“And you haven’t heard from your brother at all?” His eyes were very steady all of a sudden.
“No. Nothing.”
“He hasn’t tried to contact you?”
“No.”
“And you haven’t seen him anywhere?”
She shook her head. It troubled her, when he said that.
Shiv sat back in his seat and studied her a while longer. He looked at his phone, typed something quickly, then closed the laptop and grabbed his sports jacket from the seat next to him.
“We need to go, darling,” he said. He threw a handful of dollar bills onto the table and grabbed his wife’s arm and hauled her upright. She was muttering something about the purifying effects of pearls.
“Wait, where are you going?”
Shiv shrugged on his jacket and left the booth. The owner of the restaurant suddenly appeared at Vivian’s shoulder.
“What happened?” he said, looking at the table of untouched food. “What did you do?”
Just as Shiv reached the door he turned and said in a loud voice, “You.”
The owner pointed at himself. “Me?”
“Send your tips to Telos or I’m closing this place down.”
Then he pushed through the door and into the street, watched by two other diners. Vivian went after them, but by the time she was out of the restaurant Shiv and Judy had got into the back of their black car and been driven away. They had a chauffeur. That didn’t seem very Mount Hookey at all.
“Oh Christ,” said the owner. “Shelley.” She appeared in the double doors. “Did you bring him here? Did you tell him?”
“I didn’t! I swear!”
“Seems like an inside job,” he muttered. “Did you tell him?” he said to Vivian.
“Not me,” she said, still staring after the car as it disappeared down the highway and took a right at the intersection.
“Well,” the owner said. “That’s that, then.”
He slumped into the booth and began to eat the couple’s leftovers with his fingers.
* * *
Vivian didn’t particularly want to go back to the Sanctuary but she needed to pick up the Carters’ envelope. She didn’t know what she’d tell Jerome, because the plan to complete the course undercover was plainly doomed, but she wasn’t going to just abandon the best part of three thousand dollars in cash.
When she got back the main room was half empty and the tarp that covered the window had come undone and was flapping over the floor like an injured bird. Forrest wasn’t there. Those who hadn’t gone with her watched Vivian uncertainly. She went through the bamboo door behind the kitchen and reached her bedroom, but stopped when she heard Glenn’s voice. He was in his office at the far end of the corridor. It was the only room that had a proper door, with a handle and a lock. He was talking to someone on the phone.
“I think you’re overreacting,” he said.
A pause. Vivian could hear the voice coming out of the phone was apoplectic about something. Glenn was bouncing a ball while he paced around his office.
“I understand that. But if you’d told me about the situation in the first place then perhaps I would have done things differently… Anyway, I think threat is rather an overstatement. If anything, she could actually help us out.”
More bouncing. Something getting knocked off a desk.
“I don’t know. They are twins… Oh come on, I don’t sound like one of them. It’s not hippy-dippy to suggest twins might have some kind of a connection. That’s science… And she said just this morning that she saw him…”
They were talking about Vivian, then.
“Yes really… No, I don’t think so, she’s not like that… Alright, alright. I’ll ask. But I don’t think we really have to…”
The voice on the other end got quieter.
“Because I like her,” said Glenn.
Another couple of quiet words.
“I don’t know, Shiv. I just like her. She’s cute.”
Vivian wanted to disappear into the hood of her coat and never come out again. Shiv – for it was he – raised his voice to such a volume that he sounded like a bird squawking.
“Okay, I’ll do it!” said Glenn. “Jeez Louise! Listen, while I have you, you know Shelley from House of Telos nearly killed me this—Hello?”
Glenn sighed heavily. There was a lot of shuffling around behind the door and Vivian retreated to her bedroom. He opened his door at the same time as she closed hers. She rolled onto her futon and lay in the dark, pretending to sleep as he wandered past. His footsteps were muffled. He must have been wearing slippers. The sound of her father, padding up and down the landing on his way to bed.
