The Gathering

by Isobelle Carmody

Nissa and Indian were there, but there was no sign of Seth.

  ‘It’s been like this since about five,’ Nissa said.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ I asked.

  ‘The darkness growing,’ Indian murmured. ‘Where’s Seth?’

  Nissa scowled unhappily. ‘I don’t know, but if he doesn’t come in the next few minutes we’ll have to go ahead without him.’

  ‘We don’t need him,’ Danny pointed out. ‘His bit is over. We know where we have to do the healing now. Besides, he knows where to come if he turns up late.’

  ‘Did you bring your symbol?’ Nissa asked me, the sword cradled on her knee.

  I pulled the circle out from under my shirt and she nodded approvingly.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ Danny said impatiently.

  Nissa looked up and down the dark street, but there was no sign of Seth. She shrugged. ‘Okay.’

  Retracing our steps of the night before, we crossed Cheshunt without seeing a single soul.

  ‘This is really weird,’ Indian murmured uneasily. ‘Where are all the people? He couldn’t just make them disappear. What about the other teachers?’

  None of us had an answer for him.

  By the time we reached the end of the streets, it had grown darker and a chill wind had risen. Our clothes flapped and our hair whipped back and forwards under its force. We stopped, looking across the paddock at the abattoir. Instead of appearing less fearsome in the daylight, it was oddly malevolent in the sepia-toned light, surrounded by a sea of hissing grass.

  ‘Come on,’ Nissa said resolutely, and climbed over the fence into the field.

  The rest of us followed and as we walked up the slope, the wind increased in strength until we were bent double.

  Nissa turned to say something, but the wind had grown so strong her words were whipped away. I pointed to my ears, and shook my head.

  By the time we reached the trees the wind howled around us and it was darker still; a bleary twilight. Nissa tried again to talk, but it was impossible. Danny pointed to the abattoir. She nodded and we struggled the final few metres battling the force of the unnatural wind for each step. Moving forward required such effort that there was no energy left over to be afraid. It was enough to put one foot in front of the other.

  Once we were partly sheltered from the wind by the wall, Nissa climbed up to the window, putting her coat over the sill to pad it against the glass. She climbed in carefully. The coat flapped wildly in the breeze as the rest of us followed. Above, the tin roof rattled and quivered as if it would take off.

  Once inside on the ground, we looked at one another, wild-haired and wild-eyed.

  ‘That wind.’ Even inside, Indian’s voice was barely audible above the noise outside.

  ‘It’s him,’ Danny shouted.

  ‘It’s the dark,’ Nissa corrected. ‘It knows we’re trying to get rid of it. Let’s not waste any time.’

  She held up her sword decisively and for a moment the howling winds seemed to falter. She took a deep breath. ‘I cut the sorrowing earth to let out the darkness.’

  The blade flashed in the dull light as she heaved it forward. It clove the damp ground at her feet.

  I gasped to see the tip of the blade come away stained red.

  ‘It’s from the cattle that they slaughter here,’ Danny yelled, but he looked shocked too.

  Collecting himself, he stuck the torch in the ground to free his hands, lit a match and set it to the top.

  It flared brightly, a ragged flame in the cross draught, and the orange glow lit his pale face and blond hair as he stood over it.

  ‘I burn this earth to cleanse the wound,’ he said, and bent to take up the torch.

  Outside the wind had reached a shrill crescendo and the sound of it actually hurt my ears.

  ‘The whole place could go up in this wind,’ Danny said, looking up at the rippling tin. ‘If the wind doesn’t tear it apart first.’

  ‘Finish it,’ Nissa yelled, pointing to the torch stuck in the ground.

  Again Danny bent down but at the same time, we heard the slow, deliberate sound of someone clapping.

  We all swung around.

  Mr Karle walked forward out of the shadows still clapping mockingly, his eyes as cold as a shark’s.

  ‘The game is over. Welcome to the Gathering at last.’

  31

  He wasn’t alone. The bad guys never are.

