Cruel Minds

by Malcolm Richards

  Memories of Lewis flooded Emily’s mind. She pushed them out.

  “Basing your happiness on temporary things is like building a house on a crumbling cliff—it will only lead to disappointment. Happiness cannot be found in the past, nor can it be found in the blank uncertainty of the future. No, true happiness can only be found within the now and within ourselves. This is what Vipassanā teaches.” Pamela paused, looking up from the album to gaze at Emily. “Let me give you an example. I want you to both take a moment to think about chocolate.”

  Jerome looked sideways at Emily, then back to Pamela.

  “Should we really be thinking about food right now?” he said.

  Pamela smiled as she continued. “To the vast majority, the smell and taste of chocolate are overwhelmingly delicious. The endorphins that are released as we eat it generate feelings of pleasure and a sense of well-being. But because those pleasurable sensations only last for a short while, we’re soon left with a craving to experience them again. Vipassanā meditation teaches us to observe the sensations of the body without reacting to them. We eat the chocolate, we observe the pleasurable sensations it gives us, but we do not crave more.

  “For those new to the practice, it can be difficult. Having an itch that you can’t scratch can be truly maddening. But Vipassanā teaches you to merely observe the itch, to wait and see how long it takes to disappear. And it will disappear. As we observe our bodily sensations while neither clinging to them nor pushing them away, we train our unconscious mind at the deepest level to change its habit of reacting. We see things as they truly are. Because we are not our minds. Of course, there’s much more to the path to awakening. A Vipassanā retreat is only the beginning.”

  Pamela paused to run her fingers over the photograph album. When she looked up again, the whites of her eyes were tinged with pink. She gazed past Emily and Jerome, towards the window. Outside, darkness was falling fast. Clouds were fattening, threatening to burst.

  “As enlightening as this all is, what does any of it have to do with Franklyn Hobbes?” Emily asked.

  There was a long pause before Pamela spoke again. “The first time Franklyn came to us, taking a vow of Noble silence didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary for him. It was all I could do get him to tell me his name when he checked in. He seemed pleasant enough. Harmless ... but the type of person who’d spent his life being invisible. He settled in quickly and he seemed to take to the technique easier than most, especially for someone who had never been to a retreat.

  “By the end of the ten days, I can always see a significant change in my students. Not just in the words they say or the thoughts they share, but in their physicality. It’s as if they are seeing the world through new eyes.” She pushed the album back towards Emily and Jerome. “With Franklyn, I saw nothing. I don’t doubt he underwent changes—it would go against Nature’s Law for him not to—but his eyes were black and empty, as you’ve seen for yourself.” Pamela pulled her knees up to her chest. “I didn’t expect to see him at Meadow Pines again. But four months later, there he was. The change in him was dramatic, to say the least.”

  “What do you mean?” Emily asked. She tried to look away from Franklyn’s picture but those two black hollows were dangerously hypnotic.

  “It was as if a different person had stepped into Franklyn’s body,” Pamela said. “Gone was the quiet young man who barely spoke a word, and in his place was a man filled with agitation and nervous energy.” She paused, her shoulders heaving. “I should have put an end to it there. I should have stopped him from participating ... but in my infinite wisdom, I thought that the retreat would help him to work through whatever was troubling him. It wasn’t until the second time he broke Noble silence that I learned what he’d been doing.”

  The air in the room grew heavy, pressing down on Emily’s chest.

  “As I said, the Vipassanā technique is not easy. It requires extreme focus, which comes from hours of practice. Ten days of intense, silent meditation is a revelatory experience but also an exhausting one, which is why a period of at least three months between retreats is recommended. In the four months since we’d last seen him, Franklyn had attended six other Vipassanā retreats.”

  “Six?” Emily repeated. “Why would he do that?”

  “As students of the Vipassanā technique begin to successfully detach from sensations, to instead observe them as they pass through, extreme feelings of peacefulness often occur. At first, this can feel like an intense high. But highs and lows are still sensations, and as with all sensations, if we become attached our ego will crave for more. As students work through the process, they soon come to understand that chasing the perfect high is pointless. There is no perfect high because there is no permanence.

