The Dark Light

by Julia Bell

  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 t
oo, 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.

  ‘Alex?’

  She doesn’t move.

  ‘Alex!’ I say more loudly. She sits up in her bed, and for a moment I think I must have got the wrong cell, that this is Naomi, not Alex. Because her hair is wild and her dress is ragged and torn and on her leg, where her tattoo used to be, there is a bandage that is dark with blood.

  No. I wish I could just break through the door and get her. ‘What have they done to you?’

  She doesn’t answer. Instead she shields her eyes from the light. ‘Rebekah?’ She sounds strange; her voice is deeper, slurred.

  ‘It’s me,’ I say. ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’

  She gets up from the bed and walks slowly, like an old person, towards me. All over her arms and legs are livid scratches.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? What happened to your leg?’

  ‘All bad,’ she says. ‘All bad.’ She scratches at her skin with her nails. ‘We had to take it off. Get rid of it.’

  ‘Get rid of what?’

  ‘The bad eye. It’s how it got in. It’s the reason everything got so messed up. They’re coming. Rebekah. I saw them. So many, they filled the sky, like birds.’

  ‘What did?’

  ‘Devils. I saw them. I really saw them . . .’ She trails off. ‘Who are you?’ She looks at me blankly.

  ‘Alex, it’s me, Rebekah. What happened to you?’

  ‘He came and he forgave me. But he can’t do anything. My badness, it’s inside. I can’t ever be rid of it.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ve got to stay here and pray.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! We’re going to get you out of here, remember?’ I reach out to take her hand but she swats me away.

  ‘Get off!’ Her face is glazed with sweat and she smells strange. ‘You’re dirty!’

  ‘Are you sick? Why are you being like this? You’re acting really weird.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She leans her head against the door so I can see her face close up. Her eyelids suddenly droop. ‘I’ve seen the light, that’s all. It’s so obvious. I should have seen it all along.’

  ‘Did they hurt you?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I told you. He forgave me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Bevins.’

  ‘You saw him today?’

  She nods. He’s done something to her. She sounds like she’s speaking from underwater, and her movements are slow and treacly. I think about when we first got here and Jonathan was weird and the twins were fast asleep and she said they’d been drugged.

  ‘Did he bring you anything?’ I ask.

  ‘Just water,’ she says. ‘It made me feel sick.’

  ‘Alex, listen to me,’ I say very slowly in the hope that she will hear me. ‘I’m going to get you out of here, OK, but if he gives you any more to drink, throw it away. They killed all the animals today. In the barn – all the sheep and the goats, even the dog. We need to get away from here. We need to get help.’

  ‘OK,’ she says. Then she wanders away from me back to her bed. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s nothing you can do that will make any difference. Our lives are already written.’

  I press my head against the door in despair. Now what? Slowly, like a creeping chill, the thought that I will have to find a way to get off this island by myself fills me with dread. All our plans. We are supposed to do this together. ‘I can’t do it without you.’

  But she doesn’t answer. She lies on the bed and pulls the blanket up over her head and stays still and rigid until eventually I have to leave, a lump in my throat so hard it’s impossible to swallow.

  Cloud has descended on the Devil’s Seat and the air is heavy with the threat of rain so I walk back through the bog. I don’t care, even as my feet sink into the cold mud.

  About halfway back it starts to get really deep and marshy – up to my knees in one place – and it is an effort to keep taking one step after another. I struggle forward, suddenly really cold, my teeth chattering, the lantern swinging wildly as I try to walk. Eventually I manage to bully my way through to firmer ground, but by the time I do I am worried that I have been gone long.

  As I approach the farmhouse I can hear voices – there are people in the yard. Too late I realize I am still visible, my lantern swinging from my hand. I drop to my knees and quickly blow out the flame. There is a shout.

  ‘Over there! I saw it, over there!’

  Then someone else shouts, ‘Get inside! Get inside!’

  I run away down the path, over the gate into the field and push myself into the hedge, the hawthorn scratching my back and my arms.

  They are coming, running along the other side of the hedge. Oh God, don’t let them see me. Please. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. I hold my breath till I think I might explode. Then a voice shouts: ‘This way!’

