‘Please…’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t kn—’
‘Do you believe in God?’
He felt alarm move through his chest again. He closed his eyes, trying to prevent himself having to look at the mask. Then, something Rose had said came back to him: ‘Sometimes I think he might actually be the devil.’
He kept his eyes shut and tried to force his arms up, hoping the duct tape might tear. But the harder he tried, the harder Legion pressed his nails into his face. When he stopped trying to fight, the pressure released. He felt blood run down his cheeks, a residue on his skin where Legion’s hand had been. He wanted to touch his face, wanted to wipe himself clean, but he couldn’t move.
Finally, he opened his eyes.
In front of him, Legion placed a hand on the mask and lifted it, up past his chin, his nose, his eyes, until it was on top of his head. His real face was angular and taut, his skin pale, his eyes dark, blood vessels running like a road map across the top of his cheekbones where the skin, bizarrely, appeared almost translucent. He looked in his late forties, but he moved with the purpose and efficiency of someone much younger.
‘I never joined because I believed what they did,’ Legion said, his fingers touching a scar running along his hairline and down to the ridge of his chin. ‘The people here, they believe this is some higher purpose. A calling. A mission from an understanding God.’ Legion moved in closer, putting a finger playfully to his lips. But then he smiled again and there was nothing playful in it; only darkness and menace. ‘Sssshhhhhh, don’t tell anyone, but I just saw this as an opportunity. They needed me to do some dirty work for them. And after I left the army, I needed somewhere to stay.’
He pulled the sleeve up on his right arm.
‘That doesn’t mean I’m not a believer. I just don’t believe in the same God as them. Most of them here, they believe in a God that forgives; a God that will bend to whatever mistakes we make, and sanction a second chance. I don’t. I suppose you could say I’m more of an Old Testament kind of guy.’
He turned his arm so the tattoo was more visible. It was bluey-black, smudged by age, and ran along the centre in two lines, from his wrist to the bend in his arm.
And they were afraid.
He touched a finger to the last four words of the tattoo.
‘I’ve seen the wrath of God. I’ve watched people being blown to pieces. I’ve seen men bleeding out of their eyes. I’ve seen floods and earthquakes. I’ve seen destruction. And you know what? We should be afraid. You should be afraid.’ He paused, pulling the sleeve of his shirt back down. ‘Because God doesn’t forgive. He doesn’t believe in second chances. He punishes. He tears apart. He consumes. And the question I always ask myself when I see Andrew and Michael and all the others preaching about the power of redemption is: if God doesn’t care about me, why the fuck should I care about you?’
Legion stepped aside.
Beyond him, a double door opened up into the next room. It was semi-dark, but the dull glow from a strip light showed what awaited.
‘No,’ the man said. ‘No, please.’
‘This,’ Legion said, waving an arm towards the next room, ‘is my contribution to this place. This is the gateway to your new life.’
In his ears all he could hear was his heart crashing against his ribcage, battering against the walls of his chest. When he tried to swallow, he realized his throat was closing up. Sweat had soaked through to his clothes. Saliva was running down his face. He looked at Legion, then ahead again, into the room where they were going to take him. At the device standing in the middle.
And then he gagged.
His throat forced up whatever he had left, and he leaned forward and let it fall from his lips. It hit the ground and spread, filling the cracks in the concrete; spreading like a disease across the floor. He was breathing heavily now. Struggling to take in air. The panic, the crushing sense of what was in store, felt like it was closing down his body, one organ at a time. His veins were pumping out blood, but nothing was coming back in.
Finally, he summoned the strength to look up again.
Legion was gone.
He glanced left and right. Around him nothing moved. Nothing made a sound. There was no sign of the devil. He swallowed. Tears started filling his eyes.
‘Do you know who Lucifer was?’
A voice, right behind his ear, fierce and violent, like shattered glass.
He whimpered.
A pause. ‘Are you crying?’
He tried to hold the tears back. But then he looked at the device in the other room, a massive, harrowing shape in the darkness, and imagined himself being dragged across the floor towards it. Quietly, he tried to beg for his life again, but as he went to speak, his words got lost. And then he felt a wet patch move out from his groin, along the inside of his leg.
‘Oh dear,’ Legion mocked. ‘Someone’s made a mess.’
In the corner of his eye, he saw Legion loom out of the darkness, about six feet away. The mask was in place again, eyes blinking in the eye holes, tongue moving in the mouth slit.
‘In Ezekiel,’ Legion said, his voice crawling with power, ‘it says, “Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so.” It’s talking about Lucifer here. It’s talking about the origins of Satan. “Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.”’ Legion paused. ‘Do you know what that means?’
He shook his head.
‘It means Lucifer had everything he could possibly want. He had God’s ear. But even that wasn’t enough for him. So, God cast him out of heaven.’
The devil glanced to his left, to the room with the device.
‘Do you think a God that cast out one of his own angels can hear you when you beg? Do you? He doesn’t hear anything you say. Nothing. God wants you to be scared of him, cockroach. And he wants you to be scared of me.’ Legion leaned into him. ‘Because I am the real Lucifer. I am God’s right-hand man. I am His messenger.’
‘Please,’ he sobbed.
Legion stepped away, his fingers like a nest of snakes, opening and closing. ‘And His wrath moves through me.’
His skin crawled — the feeling moving up his arms and across his chest — as he stared at the devil. Trying to make eye contact. Trying to look inside the mask, and seek out whatever goodness Legion had left. But as the man in the mask came at him, darkness swirling around him like a cloak, he realized something terrifying: there was no good in him.
PART FOUR
34
Lochlanark was a small town halfway between Oban and Lochgilphead. It looked out over the islands of Scarba, Luing and Shuna, to the Firth of Lorn, and to the misty, grey Atlantic beyond. It took seven hours to drive up from London, and I stopped only twice the whole way. Once to fill up the car, and once to call in at a petrol station to make sure I was on the right track. They told me Old Tay was a one-street village about seven miles north, right on the edge of the sea.
When I got there, I found five cottages and a sloping village green that dropped all the way down to the ocean. Inland, there were woods. The rising peaks of Beinn Dubh were beyond, streaked black and green, small streams of snow in every fold.