The Dark Light (7 page)

‘It’s not off! It’s been blessed!’

She passes it back to me. ‘Well, it hasn’t made me holy. I mean, I’m not glowing or anything, am I? Look at it! You’re pathetic – that crap’s not holy!’ She turns away from me. ‘Who are you people anyway? I want to go back. I don’t even have my stuff.’ And her voice cracks a little and she sounds as if she’s going to cry.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I pack my witness things away in the biscuit tin. She’s right, it is a bit pathetic and I am suddenly ashamed and confused.

She stands up. ‘C’mon. We should go and find that phone. We need to tell people that something’s happened.’

‘Can’t. We’ve got to wait here.’

‘Why? Because you were
told
? Don’t you have a mind of your own?’

I’m about to tell her that obedience is one of our holy responsibilities when there is a noise, at first like an animal – I think it could be Job, Micah Protheroe’s dog, whimpering – but then I realize it’s actually a child crying.

Alex jumps. ‘Did you hear that?’

I nod. I hold my breath and listen again. This time it’s louder, a kind of mewling, and there’s a rattle on the bolted door by the pantry that leads to the cellar.

My blood turns to cold ice in my veins.

‘What the hell?’

Both of us stare at the door.

‘Help,’ the small voice says.

I recognize it, but I don’t want to acknowledge that it is true.

SEVEN

REBEKAH

I draw the bolt across and open the door. Standing there, blinking into the dim light, is Paul Protheroe. His three-year-old face sooty with coal dust and streaked with tears. He looks sleepy and disorientated.

‘What happened?’ I scoop him up in my arms. ‘Where’s Peter?’

‘Down.’ He nods into the darkness behind him. ‘Oh,’ I say, trying not to sound horrified. Sometimes if the boys are naughty Mary might shut them down there, but only when there are other people around and only for a few minutes to stop them crying. Mostly she or Micah uses the rod, as it is set out in the Bible and as Mr Bevins insists, like Father did to me.

‘Shit,’ Alex says. ‘Literally.’ She points to his trousers where he has soiled himself.

‘Get him a glass of water.’ I push him towards Alex. He really does stink; I wonder how long he’s been down there.

I take the lantern and climb down the rickety stairs.

‘Peter?’ My voice is deadened by the low ceiling. I don’t understand. If everyone else has been Raptured, why did God not take the twins? Why would He leave them?

The cellar is really just a small space half the size of the kitchen, where we store the coal for the house. As it’s summer it’s nearly empty, just full of dust, except in one corner where I find Peter lying on what’s left of the coal. Like his brother he’s filthy, but he’s fast asleep. Even when I pick him up he doesn’t wake. His head lolls back over my arm and he’s freezing cold. Since I’ve been away he’s got heavier and it’s a struggle to carry him back upstairs. He is so fast asleep he doesn’t even wake when I accidentally bang his head against the door frame.

‘He fell asleep!’ I say, trying to sound bright, as if it was a regular thing. I don’t know what else to do. But Alex is sitting at the kitchen table holding Paul in her lap, looking frightened.

‘He’s completely out of it,’ Alex says. ‘Someone’s given them drugs.’

I sit down next to her and look at Paul. Now she mentions it, his eyes are dozy and unfocused, and he looks like he too might fall asleep at any minute. ‘No. They’re just tired.’

Alex shrugs, ‘I’m telling you, they’ve been drugged. One foster home I went to, the woman used to give the kids nips of Jim Beam to make them sleep.’

‘Who’s Jim Beam?’

She sucks her teeth. ‘Whiskey, bourbon,
alcohol
. Don’t you know
anything
?’

In the past I would have been proud not to know about the world; all I needed to know was about this island and of the earth. The way that seeds grow into plants, the turning of the seasons, the path to heaven clearly laid out before us, no distractions. But since I met Alex my mind is full of questions. I want to know what she knows, to see what she sees with my own eyes. She thinks I’m stupid, and more than anyone I’ve ever met I don’t want her to think that about me.

‘Whatever’s in that pan,’ Alex says, pointing at the pot on the kitchen table, ‘it doesn’t smell right to me.’

I hold Peter tight to my chest. He’s slightly smaller than his brother. They both have the same dark hair as their father and Mary’s strong features, but they are quiet, watchful boys. I shake him gently, ‘Peter? Peter? What happened?’

