The Cult of The Enemy: The Dark Places Trilogy

by S. G Mark

  Jack accompanied her and side by side they walked in utter silence for a number of minutes. Still reeling from his failed escape plot, Jack had little concentration for small talk. He was perfectly content to walk in tranquillity as he purveyed his next attempt.

  They seemed to be traversing into the forest now. From afar he had not been able to fully appreciate how dense it was. The stars had all but vanished beyond the woodland canopy. Only stray shards of moonlight pierced the intense dark. A gentle breeze weaved between the branches and the leaves whistled an Autumnal melody. Their feet wandered onto a decent path: he could no longer feel his ankles threatening to give way as they leapt from unsteady rocks and roots to unstable embankment edges and unexpected gradients.

  The sensation that someone was watching him was now more intense than ever. Perhaps he had seen too many horror films, or perhaps he was still as afraid of the dark as he was when he was five years old, demanding night lights and bedtime stories to distract his terrifying imagination.

  “What was your life like before you came here?” Emma asked, breaking the code of silence.

  It was a question Jack was all too eager to answer for it was at the peak of his mind. His life - his screwed up, emotionally draining life. Before this all happened, Jack’s answer would have been completely different. The first thing he would have said was how disastrous it was; how unfair it was to him and how his lying had polluted the trust the only people he cared about in the world had for him. Nearly two months on and by comparison to where he was now he considered it a luxury. At the time, he was ignorant to Alex’s involvement with The Resistance; he was not being forced to choose sides and he was not being held captive in an underground bunker against his will. There was no Enemy to fight, there was no battle to join: there was only the pieces of his life he needed to pick up and that was exactly what he planned to do when he returned home.

  “I’d like to say it was boring,” Jack eventually responded, “But unfortunately I can’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He was not overly keen to admit the truth to Emma, but given his impending plans, he relaxed his attitude. Allowing her to trust him, even a bit, may prove to be useful.

  “I made a lot of mistakes in my life. The past year they all came back to haunt me,” he explained, “Trouble is I made some more to add to the list.”

  “What sort of mistakes - big ones?”

  “About as big as you can get,” he said.

  “Like what? Did you get a girl pregnant and leave her or did you kill someone in a drunken brawl - that kind of mistake?”

  Jack laughed, “Neither, thankfully.”

  “Then what?” she said before adding, “I’m sorry, if you don’t feel comfortable about telling me, I shouldn’t persist.”

  Jack pondered his options for a moment. Presented before him was one of the few opportunities for him to casually reveal the truth without fear of the consequences. Those closest to him now knew everything he had been through; but was he ready for everyone to know? He was not sure. Repulsion was his biggest fear, even from a stranger that he was hoping never to meet again.

  “Can we talk about something else?” he said, his throat tightened by nerves.

  “Sure, sure,” Emma said, “What about this Eliza girl? What was she like?”

  “Was?” Jack snapped, insulted that Emma was referring to Eliza in the past tense.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Amazing. I mean, stubborn and demanding, but at the same time amazing,” he fondly recalled their time together.

  “How long have you guys been together?” Emma asked.

  They were contouring the hill quite gently now. Though the darkness was omnipresent, talking made Jack feel much calmer about being in it. The only sound other than their own voices was the noise their footsteps made on the soft muddy path.

  “Not long, really not long at all,” he said, reckoning the number of days since they first kissed. The day of Simon’s arrest, Irene’s death. Jack flinched with guilt: he had not thought of them at all in his long incarceration. Not once had he spared a thought for either of them - it had all been about his problems.

  “Does she know you’re here?” Emma asked delicately.

  Jack knew nothing of what Alex had told the others. Only Kyle understood the full reality of how he had come to be here.

  “No, not at all. To her, I just disappeared.”

  “Wow. Alex didn’t even let you say goodbye to her?”

  Jack laughed at the irony, “Oh that was the last thing he wanted me to do!”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, tilting her head curiously.

  Jack shook his head, unsure if he wanted to reveal such delicate information about Alex’s family.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he dismissed her question, “Just a turn of phrase.”

  “What is it between you two anyway? You never seem easy around each other?”

  At that moment something darted across their path: a long slithering black shadow that disappeared as quickly as it had arrived into view. They both stopped in their tracks, instantly grabbing on to each other’s arms.

  “It’s fine,” Emma exhaled, “Just a fox or something.”

  “Do you think there is anyone out here?”

  “Well I saw torchlight up here on the hill as we left the tunnel. I can’t tell if their likely to be hostile. It could just be a lost hillwalker.”

  “What happens if they are?”

  “Keep calm and do as I say. We shouldn’t even be talking about this anyway - remember who we are. Hillwalkers.”f

  “Right, sorry,” Jack said, annoyed that he was not allowed to know the protocol if his life were in danger.

  “So, you and Alex?” she continued her pursuit of gossip.

  “I thought we weren’t allowed to talk like this?”

  “Like normal people out for a walk?”

  “Fair enough.”

