The Immaculate (38 page)

They ran on through the darkness, occasionally stopping when they heard footsteps or voices close by. It was like a deadly game of hide and seek; once, at the sound of a gunshot, Jack flung himself to the ground, dragging Gail with him. For the next few minutes they heard voices raised in anger, remonstrations. Someone shouted, “You fucking idiot, watch what you're doing. You could have killed me there.” Most of the time, however, it was quiet, though that was almost as bad because it made Jack think of ambush, of stumbling into the unseen sights of rifles, blundering into concealed pits with wooden spikes pointing upwards to impale them. He quickly lost all sense of time and place. The darkness was a black canvas upon which his imagination scribbled like an overactive child.

A number of times he asked Gail where they were going, but she sidestepped the question, telling him to shush or simply muttering, “You'll see.” This evasiveness did not help Jack's peace of mind. He began to suspect that she didn't really
know
where they were going. His faith in her was beginning to wane, and he was just about to yank her to a halt, when her steps slowed, then stopped and she murmured, “We're here.”

Jack looked around, but could see only the same shapeless darkness they had been fumbling through for what seemed like hours. “Where?” he said grumpily.

Gail turned to look at him. Her face was a vague pale oval, blots for eyes. “Don't you recognise this place?” she asked.

Jack felt anger increasing the volume of his voice and struggled to contain it. “How can I?” he said. “I can't bloody
see
anything.”

“We need light.”

“It
would
help.”

Jack felt her hand touch his cheek tenderly and a little of his rising anger dissipated.

“Things are going to happen here, Jack,” she said.

“What things?”

She ignored the question. “Don't be annoyed, and try not to be scared—”

“Scared? Why should I be scared? There's only a few dozen loonies out there, hunting for us with shotguns.”

“—and please don't be sad.”

This last request surprised him. “Sad? What do you mean? Why should I be sad?” He shook his head almost wearily. “Gail, what's going on?”

“Shh,” she soothed. “Shh, my love. Everything will be fine. Trust me. You'll get your answers, I promise.”

“But . . . but where
are
we?”

“You tell me.” Before he could protest, she said, “When the light comes, you'll know.”

“When the light comes? You mean, in the morning?”

“No, not the morning. Look.”

Jack didn't know what he was supposed to be looking at. He was aware of Gail raising an arm, and he squinted in the direction of what he guessed would be her pointing finger. The night was a black swirling soup without form. He gazed dutifully into its depths for a minute or so, but his perception remained unchanged. Sighing, he was about to point this out to her, when all at once he realised that . . . yes, perhaps he
was
actually beginning to differentiate between shapes. Certainly this gradation of shadow now seemed separate to that, and wasn't there a certain suggestion of outline, of definite form, rising through the murk?

He looked at Gail. She seemed clearer, too, her features more in focus. Was this simply because his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness? But if that were the case, why hadn't they done so before? He looked up at the sky, as if seeking answers. Through a tangle of branches he saw clouds edged with silver luminescence. Even as he watched, the clouds shredded as though pulled apart, revealing the fat white face of the moon.

Moonlight seemed to lance down, a shimmering blue-white corridor, reminding Jack of a laser beam in an old science-fiction film. Considering the presence of the hunters all around them, he should have felt alarmed at being pinpointed so candidly, but instead he felt calm, even awed, as though the light contained a balm, a drug, that nullified his anxiety. He looked again at Gail. She had her eyes closed and a serene smile on her lips; her face was raised to the moon as if she were bathing in its icy splendour. She had spoken of light, but how could she have known? Was this a natural phenomenon or a coincidence? The idea that she had instigated all this was unacceptable.

“Gail—” he began.

Without looking at him she said, “Shh. Tell me what you see.”

Jack looked away from her, let his gaze wander over their surroundings. They were standing at the edge of a clearing, which the light had transformed into an ice sculpture. Dominating the clearing, some twenty yards away, was a vast oak tree, raising its limbs to the sky. The tree was suffused with moonlight, the intricate whorls in its trunk picked out as though studded with diamonds. Smaller trees and bushes circled it, though at a respectful distance, like bondsmen. In places the tree's roots had forced their way up through the earth and then plunged back in again. The area was scattered with acorns.

