by Maggie Groff
‘Did the girls say anything else?’ I asked, wondering if their remorse was merely self-preservation.
‘Not a word.’
‘Did anyone ask why they’d done it?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And?’
‘Margo Mitchell answered for them. The gist was that all three girls were friendless loners, isolated for various reasons, which to some extent is true as no one likes them—Peony thinks she’s beautiful, Savannah’s dumb as a doornail and Kylie’s eating disorder scares everyone. Those are my words, not the lawyer’s. Mitchell said that Brianna had seduced them by the overwhelming need of young teens to belong to a group, and if they were bullying Mary, Brianna wasn’t bullying them.’
‘Where was Brianna?’
Harper scoffed. ‘In Sydney with her grandmother, recovering from the alleged assault!’
‘Have you called Mrs Niles?’ It was imperative that Mary’s mother knew about this as soon as possible.
‘Hathaway called her. She also sent a letter welcoming Mary back and apologising for the distress experienced at school. She’s going to Mary’s house tonight to visit personally.’
‘Call Mrs Niles anyway,’ I advised.
‘Yeah, I will. See if I can do anything to help. I’ll call Robert, too. Hathaway already called and invited him back. He’s considering taking civil action against the Berkelows.’
‘I don’t blame him. You know, it would be good to get Robert together with Mary and her mum,’ I suggested. ‘It might help to heal a few wounds.’
‘Yeah, I thought of that. I’ll see what I can do,’ Harper assured me.
‘What’s happened to the girls?’
‘Peony, Savannah and Kylie have already been expelled and their phones and laptops confiscated. They’re not to communicate with anyone about what happened, or about their confession, especially with Brianna. After the meeting Hathaway told me that her main focus now is on minimising further damage to Mary, and she’s worried what Brianna might do with the photos of Mary if she knew the others had come forward.’
‘So what’s going to happen?’
‘Brianna will be expelled but Hathaway’s not contacting the Berkelows to inform them of the fact, or the girls’ confessions, until Mrs Niles has decided what she wants to do. She may want the police to handle things from here on. According to Hathaway, at their age the girls are criminally responsible if a prosecutor can prove that they knew that what they were doing to Mary was wrong. Even then, though, she thought they’d probably only get a caution and maybe a court appearance, and the ultimate responsibility would be left to their parents.’
‘Mrs Niles may not want Mary to go through the court process and, as you know, justice can be served in other ways. Margo Mitchell said that she hoped alternative punishment and recompense might be considered. It’d be nice to have some good come out of all this mess. Why don’t you think up a few ideas?’
‘Like what?’ Harper said. ‘What am I now, dial an angel?’
Laughing, I said, ‘You’ll think of something, Harps, you always do.’
I was saved from further discussion by Marcia coming into the bedroom.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I told Harper. ‘I’ll talk to you Monday.’
‘Love you,’ Harper said and hung up.
Marcia had a headache and was searching for Panadol. She told me that Mark had just called, which was what had woken her, and that his mother was stable and resting. There had been two unconfirmed sightings of Tommy at Central Railway Station in Sydney yesterday afternoon, and the search of the woods near their house was continuing.
My mobile phone rang. It was Titania Pearl advising me that I would be collected from outside the Broadbeach Surf Life Saving Club at nine tomorrow morning. Titania was super-friendly, said that she couldn’t wait to meet me and knew we were going to have the most fantastically inspirational weekend.
I packed Marcia off to bed, telling her I’d sleep with Christopher and attend to his needs, and that she needed to get a good night’s sleep. Marcia looked at me and I saw the beginnings of a welcome grin.
‘What?’ I said.
‘You do realise it’s written all over your face, don’t you, Scout?’ she said. ‘You’re absolutely glowing.’
Oh dear. I’d make a lousy poker player.
Chapter 52
At eight-thirty on Saturday morning we bundled Christopher into Marcia’s car and took the Gold Coast Highway north to Broadbeach. Ten minutes later we pulled into the parking lot at the surf club. It was teeming with weekend surfers zipping up wetsuits and waxing boards. The sun was breaking through the light cloud cover and it promised to be cooler weather with temperatures in the mid-twenties.
