Addicted to the Light

by S. E. Amadis

“And what if it is a scam, and the person who wrote that article is really in cahoots with him?” I whispered into the phone. “Or... or what if it isn’t his real name? He wouldn’t care about sullying his reputation if that isn’t even his name to begin with.”

  I heard Debbie guffaw with laughter.

  “You should’ve been a spy,” she roared. “I bet you wouldn’t even trust your own mother. Well...” She paused. “Actually, Lindsay doesn’t. But at any rate,” she hastened to add, “you didn’t see any articles on the internet saying anything against Mr Kovak, did you?”

  That settled me. I decided she was right and I was being paranoid. I yanked my laptop open and ordered the transfer without another thought.

  For the next two weeks the phone sat silent. Or rather, it rang frequently, but it was only exciting new clients for me. My business was starting to bloom. A year ago I would have been ecstatic. When I signed my tenth contract, I moped in the office dreaming of the party I would have thrown, if only Lindsay had been here to celebrate with me.

  But the caller was never Bogdan Kovak. I was beginning to despair, suspecting that maybe he was a scam artist after all, when he called me one Sunday out of the blue. It was the first day of snow, and I was sitting at home staring out the living-room window and missing Lindsay. If she’d been here, we would have run to the park to throw snowballs at each other.

  Calvin rubbed his hands along my back, then blew them together to warm them and pressed them against me again.

  “I could go with you,” he said. “We can still throw snowballs. And Romeo will have a wild whoop of a time.”

  He leapt up and headed for the closet, bending down to rustle in the back for his fleece lined boots.

  At that moment the phone rang. I didn’t suspect anything, because the screen merely identified the caller as Unknown.

  I glided the slider to the little green phone image.

  “Annasuya?” the cool, cucumber-modulated voice intoned. I recognized it immediately as Bogdan’s.

  “Yes!” I nearly screamed. “What’s up? Do you have Lindsay?”

  “Meet me at this address in an hour.” He recited the name of a street I had never heard of before.

  *

  The seedy abandoned warehouse down near the lake hardly inspired any confidence in me. I approached the weather-stained façade with a palpitating heart. For the first time I questioned the wisdom of meeting a man with dangerous eyes at such a deserted location.

  As I neared the rusted door it swung open, and a hefty gloved hand swung out and clasped me by the wrist.

  “Annasuya. Shhh.”

  I gasped as the hooded figure tightened its grip around me. I glanced up, and noticed the rugged face of Bogdan half-ensconced beneath the black woollen hat. He held a finger up to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he repeated. “We’re holding your friend in here. In the end the basement didn’t work out, because we discovered the owner is inordinately fond of holding almost daily gatherings with friends in her living-room. And that simply cannot be. We needed someplace isolated.”

  “But... but her friends know about it,” I sputtered. “They’re the ones who—”

  “Shhh,” Bogdan repeated, still grasping my arm firmly. “Yes, perhaps. But they don’t need to be reminded every day of what is going on right underneath their feet. And it could always happen that Lindsay’s cries might move them to the point where they, ah, no longer trust in me.”

  He folded his arm across my shoulder and pulled me towards the innards of the building. We trod down a frost-covered metal staircase, along a dimly lit, lime-green corridor with walls thick with mould and dripping with peeling paint. At last he led me to a nondescript metal door with a round window and motioned for me to have a look.

  I peered through the window. The interior was decorated in pale blue, similar to hospital wards. There was a folding cloth screen like the ones habitually found in hospitals near one end of the room. An IV drip stood in a corner, unused. The walls were bare and the only furniture was a bed draped with white sheets, where Lindsay lay asleep, and a few vinyl-covered chairs. A fluorescent light glared above the bed and an empty shelf and mini-sized television hung on the wall opposite.

  I turned to Bogdan in bewilderment.

  “What are you doing to her?” I whispered. “Does she know where she is? How did you get her out?”

  Bogdan pressed his finger against my lips.

