Billy was mad, bad and dangerous, Emma knew that but only in a, it’s not really true sort of way, I could never love someone like that; but she could, and she did, and the stark underbelly of life rolled right over her. But don’t blame Emma, she was foolish maybe but don’t blame the innocence of the world that gives all for love. Blame the darkness that uses it to manipulate, control and destroy. Blame the devil and his baptism of tears. Emma in the sad goodnight entered the church.
Emma’s Song
“My bonny love what have you done?” Emma stared at him in horror and then with a fluttery feeling in her heart she cried out in a wailing voice, “if tears could heal you Billy I’d weep over your bones forever.” But it was too late for tears, too late for Emma and wouldn’t you just know it had been too late for Billy since the day he was born on that cold, wet day in March ’69, the day Old Smoky claimed his own, the day the devil came callin’, standing over Billy’s mother weeping for joy, baptising the new born soul with tears, the leaden sky brisk with a rain damp wind blowing in off Devil’spike Hill.
The world turned. Raven’s flapped and croaked squabbling and wheeling over Devil’spike Hill. A chill, blustery March wind whistled through a sad grey day. Emma thought about a blue summer sky and white fluffy clouds and wondered if the sun would ever shine again. The dismal day leached hope as though it was some kind of grey hole stealing light. But then summer never comes to Devil’spike Hill, only old worn out ghosts and haunted ravaged angels with nowhere to go and ragged crows with holes in their eyes. You never want to go anywhere near Devil’spike Hill. That’s where Billy crucified himself when he couldn’t stand voices rustling like bats in his head no more, voices chittering like rats, scolding and wheedling, telling him to do this, telling him to do that, and all of it bad and bloody like a torn fingernail throbbing in his head until his gut clamped like a vice and any hope of sleep fled like the night before, in shadows and bursts of light spraying out behind his eyes. Poor Billy, mad, bad, dangerous Billy, he never stood a chance in life and fared no better in death. Emma loved him but that’s life for you, you come into it screaming and if your luck runs out, if Old Smoky happens by and takes a hand in the game, you scream yourself to death in the wasteland of your soul. Emma loved him but Emma was blind and could only see with her eyes, and that wasn’t enough where love is concerned, it never is. Billy was mad, bad and dangerous with whispering voices rustling like old dry leaves in his head. Emma knew better than to love Billy but she couldn’t help herself snared by the wild, haunted look in his eyes, like he wanted to reach out but didn’t know how, so he shackled her in chains of love because if he was going to burn in hell he was going to make damn sure he did not burn alone. But that’s love for you, pure as the driven snow on one side and as dark as the devil himself on the other, and oh the sadness is in the shadow that taints and seduces the fabric of pure love a thread at a time until it unravels the cloth tearing it asunder with deliberate, venomous intent. Emma sensed something wrong with her love and ignored her instinct, and wouldn’t we all for love. Emma was in love, and love struck her deaf, dumb and blind to the living presence of the stalking shadow in Billy’s eyes. Something evil was loose in the world.
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Chalice: No one knew its provenance, at least not with certainty; attempts to date the chalice having failed magnificently, so much so it was rumored to be unlike any known form of rock crystal, and if it was manufactured crystal, no one could say how.
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He could hear grass whisper to the trees when the moon shone bright and full, and beneath the earth moldering bones in rotting coffins whispered dark secrets in his ear. And then one day Billy did a terrible thing, he used Emma’s love for him against her. He used love to persuade her to steal an ancient chalice, a rare and wondrous thing, an ancient relic of unknown provenance, a thing of legend and old power, an impossibly fashioned chalice that science cannot explain. The chalice had been carved from a single block of pale blue rock crystal. Its age was unknown and it didn’t do what naturally occurring rock crystal was supposed to do when subjected to various standard tests and experiments. Cornelius Tulla mentions the chalice in his commentaries as far back as the 1st Century BC. It is said the chalice is cursed, if so it is a strange curse. According to legend whilst ever the chalice is held in a sacred place, church or temple it is harmless. If it is taken elsewhere it amplifies the nature of whoever possesses it and as curses go that is a strange one.
Billy could not steal the chalice. The voices in his head wouldn’t let him enter a church and St Mary’s at the end of Hope Road had been built on sacred ground more than fifteen centuries ago, so he used Emma’s love to persuade her to steal it for him. “We can go away,” he said, “no one will find us and we’ll have money, lots of it,” he almost giggled.
Emma did not want to steal the chalice. Emma did not want to lose the one she loved and so she did, steal the chalice that is.