Glenn went past her room and out into the kitchen. Vivian pulled the covers up to her chin and felt her whole body shuddering in time with her heart. She had no idea whether she should stay or go. A minute passed. Then another.
Glenn pulled back the door. She yelped.
“Vivian?” he said. “Everything alright, dear heart?”
He was carrying a cup and saucer.
“I’ve been worrying about you all day,” he said. “After everything that happened this morning.”
She didn’t reply.
He sat on the futon next to her again. He placed the cup and saucer on the floor and took the sleeve of her anorak in his thumb and forefinger.
“You never take this thing off.” He leaned forwards so his face loomed in front of hers. “When I look at it, it makes me think of a chrysalis. You know what I mean? This is the old Vivian, isn’t it? You’re a beautiful butterfly under this.”
He jostled her playfully with his shoulder. She didn’t say anything.
“Listen to me!” he said. “Getting schmaltzy in my old age. Say, have you seen Forrest? I wanted to talk to you together, really. About what you said this morning. About this business up the mountain.”
Vivian sat perfectly still, unsure of the direction this was heading in. He looked at her over the top of his spectacles.
“You know, I should be angry with you. You’re not supposed to be up the mountain at all, given you’re only an initiate. It’s for your own safety, really. One glimpse of an Ascended Master will turn your mind and spirit to scrambled eggs. At least, it should. But then, here you are. That’s why I’m curious. Tell me, Vivian: what did you see?”
A few moments passed.
“I overheard you just now,” said Vivian.
“Excuse me?”
“Overheard you. On the phone.”
He furrowed his brow in disappointment and Vivian couldn’t help feeling that involuntary squirm of shame again.
“You were eavesdropping?”
“You were talking about me and Jesse.”
“Well, yes, if you must know, I was talking about you. I was talking to one of my superiors. We were discussing the possibility of accelerating your progress along the Violet Path, in light of everything that has happened.”
“You were talking to Shiv.”
“Talking to who?”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Maybe you misheard. Sieve? Was I talking about a sieve? Or maybe the sheriff? I think I said something about a sheriff.”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
He smiled sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Vivian. I know the first few days of the Path can be disorientating. There’s a lot to take in, a lot of readjusting to do.” He paused. “That’s why I really want to get to the bottom of this John of Telos story that you and Forrest were telling. It may well be that you were yearning for ascension so much that you imagined something.”
“I didn’t imagine the phone call. I thought you weren’t allowed phones in the Sanctuary?”
“Didn’t stop you, did it, dear heart?”
Glenn kept smiling. How did he know? He tried to brush a strand of hair from out of her eyes and she slapped his hand away. He recoiled.
“I understand, Vivian. I do, really. You poor thing. You’ve had a heavy few days. That
’s the only reason I’m here, really.” He nodded to the cup and saucer. “Drink your tea and get a good night’s sleep and we can discuss it in the morning.” He put the backs of his fingers against the cup. “Quickly,” he said, “it’s getting cold!” Then he squeezed Vivian’s shoulder, stood up, and left the room.
Vivian sat and didn’t move and didn’t drink the tea. She could feel things closing in around her. Where to next? Back to the motel? Up the mountain? The plan was ruined. To escape Glenn she’d have to leave town, maybe the country.
She waited for an hour until the Sanctuary was completely silent, then got changed and tucked the Carters’ envelope inside her coat and opened the door.
“Oh,” said Glenn.
He was still waiting outside the bedroom. He looked different somehow, in the way he was holding himself. She took a step back and squinted. For the first time since she’d arrived, he wasn’t in his robes. He was wearing dark slacks and a leather motorcyclist’s jacket, zipped to the top. Someone else was standing next to him in the darkness. Carl, she suspected.
Glenn looked at Vivian, then at the teacup still on the floor. He sighed.
“Still awake?”
She blinked at them.
“You’re not making this easy, dear heart.”
