The Dark Light

by Julia Bell

  Believe those who are seeking the truth.

  Doubt those who find it.

  André Gide

  Contents

  ONE: ALEX

  TWO: REBEKAH

  THREE: ALEX

  FOUR: REBEKAH

  FIVE: ALEX

  SIX: REBEKAH

  SEVEN: REBEKAH

  EIGHT: ALEX

  NINE: REBEKAH

  TEN: REBEKAH

  ELEVEN: ALEX

  TWELVE: REBEKAH

  THIRTEEN: REBEKAH

  FOURTEEN: ALEX

  FIFTEEN: REBEKAH

  SIXTEEN: REBEKAH

  SEVENTEEN: ALEX

  EIGHTEEN: REBEKAH

  NINETEEN: REBEKAH

  TWENTY: ALEX

  TWENTY-ONE: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-TWO: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-THREE: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-FOUR: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-FIVE: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-SIX: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-SEVEN: REBEKAH

  TWENTY-EIGHT: ALEX

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  MASSIVE

  ONE

  ALEX

  The first fire was an accident. I didn’t mean it to burn up so quick, so fast. I don’t even know why I did it. I was bored, I suppose, showing off. I set light to some chip wrappers and threw them in a pile of leaves that the caretaker had raked up next to the fence. It went up sudden and hot with a huge whoosh! that made everyone step back and nearly took Andrea Mason’s eyebrows off and then it spread to the brushwood fence of the houses that backed on to the playing field, and a plume of smoke rose like a sail above the school. I got put on report for six months after that. So when it came to the second one I knew exactly what I was doing.

  I squirted lighter fuel on to the cardboard to make it burn better, then rolled the recycling bin up to the side of the house so she would be sure to see the flames outside her window. I hoped it burned her face off.

  It had been going on for months. Dyke, lemon, lezzer. She wrote it in marker pen in the toilets. Alex Thomas is a Dyke! And, underneath, my actual phone number. Then it was big gobs of phlegm on the back of my bag, pictures on Facebook, text messages. Kaitlin Watts and her little minion Anna Evans, they’d turned me into their obsession, probably because they fancied each other really, but what could I do about that? And then one day on the bus home she grabbed my bag and spilled my stuff out over the top deck. All my school notes and books and the magazine I’d bought because it had a picture of Kristen Stewart on the cover. Look at her dyke magazine! Eugh, don’t touch it, you’ll catch something!

  I stood and watched as great tongues of flame licked up the side of the house, the paint beginning to peel, then I turned and ran.

  They picked me up in the park. We weren’t supposed to go there after dark on account of the muggers and prostitutes and homeless people. What a joke – there was never anyone there! It’s only because adults are afraid of the dark that they tell us not to walk about in it. But I wasn’t afraid of it. I’m made of the dark, me. I tattooed a moon into my thumb with a compass and Indian ink to remind myself. I smoked a cigarette and bounced my leg, so deep in thought and feeling I didn’t see them till it was too late and then there was no point in running.

  ‘Hello, Alex.’

  Dick the Pig. Or PC Richards, if you read his name badge.

  Sadsacks, the police, having to go round with their names on the whole time. Like they might get lost or something. He hated me. I mumbled something and pushed my hands into my pockets, jumping down off the bench. He had some woman PC with him too; that meant he planned on taking me down to the station.

  ‘There’s been a fire at the Meadow View B&B. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?’

  I shrugged. No point denying it – they knew that I knew that they knew it was me – but why let them have the satisfaction of hearing me admit it?

  ‘Talkative as ever, I see,’ he said.

  Most of the time I don’t see the point in talking. It’s just a load of blah blah blah about the weather or what do you want to eat for dinner or pointless things just to cover up for the fact that no one really says what they want to say or what they mean.

  ‘I’m going to have to ask you to come down the station.’

  And he put handcuffs on me, even though he knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

  There were Implications, apparently, and Consequences.

  Ron and Bridget and Sue the Social Worker and Dick the Pig all looked serious, and I sat there running my thumbnail into the groove of the wood on the tabletop until Bridget told me not to.

