by P L Kane
‘You needed to see what a mess it is out there,’ Vince said, folding his arms. ‘So you’d understand why we have to start again.’
‘Start again?’ Mitch was still trying to get his head around the fact his father had sent him away with all this in mind, with a purpose. But that had been before the Commune ever came here – hadn’t it? Fucking hell! he thought then, exactly how long had they had members planted in Green Acres? Ten years, twenty years? More? And he had a flash of the cave drawings now, the rituals they’d depicted. The Commune had only managed to settle there because of relatives, hadn’t it? How far did that line stretch back? No wonder they’d been able to set up their base of operations so easily, the arguments about them just another rouse. ‘Was that why Bella left? Was she forced to go as well?’ he asked. If it had all been going on back then, it explained a lot of things.
Aunty Helen spat at the floor then. ‘Bella! That monstrosity!’
‘My sister!’ he cried out.
Helen’s right eye twitched. ‘Your … half-sister.’
‘What?’ spluttered Mitch. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Same mother, descended from Wiccan stock. That whoring Apple Hill Coven from the darkest part of our history. That whore Elizabeth Croft! Different father, though.’
Different … What did that mean, his dad wasn’t Bella’s?
‘It’s like I said to you, your mother wasn’t quite right. Never had been, never would be. It’s why she had such a problem with all of this, young Mitchel. The ceremonies, the worship of the Flame. We tried with her. Mum and dad tried to put her on the right path, so did your father. But in the end, she just had to be helped on her way.’
Like those victims of the UFOs, like the backpackers who were witnesses to his father’s death. ‘No.’ Tears were flooding Mitch’s eyes. His mother! His actual mother! They killed her!
‘Don’t weep for her too much, she went with her lover,’ his aunty continued. ‘The man who’d fathered Bella. Of course, when we found out, we orchestrated the whole thing, made it look like an accident. And, though again it wouldn’t have been my first choice, we gave them both to the Flame.’
No wonder she hadn’t ‘seen’ her death coming, they either drugged her or implanted something; messed with her mind too. ‘She … she was your sister!’ Mitch yelled, struggling against his bonds once more but still getting nowhere.
‘Adopted,’ said Helen. ‘Her parents had been put out of their misery as well, and our family took her in. Sometimes, though, things just don’t work out, do they? But she had some good years with your dad, I do believe that. He loved her. It broke him, mind, when he found out she’d been unfaithful. All that time, and with a man from the next town along. Not even a local!’ Helen spat again. ‘But then you came along and we knew – knew you were his. The blood tests confirmed it: your mother’s final gift to Thomas. Just like the Great Flame prophesized. A child born of “magick” and of fire, a worshipper of the fire.’
‘Your mum would have wanted us to look after you.’
‘We had to wait until you were settled first, naturally, but once you were, we knew we had to act before your mother fled with you. Fled with Bella and her father. Thomas did so miss your mother afterwards; I think that’s why he turned his attentions to Bella. She reminded him of her.’
It was too much, all too much to take in! Now what were they telling him, not only was his father not Bella’s real father, but he was also a pervert? What exactly had he done to her back then? This man he’d wept over when he died, whose death Mitch had investigated when in truth he’d committed suicide for the cause? For the Commune?
A necessary evil.
‘That’s why she ran away, isn’t it? The real reason?’
‘Not that she’ll ever remember it, but … yes,’ his uncle said. ‘I made sure she wouldn’t. Just that she thought it was about some guy. Not a lie really.’
Girls and their fathers, that special bond.
Mitch felt like he was going to be sick again, but there was nothing left in him after the previous night – and he hadn’t eaten all day. ‘It’s why she didn’t want to come back,’ he whispered after a moment.
‘Why would she? That bit’s real, though she won’t have a clue why she doesn’t wish to return to Green Acres.’ Vince was smirking, having messed with her memories, a job well done.
‘Probably a good thing. If she ever did come back we’d just kill her on sight,’ Helen proclaimed, smiling; not his mother’s smile at all, an imitation rather than genetics. ‘Be done with it.’
