The Pilgrim
by Daniel Kaysen

No one saw the pilgrims who visited Mrs. Madison's house three or four evenings a week.

The other residents on the tree-lined street were retired or semi-retired and spent their evenings cooped up in the blue of the television, bitter that their children only ever telephoned when guilt, or the need for a loan, grew overwhelming.

It was not a neighborly street. Each home had troubles enough of its own, no need to go looking for more. So this evening's pilgrim was unobserved as he parked and walked up the path to Mrs. Madison's house, and no one heard his footsteps echoing in the quietness of the night.

When he reached her doorstep he checked that it was precisely seven thirty, adjusted his tie, and knocked on Mrs. Madison's door.

As he waited for her to answer, he listened to the howls of hell from inside the house.

The woman who opened the door had a drawn face that suggested terminal illness or the middle stages of addiction, though in truth she was physically well and had only just turned forty. She was drug-free, too, apart from the cigarettes that she only allowed herself to smoke when the sun had gone down.

It was simply the tiredness of caring that had done this to her face, just as time and too many washes had faded the cheap pattern of her dress.

"Good evening, Mrs. Madison," the pilgrim said, raising his voice to compete with the pain-filled shrieks from the house. "I can come back, if this is an inconvenient time?"

It was clearly the worst possible time for a visit--behind Mrs. Madison an elderly white-haired man raged, and a teenage boy cried piercing sobs.

"It's my birthday and you forgot!" the boy cried, between huge gasps of hurt.

It was not his birthday the pilgrim knew. The boy's birthday was months away, but he had lost track of time, as they do when they're 15 years old and a late stage addict of A. No comfort to his mother that he was not shooting it up--smoking A was just as bad, just as thorough.

"You've stolen all my money!" screamed the father to his daughter, not knowing that he made this false accusation night, noon, and morning. Not knowing that his mind, like his grandson's, was scrambled and decayed from the A he too was hooked on.

The father noticed the pilgrim then and scowled at him. "I know you," he said with demented conviction, pointing a shaking finger.

An A-ravaged mind finds betrayal everywhere, but the pilgrim was an unlikely looking suspect. He had the air of a small boy dressed for church by his mother--his suit was a little too big and his dark hair was firmly parted in the odd, old-fashioned style all the pilgrims favored.

"You're the one that stole my money," said the father, aghast. Behind his thick, black-rimmed glasses the pilgrim's eyes widened like a child's, and then he looked at the ground in embarrassment.

"You"d better come in," said Mrs. Madison.

She showed him into the living room.

The cheer had left the room long ago. The furniture was stained and the carpet was frayed from the endless circling footsteps of those in hell. On the wall three generations of bleak photographs showed a family of bent smiles and eyes hopelessly filled with grand, unattainable, plans. There was a strong smell of disinfectant.

The father and the son followed them into the room, with new crimes to tell.

"She steals all our food!" screamed the father.

"She forgets to cook!" cried the son.

They both looked well fed, to the pilgrim's eyes.

"One moment," Mrs. Madison said to her visitor.

"Of course," said the pilgrim, bowing slightly.

She went into the den and tried not to look at the table with its sticky plates and the far-scattered remains of the evening meal. They were fierce and messy eaters, her family. She knew that when they were asleep another night of cleaning beckoned.

But that would be later. For now she pressed play on the video and started the cartoon about friendly trains.

As its theme tune started, the son and the father forgot birthdays and larcenies and hunger, and sidled into the den, wondering where the magical music was coming from. They sat on the floor in front of the television, and she left them to marvel with new eyes at the video they had already seen seven times that day.

"People with A have strange obsessions," she said, as she returned. "Lucky my two have the same one."

The pilgrim did not respond. He was anxious to get down to business so he offered the envelope he had taken from his briefcase.

The pilgrims paid for the visits, of course, for otherwise Mrs. Madison would never have admitted them. She welcomed the money and saved it for the future care of her family, should anything happen to her. For the pilgrims, though, the payment introduced an unpleasant aura of prostitution into the occasion, so they liked to get the dealings with money out of the way quickly.