  ‘There is CCTV evidence,’ Sue the Social Worker said. ‘You can’t deny it, Alex.’

  The only thing I hadn’t bargained for: the camera outside the shop opposite that was pointed right at the driveway of the B&B.

  ‘Arson is a very serious offence.’

  Dick the Pig mentioned Criminal Damage and Youth Court and Young Offenders. I flinched.

  ‘Heard that, didn’t you?’

  Sue the Social Worker sighed and picked at her nails. ‘I told you, Alex. I said if you get into any more trouble it’ll be the youth courts.’

  So when Bridget laid out her solution, I didn’t argue. It made sense. Go away for a bit, over the summer, take some time out, learn some new skills, start again. Go to sixth-form college in the autumn in another town.

  ‘Of course we can help you every step of the way with the transition.’

  The transition. What she was really saying was that they wanted rid. Taking me on had been a mistake, although they were too proud to admit it. There can be no failure in the eyes of the Lord.

  ‘I think that’s a brilliant idea!’ Sue the Social Worker said in this fake enthusiastic way, as if they hadn’t already discussed this behind my back. ‘All those outdoor skills will really bring you out of yourself.’

  Bridget had sold her the idea like it was some kind of holiday camp. And I guess she didn’t really do her research; she’d been watching too much reality TV. People transformed by the wild. Turned from soft saps into rugged heroes by making campfires and climbing mountains. But New Canaan wasn’t about outdoor skills. According to the leaflet it was a Christian community, living by the precepts set down in the Bible. Even more God Squad than Ron and Bridget.

  ‘And Pastor Bevins has had great success helping people with difficult backgrounds like yours.’

  ‘What do you think, Alex?’

  I grunted. The room filled with the loud noise of everyone’s silent thoughts. Being quiet makes it easier to hear what people are thinking. You can see it on their faces. Sue the Social Worker with her irritable, professional kindness, Bridget desperate to find a solution that wouldn’t make her feel bad, Ron angry because I was costing him – he’d already offered to pay towards the repairs at Meadow View – and Dick the Pig looking smug, because he’d finally shown me who was boss.

  ‘I think you’re a very lucky girl,’ he said, ‘considering your previous. We’d be within the law to throw the book at you. But I’m inclined to be generous and I think that something like this could be exactly what you need. For someone with your background. Something to put a bit of backbone in you.’ I hated the way he tried to make himself sound magnanimous, like he was doing me a favour.

  ‘I think it would be a great solution,’ Sue the Social Worker said. I knew she’d already worked this out with Ron and Bridget anyway.

  ‘But it’s either that, or I’m going to have to suggest that Mr Davis presses charges,’ Dick the Pig went on. ‘Then it’s the youth courts.’

  The decision had already been made then, and whatever fire there was in me had burned itself out.

  ‘Whatever,’ I said, not lifting my eyes from the floor.

  TWO<
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  REBEKAH

  The rain blows in horizontal sheets under the roof of the bandstand, and against the beach a brown sea churns. The deckchair attendant has given up, tied ropes and a tarpaulin over the chairs and gone home, and only the lights on the kiosk further up still twinkle around the sign that advertises ice cream. No one has walked past in half an hour.

  Gwyllt, the locals call it, like a greeting. Wild.

  ‘Gwyllt, isn’t it? You’ll not get many coming out in this,’ an old lady says, as she hurries past us in her red coat with her small, shivery dog running on in front. She doesn’t stop to take a leaflet.

  It’s supposed to be the middle of summer but it’s been like this all week.

  Hannah rearranges all the jars of honey so the labels face outward. Some of them have got wet and the ink on the labels bleeds. Hallelujah Honey from New Canaan.

  We sell honey as a way to start a conversation, as a way to start the conversation, because what other conversation could be more important than the fate of your soul? Although not everyone sees it like this. Yesterday a man with a blotchy face and tired, angry eyes came up and shouted in my face.

  ‘You’re what’s wrong with people! You lot and your bloody magical thinking! That’s what got us into this mess in the first place!’ And he tore up the leaflet into little squares and threw them at my feet.