‘No.’
‘At least this way, she’ll die along with everyone else. In the Final Conflagration,’ Vince chirped up.
‘The Final …’ More mumbo jumbo lunacy.
Staunch believers.
‘Yes, and it’s almost time. Hottest day of the year!’ Helen exclaimed, with the same kind of excitement Denise had displayed earlier. Where had she gone? Mitch hadn’t even noticed her leave. Too busy trying to work all this out, digest what he was being told. ‘That’s where you come into it, my lad!’ she told Mitch, pointing at him.
‘Me? What the fuck has—’
‘Language!’ Helen admonished.
‘Go fuck yourself!’ Mitch snapped back. She wasn’t even a blood relative! ‘Your Great Flame can go fuck itself as well! It’s not my god.’
She sighed, but carried on regardless. ‘You’re more powerful than you can possibly imagine, sweetheart. You needed to go away, yes, but then return when you’d come of age.’
‘Growing boy …’
‘All grown up and everything!’
‘And on your birthday, this particular year,’ Helen continued, ‘it will begin and it will end, only to begin anew. As the prophecy foretold. When your magick meets the fire, you’ll be the spark that sets the whole world alight! Moving from place to place, not even the oceans will be able to stop it!’
Mitch wasn’t important; he was nobody special.
Hottest day? It was about to become even hotter … for him!
Never rains …
‘Alight, just like Green Acres is right now, spreading from your father’s house.’
‘The village.’ Why did that suddenly matter to him? Because it was his home, where he’d been born? Far from being the middle of nowhere, did these nutcases believe it was the middle of everywhere. ‘Why my … Why start it there?’
‘Your father’s house is built on one of many sacred spots,’ Vince informed him. ‘And especially his cellar.’ Those dreams of the hooded figures, were they repressed memories of actually witnessing rituals in there? Had he actually seen people being killed in there, set alight? Mitch wondered in horror. ‘The caves are another, the woods. All places where we worship.’
‘Where you murder!’
‘Sacrifice,’ Helen corrected him again. ‘Though not always. Sometimes we just talk to the Great Flame, sometimes it talks to us.’ This was beyond the Commune – or whatever they were really called – and their influence, this was deep-rooted. This was something those people had been doing for a long time, their faith like a cancer at the heart of a village that had once been good. Hadn’t it? He didn’t know what to think anymore, it depended on where the Commune originated from, he guessed. ‘That’s how the prophecy occurred, how we knew you would come to us eventually. Be born unto us.’
‘You think I’m going to end the world? My death will?’
‘Why not?’ asked Vince.
As I live and breathe …
Not for long.
‘We all have to sacrifice things …’
‘The Great Flame is all-powerful, all seeing.’ Mitch thought the man was going to get on his hands and knees right there and then and start praying. ‘You’ve seen first-hand what it’s like out there, the hatred, the violence. How sick society is.’
‘Not half as sick as you monsters!’ argued Mitch, though he couldn’t help flashing back to certain things he’d seen on the force. Teenagers addicted to drugs, huddling
in crack dens, choking on their own vomit. Domestic abuse, husbands hitting their wives, or vice versa – partners causing abuse in other ways, manipulating or eroding their confidence (not that the people here in Green Acres could bloody well say anything about that, they were masters of it). Serial killers like the ones that were in the news, how much heartache they’d caused. Governments lying to and cheating the very people who’d put them in those high-up positions, creaming off money and power, letting the poor go poorer while the rich got richer. Mitch thought about the riot he’d been involved in just before he came here, how his warnings had been ignored. How it had ended in so much destruction, ended in Tammy being battered into a coma. Though if he hadn’t been so thrown by that call, the start of these people working on him, picking up where they’d left off …
‘Yes, you know what we’re talking about,’ Helen said then. ‘I can see it. Oh, there have been attempts to try to control it, in Redmarket for example. Those people had a very different kind of belief system, one that stretched back almost as far as ours. But in the end none of it ever works, because none of it can. It’s even infected Green Acres, the modern world. Thomas was always quite comfortable with it, liked his mod cons.’ Mitch doubted he would ever have called any of the stuff in that house a mod-con, but then maybe they were to Helen and Vince? ‘But a line has to be drawn. When the weeds strangle the lush grassland, the green, what must we do to get rid of it? Burn it, Mitchel!’
