Carol tightens her grip around the top of my arms, squeezing me back into the present. I can’t keep this all locked up, I can’t carry on knowing what I know while leaving them all in the dark.
I take a deep breath. “I saw—”
Suddenly, the door of the dorm bursts open and my voice abruptly stops, my eyes staring over Carol’s shoulder towards Madam Katelyn.
“Urgent assembly,” she hisses. “Now.”
The dorm rushes to life as the women and girls hoist themselves from their beds—I drag my feet forwards, to stand in front of Madam Katelyn as everyone forms a line behind me. The shock is still imprinted into my face and I don’t think it will ever go away. I can’t hide it, I can’t run from it, I can’t change it. I’m scared.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
+ + +
As always, our group is the last to enter the ancient chapel. I don’t look around like I usually do, I don’t look up to Elijah, even though I can feel his eyes on me. I stand still, almost holding my breath as I watch the stage with my tongue clicking against my teeth. The silence is disrupted by the tapping of boots walking across it and then the tapping stops as Katherine stands proudly in the centre with her arms behind her back. Beside her is Edward, he straightens, observing the groups with sharpness.
“Hello, Cross Academy,” Katherine says. Her voice is deep and low, like her husband’s, if it wasn’t for her long hair and breasts, I wouldn’t even notice the difference. She gently shrugs and gives out a small smile to herself. “I’m back.”
The groups remain silent, showing no reaction, not even A. If anything, they seem terrified of her. Katherine doesn’t seem bothered that there is no praise for her return, but Edward does. He flinches slightly at their silence, his eyes narrowing by the lack of respect.
“Pastor will not be attending tonight’s gathering,” she says. “As he has important business to attend to. I have been informed that we have some new members amongst you.”
Her eyes find me and I swallow down the anxiety of having her look at me, of having her observe me like a lab rat. She flicks her eyes across to the men and then back to the women, before glancing up to the circle of leaders above us.
“Things are going to be changing around here,” she continues and her voice raises. “New rules are going to be introduced to ensure the utmost accuracy in progress. Rule one, anyone caught speaking to each other, even if they are from the same group, will be punished severely. Rule two, any member that has not finished their work by sundown will be ordered to continue it until it is. If you miss the assembly, then you will receive your very own personal assembly afterwards. All members are going to be given a weekly examination administrated by myself to review progress. If requirements are not met, you will be placed upon probation—with no access to food or water until they are.”
I meet Carol’s eyes for a moment, she stares back with a frown of concern. None of us know what the examinations will entail or what the requirements will be for passing it and she’s keeping those details to herself for exactly that reason.
“And that brings me to the last change,” she says. “There will be no more renouncement.”
The moment it leaves her lips, voices begin to rise. All across the chapel, from all groups and genders, the members are protesting in confusion. I’m actually surprised to see that group A are joining in, renouncement must have been something Duncan preached about constantly.
“Silence!” Katherine screams. She calls herself, looking out with kinder eyes. “I realise that the renouncements were a big part of your training. The renouncements will still continue, they just won’t be held at assemblies—they will be private. Between myself and Pastor.”
And just like that, the voices drown out, replaced with breaths of relief. I scowl at them, are they truly that stupid that they can’t see that she’s lying? There will be no renouncements because they’ve already decided that those too weak to be here will be forced to take part in their sick experiments. They must be desperate, they’ll be looking for any sign of a weak member, no matter how insignificant and that person’s life will be over.
This isn’t about God or the devil, it’s never been about that. They’re not picking out the weak members because they view them as sinned or damaged, they’re picking out members that will spill their guts to the outside if the opportunity ever came up.
They’re not religious. They’re not even members of the Church. All they are, is evil. They live for control, for dominance—but there can only be one alpha. Duncan and Katherine are both dominants, which never works well for psychopaths. Sooner or later, they’ll turn on each other, and with her return, that might be sooner than I think.
“Try to sleep well,” Katherine says. “Because examinations begin tonight.”
Chapter 38
I don’t sleep. None of us sleep. We all lay in our beds, our heads balancing against our headboards—the silence is strange. All questions of my discovery have vanished from their thoughts, there is no room for anything else at the moment, we have to prepare for an examination that we know nothing about.
Will she ask us questions? Will she delve deep into our thoughts and bring out our worst fears? Will she be able to tell the weak from the strong just by glancing upon our faces? I won’t crack under pressure, but it’s not me I’m concerned about.
It’s them.
We’re a team now, a support system. But all it takes is for one of them to crack, to inform Katherine that we’re doing secret investigations into her husband’s lifestyle. What if one of them was awake the night that I snuck out last week? What if they heard everything? What if they tell her?
I’m being paranoid, I know I am. There’s not much else to do but to be paranoid. A gentle squeak of the floorboards brings me back to reality and I glance up to see Mary wandering over to my bed while rubbing her eyes.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
Mary keeps rubbing her eyes and then she unleashes a gentle cry. “My back really hurts.”
“Let me take a look.”