  I looked at him and felt sad. I could see he’d got in so deep with the devil that he could no longer hear the truth. Mr Bevins says it happens to people who follow the broad and not the narrow path, eventually their ears close up and they become deaf to the truth. I often wonder if this means a kind of special skin grows across their ears.

  A woman strides past, holding her umbrella at a right angle against the rain.

  ‘Excuse me. Can I interest you in the word of God?’ Hannah starts, stepping out of the shelter of the bandstand to hold out a leaflet, which immediately gets soggy.

  ‘In this weather?’ She raises her eyes to the sky. ‘We need more than the word of God.’ Then she stops and looks me. ‘You’re from that island, aren’t you?’ she says waving her hand in the direction of the sea and frowning. ‘I didn’t know you had children over there.’

  ‘Young or old, we are all called to be servants of God,’ Hannah says, not answering the question.

  The woman raises her eyebrows. ‘Others might call it something else. If anyone had an ounce of sense they’d be sending social services over there. We all know what goes on! That American! Everyone has heard the stories.’

  Hannah sighs. ‘Well, perhaps if you came to one of our meetings you might—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snaps. She stares at me again and tuts. Then she pushes her umbrella into the wind and hurries on her way.

  Mr Bevins has taught us what to expect. This is what happens when you are confronted with unbelievers. He says that people don’t trust him because he tells the truth. Hannah gets upset by it, but I don’t. Like he says – if people weren’t agitated by our message, then we wouldn’t be saying anything important. That’s why he chose me for Mission Week, because I am stoic, because I believe. He calls me ‘a flower of the Lord’. And he gave me a vision of a special blessing that had come to him in a dream, of a light like honey shining out of my body.

  The leaflet tells our story. On one side is Bible verses and on the other the account of how Mr Bevins was visited one night by an angel who told him that the Rapture will happen soon and Jesus will come down on a cloud of fire to bring an end to the world and condemn the earth to the Tribulations and take all the believers with Him back to heaven. And to have the best chance of being saved we have to live like it says in the Bible, disown all property and the evils of commercialism and set an example to others. And how he was led, all the way from Missouri, USA, to Wales, by the light of the Holy Spirit and a series of Miraculous Coincidences. One of these coincidences included meeting my father and mother, who had just inherited some money and were looking to buy a farm.

  A gust of wind lifts a pile of leaflets and sends them scuttling down the prom. I make to go after them, but Hannah stops me.

  ‘Leave them,’ she says. ‘You never know where God’s word will end up.’

  But I go and fetch them anyway. We mustn’t litter. Mr Bevins says that’s the reason the planet is in such a mess and the end of days is coming, because people are selfish and stupid and they’ve spoilt everything with all the pollution.

  Before we went with Mr Bevins and built the community, we lived on a smallholding where we kept chickens and pigs and had an orchard. There’s a photo of me in red wellingtons walking around a huge vegetable garden, and one that I keep in my Bible of my mother, where she’s digging in the flower bed, with her hair pushed back behind her ears. She’s looking at the camera and smiling, looking beautiful. I keep this to remind me that I’ll be meeting her in heaven soon.

  It’s such a waste of time being here. We’ve hardly sold any honey or spoken to anyone who is seriously questioning. Usually the promenade is full of holidaymakers, but in this weather they’re all sheltering in the shopping centre. Mission Week actually takes two whole weeks out of August. At this time of year everyone back home will be bringing in the harvest, cutting the barley, the oats, digging up the potatoes. Thomas and Micah counting ewes and baling the winter hay. Even in the rain there will be work to do: checking the lobster pots, changing the fuel in the smokehouse, repairing and making tools in the workshop. It’s the busiest time. I’m desperate to go back. I feel useless here when I know there are tasks that need to be done at home. So much better than sitting around being shouted at by strangers. We are learning how to survive, preparing for the Rapture. Soon this bandstand and this town and all the people in it will be consumed with the fire of the End Times, and Mr Bevins will lead us to the glory.

