Pig Island by Mo Hayder Read Free Book Online Page A

months in a lunatic asylum before he could speak again.
    Well, it’s famous, as stories go. Only problem is, it didn’t happen . It’s just a myth, just part of Crowley’s impulse for self-promotion and showmanship. That’s what Satanists are, in general—a bunch of theatrical types whose main aim, IMHO, is to get a crafty shag. So what was I expecting of the Psychogenic Healing Ministries? I can’t remember exactly—but probably the usual shite: Gothic robes, altar rites, chanting in the trees at sundown. What I didn’t expect were these ordinary, mostly middle-class people, dressed, on the whole, like they were off for a spot of shopping on a Saturday afternoon.
    “You see, Joe, we’re quite normal,” said Blake, showing me to my seat. “We’re not going to eat you!”
    “No,” laughed one of the other diners. “Or try to convert you!”
    And that was supposed to be the first impression I got—normality and sunny wholesomeness through and through, from the gingham tablecloth to the homey food: thick-crusted quiches sprinkled with chives, misshapen pork pies, large institutional metal bowls of potato salad. There was even wine in cloudy-looking carafes placed at intervals down the table, and everywhere I looked I saw pleasant-faced people grinning back at me, sticking out their hands and saying, “Hi, Joe!” But no matter what they did, I couldn’t help it, that REM song kept chuntering away through the old grey matter: ‘ Shiny happy people’ . Something a bit sinister about anyone that happy … ‘ Shiny happy people’ . And the fucking sunshine, too. Sunshine in a bottle. That was what they wanted me to think.
    What they were doing was staging this totally elaborate game of musical chairs. My neighbour kept changing every ten minutes. Everyone who sat next to me did this dead intense PR job on the community, working their nuts off to tell me about how much hard work went into maintaining the Positive Living Centre, how much love and honest brain-power had gone into Cuagach Eilean.
    “Everything’s done with total, like, sensitivity to the environment—we recycle, don’t use pesticides or herbicides, we celebrate what Gaia and the Lord give us through Cuagach Eilean. We want to repay them in some small way. Those trees over there? The tall ones? Planted by us.”
    “The more we love the soil the more it repays us. We grow all our own fruit and vegetables. If I say it myself, when it comes to size and taste our vegetables can give Findhorn’s a run for their money.”
    “See the refectory building? I made the windows. I was a carpenter by trade before I came here, through God’s grace. It’s all timber from renewable sources—some of it from Cuagach herself. I’m working on new doors for the cottages now.”
    There was a tall African guy in a dashiki , who told me he’d arrived in England as a missionary to spread the word of the Lord to the British: ‘This proud nation that has forgotten God.“ (Get that? A Nigerian bringing Christianity to us—what a turn of the tables is that?) But no one had mentioned Dove’s name yet, which I thought was kind of odd. I waited long enough so that when I spoke it’d sound like normal curiosity. Then I said, ”What happened to your founder, Malachi Dove? I don’t see him here.“
    The missionary was smiling at me, and when I said the name his smile got a little fixed, his eyes a little distant. But he didn’t stop beaming. “He’s gone,” he said, with a fake cheerfulness. “He left years ago. He lost his way.”
    “Suicide,” I said. “Story goes he had a thing about suicide.”
    He didn’t blink. The smile got tighter, wider. “He’s gone,” he repeated. “Long time now. Lost his way.”
    “Thank you for asking about Malachi.” Blake was suddenly at my side. He put a hand on my elbow to turn me away from the missionary. “Our founder, Malachi, the messenger. We hold his name dear, though many have forgotten it.”
    “I did some