  “With this new understanding, students are able to return to the world as an observer, their lives forever enriched because they now see that reacting only brings suffering. It’s my belief that Franklyn Hobbes failed to see this. I believe the intense highs he experienced left him craving for more, and unable to detach from those cravings, he instead detached from the world. Because in comparison, the world was one continuous low.”

  “He became addicted?” Jerome said, looking from Pamela to the photo album.

  “Franklyn moved from retreat to retreat, hoping to experience those peaceful feelings over and over; hoping each experience would cure him of the unbearable misery he believed was waiting for him outside. What he’d failed to realise was that the suffering he felt was a trap of his own mind. By pushing himself from retreat to retreat without rest, the only thing he achieved was to push his mind to breaking point.”

  Pamela ran fingers through her hair, then let out a trembling breath.

  “I believed I could help him. I believed all he needed was my guidance to help him back onto the correct path. I wasn’t anywhere near qualified.”

  The first drops of rain pattered against the window. Pamela gave Franklyn’s photograph one last look, then closed the album. “I’d been monitoring Franklyn closely, teaching him better meditation techniques during the evening discourse. The night it happened, we were five minutes into the final meditation session of the day. I looked up to see him crying. His tears turned to wailing, which of course broke the meditative state of every person in the room. I stood up. I gestured to Franklyn to join me outside. As I came closer, he screamed the words, I am nothing! I removed him from the room as quickly as possible, taking him to my office. He was inconsolable. His whole body trembled. The only words he would say, over and over like a mantra, were, I am nothing. I am nothing. I tried to talk him down, but suddenly he leapt up from the chair, ran out of the house and disappeared into the forest.”

  Pamela drew in a breath. As she exhaled, a tremor ran from her shoulders down to the tips of her fingers. “I didn’t know what to do. I returned to the meditation room to reassure the other students. I told them that Franklyn was feeling unwell and that they should return to their rooms so I could take care of him. Once they were all upstairs, I went to the kitchen. Sam was cleaning up. Marcia had gone outside to compost the day’s food waste. We looked everywhere for her, but she was gone. It wasn’t until we heard her screams coming from the forest that we realised what Franklyn had done.”

  Goose pimples broke out on Emily’s arms. Beside her, Jerome swallowed hard.

  “Sam took off like a wild dog,” Pamela said, her eyes dull and lead-like. “As a mother, you’d think I would answer my daughter’s cry for help without hesitation. But I was paralysed. I stood and watched Sam disappear into the darkness. It felt like minutes before I could move again. I found Marcia just beyond the treeline. She was on the ground. Her clothes were torn. There was blood... I managed to get her to her feet. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t anything. It was the shock, I suppose. I walked her back to the house. I ran her a bath and got her cleaned up. Sam returned soon after. He had cuts on his face and on his knuckles. He told me he’d wrestled Franklyn to the ground and chased him i
nto the forest, eventually losing him.”

  Emily watched as Pamela shut her eyes and took in a deep breath. Her mind raced. What had happened to Marcia was horrifying. But the truth about Franklyn Hobbes and what he had done still did not account for what was happening now at Meadow Pines.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily said. “I can’t begin to imagine what Marcia went through. What about the police? Did they catch Franklyn?”

  Pamela sat up. For the briefest of moments, anger lit up her eyes like lightning strikes.

  “I was going to call the police. I was. But you have to understand the position we were in. We were struggling with filling the groups. We were behind on the mortgage payments. Meadow Pines was dangerously close to shutting down for good.”

  Emily’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. “You didn’t call them.”

  “We were all aware what would happen if I had,” Pamela said. “Marcia too. If word got out that one of our students had lost his mind and attacked a member of staff, Meadow Pines would have been finished. No one would want to come here. Everything Marcia and I had built up would be gone.”

  “What happened to having no attachments?” said Jerome. He sat back, unable to hide his disgust.

