by Em Bailey
I deadlock the back door and kick off my shoes. There isn’t even time to line them up next to my brother’s runners. This bothers me, of course, but I can’t waste a second right now. The brownies are flung into the bin. Even if today’s guiding word wasn’t restrain, I would never consume something that woman made. Who knows what could be in it?
I hurry to the study, directly across from my parents’ room upstairs. Their door is slightly ajar, as always. I light a candle, although the glow from the screens is more than enough to see by. Beeswax candles cast a very soothing light when they burn, and I will need some soothing, considering the tasks that lie ahead.
I turn on the computer. Check the farmhouse. The cameras confirm that Lucille and Felicity are both where they should be – Felicity asleep in her bed and Lucille setting up the chat room. I zoom in on Lucille’s face as she works, and her look of intense concentration gives me a small moment of pleasure. I was right about her, after all.
When she first arrived at the farm, I’d had doubts. Perhaps she was just too stubborn to accept who she really was. But she has settled in well now and I am sure that she would’ve done a good job of managing the chat this evening. Too bad that I have to cut it short before it begins.
‘Goodbye, Lucille,’ I whisper.
With the stroke of a key, I activate a virus in the Special Ones farmhouse systems – one I wrote for exactly this sort of situation. The virus sets off a self-destruct mechanism and disconnects the farmhouse from my encrypted server, and from the outside world. Once Esther tells the police her story, there is no doubt they will invade the farmhouse, searching through everything, and I need to protect us.
It’s like stabbing myself to destroy, in seconds, what amounts to thousands of hours of work, but it’s what I must do, if I am to remain in control of this situation. The only small satisfaction is seeing how well my emergency measures work.
Next I destroy all the electronic logs and records, anything that would connect the Special Ones portal to me – the chat, the donation page, the shop. Don’t think about what you’re doing, I instruct myself. Concentrate on the task at hand. I push my emotions down. Focus on getting this done as quickly and efficiently as I can. Tell myself that there’s a sense of joyful cleansing and rebirth – renewal, really – that should ease the difficulty a little. Sometimes it’s necessary to clear away the old to make way for the new.
After a couple of hours I have secured my online anonymity, but there is still work to do. Harry has betrayed me and I have no idea what information he might have already fed to the police. He doesn’t know where I live – I was always very careful to keep that secret – but I need to do all I can to cover myself. Despite the warmth of the evening, I hastily build a fire in the fireplace and open the filing cabinet. It’s an old wooden one that my father brought home when the police stations in his district were modernised. ‘Got it for free,’ he said. Its beauty was entirely irrelevant to him.
His hunting club magazines are still in the bottom drawer, along with the manual for the boiler. I haven’t used the boiler at all since the ‘tragedy’, but I keep the manual for sentimental reasons. My father was so proud when the system was installed, and showed me the diagrams of how it worked, the safety checklist written in big red letters. ‘It’s important to keep the air vents clean or it can leak poisonous gases into the air,’ he told me.
‘I’ll keep it clean,’ I said, eagerly. ‘It can be my job.’ That was back when I still thought there was a way to please him.
He laughed dismissively. ‘As if I would trust you with a task like that.’
At first I examine every piece of paper, each document, before placing it on the fire. Here’s the sketch I drew, back when I was still at school, of how the farmhouse should look, and there’s the rough layout for the Special Ones portal. I waste precious minutes with the first draft of Esther’s remembering book, as well as my beehive designs. But time is rapidly passing, so I grit my teeth and force myself to be more ruthless, less sentimental, and begin throwing things on the fire without reading them. Sweat drips from my face, saturating my shirt and plastering it against my skin.
Then I come to the photograph and everything stops. It would be impossible to burn this. I take it from its protective leather sleeve, running my thumb down the pale border.
I found the photograph while I was waiting in the principal’s office of the very good boarding school my parents sent me to. It had come as a complete surprise to me when my parents banished me like that, but I see now there were warning signs. All those visits to experts, all those special vitamin pills. And then there was all the fuss when I started going into my brother’s room during the night to watch him sleep.
The school principal, Mr Mills, always wore the same wet-lipped, disapproving expression, and the same egg-stained tie. He liked to make me wait alone in his office before he swept in to lecture me. I suppose he imagined I’d sit there stewing, regretting my wrongdoings. What I actually did was go through his things. Mr Mills always had a nice little stash of medications in his top drawer, so the first thing I always did when left alone was to sample a selection of them at random.
Why was I there that day? I have no idea and, anyway, the particular misdemeanour is not important. What matters is that after I’d downed a handful of Mr Mills’s meds, I saw the edge of a photograph poking out from a book on his desk. I extracted it carefully, already glowing pleasantly from the pills, hoping it might be something I could use as blackmail fodder. Compromising shots of someone who wasn’t his wife, for instance. But these thoughts evaporated the moment I saw what the photograph actually contained.
Three girls, arranged in that elegant, formal way of old pictures. The fourth figure, a male, whose beard made him look older than he was. There was something instantly familiar about him.