  “I won’t reveal how we secured her. Those are professional secrets. However, to answer your other question, no, she doesn’t know where she is yet or what has happened to her. We’ve sedated her.”

  He motioned to the door.

  “We thought she would feel more reassured if she saw a familiar and friendly face next to her when she woke up. We prepared a hospital scenario because we supposed she would feel less alarmed if she awoke to find herself in hospital. She will probably still be alarmed, of course. But since she is from this world — that is, she didn’t grow up in the religious community we reclaimed her from — she also won’t find it so inconceivable to all of a sudden find herself in a hospital. Her most likely reaction is that she might think she had suffered an accident and been found by people from outside her community.”

  He shepherded me through the door and settled me onto one of the vinyl chairs. The chair legs grated harshly against the concrete floor, setting my teeth on edge. He planted his hand heavily on my shoulder and gave me an encouraging squeeze.

  “Act natural,” he advised. Then he stalked from the room.

  I reached out, hesitant, for Lindsay’s hands, and clasped them tight.

  A long time passed before I saw her eyelids flutter.

  “Lindsay,” I whispered. “Linds?”

  She turned towards me, peeled open one bleary eye and squinted at me.

  “Annie.” She breathed the word out in a low whisper. “You’re here. You came to me.”

  She smiled wanly.

  “I knew you’d end up joining us.”

  Her gaze dropped to her hands clasped in mine, and she gifted me with a faint squeeze.

  I didn’t know how to break the news to her. In the end I decided to just let her make her own deductions.

  “I didn’t join you. I came for you,” I said, pointing at the walls.

  To my relief, her gaze automatically followed the direction of my finger. Her eyes opened wider as she took in the anonymous walls, the scant hospital equipment and the mini TV. She started to thrash about in the bed, weakly.

  “What happened, Annasuya? Where am I?” Her gaze swung about wildly.

  I grasped her clenched fists with a reassuring pat.

  “Don’t worry, Linds. It’s okay.” I pressed against her shoulder. “You’re safe. You’re in good hands.” I paused as she stared at me and tilted her head questioningly. “You... you, um.”

  I glanced up, caught a glimpse of Bogdan’s face through the round window. He eked out the slightest of nods.

  “You, ah, had an accident. But you’re alright,” I put in quickly, before she could freak out.

  I grabbed her hands tightly.

  “Nothing serious happened. Just a small mishap. They only wanted to check you out. Keep you in observation for a bit.” I smiled and patted her sheets. “Make sure you’re okay, you know.”

  Lindsay shook her head vehemently.

  “Accident? How could I’ve been in an accident? I never leave the community grounds.”

  I thought quickly.

  “I’m not sure of the details,” I explained, making it up as I went along, “but I think they said something about you were taking a walk or something. The... ah... The car veered off the road...”

  Lindsay started kicking. “Oh my God, am I hurt? Do my brothers and sisters know?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Lindsay.”

  She seized my wrist. “Don’t call me Lindsay! You know my name is Tikvah now. Tik-vah!” she repeated emphatically. “If you’ve come
to join us, you must know that you’re to refer to me as Tikvah from now on.”

  She laid her head back on the pillow. Sweat beaded at her temples.

  “I’m exhausted, Annie. So happy you’ve decided to come to us. Can’t wait for your baptism. Can you tell me what new name you’ve chosen?”

  Her eyes closed. Within a minute she had drifted off again.

  I stumbled to the door and pushed my way out.

  “Now what, Bogdan?” I hissed. “She has no idea she’s out. She’ll still have a shock when she finds out.”

  Bogdan nodded and fingered his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps. But at least the second time it won’t be such a surprise for her. And her system will have had the chance to recover from this shock, and she’ll have a greater capacity for absorbing new information.”

  I waited.

  “Now what?” I repeated, when Bogdan didn’t offer any more suggestions.

  “Now? We wait. You wait.” He turned me firmly towards the door and pushed against my shoulders. “In there. You wait until she awakes again. Then I will come.”

  Lindsay slept for what seemed like hours. I texted Calvin to tell him what was happening and to ask him not to wait for me.

