‘Don’t look so horrified,’ she said. ‘He was eighteen: hair blacker than you’ve ever seen. And he loved me.’
‘Why did he hang himself?’
‘To live forever,’ she said, ‘so he’d never be a man, and die.’
‘We didn’t find him for six days,’ said the youth, almost whispering it in Redman’s ear, ‘and even then she wouldn’t let anybody near him, once she had him to herself. The pig, I mean. Not the Doctor. Everyone loved Kevin, you see,’ he whispered intimately. ‘He was beautiful.’
‘And where’s Lacey?’
Leverthal’s loving smile decayed.
‘With Kevin,’ said the youth, ‘where Kevin wants him.’ He pointed through the door of the sty. There was a body lying on the straw, back to the door.
‘If you want him, you’ll have to go and get him,’ said the boy, and the next moment he had the back of Redman’s neck in a vice-like grip.
The sow responded to the sudden action. She started to stamp the straw, showing the whites of her eyes.
Redman tried to shrug off the boy’s grip, at the same time delivering an elbow to his belly. The boy backed off, winded and cursing, only to be replaced by Leverthal.
‘Go to him,’ she said as she snatched at Redman’s hair. ‘Go to him if you want him.’ Her nails raked across his temple and nose, just missing his eyes.
‘Get off me!’ he said, trying to shake the woman off, but she clung, her head lashing back and forth as she tried to press him over the wall.
The rest happened with horrid speed. Her long hair brushed through a candle flame and her head caught fire, the flames climbing quickly. Shrieking for help she stumbled heavily against the gate. It failed to support her weight, and gave inward. Redman watched helplessly as the burning woman fell amongst the straw. The flames spread enthusiastically across the forecourt towards the sow, lapping up the kindling.
Even now, in extremis, the pig was still a pig. No miracles here: no speaking, or pleading, in tongues. The animal panicked as the blaze surrounded her, cornering her stamping bulk and licking at her flanks. The air was filled with the stench of singeing bacon as the flames ran up her sides and over her head, chasing through her bristles like a grass-fire.
Her voice was a pig’s voice, her complaints a pig’s complaints. Hysterical grunts escaped her lips and she hurtled across the forecourt of the sty and out of the broken gate, trampling Leverthal.
The sow’s body, still burning, was a magic thing in the night as she careered across the field, weaving about in her
pain. Her cries did not diminish as the dark ate her up, they seemed just to echo back and forth across the field, unable to find a way out of the locked room.
Redman stepped over Leverthal’s fire-ridden corpse and into the sty. The straw was burning on every side, and the fire was creeping towards the door. He half-shut his eyes against the stinging smoke and ducked into the pig-house.
Lacey was lying as he had been all along, back to the door. Redman turned the boy over. He was alive. He was awake. His face, bloated with tears and terror, stared up off his straw pillow, eyes so wide they looked fit to leap from his head.
‘Get up,’ said Redman, leaning over the boy.
His small body was rigid, and it was all Redman could do to prize his limbs apart. With little words of care, he coaxed the boy to his feet as the smoke began to swirl into the pig-house.
‘Come on, it’s all right, come on.’
He stood upright and something brushed his hair. Redman felt a little rain of worms across his face and glanced up to see Henessey, or what was left of him, still suspended from the crossbeam of the pig-house. His features were incomprehensible, blackened to a drooping mush. His body was raggedly gnawed off at the hip, and his innards hung from the foetid carcass, dangling in wormy loops in front of Redman’s face.
Had it not been for the thick smoke the smell of the body would have been overpowering. As it was Redman was simply revolted, and his revulsion gave strength to his arm. He hauled Lacey out of the shadow of the body and pushed him through the door.