  “If you didn’t call the police, what did you do?” Emily asked.

  Pamela stared at the window, watching the rain grow heavier. “We locked the doors. Sam stayed on watch. I cleared Franklyn’s room and packed his bag. We agreed that if he showed up again, Sam would drive him to the sanctuary, put him in his car and tell him not to come back. But he didn’t show. It was the last day of the retreat. I told the other guests that Franklyn had left, that I’d taken him to his car in the night. A few seemed sceptical at first. But after his behaviour, most agreed it was an appropriate course of action. When the time came to return the guests to their cars, I drove them in the Land Rover. Before leaving, I checked Franklyn’s registration number on his admissions form. His car was gone from the sanctuary car park. After attacking Marcia, he must have somehow found his way back to the road. And that was that. We never saw him again. Not until you pulled that photograph from Oscar’s pocket.”

  Exhausted, Pamela picked up the photograph album and replaced it on the shelf. She stood with her back turned to Emily and Jerome.

  “I know what you’re thinking.” Her voice was quiet and low. “How could a mother do such a terrible thing? But my actions were based solely on the protection of my daughter. Marcia hasn’t lived in the outside world since she was a child. If Meadow Pines was taken away, she wouldn’t be able to cope.” She moved to the window, her body deflating with each step. “Where is she? What has happened to my Marcia?”

  “This Franklyn,” Jerome said, as he nervously chewed the inside of his mouth. “Is it possible that Oscar ended up at Meadow Pines because he followed him back here? Is it possible that Franklyn Hobbes killed Oscar and is out there, right now, hiding in the forest?”

  An icy chill settled over the room. Pamela turned to Jerome with frightened eyes. Before Emily could answer, a deafening crash rattled the living room door. Jerome’s eyes met with hers. They were on their feet and racing towards the door in seconds.

  Quiet had resumed in the hallway. Emily looked both ways. The sound of rain on wood reached her ears. Moving quickly, she headed towards the foyer with Jerome and Pamela inches behind.

  The front door was wide open. The rain blew in and hammered on the floor. Helen lay face down, her limbs sprawled, next to a toppled side table. Dark blood oozed from beneath her hair and pooled onto the floor.

  Emily raced to her side.

  “A first aid kit!” she cried. “We need bandages. Now!”

  At first, Pamela was paralysed. Then, as if she’d received a jolt of electricity, she turned and ran back towards her living quarters.

  Pressing fingers into Helen’s jugular, Emily felt a weak pulse.

  “Give me that tablecloth!”

  Jerome moved quickly, snatching up the cloth from the fallen table and handing it to her.

  “What the hell is going on?” he said, staring in horror at the widening pool of blood. “Where’s Melody?”

  A groan escaped from Helen’s lips. Her eyelids flickered open and her eye’s rolled upwards.

  “Who did this to you?” Emily asked her.

  “Sam,” Helen whispered. “It’s Sam.”

  Then, she slipped into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Before she could even register what she was doing, Emily darted through the open front door and into the falling rain. Shadows were crawling over the house, the meadow, the trees, covering the land in a veil of darkness. She ran through the garden, cleared the gate, and turned the corner of the house.

  Twigs and leaves crunched under her feet and loose soil sprayed into the air as Emily plunged into the forest. She stumbled blindly. Low branches whistled past her head. She slid to a halt, breathless and panicked, and disoriented by the darkness.

  A beam of light cut through the trees. Emily stumbled backwards.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Jerome hurried towards her, torch in hand.

  “You heard Helen!” she cried. “We have to find Melody, now!”

  Jerome brought up his other hand, which was gripped around a broken table leg. “Then let’s not die trying.”

  They found the shed minutes later, aided by the hammering of rain on its corrugated roof. The door was wide open. A quick scan of the ground revealed the broken padlock and the rock that Helen had used to gain access.

  Impenetrable blackness filled the open doorway like a portal to an unknown realm. With Jerome by her side, Emily edged nearer. A rank, coppery odour permeated the air.

