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so it was there that our sect, the True Church of Luskentyre, made its first
home, from 1949
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all until 1954, when Mrs Woodbean gifted us the estate at High Easter
Offerance, on the green and ancient flood plain of the river Forth, far to the
south-east of those wild isles.
*
'Well, it smells like that liniment stuff me mother used to slap on us soon as
we coughed out of turn,' Dec said, flopping into a huge cushion on the floor
beside me.
I had partaken of the precious zhlonjiz unguent some hours earlier, in my loft
bedroom, shortly after Zeb and I had made our way back to Kilburn from the
South Bank (happily this required no changes of
Underground train line). I had pulled up the loft ladder and closed the loft
door, placing the ladder on top of it. I removed all my clothes save for my
knickers and sat in the lotus position, meditating for some time beforehand.
A cup of water I'd brought from the bathroom sat to one side, a scented Order
candle to the other.
I struggled to open the tiny jar; the cap gave an audible crack when it
finally turned. The sharp, spicy salve inside was black in the candlelight.
I took a little of the thick dark cream on my little finger and placed some on
my forehead, some behind my ears and some on my belly-button. I slipped the
rest into my mouth, scraping it off against the back of my teeth and quickly
swallowing it. I washed it down with the cup of water; the gritty black cream
burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth as it slid down my throat.
I coughed and my nose ran and the fierce dark smell of the stuff seemed to
surround me, fiery and raw and dissolving, reeking of a mountainous,
half-mythical East. I sniffed back, breathing deeply to suffuse my being with
the magical balm, relaxing and trying to let my soul open to the voice of the
Creator, attempting both to ignore the vast city and its millions of
Cluttered, Unsaved souls, and at the same time to use their untapped, ignorant
capacity for Receiving to focus the signals of God upon myself.
In short, it did not work. I waited for the blink of an eye and the life of
an old God, I waited until the next heart beat and the next Ice Age, I waited
for the merest whisper of murmured acknowledgement and the erupting scream of
God at last losing patience with us all; I waited long enough for the candle
to flicker and go out, my legs to grow sore and my skin to prickle with
goose-bumps.
Eventually I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness, aware of an edge of
light round the sides of the loft door and the vague buzz of voices and smell
of food drifting up from downstairs. I lowered my head and might have wept,
until I rebuked myself for such self-pity, and told myself that - if fault
there was - it was my own, and I had nobody else to blame. I sniffed, rose
stiffly and dressed, tidied things up and lowered the wooden ladder through
the opened loft door.
'What liniment?' I asked Declan.
'I dunno,' he said, lighting a small roll-up cigarette. 'Some stuff. She just
called it "Di lineament" and
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all dabbed the damn stuff on us at every opportunity; worst was when you had
the toothache; stung like hell;
worse than the toothache.'
'I thought it smelled like coriander,' said Roadkill, who was rolling one of
their drug cigarettes. We were all - save for Scarpa - in the living room,
listening to some modern CD music on the hi-fi. I had eaten after the others,
having missed the main meal while I was attempting to Receive. I had, perhaps
misguidedly, attempted to explain to the others what I had been trying to do
in the loft; probably I ought not to have mentioned the zhlonjiz at all.
Roadkill at least seemed sympathetic. Brother Zeb, also now rolling what they
called a 'number', seemed to be ignoring me.
'Dec,' Boz said, stretching his hand across me to offer Declan the drug
cigarette which was currently in circulation.
Dec seemed to hesitate, and Boz offered the long white tube to me. 'Hey, Isis,
child; you want to try the holy ganja instead?'
I looked at it. 'I'd probably just cough,' I told him, though I was thinking
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