They stepped into the room and Glenn slid the door closed behind him. Carl produced something that looked like a tea towel, took a couple of paces forward. Before Vivian could do or say anything it was over her head and she smelled lavender, like the Sanctuary’s washing detergent, only much stronger and with a sweetness that was almost rotten, and the darkness of the hood was quickly replaced with a deeper darkness, which blossomed inside her head and rendered her numb and blissfully thoughtless.
16
SHE WAS in the back of a truck. Carl’s, she assumed. Her head was right next to the top of the wheel arch, and the noise was like an angle-grinder boring into her skull. The cargo bed of the truck had a tarp over the top and smelled of oil and cigarettes and a savoury, hotdog-type smell. There was a long, hard object sticking into her back; a crowbar, perhaps, or a tyre iron. Her hands and feet were tied.
It was almost a relief, Vivian thought, to finally be sure of something. To know, without doubt, that Telos really was as bad as her worst suspicions. But then: what did this mean for Jesse? Were they doing to her what they’d already done to him? And what were they doing to her?
The radio was on in the front of the truck. It was playing some classical music, the orchestra only just audible over the growl of the engine. Someone tried to change the station and there was a short argument and the truck wavered slightly on the road. She could hear Glenn’s raised voice, his clear and aristocratic diction. The truck straightened itself again and they went quiet.
They drove for a long while without turning. Light began to creep in around the edges of the tarpaulin. After an hour or so they swung sharply to the right and there was the crunch of dirt and gravel, and the truck started to bounce and creak. The suspension was shot. There were more cries of consternation from Glenn, who was apparently unhappy with the way Carl was handling the vehicle.
The rope around Vivian’s wrists had not been tied very tightly, but the fibres still bit into her skin when she tried to pull her hands out of the loop. She wriggled around underneath the tarp, banging her poor, tired, throbbing head on the truck bed every time they went over a pothole. She discovered the thing stabbing her in the back was an initiate’s rod. There were dozens of them rattling around in there with her.
At her feet she found a can of motor oil. She managed to unscrew the cap and tip it over, and she smeared her hands and wrists in the oil that pooled on the bed of the truck. It stung where it met her raw skin, but with a little more teasing she was able to slip her hands out of the rope, and then undo the bindings around her ankles. Next she slithered to the cab end of the truck and felt with her oily fingers for a way to undo the tarpaulin. She heard Glenn in the passenger seat again.
“Listen to this,” he was saying. “Glorious.”
He turned up the volume on the radio and the voice of an opera singer wobbled raucously out of the cab’s open windows. Then it went quiet.
“What are you doing?” said Glenn.
“Why’d you put it up so loud? It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not like anyone’s going to hear us out here,” said Glenn. “Your reputation will remain intact. Listen, this part—”
They fought over the volume again.
“My truck, my radio,” said Carl.
“I’m your boss.”
“I’m a Twelfth Stone initiate.”
They both had a good laugh about this. They drove on for a few moments in silence, and then Carl tuned the radio to something more modern.
“This is atrocious,” said Glenn.
“Why are you here, anyway?” said Carl. “Shouldn’t you be back at the Sanctuary?”
“Just thought I’d come along for the ride.”
“Bullshit. You never get your hands dirty.”
“Shiv wants me to get some answers from her.”
“You don’t trust me to do that?”
“I trust you, my sweet.”
“Then what?”
“The questions are of a very specific nature. Also, when we’re done with the questions I thought I might…”
“Thought you might what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Carl tutted.
“Glenn, you are a fiend.”
Vivian waited for Glenn to reply to that, head pushed up against the tarp roof, making a gap of just a couple of inches where she could see them in the cab. Glenn didn’t say anything. The truck rumbled on.
