The Special Ones (9 page)

Felicity gives a little squeak of anxiety and I can tell she’s expecting what I’m expecting. That Lucille will completely lose it now.

But Lucille doesn’t say a word. When I tilt my head, I’m shocked. She’s
trembling
.

Harry’s eyes are fixed on her. ‘This has been hard for you, hasn’t it?’ he says softly. ‘Letting go of everything you thought was true. Finding out who you really are. We’ve all been through it too, don’t forget. We’re not mad at you.’

I am,
I think.

‘We just want you back,’ he continues. He sounds sincere. Perhaps he is. We’re under a strict deadline to reintegrate her, after all.

Lucille suddenly lets out a low moan. It’s a shocking sound, something that seems to come from deep within her. I hear Felicity’s breath catch.

But Harry seems unfazed. ‘It’s okay, Lucille. What matters is that you accept the truth now. And you do, don’t you? You do accept that you are a Special One.’

Lucille chokes again and nods, her tears falling freely.

Harry moves so he is standing in front of her. ‘Poor old Lucille. You feel bad, don’t you? Bad about fighting the truth for so long.’

‘Yes,’ wails Lucille.

‘It’s heavy, isn’t it, that guilty feeling?’ says Harry quietly. ‘We’ve all felt it.’

‘It’s pushing me down,’ says Lucille, panicked. ‘I can hardly stand up!’

Harry places his hands on her shoulders. ‘Let it push you. Don’t fight it.’

Lucille collapses to her knees, head bowed, chest heaving.

I turn to Felicity. ‘Get the wheel.’

Felicity hurriedly fetches the box on the mantelpiece. She doesn’t look
pleased
exactly as she hands it to me, but she definitely doesn’t look as sorry as she does when it’s Harry who’s about to receive punishment.

‘You can go,’ I tell her, as I remove the wheel from the box and set it up on the floor.

‘No, let me stay,’ she pleads. ‘I want to see what she gets.’

I start to argue but Harry stops me. ‘Let her stay.’

I spin the wheel and Felicity crouches down beside me. Lucille remains where she is, motionless. Even her trembling has stopped. Felicity watches the spinning wheel intently. The candle on the mantelpiece makes the wheel form strange, amoeba-like shadows on the floor.

‘Cellar!’ announces Felicity, as the wheel finally stops.

Cellar.
The worst one of all.

Lucille doesn’t react. It’s just a word to her at the moment. She’ll find out what it means soon enough. Harry and I go over to the rug and roll it up together, revealing the trapdoor in the floor. Harry pulls on the worn brass ring. With a shudder the cellar door lifts, releasing a whoosh of stale air from deep below the house.

Harry goes over to Lucille and holds out his hand to help her up. ‘Come on, Lucille,’ he says. His voice is so kind and patient. Almost loving.

Lucille looks up at him and, after a slight pause, takes his hand. I think for a moment that Harry is going to get down into the cellar too, but just at the edge he stops.

Lucille stops too and looks down. ‘I have to go in there?’ she says. She sounds very young, very small.

‘It won’t be for long,’ Harry reassures her. I hand him a jug of water from the side table and he in turn holds it out to her.

I keep waiting for Lucille to wake from her strange, trance-like state and start yelling that we’re crazy if we think she’s going down there. I almost
want
her to. But Lucille just nods and takes the jug. Then, daintily lifting her skirts, she descends obediently into the cellar.

The trapdoor slams down over her and Harry fixes the catch in place. He makes an odd noise and I think at first it’s from the effort of manoeuvring the door, which is heavy and awkward. But then I glance at his face.

‘Harry?’ I whisper. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I had to do it,’ he mutters. His voice is so strange suddenly, so fierce! ‘Going down there is her only hope now. And ours, too.’

I’m not sure I understand exactly what Harry means, but I recognise the emotion. The survival urge forces us to do things we don’t want to do. Sometimes terrible things.

I nod slowly. ‘We had no choice,’ I murmur.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The cellar punishment can only end when
he
sends a message to Harry. Usually no more than a single day passes before it arrives, but this time a whole two days go by without a word. I start to get concerned. Lucille is meant to move into the main part of the house with us in the next couple of days. As I walk around doing my chores I imagine her below me, alone, without food and with nothing but spiders for company. I spent a day and a night in the cellar once, for forgetting to leave the tonic out on the kitchen table. It felt like I’d been there for a year when the trapdoor finally opened and I was released. Time goes very slowly in the pitch-black.

Another day passes and my thoughts become darker. How long could Lucille last down there with that single jug of water? How much longer will the punishment last? Has
he
forgotten about her? Then something truly terrible occurs to me. Maybe she’s being abandoned down there. Left to die. The more I think, the more certain I am that this is what’s happening. I’m not sure what to do. Pull up the trapdoor and let her out? Smuggle some food and water down to her? Or leave her to her fate to protect myself?
I’ll wait one more day,
I think, hating myself for being such a coward.

And then, after breakfast the following day, Harry comes up to me and says, ‘It’s time to let her out.’

‘Really?’ For a moment I’m trembly with relief, but almost immediately fear clutches at me again. For the first two days I had heard the occasional noise from below the floor, which I assumed must have been Lucille moving around. But there were hardly any sounds yesterday and nothing at all so far this morning. I’m terrified of what we might find when we open the trapdoor.

Felicity wants to watch but there is no way I’m letting her see what might be down there. I shoo her off to collect the eggs.

Harry and I roll back the rug again and then he pulls open the trapdoor. I peer into the blackness, hoping that Lucille will stampede up the stairs. There’s no sound from down there.

