Free John the Revelator by Peter Murphy Page A

OK?’
    She almost jumped.
    â€˜Fine, fine. Come straight back though. You need to get to bed or you’ll be no good to me tomorrow.’
    We ducked out the front door and walked briskly up the road. Cows stood motionless in the fields like topiary shapes. Jamey cleared his throat.
    â€˜That was weird,’ he said.
    â€˜She was really giving you the eyeball.’
    â€˜I noticed. Trying to get my measure. She thinks the sun shines out of your fundament.’
    â€˜Come off it.’
    â€˜She does. Only-child syndrome. Wait until you try and leave home. That’s when the fireworks’ll start.’
    He stopped walking and looked around at the fields with the bemusement of a born townie.
    â€˜I think I can find my way from here. You’d better go back.’
    I watched until he was obscured by a hump in the road. I could still feel the effects of the drink and smoke swirling in my lungs, my bloodstream, my brain. The backs of my eyeballs ached as I stared up at the heavens, the long dead stars, and when I shut my eyes the afterlight remained imprinted on my mind, lotus-shaped lights flowering into big white wows.
    I hoped Jamey’s parents were heavy sleepers.
    It’d be morning soon.
    Â 
    Shapes stirred in the shadows of my room. A skull-faced crone with parchment skin who unfolded her withered briar limbs and moved to the foot of my bed. Nails long as thorns clawed back the bedspread. I couldn’t move. Cold crawled all over my skin, arousing thousands of tiny nipples. The crone pawed my legs with gnarled fingers, witch-teats grazing my balls and belly and chest. The smell of her breath, her hideous face, her mouth clamped on mine, the stink, the suffocating tongue down my throat scooping the air from my lungs.
    When I woke, the too-sweet reek of old-lady perfume filled my nostrils. It smelled like fly-spray, overripe fruit. I crept onto the landing and sat on the top step and listened. Downstairs in the kitchen, tea gurgled from the pot and cups clattered on saucers. I needed to go to the bathroom but couldn’t resist eavesdropping for a bit.
    â€˜They’re taking over the country, Lily,’ Mrs Nagle was saying. ‘Look at the Methodist church above in Ballycarn.’
    Mrs Nagle and my mother appeared to have patched up their differences and now she was a regular visitor again. It started tentatively enough, with a shout over the ditch, or a salute on the road as she passed, then she’d ask to use the phone or have a look at the paper, squinting at the headlines in a manner that suggested she harboured a deep distrust of the written word.
    She usually appeared when we were sitting down to eat. My mother reckoned the smell of cooking drew her out of her lair. She always had some comment to make about how many stone I’d lost and wasn’t I gone fierce anguished-looking, the flesh falling off my bones. My mother took no notice, just gave me the odd wink behind her back.
    Mrs Nagle slurped her tea and made an
aaaah
sound.
    â€˜Used to be there wasn’t a sinner in it of a Sunday,’ she said, ‘the quietest little country chapel. Now you wouldn’t find a seat. Mrs Tector from beyond in the Holla was giving out, she says you can hardly get in the door of a Sunday with their singing and banging tambourines and all this happy-clappy business. If we’re not careful, they’ll start the same carry-on here. God knows it’s bad enough as it is, what with all these fecken folk masses.’
    My mother cleared her throat. I could almost hear her smirk.
    â€˜It’s not the same since they did away with the Latin, Phyllis.’
    â€˜Never mind that. These crowd are worse than the boat people ever were.’
    The tap ran.
    â€˜Hah, Lily?’ she demanded. ‘Isn’t that right?’
    Mrs Nagle couldn’t bear to think she wasn’t being agreed with, but my mother wouldn’t be drawn, so she changed tack.
    â€˜I see