'You must.'

'Is Martin there yet? Is Martin in there?'

'Not yet.' 'Martin will come in when the feast is almost finished, and he will make the first self-sacrifical cut right in front of us.'

'What cut?'asked Charlie.

M. Musette tugged at his arm again. 'Come on, you have to see it for yourself.'

'What d.a.m.n cut?' Charlie persisted.

'What cut do you think? The cut that is holy without being fatal. The cut that transforms a man into a divine being.'

'He's going to -?'

M. Musette nodded.

Charlie could have screamed, and hit out at him, and banged his head against the wall. He was shuddering with suppressed hysteria. But all the time his logic was telling him: This isn't the way. These are only words. They haven't hurt Martin yet, and until they do you've got to bide your time, Charlie, otherwise you'll blow this chance and you'II never get another.

'Come on,' M. Musette encouraged him. Charlie swallowed again, and followed him through the kitchen doors.

It took Charlie a few seconds to understand what he was seeing. The kitchen was so crowded and steamy, and there was so much bustle, that at first he saw nothing but stainless steel and glistening scarlet flesh and two dozen men and women wearing blue ap.r.o.ns and overalls. There was a strong smell of garlic and grilling meat; and that distinctive aroma of herbs which the Celestines always seemed to find to their taste. The noise was chaotic, too. Pans were being clonked on to the ranges; knives were being sharpened on steels; people were shouting and coaxing and calling and sobbing and crying out; and it could have been the busy kitchen of any large international restaurant.

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Except... as Charlie stepped forward, pulled by M. Musette like a boat being pulled through water, the true spectacle of what was happening was almost too grisly for the human mind to comprehend.

At the first table, a young naked girl with long brown hair was sitting up, supported by two blue-shirted Guides, and she was sawing through her own arm at the elbow. Her eyes were fixed and wild-looking. Her teeth were clenched on a hard rubber wedge, to prevent her from biting her tongue. She had cut through the skin and muscle of her upper forearm with a surgical scalpel, and now she was rasping her way through the bones, radius and ulna, bone dust mushing white into her bright leaking blood.

At the next table, a one-armed boy of about twenty was grimacing in concentration as he cut long deep slices of flesh from his calves and his thighs. One leg had already been reduced to the bare bone, and the raw meat of his upper thigh was bound around with a rubber tourniquet to prevent the boy from bleeding to death before he had finished stripping the meat from his other leg. Blood ran along the gutters around the table, and poured darkly down the drains.

One hideous spectacle followed another, eleven of them, and M. Musette tugged Charlie past all eleven. Velma was there, or what was left of Velma. She had sliced off both her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and then cut open her own stomach in an attempt to drag out her liver and her kidneys. The a.s.sistants who had been helping her looked up as M. Musette pa.s.sed, and explained, 'She died just a few minutes ago.' Two of them were carefully dipping their hands into the b.l.o.o.d.y tangle of her abdomen and cutting out her stomach and her pancreas; a third was severing her head with a stainless-steel hacksaw.

'Of course, you knew Velma,' said M. Musette, but Charlie could only hear his voice as a distant echo, like somebody shouting through a closed window.

Harriet was there, too, the waitress from the Iron Kettle.

She was weeping as she lifted her left bicep away from the bone with the point of a broad-bladed carving knife. M. Musette approached her and laid his hand gently on her naked back, and said. 'Are you in pain, Harriet?' And she turned to him with tearful eyes and smiled.

'Christ suffered on the cross,' she said, with the blade of the knife running right through her upper arm from one side to the other, and blood running from her elbow in an endless stream.

They came across two more disciples who were already dead. Their bodies were being quickly and expertly butchered. The dark red meat was being arranged on white enamel trays, according to which cut it was, leg or arm or shoulder or rib. Offal was being collected in white enamel buckets, great slimy maroon heaps of human liver, and gristly crimson hearts.

Out of all of this horror, one image cut itself with extra vividness into Charlie's consciousness: a young boy of nineteen, no more than that, who had already amputated both of his legs below the knee, holding a razor-sharp butcher's knife underneath his s.c.r.o.t.u.m, and staring at his genitals in fascination and fear. For the first time since he had seen a Celestine Devotee, Charlie saw indecision and uncertainty. Ecstasy was one thing: self-emasculation was another. M. Musette must have seen the hesitation, too, because he stopped for a while, and watched the boy with expressionless eyes.

'Vincent?' he said at last.

The boy looked up. Charlie saw a look of terrible desperation. So it was possible for the influence of the Celestines to be broken. It remained to be seen, though, whether the boy could stand up against the cold, withering personality of Edouard Musette.

M. Musette stepped forward and laid his hand on the stump of the boy's left leg. 'Vincent? Is something troubling you? Today you will become part of our Lord Jesus Christ.'

