by Adam Cloake
Conall had instincts about what he needed to do for survival. He knew that he had to work alongside these others who stood naked before him. That meant hunting together. And killing together.
On an earlier night, they had left animal skins hidden among the rocks nearby. These were the hides of creatures they had killed for meat on other hunts. Hidden under the skins were hunting tools – rudimentary spears and knives – all fashioned from stone, flint, and the bones they had found lying nearby.
They draped themselves in the crudely-cut skins, covering their nakedness, hoping to keep out the cold of the night.
With their weapons in hand, the group was ready to set out. As they did on each of these nights, however, they all glanced for a moment at the way that led down to the valley. Although none of them had any memory of it, they all felt that this was the way they had travelled to get to this place. They never chose to take this way while they hunted. There was something sacred about it, something forbidden, so they always hunted in the opposite direction, on the other side of the hill.
The others walked away, to begin the hunt, but Conall alone remained where he stood.
None observed him as he continued to stare down the path, a look of growing curiosity in his eyes.
None heard his deep intake of breath as he came to his decision.
And, as he took a tight grip on his spear, none saw him begin his descent back the way he had come, to meet whatever lay at its end.
A Brother of The Light of Truth
The house was old and remote, with barely a sinner nearby – the perfect place to sacrifice his parents.
Tom was driving them all north, into the Highlands of Scotland. Four hours had passed since their departure from the ferry port at Cairnryan. Now, having just left the splendour of the Cairngorms National Park behind, they had just another hour ahead of them. In all, they had been travelling for half a day, since their early morning departure from the Commune in the west of Ireland. All three were anxious to reach the Brethren before nightfall, although Tom’s anxiety was of a different sort, a more fundamental one.
They were expected around 7.00 that evening, with the Ceremony due to take place shortly afterwards.
Tom was tired. He had been driving since 4am, except for a period of rest during the two-hour crossing of the Irish Sea. And even that brief time had been taken up with prayer. The car was an old Toyota which belonged to the Brethren, provided for them by Brother Fintan for this trip. Despite being a car enthusiast since childhood, Tom had never driven such a long distance before. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror showed him that his parents were tired as well. They would be drained when they arrived at the retreat.
He was also hungry. They had eaten a small breakfast before leaving the Commune, and an even smaller meal in the ferry port at Larne, before they departed on their sea trip. He assumed that his parents, sitting in the back seat, must be hungry as well, but they, of course, would never reveal something like that to him.
Besides, they were both otherwise occupied. His mother, Annie, mumbled continually throughout the journey, as she had been doing with increasing frequency in recent months. The tumour on her bowel was bad enough, but the constant pain was now accompanied by a new illness – dementia. The sad, moaning sound of her voice was interrupted only by an occasional cry.
“Where's Sarah? I want Sarah!” she shouted several times.
Her husband, Brendan, sitting close beside her, had spent much of the journey trying to keep her relaxed. He was now reassuring her that her sister Sarah – dead for eighteen years – was not here, but that she was happy. She was with God.
And soon, they would both be joining her there, in Paradise.
At other times, Annie would complain about how cold the ice was under her feet, even though it was just coming into summer. Her circulation had been poor for some time, but the confusion in her mind added new layers of intensity to this problem, and to everything else she felt.
“Hush, hush, Annie. We'll be there soon,” Brendan whispered, with a practiced, soothing air. In the rear-view, Tom could see his father attempting to glare at him through cataracts the off-white colour of oysters. Even without using the mirror, Tom would have assumed his father was glaring anyway. The old man had become more austere in recent years, weighed down by his own infirmities, as well as those of his wife.
More than ever, Tom was aware of his parents’ age. They had married late in life, both having focussed on their careers until their mid-thirties. Brendan had established his own business in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown – a garage which he had run along with Lenny, a friend from his whist club – and Annie had worked as secretary to an optician. They were both already 43 when their daughter, Eileen, was born. Tom had come along three years later, when Annie and Brendan felt ready for a second child. He was now 19, and his parents would both be arriving at their seventies in just four years’ time.
Except, of course, that this wouldn’t be happening. Not after tonight.
He tried to pray silently, wishing his faith was as strong as theirs.
Continuing north-west along the A9 would eventually have brought them to Inverness but, as instructed by Brother Fintan, Tom turned off about ten miles beyond the Cairngorms, first onto a secondary road, then a tertiary one. The further they travelled, the fewer houses could be seen, either on the roadside, or in the surrounding hills. There appeared to be no people anywhere.
They were getting close to the retreat now, surely one of the most remote places Tom ever expected to visit. The final stretch of road was barely wide enough for one car. It had a strip of scrubby grass growing down the middle, like a prickly green spine. This strip was flanked on either side by compacted topsoil as grey as rats’ fur, as grey as the sky. When they were younger, Tom and his sister used to joke that roads like these were the country equivalent of dual carriageways. That was back in the days before jokes were frowned upon within the family. Back in the days when Tom still officially had a sister.
The road into the mountains snaked around a series of bends until, finally, in the near distance, Tom caught a glimpse of their destination. Set back from the road was the gable of the large house. To approach the place, he had to turn off yet again, onto an even narrower lane.