With an awkward nod, he handed over the envelope full of bills. Mrs. Madison put the envelope out of sight, turned back to the pilgrim and tried to put him at his ease. "Please, take a seat."

He dutifully sat and got the questionnaires out of his briefcase.

The sun had gone down, so Mrs. Madison took out a pack of cigarettes and offered him one. "I don't imagine you smoke." The pilgrims regarded their bodies as temples.

"Thank you, but no."

He tried not to cough as she lit her cigarette.

"We're very grateful for your participation in our research," he said, starting the interview. "I'm sorry if my colleagues have asked some of these questions before."

They had.

All the pilgrims asked the same questions, and by now she was used to answering them on autopilot.

She told tonight's pilgrim the history of her family's drug use, the time-course of the decline of the two she was looking after, and their A-demented obsessions with food and injustice. She told him of her refusal to have strangers care for her kin.

She spoke all the words emptily, like a pledge of allegiance too often made and now become rote. Even the long-ago suicide of her mother, and the contents of the bloody note commanding that her eight year-old daughter must now care for the family, was recited with an absence of emotion.

She barely looked at the pilgrim as she spoke. So many of them visited that they all looked the same to her. The hairstyles never varied, the suits never quite fit, the questions never changed.

"Why do you all ask the same questions?" she said, now.

The pilgrim blinked. "We are researching how the A sufferer's needs change over time."

"Don't you ever wonder if it's a waste of effort?" she said.

"No!" said the pilgrim, shocked.

It was always a struggle for the pilgrims to remember that Mrs. Madison was not of their kind. She did not live by loyalty above all else, as they did.

"In pilgrim society there is nothing more shameful than betrayal," he told her earnestly. "When we are converted, we pledge to carry out the research, and we keep our pledges. It would be betrayal to do otherwise, and betrayal is unthinkable."

He nodded once for emphasis, as if she doubted him. She didn't. She had seen too many pilgrims and heard the loyalty speech too often. They made the Mafia's attitude to betrayal seem positively forgiving.

But the pilgrims had kind, innocent eyes, and they knew when they had outstayed their welcome, and they paid well, so she did not discourage their visits.

As the pilgrim closed his briefcase. the sound of the video's closing theme tune came from the den.

In a couple of minutes, or less, the family would return. The starving boy whose birthday she had, horrifyingly, forgotten. The man whose life savings she had stolen.

The pilgrim stood up and thanked her for the interview and squeezed her hand in sympathy.

"It must be so hard," the pilgrim said to her softly, "looking after them alone, with no support."

Mrs. Madison looked away, her mind long ago walled up like a dam against the truth of the burden.

"I know where you can get help," he said, and with a look of tenderness and compassion he handed her the business card with the care home's address printed on it.

All the pilgrims worked in care homes and they all gave her a card. The addresses varied, but there was always a card. Mrs. Madison threw them away, ritually, after each visit, for she had solemnly vowed, years ago, that strangers would never look after her flesh and blood.

"Thank you," she said simply, taking the card.

Then she politely showed him to the front door.

At the door he stopped.

"Oh, and happy birthday," he said, on an impulse.

It was the wrong thing to say, for Mrs. Madison's expression broke and she began to cry. He touched her arm in apology and stepped back. Then the front door shut, and he started the lonely walk down the path to his car.

Driving home he reflected that the interview had gone well, apart from the last exchange. Why had he mentioned her birthday? Pilgrims were taught to suppress impulse, from the moment they converted to the faith.

He was surprised at himself.

Surprised, too, to find a small but distinct feeling of disappointment. Somewhere at the bottom of his heart had been the thought: What if she says it? What if she says it to me?

What if she says she repents? What if she says she wants to be released? What if she says: forget the family. Take me. Cleanse me. This is my body, wash away my sins.

But no. She had said none of these things. Nor was it likely that she would have, of course. It was far too early.

Still, he had given her the card.

Mrs. Madison did not throw the card away.

She put it on the mantelpiece and when her father and son were finally sleeping she sat up late, smoking, and looked at the card and thought about what the pilgrim had said.

