by John Moralee
“Yeah, he does look too young,” he said to Saffron. “He could have had plastic surgery, I suppose. You know – because they’re in hiding.”
“Doubt it,” she said. “Would you choose that face?”
He almost laughed out loud. But he saw his friend looked scared. She was joking to hide her fear.
“Ryan, I don’t want to be brainwashed. My brain is what makes me ‘me’.”
“He won’t brainwash us.” He reached across and took her good hand in his. “I’m sure Mira can persuade him to let us go. She’s on our side.”
Ravencroft finished his drink with a gasp, then set down the empty glass on the mantelpiece underneath a mirror. He looked in the mirror and adjusted his tie before turning around to look at them, his cold eyes flicking from one face to another.
If looks could kill, Ryan thought, I would be six-feet-under eating a soil sandwich.
“Well, this is a serious ethical dilemma you’ve created ...”
The mirror was slightly tilted downwards, making it possible for Ryan to see his own reflection looking back at him. His hair was sticking up at awkward angles. He thought he looked tiny sitting on the huge leather couch. Ryan hated seeing himself as Ravencroft would see him, an annoying brat who’d broken into his home. With every irritating creak of the leather, Ryan felt as though he was giving Ravencroft another reason for brainwashing them both.
Saffron squeezed his hand tighter. Ryan felt a little embarrassed about the way he looked, holding her hand. For some stupid reason, he didn’t want Mira to think Saffron was his girlfriend. He wanted to explain they were friends, nothing more.
Ravencroft had taken away his bag of tools. He was shaking his head now, inspecting the contents. “I see you came prepared to break into Fort Knox.”
“I’m sorry about the damage to your door,” Ryan said, for the seventh or eighth time. “Like I said, I’ll pay for it.”
“That is irrelevant,” Ravencroft said. “The only issue of important is how I am going to proceed. My granddaughter has convinced me killing you is not an option. Even if I could do it, it would not solve anything at this stage. Your deaths would be noticed, bringing media attention to Hobley. Attention I wish to avoid. No, I can’t kill you ... and yet I can’t let you go. What am I to do with you?”
It was a rhetorical question he didn’t expect them to answer, but Ryan thought he would, anyway. They had nothing to lose – except their memories.
“You could trust us,” he said. “We won’t tell anyone.”
“That’s what you say now - after I caught you. I don’t have any guarantee you won’t run to the police the second you’re out of the door.”
“They wouldn’t do that,” Mira said. “They only meant good.”
She clearly wanted her grandfather to like them, but his face and body language were stoically unreadable. His sword had been sheathed, but it was resting against the mantelpiece, where he had put their phones so they couldn’t use them to call anyone.
“Brainwashing is wrong, grandfather. Besides, if you did brainwash them now, you’d have to get rid of three whole days of memories. Three days! Other people would definitely notice that. We have no choice. We must tell them everything so they can understand the dangers.”
Ryan was glad she had used his word “brainwashing” and not the cosy word “conditioning”, which made it sound like something harmless you did to improve your hair.
Ravencroft sighed. “You’re right, my dear. Conditioning them now would be pointless. If they both suddenly forgot the last three days, their families and friends would be alarmed. Then they’d probably be sent to see doctors for a thorough neurological examination. Doctors keep records, which are often analysed by The Brotherhood. Two incidences of amnesia in one area would appear highly suspicious. That kind of attention would be bad for us.”
“And for them,” Mira pointed out.
“Yes,” Ravencroft agreed. “And for them.”
He walked towards a chair and sat down wearily. “In a way this situation developed as a result of my own ineptitude. I could have been friendlier when I first returned your ball, Ryan. My efforts to frighten you away merely made you suspicious – the exact opposite of my intent. You would not have done the things you did if I had not behaved foolishly, such as saying my real name to you. That was another mistake I made. Unfortunately, I’ve never been a good liar. I couldn’t think of a false name on the spot. My real name slipped out instead of the alias I used to purchase this house. I have been hiding from The Brotherhood for so long I have forgotten basic social skills. Ryan, I’m sorry I conditioned you and your sister. At the time, I believed it was the safest thing to do. When you left the other day I gave you instructions designed to allay your friend’s suspicions – I knew she was waiting in the car because Rachel told me under conditioning. I had hoped that you and your sister would convince Saffron that there nothing to be worried about, but I see now she is a resourceful, intelligent girl. I couldn’t fool her.”
Ravencroft addressed Saffron. “The de-programming method you used to make Ryan remember was impressive. It wasn’t actually dangerous for him to break the conditioning, though it requires a degree of mental strength that can be exhausting. I’m very sorry you had to endure that, Ryan.”
“What about my sister Rachel? Is she okay?”
“She won’t recall coming here unless she is made to remember. She is perfectly normal in other respects. You don’t have to worry about long-lasting side effects. What I did is not harmful.”
Because Ryan didn’t look convinced, he went on to explain more.