  “Lately you fucking do everything behind my back,” he texted in return. “I’m sure as hell not waiting up for you!”

  I sighed.

  “I knew you wouldn’t agree,” I wrote to him. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. I know you don’t understand.”

  “All you’re looking for in me is a goddamn free babysitter,” he retorted.

  I turned the phone off and chucked it into my bag.

  *

  I was starting to doze off in the only armchair in the room when a wispy blonde girl who looked barely out of her teens joined me. She was dressed in a pure white nurse’s uniform. She smiled, and I noticed that her teeth were crooked.

  “I’m Maisie,” she whispered. “Bogdan asked me to come. I’ll be helping to take care of your friend.” She motioned with her chin towards Lindsay.

  She bustled around a bit, making a lot of noise and shuffling things about from one end of the room to the other. But I noted that she didn’t actually seem to be accomplishing anything. I gazed at her in puzzlement.

  “We should act like we’re really in a hospital,” she hissed almost inaudibly. She pointed at Lindsay. “She might appear asleep, but often people are aware of sounds even when they’re out of it, and later they remember what they heard.”

  After a while Lindsay started to stir. Maisie pressed her finger against her lips and stepped towards the door.

  “I’ll be back,” she whispered. Then she let herself out.

  I turned to Lindsay, waited for her to come to. I wondered what time it could be. There were no windows or timepieces of any sort, nothing to even indicate if it was night or day. I imagined, from the amount of time it felt like I’d spent here, that it must be somewhere in the middle of the night.

  I started groping about in my handbag for my mobile to check the hour. Lindsay’s eyes drifted open. She saw me and a faint grin crossed her face.

  “Annie,” she said, her voice weak and wan. “You stayed here by my side. You’re the best friend I coulda ever wished for.” She blinked, then reached out to touch me. “You’re real, aren’t you? You’re not a hallucination?”

  I grabbed her hands tight tight.

  “Maybe I was missing you so much I started to hallucinate you,” she said. “I’m glad you’re for real.”

  She lay still for a while, just staring at me and holding my hands.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said at last. “I missed you so much. I think I missed you even more than my mother. Not that I ever missed her very much,” she added wryly.

  “If you missed me so much, why didn’t you just come and visit me?” I couldn’t help bursting out, frustrated. “You could’ve come, you know. I’ve missed you just as much as you’ve missed me.”

  Lindsay shook her head.

  “I couldn’t,” she explained. “I couldn’t leave. They said I still needed to earn their trust. That it was normal. That all new members have to go through this. You have to prove yourself. Stay there for a time, before they let you leave the grounds. Like Tikvah, my friend and roomie. She’s been there almost... oh, five or six years, maybe.”

  I gasped.

  “Five or six years? But she looks barely out of high school.”

  Lindsay grinned.

  “She’d sure be happy to hear that. But she’s not that young. She’s about in her late twenties or so, I think.” She squeezed my hand. “So they trust her fully,” she continued. “She can go anywhere she wants. They trust her to work in the restaurant. And if they need supplies from the outside world, she often gets sent.”

  She glanced at herself.

  “But I’m like a baby to them. I’m brand new. So of course they don’t trust me not to make a dash for it, if I went out. Not that I would’ve done that,” she hastened to add. “Nope. I’m happy there. I don’t want to leave.” She stared at me. “But I missed you so much. I would’ve done anything, I think, to get you to join me. Anything at all.”

  I glanced around, wondered if this would be an appropriate moment to bring up the subject.

  “Linds,” I plunged forwards, “you do remember, don’t you, what happened the last time I was there?”

  Lindsay nodded.

  “Yeah. But they just... they were just overreacting,” she put in quickly. “Even Elder Brooks apologized to me afterwards for the way they’d behaved. He himself came to me and told me they had misinterpreted things. And that’s something he never does. For anyone.”

  She swallowed.

