Glasshouse - Charles Stross [139]
I’m simultaneously appalled, dumbstruck with admiration for the artistic technique on display, terrified that whoever did it might still be lurking at the scene, and utterly nauseated at my satisfaction at Mick’s end. So I do the only sensible and socially expedient thing I can think of, and scream my lungs out.
The first fellow to arrive on the scene—a couple of seconds after I get started—isn’t much use: He takes one look at the impromptu chandelier, then doubles over and adds his lunch to the puddle. But the second on the scene turns out to be Martin, one of the volunteer gravediggers. “Reeve? Are you all right?”
I nod and manage to take a sobbing breath. I feel unstable, and my vision is watery. “Look.” I point. “Better get the . . . the . . . Fiore. He’ll know what to do.”
“I’ll call the police.” Martin walks around the pool of blood and vomit carefully and picks up the telephone handset that’s fastened to the wall by the vestry entrance. “Hello? Operator?” He jiggles the switch on top of the handset. “That’s odd.”
My brain is slowly beginning to work again. “What’s odd?”
“The telephone. It’s not making any noise. It doesn’t work.”
I snuffle, wipe my nose on the sleeve of my jacket, and stare at him. “That’s very odd.” Yes, a quiet corner of my mind reminds me, that’s odd, and not in a good way. “Let’s go outside.”
Andrew—the guy who’s throwing up—has just about finished, and is down to making choking, sobbing noises. Martin pulls him up by one arm, and we walk outside together. There’s a growing crowd on the porch, curious to know what’s going on. “Someone call the police,” Martin shouts. “Get the Reverend if you can find him!” People are pushing past him to look inside the doorway, yelling in disbelief and coming back out again.
Somebody is sending us, the congregation, a message, aren’t they? I stumble but make it down onto the grass. Sam’s there, looking concerned. “You were with me during the service,” I hiss. “You were next to me the whole time. You know where I was.”
“Yes?” He looks puzzled. So do I. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, but . . .
“I spoke to Jen briefly, then heard the bells and went to see. Then I screamed. I was only inside for a second on my own. Wasn’t I?”
Sam gets it: His shoulders tense suddenly. “How bad is it?”
“Mick.” I gasp quietly, then run out of words. I can’t continue just now because I had to look; I saw how his killer fastened him to the bell-rope by his ankles, cutting him and running the thick rope through the meaty gap between the bone and the thick tendon. I’m half-afraid that when they cut him down, they’ll discover he was raped first, while paralyzed, before his killer strung him up to drain like a slab of flesh. A moment later I’m leaning on Sam’s shoulder, sobbing. He doesn’t pull away, but holds me in silence while all around us the crowd throbs and chatters. I’ve seen many horrible things in my life, but there was a judicial deliberation implicit in what was done to Mick—a hideous moral statement, blindly confident in its own righteousness. I know exactly who did it, even though I spent the entire service next to Sam; because for hours on end I lay awake and fantasized about doing that to Mick, the night we took Cass away.
“WELL, Mrs. Brown, how fascinating to see you here! Always in the thick of things, I see.”
His Excellency smiles like a skeleton, jaw agape at some private joke. Sam shuffles next to me but holds his peace. You do not talk back to the Bishop, especially when it’s clear that his humor is a mercurial thing, a butterfly floating above a blast furnace of rage at the intrusion that has spoiled his Sunday.
Fiore clears his throat. “She is not a suspect,” he says stiffly.
“What?” Yourdon’s head whips round like a snake’s. The police zombies around us