14.7
The Cross brothers became nomadic for a while, living wherever they could without being discovered.
One day fate smiled upon them.
A wrong turn had led them to pass a small village by a river.
It was picturesque; a quaint old-fashioned English country village.
It seemed as though the sun was shining directly upon it, almost like God was focussing a spotlight for them.
Midges swarmed by the banks of the river as they walked.
‘What a beautiful village,’ Simon said.
Wayne looked up.
His jaw dropped.
The scents of flowers hit their nostrils hard.
‘It’s a picture of calm and serenity,’ Simon said, beaming. ‘Let’s see what’s going on here.’
*
The village was quiet; everyone kept themselves to themselves.
They took a pride in their homes and village that was a world apart from the shitholes in which Simon had grown up.
Everything was meticulously well-maintained.
It seemed the villagers’ pride was contagious. They wanted to outdo each other.
‘This is like nothing I’ve ever seen,’ Simon breathed, looking around in awe.
The feeling deepened when they saw the church, a stone building with an impressive stained glass window that made up most of the left hand wall.
It depicted Jesus comforting grieving children.
‘If you are lost, God will find you,’ read the ornate legend beneath the picture.
The image comforted Simon and his brother.
It seemed like God had led them here.
The church door – which hadn’t been painted in years, judging by the peeling paint on the corners of the frame – was ajar.
They knocked and entered.
‘Hello?’ Simon called out, leading his brother inside.
The scent of dust and damp hung thick in the air.
The light coming through the windows was dulled by an inch-thick layer of dirt when it should have been shining into the church.
Simon tutted loudly, shaking his head.
‘A place as beautiful as this and the parish are happy to let it sit in this state.’
Wayne nodded.
He looked like he was in a daze.
‘Hello? Hello? HELLO?’ Simon called out.
The sound echoed off the walls.
Still no one came.
They moved around to the altar.
Simon again gasped when he saw the magnificence of it; well, what it could’ve been if it hadn’t been covered in dust and cobwebs and red wine stains.
His blood was boiling.
‘Wayne, you hide over there,’ he said, pointing to the shadows on the other side of the church.
He shoved the door open that led to the priest’s quarters.
An overweight man wearing creased, dirty priest’s clothes shuffled out.
He reeked of body odour and altar wine. His eyes were half-lidded, his nose red and veiny like that of a hardcore booze hound. His cheeks were dark with at least four days of stubble.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he said, his eyes dull and glazed.
‘What in the name of God are you playing at, man?’ Simon spat, pointing to the dust-covered altar.
‘What?’ the priest said.
‘A magnificent church like this and you’ve neglected it, let it fall into disrepair. It tells me everything I need to know about the state of your faith.’
The priest blushed. ‘My cleaner is ill at the moment,’ he stuttered.
‘That’s no excuse. You could clean it yourself, take a bit of pride in your church. In your faith. How do you think God feels about your apathy?’
The priest stuttered.
Simon shook his head, eyes bulging, face contorted with rage.
‘You’re pathetic. This church could be something to really be proud of. The rest of the village is a joy to behold. This should be the heart of the community.’
The priest’s jaw flapped, trying to summon the words to defend his actions.
‘Well – what’s your name? – I’ll take care of it for you.’
‘I’m Reverend Sanders,’ the priest said.
‘Reverend Sanders, you should be ashamed of yourself,’ Simon said, looking him up and down with a withering gaze.
Sanders shrunk away.
Simon went in the back of the room and grabbed a bucket and some sponges.
There was a telescopic window cleaner there, but it too was covered in a thick layer of dust.
He washed it off in the utility room’s sink – which was also absolutely pitted with dirt.
After bleaching the sink, Simon filled up a bucket with hot soapy water and began to fervently clean the place.
*
Over the following weeks, Simon became a part of the community. He’d talked Wayne into staying in hiding in a barn on the edge of the village, while he got the lay of the land. He helped people with their chores, asking only for a hot meal as payment.
He called himself Wayne, wanting to give the impression that he and his brother were the same person.
Once Simon had finished with it, the church was gleaming, freshly painted. Simon even shinned up a ladder and washed down the roof twice a week.
While up on the roof, he looked around the village.
‘That’s much better,’ he smiled.
He went into the church and Sanders was shifty once more.
‘Now this place is something to be proud of,’ he said.
Sanders agreed with him, but seemed awkward, like he’d been caught in the middle of something unsavoury.
Simon vowed to find out what he was upto.