She fiddled with the hooks and eyes that held the tarpaulin down. Once she’d undone the two front corners it flapped backwards and suddenly she was exposed to the cold air and the red light of dawn. She sat up. They were in the middle of dry prairie grasses and ridges of low, bronze hills, like sand dunes. She could see Mount Hookey in the distance but it was such a colossal thing she had no idea how far away it was. Fifty miles? A hundred? Two hundred? There were a few barns and bits of farming machinery scattered around the prairie. They could have been thousands of years old. It felt like they were traversing the surface of some abandoned alien planet.
“Shit, she’s awake!”
Carl was looking in his rear-view mirror. Glenn turned in his seat to look at Vivian. Then Carl turned, too, and the truck swerved on the dirt track.
Glenn smiled at her and spoke through the glass of the cab.
“Just relax, Vivian. It’s going to be fine. This – all of this – is part of your ascension. You’ve been chosen. Do you understand?”
She crawled to the back of the truck and looked down at the road as it sped under and away from them. Carl seemed to be accelerating.
“What’s she doing? Glenn? She going to jump?”
“No, she won’t jump.”
“What am I doing, here? Am I stopping?”
“Keep driving, and calm down,” said Glenn. “And keep your eyes on the damn road!”
Vivian was still watching the stones and grasses whizz past. A barn and an outhouse and the desiccated corpse of a tree. The truck threw up great clouds of yellow dust. Could she jump? She might survive unscathed – she was still in Jesse’s indestructible coat, after all.
“Vivian? Dear heart?” Glenn called to her. “Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”
“Why’s she awake anyway? I gave her enough to knock out an elephant.”
Carl was trying to look over his shoulder again.
“Watch the road, Carl.”
“Didn’t you tie her up?”
“Carl, watch the—”
As if trotting in from the wings of a stage, a skinny horse and foal appeared from behind a farmhouse and stood in the middle of the road. Carl spun the wheel. The truck hit the back end of the foal, and its mother screamed, and Glenn screamed too. They lurched off the r
oad, the windscreen already cracked, and drove straight into the farmhouse. The truck obliterated the front porch and then struck something harder in the building’s foundations. The nose drove down towards the earth and the tail bucked and Vivian was thrown down the length of the truck’s bed into the rear window of the cab, and it felt as if all of her ribs shattered at once and the air was snapped out of her like someone beating the dust from a rug.
Vivian’s ears rang. She lay on her back, looking up at the sky, which was somehow brightening and darkening at the same time. The engine made tortured, irregular ticking noises, and there was steam hissing from somewhere. A beam fell from the remains of the farmhouse and landed on the cab. Then all was quiet, save for a mournful whinnying coming from the horse a few hundred yards back.
Vivian picked herself up and prodded her sides. Jesse’s coat still held her together. She crawled painfully to the side of the truck and climbed down into the ruins of the farmhouse’s veranda. She went around to the front of the cab. The noise from the horse was unbearable. She didn’t want to look behind her.
The bonnet and everything beneath it was crushed like a paper bag, and the windscreen was gone. It was an old truck – no airbags or anything like that. Carl was slumped over the steering wheel, pinned between it and the seat. There was a lot of blood coming from his forehead and nose and mouth. He wasn’t moving. Glenn was bloodied, too, but breathing. The rafter that had fallen from the roof was lying at an angle across his lap.
Vivian just looked at him for a while, and he sat with his eyes closed as if he was having a nap. He didn’t seem to know she was there. She leaned into the cab and undid his seat belt and ran a hand over the pockets of his leather jacket. She felt the edges of his phone and took it out. The screen was cracked and blank and no amount of button mashing would make it turn on. When she looked up, she saw Glenn had opened his eyes.
“Vivian,” he said, “dear heart, let me explain.”
“Where’s Jesse?” she said.
“I can’t say.”
His eyelids fluttered when he spoke, and he seemed to be in a lot of pain. His voice was quieter than it had been. The horse was still stamping and moaning back in the road, and Vivian finally turned around and saw it nosing at the broken body of the foal and decided she had to leave as quickly as possible, or her heart might just go black and die from the horror of it all.
The Follower Page 13