The Rapture

by Claire McGlasson

  But what if Grace was telling my secrets? Spying on me all along. I thought that Kate had told Octavia about the window but I never found out, I never asked her. Everything is unravelling: snag one stitch and the whole line is tugged out behind it.

  ‘Poor Dilys,’ Emily says. ‘She has left you.’ She pats my leg and I knock her hand away. It feels good. I have shocked her. I have shocked myself. And I want to do it again. I want to lash out. I want to hurt her. Spill her blood. Grab her hair and smash her face into the wall. But once I start I might not be able to stop.

  ‘It’s been a shock,’ she says. ‘But try to calm down. I have decided not to worry Octavia with the details. But if you leave me no choice …’

  I’m going to be sick. I run out of Grace’s room to the lavatory. There is no food to come up. No, my body is trying to rid itself of Grace, purging the memories that I have collected; the butterflies that have danced inside me since the day she first came. She has left you. With every retch I delve deeper, but I can’t let go of them. I push my fingers down my throat to try to force them out. I can feel the burn of separation as they shoot into my chest. I taste their bitterness. But I can’t let her go.

  ‘I think you’d better lie down,’ Emily says, from behind me. ‘She was a dangerous influence, Dilys.’ She takes my arm and leads me across the landing to my bedroom, and I haven’t got the energy to resist. What’s the use in fighting now?

  ‘We are better off without her,’ she says. ‘Settle down now.’ She pulls back the covers and I climb in with my clothes and shoes still on. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’ She picks up the glass by my bed and walks back to the bathroom, where I can hear her filling the glass. When she returns there is a square of linen swirling around in the water as though she has stirred it.

  ‘Here, this will make you feel better,’ she says.

  I want it to wash the taste away but it doesn’t; the water itself seems to have taken on a bitter flavour. It feels gritty in my throat as I swallow.

  ‘That’s right, drink it all up,’ Emily says. When the glass is empty she takes it from my hands and walks to the door. ‘A nice long sleep,’ she says. ‘And when you wake up let’s hope you have a little more perspective on what’s important.’

  I hear the key turn in the lock and I am trapped again. Thoughts crawling inside my head. I can feel them clamouring over each other, a mass of sticky wings and knotted legs. I wish I could open up my skull and let them out. I’d take a knife to it myself if I thought I could make them stop. Was it all a lie? Did she ever care for me at all? Perhaps she stepped into the sitting room to make her confession to Octavia. Perhaps she was whispering my secrets to Emily that day in the kitchen.

  I climb out of bed and look out of the window. I watch the washing blowing on the line.

  Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

  I thought the Lord had sent her to me. It seemed so clear. But now I can’t make sense of it. My thoughts won’t stay still, they are dancing like my nightdress in the breeze.

  I remember that night. Her scent, her heat, her breath. The taste of cotton. She wanted me to find every part of her. But there’s another memory. We can’t. We mustn’t. We are just friends, Dilys. The best of friends.

  In my dream she begged me to kiss her. In my dream she begged me to stop. And I’m too tired to know what was real and what was not. I climb back into bed and I try to stay awake. I need to think. I need to understand.

  Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

  Emily said that it was sinful and unnatural. Is that what Grace thought too? Dilys, she said, if this is how it is going to be I just don’t think I can stay here. And now she is gone. And I can’t make sense of it, I can’t stay awake. That must be why it’s called falling asleep because once it takes hold you are powerless to stop it. It’s inevitable. Irresistible. You fall when it comes to sleep. And when it comes to love.

  I can’t keep my eyes open. When they close, the lids burn red like the tip of a cigarette.

  The Truth

  I am alone. In bed. I still have my shoes on. I can feel fingers creeping across my skin. Cold like Ellen’s. And a hand around my throat again. I can’t move. Heavy with grief. Choked with sorrow.

  I don’t know how long I have been asleep for. Or what time it is. Or what day. How long has she been gone? I manage to climb out of bed, my legs are heavy, they feel as if they don’t belong to me. The door is still locked. I can’t get out. There’s no chance of leaving now. Did Grace tell them that too? Did she tell them that I planned to go with her?

  I hear footsteps on the stairs and I stumble back to bed. Whoever is on the other side of the door knocks softly, turns the key in the lock and walks in. ‘Miss, are you awake?’ Betty whispers. I close my eyes and pretend I am asleep, dead to the world. ‘Miss, you are wanted downstairs. There’s a telegram arrived. Emily says it’s important.’

  It might be news of Grace.

  ‘A telegram from who?’ I say, startling Betty by sitting up in bed.

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s caused quite a shock. I think you ought to come.’

  At least it will get me out of this room.

  ‘Betty, do you know what happened to Grace? Where she’s gone?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, Miss. I haven’t seen her. But you know about Ellen’s funeral?’

  I nod.

  ‘About time,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t natural what they did, trying to keep a body warm like that. But you stayed with her, Miss Barltrop, all them days. You looked after her. I came to see you, do you remember? I brought you food. You wouldn’t leave her side.’ She uses the corner of her apron to wipe tears from her face. ‘I know you took it hard. Are you feeling better?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure.’