Jack drew in a sharp breath, which felt as though he had sucked ice-blue moonlight into his lungs. He felt suddenly cold inside; pain blossomed at the base of his sternum, momentarily stabbing, almost doubling him over. He knew this place. A memory rose like bile: the sensation of an egg bursting in his mouth, releasing something salty, viscous, with feeble life. He tore his gaze from the glittering oak, turned accusingly to Gail. “Why have you brought me here?”

“You know this place,” she said. A simple statement, not a question.

“Of course I do. You know I do. How could you have brought me here? I thought you loved me. I trusted you.”

“I
do
love you, Jack,” she insisted.

“How can you say that? You wouldn't do this to me if you loved me.”

“Jack, listen to me. There's a reason for bringing you here.”

“What reason? What fucking reason?” He heard his own voice becoming shrill with fury. Gail reached out a hand to touch him, but he recoiled from her as if she were diseased.

She sighed and said, “Exorcism.”

Jack opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish before managing to blurt out,
“What?”

“Exorcism,” she repeated. “Laying ghosts, remember? Finding love. It's all here.”

“What are you talking about?”

She was becoming angry now. “If you'll just listen a moment and not be so pigheaded—”

“I am listening. I just asked you a question, didn't I?”

“You're flying off the handle.”

“Well, what do you expect? We're likely to get our fucking heads blown off at any second and you're doing a Sigmund Freud on me.”

“Jack,” Gail said, and her voice was now controlled, conciliatory. She reached out a hand. He stepped back again but she grabbed him by the sleeve.

“What?” he snapped.

She paused a moment, as if absorbing his anger, killing it. “Take my hand,” she murmured.

“Why?”

“Because I want you to. Trust me.”

He glared at her sullenly. Her face was alabaster, eyes silver.

“Take my hand,” she repeated.

He yanked his arm from her grip. “No, I won't.”

She was suddenly furious.
“Take it,”
she ordered.

Jack stepped back, mouth dropping open, eyes widening in shock. The voice that had emerged from her lips was not her own. It was a man's voice, deeper, older.

It was his father's voice.

He stood frozen, staring at her, unable to say or do anything. She looked back at him, her face calm, almost bland. There was no indication of what had just occurred, and Jack found himself wondering whether in fact anything had, whether perhaps it had been no more than a quirky aberration of his own stressed mind. For a long moment the woods were absolutely silent; silent as a vacuum, silent as death.

Then a voice from behind him said, “Jack.”

Jack turned slowly, as if the word were a hand on his shoulder or a hook in his flesh. Moonlight still filled the clearing, bleaching the trees and bushes and undergrowth a uniform white. The figure, standing before the oak tree, silhouetted against its massive trunk, seemed to deflect this light, however, to be wrapped in charcoal shadow. Despite this, it radiated peace, serenity. In a quiet, clear voice it spoke three more words: “Come here, Jack.”

He felt a strange blend of emotions swirling inside him—fear, peace, excitement, awe. He looked to Gail as though for guidance and saw that she was smiling, her face radiant. “It's okay,” she whispered. “Please take my hand.”

She held it out and this time Jack grasped it without hesitation. Together the two of them began to walk towards the dark figure standing before the oak tree.

Each step was a journey in itself, and each journey a regression. Jack felt his life unravelling, slipping through his hands and his mind. It was a life full of pain, of anger, of bitterness, resentment, fear. Occasionally slivers of love, of happiness, flared like matches in a darkened room, only to die when Jack reached out his hands to warm them.

He looked up at the figure and felt waves of sorrow, regret emanating from it, substantial as cold and heat. He understood that the figure was trying to atone for the darkness that had tainted Jack's early life, was somehow holding itself responsible. The closer Jack got to the figure the more he felt himself dwindling. But the sensation was neither unpleasant nor enervating; indeed, it was cathartic. Now he was close to the figure and it seemed to loom over him like a giant, beckoning him with its silence. Jack looked across at Gail for reassurance, and was surprised to find he was holding the hand of a young girl perhaps ten years old. He looked down and saw that he, too, had reverted to childhood. He clenched Gail's hand tighter; she seemed not quite there, ethereal, suffused with a faint golden aura that blurred her outline. They came to a halt a few feet from the figure. It bent toward them, craning into the light. With a sound like rustling silk the darkness fled from it, revealing its face.