The two-storey house was of a dark stonework typical of the mid-18th century. A lighter, more metallic extension had recently been built onto the back. The extension was squat, just a single storey, but it made the structure about 30% larger. It appeared to have no windows, in contrast to the inquisitive, bulging bays on the house’s frontage. It was an incongruous addition, lacking any of the classical nobility of the house itself. Tom guessed that this metal cube was the clinic, the end-point of their journey.
Tom wondered at the motivations of the people who had originally built such a secluded home for themselves those two centuries earlier. He knew little about them, but their misanthropy was clear from the location they had chosen. Of course, he wasn’t surprised that the Brethren had opted to purchase the property once their apostles had brought the Faith to this side of the Atlantic. The Brethren of The Light of Truth – a church which had received its earliest life-blood in the bayous of Mississippi – valued secrecy highly. It had established branches in Britain and Ireland just three decades earlier, and had used political influence to keep its activities silent throughout this time. There were powerful people on both continents who had been enticed by the Faith of the Brethren, and had joined secretly, apostates from a variety of faiths.
Aside from being a retreat – a place of prayer and salvation – this isolated house provided an extra service which was little known about. What happened here was illegal, and would have horrified most people.
Tom parked in front of the house. Looking through the passenger window, he could sense, rather than see, the house's age in the swirls of its stonework. The sun would still be up for a little while yet, but this house seemed impervious to the light. It stood in its own p
erpetual autumn dusk. The upstairs curtains were closed, but there was clearly someone looking out through a gap in the curtains.
There were few trees around but, from a nearby branch, Tom could hear the contented voice of a cuckoo. From a little further away came the guttural rattling of a bird call he didn’t recognise.
“Oh, I'm stiff,” Brendan said, as he slowly heaved first one leg, then the other, onto the gravel drive. As usual, Tom had his own tussle getting out of the driver’s seat. His thighs were chunky, and his trousers were slightly too small for his waist.
Once standing, he offered to help his father, but the old man shooed him away with an impatient wave of his arm. Through the open car door, Tom could see the customary look of sadness and pain on Annie's face, as she stared at nothing. She was often lucid, but, when the dementia was bad, she looked confused, angry, suspicious of everyone she saw. From her current expression, Tom knew she was going through a lucid phase, but didn’t want to be. She’ll welcome death when it’s offered, he thought.
He went around to the other side of the car, and opened the door to help Annie out. She looked at him with rare recognition, accompanied by her usual subtle note of disappointment. She struggled out onto her feet. A moment later, they were joined by Brendan, who had carefully felt his way around from the other side. He took his wife’s frail arm, and began leading her towards the front door of the house.
Tom opened the hatchback.
“Get the bags, Thomas!” Annie ordered him, her voice sharp, as it usually was when she addressed him. Among the clutter of Annie’s mind seemed to rest the notion that this was the beginning of some family holiday, like the ones they used to take when he and Eileen were small. They had travelled as a happy little unit to Clare, to Galway, to the ring of Kerry. They had mingled with other families taking similar excursions, had made temporary friends, had played and laughed like a normal family. Tom and Eileen had been close to their parents then, as well as to each other. And then, the Brethren had come along, and their parents were guided along a new path. A few years later, Eileen was banished.
“Have you got them?” was his mother's follow-up question, forgetting that this trip required only a single medium-sized bag. Tom would be staying for just one night, and his parents needed hardly any luggage at all.
“I have them, Mother,” he told her, taking out the single case. “The bags are all here.”
“Then bring them!” Because of her faith, the only authority Annie possessed was within the family. As a woman, she was expected to defer to the men around her. She had initially resisted this aspect of the doctrine, before eventually coming to embrace it as a true zealot.
Brendan walked her to the large oak door, mindful of both their steps. From behind, Tom observed the tall, stooped frame, and the old, gnarled hand – once that of a talented mechanic – cradling the back of the small woman, who resembled an injured bird. Conscious of his father's Taurean stubbornness, Tom had chosen to hold back, leaving the old man to take charge.
Before Brendan had even touched the heavy knocker, Tom could hear a sound from behind the door, of metal scraping against metal. The door swung open, the creak of its hinges only partially muffled by an indifferent oiling.
“You are welcome!” said the man who stood in the entrance, his accent clearly American, oozing from him like that of a salesman. “May the Light of Truth be with you!”
As the head of the family, Brendan extended his hand, saying, “And also with you! And may the Light always shine in your home, and in your heart.”
“I am Brother Marcus – or Doctor Foley, as was. I administer the clinic here.” The man’s smile looked warm, but practiced. He was small, thin, and worryingly pale. His forehead seemed too large for his face. His shiny black hair was perfectly sleeked to his head, the parting on the right-hand side immaculate. He could have been aged anywhere between forty and sixty.
Tom knew that, through his cataracts, Brendan would have been just capable of making out the man’s strange appearance. The old man turned, and proudly introduced Annie, before mumbling Tom’s name, throwing a quick hand gesture back towards him.