‘Maybe she’s dead,’ I whisper. Dead from dehydration or hunger. Dead from a spider bite – or one from a snake. Dead from loneliness and fear.

Harry shakes his head. ‘
He
wouldn’t let that happen.’ Does he really believe it? I can’t tell.

I lean over the dark square, plunge my head into it. ‘Lucille?’ I call. ‘You can come out now.’

There’s silence. Nothing.

‘I’ll go down and look for her,’ says Harry, his face grim despite his mild tone. ‘Maybe she’s asleep.’ But suddenly there is the sound of footsteps – very, very slow ones – and I glimpse a flash of white in the darkness.

My heart stops as a figure floats from the gloom.
Of course it’s Lucille
, I tell myself. And it is, but she’s different. A layer of dust and dirt has settled on her, fading her hair, covering the colour in her skin. She looks older. Drained.

She climbs the stairs rigidly, mechanically, like a thing that’s been wound up and has no choice but to go, go, go. Even her expression has changed. The glimmer has left her eyes. Now they’re blank.

Harry reaches a hand to help her out, but she doesn’t seem to see it.

I hold out a glass of water and a hunk of bread and butter I have prepared for her. Something bland but filling. ‘Here.’

She accepts the water silently, drinks it, then hands back the empty glass. ‘Thank you, Esther,’ she says. Her voice makes me shiver. It doesn’t come from her body now but from somewhere far away or long ago. ‘I need to go and clean up,’ she says. Then she floats off down the corridor. I glance at Harry. He looks relieved.

‘It’s happened at last,’ he says. ‘She’s one of us now.’

I nod but, inside, I’m not so sure that’s really what’s happened.

I look up from laying the breakfast table to find Lucille standing there, making me jump. She has washed, changed her clothes and redone her hair.

‘What can I do to help, Esther?’

‘Nothing, just sit down!’ I say, my voice overly cheery as I attempt to cover my ill ease. ‘Ah! Here’s Felicity with the eggs.’

Felicity stops just inside the doorway when she sees Lucille there. ‘You’re out of the cellar,’ she says. She sounds a little disappointed.

‘I’ll take those,’ says Lucille, holding out her hand for the basket.

‘No, really,’ I say. ‘It’s fine. I’ll take them.’

Lucille shakes her head stiffly. ‘It says in my remembering book that Lucille should assist Esther whenever she can during mealtimes.’ She takes the egg basket and goes to the pantry.

Felicity looks at me, eyes meaningfully wide. I make mine big in return. Harry walks in, grinning.

‘What do you think, Esther?’ he says, sitting at the table. ‘Is it time for Lucille to move out of the changing room and back into her bedroom?’

He makes it sound like there’s an alternative. Today is the deadline for Lucille to rejoin us. Still, Lucille doesn’t know that and it won’t hurt her to think we have some power over what happens to her. I turn to Lucille. ‘Would you like that? To live out here with the rest of us?’

‘Only if you think I’m ready, Esther.’

Her new voice gives me the creeps. I force myself to smile. ‘You’re ready. I’ll show you your room after breakfast. It’s just as you left it.’

Lucille’s bedroom is the biggest one, and has the best view. From her window it’s possible to see out over the kitchen garden, and also to catch a glimpse of the world beyond the perimeter fence.
Outside
.

Jutting up on the horizon, far beyond the fence, is a brick tower – tall and cylindrical, although slightly narrower at the top. It looks like it might belong to a factory, and although it’s probably no longer used I still find myself checking it for smoke or steam whenever I’m in Lucille’s room. I’ve never seen any, but on bright days I can just make out lettering on the tower, written with different coloured bricks –
OWN
.

Maybe it’s a fragment of a word, or they’re simply someone’s initials. But for me they act as a constant reminder:
You are on your own
.

Lucille doesn’t notice the tower when I take her in later that morning. There are too many other things to absorb, especially after so many days in the changing room and then in the cellar.

She walks slowly around the room, picking things up and putting them down again. She lifts the small vase of flowers I sent Felicity out to pick and breathes deeply, her eyes closed.

Felicity hovers in the doorway. ‘Do you think she likes them?’ she whispers and I nod.

Lucille stands in front of the picture I’ve hung near the door. It’s a watercolour of a young girl sitting in a garden, sewing. ‘This isn’t right,’ she says, suddenly. I’m not sure what she means. Lucille swings around and faces me, frowning. ‘It’s not right,’ she says again firmly, and then points to the opposite wall. ‘This picture would look much better over there.’

I suppress a smile. ‘You can move it,’ I say. The Lucilles always like to make minor adjustments like this. ‘I’ll ask Harry to hammer in a nail for you.’

It’s Lucille herself who suggests she join evening chat that night. ‘My followers have gone for long enough without my guidance,’ she says, tucking a glossy ringlet behind her ear. ‘And I’m sure
he
must be wondering what’s taking so long.’

I examine her face, trying to work out if she’s sincere. I’m still not sure what I think of this new Lucille.

‘She’s got a point, Esther,’ says Harry. ‘It has been a very long wait for the followers.’

‘Well, okay,’ I say, making it seem that I’m the one allowing it. ‘I guess we can try it.’

Lucille looks genuinely thrilled and Harry shows no sign of concern, but the uneasy feeling in my chest continues to grow.

I take Lucille to the chat room early so I can explain how everything works. She reacts as everyone does when they see the sleek modern glow of the computers – with disbelief and excitement. ‘How do they work? I thought we didn’t have any electricity.’

‘We have a solar generator,’ I explain. ‘Harry looks after it.’