Dressed for the part, I was wearing the patchwork skirt, a tie-dye T-shirt and the new rainbow-coloured hat. My hair was loose and falling below my waist, prompting Marcia to comment that I looked like the folk singer Joan Baez. The mirror, however, told me that I looked like my mother ready for a sixties party. Mum, I thought, would be very proud.
Marcia hugged me tight. Words weren’t necessary as we both knew the enormity of my undertaking, not to mention the risks. Apart from the dangers I faced from exposure to psychological coercion and indoctrination, there was the very real possibility that by now Tildy had remembered me, or that Tracey had seen Marcia’s notes and knew who I was and what I was doing. Looming large in my mind was also the awful thought that Tildy might be a lost cause. I didn’t say anything to Marcia, but the crown weighed heavy on the Queen’s head.
Last night I’d reviewed all my notes to date, including information that Rafe and Ben had provided on brainwashing techniques. What was crucial for me was not to believe anything I was told, and never to allow myself to be isolated. Fortunately, I already knew exactly what shared joy and love entailed. And I was also wearing two pairs of knickers to be on the safe side.
At 8.50 am two young women arrived holding hands and carrying plastic bags. In their twenties, they both had short spiky black hair, heavy dark eyeliner, numerous piercings and were dressed in black. Clearly goths, they chewed gum, swore, smoked, kissed and oozed attitude. They seemed an unlikely couple to be searching for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Five minutes later a skinny weather-beaten woman of about forty arrived and stood a short distance from me. She had a thin foxlike face, short orange hair, lots of silver earrings spanning the outer edge of her left ear and a red rose tattooed on her neck. She fidgeted nervously with the hem of her blouse and pretended that she hadn’t seen the rest of us.
Shortly, a white minibus painted with daisies and rainbows and original words like love and peace pulled into the parking lot. The side and back windows had been partially painted over, but it would still be easy to see out. On the front was a painting of Bacchus, his dark curls momentarily reminding me of Rafe. The rhythmic beat of ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ pounded from inside the minibus.
The driver’s door opened to reveal a spiritual-looking young man with long black hair, a short trimmed beard, white fisherman’s pants and a white Indian shirt. He jumped out of the minibus and threw open his arms.
‘Welcome aboard for Bacchus Rising!’ he greeted, and he was smiling so hard that I thought his teeth might crack.
The goth girls and the woman with the rose tattoo moved towards the young man and, banishing my last trace of trepidation into the sissy box, I counted to ten and followed.
‘My name’s Bauble,’ the driver announced. He adopted a quizzical stance, one hand on his hip and one finger against his cheek, pretending to think. Suddenly he pointed at rose tattoo and said, ‘You’re Dawn. I’m right aren’t I, I know it!’
Bauble had pressed all the right buttons. Dawn’s face lit up like a Christmas tree and she nodded enthusiastically. I guess she didn’t have many friends.
‘And you girls must be Solly and Laura?’ he said, turning to the goth girls, who both made wry smiles and nodded.
Then
Bauble looked at me. ‘Fantasia?’
I looked around and shrugged my shoulders. ‘Has to be,’ I said, mildly embarrassed.
We all shook hands and I registered that Bauble’s palms were clammy, never a good sign. We were directed to place our bags in the space where the front passenger seat had been and then we climbed aboard.
‘Before we set off for Bacchus Rising,’ Bauble said, ‘I’ll collect your money. Also, I need to inform you of an important rule. No mobile phones or cameras are to be used at Bacchus Rising, as electromagnetic radiation distorts cosmic harmony. Serene Cloud is very strict on this. Use it and lose it is his rule.’
As Bauble stated this rule, which effectively cut us off from the outside world, he smiled kindly, as if we were children and he’d told us not to climb trees and to go to the kitchen if we needed chocolate. Unlike me, the others didn’t appear bothered by this usurping of our civil rights, but then I was planning to rail against everything.
Bauble waited while we turned off our mobile phones and I pretended to switch mine off, and set it on silent. It was rather pleasing that I’d already broken the rules and we weren’t even out of the car park.