  Before we could react, the doors opened and kids poured in with the wind, sending Danny’s torch flame into a wild fluttering dance. There must have been more than a hundred, mostly from the older forms and the school patrol. They were all wearing dark clothes, and their faces were painted in garish red and black markings, a bizarre echo of Indian warpaint.

  But the chilling thing was that each of them carried some kind of weapon. An axe or a knife or a hammer. And a couple of them had guns.

  Fear evaporated when I spotted Buddha. I began to shake, not with fear, but with instant rage at the indelible memory of him smiling as he lit the match that destroyed The Tod.

  ‘I would not think of it, Nathanial,’ Mr Karle said smoothly. ‘There would be a price to pay, and as before, it would not be you who paid it, but one of your friends.’

  I glared at him with hatred, wanting more than anything in the world to smash the mocking smile from his face. Dimly, I remembered Bunny saying thinkers rarely acted, but when they were pushed to it, as Hamlet was, they were capable of dreadful carnage.

  At that second I would have given my life to give some carnage to Mr Karle and Buddha. But there was the cost. I did not think I could survive another price like the last one.

  ‘How do you like my army?’ Mr Karle enquired. He didn’t raise his voice, yet it was clearly audible above the noise of the wind and the rattling of corrugated iron.

  ‘They are about to go out and teach Willington and Ercildoune an object lesson in the need for control and order.’ He leaned closer and his lips stretched over white teeth as his smile broadened. ‘They will administer this lesson to the good citizens of those suburbs in my name.’

  ‘You won’t get away with this!’ Nissa shouted, her voice barely audible above the incredible wind. ‘No matter what you do to us, they’ll get you.’

  A wave of wind swept around us as another group of kids came in the outer door, swelling the crowd. They had lanterns and lit them, and the light played strangely over their painted faces, making them look oddly demonic. The dense, foul air seemed to slide against my skin with a greasy intimacy, like some kind of hellish cat wanting to be petted.

  A boy came over and said something into Buddha’s ear, then the three of them went out.

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ Danny demanded.

  Mr Karle’s brows lifted playfully. ‘Do? I will do nothing to you. I will leave you to the authorities. They are the proper agency to deal with delinquents. I daresay you will be put into reform schools or, perhaps in your case, some other institution for disturbed children.’

  ‘We’ll tell them,’ Indian said. ‘We’ll tell them you’re behind the gangs.’

  ‘And you really imagine they would take your word against mine?’ He laughed. ‘I think you underestimate me. And you certainly overestimate yourself.’

  ‘I couldn’t go low enough to underestimate you,’ Nissa said scathingly.

  He only smiled. ‘You misunderstand the nature of this society. The strong are believed because they can defend their truth.’

  ‘Truth doesn’t need defending.’

  ‘You are wrong, girl. If you spoke against me, I would defend myself and I would be believed because I am a reputable figure and an adult, and after this day, you will be amazed at how persuasive I shall be.’

  ‘Only here,’ Nissa said bitterly. ‘They’d only believe you in Cheshunt because the whole place is poisoned with evil.’

  Mr Karle laughed. ‘Oh, my dear child. Wrong again and again. With as many witnesses as I will produce, I should be believed anywhere
. And the same voices that will defend me, will bear witness against you.’

  Nissa laughed at him with fearless scorn, but he was unmoved. ‘I have all the time in the world to conquer. But your time is very limited indeed. Your interference sets a bad example. You must learn to obey your betters.’

  ‘We’ll never do what you say,’ Danny yelled defiantly. ‘Not even if you torture us.’

  Mr Karle chuckled. ‘Torture? Where do you get such foolish, melodramatic notions, boy? I think you must truly have damaged your brain in that field. The dog must have bitten into it.’

  His eyes flicked sideways at Indian. ‘Or perhaps he simply hit his head and damaged it. What do you think, my stolid friend? You would know, wouldn’t you. You would recognise the signs of concussive brain damage.’

  Indian said nothing.

  ‘You bastard,’ I said.