But he can’t answer me.

‘I
told
you,’ Alex says. ‘They’re totally out of it.’

Then a gust of wind blows through the kitchen, followed by heavy footsteps in the tack room. I think Father and Hannah must have come back, but they haven’t. The kitchen door swings open and it’s Jonathan, and he’s soaking wet, shivering like a dog, and his eyes are huge and black as marbles, like he’s just seen something he shouldn’t.

‘Light the fire, light the fire,’ he mutters, over and over. ‘I couldn’t take it any more. I couldn’t do it.’

He picks up a handful of kindling sticks, but he’s trembling so much he drops them on the floor. He hardly seems aware that we’re in the room. I lay Peter’s sleeping body on the table and pick the kindling up and lay it on the grate and set a match to it until there is a small fire. He hops from foot to foot, rubbing his arms, and trembles like a wet dog.

‘Jonathan, what’s happened?’ I say slowly. ‘Where is everyone? Why were the twins locked in the cellar?’

‘Mr Bevins has seen it! The gates of heaven! We’ve been praying for two days. He told me to watch for signs, but I was just so cold I couldn’t stay out there any more!’

I put a few lumps of coal on top of the kindling. We have to be careful not to use too much fuel. We will need all we can get our hands on in the winter. Jonathan radiates cold and wet and he smells of outdoors. Of soil and air. But more than that, he smells sharp like a spooked animal.

‘I won’t make it! What if I don’t make it?’ He babbles about heaven’s gate and auras and lights in the sky, but he’s not making any sense. Alex looks horrified. I don’t want her to see us like this; it isn’t what we’re about. This isn’t what usually happens here. I talk to him softly.
It’s OK, calm down, everything’s going to be OK
.

When Jonathan first came to the island he was still withdrawing from drugs. He would cry in the prayer services, big heavy sobs, and when he gave his testimony he could hardly speak he got so upset. He said he left home at fourteen because he was being abused, and never knew a real family until he came to live with us. He said he was so grateful to be accepted at last, that he had never felt a love so strong and true. He struggles every day and has to get extra prayers from the elders to help him with his bad thoughts. Thoughts which he says come straight from the devil, that tell him to do bad things to himself.

As the fire rises I shovel on more and more coal and he stands awkwardly in front of it, his clothes steaming in the sudden heat.

As the shaking subsides, he notices Alex.

‘Who’s that?’ he says in a loud whisper to me as if Alex can’t hear.

I put my hand on his arm and he nearly jumps clean out of his skin. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘She’s come here to live with us for a while. We’ve been away, remember?’

‘You’re her!’ he says, backing away from Alex. ‘You’re the reason we’ve been praying all week! Mr Bevins said that a visitor would come from the mainland. It’s happening . . . just like he said!’

Alex stands up, holding Paul on her hip, and backs away from him. ‘You’re nuts,’ she says.

‘Where are the others, Jonathan? Where’s Mary? Why were the twins locked in the cellar?’ I talk to him slowly. ‘What’s happened?’ But I can tell he isn’t taking anything in. He kneels in front of the fire, his hands pressed together, muttering prayers.

‘What the hell’s wrong with him?’ she hisses, sounding scared.

‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘He’s just a bit intense.’ We back away from the fire and settle back at the kitchen table, while he ignores us. I look at the pot on the table suspiciously and sniff it. It smells bitter, of mud and of something else, something chemical that I don’t recognize.

Then there is the suck of the door opening and the fire draws, logs sending out sparks. Father and Mary Protheroe come in.

Mary is tall, with a strong, serious face and red rosacea on her cheeks. This makes her look as if she’s just been scrubbed, especially when it flares, which it always seems to in the summer. Her hands are gnarly from all the work she does and the beginning of arthritis. She was already quite old when she gave birth to the twins, I don’t know how old she is exactly, but Mother told me once that she was over forty, and that was a few years before she got pregnant.

‘Where have you been?!’ I ask. ‘The twins were locked in the cellar!’

She raises her eyebrows at me as if I’m making a fuss. ‘They needed to be safe while we were gone,’ she says with a shrug, as if it doesn’t matter.

‘But . . .’

She gives me the kind of look that makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it. ‘Welcome back,’ she says tightly, as if she doesn’t really mean it. Her hair is wet and her face is raw.

‘But
why
were they in the cellar?’ I want her to explain this to Alex as much as to me.