“Imagine your brain is a gigantic train network with trillions of destinations – your memories. Your conscious mind is like a train on one particular track. You can see things out of the windows, but you can’t see everything all at once. You need to move to another part of the network each time you want to see something else. You can normally do that at will, providing you can find the route. Your subconscious mind is like the controller of the network, flipping switches here and there, changing the places you can go. Now imagine I take control over the network. I can flick switches to change the network so parts are unreachable. They still exist, but unless someone flicks the right switch, the train can’t get there. I flicked some switches in your mind to make you forget all about me. What your friend did was the equivalent of stopping the train at a junction until the driver got out and flicked the switch manually. The effort made you sick, for which I apologise.”
“Hmmm,” Ryan said. “I think I understand that. Sort of.”
Saffron asked him how he could control people with a touch. “Is it magic?”
“Magic?” Ravencroft laughed without humour. “No, it’s not magic. There is no such thing as magic. It’s a gift and a curse of biology.”
“Grandfather,” Mira said, “please tell them the whole story.”
“Very well – the whole story. It will probably take a couple of hours. You are free to go now – or you can stay and hear it. It’s your choice.”
Ryan wanted to hear it.
“Saff?” he said.
Saffron hesitated, then nodded to him.
“We want to hear it,” they both said in unison.
“I shall require another drink before I begin,” Ravencroft said. There was a decanter beside his chair. He poured himself a full glass of whisky and settled back into the creaking leather upholstery. Meanwhile, Mira sat down in another chair, curling her feet under her. She smiled reassuringly at Ryan and Saffron. Her grandfather began his story by telling them he was the same Lucas Ravencroft they had read about, the man born in 1805, over two hundred years ago.
“My lifelong obsession with the occult started when I was about two years older than you are now, when I saw something incredible that changed my life forever ...”
Chapter Fourteen:
Lucas Ravencroft’s Tale
Part One
I was born in London, the heart and soul of the
British Empire, but I lived most of my childhood and teenage years thousands of miles away, in India, which was one of our colonies. The British Empire had recently taken over the country with the help of a large army. Sir Henry Ravencroft, my father, governed a province twice the size of England.
India wasn’t like dreary, wet England.
We lived in a colonial mansion surrounded by beautiful English gardens, while just a few miles beyond the walls of our home the natives lived in extreme poverty.
I had an enormously privileged life because I had servants to do all of the hard work, the boring things. In the mornings servants brought me breakfast in bed, ran hot baths for me, put out my clothes, dressed me and loyally called me master as though happy to serve me. I spent my days learning how to be an English gentleman – riding horses, reading classical literature, playing cricket, fencing and shooting. I enjoyed my free time playing games with the other English children and riding my horse along the bridle paths that took us as far as the edge of the estate. Across the road, under the supervision of armed English soldiers, Indian boys and men worked hard on the cotton plantations. We used to laugh at them as we rode by the fields on our horses, feeling superior because we didn’t have to work.
I should have been very happy, but the one thing I didn’t have was the most important, the love of my parents. They were both cold, distant people, incapable of showing affection. My mother had given my father eight children in eleven years of marriage, but we rarely saw her, except at mealtimes, when the whole family dined together in an opulent dining room. My father sat at one end of a thirty-five feet long table, my mother at the other, the two of them barely speaking to each other unless it was to pass the salt. She had only married him for his position in society, a fact he certainly knew but didn’t care about. He married her because she was extremely beautiful and would therefore provide him with strong, handsome sons and beautiful daughters. Neither spent more than a few hours in any week acting like parents. He was too busy ruling over the natives. She was too busy organising lunches and dances to impress the wives of other important men.
My siblings and I were brought up by a stern governess, Mrs Slade, a widow with no children of her own. She was a staunch Christian who read the Bible to us day and night. I loathed her strict teaching methods, but I liked where she taught them on hot days – in a gazebo in the gardens, where the lush view was always a treat.
Like most Englishmen, my father loved his gardens. They were his pride and joy. Sometimes, I envied the Indians he’d hired as gardeners because he paid them more attention than his own children. They had easier jobs than the cotton pickers ... but he used to whip them for the slightest transgression of his strict rules.
I’m ashamed to say I grew up thinking whipping the servants was perfectly normal. I had no idea it was wrong because my father told me he had to whip them to make them respect him. As a child, I didn’t know my father used to treat them badly because he believed they all hated him and would revolt if they did not fear him. Like him, I treated the Indians like inferiors because that was how I saw my father behave. Each time he saw me act like him, bullying the servants, I saw the approval in his eyes. They were the only times he smiled at me.
One of the servants was a Sikh boy about my own age. He worked in the kitchens and served our dinners. I didn’t know his name because I had never asked it. I didn’t care. He was just one of the so-called ‘Natives’ with a capital “N”. I was a spoiled, obnoxious child, like my father in too many ways. I had a cruel, bullying streak, which one day, when I was about ten years old, made me to do something I’ve regretted for the rest of my life.
That particular evening the boy was serving the first course of soup when I thought it would be hilariously funny if I put out my foot as he went past me. Of course, he tripped and spilled soup all over the floor. I chuckled to myself when my father ordered the boy to clean up the mess. I didn’t tell him it had been my fault. I just smiled slyly, hugely pleased by my joke.