The boy opened and closed his mouth, and then looked 342.

down at his genitals again. Charlie could see his hand was trembling.

'Vincent?' whispered M. Musette.

Charlie turned away. He heard the knife slicing through skin and veins and spongy flesh. He heard the boy Vincent utter a noise that was almost inhuman. When Charlie turned back, the boy's a.s.sistants were already pressing a large b.l.o.o.d.y pad of gauze between his thighs, and the boy was holding up something which looked like a butchered bird.

'Now,' said M. Musette, 'let us see how our sacramental feast is being prepared.'

He guided Charlie through to the kitchen range. There, a small sallow man with a white ap.r.o.n and a black wilting moustache was grilling flesh over a gas barbecue. As the slices were cooked, he was arranging them on white dinner-plates, three thin slices on each, and garnishing them with zucchini and peeled tomatoes and green beans. The plates were then being carried out to the waiting company.

'This is Fernest Ardoin, who directs the preparation of all our sacrifices,' explained M. Musette. 'Fernest has prepared meals of human flesh for private dinners all over America, and a few in Europe, too. Some of the meals were for spiritual purposes. Others were simply for the appreciation of long pig. All of the meals, of course, were superb. Fernest is an artist, as well as a dedicated Celestine.'

Fernest nodded his head to acknowledge this flattery. 'We are almost finished preparing the first course, M. Musette. The barbecue-grilled fillet of upper thigh, served with a light tomato-and-garlic sauce.'

Next to him, one of his younger a.s.sistants was cutting liver into wafer-thin slices, almost transparent, to be lightly sauteed in b.u.t.ter and served with fresh rosemary.

The cooking smelled so much like ordinary restaurant cooking, and it was so fastidiously prepared, that Charlie found it almost impossible to a.s.sociate the elegant nouvclle cuisine on 343.

the plates with the grim self-inflicted butchery that was going on behind him. Somehow he had always imagined cannibalism to be a matter of gnawing at half-roasted human legbones, or cutting off human flesh in strips and hanging it out to dry, like pemmican. This gastronomic expertise somehow made the Celestine's crime against nature ten times more ugly, and ten times more sickening. They were indulging a forbidden appet.i.te, that was all, and they were taking the name of G.o.d in vain to do so.

M. Musette touched Charlie's elbow, and said, 'We must go back to the feast, my dear sir. They will be missing us, and we will be missing our appetizer. I hope you have found this to be instructive.'

Charlie nodded numbly. 'Instructive, yes. I think that's all I can say.'

He averted his eyes from the gory bodies of the eleven disciples as they left the kitchen. The young girl with the long hair had severed her forearm, and was holding it up in triumph. The doors swung shut behind them. M. Musette said, 'Are you all right, Charlie?' but Charlie pushed him away and said, 'Don't worry about me.'

They rejoined their table. Charlie sought Robyn's face and tried to convey with nothing more than a slight shake of his head the horrors he had just witnessed. He felt as if his stomach was filled with worms and grease, and his throat was so parched that he found it almost impossible to say anything.

'You look pale, Charlie,' said the nun-like Mme Musette. 'I thought restaurant inspectors weren't supposed to be squeamish.'

Charlie choked out, 'I don't usually inspect the kitchens, Mme Musette. And I have never inspected a kitchen like that. That kitchen is a human abattoir.'

'Well, you're right, of course,' said M. Musette, cheerfully. 'Look - here is our food.'

Plates of thigh meat were set in front of each of them.

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Charlie kept his head raised so that he wouldn't have to look at it; and so that he wouldn't have to witness Mme Musette carefully slicing it up with her knife and fork and putting it into her mouth.

The Guide sitting next to Charlie tapped him gently on the shoulder and said, 'Don't you want yours?'

Charlie could do nothing but stare at him. The Guide said, 'Do you mind if I .. .?' and forked Charlie's meat on to his own plate.

The feast was slow and leisurely and proceeded with sinister stylishness. Outside, the sky became overcast and dark, and the clouds that Charlie could see through the clerestory windows looked like inkstains on wet cartridge paper. 'Wouldn't be surprised if we're in for a storm,' remarked M. Musette, with his cheek full of human liver. 'Makes it more dramatic, in a way, don't you think?'

After every course, there were prayers of hope and thanksgiving, and the Celestines sang a hymn. They ate thigh meat and liver and boneless ribs, and then they were served what M. Musette called, 'a selection of delicacies', which included thin slices of female breast, some of the best of them tinged with the nipple, and pale pink sushi-like arrangements of raw marinated l.a.b.i.a. Mme Musette laughed a tinkling laugh at Charlie's obvious disgust.

