Dogstar Rising

Chapter Thirty-Seven




There was only one person whose name kept surfacing in Makana’s thoughts. One man who was always there in the background, just out of focus. Someone who fitted all the requirements. A man who was everywhere and nowhere. Yousef had been running the passport scam if not for the Zafranis then with their blessing. As an ex-Military Police officer he still had contacts inside the security services. He was placed inside the Blue Ibis by the same officials who had turned the Eastern Star Bank to their own purposes. Yousef was everybody’s friend and nobody’s. He took care of business for himself, first and foremost.

Father Macarius was waiting for him in the big gloomy hall that served as a dormitory and dining room. He was sitting at the far end of the long table, his head resting against the wall. On the table in front of him lay a string of rosary beads and a wooden cross. He looked asleep and it wasn’t until Makana was standing over him that he opened his eyes.

‘Ah, there you are. I was wondering why we hadn’t seen you.’

‘I have been away.’

Makana slid onto the bench opposite the priest. Father Macarius’ face looked gaunt, painted in bands of shadow and light coming through the narrow windows high above.

‘That must have been nice for you.’

‘I went to visit Wadi Nikeiba.’

Father Macarius stared at him.

‘Father, I think you tried to tell me about what happened all those years ago.’

‘I tried, but I couldn’t.’ Father Macarius closed his eyes for a second. ‘It was too painful. Wadi Nikeiba was a dream for us. It wasn’t just about rebuilding the old monastery. We wanted to go back to the old ways, to return to the solitude of the desert, to find the solace of prophets and make our peace with God.’

‘It didn’t turn out that way.’

‘No,’ Father Macarius looked up, his eyes dark. ‘We harboured a monster in our midst.’

‘And you think that monster has followed you here?’

‘How else to explain it?’ Father Macarius sat up, suddenly alert. ‘There are too many similarities for it to be coincidence. The children are roughly of the same age as the victims back then. The nature of the attacks. The brutal disfigurement and torture. The person who committed these murders is inhuman.’

‘You think you were wrong about Antun?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. I believe he is a good boy by nature. He was too small, too frail to have done those things back then.’

‘Father Girgis told me he was seized by terrible fits of anger.’

‘He has a nervous condition, but I don’t . . . I can’t believe he is capable of such cruelty.’

‘But now you’re not sure.’

Father Macarius lowered his head. After a time he nodded.

‘I was protective of Antun, it’s true. Perhaps more so than the others. Why? I cannot say. He was vulnerable and weak. I developed a particular bond with him.’ Macarius reached for his rosary beads. ‘To me, he was always very special. I tried to protect him. I fed him stories.’ Macarius’ voice echoed through the gloom. ‘He possessed a powerful imagination. He wasn’t like other children. He wanted to know where he came from. I told him that an angel had brought him to us.’ There was another lengthy silence as the priest seemed to lose his way again.

‘But the other monks suspected him.’

‘They were . . . suspicious of everyone. They couldn’t understand our relationship. We had something special, Antun and myself. A loyalty, an understanding. Nothing more.’

‘So, when the time came you offered to take him away with you.’

Father Macarius nodded slowly. ‘In the end, when they came and closed us down it was a relief in a way. The distrust between us was unbearable. None of us knew if the others were killers.’ Macarius’ voice cracked. ‘I took the boy with me. I brought him here. Oh, Lord forgive me, I brought him here.’

‘Father, do you have any evidence that Antun is responsible for these recent killings?’

‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.’ Unable to sit still, Macarius got to his feet and started pacing. ‘Imagine if it is true, if I have protected him, all these years. My God, what have I done?’ Father Macarius faced the crucifix hanging on the wall above his head and closed his eyes. ‘I caused the death of those children.’

‘No!’

The anguished cry echoed from the dark recesses on the far side of the room. Makana turned in time to see a shadow dart from where he had been hiding and head for the door.

‘Antun!’ Macarius cried. ‘Quick! We must catch him. He must have heard everything.’

They made it out into the yard in time to see the figure vanish through the doorway on the far side leading to the darkened gym. The priest hurried over, pulling open the door and disappearing into the blackness within. Makana felt he was chasing a shadow.

‘That’s his room up there.’

An enclosed storage space made of warped plywood ran along the far end of the room just under the roof, suspended over the punchbags and weights. A staircase materialised out of the gloom. Steps creaked ominously as they climbed. It led to a square hole. Makana stuck his head through and found himself inside a small room.

‘There used to be a bulb up here, but it seems to have gone.’ Father Macarius’ voice echoed out of the darkness. Makana stared hard in the direction it had come from. He could have been standing with his nose almost touching the wall and he wouldn’t have known. There was some scuffling and then the sound of a match being struck. Father Macarius’ face surfaced briefly in the halo of light from a candle. Then he turned and disappeared like a fish swimming into black water.

Makana realised he had been standing next to a window of sorts, a hole cut into the plywood wall. In the turgid gloom below punchbags dangled like hanged men. The patched and grubby canvas ring stood out as an outcrop of dull ivory against all that darkness. The snap of wings made him look up sharply. Something. A pigeon? A bat?

