Doctor Who_ The Hollow Men - Keith Topping [32]
„What be thy business?‟
Hatch had met this avatar before.
„Inform thy master John Ballam, that research into the cure goes well. I‟m expecting to have the latest results within the next four days.‟
„The master grows impatient,‟ cut in Ballam with a snarl.
„Jack i‟ the Green has waited nigh on three hundred years for his coming,‟ said Hatch contemptuously. „He can wait another week.‟ And with that he turned and walked back up the tunnel.
In the mirror, John Ballam faded into the mist. But a gaggle of voices followed Hatch up the tunnel.
„The work must be influenced to serve the master better.‟
„The time is almost upon us.‟
„Delay frustrates us, but soon we shall be free.‟
The Reverend Thomas Baber knelt down as the parishioners began trudging through the final verse of „Oh for a Closer Walk with God‟. Was it him, or was the organ even more out of tune than normal? That really would need attention again, when funds permitted.
Baber shook his head to clear the babbling, interminable clutter from his mind. Concentrate. He rested his head against the pulpit of oak, knowing that it shielded him from the rest of the church, affording brief sanctuary. He sighed, trying desperately to find God within his heart... And found something else, as dark and gnarled as the wood that surrounded him like a dry and dusty womb.
So shall my walk be close with God, Calm and serene my frame:
So purer light shall mark the road That leads me to the Lamb.
Baber sighed. Fine sentiments, but they were alien words, with no relevance to Baber‟s inner life. This was the lull before the storm.
He rose to his feet, a snivelling, fidgeting hush coming over the congregation. He surveyed them slowly, heads all turned up towards him, faces bright with expectation and fear.
Baber closed his eyes. „May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.‟
The murmur of assent from the villagers echoed down the main aisle, bounced off the high Gothic arches, before finally dissipating on the stained-glass window of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Very precisely, Thomas Baber opened his leather-bound volume of notes. But he barely glanced at them.
„Saint Paul, I think, put it well in his epistle to the church in Rome. “I am unspiritual,” he wrote. “Sold as a slave to sin.
I do not understand what I do. I know that nothing good lives in me, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. Instead, I keep on doing the evil things I do not want to do.”‟ Baber paused, as if the words were too painful, too intimate to relate. „“What a wretched man I am!”‟ he exclaimed, his knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the pulpit. „“Who will rescue me from this body of death?”‟
Baber paused, leaving the heartfelt plea hanging in the air like an accusation. „Good men and bad have pondered this ever since. Who will rescue us from the turmoil - the war, as Paul puts it - that we feel within?‟ He scanned the faces arranged below him. „As I walk the village, I notice many things. I see delinquent, drunken children, completely out of control.‟ He glared at Mr and Mrs Tyley. Only the man returned his gaze. The woman‟s cheeks were still wet with tears. „I see abominable practices and brutality that defies description.‟ There were nervous coughs from pews towards the back of the church. „I see infidelity, unfaithfulness and sexual immorality.‟ He glanced at the Matsons, sitting in the side aisle. They stared forward, unblinking, like children at assembly, their hands limp in their laps. The space between them was the chasm of their lives. „Racism, fornication, contempt for the Lord and his day. I see all these things, and am appalled.‟
Baber‟s voice was rising in volume and pitch now. He wasn‟t quite shouting, but the anger in his voice was like a flaming brand. Dust motes sparkled and danced in the air, lit by a beam of sunlight