14.6

Sister Wild clicked record on her tape recorder, then listened intently, her fingers steepled in front of her on the table.

She didn’t interrupt Simon, save to tut loudly when he called his first victim, his foster mother, a ‘Fucking filthy disease-ridden whore.’

When he’d finished, his face was red and contorted with rage by reliving his squalid, disappointment-filled life in front of total strangers.

Tears had ran down his cheeks and pooled on the table beneath him.

‘May we have a moment, please, gentlemen?’ Sister Wild said, turning to each of the orderlies in turn.

Len nodded and gestured to the door for the others to leave before him.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, waving Len away.

Len reluctantly left and closed the door.

It was only when the door clicked shut that Sister Wild began talking.

‘Young man, I am bitterly disappointed in you. The path your life has taken is grim, to say the least, but the choices you have made have been despicable. A part of me can see why you have taken the actions you have, but I cannot reconcile the action and the reaction.’

‘I just need someone to love me,’ Simon said, then shook his head furiously. ‘No, that’s not true. I don’t even need that. I just need someone to care whether I live or die. Because no one ever has…’ he trailed off, sobbing hard enough to rattle the chair beneath him.

‘I care whether you live or die.’ Sister Wild’s cold grey eyes locked with his and for the first time in his life he saw a semblance of emotion in there. No one else had ever looked at him like that; like he mattered.

He saw that she was telling the truth.

‘Thank you for that,’ he said, reaching out across the table.

She took his shaking hands, squeezing hard. The act was tender. The warmest in a life full of cold indifference, neglect and cruelty.

‘And thank you for that,’ he sobbed. ‘It’s the most affection anyone has ever given me.’

Sister Wild let him cry it out for a moment.

‘Do not think that this is an acceptance of what you have done. Your sins are far too wicked to be dismissed so easily. But there is hope. A deeply damaged young man sits across the table from me. But, God’s love can heal all wounds. So do not fear. His love, through our teachings, will help mend you.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’

Sister Wild locked eyes with him again. And this time the gaze was cruel, crueller perhaps than anything he had seen. But this was at least coming from a good place, so he allowed it.

‘I am willing to give you the weapons needed to fight for your soul, Wayne. But are you willing to fight evil every second of your life?’

Simon nodded.

‘Good. Then we at least have somewhere we can begin. I look in your eyes and I see a wounded little boy. I have no doubt that were it not for the unfortunate hand you were dealt in life you would not be sitting here across from me.’

Simon shook his head.

‘But this is not going to be easy. There is a lot of work to do and there are a lot of hard lessons you need to learn. Are you willing to shoulder this burden and allow God into your heart?’

Tears still spilling down his cheeks, Simon smiled and said, ‘I am.’

*

Sister Wild lived up to her name. After seeing her in action, Simon was instantly more terrified of her than he was Len and the other tough guy orderlies.

The fun started within a few hours of Simon’s admittance.

With it being Sunday, the nuns were all fasting.

It was taken as a given that all of the patients were in on this too.

Simon was starving. He’d been homeless since he’d murdered his foster mother, living in bus shelters and abandoned houses. Food had been scarce. Until he’d met the friends who he’d sent Wayne to live with.

He’d hoped that being in care would mean that he was able to indulge.

He was so hungry he could cry.

Sister Wild came around to see him. He begged her for something to eat.

‘Wayne, we fast on Sundays. We all do, staff, patients. Not one exception. We need to show God we love him. With this simple act of sacrifice, we are telling him that we need him more than we need food. More, in fact, than we need life. Push your feelings of discomfort aside and focus on that.

‘Matthew 6:16-18, Jesus says, “When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”’

Simon nodded. This did kind of make sense to him on some level.

Sister Wild pushed something into his hand.

It was a Bible. It was clearly old and well-used, but well-looked after.

‘This will be of use to you while you are staying here with us. Please look after it. If you read it and take the words into your heart, you will be taking your first step onto the right path.’

She pressed the book into his hands.

As their hands brushed each other, he felt a powerful charge like a static shock. A wave of goosebumps ran down his spine.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘I want you to recite that verse for me tomorrow morning. You have,’ she squinted through the window of his room at the clock in the corridor. ‘Just under three hours till lights out.’

Simon was confused; the clock said just after six o’ clock.

‘You have all you need there, I’m sure. I’ll see you in the morning.’

*

What Sister Wild hadn’t said was that the morning was actually 2:45 a.m.

The lights blazed on, searing his corneas even through his eyelids.

While he floundered, mouth flapping wordlessly, the sound of a bell rang out in the corridor.

It was loud, loud enough to make him wonder whether to cover his eyes or ears first.

‘Out of your bunks, sinners. It’s prayer time,’ a voice that could only have been Sister Wild’s bellowed.

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Simon was startled as he saw the clock in the corridor.

Surely they’d made a mistake.

Sister Wild poked her head round the side of his cell.

‘Out of your bunk, sinner. Didn’t you hear the bell?’

‘It’s the middle of the night,’ he protested weakly.

Sister Wild said nothing else, just hurled a bucket of icy water over him.

He jolted as it hit him, and a couple of dozen ice cubes bounced off his skull.

His heart leapt in his chest.

His clothes clung to him, making him even colder, if that were possible.