  Mr Karle turned his pale green eyes to me. ‘Nathanial! My poor boy. Such a violent temper. Just what your mother fears most. How it distresses her to know her only begotten son is going the way of the father. So terribly sad. So ironic.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  His brows lifted in mock horror. ‘Oh dear. She hasn’t told you yet? Tsk, tsk. How remiss of her. How cowardly. But then, life has made her a coward. She became a coward to survive.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him!’ Nissa shouted.

  Her voice sounded distant, flat. Bile rose in my throat and I thought I might vomit at a sudden vision of my mother crying, blood leaking out the edge of her lips.

  ‘Are you beginning to understand? Do you see yet?’ Mr Karle asked eagerly.

  Nissa kicked me hard in the ankle. ‘Nathanial, don’t look at him. Don’t listen. He’s trying to get inside your head. He’s trying to poison you.’

  ‘Not at all, my dear girl. Nathanial does not need me to poison him. He carries his own poisons; he was born with the seeds of violence and murder.’

  I was dizzy. Disorientated. I felt that I had lost grip on the world and it was sliding away from me, out of my reach.

  ‘Think, Nathanial,’ the Kraken invited. ‘Think hard enough and you will break through the walls your mind has erected. Think of the zoo …’

  Obediently my mind threw up a picture of the small monkey lying passively while the gorilla punched and kicked it. I heard my mother murmur, ‘It’s too frightened to run.’

  ‘Leave him alone, you bastard!’ Nissa shouted.

  Mr Karle’s smile only deepened. ‘My, My. What a crude little girl you are, Nissa. How unfeminine and unattractive you are. How rough. No one could ever love such a creature except out of pity.’

  The stricken look on her face was like a bucket of cold water and abruptly the world stopped shifting under my feet. ‘That’s a lie,’ I said, but the wind ate my words.

  ‘Imagine how surprised I was when my students told me there was no Nissa Jerome at your address,’ Mr Karle was saying to her. ‘And where do you live, I wonder? Where is your burrow, little rabbit? Where do you go after dark?’

  He looked around at the four of us. ‘Do you see now? No one would ever believe your word against mine. To begin with, you are not children of good character. But more importantly, I am an adult and you are children. And children should be seen and not heard.’

  I jumped and he saw it. ‘Does that strike a chord, Nathanial? Does it ring a bell?’

  I was shaken at his use of the words from my dream. What did it mean? Could he look into my sleep?

  Nissa tried to kick out at me again, but the boy behind her wrenched her viciously sideways.

  ‘Such bad manners, Nissa,’ Mr Karle smiled. ‘Let him have his memories in peace.’ He looked at me. ‘Let them come. They will, Nathanial, if you let them. They want to come.’

  And as if called up by the Kraken, I did remember.

  As if in a dream, I saw it all.

  I was very young and going to the zoo for a picnic with my mother and father. The leaves were brown and yellow and my father shouted at the ticket lady for something. I was too excited by the sound and smell of animals flowing out to care and I didn’t like listening to the sound of his voice when he was angry. I had learned how to stop hearing when he shouted and my mother screamed and cried in the night.

  We went inside and my mother laid out a rug and unpacked the picnic basket. I was thirsty and my mother gave me a drink. The cup was big and it slipped out of my hand. Milk lay in pale beads on the rug like a mermaid’s necklace.

  My father’s mouth opened and closed. He reached out and slapped me hard. He had never done that before. It frightened me and I screamed. Told him he was a bad daddy. His face reddened and his eyes darkened and I screamed in terror because he was turning into a monster like in the movies. His hands reached out for me, but my mother flung herself across him and cried out to me to run.

  I ran as fast as I could into the trees. I heard a scream from my mother and then I heard footsteps and the crashing and cracking of branches. 1 was terrified because I knew he was after me. My father. The monster.

  He caught me. His fingers bit into my arms like teeth.

  ‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ he said, and his big hand closed around my neck. And squeezed.

  I blinked in horror and Mr Karle was smiling into my face. ‘You see? There is no fighting the dark. It is in all of us. All of you.’

  ‘Nat?’ Nissa called, but I couldn’t look at her.

  The Kraken grinned triumphantly, showing his teeth. They were very white. All the better to eat you with, I thought. Crazily.