“Jack,” said the man again and held out his arms. Jack realised now that he had never seen his father without the grief and the pain and the anger. He was a handsome man, even a beautiful one. It was serenity, Jack decided, that made him so.

Releasing Gail's hand, Jack held out his arms, aping his father's gesture, and he was younger still now, eight years old, or seven. He felt himself swept up, swung round; he couldn't help but shriek with the joy of it.

“Come on, Jack, up you go,” said his father. It seemed to him as though his father had said this many times before. Certainly Jack knew instinctively what to do. Aided by his father's strong hands, he scrambled up on to his shoulders, until his own feet were on either side of the man's neck, resting on his chest. Jack's hands were around his father's forehead, his chin touching his father's hair.

Jack squinted up into the sunny sky. Though he had faith in his father, he found all at once that he was confused, that his thoughts had fled. “Where are we going, Daddy?” he asked as his father began to walk.

“We're going to see Mummy and Gail,” his father said. “Don't you remember?”

Mummy and Gail. Jack knew that the names were so familiar they were part of him, but strangely, he could conjure up no faces to accompany them. He put the thought from his mind for the time being and concentrated instead on holding tight to Daddy's forehead so that he wouldn't slip from his shoulders. It was an awful long way to the ground. Being up here was scary, but it was exciting, too. “I'm the king of the castle, you're a dirty rascal,” he sang as they jolted along.

Then they were standing at the entrance to a churchyard. It was a sudden transition, like a cut in a film, or as if Jack had fallen asleep for a while and only now woken up. Except that he couldn't have been asleep because he was standing beside his Daddy, holding his hand, unless of course he'd been sleepwalking. In his other hand he was holding a bunch of flowers, some yellow ones which he knew as daffydills and some pink ones which were roses (he vaguely remembered Daddy telling him to “be careful of the thorns, they're sharp”). Daddy crouched beside him and Jack turned to him expectantly. “Okay, Champ?” Daddy said.

“Yes,” said Jack quietly, reacting to the solemn tenderness in Daddy's voice.

“Face clean for Mummy?”

“Yes. And my hands, too.”

Daddy smiled. “Come on, then.”

He pushed open the creaky black gate and the two of them turned left to walk up the gravelly path that snaked between the tombstones. Jack liked the church with its nooks and crannies, its beard of ivy; it seemed a nice peaceful place. The graveyard was peaceful, too. Tall grasses swayed in the wind, wild flowers bobbed their pretty heads. To reach Mummy and Gail you had to go over the grass, past some very old stones, all crooked and crumbling, and there they were. The plot was always nice and neat. Daddy took last week's flowers, which were beginning to wither, out of the metal thing with the holes in it and Jack put in the new ones. Then they stood and looked at the stone for a bit; sometimes when they were doing this, Daddy knelt down and bowed his head, and sometimes he cried and Jack did, too, because Daddy said it was all right to cry. Jack was only four and could only read little words, but he knew what the words on the tombstone said:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF ALICE STONE
BORN
15
^TH
JULY
1938–
DIED
10
^TH
OCTOBER
1970
AND GAIL STONE
BORN AND DIED
10
^TH
OCTOBER
1970
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, AT PEACE TOGETHER
LOVED AND MISSED FOREVER, NEVER FORGOTTEN

Daddy turned to Jack and said, “You understand what this means, son, don't you?”

Jack shrugged. “Yes,” he said, but he was not sure that he did.

Suddenly Daddy reached for him and hugged him tight. Jack knew Daddy wouldn't hurt him, but he felt a little frightened all the same. His face was pressed into Daddy's chest. Daddy began to make sobbing noises. Through the sobbing noises he said, “I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry. This is how it should have been. This is how I wanted it to be. I'm sorry.”