A Divine Madness

by Colin P. Davies & David Redd

Table of Contents
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Part 3: Coventry 1941

Death was like a plague-cloud expanding across the world. The Third Reich sought Lebensraum for its Übermenschen. On a dreadful night Diana watched German bombers transforming Coventry into Hell on Earth.

She stood in the dark doorway of a village pub, gazing out across black fields as the sky glowed and bled — stabbed by searchlights — above the distant city. The air resonated with the drone of aircraft and the throaty rumbling of explosions.

“Poor buggers!”

The voice made her jolt. She hadn’t heard the man come up behind her. She examined him in the dull red glow. A gaunt, hungry-looking face. His eyes seemed to peer through her and she shuddered. It was old Tom — at least that was what they called him. No job and no family. He was less than fifty, but carried himself as if a great weight were bending his back.

“Poor buggers,” he said again. “I was living in the city until the raid last November, when they got the Cathedral, you know. My place was just one room over a draper's, nothing to them, but it’s gone. The whole street’s gone.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s happening again.”

Warm air gusted around the doorway and blew Diana’s hair into her eyes. “I feel we should do something,” she said.

“We can.” He pulled up the collar on his heavy army coat; he didn’t seem to notice the warmth. “We’re expecting people to reach here soon. I’ve been helping the vicar prepare the church hall. We need blankets and we’re going to need water, bandages... anything we can get.” He moved out into the open. An aircraft roared overhead in the darkness. He glanced up. “One of theirs. If only I could get at them...” He sighed. “Never mind. I could use some help at the hall.”

“Show me.”

He nodded. “This way, girl.”

All she had been able to do, these last few years, was give physical help. Words, which had once held such power, seemed useless. At one time, her words had enriched the lives of planters and herdsmen and seafarers, but now her poems were seen as mere novelties, baubles to amuse for a moment and be forgotten, trifles from a pre-war age. Still, these dogged Englishmen needed whatever help she could give.

Diana followed him as he limped up the lane. A cripple, obviously, and too old for enlistment, but she could sense a hatred and wish to kill as he glanced back towards the bombing. Already she regretted her offer of help.

Tom diverted up a narrow path between two cottages. The whitewashed walls were red-hued, as if caught by sunset. She slowed a moment to watch the city burning, and imagined the bomber crews as they cast out their cargoes like gods hurling thunderbolts. Then she ran after him.

At the end of the path they turned sharply. The track was muddy, rutted by army trucks which had only yesterday driven through from the city. The Norman church tower was silhouetted against the burning sky. Over to the right, nestling in the shadow of tall elm trees, the church hall crouched like a squat tent, a prefabricated structure of wood walls and corrugated metal roof. Tom directed Diana through the steel-sheeted door and into the black lobby. She stamped mud from her shoes as he closed the door behind them.

“Just a moment,” he said. “I’ll get us some light”

A match flared and she saw him light a candle, then another. He handed one candle-holder to Diana. The lines around his mouth and eyes became trenches. “Are you strong?” he said. Again his eyes appeared to see through her, or beyond her, and she had the notion of another world behind those two tiny windows.

She backed away. “What do we need to do? Where are the blankets?”

“First we need to move the tables, to clear some floor-space.”

Diana followed him through into the body of the hall. Her footsteps echoed and she glanced down at the marble floor; clearly there had been an earlier building on this site. She crouched and ran her fingertips over the stone, wondering if it was from a time when she had been in this country before.

The metal roof creaked in the wind.

Tom put his candle on the floor between them. His eyes flashed as he studied her face. “Have you lived here long?” he asked. “In England... I mean, you don’t look English. You look too healthy.”

“I’ve been here a long time now... you couldn’t imagine.”

“You’ve got the accent fairly well. But you still look continental.”

“I was born in Cornwall, but I was living in Spain just before the war.” She put her own candle on the floor.

“I thought you didn’t look English.”

“I am English... British... are we going to move things?” She took hold of a wooden chair, lifted it easily. She felt a gnawing irritability. She was angry, but could not understand why. “You don’t have many friends, do you, Tom?”

“Don’t need friends.”

Don’t need friends. Were they so alike, this mortal and a goddess?

“You need a job,” she said. “And you’re not going to get a job, being a worthless cripple.”

He glared at her. “Bitch! Who do you think you are?”

“Call me Rosalita...” That name bursting to her lips again! Was she possessed?

“I’ve been through Hell for my country. Can you say the same?”

“You don’t realise how many people I’ve sent to Hell this year alone.” She flung herself at his crippled body and forced his arm up his back, but he shook her off easily.

“Trying to hurt me?” He spat out the words. “Do you think pain matters after Morocco?”

He was right. Pain did not matter. All she wanted now was to destroy him. That was her purpose in life. Diana thought back to Madrid, as she had done at similar times recently. She recalled her fear, the sensation of power...

And the power came to her.

His hand jerked up to his face. She felt something roaring through her. His skin flushed red. His eyes were white. A flame flickered on his tongue. He screamed and a torrent of Hellfire gushed from his mouth and engulfed him in yellow flame. He fell to the floor, kicking and convulsing and crying. Diana backed away, suddenly fearful of what she’d done. She almost tripped, then ran for the front door, pushed it open, slammed it behind her. Inside the hall, Tom screamed.

So once again she had willed a man to death. But, this time she had used fire. There was no blood and no urge to sample blood. For she knew he did not have the madness, or psychosis, as it was known these days. It had been she herself who pushed his bitterness into anger. Tom had been loveless rather than evil. The displacement she had glimpsed in his eyes was anguish — a memory of what others had done to him, not anything that was in his own nature.

She moved away from the hut. Smoke began to rise from the gaps between the metal roof sheets. The screaming had stopped. Her heart was sprinting. Did he deserve to die? Probably not... but, being honest with herself, she didn't care. She cared much more about that name, blurted out from her subconscious... Rosalita. Who was she?

Diana moved away as flames licked up from the top of the walls, illuminating the trees, making them seem to tremble.

She savoured a deep breath and let it flow out softly over her moist lips. She felt satiated. Who would have thought that death could be so uplifting, so addictive? She had to go further. She was definitely changing. She no longer found any joy in befriending the mortals; taunting them was more pleasurable. She felt a need to assert her divinity stirring within her.

Already, she wanted to kill again.

* * *

Proceed to part 4...