It was Matt.
In a normal dream, Scarlett wouldn’t see people’s faces – or if she did, she would forget them when she woke up. But she had experienced this dream again and again over a period of two years. She’d learned to recognize Matt and the others almost as soon as she was asleep and that was why she knew him now. Short, dark hair. Broad shoulders. Pale skin and eyes that were an intense blue. He was about her age although there was something about him that seemed older. Maybe it was just the way he walked, the sense of purpose. He walked like someone in trouble.
What was he doing here? How had he even got in? Scarlett turned to a girl who was sitting close to her, drawing a major explosion from the look of the scribble on her pad.
“Did you see him?” she asked.
“Who?”
“That boy who just went past.”
The other girl looked around her. “What boy?”
Scarlett turned back. The boy had disappeared from sight. For a moment, she was thrown. Had she imagined him? But then she saw him again, some distance away. He had stopped in front of a door. He seemed to hesitate, then turned the handle and went through. The door closed behind him.
She followed him. She had made the decision without even thinking about it. She just put down her sketch book, got up and went after him. It was when she reached the door that she asked herself what she was doing, chasing after someone she had never met, someone who might not even exist. Suppose she ran into him? What was she going to say? “Hi, I’m Scarlett and I’ve been dreaming about you. Fancy a Big Mac?” He’d think she was mad.
The door he had passed through was in the outer wall underneath a stained glass window that was so dark and grimy that the picture was lost. Scarlett guessed it must lead out into the street, perhaps into the cemetery if the church had one. There was something strange about it. The door was very small, out of proportion with the rest of St Meredith’s. There was a symbol carved into the wooden surface: a five-pointed star.
She hesitated. The girls weren’t supposed to leave the church. On the other hand, she wouldn’t exactly be going far. If there was no sign of the boy on the other side, she could simply come back in again. The door had an iron ring for a handle. She turned it and went through.
To her surprise, she didn’t find herself outside in the street. Instead, she was standing in a wide, brightly lit corridor. There were flaming torches slanting out of iron brackets set in the walls, the fire leaping up towards the ceiling which was high and vaulted. The corridor had no decoration of any kind and it seemed both old and new at the same time, the plasterwork crumbling to reveal the brickwork underneath. It had to be some sort of cloister – somewhere the priests went to be on their own. But the corridor was nothing like the rest of St Meredith’s. It was a different colour. It was the wrong size and shape.
It was also very cold. The temperature seemed to have fallen dramatically. As she breathed out, Scarlett saw white mist in front of her face. It was as if she were standing inside a fridge. She had to remind herself that this was the first week of November. It felt like the middle of winter. She rubbed her arms, fighting off the biting cold.
There was a man, sitting in a wooden chair opposite her, facing the door. She hadn’t noticed him at first because he was in shadow, between two of the torches. He was dressed like a monk with a long, dirty brown habit that went all the way down to his bare feet. He was wearing sandals, and a hood over his head. He was slumped forward with his face towards the floor. Scarlett had already decided to turn round and go back the way she had come, but before she could move, he suddenly looked up. The hood fell back. She gasped.
He was one of the ugliest men she had ever seen. He was completely bald, the skin stretched over a skull that was utterly white and dead. His head was the wrong shape – narrow, with part of it caved in on one side, like an egg that has been hit with a spoon. His eyes were black and sunken and he had horrible teeth which revealed themselves as he smiled at her, his thin lips sliding back like a knife wound. What had he been doing, sitting there? She looked left and right but they were on their own. The boy called Matt – if it had even been him – had gone.
The man spoke. The words cracked in his throat and Scarlett didn’t understand any of them. He could have been speaking Russian or Polish
… whatever it was, it wasn’t English. She backed away towards the door.
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I think I’ve come the wrong way.”
She turned round and scrambled for the handle. But she never made it. The monk had moved very quickly. She felt his hands grab hold of her shoulders and drag her backwards, away from the door. He was very strong. His fingers dug into her like steel pincers.
“Let go!” she shouted.
His arm sneaked over her shoulder and around her throat. He was holding her with incredible force. She could feel the bone, cutting into her windpipe, blocking the air supply. And he was screaming out more words that she couldn’t understand, his voice high-pitched and animal. Another monk appeared at the end of the corridor. Scarlett didn’t really see him. She was just aware of him rushing towards them, the long robes flapping.
Still she fought back. She reached with both hands, clawing for the monk’s eyes. She kicked back with one foot, then tried to elbow him in his stomach. But she couldn’t reach him. And then the second monk threw himself onto her.
The next thing she knew, she was on her back, her arms stretched out above her head. Her legs had been knocked out from underneath her. The two men had grabbed hold of her and there was nothing she could do. She twisted and writhed, her hair falling over her face. The monks just laughed.
Scarlett felt her heels bumping over the stone cold floor as the two men dragged her away.