  “There’s a story there - something between you. I can’t quite grasp it. He doesn’t treat you like the others. Whenever you are in the same room he barely looks at you - rather he completely avoids you. It’s curious.”

  “Is it now?”

  “Oh come on, you have to give me more than that?”

  “Let’s just say we don’t see eye to eye,” Jack said, hoping that she would let go of her juicy bone. Luck, however, was not on his side.

  “You know him don’t you? You know him from outside here?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, Emma. Can we change the subject again?” Jack snapped. He felt she was moving too close to the truth and he did not want his heart to be exposed right now.

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” she said, and did not carry on conversation.

  They walked for a few minutes in silence, both keeping an eye on their surroundings: Emma for clues on who was out there, Jack for any possible escape route.

  On either side of the path was thick forest. He could not see any definite way through and there was no possible way of knowing how far the woods stretched into the distance or even where he might end up on the other side of it.

  Up ahead two figures, smudged into the darkness, approached. Jack gasped - fearing the worst, though what that was he had not quite articulated to himself.

  “Keep calm,” Emma whispered, “It’s most likely the others.”

  “What if it’s not?”

  “Either way, we don’t know them. Either way smile and walk on as normal.”

  The two sets of figures converged on each other. Jack’s heartbeat elevated as the distance between them shrunk until they were level. Dully, their faces were revealed in proximity - four familiar faces greeting each other as if they were passing strangers.

  “Lovely evening,” Emma said cheerfully to them.

  “Perfect for a walk before bed,” the other woman said, equally cheerful.

  They walked on as if they had never met.

  It made Jack extremely nervous to thin
k that someone might be watching them. Was there a chance that they may follow him once he made his escape? It would be difficult enough to outrun any of The Resistance, let alone someone else. Who might they even be, though? It was not set in stone that they would harm Jack - there was a chance they were on the same side? They might be the government, seeking out the terrorist’s headquarters - they may have been on their way to rescuing him anyway? It was a childish hope, a pathetic dream, but it was enough to keep his insides warm.

  “When my brother and I left to join The Resistance full time we didn’t tell anybody either. One day we both pretended we were going to work - well me to The Ration Office to claim my benefits - and we never returned. No note, nothing. Took us hours to leave without being spotted on security cameras. I’m sure we were on a few, but they would never have known where we were going. We met with Kyle at an abandoned retail carpark out of town, he drove us to another location and then someone else took us the rest of the way here - it was all very cloak and dagger.”

  “Cloak and dagger?”

  “We were blindfolded in the journey over - Resistance policy. Not even we can know where HQ is. Only Alex knows where it is, officially. We’ve all guessed, though we’re not supposed to.”

  “No, hang on a second - you don’t know where this is? None of you? But you’re here right now, don’t you recognise where you are?”

  “Have you heard my accent? I’m not exactly from around here!”

  Jack didn’t follow.

  “This isn’t England. This,” she gestured with her hands, “Isn’t even remotely England. I don’t know where, but it’s North Scotland. Really fucking North.”

  “I don’t get it - I don’t understand - you’re here? You must know where you are, how you get here? You can’t just…”

  “I told you. We’re taken to a location then we’re taking into another car, blindfolded so we can’t know where we are going. Sometimes we change two or three times, depending on where we are in the country - just so we aren’t followed and that we don’t find our bearings.”

  “Christ, so you don’t even vaguely know where you are?”

  “Even Aiden only has some idea. He grew up on the farm, but he’s never been past the nearest village.”

  “But surely he must know where in the country he is?”

  “I think you would be surprised at just how long this fight has been going on. Aiden has learnt from a very early age what he can and cannot say. As far as I know, only four people in The Resistance know where we are. That’s Alex, Kyle, Aiden and his father. That’s it. The best kept secret in the country, I reckon.”

  “But why? Why all the secrecy?”

  Emma returned him a critical look.

  “No, I mean why all the secrecy inside the organisation?”

  She took a moment to pause, “Because you never know who might be a spy, because you never know who might be weak, who might be vulnerable, who might be followed. Even if you never intended to break, these wicked people have ways of making you talk you mark my words.”

  Jack flashed back to the nights he was arrested. On both occasions it had been harrowing. If he was treated like that when innocent, what indeed would it be like if he were not?

  “The Resistance have a policy,” Emma continued, “It’s not that they aren’t trusting, it’s just that they understand that we’re all human - but that this fight we’re fighting, it can’t be at the mercy of human weakness, well no, that’s the wrong word. It can’t be at the mercy of humanity - and it’s inevitable flaws.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you get caught by the CRU tomorrow, what do you think would happen?”

  Jack guessed, but shrugged his shoulders regardless.

  “If you didn’t offer everything you knew up on a platter for them, then they’d torture you for it. They’d torture you physically, psychologically… they’d even threaten your family,” she said, “They would stop at nothing just to get a fragment of information about us. After a while a lot of fragments add up and sooner or later they have something; and then we’re vulnerable. And I’m sorry if this goes against every ideology or hope or optimism, but you would talk. We all would. Some faster than others, but we all have our breaking point.”