Tom stepped briefly to his father's side to shake the pale man's hand. That duty done, he stepped back behind his parents.
Brother Marcus directed them inside. The house smelled of old, hidden dust, and seemed to exist in a different world from the summer day outside. The colour brown was prevalent all around them.
They were standing in a dim vestibule, at the foot of a high, wide, wooden staircase, with hefty newel posts. There were four paintings on the walls. The faces within the frames were ancient, solemn, and unhappy.
“The house is old,” Marcus told them, as if conscious of Tom’s thoughts. “But we decided to leave it the way it was when we found it. There is no shame in even a house becoming aged.”
“And vanity is a sin,” said Annie.
“My next words exactly, Sister,” replied Marcus, with a little skip in his voice. The salesman again!
“Will you be the one helping us later, Brother Marcus?” Annie asked. She had briefly hesitated before she said “helping”, as if scrabbling for the word which contained the most hope.
“I will indeed be delivering you up,” was Marcus’s reply, his voice soothing, as if offering a celestial gift.
“Then God bless you!” said Annie, closing her eyes in rapture.
“God bless you!” said Brendan.
“God bless you!” added Tom, automatically.
To his surprise, a section of the wall suddenly opened and, from what appeared like a secret panel in the woodwork, a robust woman emerged. Her lips were pursed, forcing her tight smile upwards, creating a bulge of skin under her nose. She stepped forward, her right arm extended, willing to shake any hand that was offered.
“I’m Sister Ruby,” she said. “I’ll be assisting Brother Marcus later.” Like her colleague, there was a hint of American in her accent, this one more Southern.
Marcus introduced Brendan and Annie, leaving Tom till last.
Ruby gave each of them a curt, but respectful, handshake. With that, she abruptly turned and disappeared back into the wall, the panel whispering shut behind her. She had been present for all of thirty seconds.
Marcus smiled. “Sister Ruby is, of course, quite busy, as I’m sure you can appreciate. A fine, fine surgeon, though! Later on, you will be meeting our two nurses, Sister Olive and Brother Carlos.”
Marcus turned and led them towards another oak door to the right of the staircase, this one almost as heavy as the one in front. He opened the door, and they all stepped inside.
“This is the Preparation Room,” he told them, sweeping his hand majestically around the little space, as if it were the anteroom to Heaven. It consisted of twin beds, a small chest of drawers, and four chairs.
“We will begin the Ceremony a little after dark. I’m sure that Brother Fintan will have explained this to you already, but we feel it is always better to complete the offering as quickly as possible after our guests’ arrival. Lucifer will always seek to plant doubt in our hearts, and cause us to delay our best decisions. If we delay, we falter. And if we falter, we endanger our souls.”
“And then we are lost,” said Brendan. “Of course we understand, Brother Marcus. Don't we, Annie?”
The old woman nodded decisively. There was no sense of delay or faltering coming from her. Following an initial period of uncertainty, she had become the one in the family with the strongest faith. It had been her decision to banish Eileen, subject, of course, to her husband’s approval.
“Good!” continued Brother Marcus. “We will not offer you any food – for obvious reasons – but we have provided you with water, for drinking and for washing. You may visit any part of the house you choose, except for the clinic. We are, of course, making our final preparations there. I recommend, however, that you both remain here in this room, so that you may pray together. I shall come fetch you in about an hour.”
An hour! The reality of it suddenly struck Tom. His breath caught, creating an audible gasp, like the beginning of a sob. The other three looked at him, noticing his presence for the first time since entering the room.
“And you, Thomas, will come with me, please,” Marcus smiled. He gave Annie and Brendan another blessing, then placed his hand on Tom’s shoulder. He directed him out into the hall, and gently closed the door behind them.
“I'll show you to your quarters,” he said.
“Already?” Tom replied. “I thought I would stay here with them.”
As Marcus led them away from the door, he shook his head and tutted, as if speaking to a child. “They have many preparations to make, Brother Thomas. They must help each other ready their souls. You do remember that they are embarking on a remarkable journey tonight?”
The thought occurred to Tom that the people here might have other reasons to keep him separated from his parents. Perhaps they perceived the struggle he was having with his own faith, and how he might represent some sort of threat to the sanctity of tonight’s ritual. Perhaps Marcus had been referring to him when he alluded to Lucifer and his interferences. Tom almost laughed aloud at the notion of his parents paying any attention if he did try to dissuade them from going ahead with their plan.
At the foot of the staircase, Marcus continued, “Besides, Brother Thomas, you need to prepare yourself as well. Your role tonight is of the greatest importance.”
With his hand still on Tom’s shoulder, Marcus and he climbed the stairs. A door on the top landing opened onto a room which was almost identical in size and shape to the Preparation Room directly below. The only real difference was the wardrobe in the corner. Naturally, thought Tom, the people who sleep in this room always stay longer than those downstairs.
Through the partly-open window wafted up the aroma of something cooking, perhaps dinner for the house’s regular inhabitants. Strength for the difficult task ahead. Reminded of his hunger, Tom wanted to ask Marcus if he could please have a sandwich. He knew, however, that this request would be refused so close to the Ceremony.