FATHER GREGORY
The cell was tiny – less than ten metres square – and there was nothing in it at all, not even a chair or a bench. The walls were brick with a few traces of flaking paint, suggesting they might have been decorated at some time. The door had been fashioned out of three slabs of wood, fastened together with metal bands. There was a single window, barred and set high up so that even for someone taller than Scarlett, there wouldn’t be any chance of a view. From where she was sitting, slumped miserably on the stone floor, she could just make out a narrow strip of sky. But even that was enough to send a shiver down her spine.
It was dark. Not quite night, but very nearly. She realized that it would be pitch black in the cell in just a couple of hours as they hadn’t left her a candle or an electric light. But how was that possible? It had been around two o’clock when she had entered St Meredith’s and the sun had been shining. Suddenly it was early evening. So what had happened to the time in between?
Scarlett was shivering – and not just because of the shock of what she had been through. It was freezing in the cell. There was no glass in the window and no heating. The bare brickwork only made it worse. Fortunately she had been wearing her winter coat when she set off on the school trip and she drew it around her, trying to bury herself in its folds. She had never been so cold. She could actually feel the bones in her arms and legs. They were so hard and brittle that she thought they might shatter at any time.
Desperately, she tried to work out what had happened. For no reason that she could even begin to imagine, a man she had never met had grabbed her and thrown her into a cell. Could she have strayed into a secret wing of St Meredith’s, somewhere that no one was meant to go? The single strip of sky told her otherwise. That and the freezing weather. She remembered that the monk had spoken in a foreign language.
She was no longer in London.
It seemed crazy but she had to accept it. Maybe she had blacked out at the moment she had been seized. Maybe they had drugged her and she had been unconscious without even knowing it. Everything told her that this wasn’t England. Somehow she had been spirited away.
With a spurt of anger, she scrambled to her feet and went over to the door. She wasn’t just going to
sit here and wait for them to come back. Suppose they never did come back? She might die in this place. But she quickly saw that there was no way through the door – not unless it was unlocked from the other side. It was massive and solid, with a single keyhole built for an antique key. She tried to squint through it but there was nothing to see. She straightened up, then hammered her fists against the wood.
“Hey! Come back! Let me out of here!”
But nobody came. She wasn’t even sure if her voice could be heard outside the cell.
That left the window. Could she possibly climb up, using the rough edges of the brickwork to support herself? Scarlett tried but her fingertips couldn’t get enough grip, and anyway the bars at the top were too close to squeeze through, even assuming she could drop down on the other side. No. She was in a solid box with no trapdoors, no secret passages, no magic way out. She would just have to stay here until somebody came.
She sank back into a corner, trying to preserve what little body warmth she had left by curling herself into a ball. The strange thing was, she should have been terrified. She was completely helpless, a prisoner. This was an evil place. But she still couldn’t accept the reality of what had happened to her and because of that it was difficult to feel scared. This was all like some bad dream. Once she had worked out how she had got here, then maybe she could start worrying about what was going to happen next.
An hour passed, or maybe two. Finally there was a rattle of a key in the lock, the door swung open again and two monks came into the cell. Scarlett couldn’t say if they were the ones who had grabbed her in the corridor as all these people were dressed the same way. Their hoods were up and they were skeleton-thin. Even if you stood them up against a wall, it would have been difficult to tell them apart.
One of them barked out a command in the strange, harsh language she had heard before and when he saw that she didn’t understand, made a rough gesture, telling her to stand up. Scarlett did as she was instructed. Her face gave nothing away but she was already thinking. If they took her out of here, maybe she would be able to break away. She would run back down the corridor and find the nearest exit. Whatever country she was in, there would have to be a policeman or someone else around. She would make herself understood, somehow find her way home.
But right now, the two monks were watching her too closely. They led her out with one standing next to her and the other directly behind, so close that she could actually smell them. Neither man had washed, not for a long time. As they reached the corridor, Scarlett hesitated and felt a hand pushing her roughly forward. She turned left. The three of them set off together.
Where was she? The place had the feel of an old palace or a monastery, but one thing was certain – it had been abandoned long ago. Everything about it was broken down and neglected, from the peeling walls to the paved floor, which was slanting and uneven with some sort of mould growing through the cracks. Naked light bulbs hung on single wires (so at least there was electricity) but they were dull and flickering, barely able to light the way. The air was damp and there was a faint smell of sewage.
Scarlett noticed an oil painting in a gilt frame. It showed a crucifixion scene, but the colours were faded, the canvas torn. An antique cabinet with two iron candlesticks stood beneath it, one door open and papers scattered on the floor. The three of them turned a corner and for the first time she was able to see outside. A series of arches led onto a terrace with a garden beyond. Scarlett stopped dead. Her worst fears had been realized. She knew now that she definitely wasn’t in England.
The garden was covered in snow. There were trees with no leaves, their branches heavy with the stuff. The ground was also buried and, in the distance, barely visible in the darkness, she could see white-topped mountains. There were no other buildings, no lights showing anywhere. The monastery was in some sort of wilderness – but how had she got here? Had she been knocked out and put on a plane? Scarlett searched back in her memory but there was nothing there… nothing to indicate a journey, leaving England or arriving anywhere else. Then one of the monks jabbed her in the back and she was forced to start moving again.