  “But if no one knows anything then these guys are suffering needlessly?” Jack argued. “They’re being tortured for nothing?”

  “Maybe the first few, maybe the first hundred. But if The Resistance remains out of CRU radar, then we become stronger. And the stronger we are, the quicker we’ll defeat them and then that’s it - the torture chambers demolished, the CRU abolished, the country joyous in revolution. But personally I’m glad that you’re starting to believe.”

  “Believe?” Jack said, as a bat swooped over their heads.

  “Instead of denying they were being tortured, you were concerned about their suffering,” Emma’s smile radiated in the half-light and she marched on with expedited enthusiasm.

  The whole story was engulfing him. The Resistance, the fight, the revolution he had inadvertently become a part of, it was all woven into a plot too viscous for Jack to judge at this proximity. Was it true, was any of what they said remotely fact? The questions spiralled around like a pig on a spit roast; as more questions crackled and sizzled into existence. Before Alex had taken him to here, had he ever felt oppressed? Had he felt his liberties compromised? Had he been victimised, brutalised and indoctrinated? Was what he had experienced now tainted under a new light; was he now searching for feelings that were never there? At the same time, how could he blame any of what happened on anything but himself? He had lost his job - it wasn’t taken away from him. He had lied about who he was, that’s why his Rations were removed and that’s why he needed to steal and that’s exactly why he lost his job. But the others? Simon had only eased his wife’s passing. Scar had only protected herself. Tony had disappeared into inexistence; Mary vanished in the blink of an eye - and what of his neighbours? He could barely remember their names, the Moorcrofts? Trying for a baby and arrested for Ration Fraud?

  Jack quickened his pace to catch up with Emma but something caught his eye - a slice of cloth billowing in the wind as it clung desperately to a wrinkly tree branch. There was nothing unusually odd about it, but given the circumstances as to why they were out there, it was sufficient to stop him in his tracks.

  “Emma,” he called out to her, “There’s something here.”

  She backtracked towards him. Jack stepped off the track and into a heather undergrowth. He took out his flashlight and pointed it briefly at the cloth. In the bright burst, the tartan scarf revealed itself.

  Emma gasped suddenly, “It’s The Resistance tartan!”

  Jack spun round, “What, really?”

  Emma was bent over in hysterics, “No, you daft plank!”

  “Oh come on!” Jack protested, authoritatively putting his hands on his hips whilst holding back a defiant grin, “How was I supposed to know!”

  Crumpled into a laughing heap on the floor, Emma was barely able to answer him and the grin Jack was keeping at bay, burst through and he could not stop himself. A wave of relief past through him - it was the first time he had laughed in weeks.

  “You are such an eejit,” Emma said, “What did you think we do, leave cryptic calling cards in the trees to convey secret messages?”

  “Shush!” Jack said, still embarrassed, “Anyway, who left it here?”

  Emma shrugged, “Could be anyone’s - might have been left weeks ago and just blown up there by the wind. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “Worth just having a wee wander up though?” Jack was being deliciously devious. The further into the foliage they ventured, the more easily he might slip away.

  “Aye,” Emma said, “Maybe for a bit. Can’t hurt.”

  “Aye?” Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t spend this much time up in Scotland without picking up some of the lingo.”

  “Well I suppose you’d
need to - having to try and understand what the heck Kyle says when he lets his accent slip!”

  “Tell me about it,” Emma groaned as they wandered from the path and into the depths of the forest.

  In every direction was a scene from a horror movie; an ethereal darkness surrounded them, the branches scratched at their skin like tentacles, sinisterly knotted and gnarled with age and malice. At any moment something might snatch them and carry them off into the night; every snapping twig, every rustle of leaves may lead them into treacherous ground. There was no way of knowing which direction they were going; further up they climbed over boulder and completely blind. Their only company was their heavy breathing as the ascent grew tougher and more exacerbating.

  With every step, Jack fermented his plan. Whilst Emma was suitably distracted with negotiating her way through the tall bracken and thick heather, the terrain hindered his attempts to implement his escape plan. At the back of his mind he knew he could just run off at any second, but Jack wanted everything to progress smoothly. He didn’t want to chance failure and find himself backed into a corner or traversing tricky ground.

  Escaping was not the only dream spiralling through his mind. Once he was free, though it may take a few days depending on where in the country he was, he would be home. As he walked through the woods, owls screeching overhead, he imagined running in the front door to number forty-two, bursting into the living room and heading straight for Eliza’s outstretched arms. He imagined how she would look - her hair half up, half down, no doubt in one of her short skirts and mid-argument with Maggie. Eliza would be all grown up - a graduate of high school and making her own way in the world. No longer complaining of homework, she might have joined the ranks of society and found a job; he hoped that she was not reliant on Rations alone.

  How long his dream would last was something he did not want to contemplate. In his fantasy, he could gloss over the last month, of all the knowledge he’d learned and all that he had seen of The Resistance. In reality, his dream was a fallacy; a folly of the desperate, even he was ready to admit that but that did not necessarily mean he was ready to accept it.