  Another group of kids came in, darkly dressed and painted. The last wrestled the door shut and I suddenly remembered the cold ghost wind that had blown through the car the first day my mother and I came to Cheshunt. ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’ my grandmother would often say. Now I wondered if there were winds like that; winds that blew ill, and more than ill.

  I looked around at the others.

  They seemed to be a long way away from me. Nissa’s sword lay at her feet. No one had bothered moving it. Maybe it was true they couldn’t see the symbols. Or maybe they just didn’t care about them. Indian’s bowl lay on its side in the dirt and Danny’s torch flickered, still stuck in the ground by his side. They looked like they were posing for some sort of off-beat publicity shot for the war at the end of the world. They looked like the losers.

  As I watched the torch drooped slowly sideways, the flaming end coming to rest on a timber roof support. Flames licked up along the support beam.

  By now the place was packed and Mr Karle turned to address them. ‘Let the Gathering come to order.’

  Instantly they fell silent. The wind outside shrieked and wailed, but Mr Karle’s voice rose above it.

  ‘We have made Cheshunt into a place to be proud of. Here, there is control and order. There is unity and obedience,’ Mr Karle said in an exalted voice. Then his expression became sombre. ‘But the outside world refuses to understand. They are constantly bleating about human rights and freedom of choice while chaos reigns. And so, we have a mission. Our mission is to save them and teach them the way.’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the crowd. They were starting to come to life. The Kraken was pouring energy into them.

  ‘We must allow them to see where the road will lead. We must demonstrate to them in clear lessons what will become of them if they do not learn. We must teach them. You must teach them, for shall not the young teach their elders?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Yesss,’ the Kraken said. ‘Yes. Tonight you will show them the error of their ways. You will teach them with pain and sorrow and suffering and they will never forget, because that is the best way.’

  ‘Yes!’ Louder still.

  ‘You are my instruments,’ he cried, lifting his hands.

  His audience roared in unison.

  Nissa drew herself up, gazing around with contempt. ‘I’m not afraid of you. Of any of you.’

  ‘N
o,’ Mr Karle sneered. ‘You are afraid of yourself. But you will be afraid of me, you can be sure of that.’

  ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ Nissa cried, ignoring him. ‘You don’t have to do this. You can stop right now and go home. If you do that, there’s nothing he can do. Alone he’s just one man! You make him powerful by doing what he tells you. You can take his power away.’

  There was a stillness among those arrayed around us as if for a moment they were really listening.

  Then the Kraken stepped forward and slapped her across the face. A trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of her mouth, but her smile didn’t falter.

  ‘You won’t win.’

  The flash of anger in his eyes penetrated the strange, distant calm that had enveloped me, because if he was so sure of himself, why would he become angry?

  ‘I have won, or are you so stupid you fail to perceive it?’

  The flame from the torch had begun to lick along the beam and up towards the roof, but I couldn’t cry out or even whisper a warning to the others. My mind was filled up with the realisation that my father had tried to kill me, had beaten up my mother. I kept hearing the Kraken saying: there’s no fighting the dark. It’s in all of us.

  The Kraken leaned over to Nissa. ‘You don’t see, do you? You still have hope. How touching.’ He smiled, a bright corrupt glee in his eyes. ‘And why do you hope? What possible reason could you have for hope? Could it be that you have something hidden from me? Some resource?’

  Nissa said nothing.

  The Kraken nodded a curt signal to Buddha, who flung the door open again. The black death wind swirled around us, bitter cold.

  As if their entrance had been timed to have the most impact, Seth Paul’s father entered, and behind him, Seth.

  Nissa gave an anguished cry. ‘Oh God! They’ve got him too.’

  But Mr Karle gave Nissa a radiant smile. ‘Got him? But you misunderstand, Nissa. I didn’t get Seth. He came to us.’

  ‘You filthy liar,’ she snarled.

  He laughed. ‘Do you really think that, Nissa? Do you imagine his love for you would make him a hero? Do you imagine anyone of worth could love you?’