'You sit down at Thanksgiving and eat the butchered carca.s.ses of living creatures, served with sauces and herbs and vegetables. This is no different, once you have accepted the notion that there is nothing blasphemous or illegal in man eating man. This is a sacramental feast of body and blood. It is G.o.d's gift, and you should be grateful, not disgusted. Those young people gladly gave their flesh and their pain - gladly - how can you sit there and feel self-righteous about rejecting their sacrifice?'

Charlie said, 'You might be able to persuade the rest of these freaks but you're never going to persuade me. Haven't you heard about something called the sanct.i.ty of human life?'

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Mme Musette smiled, and slipped something into her mouth that looked like a flesh-coloured oyster, but obviously wasn't. Charlie turned away, his lips tightened, his stomach clenched in tightly suppressed nausea.

By eleven o'clock, the feast was close to its climax. A choir of twelve Celestine guides a.s.sembled solemnly in front of the altar, and began quietly to sing the Kyrie Eleison. The kitchen doors were opened, and a procession of Celestine cooks emerged, headed by Fernest Ardoin. Between them, they were carrying in the most symbolic and most openly grotesque of all the dishes that had yet been served - the dish that showed conclusively that the eleven disciples were now dead, and that the a.s.sembled Celestines were about to eat their very essence. On a large white dish were heaped, still steaming, their eleven brains, lightly poached in a stock made from boiling their lungs and their sweetbreads, served on a bed of red cabbage. The dish was carried up to M. Musette for his approval, within inches of where Charlie was sitting. Charlie did nothing more than glimpse the shining fawn-coloured convolutions of human cortices - did nothing more than breathe in one nostril-ful of their pale, sweet aroma, and he started to gag. Without excusing himself, he pushed back his chair and walked quickly toward the exit. Behind him, M. Musette nodded to the man with the close-cropped hair to keep an eye on him.

Charlie went outside and bent double under the oak tree and vomited coffee. The man with the close-cropped hair stood on the steps watching him. Charlie's stomach went on convulsing for two or three minutes, but at least he managed to stand up straighter and lean against the tree, his throat sore and his eyes watering.

'You done now?' the man asked him.

Charlie nodded. He raised his head and looked around. Clouds had gathered above L'figlise des Pauvres, and over towards Ville Platte and Evangeline County lightning was flickering all along the horizon like the tongues of electrified 346.

snakes. A cold wind began to stir the dried oak leaves that were scattered on the dirt, and the cypress trees dipped and swayed.

There was an extraordinary feeling in the air. Excitement, fear, the sense that something incredible was about to happen. Charlie looked at the man with the close-cropped hair and for a moment they both shared this sense of oncoming apocalypse.

'We'd better get ourselves back inside,' the man suggested, his white robe ruffled by the wind. But at that instant, a blinding artery of lightning ran down into one of the abandoned cotton fields only a quarter-mile away, with a sizzling crack, and from inside the main building Charlie heard a deep, low moan, all the Celestines chanting at once.

Charlie wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and pushed his way quickly back into the feasting hall. The room was almost completely dark now, and a.s.sistants were going from table to table, lighting candles. M. Musette was standing at the head of the dining table, his arms outstretched, and he was reciting the Celestine Creed, while his followers chanted their responses. Thunder burst over the rooftop with a noise like a collapsing bridge.

'It is time!' cried M. Musette. 'It is time for the second coming!'

Charlie quickly checked that Robyn was still at her place, and then walked purposefully up to M. Musette. 'This is it,' he said adamantly. 'This is where the game finishes. I'm taking my son and I'm going.'

M. Musette stared at Charlie and his eyes didn't even look human. 'This is the hour of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. You will not deny Him your only son.'

Charlie made a quick move toward M. Musette but the man with the close-cropped hair was quicker. He grasped Charlie's arm and whipped it painfully behind his back in a half-nelson. 'Keep still and I won't break it for you,' he murmured, almost apologetically.

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M. Musette raised his hand. 'Bring the sacrificial lamb!' he cried out. 'Bring him here, for the moment is upon us!'

Charlie shouted, Wo!' but four Celestines rose from their table and went to one of the side rooms, their hands crossed over their chests.

Through the clerestory windows, Charlie could see more flickers and flashes of lightning. Rain began to beat against the gla.s.s, and patter on the corrugated roof like dancing cats. He turned almost hysterically to Mme Musette, who was sitting upright in her seat, her face rigid and incandescently beautiful.

'Don't let him do it!' he yelled at her. 'Don't let him murder my son!'

Mme Musette said nothing, but gave Charlie a wan, mysterious smile, and turned away.

The four Celestines returned to the room, walking with their heads bowed. In the middle of them walked Martin, completely naked except for a white headband. Charlie struggled against the man who was holding him, but his arm was jerked upwards until his hand was almost touching the back of his neck, and there was nothing that Charlie could do to break free. Charlie looked desperately at Martin's face, hoping for one last breakthrough of normal feeling, hoping for one last sign of love and recognition, but Martin was smiling the same idiotic, accepting smile that Charlie had seen on the face of so many Celestines. Happiness is obedience. Nirvana is an empty mind. Heaven only comes to those who surrender their private will to live.