While he flapped his arms, trying to warm himself and somehow come to terms with this brutally efficient method of being woken, Sister Wild again appeared around the door.

‘Now how did I know you would be the last one from his bunk?’

Before he could react, Sister Wild had wrenched him from his bunk by the ear, bellowing bible verses at him all the while.

It was a hell of a welcome.

In spite of his willingness to change, he lashed out, trying to shove her away.

She was much stronger than she looked.

While they wrestled – Simon on the losing end by a wide margin – another nun came in, a sadistic grin on her face, and smashed a cricket bat across the back of his thighs.

He hit the concrete floor hard, his wet clothes serving to make this experience all the more miserable.

The landing sapped most of the fight from him. Stinging pain shot through his nervous system.

‘Look at him, bloated with sin,’ Sister Wild spat. Her cricket bat poked roughly into Simon’s stomach. Her eyes blazed with hatred.

Three other nuns stared down at him, their faces pale, gaunt and skeletal beneath their habits.

‘Nothing a few more days of fasting won’t solve,’ Sister Wild grinned.

‘Fuck you. You’re all fucking crazy,’ Simon bellowed, his face turning as red as the back of his legs.

The nuns looked to each other and tutted.

‘This simply won’t do,’ said Sister Wild.

As Simon looked up at her, he realised that she was not as old as he first thought.

She whacked the cricket bat into the floor a couple of times then came at him with it again, hitting him across the back of the legs, the buttocks and the belly until he stopped struggling and lay, whimpering, on the floor.

‘There, now we have somewhere we can start from,’ she smiled. ‘On your feet and follow me to the end of the corridor where your fellow sinners are waiting for you.’

*

Over the next week, Simon was shown the ropes in his new home.

He was starved, forced to memorise and interpret vast chunks of the Bible.

He was beaten day and night, not allowed to sleep.

He was forced to shower in ice cold water twice a day, because, ‘Cleanliness was next to Godliness.’

And he slowly began to turn his life around.

His temper remained, but he reined it in, too terrified of being beaten to a pulp by the brutal nuns.

Sister Wild still routinely went upside his legs, back and buttocks with the cricket bat, to keep him in line.

But it began to work.

The structure was what he needed to keep himself in line. He came to relish the fasting, the pain, the penance.

And he felt God in his heart. He knew vast chunks of the Bible and was able to recite them from memory.

Two years after he was admitted he was judged as being rehabilitated and thrown out without any pomp or ceremony.

It was a blessing to be free of their cruelty.

But it had taught him a great deal about life and about God.

It was a path he was keen to continue to follow.

And lead others down too.

*

After serving his time, Simon went back to check up on his brother.

Wayne was still living with Jeff, one of the friends that Simon had set him up with.

But Simon was dismayed to see that his brother was being derided and pushed around by Jeff . Wayne was still not taking charge of his life; he was content to be a bit player in his own story, a sheep rather than the shepherd.

Simon had God on his side and in his heart now, and a strong sense of what he would and wouldn’t tolerate.

He watched through the window, watching his broken, dejected brother.

Simon blamed himself for this; after all, he had killed Wayne’s – he refused to claim blood ties with a woman he’d never met – mother.

He vowed to look after him.

He owed him that much. They were square now, the grudge was over.

Wayne was in a bad home now too.

Jeff was a heavy drinker and often had a foul mood to go with it.

He put Simon in mind of the slut he’d murdered before setting off to find Wayne.

Simon had taken up residence in the house’s shed, in order to be closer to his brother.

He watched through the dirty glass, keeping a watchful eye over Wayne.

One night, Jeff came in pissed from the pub and laid into Wayne while he slept on the settee.

‘Lord, if you don’t stop him then I shall have to intervene,’ he said, eyes raised to the skies above.

He waited a moment, saw that Jeff was not going to stop of his own accord.

Simon grabbed a loose slab of paving from the path and hurled it through the window.

Glass rained down upon the laminate floor and lay, gleaming, among the crumpled beer cans.

Jeff turned, furious.

Confused, he saw Simon’s face at the window.

Wayne cowered at the sight of him.

‘Don’t you raise a hand to him,’ Simon bellowed.

As Jeff came for him, Simon grinned a shark-like grin and said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’

And with that a fist-sized chunk of rock hit Jeff in the temple.

He went down, a thick ribbon of blood oozing from his ear.

His throat let out a sickly gurgle.

Until Simon pulled a knife from his jacket pocket and opened his jugular.

Wayne was wide-eyed, terrified.

‘Not again,’ he sobbed, hiding his eyes.

‘Fill a bag with some clothes and come with me.’

Wayne looked at his brother’s crazy eyes.

He saw no harm in them anymore.

‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ Simon said. ‘And I will do whatever I can now to make this up to you.’

Wayne looked dubious.

‘If you’re coming you’d best come, cos he’ll be dead soon,’ Simon said, pointing to the gurgling body on the floor.

Wayne took a look at the body, looked at Simon’s extended hand, glanced back at the corpse again, then took his brother’s hand.

*

‘We’re in this together now,’ Simon said. ‘You understand that, don’t you?’

Wayne bowed his head.

Nodded glumly.

‘Till the bitter end, my brother.’ Simon threw an arm around him and hugged him in tight. ‘Not even God himself can part us now.’