one thing more,' Mme Musette told him. 'When 327.

your son goes to the altar tomorrow, it is you who must willingly give him as a sacrifice.'

Charlie stared at her. 'You expect me to offer up my own son;"

'It is his destiny, Mr McLean. You cannot deny him his destiny.'

'I can and I will. You must be cracked.

M. Musette said, 'It is necessary for the completion of the ritual. The father must willingly sacrifice his son. Do you remember what G.o.d said to Abraham when he offered to sacrifice Isaac? " You have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed will I greatly bless you."'

Charlie said, 'I seem to remember that G.o.d spared Isaac's life.'

'In those days, G.o.d had no need of it,' M. Musette replied. 'But now that His only Son has been crucified, He requires such a sacrifice in order for Jesus to live on earth once again.'

'This is complete bulls.h.i.+t,' said Charlie. 'If you don't let me take Martin out of here right now, I'm going to break your face.'

'Dad!' interrupted Martin.

Charlie turned to him.