‘Maybe try weed killer?’ Mitch said, but his black humour fell flat. Helen wasn’t really listening anyway, she was in full flow.
‘Burn it and start again! The light must drive out the darkness. Can’t you see that?’
Mitch was reminded of the speech Denise had made about lighting fires back at the dawn of time, to keep people safe. To keep away animals – and the darkness. Without light, human beings felt like he did back in that cave when his torch went out. Panicked, scared. Made sense that they would worship whatever gave them that luminescence, kept them warm. But people had come a long way since those days – hadn’t they? Not looking around at all this, hearing these people speak, they hadn’t! Civilized, his arse! It was only now he noticed folk from the village were beginning to congregate, the barn getting quite full.
He spotted individuals from Green Acres itself now wearing those robes, they probably had nowhere else to go since the entire place was ablaze. His dad’s neighbour who’d rung the authorities, the old man Denise had been serving outside The Plough, the youth who’d served him from the shop … And younger still, kids being dragged inside this barn to witness what was about to happen, the children who’d been with their parents that day. Just like they’d done with him as a boy, taking him by the arm into the cellar, Bella too more than likely. Down into those caves … He couldn’t help thinking about the lad who’d been lost in there, now; what had been his name? Who was he? Had it been him? Mitch was beginning to think it might have been; maybe that’s how he found his way out again? Those hooded figures Mitch had seen before – after – he’d banged his head, had they simply been more repressed memories of another time, when he’d been trapped in there? It was looking more and more likely.
‘The last of the drugs should be out of his system by now,’ Vince said to his wife. ‘It’s almost time.’
This was it: they, the Commune, were going to kill him. It was their version of Helter Skelter, Armageddon, the Apocalypse. They were looking to Mitch to light the fuse. ‘Wait, wait! If the world burns, like you believe it’s going to do, you die too,’ he said to them. A flaw in their plan, he was hoping. Not much of a hope because all this had been set in motion a long time ago.
‘Our Lord will grant us a favour,’ Vince replied. ‘We’ll be reborn, the world will start again. Like a phoenix from the ashes!’
‘It will begin and it will end, only to begin anew.’
‘New seeds can be planted, once the weeds are gone,’ Helen added, returning to her previous analogy about nature.
A reboot, like rebooting his dad’s old computer so it would work? These people – these crazy, deluded people – believed they were going to come back and repopulate a better world? Frolic in the fields and the woods that those new seeds would provide, with no threat from—
What was he thinking? None of that would happen. He wasn’t going to start an apocalypse, all that would happen would be another killing. Another person dead, burned to death. Him, Mitchel Prescott.
Helen looked him in the eye now, and asked seriously: ‘Mitchel, do you pledge to go to the Great Flame willingly?’
He couldn’t help laughing out loud at that one. ‘Throw myself in the fire, you mean? Are you fucking kidding me?’ There were no qualms now about swearing in front of her.
‘Even after everything you’ve seen of the world outside?’ asked his uncle, amazed. ‘Look inside yourself, search your feelings.’ Really? Vader again trying to get him to join the dark side. Except they claimed they were on the side of the light, didn’t they? There were plenty of flames in Hell, though, weren’t there? Paths and good intentions. Not that these intentions were particularly good; not from where he was standing.
‘I’ll say this very slowly, very clearly: no. What’re you going to do now? Have I ruined everything?’ Mitch laughed bitterly once more.
Helen just shook her head. ‘No. You came here, to this most sacred of places—’
‘What, a sodding barn?’
‘It is hallowed ground!’ Vince snapped. ‘Show some respect!’