In fact, all the figures were familiar – in a way I couldn’t explain but somehow felt. I knew Mr Mills fancied himself as a local history buff. He’d probably unearthed the picture during one of the regular flea-market trips he was always droning on about at assembly. He probably hadn’t noticed what I had – that although the figures were standing in the shade, they emanated a brightness, like the way the entire length of a candle sometimes glows when the wick is burning. The tall girl in the centre of the group particularly seemed to shine, and I held the photograph close to my face so I could examine it more carefully.
Everything around me dimmed: Mr Mills’s depressing office furniture, the sound of the boys playing soccer on the field outside. The edges of the photograph stretched up and out, enveloping me. There was a breeze. Sun on the top of my head. The four figures from the photograph were before me on the verandah.
The tall girl smiled at me and spoke. There was no sound but I could read her lips. Are you ready?
The vision was over in an instant. But it was long enough to have changed everything.
How to describe the moment when you realise that you’ve lived before? That you’ve never truly died, but simply moved through different bodies in the same way that you might move from one house to another. A feeling of bliss flowed through me, powerful and profound.
I looked at the male in the photograph again and this time I easily recognised myself. My hand shook as I turned the photo over, already knowing what I would find there. At the bottom left were three words in faded ink: The Special Ones. After this came the names: Lucille, Felicity, Esther and Harry. Esther. Those six letters brought such heat to my chest!
Not everything returned to me on that first day, but I remembered a few important things, at least. The girls were my true family. I was Harry. Most thrilling was the deep, unshakeable knowledge that we all still existed today in some form, and that if I brought us together again, great things would happen.
In the end I burn almost everything, save the Special Ones photograph, and Harry’s file. I am not entirely sure why I keep it, but I know that my instinct on such things is usually correct.
Aft
er I’ve hidden these two items beneath a loose floorboard, I drag myself down the corridor to my bedroom, which is opposite my brother’s, at the other end from our parents’. It’s vital that I rest for a few hours at least, but, although I am physically exhausted and mentally drained, I cannot fall asleep. There is no bed in my room – most of the furniture from here is at the farmhouse – but sleeping on the floor does not usually bother me.
Eventually I take a sip from the purple bottle and let the images begin to swirl. This time it’s not my vision I see, but the real-life Esther who just slipped through my fingers today.
She smiles at me, no longer afraid, no longer wanting to escape. Her hands stretch out. ‘I’ll be with you in the house soon,’ she whispers and her sweet words soften the boards beneath me until I feel that I am floating on a bed of cloud and feathers.
‘Soon,’ she whispers. ‘Very soon.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
When I wake at dawn, there’s a tightness in my chest, like hands pressing down on me and I know instantly that Esther’s story has broken. I sit up and begin to meditate. It’s crucial that I prepare myself mentally for what I am about to face: my secret place ripped open for everyone to see.
This is all for a purpose, I remind myself, a vital step that will progress the Special Ones to the next stage of existence.
Besides, I think, maybe some good will come from the exposure. The entire world will soon learn of the Special Ones’ existence. Millions of people will get to see our farm. How beautiful it is. How pure and perfect life was there. It makes sense that, after this, followers will come flooding to Esther and me in even greater numbers, wanting to learn our ways.
They can’t ever be Special, of course. But they can try.
I flip open a laptop and check my newsfeeds. Immediately an item catches my eye.
BREAKING NEWS – PRISON FARM RESCUE!
My hands are shaking as I click through. There’s an aerial image of the farm splashed across the home page of a news site, and although the image is dark and blurry, I can still make out many distressing details: the front gate lying twisted and broken on the ground, armoured vans surrounding the farmhouse, the swarming police.
Along the top of the webpage are links and I make myself click on What we currently know. A moment later I am watching a clip in which a reporter talks breathlessly about the unimaginable horrors that he has seen this morning.
My whole body begins to tremble and it takes every inch of my self-control not to smash the computer against a wall. It’s as if people want to find the dark and the dirty in things that are pristine and beautiful.
I’m tempted to take a sip from the purple bottle and hear some reassuring words from the vision, but it occurs to me that it may be some time before I get a refill. The ingredients, after all, can only be found on the farm.
Instead, I go down to the kitchen. Drink some water, straighten up my shoes. Once my breathing is steady again, I take a TV from the pantry – an undelivered one from last week – and plug it in.
The networks are all playing the same footage of Lucille and Felicity leaving the farmhouse: Lucille wrapped in a silver blanket and Felicity on a stretcher. What a shocking discovery this has been, all the reporters say. How heartbreakingly scared the girls look. There’s no denying they look scared, but I seem to be the only person who realises their fear is not from living on the farm but from having their home violated in this grotesque way.
Rage boils inside me now, surging just beneath the skin. It’s so difficult to witness this evil, these lies, without losing control. To accept that this is the way everything is meant to go and that I must accept it as part of the process. We Special Ones have endured similar trials before, and will survive them again.