Billy was mad, bad and dangerous, Emma knew that but only in a, it’s not really true sort of way, I could never love someone like that; but she could, and she did, and the stark underbelly of life rolled right over her. But don’t blame Emma, she was foolish maybe but don’t blame the innocence of the world that gives all for love. Blame the darkness that uses it to manipulate, control and destroy. Blame the devil and his baptism of tears. Emma in the sad goodnight entered the church.
A wan, misted moon hung low in the east. A high arched window of old foreign glass focused the moon’s thin light. Spectral moonshine poured down lending the white damask altar cloth a bleached look. The chalice standing in a hollow niche in the wall behind the altar shimmered. Seeming to absorb the moonlight and somehow use it to enhance the fragile blue crystal. It stood in its niche shimmering like thin blue water. Emma, her heart in her throat, reached out with trembling hands and grasped the chalice. Something cool yet warm, something benign inside a song, something blue as a faint sky enveloped her in a cascading shimmer, and then it was gone. Hugging the chalice to her breast she hurried out of the church crossed the road and slipped into the shadow cast by a high brick garden wall where Billy, hunched and tense, waited impatiently.
What moonlight lingered in the church dimmed even as the echo of Emma’s footsteps rang like splintered stone and then nothing, just weighty breathless silence. A faint smell of incense hung in the cold, still air. Did something stand in the central isle of the church; was there a presence inside looking out? Did the ancient power stored in the sacred stones draw it forth, from where, who can say, perhaps it is always there like the universe, an aspect of god in a different way? Maybe love is like that sometimes, aspects of all that is good mirrored in endlessly different ways.
But not Billy, Billy was stained with the devil’s tears. All Billy could do was corrupt love, hunt love down and betray it until it shattered like glass, razoring the heart and the soul, and about all you can do is hope and pray one day the pain will go away and the wounded spirit will somehow heal itself, because all you know when love comes to stay is that something of its presence lingers on. So don’t blame Emma for stealing the chalice, don’t blame the song.
When Emma grasped the chalice, love rang like a bell.
When Billy took it from her, eyes gleaming with avarice and strange unholy light, he almost dropped it. A brief sensation of cold fire seared his hands. Voices chittered alarm inside his head. He thrust the chalice at Emma, “take it,” he said in a slow voice, “put it back, go do it now.” Without thinking Emma spun on her heel, crossed the road and slipped inside the church. As she hurried down the isle something unseen, a moonlight shimmer in the air made way for her. Breathless, heart racing Emma replaced the crystal chalice in its niche. An almost sigh hung in the air. She turned and hurried out into the night but Billy was gone. Emma searched the streets until finally exhausted she returned home, weeping she climbed wearily into her bed sure in her heart that she would never see Billy again. And she was right but in a different way.
Billy thrust the chalice away, demanding Emma take it back, but it was too late, the darkness inside Billy focused and amplified. His mind crumbled, his heart ached with sudden pain, his soul-spirit gibbered. And then the world went away and blackness crashed in. ‘Shadows have teeth,’ a voice wailed in his head and then he started screaming deep inside and kept on screaming until he screamed himself away like smoke on the wind as he clawed his way up to the top of Devil’spike Hill where the devil claimed his own but I expect you know that.
Everybody knew Billy was mad, bad and dangerous. Everyone that is except Emma, and when his mind crashed, it was terrible. Rumour had it that the night Billy died, a strange blue light flared inside the old church at the end of Hope Road. But you know how rumours go so I don’t expect there was anything to it.
Emma goes to Saint Mary’s regular now. She sings in the choir and everyone will tell you her voice is a joy to hear. Her special song, the one she sings solo (but rarely) in a high, clear, sweet voice that just about reduces the entire congregation to tears is the one that goes:
Sweet Saviour of all love divine
Sweet Jesu hold my hand in thine
Guide me through this vale of tears
Uplift me Lord in thy love eternal
In thy sight I am not forsaken
Sweet Saviour of all love divine
Sweet Jesu hold my hand in thine.
Emma mourns Billy and there is something about that old priest at Saint Mary’s, something in his eyes that says he knows when Emma held out the stolen chalice to Billy, she did so with nothing but love in her heart and love turned the curse against the devil’s shadow one cold moonlit night in March.
Sometimes you just can’t help yourself when love picks you up and carries you away, and when you come back down to earth again you are the same; in a different way.
Emma sings in the choir. Sometimes she weeps in her sleep. She just loved him that is all she knows.
A story with original photography, digital art, and illustration, about Son of Waves, 12 Dolphins to save the planet, David The Visionary on the beach in Tel Aviv, a digital messiah, and an internet of Love. Free PDF download.