  ‘It’s been a lot to take in,’ she says.

  ‘It has.’

  ‘But I shall look after you now. I’m here, I’ve moved back into my old room, so everything’s back to how it used to be.’

  How it used to be before Grace came.

  ‘Miss,’ she says. ‘They are waiting on you downstairs.’

  ‘Yes. The telegram.’

  *

  I’m only halfway down the stairs when I hear raised voices. Emily, Octavia and Peter are gathered around the table in the sitting room. Octavia has her head in her hands.

  ‘Dilys, we’ve had word,’ she says, looking up as I enter, ‘from America.’ Her voice is shaking and so are her hands.

  ‘You’d better come and sit down,’ Emily says. ‘I thought you should hear it before we make the announcement in chapel tonight; after all, you were … involved.’

  ‘Octavia?’ I say, taking a seat between her and Emily. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It has happened,’ she says. ‘The prophecy has been fulfilled.’

  She slides a piece of paper across the table to me, marked ‘Western Union’.

  EDGAR PEISSART TAKEN ILL ON CROSSING TO NEW YORK. TREATED IN HOSPITAL ON ARRIVAL. DIED TWO DAYS LATER. CAUSE UNKNOWN

  ‘But how did they know where to send it?’

  ‘Octavia paid for his ticket,’ Emily says, her voice measured and cold, ‘so they traced Her as next of kin.’

  ‘It is just as she said it would be,’ Octavia says, ‘just as the Divine Mother said: “Send the man to New York. He will die.” And now he’s … oh! We knew to expect it but to receive the news so soon …’ She puts her head into her hands again, rubs her temples and looks up. ‘It’s just such a …’

  ‘Shock,’ I say.

  Emily corrects me: ‘Relief.’

  But when I look in Octavia’s face it is something else I see. Is it fear?

  ‘It means there can be no doubt now,’ Octavia says, staring past us all to a picture of the crucifixion on the wall. ‘No doubt that the Lord has sent the Divine Mother to speak through Emily.’

  ‘It is the strangest feeling,’ Emily says, ‘when the Spir
it comes to me I know nothing of what it says. It is just like falling into a deep sleep. But this is proof.’

  ‘Anyone who questioned it can now have no doubt,’ Octavia says, still staring at the painting.

  Anyone who questioned it must now be silent. Unless they want to be next.

  ‘You said he’d get what he deserved,’ I say. Emily looks up as if she has just woken, and something passes between us, an understanding, a secret, a truth.

  ‘Yes, the Lord made sure of that,’ she says. ‘We must give reverent thanks that He rid us of the man who sinned so deeply.’ She smiles at me. Victorious. But the world is spinning again. Too quickly. Spinning with questions. What she gave him when she went to visit. What she might have put into the Water.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ I say, rising suddenly from the table. ‘I need to lie down.’

  Grace said she had found out something. I remember now. She was trying to tell me a secret. Is this why she had to go? We don’t have long, she said. Read the letter when you wake up.

  *

  I thought she might have left something under my pillow; that used to be our place, the place where we could hide the words we dared not speak out loud. But there is nothing there; nothing in the wooden box where I store the notes and letters that I have kept. I tip them out onto the bed and shuffle through. Perhaps if I read them I will remember, I’ll be able to work out what has happened; what I have done; and what I should do next.

  Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget thee.

  That was when she found out Octavia was my mother. That was when I told her there were no more secrets. Which was the biggest lie of all.

  Among the letters I find her button, the dark blue one, the one that fell off her sleeve that first day when I invited her to visit. I hold it in my hand and squeeze it until tears prick my eyes, but I can’t make them fall. I should be sorry that I ever met her but I can’t be, even now. I don’t want to let go of her, even if all I have to hold is pain.

  Pain and a small blue button.

  I will not forget you. That’s what she said. And I wish I could believe it. But now she is gone, perhaps it is easier for her to forget this place, to forget she ever met me. Just like Adrian has. His letters are here too, but there is nothing new among them, nothing that I haven’t read before. Both he and Grace tried to tell me but I wouldn’t listen.

  I didn’t hear until it was too late.

  I pull out all the clothes from my drawers, but I don’t find anything hidden there; I take my books from the shelf and shake each one by the spine; I stand among the mess strewn around my feet and search my mind but I can’t remember what she said. Read it when you wake up. Or did I imagine that too? I have to find it. I have to find something. A sign that Emily was lying; that Grace didn’t want to leave. A sign that what we shared was not all in my head.

  The poor thing found your feelings for her rather too much.

  I reach for my Bible and that’s where I find it: an envelope addressed to me. It has already been opened. Inside is a letter from my brother, Adrian.

  Edward Reeves Esq.,

  Jessop and Son,

  5c Harper Street,

  Bedford

  Dear Miss Barltrop,

  Please do not be alarmed by the headed notepaper on which this letter is typed. I write on behalf of your brother, Adrian, who is most concerned about your situation and anxious for reassurance that you are well.