Once Bauble was satisfied that we had disconnected from the real world, he took a deep breath and launched into a well-rehearsed sales pitch to ensure we paid the money. I wondered if his enthusiasm reflected the fact that he would be beaten with sticks, bitten or locked in a room for a month with soup and water if he failed to close the sale.
‘Sisters, the experiences ahead of you will change your lives forever,’ Bauble reported confidently. ‘You are about to have the privilege of personally meeting Serene Cloud, Mystic Master of Mars, who, as I speak, is preparing to take your mind, body and spirit to a higher consciousness. The Mystic Master is the embodiment of the supreme profluence of Bacchus. He is the all-seeing, all-knowing Cosmic Master. You have chosen well and I promise that you will achieve a cosmic enlightenment you never imagined.’
Wacko, I thought.
Dawn gasped and clapped her hands together.
The goths turned to face each other, smiled, hunched their shoulders and kissed to seal the deal.
We all paid cash, no one asked for a receipt and no one received one. Bauble stashed the notes into a money belt around his waist, climbed into the driver’s seat, slotted an Enya CD in the disc player and we were off. A ship of fools sailing into unchartered waters.
Chapter 53
Bauble took the Nerang Road and headed inland towards the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. It was easy to see where we were going, and I supposed once potential recruits had come this far there was no longer a need to keep the location of Bacchus Rising secret.
It was beautiful country—subtropical rainforest, lush green hillsides and sweeping views of spectacular mountains and volcanic peaks. We motored through pretty rural communities, past equine studs, smallholdings and roadside vegetable stands selling new-season custard apples.
I daydreamed about love and lust. Sure, I loved Toby, and in a different way I still loved Rob, the father of my children. But clearly I loved Rafe in a physical way, an essence of real love yet to be played out or proved.
A thrill shot through my body and I closed my eyes blissfully remembering the touch of Rafe’s lips on my neck . . . and a few other places. When I opened my eyes, Bauble was glancing at me in the rear-vision mirror. He was probably thinking that I was already on my way to cosmic enlightenment. Actually, I was, sort of.
After an hour Bauble turned onto a gravel road leading through a forest of tall trees. The minibus bumped along, rearranging our internal organs and throwing up dust for five kilometres or so before turning onto a dirt drive. A short while later we pulled up in front of a large security gate bearing a warning sign, KEEP OUT. At last we’d reached the entrance to fruit-loop central.
An impenetrable cyclone-wire fence appeared to go for some distance in either direction from the gate, and the security cameras angled towards our bus were anything but welcoming. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear a voice call out, ‘Man the garrisons!’ but perhaps I was overreacting, as the others appeared unfazed by this radical display of fortification.
Bauble spoke into an intercom, waved at the security cameras, and the gates opened. I wanted to ask him if the electromagnetic radiation from the cameras affected cosmic harmony, but thought I’d maybe save it for question time.
After another five minutes of tall trees, bumps and bends, we drove into a clearing where an assortment of cars and a van were parked randomly on the grass. Bauble pulled over behind a car and switched off the engine.
‘We’re here,’ he announced brightly, jumping from the minibus and racing round to open the side door. Gingerly, we stepped out and surveyed our surroundings. Dawn, Solly and Laura were now looking bewildered and a little unsure. We were some distance from civilisation, and I doubted there was a mobile phone signal this far out. If there was reception, and they had been worried about security breaches, Bauble would have confiscated our phones. I was pretty sure the flimflam about electromagnetic radiation distorting cosmic harmony was just part of the groundwork to set the scene for more deceptive nonsense to come.
The property was not what I was expecting. Perhaps the esoteric babble on the Bacchus Rising website had led me to imagine a green and pleasant valley littered with crystals—a place where beautiful people dressed up as fairies and skipped merrily between idyllic log cabins spreading cosmic enlightenment. The reality was somewhat different.