She whimpers slightly as she turns her back to me and my fingers gently pull up her grey sweater. I stare at the damage on her back. The whipping has torn away most of her skin, leaving open wounds that are riddled with white, gooey mucus that begin at her tiny shoulder blades and lead all the way down to the rim of her pyjama pants. The image would probably make most people squirm or gag, but I’m not most people.
“Elizabeth,” she whispers.
“It’s infected,” I say. “You need to go to medical.”
She spins around, panting at me in fear. “No, but, I can’t, I can’t go there.”
“Calm down,” I say, meeting her panicked blue eyes. “The noises aren’t there anymore.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” I say. “This is very serious. You need antibiotics.”
“What are those?”
I smile. “Pills. Special pills. They’ll make you better.”
“What if they don’t make me better?” she says. “Will I die?”
I swallow—glaring into her small, childish eyes sends my heart racing. “That’s not going to happen,” I say. “Ever.”
“It has to happen someday,” she says. “All people die.”
“Yeah, but, they live a long life first.” I take her hand in mine, soothing it over until she has the courage to smile at me. “You’ll need to go to medical tonight and you might be there for a while, can you be brave?”
She nods. “I’ll be brave, Elizabeth.”
“Good girl. I promise I’ll get you help.”
Her head gently rests against mine in a sisterly notion and I play with her hair as her body curls up beside me.
“Do you know why Madam Joan whips you so much?” I whisper down at her.
“She says I’m going too slow,” she replies in a sweet voice. “But I go as fast as I can. Sometimes faster than Reagan, but she never gets whipped. It’s
always me.”
“She does it to the rest of us too,” I say. “Remember that.”
Mary lets out a cute sigh and then turns her head into my throat. “I know, but it doesn’t hurt you like it hurts me. I don’t want it to hurt anymore. I just want it to stop. I try to keep imagining I’m somewhere else but it’s making it worse now, not better. I just want it to stop, Elizabeth, please make it stop.”
My head clinks into hers. “You know I’d take all of your pain if I could. When I was your age, something really bad happened to me too.”
“What?”
I pull out my hand that contains the imbedded scar in my palm and she stares at it. “You see that scar? When I was eleven, I did something that my parents thought was bad and they poured a cup of boiling water over my palm. The pain was unbearable, I screamed for so long that I lost my voice. They made me cover it with a bandage, which you’re not supposed to do with a severe burn and it became infected. When they took me to the hospital, they told the doctors that I had purposely placed my hand over the flame of a candle and they were so convincing that I grew up believing it.”
“What made you remember?”
“It’s not that I forgot,” I say. “I just wanted anything else to be true, because accepting that they left their mark on me, forever engraved into my skin, was worse than the pain itself. Since coming here and seeing the leaders leave their mark on us too, it made me realise that I’m not the problem, they are. And they can leave as many marks on me as they want, you know why?”
“Why?” she breathes.
“Because their actions are their karma, and how I respond is mine. I accept the scars because I know that it means that I’m a good person, and that’s what they hate. And the more I don’t react, the more I acknowledge their evil, the more a piece of good just grows stronger within me. Do you understand?”
Her head nods gently. “They can leave scars on me too, I’ll still be me.”
“And you’ll still be kind,” I say. “Kinder than your family was, kinder than the leaders are, and you’ll see that helping someone even when you’ve been hurt over and over again, will still count for something.”
“Jesus, girl,” a voice mutters from across the dorm.
I lift my eyes to find the entire dorm staring at me. They listened to the whole conversation.
“You’re right,” Salome says, she twists pieces of her long hair over her shoulder as she sits up in her bed. “I can’t imagine what your life must have been like. To go from there to here, pain after pain. But to have an attitude like that after everything you’ve been through, I think that’s pretty incredible.”
“It wasn’t all bad,” I say. “Some of it was actually great.” I frown as I think of Nathan and sudden tears well in my eyes. “We all have a story, we all have a past, but none of our pain is greater than someone else’s.”
“Our pain is the same,” Carol whispers as she rocks back and forth on her bed. “We must remain kind. We must.”
“If you’re worried about Katherine, don’t be,” Salome assures her. “The woman’s a nutter. Compliment her and she’ll probably give you a chocolate.”
I and a few others laugh, but it sparks confusion in the face of a teenage girl named Elle laying on the bed adjacent to Salome.
“What’s chocolate?” she asks as she props herself up on her elbow.
“Very bad for you,” Salome responds with a chuckle and then her eyes land on me. “Is there any progression yet?”
I shake my head. She’s referring to the unofficial escape plan. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken about it. Honestly, since finding all of the information out today, I haven’t even thought about it. A good thing that came out of today is that I was able to get closer to Elijah again and he must trust me to open up about his secret hole in the floor. It might only be a matter of days until I can convince him to get a letter out and then I won’t need to sneak out at all.
As I glance around the dorm and watch as they engage in their own conversations with each other, it makes me believe just a little bit more that things will be okay.