I thought nothing more of the incident for a week. I didn’t even wonder why the boy did not serve our dinners any more. I assumed he had been assigned other work in the kitchens.
I was wrong.
One swelteringly hot afternoon, I was relaxing in the cool shade of the gazebo with a refreshing glass of lemonade when I saw the boy again.
He was trimming the hedges with a pair of shears, working hard in the blazing sun. Sweat was gleaming on his bare back, where I saw six long, ugly pink lines, scars that were healing slowly, scars that would be permanent, scars I had given him by my cruelty and cowardice. He had been whipped because of my actions.
For the first time, I hated myself for being like my father. I suddenly realised what a monster I was turning into. Like father, like son.
The boy looked exhausted and ready to faint. Under my father’s rules, the gardeners were only allowed breaks for water and a short rest out of the sun every four hours. It was much tougher work than the kitchens. The workers often fainted due to the heat – for which they were punished with no pay for the hours they were not working. They worked for twelve hours every day, cutting hedges, digging soil, hoeing, scything weeds and mowing acres of lawn with heavy machines. And now the boy was one of them. All because of me.
Nothing could make amends, I knew, but I went over to him with a pitcher of lemonade. I apologised and offered him a glass. He was afraid it was a trick – I couldn’t blame him - but I assure him I meant it. I was genuinely sorry. There was nobody else around to see him breaking the rules, so he gratefully accepted the lemonade. He gulped one glass, then another. Afterwards, he actually thanked me.
I wouldn’t have been able to forgive him if he’d caused me to be whipped, but he quickly forgave me. He told me his name was Manjit. He explained why he worked for my father. He needed the money pay for food and clothes for his younger brother and sisters. Manjit lived in the local village with his mother and sick father, who could not work. It was up to him to provide money for his family. His family needed every penny they could get.
I volunteered to cut the hedge for him while he rested, but he said no. If he were caught not working, he would be punished. I asked him if there was anything else I do for him. He told me there was something. When he’d worked in the kitchens, he had often sneaked scraps off our used plates to take home to his family so they didn’t starve. Now he couldn’t do that. If I could get him those scraps, he would be grateful.
From that day on, I always made sure I visited the kitchens before the scraps were thrown out for the dogs to eat. I collected the best meat and vegetables for Manjit to take home to his family. I also arranged for him to be switched to the stables, which was a better job. There he could look after the horses and we could spend time together, teaching other our languages and customs. Over the next couple of years, we became the best of friends, but we had to keep our friendship as a secret, because I knew my father would not approve.
I had excellent tutors for my formal education - but I probably learnt more about life from Manjit, who opened my eyes to the real world. We were like brothers when we were away from the mansion. He showed me the real India – a loud, dirty, bright, dangerous and exciting place. I loved that India more than the British India imposed by the Empire. Unknown to anyone in my family, I learnt how to speak several of the Indian languages almost as well as Manjit, who became good at speaking English.
I had my fourteenth birthday in 1819. I remember it well because Mrs Slade arranged a birthday party out on the main lawn, where my birthday cake was served on a valuable silver plate. Unfortunately, shortly after the party, Mrs Slade noticed the plate had gone missing. To find it, she had the mansion searched from top to bottom, then the grounds. The plate was eventually discovered hidden under some hay in the stables. Mrs Slade informed my father of the theft. Manjit denied stealing it, but my father didn’t believe him. He claimed he had never seen the plate before, but nobody except me believed him.
Years lat
er, Mrs Slade made a deathbed confession to me that she had been the one responsible for the crime. She had placed the plate there because some days before she had heard me talking to Manjit in his own language. She had set up Manjit as a thief because she wanted my father to fire the boy because she believed he was a bad influence on me, a Christian.
However, my father did not fire Manjit. No – it was worse. He decided the only suitable punishment was a trial and a public hanging.
I couldn’t let that happen. That night I collected supplies for a long journey and helped Manjit escape. We stole two of my father’s fastest horses and rode off before anyone realised. We rode all night across hills and valleys, only resting when were a good distance from my home. We knew my father would eventually track us down as long as we remained in his province, so we needed to keep moving once the horses had rested.
My plan was we could ride all of the way Calcutta, where we could sell the horses and buy passage on a ship to another country. We were carrying enough supplies to last several weeks, and I intended to buy food on the way with some money I’d brought. Because I would stand out in English clothes, I disguised myself as a Sikh, wrapping a turban around my head and darkening my pale white skin with wet tea leaves.
I thought my plan was perfect, but it soon went wrong. Four days after our escape, some thieves robbed us in our sleep. They stole our horses and all of our valuables, including the money I’d hidden in my boots. We were left with nothing but the clothes we were wearing.
Penniless, we sneaked aboard a steamboat travelling up the Ganges. For days and days we hid in the boiling-hot bowels of the engine room. The heat made us delirious. We were probably lucky when someone discovered us – because we would probably have died of heat exhaustion if we’d remained there much longer. We were frogmarched to the captain’s quarters, where he was having dinner with some wealthy passengers. He was furious we’d stowed away on his boat. He was going to throw us into the dirty water of the Ganges, but an American passenger shook his head.