She had grown used to her birthdays going unmarked by anyone. Her father and son remembered nothing. The rest of her family were either dead or scattered to the winds, like her two ratty addict brothers, run away some twenty years ago, and her one-time husband who had gone the way of her family flesh and was now chasing a drug in a faraway town.

Her few friends had fallen away over the years, and she had let them go. Her neighbours never spoke.

The pilgrim's birthday greeting was the first she had received in years.

Forty. When her life was supposed to begin, according to the saying. Life, she thought. Her life.

The dam inside her cracked and a trickle of long-suppressed thought seeped through.

Why was she the one who coped, who cared, when no one else did? Why did she destroy herself, with no hope of thanks?

She opened a rare bottle of wine, turning this question over and over.

The answer, she suddenly saw, was that no one else would have coped or cared if she had not. She was the one designated to hold the family together. That was both her role and her only identity, and she was as addicted to caring as they were to A.

Life does not hold many moments of sudden perfect clarity, but for Mrs. Madison this was one such moment.

She took the card down from the mantel. "What the hell," she said, turning on the computer.

She found the care home's website and looked at the care options.

Short term care. Long term care.

Terminal care.

She looked at the prices.

And then she went to the wall safe in which she stored the pilgrims' fees. There would be enough, soon. A few more weeks of visits from the impeccably polite men and she would have enough.

For the first time since she was eight years old she entertained the possibility of leaving hell. After all, her solemn vow had referred to putting the family in the care of strangers, but the pilgrims were practically friends now, practically family even. Who else remembered her birthday?

Larger cracks appeared in the dam and she was swept away.

The pilgrim was sleeping when his phone rang the next day.

"Mrs. Madison did it," said the pilgrim's manager at the care home.

. "Did what?" Heart pounding.

"She committed her father and son to our terminal care, a few minutes ago."

"She chose ourhome?"

"Yes. It was your card she brought."

"Did she understand the meaning of terminal care?"

"Of course. She read the form. She signed it. She knew."

"But did she understand how their terminal care would be managed?"

"No. But it doesn't matter, not according to the code."

"I'm coming in," said the pilgrim, his heart flinging itself against his ribcage.

Of course, it would have been better if she had understood all the details.

It would have been sweeter if she had known how her family was to die, and had nonetheless still chosen the home's terminal care option.

But it was enough that she knew she was killing them.

She had betrayed her family.

They were now fair game.

The manager and the pilgrim took the father and the son to the sealed white room.

Everything there was as it should be.

They wore the feeding sashes. They extinguished the candles in the ritual order. The code was precise on the ritual, and they obeyed it.

The code was also precise about the relaxation of the usual rules.

For once it did not matter that the clothes of the pilgrim and his manager became messed, or their hair wet and clotted, or their movements greedy and barbaric, all impulses acted upon.

For once their sharp pristine teeth turned dark, and it did not matter.

They gorged themselves until sickness and pleasure united in the temple of their bodies, and they transcended.

The father and the son exited hell, bathed in red.

The pilgrim was chosen to return to Mrs. Madison's house a few weeks later.

He parked a few streets away and walked the rest of the distance, not wanting to raise the neighbors' suspicions. No one noticed. It was dark, and the road had many trees, and the neighbors were locked up tight in their own regrets.

At the bottom of the path there were two other pilgrims, waiting.

He did not know them, but they knew him, for he was a senior now, bathed in the flesh of a father and a son. He was famous amongst them and they quieted at his approach.

"Good evening," he said, as he came near. They nodded, respectful. "Who's first?" he asked.

One of the pilgrims raised his hand.

The senior handed him the sash.

"Good luck," he said.

The other nodded, and took the long lonely path towards Mrs. Madison's door.

The senior pilgrim heard his knock and waited, heart pounding, for a response. There was none.

The pilgrim at the door paused and knocked again.

The rules said he could wait no longer than a minute after the second knock. If no response came he was required to return back down the path and wasn't allowed to try again until he was chosen for duty once more.

The minute elapsed. The door remained shut.

The failed pilgrim returned down the path, handed the sash to the senior and began the walk to his car.