  “They thought you were there to kidnap me and bring me back to your world. That happens all too often, to new adepts. The outside world doesn’t understand us. They think we’ve gone to hell or something. The light in the community is too blinding, too dazzling, for ordinary mortals to understand. They think it will burn us, and that they have to save us.”

  She shook her head.

  “But it isn’t true, Annie. You don’t need to save us from anything. Being there purifies us. And maybe...”

  She paused, thinking.

  “Maybe, it’s just our purity scares people, you know.”

  Chapter 29

  Maisie hustled herself in at that moment, bearing a tray with a plastic cup. She grinned at Lindsay when she saw her.

  “Well, well, well, I see our favourite patient is up and about again,” she exclaimed in cheery tones. “Someone like you definitely brightens up the ward on a gloomy, cloudy day like today.”

  Lindsay glanced around, suddenly seemed to become aware of her surroundings.

  “A cloudy day?” she cried. “How do you know it’s cloudy? There’re no windows here.”

  Maisie’s smile never left her face.

  “No. You’ve been unlucky, I’m afraid, and they gave you one of the inside rooms. Seems the exterior ones are all occupied.”

  She approached Lindsay’s bed, pulled over a functional metallic night table and laid the tray with the plastic cup on it.

  “Some freshly squeezed orange juice to start your day,” she chimed up. “Full of zesty vitamin C to whip you into shape. In a little while I’ll bring you your breakfast. And then the doc’ll make his rounds, let you know how you’re doing.”

  Lindsay glared at her.

  “The doc? I have to wait for the doctor? I want out now! My brothers and sisters must be mad with worry about me. Have you notified them?”

  Maisie arched her eyebrows at Lindsay. “Notified them? We don’t know who we’re supposed to notify. We don’t even know who you are. But you could start by telling me your name.”

  She perched on the edge of Lindsay’s bed and leaned towards my friend conspiratorially. Lindsay opened her eyes in surprise.

  “You don’t know who I am?”

  Maisie shook her head.

  “Nope. Yo
u were just brought in here, unconscious. I don’t know all the details, but seems it was a hit and run.”

  She pointed at some sort of plain wooden cabinet in a corner.

  “Your clothes are in there. You weren’t carrying any documents on you,” she explained helpfully. “But seems you’re not suffering from amnesia so we’d sure love it if you could enlighten us as to who you are, and who we should be contacting.”

  Lindsay shook her head.

  “My name’s Tikvah,” she said, then clammed her mouth tight.

  Maisie waited, but she didn’t say anything more. Maisie pulled a notepad out of her apron and jotted something in it.

  “Tikvah. Very good. And what else? There must be something else?”

  Lindsay shook her head again, still mute.

  “A surname, perhaps? You must have a surname?”

  “Just Tikvah,” Lindsay insisted. “We don’t have surnames in our community. We don’t need them. We’re very close to one another and everyone knows everyone else.”

  Maisie arched an eyebrow at Lindsay.

  “Your community? And what community is that? Do you want me to get in touch with them?”

  Lindsay pounced up all of a sudden, relief flooding over her whole face.

  “Oh, would you? Please? You wouldn’t mind getting in touch with them for me? They must be worried sick about me.”

  Maisie graced her with a puzzled look. “No, of course not. Why should I mind? It’s the usual thing to do.” She smiled brightly. “So, what are they called? Do they have a name? An address? A phone number?”

  “I belong to the Children of the Heart of Christ.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I noticed her chest swell out just a bit as she pronounced that name, her chin lift slightly with pride.

  Maisie’s expression was completely neutral as she jotted down the information Lindsay gave her.

  “I’ll take this to the doc,” she said when Lindsay finished, “and we’ll make sure to get in touch with them.” She pointed at the orange juice. “Now drink up.”

  She strode briskly from the room.

  I stroked Lindsay’s hair as she downed her orange juice. Soon after Bogdan strolled in with a casual air, his chin in his hand. He was dressed in a lab coat and bore a minuscule name plaque on his breast pocket. He carried a clipboard in his hand. He beamed at Lindsay, and his voice seemed overly optimistic as he boomed out at her.