The vision reached across and touched Gavin’s jaw, lightly, running its crudely carved fingers along the lips of the wound Preetorius had made. A ring on its smallest finger caught the light: a ring identical to his own.
‘We’re going to have a scar,’ it said.
Gavin knew its voice.
‘Dear me: pity,’ it said. It was speaking with his voice. ‘Still, it could be worse.’
His voice. God, his, his, his.
Gavin shook his head.
Yes,’ it said, understanding that he’d understood.
‘Not me.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
It transferred its touch from Gavin’s jawbone to its own, marking out the place where the wound should be, and even as it made the gesture its surface opened, and it grew a scar on the spot. No blood welled up: it had no blood.
Yet wasn’t that his own, even brow it was emulating, and the piercing eyes, weren’t they becoming his, and the wonderful mouth?
The boy?’ said Gavin, fitting the pieces together.
‘Oh the boy . . .’ It threw its unfinished glance to Heaven. ‘What a treasure he was. And how he snarled.’
‘You washed in his blood?’
‘I need it.’ It knelt to the body of Preetorius and put its fingers in the split head. ‘This blood’s old, but it’ll do. The boy was better.’
It daubed Preetorius’ blood on its cheek, like war-paint. Gavin couldn’t hide his disgust.
‘Is he such a loss?’ the effigy demanded.
The answer was no, of course. It was no loss at all that Preetorius was dead, no loss that some drugged, cocksucking kid had given up some blood and sleep because this painted miracle needed to feed its growth. There were worse things than this every day, somewhere; huge horrors. And yet –
‘You can’t condone me,’ it prompted, ‘its not in your nature is it? Soon it won’t be in mine either. I’ll reject my life as a tormentor of children, because I’ll see through your eyes, share your humanity.
It stood up, its movements still lacking flexibility.
‘Meanwhile, I must behave as I think fit.’
On its cheek, where Preetorius’ blood had been smeared, the skin was already waxier, less like painted wood.
‘I am a thing without a proper name,’ it pronounced. ‘I am a wound in the flank of the world. But I am also that perfect stranger you always prayed for as a child, to come and take you, call you beauty, lift you naked out of the street and through Heaven’s window. Aren’t I? Aren’t I?’
How did it know the dreams of his childhood? How could it have guessed that particular emblem, of being hoisted out of a street full of plague into a house that was Heaven?
‘Because I am yourself,’ it said, in reply to the unspoken question, ‘made perfectible.’
Gavin gestured towards the corpses.
‘You can’t be me. I’d never have done this.’
It seemed ungracious to condemn it for its intervention, but the point stood.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ said the other. ‘I think you would.’
Gavin heard Preetorius’ voice in his ear. ‘A crime of fashion.’ Felt again the knife at his chin, the nausea, the helplessness. Of course he’d have done it, a dozen times over he’d have done it, and called it justice.
It didn’t need to hear his accession, it was plain.
‘I’ll come and see you again,’ said the painted face. ‘Meanwhile – if I were you – ‘ it laughed,’ – I’d be going.’
Gavin locked eyes with it a beat, probing it for doubt, then started towards the road.
‘Not that way. This!’
It was pointing towards a door in the wall, almost hidden behind festering bags of refuse. That was how it had come so quickly, so quietly.
‘Avoid the main streets, and keep yourself out of sight. I’ll find you again, when I’m ready.’
Gavin needed no further encouragement to leave. Whatever the explanations of the night’s events, the deeds were done. Now wasn’t the time for questions.
He slipped through the doorway without looking behind him: but he could hear enough to turn his stomach. The thud of fluid on the ground, the pleasurable moan of the miscreant: the sounds were enough for him to be able to picture its toilet.