The Dark Light (21 page)

I wonder who I should like to meet from the Bible, but I can’t think of anyone, apart from Jesus. And surely if the Rapture does come, then he will be here anyway. I think of all the Bible stories I know, but there are no girls like me in any of them and I wonder if heaven will just be full of old men with long white beards.

I excuse myself to go to the outside toilet, but I can hardly
see
, the rain is so intense.

Across the other side of the yard I can make out a figure – Micah, I can tell from the slope of his shoulder. He has Job the sheepdog with him. He’s holding him by the collar and is bending down to the dog, speaking to it. I know how he loves that dog. He’s trained it since it was a puppy to round the sheep and come when it is called. But then, in a sudden, terrible instant, he holds the gun to the dog’s head and fires.

I think I must cry out, because immediately he looks up at me and shouts, but all I can see is the limp body of his dog, fallen into an unnatural heap at his feet.

‘What is it, child? You’re like a ghost!’ I bump into Hannah as I fly through the door.

Mary frowns at me. ‘What was that noise?’

‘Micah,’ I say, the blood draining from my face. ‘He shot Job.’

There is a gasp. ‘But he loves that dog!’ Margaret says.

‘Which is doubtless why he did it,’ says Hannah. ‘How much crueller to leave him behind to fend for himself.’

‘Are there dogs in heaven, do you think?’ asks Margaret.

I am distracted for a moment by her idiocy, but then give way to the howl of protest building up in my heart and the floor seems to melt beneath me. ‘But . . .’ I say. ‘But . . .’ They will leave Alex to fend for herself, but not an animal?

Mary grabs my arm. ‘A word,’ she says, pulling me out of the kitchen into the tack room where the dead chickens hang plucked from the ceiling, naked and defenceless. ‘Shush, Rebekah. Shush. Don’t make a fuss.’

‘But why not?’

‘It’s not our place to ask why.’

‘But they’ve killed all the livestock and now Job! And Alex is in the Solitary, in this weather! You know it’s wrong.’

‘I’ve paid for it.’ She touches her cheek.

‘I
must
see her!’ I say, looking at her pleadingly. ‘We can’t just leave her over there in this weather.’

‘You can’t go,’ she says. ‘Not now. It will be noticed.’

‘I don’t care if it’s noticed!’ I say rashly. ‘She should not be out there tonight, alone in this weather.’

‘What you say is true, but she is probably drier there than we are – the Solitary is safer than most places here. I know. I’ve spent time there. If you want to see her again, you must not be seen to want it.’

Defiance takes hold of me that will not be extinguished with reason. All I can think of is Alex, cold and alone in the raw weather, lost in the night with no comfort. ‘But what has she done wrong?’ I say out loud. ‘She’ll get sick and die!’ The thought that I might not see her again consumes me with a fear that is almost too painful to contemplate. Mary puts her hand on my arm to still me.

‘We’ll find a way. Just not now. You must be obedient, even if it kills your heart to do so. Alex will be OK, you’ll see. But if you go out tonight you will be followed, and if you’re followed you might come to harm, and then I can’t protect you.’

Her words surprise me. ‘Protect me? Why should I need to be protected?’

She tuts and looks at the ceiling as if to ask God Himself for patience. ‘Rebekah, do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, then you must be quiet. For all our sakes.’ She lowers her voice still further. ‘Hannah and Margaret are watching and they do not mean you well.’

This I understand. ‘You mean they will tell Father?

‘Yes, but worse than that.’

We do not say his name. To say his name would be to make it real, this fear that we both carry. It would be a heresy, and also a truth, and we are silent because we are afraid.

I nod slowly. ‘Do you think the Rapture is coming on Tuesday?’

Mary bites her lip. ‘I don’t know, Rebekah. Some of us might be grateful for the glory. I watch and pray. So should you.’

‘Micah shot the dog . . .’ I can’t get the image out of my head.

‘For what Micah has done he will have to answer to the Almighty.’

When we walk back into the kitchen, Hannah is there with Bevins. He is flushed and agitated, full of a kind of happiness that is almost manic.

‘Live for the Victory!’ he says, his face shining with sweat. ‘Live for the Victory!’ And he needs to borrow a pan, although he doesn’t say why.