  The footsteps run past me and further along the path and on towards Devil’s Seat. I let out a long slow breath before pulling myself out of the hedge. I walk slowly and carefully back towards the house, taking the long way, squeezing between the vegetable garden and the wall, treading on the soft soil of the flowerbeds so as not to crunch the stones on the path. I run across the yard into the shadows, pressing myself against the wall, and turn the corner to the front of the house. Lantern light dances in the window and there is the sound of muffled talking: people have come back from church. I wonder if they even know that I am missing. I open the front door very slowly and quietly. If I can get as far as the stairs, then I can pretend I’ve been in the attic with the boys all along.

  The house smells of woodsmoke and people. A lantern on the table by the door throws a dim light into the hallway. Everyone is awake. I can hear talking, then a scream from the kitchen and someone bursts into the hallway. It is Hannah, quickly pursued by Mary.

  ‘Are you sure it’s worth disturbing his sleep over this?’ Mary is asking.

  ‘But I must tell him what I saw,’ she says. ‘The girl walks abroad even though she is locked up! Jonathan and Ezekiel think so too.’ She sees me and stops. ‘And where have you been, Rebekah?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I say.

  But she furrows her brow at the mud on my legs, my boots, my blue-knuckled hands.

  ‘Well, I went outside for a moment because I heard shouting. But I came back in because I was scared.’

  ‘He is about us,’ she says conspiratorially. ‘Now. I have seen him. A glow in the marsh towards the Devil’s Seat. A will-o’-the-wisp. A demon spirit. Many saw it. Jonathan and Ezekiel have gone to banish it. Mr Bevins must be told. Your father too.’

  Mary Protheroe looks at me and raises her eyebrows. Hannah is so preoccupied with what she has seen that she’s not looking at me. Quickly I walk past her towards the stairs. ‘The noise woke me. I wanted to see what it was about.’

  Mary Protheroe’s lips twitch into a little half-smile and she nods at me.

  ‘Go to your room, child, and pray,’ Hannah says. ‘We must bind cords of light around this house if we are to stop the devil from getting in. Cords of light.’ She knocks on the door of the living room and enters. I don’t stay to hear what she says.

  TWENTY-TWO

  REBEKAH

  In the morning Mary is in the kitchen with the twins. She has given them small cakes made of potato, but there is no food for us. My belly grumbles. The light is the blue-grey of just-dawn and her frame appears shadowed against the window, thin and spectral.

  She doesn’t even ask me where I’ve been. ‘Was she alive?’ is all she asks.

  ‘She’s not herself,’ I say. ‘
She’s not well. What has he given her?’ We both look at each other. It’s like in the last few days a thought has grown between us that neither of us can say aloud.

  Mary bites her lip. I want to cry like a child. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Ssshhhhh. We’ll talk about this later, OK? When did you last eat?’

  I don’t know. ‘Yesterday?’

  She goes into the store and comes out with a sugar cube. ‘I am saving these for the boys, but you must have one.’

  I suck on it and my bloodstream fills with the relief of a sudden chemical energy. It’s going to be OK, I tell myself. You’ve just got to be brave. But I don’t feel brave at all.

  The other women come in – Hannah and Margaret and Ruth and Mrs Bragg. No one is sleeping much these days. Mrs Bragg says it’s because everyone’s hungry.

  ‘Doing wonders for my waistline, this is!’ she says idly, before Hannah silences her with a glare.

  Then she notices me. ‘What is wrong with you, child? You look like you’ve seen the devil himself,’ she fusses, placing her hand on my forehead.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ I say.

  ‘Perhaps it was a vision,’ she suggests earnestly.

  She’s starting to sound more and more like a shadow of Mr Bevins. I look at her face. Even her features have changed, her mouth like his when she is speaking.

  Mr Bevins has drawn up a rota that each of us must observe, a vigil of prayers in the church that we must keep until the Rapture comes. Hannah shows me a copy; her name is down for the evening, Mary at midnight tonight.

  ‘A final farewell to our lives in New Canaan,’ Hannah says. ‘Our waiting is over at last!’

  My head spins with the weight of everything I’m about to do and I have to hold on to the table to stop myself from falling over.

  The men finish building the bonfire, a trench for water is dug around it and piled up with branches from the hawthorn and rowan. In the middle they have made a pen where they will drive the last of our livestock, and placed around it are some of the carcasses which they did not bury. The crows and the seagulls have discovered it too, and sit around in the field waiting for their chance to peck at the corpses. The first thing they go for is the eyes, so now several of the sheep’s heads are grotesquely blinded. I stand and look at it when Mary sends me out to get some logs from the barn. Something in me hardens. This will not bring God down from heaven. How could something so monstrous be divine?