“I knew this was wrong, father. I knew it. You can’t cheat death. You have only your own time. But I made that wrong decision, I tore off my clothes and climbed into the back of this new self. I put my head up inside its head, like a mask, you see, put my arms inside the arms, my hands into the hands, like gloves, legs inside the legs. And then he shut the little doors at the back, snapped them shut and clicked the catches. And there was this terrible pulling, this shrinking as that new skin shrank around me, embracing me, clinging to me.

“My neck tightened, this awful compression and he said, ‘I must take your spine now. The exchange must be made.’ I struggled, but he took hold of me and he had this instrument, like a pump, polished brass, very old-looking and he put it against the small of my back and he –”

“Nurse!” called the priest.

“No!” cried the old man. “No, let me speak, let me finish. What he did to me. The pain. I woke up in a doss house and when I woke up I screamed. And I looked around and I laughed then, and I thought, oh no, it was a dream. A nightmare, drunk probably, oh how I laughed. But then, but then, as I sat up on that wretched bed, I knew it had all been true and I felt at my neck and I could feel the flap and the button and I knew that that other self was now inside me, I wasn’t inside it. The backs of my arms, hard under the skin, like wood and my legs, my back, rigid and I was numb. I couldn’t smell anything, even there in that stinking doss house, not a thing and I no longer had a sense of taste. I got up and I was like a robot, an automaton, I was not a person any more, like a doll, not a person.

“I walked about and I looked at people, but they weren’t like people any more, they seemed like animals, or some remote species. But it wasn’t them, it was me. I wasn’t one of them. I was something different. And now they meant nothing to me. I was remote from them, aloof. I couldn’t feel them any more. Emotionally, I couldn’t feel them emotionally. I had no feelings. No love, no hate. Nothing, just a great emptiness inside.”

There was a moment of silence and then the priest said, “I am afraid, my son. You have made me afraid.”

“I am afraid, father. Afraid of what I have done.”

“Will you tell me more?”

“I will tell you all. I knew that I was afraid then. But I could not feel it. I knew that I was angry, very angry, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t remember how those things felt. But I knew one thing and that was that I could not go through five hundred years of this. Of this emptiness and solitude. This apart-ness. I wanted my self back, wretched thing that it was, but it was me.

“I returned to that chapel to seek out the man who had taken my spine. But he was gone, the chapel was all boarded over, the door chained shut. I did not know where he might have gone to, I couldn’t know where. But I knew I had to find him, to reclaim my self. And so I searched. I walked, father. I walked across England. And I didn’t need to eat - I felt no hunger - or sleep - I never felt tired. I walked and walked from town to town until the shoes wore off my feet and then I begged for more. I searched through the pages of every local newspaper.

“I walked, father, for fifty years I walked.”

The priest caught his breath. “For fifty years?” he whispered.

“For fifty years. But I found him. I finally found him, right here, right here in Brighton. Another small advert in the local paper, another chapel just like the first. And there he was, up upon the dais. Same man, same suit, exactly the same. He hadn’t aged by a day. I kept to the rear of the hall, in the shadows and I watched and I listened. It was all the very same. And I watched his audience. The same audience, father, the same people, even after fifty years I recognized them all, sitting there, straight-backed.

“He spoke, a newer speech now, of micro-technology and silicone chips, but he was selling the same thing. The five hundred years. And as he spoke the other folk drifted out, leaving only me, hiding at the back and one lone downtrodden-looking man at the front, and after he had spoken he led this man away.

“I crept after them. I had a gun and I could feel no fear. I stood at the door of another little back room, listening. I knew he would be removing his shirt. I had waited so long for this, but I was like a sleepwalker, so distant. I turned the handle and pushed open the door. He stood there, half naked. I shouted at him, raised my gun, the young man saw the gun and he ran away. He was safe, he would be spared my torment.

“The man in black slipped on his shirt, he was cool, I knew that he could feel nothing. Or what did I know? He did this to other people, yet he knew what it was like. I had many questions. Fifty years of questions.

“‘So, said he. ‘This is most unexpected.’

“‘Give me back my spine,’ I told him. ‘Give me back my self.’

“And he laughed. Laughed in my face. ‘After fifty years?’ he said. ‘It is gone. It is dust.’

“My hand that held the gun now shook. Of course it was dust. Of course after all this time. After all these years.

“‘But you go on,’ he said. ‘You go on into the future. Look at you, still young, still fit.’

“‘No!’ I cried. ‘No. I will not be like this. Not what you have made me. I will kill myself, but first I will kill you. You will do to no more folk what you have done to me.’

“He shook his head. He smiled. ‘You fail to grasp any of this,’ he said. ‘I am just one, there are many like me. Like us. Our number grows daily. Soon, soon now, all will be as we are. You will achieve nothing by killing me.’

“‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Why do you do this?’

“‘A new order of life,’ he said. ‘A new stage in development. A world freed of emotion, without sickness or hatred.’

“‘Without love,’ I said and he laughed again.

“‘Put aside your gun,’ he said, ‘and I will show you why this must be and then you will understand.’

“I put aside my gun. I would kill him, I knew this. And I would kill myself. But I had to know, to understand.

“‘Follow me,’ he waved his hand and led me from the room. Along a dirty corridor we went and down a flight of steps towards the boiler house below. Here he switched on a light and I saw heaps of ancient baggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags. ‘All mine,’ he said, and opening a musty case he took out an ancient daguerreotype in a silver frame. He held it up to me and I looked at the portraiture. A gaunt young man in early Victorian garb.

“‘It is you,’ I said.

“He inclined his head. ‘I was the first. I opened up the way for Him and He gave this life to me.’

“‘For Him?’ I asked.

“‘I am His guardian, until all are converted. It is conversion, you see, real conversion.’

“‘Who is this person?’

“‘Oh, He’s not a person.’ The man in black stepped back from me. There was a old red velvet curtain strung across a corner of the room, he took hold of it and flung it aside. And I saw Him. I saw the thing. It sat there on a sort of throne, hideously grinning. It was like a monstrous insect. Bright red, a complicated face with a black V for a mouth and glossy slanting eyes. And this face, it seemed to be composed of other things, of people and moving images, moving, everything moving. Shifting from one form to another. I cannot explain exactly what I saw, but I knew that it was wrong. That it was wrong and it was evil. That it shouldn’t be here. That it was not allowed to be here. He had brought it here, this tall gaunt man, he was its guardian. All he was and all he did was for the service of this creature.

“‘Meet your maker,’ said the man in black. ‘Meet your God.’

“‘No!’ I fumbled for my gun, but I no longer had it, the man in black had somehow stolen it from me. I wanted to attack this thing. I felt no fear, you see. I couldn’t fear. But the sight of this thing was such that I knew, simply knew, that I must destroy it. I raised my hands to strike it down, but the gaunt man held me back.