But I can hear Farah screaming like she’s a million miles away. I can see that the blade of the knife has gone cleanly into my chest and I can feel it growing inside me, filling me up. I can’t breathe. It’s like a weight holding my lungs closed, crushing me. There’s a buzzing sound in my ears and the creeping purple-blackness at the edges of my vision and the sense of rushing that comes before a seizure.
And I know I’m dying.
FORTY
It’s the unfilled space of a seizure that unnerves me the most.
I don’t feel it when I hit the ground.
I don’t feel it when I crack my skull or scald myself or knock out a tooth.
I don’t dream.
Only on returning is there sometimes an impression … a memory. Of rushing, of falling, but mostly of blackness and, for me, noise. My seizures are always noisy.
Dying is a bit like that.
Except this time there is no return.
I die. But thinking doesn’t end. Instead, the rushing goes on and on and my head fills with noise. A sound that’s somewhere between a building site and a heavy metal band playing at full volume.
For now, I see through a glass, darkly.
Now I know in part; then shall I know even as I am known.
That phrase plays over and over inside my head. So does the memory of Benedict. “Don’t you want to dig a little deeper, Kyle?”
And Jonah: “Time to meet your Maker.”
Something is coming. Or rather, I am heading towards something.
And I’m terrified.
The fear is not human, not bounded by cortisol and adrenaline and an elevated heart rate. It’s a cosmic fireball consuming everything in its path.
I wonder if this is hell, if this rushing, consuming terror is what “dead” is.
But then other thoughts come. Potent memories.
I remember.
I remember the morning of my seizure.
I remember that Mum had already gone to work when I woke up. I remember making tea and toast like any other morning. I remember sitting at the tiny kitchen table, eating, browsing my phone. I remember the note on the table catching my eye: “Early prayer meeting – see you for dinner. Exciting news!”
The panic is fresh, like I’m there. I watch myself searching through the piles of notes on Mum’s table. Leaflets that Father Michael has printed on his inkjet, his badly drawn depictions of an X-rated hell. What am I looking for? The bible is not there, of course, she’ll have taken that with her. Her notebook where she jots down her own interpretations and ideas about God is also gone. But there’s something else … something that I’ve seen on this table and tried not to think about. Something that should be there and the fact that it’s not is bad … bad … bad.
Then the memory clicks and it feels like falling off a cliff.
The forms!
The same kinds of forms Grandad had shown me in the garage. Forms with big official titles and OFFICIAL USE ONLY boxes:
ID1: Verify Identity – Citizen.
TR1: Transfer of Whole of registered title(s).
AP1: Notification of Change of Register.
I watch myself bolt into the garage and check the gap between the electricity cupboard and the wall. The deeds are gone. She found them. Then she got fresh versions of the forms she needed.
She was going to give the house to Father Michael.
Everything falls sharply into place. Mum’s sense of anticipation that had been building for weeks. That terrible visit. After all those years of faith-dating, Mum had finally decided to settle down with God’s Scholars.
I should have confronted her when I found the forms weeks ago but I was too scared and too weak and I didn’t want to face the truth and now it was too late.
“I need you to step up, Kyle.”
Well, sorry, Grandad, I kind of screwed that one up like you thought I would.
Just a signature in front of a witness, that’s all it takes to give someone a house.
And Lacy would make a perfect witness.
“Don’t be fooled by our present circumstances, Kyle. I have big plans. I’m on a mission from God and your mother is going to help me.”