Helen went on regardless. ‘You came here willingly, we shall help you with the last few steps. Vincent, it is time we took our places.’ She held out her hand and her husband took it, both pulling up their hoods at the same time. When he hadn’t been looking, someone had lit the bonfire and already the fire was spreading through the wood. For the second time that day, Mitch smelled the smoke, heard the crackling. This time there would be no escape.
As his so-called relatives joined the others forming a circle and chanting, (‘Family’s everything, brothers, sisters and all that’), other figures in robes set about unchaining Mitch. As soon as he was released, he made a bid for freedom, lurching forwards, even trying to get a punch in. He wasn’t under the influence of drugs or hypnotism, the sacrifice wouldn’t work if he was, but Mitch was still weak – and there were just too many of them. Three on each side at least, holding him by the arms. Then Mitch looked up and saw Granger again, brandishing his shotgun.
‘I’m glad your dad’s dead!’
His words when they’d been in this position last time. Of course he was, because it meant Mitch would come. Meant he’d eventually be here, now, today.
‘Stop,’ said the man in his gruff voice; it was the message from the rock, and Mitch wondered if he’d done the deed himself. Relished it, in fact. ‘Stop struggling.’
There was no choice but to do what the farmer ordered. As Mitch was being led across to the hooded, chanting figures, who were dancing in a circle around the fire as it rose higher and higher; Mitch had never seen a fire spread so quickly. Culminating in a huge flame at the top. Their Great Flame, as they’d have everyone believe. He could feel that same spider-sense coming back now, the one that had worked just that bit too slowly, poorly, to help him in Green Acres, or not at all, hampered by drugs or suggestion. He felt it now as strongly as he had in the riot, as wound up as he was: a gift from his mother?
Not that he needed it to let him know things were about to go to shit. Had the capacity to get even worse. That he was about to get tossed on a bonfire like a Guy Fawkes doll! Or maybe it was something else?
Because someone was missing, weren’t they? All the gang were here – Granger, Nuttall, yes there was Denise, his aunty and uncle – everyone apart from the star turn. Their leader—
Leaders.
But, as Mitch now saw, they’d opened the door of the barn and appeared at the back. Daniel and Leah, here to oversee the final few moments of the great ritual, even as a gap opene
d in the circle of dancers, paving the way for the men to lead – half carry, because Mitch freely admitted he was dragging his feet now – their most important sacrifice ever to the fire.
‘Brothers!’ shouted Daniel loudly. Proudly, opening his arms. ‘Put him the fuck down!’
That’s when everything really did go to shit.
Chapter 33
He couldn’t believe what was happening.
This was it, surely. The end. Daniel had arrived, Leah had arrived. But they weren’t alone. They’d brought more of the Commune with them, flooding into the barn, including that bald man with the fleshy lips he’d seen there before. Only, as Mitch looked back over his shoulder, still being pulled towards that bonfire, the heat so intense it was causing him to sweat profusely again, none of them were dressed in those maroon robes. They were all still wearing cream tunics and trousers.
‘I said: put him down!’ Daniel repeated, his words aimed at the hooded men who had hold of Mitch. Were they doing it wrong? Had there been a change in plans? After all this work, all this preparation, surely not! And why was Granger turning, aiming – with that shotgun – at Daniel.
‘Get out of here!’ yelled the farmer.
Why? They didn’t want their leader here? Unless … Yes, Mitch could see now that the members of the Commune were branching off, seeking out those in the maroon robes and hoods and tackling them. One man he spotted had a hooded figure in a choke hold to restrain him. Another – that same bald guy – had dropped a person to the ground, rolling them in a move he was all too familiar with from his own self-defence training. For each hooded figure there seemed to be an equivalent counterpart dressed in cream, attempting to subdue them. Like a wave moving over them, this was the real light driving out the darkness.
For his part, Daniel was moving forwards – heading towards Granger. ‘Get out, I’ll fire!’ shouted the large man, but it didn’t put the Commune leader off at all. Mitch jostled the men holding his arms, leaning sideways and pushing the ones on his left into the farmer. It affected his aim and the shot went high, into the ceiling of the barn.