“Do you remember me?” Johnny’s tone is light, almost mocking. “Father?”
I’M HAVING A GUILT DREAM—SOMETHING ABOUT RESCUING A dead man from a burning hotel and hoping he won’t eat my face as I climb backwards down a ladder, then finding that he’s got no tongue and I’ve suffocated him by accident—when my phone rings. I roll over, nearly strangling myself in the sheets as I grab for it. It’s showing an international call, no caller-ID. “Hello?” I see the illuminated digits of the bedside radio: it’s a quarter past five.
“Bob?” It’s Pete. “Bob, is that you?”
“Ye—yeah.” I sit up and wince, swing my legs over the side of the bed. It’s dark. “Returning the favor.”
“I looked at the manuscript you sent me.” Pete sounds odd. It’s hard to tell over a mobile phone, but I could swear he’s upset about something.
“Great.” I summon up some false cheeriness as I shuffle towards the curtained window. “What did you make of it?”
“You said you’re doing business with people who, who have bibles containing this material?” Yes, Pete is worried. “I’d advise against that, Bob. I mean, assuming your business has anything to do with their beliefs, obviously; if you’re just buying office supplies from them that’s probably safe, but…” he trails off.
I yawn hugely, and peel back a corner of the curtain with one pinkie. Outside it’s dark and cold, but flakes of snow are falling just beyond the glass. Very large snowflakes. I let the curtain fall. “How non-mainstream are they?” I ask. “If you had to describe them to a colleague, what would you call them?”
“I’d”—Pete clears his throat—“I’d call them dangerously loopy heretics who are well down the slippery slope to hell, Bob. A hell of their own creation, even if you don’t believe in the literal sulfur-and-brimstone variety presided over by a big red guy with horns and cloven hooves. Which these people very likely do, but they think they’re on the side of the angels, which makes them doubly bad. They’re outside the Nicene Creed and they’re not actually Christians, although they think they are—like the Mormons. But while the Book of Mormon is just a nineteenth-century fabrication there’s stuff in here that’s, uh, disturbing. Very disturbing, Bob. The marginalia—are they yours?”
“Marginalia?” I ask before I can stop myself, then bite my tongue.
“Not yours?” Pete sounds relieved.
“Not mine. Er, I don’t think I’m supposed to have been allowed to have access to the book. If you don’t mind keeping that under your hat…?”
“Naughty, naughty! Well, that’s a relief because it means you haven’t turned batshit crazy on us since dinner last Tuesday. Mo will be relieved. In fact—”
“Pete.” I yawn again, but my head’s clearing. “What do they believe?”
“What? Oh. Hang on, let me check my notes.” I wince, but there’s no helping it: Pete runs on paper, so there will be an evidence trail of this unofficial consultation. Damn. “Let’s see. We have a bunch of foundational mythology about the Nephilim, an alternate creation myth to Genesis—that’s not so new. We then have a line of prophets descended from Adam by way of Lilith, not Eve, who are able to talk to these supernatural beings, angels or demons. And a couple of confused allegorical stories, sort of like the Book of Job only not as upbeat and cheery. But then there’s the new stuff. An entirely new apocalypse that devotes some verses to denouncing St John the Divine as a charlatan—that, right there, tells you we’re in uncharted territory. Between you and me, that conclusion is mainstream among serious biblical scholars—but it’s not something you generally run across among the literalists. And then the authors construct a bizarre eschatology around the image of a dead-but-sleeping god, whose followers on Earth will receive their reward in heaven if they conduct a series of purification rituals and—it says bind—enough converts to resurrect him? That’s literal heresy, Bob, insofar as it goes entirely against the two pillars of Christian doctrine, which are that the path to salvation is through voluntarily accepting Jesus as your personal savior, and that he’ll return when he’s good and ready. It’s not right.” There is a rising note of disquiet in his voice. “There are other hints that something is wrong: lots of elaborate gibberish about the ritual of summoning that requires the participation of two pure-blood descendants of the sons of Lilith. Lots of references to the sacrifice of Abraham, pronouncements of anathema upon the followers of false churches, imprecatory prayers and declarations that anyone who isn’t within the circle of salvation is going to regret it, that kind of thing. Who are these people, Bob? What are you doing with them?”
I stare at the thing in the pizza box on my desk. “I can’t tell you that.”
“They’re dangerous,” he insists. “Bob? If they invite you to one of their church services? You really don’t want to go—”
“I got that already.”
“No! You’re an outsider, Bob. There’s this stuff about binding converts. It sounds like some sort of coercion to me, and whoever owned this Bible was very keen on underlining passages relating to it. And stuff about making the unclean vine bear clean fruit whether it will or no. There’s a strong stench of the unholy about this book, Bob. Bob? Are you listening?”
I close my eyes. “Pete. You know damn well I’m an atheist.” He does, and he forgives me for it because he’s Pete. Even though it’s a lie; I’m not an atheist these days (even though I wish I was). “I’m not going to visit these folks’ church, either.” (That is a lie.) “But I have to prepare a report on, on their reliability. Deadline’s later today. You’ve been a real help. Is there any chance you can send me your notes?”
“They’re on paper…”
“Use your phone; photograph each page and send it to me as an MMS. I’ll pay you back. It’s really urgent.” A plausible white lie jumps into my mouth and is out before I can swallow it: “I’ve got to put the word out before they land a contract to set up half a dozen faith schools.”
“Oh dear! No, that wouldn’t do at all. But I’ve only got six pages. It’s handwritten, they’re not very legible…”
“Just send them. Please?”
“All right.” He pauses. “God bless, and take care.” Then he ends the call.
I open my eyes again, and take a deep breath. I really hope I haven’t got one of our last remaining innocent friends into deep trouble.
Then I peel back the curtain and let my eyes adjust. It’s snowing heavily now, and a thick rind of spongy white covers the car park, turning the vehicles into hunchbacked white boulders. The snowflakes are big, and they fall fast. At a guess there’s upward of five centimeters down there already. I shiver, check the time, and go back to bed for an hour or two.
But I can’t get to sleep again.
I don’t like snow.
Years ago now, when I was young and foolish and ignorant, I got a ringside view of what happens when it snows for forty years. Or rather, of what happens when a team of mad necromancers use a certain very unpleasant ritual to summon up what they mistakenly called an ice giant, a monster out of Norse mythology who they hoped would freeze the Red Army in its tracks and secure victory for the Thousand Year Reich.
Well, in the short term their plan worked. Predators from dying universes trump T-34 tanks and B-29 bombers. But their triumph was short-lived: consuming energy from the structure of spacetime, the monster grew and grew and…well, when we went through the gate in Amsterdam to shut it down, there wasn’t a lot left. A layer of dirty carbon dioxide snow beneath unblinking, reddening stars. A view down a hillside towards a blue-tinged lake of liquid oxygen, a crust of solid nitrogen slowly growing across it. A gibbous moon carved with Hitler’s saturnine portrait rising behind the battlements of a dead SS castle…