Because we have each other, we have-
“Mary?” Victoria’s voice rises above everyone else’s as she stands from her bed, staring down at the still girl in my arms.
I nudge Mary, thinking she might have fallen asleep, but she doesn’t respond.
“Mary,” I say, nudging her again. “Mary, wake up.” Still no response and I become frantic. I move my body so that I can see her face, but her eyes are closed, her limbs lifeless.
“What’s wrong with her?” Salome demands, pushing her way through the crowd of bodies to get to the bed. “Mary!”
“She’s not responding,” I say, cupping her face in my hands. “Mary! Can you hear me? It’s Elizabeth, you need to wake up now.”
The bolt of the door is suddenly pushed across, but we’re all oblivious to the entrance.
“Elizabeth,” Katelyn calls aimlessly, as if she isn’t seeing what’s going on. “It’s time for your assessment.”
“Mary needs medical attention, now!” I scream. “Her back, it’s infected, she isn’t waking up, she’s—”
“Silence,” she screeches, holding out a hand to stop me from continuing. “I don’t care.”
“We care!” Salome yells, her face turning purple. “She’s going to die if she doesn’t get to medical right now!”
Katelyn holds her face high, looking over Mary’s body with observation, then her eyes flick over each of us. “If this is a trick—”
“It’s not a trick!” I cry. “She needs help, please.”
She glances over her shoulder towards the door. “Terry!” she screams. “Emergency!”
I place my hand in Mary’s as I will for her to be alright, she has to be alright, she has to be.
I hear footsteps running towards the dorm and some words are exchanged before Terry is kneeling down at the other side of the bed with her hand over Mary’s forehead, checking her temperature.
“How long has she been like this?” Terry asks me.
“I don’t know, a few minutes,” I say. “She went quiet, but, I just thought she was asleep or something. She was talking fine before.”
“Talking?” Katelyn hisses from the doorway. “You all know the rules it’s—”
“Not now,” Terry tells her as she pushes a blonde strand behind her ear. “Mary? Mary, can you hear me?” Terry pushes her ear to Mary’s chest and then straightens with a look of panic. “I need to get her to medical.” I watch as her arms go around Mary’s body and I grip my hand around her wrist. “She’ll be safe with me, Elizabeth,” she says. “Trust me.”
I pull back my hand, knowing there’s nothing I can do but trust her. She carries Mary out of the dorm and I begin to follow.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Katelyn demands as she blocks my exit. “You have an assessment to attend.”
“You can’t be serious,” I puff. “Mary needs me, she—”
“I don’t want to hear another word from you,” she sneers. “Katherine is expecting you.”
“I’ll go with her,” Salome offers.
“No one is going with her,” Katelyn shouts. “All of you get back to bed and if I hear one more word from this dorm, then I’ll get Joan to pay you a visit.”
Katelyn grabs my wrist and pulls me towards the hallway, for a woman with a damaged spine, she sure has a tight grip. She locks the door behind her and I snarl as I’m forced to follow her behind her towards the open door at the end.
“Such a nice girl, such a strong spirit, what a waste,” says a voice from behind me.
I stop walking, knowing who that voice belongs to and I turn around to meet the stone-cold eyes of Joan as she leans against a doorway in the hallway.
“I’m sure it won’t be long now,” she states as she admires her nails and grins.
I ball my hand into a fist and I take a step towards her.
“Elizabeth!” Katelyn’s s
cream halts my charge.
I shake the anger from my mind, unravelling my hand to pat against my sweatpants. Joan finds amusement in my bravery and keeps the smirk shining from her face.
“Your karma is coming,” I say, too quietly for her to hear.
I turn back around and I follow Katelyn into the silent night.
Chapter 39
Katelyn takes me to one of the leader-only cabins around the corner from the dorms, she pushes on a creaky metal door that unleashes a comfortable entrance bathed in light bulbs. I stand on the outside of the building, peering in with fear as Katelyn walks away without any further instructions.
The wind blows my hair around my face as I stare at the hallway before me. The cold sticks to my cheeks and my fingers rub against the fabric of my sweater.
I peer around the compound, seeing a group of men walk across the street carrying their familiar guns. I don’t want to step inside, I don’t want to go in there. I don’t have the energy for Katherine’s inquisition.
“Worried?”
I flinch as Elijah appears next to me at the corner of the building, his arms crossed as he reads over my eyes.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispers.
“I’m not in the mood, Elijah.”
“I’ve just heard about Mary,” he says. “She’s in good hands, she’ll be okay.”
“Will she?” I say quietly, staring at the hallway on the other side of the door. “I thought you said none of us can be helped.”
“Maybe I wasn’t sure what it really meant.”
I stare up at him and the tears in my eyes must startle him because he uncrosses his arms.
“I know it’s hard, but you have to forget about Mary while you’re in there. You need to focus. You can’t show her any sign of weakness.”
“Weakness?” I say softly, grinning at the thought. “There’s not an ounce of weakness in me. I was reminded of what I’ve overcome tonight, of what I’ve survived and I’ll never see myself as weak again.”
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