They came to a hallway, lit by a huge chandelier, not electric but jammed with rows of candles, at least a hundred of them, the wax dripping slowly down and congealing into a series of growths that reminded Scarlett of the sort of shapes she had once seen in a cave. Some of it had splattered onto a round table beneath. An empty bottle lay on its side along with dirty plates and glasses, mouldering pieces of bread. There had been a dinner here – days, maybe weeks before. There were no rats or cockroaches. It was too cold.
Several doors led out of the hallway. The two monks led her to the nearest of them. One of them opened it. The other pushed her inside. He had hurt her and Scarlett spun round and swore at him. The monk just smiled and backed away. The other man went with him. The door closed.
She turned back and examined her new surroundings. This was the only half-way comfortable room she had seen so far. It was furnished with a rug on the floor, two armchairs, bookshelves and a desk. It was warmer too. A coal fire was burning in a grate and although the flames were low she could feel the heat it was giving out and smell it in the air. More paintings hung on the walls, also with religious subjects. There was a window, but it had become too dark to see outside.
A man was sitting behind the desk. He also wore a habit, but his was black. So far he had said nothing but his eyes were fixed on Scarlett and, with an uneasy feeling, she walked over to him. He was the oldest man she had seen – at least twenty years older than the others, with the same bald head and sunken eyes. There were tufts of white hair around his ears and he had thick white eyebrows that could have been glued in place. His nose was long and too thin for his face. His fingers, spread out across the surface of the desk, were the same. He was watching Scarlett intensely, and as she drew closer she saw that there was a growth – a sty – sitting on one of his eyes. The whole socket was red and dripping. It was as if, like the rest of the building, he was rotting away. Scarlett shuddered and felt sick.
The man still hadn’t spoken. Scarlett drew level with him so that the desk was between them. Despite everything, she had decided that she wasn’t going to let him intimidate her. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where am I? Why have you brought me here?”
His eyes widened in surprise. At least, one of them did. The diseased eye had long since lost any movement. “You are English?” he said.
Scarlett was taken by surprise. She hadn’t expected him to speak her language. “Yes,” she said.
“Please. Sit down…” He gestured at one of the chairs. “Would you like a hot drink? Some tea should be arriving soon.”
Scarlett shook her head. “I don’t want any tea,” she snapped. “I want to go back where I came from. Why are you keeping me here?”
“I asked you to sit down,” the monk said. “I would suggest that you do as you are told.”
He hadn’t raised his voice. He didn’t even sound threatening. But somehow Scarlett knew it would be a mistake to disobey him. She could see it in his eyes. The pupils were black and dead and slightly unfocused. They were the sort of eyes that might belong to someone who was mad.
She sat down.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now, let’s introduce ourselves. What is your name?”
“I’m Scarlett Adams.”
“Scarlett Adams.” He repeated it with a sort of satisfaction, as if that was what he had expected to hear. “Where are you from?”
“I live in Dulwich. In London. Please, will you tell me where I am?”
He lifted a single finger. The nail was yellow and bent out of shape. “I will tell you everything you wish to know,” he said. His English was perfect although it was obvious that it wasn’t his first language. He had an accent that Scarlett couldn’t place and he strung his words together very carefully, like a craftsman making a necklace. “But first tell me this,” he went on. “You really have no idea how you came h
ere?”
“No.” Scarlett shook her head. “I was in a church.”
“In London?”
“Yes. I went through a door. One of the people here grabbed hold of me. That’s all I can remember.”
He nodded slowly. His eyes had never left her and Scarlett felt a terrible urge to look away, as if somehow he was going to swallow her up.
“You are in Ukraine,” the man said, suddenly.
“Ukraine?” Everything seemed to spin for a minute. “But that’s…”
It was somewhere in Russia. It was on the other side of the world.
“This is the Monastery of the Cry for Mercy. I am Father Gregory.” He looked at his guest a little sadly, as if he was disappointed that she didn’t understand. “Your coming here is a great miracle,” he said. “We have been waiting for you for almost twenty years.”
“That’s not possible. What do you mean? I haven’t been alive for twenty years.” Scarlett was getting tired of this. She was feeling sick with exhaustion, with confusion. “How come you speak English?” she asked. She knew it was a stupid question but she needed a simple answer. She wanted to hear something that actually made sense.
“I have travelled all over the world,” Father Gregory replied. “I spent six years in your country, in a seminary near the city of Bath.”
“Why did you say you’ve been waiting for me? What do you mean?”
The door suddenly opened and one of the monks came in, carrying a bronze tray with two glasses of tea. Scarlett guessed that Father Gregory must have ordered it before she was brought in because there was no obvious method of communication in the office, no telephone or computer, nothing modern apart from a desk lamp throwing out a pool of yellow light. The monk set down the tray and left.
“Help yourself,” Father Gregory said.
Scarlett did as she was told. The liquid was boiling hot and burned her fingers as she lifted the glass. She took a sip. The tea tasted herbal and it was heavily sugared, so sweet that it stuck to her lips. She set it down again.
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