Father Macarius was moving deeper into the gloom. The stuttering flame cut ahead of them like a dying star. Makana felt the floor creak beneath him and realised that the whole structure around him was made of rotting old wood. The watery light picked out shadows scattered around the walls. Close up they resembled people huddled on the ground, then he realised they were old sacks stuffed with equipment, ripped gloves, torn singlets, stacks of paper flyers. Makana made his way over carefully, following Father Macarius’ voice, his heart stopping with each crack the floor gave, like brittle ice. There was no reply from within. The sides around the entrance were grubby from people’s hands. The light narrowed as the priest squeezed through another gap.

‘He’s been living up here for years . . . No one else ever comes up here.’ The voice tailed off.

The next room was low and dark. Here, faint light filtered through an arched window at knee level which faced onto the street. Opaque glass covered with patches of old newspaper. A heavy musty smell in the air reminded him of a cow shed. The floor was cluttered with all manner of junk, bits and pieces that appeared to have been salvaged from the street. Out of the gloom floated wooden crates, milk churns, wheel rims, hubcaps, a soapstone sphinx minus its head, electric cables, car batteries, a heavy wooden tiller, and across one wall an array of bird cages awkwardly shaped from chicken wire and whittled struts. Makana was put in mind of Old Yunis’ rather more exotic menagerie. These birds were in a much poorer state and looked wretched for the most part: brown turtledoves, sharp-eyed pigeons with twisted wings, a yellow canary that stood out like a tiny sun floating in the darkness. There was an old mattress slung in one corner. A few cardboard boxes that seemed to contain Antun’s clothes. How could they let him live like this? More than sheltering the boy, Makana suspected that Macarius was hiding him from the world.

‘Oh, my God!’ Father Macarius uttered the words in a low whisper, staring past him.

Makana turned to look back. The wall through which they had just passed was covered with symbols and letters. The words were written in what he knew was Coptic. The stark images were like a religious vision. They appeared to have accumulated over many years. Painted onto the wood in such thick layers they resembled the icons Makana had seen in the church. Even in the low light he could make out vivid ochres and reds. Angels floated around the ceiling with golden wings and halos circling their heads. The images seemed to make up some kind of biblical mural. At the centre was the large figure Makana had seen before. A face surrounded by what appeared to be wings or flames. They tapered into points above and below. The angel with eight wings. The Seraph.

Father Macarius gasped. He touched a hand to the wall gently. ‘Saint Macarius and the Seraph. Only here it is the winged angel alone. Antun identifies strongly with it. Here’ – he leaned closer – ‘you can see that it has Antun’s face.’

Makana drew closer to the flame and the features of the slight, retiring boy he had seen in the gym floated out of the gleaming dark wood into the light.

‘He has lost his mind,’ said Father Macarius quietly, almost to himself. ‘All these years I have tried to protect him.’

‘What does the rest of this mean?’ Makana turned back to the mural. Father Macarius stirred himself from his thoughts and lifted the candle stub again. His hand was covered with melted wax.

‘This is the Book of Daniel. The angel precedes the coming of the apocalypse.’

‘The end of the world?’

‘Apo-kalypto in Greek signifies the lifting of the veil. The world is cleansed by fire. Truth is revealed. The age of dishonesty ended.’ Father Macarius leaned back, his eyes slowly reading the words scrawled on the walls. ‘The poor child sees himself as the angel heralding the apocalypse.’ Father Macarius stepped closer to the wall, raising his free hand as if to touch the angel floating above him. ‘And so he turned himself into the Seraph, the highest of the orders of angels, the Burning One.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘He will cleanse the world with his flame. I still can’t believe he would kill anyone.’

Makana lifted something from the floor. A cape of some sort. ‘Do you know what this is?’

‘Some of the fighters wear them to keep warm before they enter the ring in a tournament.’

Something had been sewn onto the inside of the lining.

‘Feathers?’ asked Father Macarius incredulously.

‘Pigeon feathers by the look of it.’ They had been sewn into the cloth in bunches. Makana turned the cape around in the air. Tiny flashes of light revealed strips of silver foil, coils of tin that bobbed gently as if they were living creatures. The whole cape was covered in feathers, sewn with great care into a pattern.

‘The wings of an angel,’ murmured Father Macarius. ‘The Angel of Imbaba.’

‘And this?’

Makana drew the priest’s attention to another figure which appeared to dominate one corner of the mural. It was drawn in charcoal and was the face of a man, with horns.

‘Satan. The devil.’

It struck Makana that the drawing was more than that. In fact, it seemed to him that the face was actually a depiction of someone specific. A mixture of the mythological and the real. A focus for the pain that Antun had carried with him for years. The features were precise. Makana stepped back to get a better look.

‘You recognise who it is?’

‘Of course,’ muttered Father Macarius, his jaw hanging slack. ‘It’s Rocky.’