'Martin!' Charlie appealed to him. 'Martin, this is your father! This is Daddy! Martin, listen to me, don't let them do this to you! Martin, for Christ's sake!'

'Yes,' murmured Mme Musette. 'For Christ's sake.'

And M. Musette added, 'Amen.'

The four Celestines brought Martin in front of the altar, and then turned him round so that he was facing the a.s.sembled 348.

company. He was the twelfth disciple, the final sacrifice. M. Musette approached him, walking all the way around him, and then stepped up to the altar, where he knelt down and bowed his head and spent a moment or two in silent prayer. Then he rose up again, and turned to the main body of the hall, and spread his arms wide in conscious imitation of the crucifixion.

'Almost two thousand years ago, our Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed His body and His blood in order that we might live. Now, we have repaid the debt; and we are about to return to Christ that body and that blood which He so freely gave to us.'

There was yet another crackling lightning-strike outside. Charlie jerked his head up. He felt sure that it had hit the crucifix on the roof. There was a strong smell of ozone and burned metal, and he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck lifted up by the huge charge of static electricity in the building.

M. Musette nodded to his wife, and she left her place and walked up to Martin. She touched his forehead, she touched each of his nipples, she touched his navel. Then she drew out of her robes a long steel-bladed knife with a handle fashioned out of gold and silver.

'The sacrificial knife,' said M. Musette. Charlie watched in fascinated horror as Martin accepted it from M. Musette, and lowered it between his thighs.

'You said you had to have my consent!' he screamed at M. Musette.

M. Musette turned to Charlie in acknowledgement. 'Of course; but only when it comes to giving his life. And I am sure that by the time he has finished sacrificing his arms and his legs and his genitalia to the Saviour, you will be quite prepared to give your consent in order to release him from his earthly suffering,'

Charlie found himself unable to speak. He looked away, he 349.

couldn't bear to see Martin hurting himself. But then he found that he had to watch. Martin was his son, his responsibility. He had to know what agony Martin was going to go through, or he would never be able to redeem his own guilt for it in the future., If he had a future, of course. The Celestines were probably planning to kill him, too, once this ritual was over. Especially when it failed to produce a second coming.

M. Musette pressed his hands together and prayed. 'All flesh is as gra.s.s, and all the glory of man like the flower of gra.s.s. The gra.s.s withereth, and the flower thereof away falleth, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.'

As he spoke these words, Charlie alone in that company of Celestines, raised his eyes. Directly above the altar, suspended only a few feet below the ceiling, he saw a white light, soft and radiant and steady. He thought at first that it must be static electricity, something like St Elmo's Fire, but it remained calm and steady and unblinking.

M. Musette continued to pray, and while he did so, the light very slowly descended, growing brighter and larger as it neared the top of the altar. 'Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? It shall never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself with a harlot is one body with her? For He says, 'The two will become one flesh."'

'But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.'

One by one, then more quickly, the praying Celestines raised their eyes. A ripple of astonishment ran all the way around the room. Only M. Musette remained as he was, with his hands pressed together and his eyes closed. Charlie had to admire his faith. He knew what was happening, he believed in it, and by G.o.d it was actually coming to pa.s.s.

The light hovered a few inches above the altar and it was 350.

now as dazzling as phosphorous, and impossible to look at directly. Charlie used his one free hand to shield his eyes, although the man with the close-cropped hair gave him a sharp tug on his other arm to remind him that he was still held captive.

Martin hadn't moved. His eyes remained bright. He held his knife ready. All he was waiting for now was the word from M. Musette that would begin his self-sacrifice. The first cut, which would instantly change him from a young man to a eunuch.

The light above the altar seemed constantly to shift and change, as if it were a living spirit. M. Musette at last turned around to face it, and he genuflected and crossed himself and cried out in a voice choked with tears, 'Oh, Saviour! I know that my Redeemer liveth!'

There was a moment of utter silence. Then a hair-raising voice spoke all the way around the room, a soft, deep voice that was everywhere and nowhere at all. Charlie wasn't sure whether he was hearing it with his ears or through his bone marrow.'

' You have summoned Me here. You have called upon Me and I have heard your voices.'

M. Musette let out a cry of sheer ecstasy. 'Oh Lord, you have returned to us! We thank you, Lord, for hearing our cry! Everything is ready, we have consumed the thousand thousand, but for the very last, and your earthly temple awaits You!'

There was weeping and shouting and clapping in the hall. Many of the Celestines dropped to their knees. But none of them could take their eyes away from the bright, pure light.