*
Simon made a nuisance of himself, keeping the church clean and tidy.
It gleamed from rafters to floorboards.
Simon took a pride in it that he never had in anything before.
He felt closer to God.
And he found a peace descended upon him when he was in the village and in particular the church.
Sanders seemed uncomfortable with him being in here, like he had something to hide.
He was constantly on edge whenever Simon was around.
Simon had the answer; before he’d left the psychiatric ward, he’d managed to build up a stash of the strong sedatives they’d given him. They’d been sat in his bag, unused.
But something had told him to keep hold of them.
Now he had his use.
*
One morning after mass, when Simon knew the priest would be in his quarters doing whatever he did in there most of the day, the brothers crept into the church.
Wayne locked the front doors then hid in the shadows.
Simon moved slowly to the altar where he used the bottom of the chalice to grind up four of the strong sedative tablets.
He carefully tipped them into the wine bottle that he knew Sanders would be coming for soon.
He cleaned the church, waiting for Sanders to shuffle out for the wine bottle like he tended to do at the same time each afternoon.
Simon watched him drink it, trying to make conversation so he could keep an eye on him.
The priest moved away, headed back for his quarters.
He was barely through the door when Simon heard a hefty thud.
Simon dragged him behind the altar and moved into the back of the church which housed the black-glossed door which led to Sanders’ living quarters.
It hid Sanders’ secret, of that he was certain.
As he opened the door the smell of damp flooded into his nostrils.
He saw a long staircase, descending into a dank basement.
It was dark as hell down here.
It was startling that a house of God could harbour such darkness.
He moved around in the dark, finding a vast labyrinth of tunnels beneath the church.
It seemed old, like it had been here since the days when the church had been built.
There was a wooden door on the right hand wall.
A thick padlock helped hide its secrets from Simon.
He pressed his ear to the door, hearing pained breathing from behind it.
He grimaced at the sound.
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‘Is someone in here?’ he asked, wiggling the door handle in vain.
‘Help me,’ a startlingly young voice called out.
Simon’s mood darkened.
He took a step back, raised his right knee and delivered a hard kick to the left of the door handle.
The door buckled a little.
He threw himself against it like a man possessed until the door popped open, dumping him on the cold concrete floor.
In the dark room, in a cage, no less, he found a boy.
*
The poor bastard couldn’t have been older than ten. The only clothes he wore were a dirty pair of tight white briefs. He was skinny to the point of emaciation.
‘Are you ok?’ Simon asked.
The boy shook his head and burst into tears.
‘He said he was helping me find Jesus,’ the boy sobbed.
The boy’s strange walk and the dark blood matted into the back of his underpants told Simon everything he needed to know.
Simon’s expression became utterly murderous at the realisation of what the boy had endured in here.
‘I’m coming back for you,’ he said, clasping the boy’s hand tight through the bars. ‘I promise.’
The boy nodded, panic in his eyes.
‘I just need to find the keys.’
The boy nodded again. ‘Please don’t take too long.’
Simon pulled him in, stroked his hair comfortingly.
The boy recoiled from his touch in a way that sickened him. ‘Don’t rub my hair,’ he sobbed. ‘That’s what he does.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’
The boy nodded again. Tears glimmered in his eyes.
Simon shuffled upstairs.
He began to throw things around.
A statue of the Virgin Mary tipped over and shattered on the stone floor.
He found a set of keys hidden beneath the altar cloth.
He ran back to the basement room and tried them in the cage door.
The boy collapsed onto him, crying his heart out.
‘Shhh, it’s ok,’ Simon said. ‘I won’t let him hurt you anymore.’
The boy looked at him with dripping, red-rimmed eyes. ‘Promise?’
‘If you stay by my side, no harm will ever come of you, my child,’ Simon said.
The boy smiled, eyes gushing tears. ‘Thank you. And God bless you.’
‘Wayne?’ Simon called upstairs.
His brother was waiting at the top of the stairs.
‘Can you make this boy some food please?’
Wayne nodded, then took the boy into the kitchen.
Simon stared blankly at the walls of the basement room, where all this Godlessness had taken place.
A vein pounded in his right temple.
Rage threatened to overcome him, but he fought it.
This could not be a flash in the pan.
This needed to be a protracted learning process.
He inhaled deeply a few times, closed his eyes, tried to quell his racing pulse, tried to banish that familiar red mist that had descended.
Murder was in his eyes, he didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that.
He pounded his way up the stairs and grabbed the still-paralysed priest.