"Hard luck," said the senior generously. "Next time, perhaps?"

The second pilgrim failed, too.

Mrs. Madison was in the house of course, where else would she go? She was a prisoner of her own guilt, her conscience locking her up as tight as Alcatraz.

The second pilgrim left for his car as the first one had, downcast with disappointment. They had seen their hopes of glamor, of fame, of the ultimate seniority and of the ultimate transcendence, quite dashed.

The senior offered him a word of consolation, a word of hope for next time.

"Another time," he said. "It was just not fated tonight."

But his generous words were just form, really. The senior was glad in his heart that they had failed. They all knew that it meant his own chance lived on.

When the second pilgrim was no longer in sight the senior pilgrim put on the feeding slash, checked his pockets for candles, and walked towards her door.

His footsteps echoed on the pathway.

Mrs. Madison's bedroom was at the front of the house, upstairs. The light was off, but that was where he knew she would be, waiting in the darkness, listening.

She could hear his footsteps, he was quite sure of that.

His heart pumped. Perhaps she could even hear his heartbeat, such was its urgency. Imagine, said his heart. Imagine if she opens the door. Imagine if she says yes.

That's what the code demanded - the betrayer had to invite the pilgrim in, over the threshold, fully aware of what the invitation implied.

Well, she at least knew what such an invitation meant. The pilgrim and his manager had sent her the details of her family's deaths. Not photographs, obviously. But they had written clearly how the father and the son had passed from hell. They had explained that according to their code she in turn was a candidate now.

Her betrayal made her an animal, a food, a rite.

A mercy killing.

They had explained that they would, of course, obey the ritual form. They would walk up the path after dark. Knock once, knock twice. Leave after exactly a minute, if she didn't respond to the second knock.

The pilgrims had found over many lifetimes of experience that it was a ritual form that worked. The footsteps, the knocking, the waiting, then the footsteps retreating again, to be replaced after a pause by a new set, over and over, night after night. The rhythm drove the betrayer to distraction, for it matched the rhythm of guilt and memory, the endless rise and fall of remembering how they had betrayed their kin.

In the end, sooner or later, the betrayers found that they no longer feared the only fitting release from their torture. Instead they saw it was the only way to wash away the sin.

The betrayers craved it in the end, the red-bathed exit from an addict's hell.

That had been Mrs. Madison's mistake. Like all addicts, she thought she could kick her own addiction instantly, through simple strength of will.

But strength of will fades when the sun goes down, and each night the bloody injunction against leaving her kin to strangers' care took hold of her again, and she knew again the horror of what she had done.

Strength of will is not the answer to addiction. Washing away the person is the answer.

Hence the pilgrims' dress code, their uniformity. They had all been early- to middle-stage addicts once, but now their old identities were forgotten and wiped clean, and even their families could not recognise them. They were new people now. All of them success stories, working selflessly in caring professions.

The senior pilgrim? Why, once upon a time he had been a runaway, with tattoos and straggly blonde hair and teeth as ragged as his clothes. A junkie, from a family of junkies. But then he had converted and seen the light and taken the pledge.

He had been cured just in time, and the cure had saved his mind. He didn't crave A or forgetfulness any more, and could not imagine doing so again. He was clean of all addiction, and only two of A's residues were left in him. But fight as he might, they still had a pull, these residues, and when sun went down he felt them, as he felt them now.

The hatred of betrayal.

And the fierce hunger.

The senior pilgrim stopped on the doorstep. The house was silent now, no more howls from hell. He composed himself, checked that his tie was straight--it was, of course--and prepared to knock.

He thought of her sitting up in the bedroom, above the door. He wondered if this would be the knock that would finally trigger the wanting in her, the need for redemption. He had an impulse that it might. There was a connection between them, from his earlier visit, and before. He imagined her saying it. Take me. Cleanse me. This is my body, wash away my sins.

He took a breath.

He knocked on the door.

He waited, hungrily, for his sister to answer.

Daniel Kaysen has previously written speculative journalism and customer information, and edited train timetables. He is currently based in Brighton, England,