She tuts and shakes her head, she looks at Peter, lifting his eyelids and checking his pulse. ‘They’re fine! Take them upstairs,’ she says, and then, pointing at Alex, ‘and her too. She can share your room till we sort something out.’

‘But where were you?’ I ask. ‘No one was here. We thought . . .’ but I don’t tell her, because now she’s here it sounds presumptuous.

‘Praying,’ she says curtly. ‘In fact, the others are still up there.’

‘But the chapel lights were off. And Jonathan . . .’ He’s still kneeling by the fire.

‘We were outside, up at the rock.’ She says this like a rebuke, as if she’s angry with me. Something’s been going on while we’ve been away that I don’t understand.

‘Oh.’ I look at the twins.

‘We were praying for . . .’ She nods at Alex.

‘But why didn’t anyone come? We had to unload the boat by ourselves. And why has no one harvested the crops? Where’s Mr Bevins?’

‘Because we’ve been praying for your mission. Every day.’ When she sees Jonathan she raises her eyebrows. ‘Especially
him
. You know how he takes things to heart. We’re very close now, Rebekah. There have been signs, movements, the end is in sight.’

‘Go on then, off you go. Upstairs,’ Father says. ‘Everything’s OK.’

He goes over to Jonathan and touches him on the shoulder.

‘But . . . what about Mr Bevins? What about supper?’ I ask.

‘He’s deep in prayer. You’ll see him in the morning. And you don’t need any supper after that journey! Best to let your stomach settle!’ Father says.

Mary pours us each a glass of water. ‘Take this in case you get thirsty in the night.’

They seem desperate to be rid of us.

‘But the twins . . . need changing.’

‘You can do that, can’t you?’ She sounds really irritated. ‘Just put the dirty clothes in the corner. I’ll deal with them in the morning.’ She comes over to me and smooths Peter’s hair with the flat of her palm. ‘They’re fine,’ she says, ‘just a bit dirty.’

I look at her face. Something odd has happened to the person inside her body and, although she sounds like Mary and looks like Mary, she is not being herself.

It’s hard to walk upstairs carrying Peter and a lamp and a glass of water. Halfway up I spill most of it down the stairs.

There are two small attic rooms at the top of the house, where the servants used to sleep. I sleep in one and the twins in the other. More often than not they will wake up in the night and get into bed with me.

‘I can’t believe she’d lock them down there,’ I mutter to Alex. She helps me undress them and put them in clean clothes. ‘Something weird has happened while we’ve been gone.’

‘Well,
duh
,’ she says, like I’m stupid.

I cringe. I don’t want her to judge me. ‘It’s not usually like this,
honestly
.’

But she just tuts like she doesn’t believe me.

Once we have the twins changed and tucked up under the blankets as best we can, we leave the door open between the rooms and go into my bedroom, which is cold and dingy in the weak lamplight. From the window I can just see the church if I stand on tiptoe. There are lights and people now. I can hear voices outside and see the floating orange glow of lanterns. They must have come down from the Devil’s Seat to pray in the church. I wonder what revelations Bevins has had now. I don’t know what time it is, but my stomach is grumbling. I suppose if I go to sleep now, the morning will come quicker.

Alex lies down in my bed and burrows beneath the blankets with all her clothes on. I blow out the lantern and get under the covers. Her arm presses against mine and there’s a warmth that spreads between us that makes me suddenly awake. I don’t know why, but there’s this electric tingle, like an energy between us. I can feel it all through my body. I wonder if she can feel it too.

‘In the morning,’ she says, ‘we’re going to find that satellite phone.’

‘OK.’ Although I don’t know how. Mr Bevins keeps his cabin locked, and if anyone saw us we’d be in trouble. She’ll learn soon enough that it’s hard to do anything here without being seen. And anyway, I don’t want her to leave. Maybe in the morning she’ll change her mind. I want her to stay here and love this place as much as I do. She just needs to meet Mr Bevins, then she’ll see. The wind has dropped and the rain stilled to a constant flat drip. I close my eyes and make a short silent petition to God that, whatever has happened, He will look kindly on me and take me to be with Mother in heaven, and in the meanwhile help me to be a good example to those who are not yet saved, in Jesus’s name. Amen. But all night I dream that I am locked in a cellar, running around alone in the dark in a panic because everyone has gone and I have been left behind.