  He has instructed me in my capacity as his friend rather than his solicitor. We were chums at school and have kept in touch since – Adrian sharing exotic stories of his life in India and I, in return, writing with news from here in Bedford.

  I hope you will excuse me for speaking plainly, Miss Barltrop, but he has confided his fear that your mother’s socalled religion is not just misguided, but dangerous. Though her notoriety has caused him much personal embarrassment, his only concern is for you, his dear sister, and the effect that confinement among those zealots is having upon your health.

  Though he writes to you regularly, he receives no replies, and is becoming increasingly worried about your well-being (for since your mother has cut him off he would not know if some illness or accident befell you). In desperation he asked me to work as a detective on his behalf and keep a watch on your house. I made no sighting of you for several weeks until I made what I believed to be a positive identification through the window of the empty property, Castleside. At Adrian’s request I have tried on several occasions to get word to you, by shouting messages over the garden wall. I came to 12 Albany Road and insisted on speaking to you or your mother but was prevented from doing so.

  This confirmed Adrian’s suspicion that there are those within the Panacea Society who are obstructing his attempts to contact you. It is not clear whether you are receiving his letters (or indeed whether you will be given the opportunity to read this one) but Adrian is quite determined to help you and will not give up until he has done so. Miss Barltrop, he urges you to consider going to live with him and his new wife in India. He is quite convinced that away from Bedford you would see the society’s beliefs are false.

  If you are reading this, I must impress upon you the importance of getting word to me at the above address. Any correspondence would be in the strictest confidence and you have my word that I will assist you in any way I can.

  Yours sincerely,

  Edward Reeves Esq.

  Thoughts crash over me, crests high enough to knock me off my feet. Between each one I grab a breath and then I am submerged again. The voices, the faces, they were never in my head … the man I saw at the window in Castleside … the reporter at the door. Was he a reporter at all or did Adrian send him too? … I heard him call my name, and then Emily said I should stay inside the garden … She said it wasn’t safe. But safe for who? She wanted me to think that Adrian had given up on me, but he was trying to get word to me all along.

  Tears are falling down my face. The fear that I have carried is flowing out of me, I can feel it leaving my body. I am not mad. I am not mad. I say it over and over and then laughter rises up inside me, just like it did on that first day Grace came to visit the chapel, when I felt God’s Spirit.

  I cry and I laugh and I cannot stop.

  It was Emily all along. It was Emily’s scheming that made me think I was hearing voices. It was always Emily. Keeping the truth from me. Is this what Grace found out? Why would she have left me this letter if she didn’t want to help me? Guilt, says the voice in my head, because she had been telling your secrets. Revenge, because Emily forced her to leave. Love, it says, because she loved you. Perhaps she still does.

  I tuck Adrian’s letter back into the envelope and as I lift the flap I see something written there.

  Psalms 35:17

  Luke 8:17

  Matthew 28:20

  I reach for my Bible and look them up one by one.

  Lord, how long wilt thou look on? Rescue my soul from their destructions, my darling from the lions.

  For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.

  And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

  Love, says the voice in my head. She loved you, she still does.

  I know what I have to do.

  The Exorcism

  I have to get out. ‘Let me out of this room.’ I am shouting, banging on the door but no one is coming. I open the window. Octavia! Help me! Betty calls up from the garden. I put my leg over the sill as if I am going to jump, and they come running. Emily unlocks the door and Octavia pulls me back. From the brink.

  ‘Octavia, Emily, help me. There’s a devil here. Don’t leave me locked in with him. I need to get out.’ I struggle against Emily, who is holding my arms behind my back. ‘He is there. Do you see him? Octavia, do you see?’ I stare at two flowers on the wallpaper and imagine they are eye
s. ‘He is watching me, Octavia. He has come for me.’

  She follows my gaze and looks to the same spot, cowering when she sees the face I have described.

  ‘Dear Lord,’ she says. ‘Dear Lord, deliver us.’

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror; my hair is wild, there’s a smile on my face. ‘His eyes, Octavia,’ I say. ‘They are red like the coals of Hell.’

  ‘It is horrible! Too horrible!’ she cries out.

  Emily lets go of my arms and I see her pull the Jerusalem knife from her sleeve. She must carry it with her all the time now. I suppose she never knows when she might be called to cast out a spirit.

  ‘I am the Divine Mother,’ she says, stepping forward. Not even bothering to fall into a trance. ‘In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I banish you. You have no power here. This is the Lord’s jurisdiction.’

  She cuts the air with the knife, then lifting it with both hands she runs at the wall, using the blade to slash the wallpaper. She is cutting the wrong flowers but I don’t point out her mistake.

  ‘Open the window!’ she shouts. Octavia is nearest but she struggles to lift the casement. It is stiff, and there is a knack to it.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I say.

  With growls and bared teeth Emily chases the invisible demon to the open window, then slams the sash shut. Octavia is sobbing, she is swaying on her feet. I take her arm and sit her on the bed. She looks up at me.

  ‘It is over,’ Emily says. ‘The Lord has protected us.’

  But it is not over. Not yet. I stand up again, lift the water jug from my washstand. The one decorated with lilies. And throw it at the wall.