I spend the day inside, watching as the story spreads, my feelings swinging violently back and forth. It is, on the one hand, devastating to have my little world ripped apart like this. To hear it described so negatively. The media keeps referring to it as ‘the prison farm’, and this rankles every time. Yet I also feel proud – deeply so – at how strongly the world reacts to Esther. Her calm, composed face is soon everywhere. Everyone adores her.
It’s late on that first, frenzied day when the networks start showing scenes of Esther’s reunion with her parents. ‘Emotions are overflowing here!’ declares one particularly vapid reporter as the camera zooms in on the family arriving at the police station.
It’s quite clear that the overflowing emotions are all coming from Esther’s mother and (to a lesser degree) her father. Esther embraces her parents, but she doesn’t go overboard with fake feelings. And why would she? These two people are not her real family.
Esther remains polite but reserved as the media jostle around, bombarding her with questions. There’s only one point, when yet another reporter asks her how does it feel to be free? that Esther’s expression switches over into annoyance. ‘I won’t be free until the others have been found,’ she says, in a snippet the networks play over and over again.
‘But they have been,’ another reporter says.
Esther shakes her head. ‘No, there are others. Ones who left the farm before.’
‘What do you mean?’ ask several reporters simultaneously, as the cameras flash. ‘Where did they go?’
Esther’s face tightens. ‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’
I have to smile. Esther looks so serious, pretending that she cares about the fate of the others. I dare say she fools the reporters, but she doesn’t fool me. I know that her real interest, whether she realises it yet or not, is to reconnect with me.
The next day, someone discovers the link between the farm and the Special Ones portal, and the headlines change to DAWN RAID ON CULT. The force against my chest presses harder.
How could anyone refer to us as a cult? It’s laughable. The Special Ones is a philosophy that defies any traditional definition. We don’t force people join us. We don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. People willingly seek advice from the Special Ones and buy our homemade products – bowls, knives, aprons, scarves – from the online store. No-one, I reassure myself, could possibly see the Special Ones as a cult.
After this my teachings begin to appear, first circulating online and eventually appearing on the TV networks. I am confident that they can’t be linked back to me, and so I allow myself to feel some small amount of pride in these films. I know our followers cherish them, even now as they’re being used as base entertainment. Making the films consumed a lot of my time – not just the hours spent fast-forwarding through footage to choose the best, most inspirational scenes from the day to use, but also the compiling, the editing and uploading. Yet I always knew it was worth it.
By that evening, however, my feelings have changed. Inevitably Harry appears in some of the films, although I tried wherever possible to keep him out. Watching them now, I find myself discovering little clues as to what had been developing between him and Esther, right there in front of me. I see the feeling compressed into those three-second glances – far more powerful and concentrated than anything a lingering gaze could convey. And the not quite touches of their bodies now strike me as almost pornographic.
Did they think they could get away with it? Deceive me? One thing, at least, is very clear to me now. There will be a reckoning.
The next morning, I wake up in front of the television with an anxious, niggling feeling, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a minute or two. I do not need to leave for work until late in the afternoon, but I get dressed anyway.
The problem, I realise, is that I want to go and check on my possessions. Now, immediately, rather than waiting for darkness like I usually do. It’s not that I’m worried the police will locate what I have hidden there yet, but whenever I think of the factory I feel uneasy. In the end I decide to go with my instinct and drive out there, despite the risks. Now that everything is in flux, it’s time to make a decision about what to do with them. I also nee
d to confirm that there’s nothing there – fingerprints, DNA – that will link the site to me.
I take my father’s car, loading it up with everything I’ll need. His car is a fuel-guzzling, wasteful monster, but there’s no denying it’s spacious. The empty water drum and the box of supplies fit easily into the boot. It’s possible to fit a person in there with room to spare.
I keep my possessions in the factory whose crumbling tower can be seen distantly from the farm – I found the two locations on the same day. Although it’s probably more accurate to say I simply remembered where they were.
After I’d retaken possession of the Special Ones photograph, I began meditating, often sitting cross-legged on my school bedroom floor for an entire night – while the others slept around me – trying to re-create the experience I’d had in Mr Mills’s office. Meditation, especially when combined with medication, was the best way I’d found to tap back into my former life and the lives of the other Special Ones. It brought me such joy to reconnect with them. We had come from different parts of the country, drawn together by our shared philosophy on the way a life should be lived (with purity, with simplicity, with economy), and lived together in harmony in a perfect, self-sustaining farmhouse.
But the farmhouse. Where was it? I could picture it so clearly in my mind and I ached with longing to be there.
It wasn’t until after the tragedy, after I’d dropped out of school and moved back into the family home, that it finally happened. I woke one morning with a strong urge to go for a drive. So, after consuming the last of my pill collection, I took off that morning in an almost trance-like state. I took no map and paid no attention to the road signs. It felt like the car itself was deciding which direction to go.
The car drove me away from the city and, after a couple of hours of winding through country lanes and dirt tracks, I found myself on a remote piece of land. It was obvious from the tangle of weeds that grew there and the broken-down fencing that the place hadn’t been used in a long time. Something drew me towards it, the shining edge of a memory.