Solomon Creed. Simon Toyne

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СКАЧАТЬ gleefully dragging some poor soul down into the fire while their terrified eyes gazed up at the distant glow of a painted heaven. And there was something else, something moving in the shadows – a figure, pale and ghostly – walking out of the painted landscape towards him. It was his reflection, captured in a large mirror that had been positioned so that anyone looking at the fresco became part of what they observed. Either side of the mirror were two painted figures – an angel and a demon – gazing out of the picture, their eyes focused on whoever might stand and gaze into it.

      Solomon moved closer until his reflection filled the frame. He studied his face. It was the first time he had seen himself properly and it was like looking at a picture of someone else. Nothing about his features was familiar, not his pale grey eyes nor his long, fine nose nor the scoops of his cheeks beneath razored cheekbones. He did not recognize the person staring back at him.

      ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and a loud bang echoed through the church as if in answer. Footsteps approached from behind a curtained area in the vestry and he turned just as the curtain swept open and he found himself facing a modern version of Jack Cassidy. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, Cassidy’s face a mixture of curiosity and suspicion as he looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on his shoeless feet. ‘You must be Mr Creed,’ he said, walking forward, hand extended. Solomon shook it and his mind lit up as he caught the hint of a chemical coming off him.

       Napthalene – used in pyrotechnics, also a household fumigant against pests.

      He saw a small frayed hole in the pocket of his jacket – Mayor Cassidy smelled of mothballs. It was a dark suit, a funeral suit. ‘You just buried James Coronado,’ Solomon said, and pain flared in his arm again at the mention of his name.

      Cassidy nodded. ‘A tragedy. How did you know him?’

      Solomon turned back to the painted landscape. ‘I’m trying to remember.’

      There was something here, he felt sure of it, some reason the cross around his neck had brought him to this place where its larger twin sat.

      ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Cassidy said, stepping over to the wall and flicking a switch. Light faded up, illuminating the fresco in all its dark and terrible detail.

      There were many more figures populating the landscape than Solomon had first thought, their black arms and shrunken bodies almost indistinguishable from the land, as if they were made from the earth and still bound to it. The ones with faces had been painted in such realistic detail that Solomon wondered if each had been based on a real person, and what those people had thought when they had seen themselves immortalized as the damned in this macabre landscape. They seethed over the desert, their faces ghostly, their eyes staring up at the too distant heaven. Solomon looked up too and saw something he had missed when the fresco had been sunk in shadow, something written in the sky, black letters on an almost black background.

       Each of us runs from the flames of damnation

       Only those who face the fire yet still uphold God’s holy laws

       Only those who would save others above themselves

       Only these can hope to escape the inferno and be lifted unto heaven

      The brand on his arm flared in pain again as he read the words, bringing back the feeling he’d first felt back on the road, that he was here for a reason, that there was something particular he had to do.

       Only those who would save others … can hope to escape the inferno …

      ‘I’m here to save him,’ he muttered, his hand rubbing at the burning spot on his arm.

      ‘Who?’

      ‘James Coronado.’

      Cassidy blinked. ‘You’re … but we just buried him.’

      Solomon smiled. ‘I didn’t say it was going to be easy.’

      A noise outside made them both turn, a siren howling past, heading somewhere in a hurry. Solomon could smell smoke leaking in through the open door.

      The fire.

       … Only those who face the fire …

      The whole town would be heading to the city limits now, preparing to defend their town from the oncoming threat. Most of them would have known James Coronado. Maybe his widow would be there too.

      ‘Are you OK?’ Cassidy asked, stepping closer. ‘You seem a little shaken. Maybe you should head to the hospital, get yourself checked over.’

      Solomon looked back at his reflection, trapped between the angel and the demon, their painted eyes looking at him as if asking: ‘Which of us are you?’

      Let’s find out, Solomon thought, and the pain in his arm flared again.

      He shook his head. ‘I don’t need the hospital,’ he said. ‘I need to go back to the fire.’

       III

       ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’

       Exodus 20:3

       Extract from

       RICHES AND REDEMPTION

       THE MAKING OF A TOWN

       The published memoir

       of the Reverend Jack ‘King’ Cassidy

      I ARRIVED AT FORT TUCSON with the priest’s gold all but spent. To raise more funds – and to my eternal shame – I tried to sell the Bible to an itinerant preacher name of Banks who balked at the size of the book, saying if God had meant him to have such a thing He would have sent it in smaller form. He told me instead of a Jesuit mission south of Tucson where a fine old example of scripture might find a permanent home on some sturdy lectern where no poor soul nor mule would have to carry it more.

      I blamed encroaching poverty on my decision to try and part with the Bible, but in truth I could feel the hold it had on me and I was frightened by it. The visions of the white church and the pale Christ on the cross haunted my waking hours now and I feared I might be losing my mind, as the priest had lost his. But setting it down now, it seems clear to me how all of this was God’s design – the priest travelling from Ireland and finding himself in the bed next to mine, the Bible being signed over to me, the gold funding its journey west, and my chance conversation with the preacher who sent me on the path that would lead me to the Jesuit mission and the pale Christ on his burned cross.

      We saw the smoke rising in the morning sky a couple of hours after sunrise on the second day. I had joined a cavalry supply train heading south to Fort Huachuca via the trading post where the Jesuit mission was based. We smelled them long before we saw them, poor murdered souls roughly delivered to God СКАЧАТЬ