I stare at him. When he looks at me the excitement leaves his face, which becomes set, his eyes like stones. He seems not like the kindly father sent to lead us to the promised land, but a lost man, wandering through a wilderness of his own creation, not leading us anywhere at all.

TWENTY

ALEX

I fell asleep and woke up not knowing where I was. It was so dark that for a moment I thought I’d gone blind. I waved my hand in front of my eyes but all I could feel was air against my face.

Then I heard a sound, like someone clearing their throat.

‘Hello?’

But there was no reply. I listened really hard. I heard it again.

‘Hello?’ I sat upright, pushed myself to the back of the bed, clutching my knees to my chest. There was someone in the room with me, I was sure of it.

‘Who’s there?’

I sat there listening, staring into the dark until my eyes hurt. Nothing. They had come and prayed with me all of last night. Droning on and on while I fell in and out of awareness. You are a sinner; you must repent. On and on and on until I thought I was going to explode. Now I was alone and I couldn’t work out which was worse.

My thoughts became pitiless. There was something wrong with me. I’d always known it. I mean, you don’t end up in care because you’re a good person. She didn’t even want me enough to fight for me. Perhaps if I’d been more normal then all these bad things wouldn’t have happened. The scars on my arms started to itch.

Bevins was right; I did have a devil inside of me. A chattering monkey that never shut up, that always wanted to do the wrong thing. The more I thought about it, the more I realised it was true – I came from badness and to badness I would return, and the thoughts and feelings I had about other girls were
unnatural
, just like everyone said all along. I was here because I
deserved
to be here, because I was a sinner, because what happened between me and Rebekah was a terrible thing.

I was so thirsty. I rubbed my head against the wall, pressed it in, hard until I could feel the rough stone scratching my scalp. Bevins left me with a bottle of water, but I didn’t trust it, it smelled bitter, poisoned. I took a tiny, tiny sip, just to wet my tongue. But it made me want to vomit.

They said that she wouldn’t have felt a thing. The drugs would have sent her into a deep sleep, her heart slowing until it stopped. And then she was gone, switched off like a light. It was two days before they found me, running around in a filthy nappy trying to wake her. Apparently I had opened the all the kitchen cupboards and taken out all the bleach and the sugar and the flour and the washing powder and was trying to make a cake with it on the kitchen floor.

After she died, everyone handed me on, like a pass-the-parcel nobody wanted. I was the accident that she wasn’t ready for. The reason that she relapsed. If I hadn’t been born, maybe she might have lived. Before she had me she’d had hard times but she’d cleaned up, got her life together. It was me and my weirdness that messed everything up. If only I had been an easier baby.

And then the crack that had opened in my mind just seemed to get bigger and bigger until it became a deep black hole and I took the flask of dirty water and I drank it all down in one go.

The cell quickly became too small and too hot and the walls shrank and suddenly I was too big, swelling up so that I filled each corner of the space, my skin rubbing against the rough surface of the walls, and I thought I might burst out like a giant born from a tiny egg and then the room seemed to explode, shattering into a million pieces, and then I was floating on the little bed of planks, a life raft in a huge sea and I was really tiny and the vaulted ceiling above me became a sky full of stars and above my head a whole firmament, which split open, clouds parting, and through the gaps came bright shafts of light illuminating the darkness. And there was an island in the middle of the sea with a tree full of angels, all sleeping, their faces folded into their wings like birds.

‘Alex? It’s me.’ Rebekah’s face smiling. I reached out a hand. I was so happy to see her again I wanted to cry, but then she turned her back to me and when she turned round it wasn’t her at all, but an old woman with evil sharp teeth who was laughing at me.

I blinked and slapped my face. This couldn’t be real, I knew it couldn’t be real, it was something in the water Bevins had given me. But even as I thought this another wave of nausea washed over me and I threw up and I was back in the room and there were dark shadows crawling the walls. They came close and then scurried away like spiders. So many of them. The room swarming with them. They massed around me, even when I closed my eyes.

‘Make them go away! Make them go away!’ I tried to brush them off me but they wouldn’t.

‘I can’t. Only you can. They’re inside you,’ the Rebekah/not-Rebekah woman said.

‘But I can feel them!’ And my skin itched everywhere like someone had set it on fire.