  ‘Only one more day, eh?’ Hannah says, as if she can read my mind.

  Hannah joined our Church when her fiancé abandoned her, the very day before her wedding. She met Mr Bevins on a Mission Week and was touched by his words of truth and fell in love with the island. In her testimonies she talks about how God led her. ‘I was lucky! If he hadn’t left me I would still be living in ignorance! I would never have been chosen!’ At her first repentance meeting she burned pictures of a man in a blue suit with oily dark hair. She said she was dedicating everything to God from now on. She even built her own cabin.

  I rub my arms against the cold. It’s our job to stay cheerful even if it’s raining set to drown us and the leaflets have all got wet.

  ‘You’ll be missing your mother,’ Hannah says, looking at me kindly.

  ‘Not really,’ I say. ‘Live for the Victory, remember?’

  I hate it when people talk about her like they’re expecting me to be sad. Sadness shows weakness. It means you don’t have enough faith. We live for the life after life. That’s what Mr Bevins says. What’s the point of being sad when we know that heaven is only just round the corner? When we spoke to him yesterday on the satellite phone he warned us about exactly this, the backsliding that comes when you are in the world of the Antichrist. I dig my nails into my palms. ‘In such a flower of the Lord, a doubt is a disappointment to him.’ Isn’t that what he said? I’ve taught myself not to be sad. I know I’ll see her in heaven really soon.

  By the time Father comes in the van I’m freezing, flapping my arms up and down to keep my blood up, and Hannah is humming hymns to keep us cheerful. The van belongs to the Church of New Canaan, who are our mainland offshoot and who host us during Mission Week. It has a painting of angels blowing trumpets on it and a verse from the Psalms, except whoever painted it ran out of space for the letters so it’s a bit messed up on one end. If you look at it from the wrong angle it reads: Praise Him with a Joyful Trump. I have pretended not to notice, because the Church collects for us and gives us donations. Clothes and canned stuff, sugar, coffee, tea. A box of shoes this year. I hope there are some my size. My boots are worn at the soles; they won�
��t last another winter.

  ‘Hello, Father.’

  Recently he seems to have got very skinny, although he’s always been thin, and sometimes his head seems too big for his body, especially as he grows his beard thick and bushy, like all the men on the island do.

  ‘I think we’ll call it a day,’ he says, lifting up one of the crates of honey.

  As he walks back to the van, three figures appear on the promenade, rounding the corner past the kiosk, walking quickly towards us against the weather. A man and a woman and a boy with curly dark hair and pale skin, with leather tied around his wrist, who kind of swaggers. As they approach he laughs and points at our van, raising his mobile phone to take a photo.

  I look at the van and cringe. I wish I could stand in front of it to stop him.

  As he gets closer I can see he has a ring in his lip. People like that give me a weird feeling. I say a quick prayer for protection and wish Mission Week was over so that we could go home. Being on the mainland is precarious, like being on a narrow path on a high cliff that I could slip and fall off at any moment.

  When Thomas Bragg came on Mission Week he disappeared with a woman from the Church for two nights. He said he was witnessing to her, but Father and Mr Bevins sent him to the Solitary when he got back and Hannah and Margaret remarked darkly that he’d been up to ‘desperate acts’. This year he stayed on New Canaan with Mr Bevins. Father says it will be a long time before Thomas can be trusted again, that he’s still too immature to be in the world without being tainted by it. But I’m not weak like that. There’s nothing here that I want. Mr Bevins says I’m kind of like an angel, that I burn bright with the light, that I am a daughter of the Lord. I bite my lip until I taste blood.

  I think they’re going to pass us by when the man pauses and squints at us through the rain.

  ‘Are you the people from New Canaan?’

  ‘Yes!’ Hannah says, holding out a crumpled leaflet.

  ‘Praise God!’ His face lights up. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over town!’

  They tell us that they are called Bridget and Ron and that they have travelled all the way from Essex. Ron is a member of a Church that is much like ours. It’s taken them nine hours in their camper van and they’ve brought with them their daughter, Alex.