‘Reverend Sanders?’ he spat, slapping the old pervert till his lips were burst across his face. ‘God and I have some very uncomfortable questions to ask you.’
He dragged the priest down to the cellar by the ankles, in spite of being outweighed by a good five stone.
He gave him a good hiding, but reined himself in before he did any lasting damage.
‘Wayne?’ he called up the stairs. ‘Can you give me a hand down here?’
*
Wayne stood in the room with him.
The pair of them fixed the priest with an intense glare.
The priest was just regaining the use of his faculties.
‘What shall we do with him, Wayne?’ Simon said, a sickly grin on his face.
Wayne shook his head, brow furrowed, hatred in his eyes.
‘You’re weak. Bloated with sin. You’re a disgrace to your faith. You are a sickening example of power being used to corrupt innocence. Hypocrisy. Apathy. Sodomy,’ Simon’s eyes narrowed at this last. ‘You are seemingly beyond redemption. But I have been told to try and cleanse you, though you are – in my eyes – a lost cause.’
Simon pulled a kitchen knife from under his clothes. ‘I’ve been told to cut the devil out of you.’ He advanced, his chin on his chest, grinning that demonic grin, eyes rolled back into his head staring up at Sanders through dark slivers of pupil.
Sanders lasted four days before his heart gave out.
Simon was disappointed in the end. He’d been hoping he could cleanse the priest’s soul. And plus he’d been enjoying himself.
The priest’s face was drawn in a horrific silent scream.
Simon had removed his genitals, fingers and tongue as well as handfuls of his flesh.
‘Not enough to save him,’ he said to Wayne, who stood, pale and disgusted in the corner.
He took one look at the mutilated priest’s body, still seeping dark blood like spilled altar wine, and hurled all over the concrete floor.
They wrapped the body in a tarpaulin that Wayne had stolen from the barn they had been sleeping in and dumped it in the bottom of an open grave. They covered it up with just enough soil to conceal it.
The next day one of the villager’s coffins was lowered on top of it, hiding Sanders’s corpse for good.
*
After ridding the village of their vile paedophile priest, the brothers took over the church. They agreed that Wayne would hide out in the residential quarters while Simon would be the public face of the church.
Simon, with his newfound faith blazing like a beacon in the dark, made a perfect preacher.
His heartfelt sermons were an instant hit with the parishioners.
Word spread and people came from miles around to see this new preacher, taking the word of God and bringing it into the modern age.
Sin was banished from their community and everyone began to adopt his ideals.
He was a natural born leader.
Simon remembered his time with the nuns and the joy that fasting had come to symbolise for him.
He often spoke to Wayne about the sacrifices that Jesus had made for them.
When things in the village were stable, he told Wayne he was going to have to deal with the church and its parishioners for a while.
He instructed his brother to lock him in the cage in the basement and leave him there for forty days and nights.
Wayne looked at him like his insanity had found new bounds.
But he saw the conviction in his brother’s eyes and knew that he was going to see through whatever madness he had in mind.
‘It’s Lent,’ Simon said by simple way of explanation. ‘And I need to cut the devil out of myself.’
Not a morsel of food passed his lips in that time, although he did drink water from the hose (he insisted that Wayne hose him down twice every day as, ‘Cleanliness was next to Godliness.’)
He came out with forty fresh wounds in his right thigh.
‘Thank you for that, my brother,’ he said. ‘I felt Him in there.’ His tone was excited, that of a kid discovering a mountain of presents on Christmas morning. ‘He walked with me every step of the way.’
Wayne bowed his head. ‘Can I take my turn?’
Simon embraced him and nodded. ‘Of course, my child.’
*
Wayne’s experience was identical to his brother’s except for the wounds being on his left thigh.
Simon took great pleasure in cutting the devil out of himself and Wayne, purifying their souls through their shared pain.
And they began to do this as a service to others.
After sinners revealed their deeds during confession, the confessor would sometimes find themselves, bleeding and screaming, in the basement of the church. Other than the brothers, no one ever made it until Deborah years later.
The village became, unofficially at first, to be known as Serenity, at Simon’s recommendation.
As the brothers grew more practised at their macabre craft, they began to take turns, switching seamlessly.
The only difference in their captive’s eyes were the scars on the opposite leg, the slightly differing colour of their eyes and their subtly different mannerisms.
The unsuspecting eye would never have thought there was anything going on, but a few people in Serenity knew, among them the boy they’d rescued from Sanders’ cage.
The boy who would one day become Preacher Kelly.