Page 27 of The Salt King

He showed her some of the developed pictures, which he’d enlarged. On all of them, on the left side—the place that on the film dosimeter had been covered over with copper and plastic—the pictures were pure, bright white. On the right—the side that had been covered by the aluminium—there was some kind of fog, but not evenly spread across the frames. It sat in irregular wisps and bands.

And, incredibly, it silhouetted those vast metal spikes spearing through the ground, and their thorns, all pin sharp.

“That’s . . . not radioactivity,” she said.

“No,” he said. “But look what happens to the ones that were closer to that gate.” He handed her another. The left-hand side was blasted white, like the others, but on the right, where the film had been covered by the aluminium again, the light was brighter, the shapes of the spikes even starker. And another one; brighter again.

“What about the one I put on the gate?” she said, with something molten starting to flux in her chest.

“Yes,” he said tightly. “Yes, exactly.” He hesitated though, then picked up an image he’d left face down on the table.

Again, the left side was just white.

On the right, where the aluminium had been—there was a person.

Or something like a person. It was a whirl of brilliant light, and within that whirl were arms, faces, wings, horns, round streams like wheels, the furl of what might have been fabric, a chaos of many things all in the same space, but . . . slightly blurred. It had moved.

Tallis stood holding the picture. She had pinned the test on that door. Whatever this thing was, it had been right in front of her, just on the other side of the wood.

“Is there any way we could have accidentally exposed this one to . . . or overlaid another image on . . .?”

Wordless, Sally handed her the other pictures that had faced the same way.

The thing was on all of them.

“All right. Let’s get these emailed to both our agencies,” Tallis said, very carefully. “And then I think we should leave.”

13

Hreodwater, England

From the gateway into the working part of the mine, the salt light flared and shone the image of Saint Hildegard and the King down across the congregation. It was uncanny to know nobody else could see it. All anyone else knew was that the candlelit darkness was a little bit warmer. As the salt light rippled, so did the image of the King: he was all whirling half shapes, wings, horns, faces, wheels, eyes.

Typical, Avelyn thought grumpily. When Hildegard had built the abbey, she must have known that the Hreoda were saying she had fought the Salt King, and by way of making sure that the annoying paganism didn’t get out of hand, she’d mixed that story thoroughly with the Book of Ezekiel and said, No, no, honest, they think the Salt King is some spirit of the fen but really he’s an angel, ta-dah. That was how you did missionary work in those days. You used Christianity like a red sock in a white wash. Launder it together with other faiths, and everything turns pink before long.

He surfaced when he realized he’d just heard his own name from the priest leading the Mass.

“And finally, let us welcome Father Avelyn Brocken, who has come to us from Rome to begin the process of verifying the miracles here for the Holy See.”

To Avelyn’s surprise, there was a little cheer. That was unusual for an early morning Mass where most people were still wearing pyjamas under their clericals.

The priest smiled encouragingly, in that particular way older people tended to do with Avelyn’s generation; the way that said, I know you were probably raised on a smartphone and now you have overpowering anxiety and ADHD but you really must learn to function in the real world and I’m about to make you do just that in a super-supportive and definitely not impatiently aggressive way. “Father Brocken, would you like to say a little something?”

Avelyn stood up, tickled in advance. “Well, that wasn’t how people normally react to the sudden appearance of a Jesuit, was it,” he said, and a little run of laughter went around. “Thanks. Right, as many of you will probably know, my job here is not to disprove what’s happened: we’re well past that now. The task is to find out whether these occurrences are miraculous, or just supernatural. That means I’ll be talking to all of you, starting with those who have experienced some kind of cure, and those of you coming to the end of your stay here. It’s not going to be scary; all I’m after is what you think and how you feel about it all. I’m supposed to tell you that nothing you say is going to be wrong, but that is of course a lie: if you do say anything disparaging about the Welsh rugby team, you will be immediately punished.”

“Yes, bach!” someone at back called.

Avelyn laughed. “Thanks, everyone.”

The priest looked disgruntled, remembered to thank him, and took over again for the final prayers.

“Did you prepare that in advance?” Annunciata whispered to him.

“No?” said Avelyn, distracted, because someone was eating behind him and he was suffering the urgent need to scream and set them on fire.

“Jesuits are scary.”

“You’re scary,” he said.