Then there was a burning in my ankle, and when I looked all I could see was the eye of my tattoo. Except it was real and it blinked at me, the eyeball glossy like an egg, and the gaze followed me, and swivelled in its socket, and it spoke to me.
Alex
, it said, in a dark voice that sounded like him.
Alex, you belong to me
.

I found a sharp stone and started to scratch against it. Deep gouges, the skin coming away in strips. I wanted to dig it out of me.

And then he was there with Thomas and other men in the background. Everything was blurry and hard to see.

‘Alex, we’ve come to cast it out of you,’ he said. And they held me down and prayed over me, and when I closed my eyes these winged creatures flew around in my head like birds. And from the tree of angels came this white light and they fought with the dark shapes and he shouted and raved and I tried not to look, but the visions were everywhere around me and in me, and I began to see that what I was witnessing was some kind of mortal battle for my soul.

‘You can see them all around you, I know you can see them, just like I can,’ he said. ‘It’s only when you are truly blind that you can see.’

I looked at him. His face kept blurring in and out of focus.

‘Are they real?’

‘Repent, Alex! Repent!’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I believe!’

I just wanted it to go away. I wanted to feel
clean
. I wanted my teeth to stop chattering, for my headache to pass. I wanted the angels to win. By the time they were finished I would have believed just about anything Bevins told me.

‘You have been reborn,’ he said. ‘You will come with me to heaven, just like in my vision and all of this will go away, and be as nothing.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, overtaken by sudden relief, a euphoric peacefulness. ‘Thank you.’ And I started to cry.

TWENTY-ONE

REBEKAH

I keep dropping off, waking up with a start, terrified that already it is morning. Finally I decide, it must be time. The whole house lies under a thick blanket of silence. It has stopped raining and the sky has cleared to a clear black that is full with the pinpricks of stars. I slowly make my way downstairs. Each creak in the floorboard makes my heart wither. I can hear loud snores coming from the front bedroom, where Micah and Mary sleep. I stand at the top of the stairs and hold my breath.

I tiptoe my way through to the kitchen. The room still carries some of the warmth of the day, though a chill draught breathes through the cracks and under the door. I search the larder for food, but there is none. Some flour, an egg – I can’t take her any of these things. There are coats in the tack room. I take one even though it is not mine. Maybe Micah’s or Jonathan’s. It is dirty and ripped and smells of the goats but at least it will keep me warm.

The wind bites, making me glad of the extra layer, but aware that it will not keep me warm long unless I am moving. The wind blows with a stinging insistence. I can’t walk hard or fast enough to overcome it and I wish I’d worn more clothes.

I follow the path out to the lake before I strike a match to light the lantern, just in case there’s someone watching. The air is still, a fingernail of moon shines through the thin clouds. The air carries the smell of the harvest, and the coming autumn chill. I’m shivering in spite of the heavy coat. I hurry along the narrow track, stumbling over the tussocked grass, my feet slipping into the puddles of mud. The lantern throws out a meagre light, which shines no further than a step in front of me. Without the sheep the fields are too quiet and my heart quickens at a rustling in the hedge. I don’t look.

When I get to the flat rocks I can just make out the shape of the Devil’s Seat above me, glowering down at me in the night sky. My heart pounds so fast I’m afraid it will jump out of my chest. I daren’t look too hard in case I should see the devil on his seat. I imagine he must have a fork in his hand and a long tail and cloven hoofs like a goat’s. When I get to the top I wish I’d taken the lower path through the marsh instead. Every rock seems to hide the shadow of a demon.

I hurry and stumble and fall, hurting my knee. The wind howls through the gaps in the boulders, I put my head down, not daring to look. I can just make out the horizon against the sky and I run down the slope, my feet skidding and sliding over the damp turf. I can hear the sea again too, the loud roar and boom of water hitting the cliffs.

There’s no sound when I get there. I tread quietly around Naomi’s cell in case I wake her and she tells someone I was here. I don’t know which cell they’ve put her in and my blood roars in my ears as I open the hatch on one of the doors. I lift up the lantern, but it throws only shadows against the wall; there is no one in there. I try the one next door. This time I can see a shape hunched up against the wall under a blanket.