At first glance Bacchus Rising brought to mind an abandoned army camp. Whitewashed rocks had been strategically placed to formalise a central thoroughfare through the bushland setting, and numerous shabby fibro huts with tiny verandahs were dotted amongst the trees. Not far from where we were standing was an ugly grey cement-brick building, which I assumed was the ablutions block. Several smaller huts were also clustered nearby. Some distance away, in the rainforest, I spied a large marquee, and in another direction what looked like a few demountables.
Bauble took off his money belt and disappeared into one of the small huts. A few seconds later he emerged empty-handed, so I presumed that the hut was some sort of administration office, and wondered if it also housed the main security system.
Apart from us, there was no sign of life or habitation. Sunlight filtering through the canopy of giant coachwoods and white booyong made stripy patterns on the tin roofs and dirt paths that connected the huts. It was eerie, like a scene from a Hitchcock movie, and I braced myself.
All of a sudden doors flew open and young men and women emerged smiling and laughing. They came from every corner, about fifty of them, women in long blue dresses and men in loose white Indian shirts and pants like Bauble. The women had high ponytails and wore silver pine cones on chains, and the men had long hair and wore leis of artificial frangipani around their necks. There were no older people, no children and, more importantly, no sign of Tommy.
They ran towards us with their arms outstretched in welcome. A handsome young man reached for my hands and swung me around like ring-a-rosie. He was paralytic with joy and hugged me a little too tight for a stranger.
‘Welcome, welcome,’ he cried. ‘My name is Pan. What’s yours?’ I felt as if I was part of the second coming.
‘Fantasia Jonson,’ I answered. His joy was infectious, and I couldn’t help smiling.
Pan removed his lei and placed it over my head.
‘Your aura is beautiful, Fantasia,’ he said. ‘I will bridge my aura to yours.’ Pan made a fast rolling gesture with his fists and stretched one hand out towards me. ‘There, take it,’ he instructed, and I reached my hand out and pretended to grasp the imaginary link to his aura.
‘How wonderful,’ Pan crowed. ‘Now wherever your aura will be, mine will be.’
Mindful of the reason that I was there, I scrutinised the flock. ‘Fat lips’ Tracey was nowhere to be seen, neither was Casey Steinman. However, I saw Tildy almost immediately. She was hug
ging Dawn and swinging her around, which was obviously all part of the welcome routine. As Dawn bubbled with delight, Tildy laughed and waved happily at me, showing no hint of suspicion.
Solly and Laura were also undergoing trial by hugs and swings from a pregnant Cinnamon Toast and another woman. The goth girls, I discerned with amusement, were revelling in the attention. Auras were flying all over the place.
Pan took my hand and sang, ‘Come with me,’ and he started to skip. Having little choice, I skipped along beside him, feeling like an idiot. Behind me I could hear talking and giggling as the others followed.
Dawn, Solly, Laura and I were led skipping through the trees to where a large white marquee had been erected on a disused tennis court. Inside the marquee, two rows of green plastic chairs had been placed in a large curve facing a raised dais and a table strewn with hibiscus flowers. A sound system sat on the floor, and overhead, fabric banners bearing the image of Bacchus swung from the roof.
As everyone else was wearing either blue or white, I surmised that the four of us were the only takers for the weekend retreat. Bauble was fussing with the chairs, making sure they were evenly spaced. He showed us to four seats in the middle, directly in front of the dais. We sat and waited while the already converted filed past us and filled the remaining seats. As they passed, each one touched us on the shoulders. Uncharitably, I wondered how many were on unemployment benefits and how many were illegal immigrants.
Suddenly stirring music filled the marquee—Beethoven’s Eroica, I think—and Serene Cloud, Mystic Master of Mars entered. He was holding his arms in the air like a television evangelist in full flight. His get-up was identical to the clothes I’d seen him wearing in Harold Steinman’s photographs—white pants, orange calf-length cotton over-shirt, white shoes and a white straw hat.
As he walked towards the dais his followers fell to their knees chanting, ‘Mystic Master, Mystic Master . . .’ They continued chanting until he swiftly dropped an arm to his side, their signal to stop. In the blink of an eye there was total silence, and Serene Cloud beamed at the four of us in the front row and said, ‘Behold my power!’