Chapter 105

SEND HIM BACK TO ME

Lew said, “That’s your judgment, Charlie. That’s the price you have to pay.”

Faultless was shaking with anger. “The price,” he said. “The price for what?”

“For your birth. For the murder you committed.”

“And how many have you committed?”

“But I’m God. I create and I destroy.”

Faultless sat slumped on the dusty ground. He rested his arms on his knees and his head hung low. He was beaten.

“How did he get to Barrowmore in the first place?” he said. “How did he get to Whitechapel? You, I guess?”

Lew shrugged. “Not me. I don’t have as much control as you might think. Now and again I do interfere. An earthquake, perhaps. Famine. The reason I interfere is that death on a massive scale oddly brings people back to me. I made a funny race in humans, I really did.” He paused and looked around his domain—his hell. “He wasn’t Jack when he came to England. He was someone else. He came with the Crusades in the 12th century. Those were fine days. Men really loved me back then. They murdered lavishly and inventively in my name.”

Hate welled up in Faultless.

Lew said, “Some of them came for a cup. You know the story? Holy Grail. The cup I was supposed to have drunk from during the Passover meal when I came to earth in human form.”

“And did you?” said Faultless, dislocated from reality now. I’m asking God questions about The Last Supper, he was thinking, while a madman’s laughter echoed through his mind.

“No. Never. I never came to earth in human form and sacrificed myself. Why would I do that? Why would I put myself through torture because men broke my rules?” Lew grunted, and his eyes glazed over. “He was called Yeshua, and he was a prophet. One of mine. People have called him Jesus. Made him a god. But he wasn’t. He was human. But he was crucified, and he was named the Christ, and his wounds still resonate.”

“The wounds of Christ . . . ”

“Those wounds were there from the beginning of time. Like everything I wrote down. Like everything I made. Nothing is random. They have meaning and power.”

“And the knights, they never found the cup?”

“Course not. It doesn’t exist. Just another story. But they did come back with original sin. Him—my first evil thought. A group of knights raided a Muslim fort in a place called Acre. Hundreds of years before, seers hunted Jack—as you call him—to that fort, and they trapped him there. This group of knights raid the fort. They steal the treasure—in my name, of course.”

“Makes it all right, then.”

“It does. But coiled up in the gold and jewels was him. He had free passage to England. And on the boat over he managed to get into some knight’s head who then spilled the blood that can unbind him—just like that little fellow Spencer did.”

Faultless said nothing for a while. He listened to the screams of the damned. Then he said, “So I kill him, and he’ll be gone?”

“He’ll be gone.”

“Where? Here?”

“Back into my heart, where I will love him tenderly and torture him endlessly.”

“And then there’s no evil?”

Lew raised his eyebrows. “Charlie, there will always be evil. It’s necessary. It counterbalances goodness. It’s vital.”

“But with him gone, there . . . ” He trailed off. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. He started to realize something, and the knowledge was like blades inside him. He stared at Lew. “I can’t be . . . you’re not . . . ”

“You’re his brother, Charlie. You’re evil’s evil twin, if you like. It’s why I thought you into existence. To carry out this task. You are the darkness that comes from my heart. Now you’re going to suffer for it.”