  Emily hovered, suspended between curiosity and fear. “Melody? Are you in there?”

  She waited for an answer. When none came, she and Jerome stepped inside.

  The light pushed back the darkness, casting shadows against the mouldy walls. The shed was larger inside than the exterior suggested, and was partitioned by a shelving unit, which ran from ceiling to floor and contained tools and open cans filled with screws, nails, engine oil, old rags, and broken glass.

  A carpet of leaves and dirt covered the floor, as if the forest had claimed the shed as its own. Gardening instruments hung from hooks on walls—a rake, a hoe, the curved blade of a scythe. A workbench sat in the corner. Metal scraps and wood shavings lay scattered on top.

  Jerome swept the torch across the room. Light pierced through the junk on the shelves and hit the wall beyond, illuminating deep red splashes.

  Holding her breath, Emily signalled to Jerome. Together, they moved forwards. Nausea frothed in her stomach. She did not want to see what lay beyond but her limbs betrayed her, forcing one foot in front of the other, until she moved past the shelves and stood on the other side.

  Emily turned away, squeezing her eyes shut before she could see the body.

  Jerome’s voice trembled over the din of the rainfall. “It’s not Melody.”

  The dead man sat in the corner with his head resting against the wall. His legs were folded at the knees, his hands placed neatly in his lap. Blood swamped the front of his t-shirt and covered the wall behind. It smeared his neck and face, painting over skin that was as grey as wet cement.

  “Sam...” Emily tasted bile in the back of her throat. He had been stabbed multiple times. She could see tears in his t-shirt where the blade had entered. Blood was thick and black around each entry point. Helen hadn’t been trying to tell them that Sam had attacked her. She’d been trying to tell them that he was dead.

  The torch wavered in Jerome’s hand. “We need to go back to the house. We lock the doors. We all stay in the same room. We wait for Daniel and Janelle to return with the police.”

  “Melody is missing,” Emily said.

  “Perhaps she got scared and ran off.”

  “Whoever did this, they attacked Helen. What if they’ve taken Melody? We can’t just leave her.” />
  “Do you think I’m right? Do you think it’s Franklyn Hobbes?” Jerome swung the torch towards the open door. The light cut through the rain, illuminating the trees. “What if he’s out there, right now, watching us.”

  Emily reached up and took the torch from Jerome’s hand. As she directed it back to Sam’s body, something flashed in the corner of her eye.

  “What is that?”

  She had missed it before. Lost between the arterial splashes was a small symbol painted in blood. Eight arrows crossed each other like the points of a compass—four long pointing north, east, south, and west, and four short, placed symmetrically in between.

  “It’s the same symbol,” she breathed. “The same one I saw on the tree Oscar was hanged from.”

  Jerome’s eyes grew round and wide. “That’s a chaos star.”

  “A what?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “Law is represented by a single upward arrow. Chaos by the symbol of eight—eight arrows pointing to all possibilities.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emily said, turning to face him.

  “The chaos star originates from Michael Moorcock’s The Eternal Champion, a fantasy novel from the early seventies,” Jerome explained. “But pop culture ate it for breakfast and since then it’s appeared in all kinds of places—modern-day occultism, heavy metal album covers, films, TV, RPGs.”

  “RP-what?”

  “You never played Warhammer? Dungeons and Dragons?”

  Emily swung the torch back towards the symbol. “How do you know all this?”

  “At school I was a not-so-secret fantasy geek.”

  Emily stared at the symbol, willing it to reveal its meaning. Why was it here? Why was it carved on Oscar’s tree? It was pointing her towards something, but what? Her mind pulsed with myriads of thoughts, none of which formed a cohesive explanation for what was happening at Meadow Pines. For the briefest of moments, she had suspected Sam. But now Sam was dead; murdered alongside Oscar, probably Marcia too. Was Jerome right? Had Franklyn Hobbes returned to Meadow Pines in a dangerous and delusional state? Could his belief that he had become nothing led him to transcend moral beliefs of right and wrong? If Franklyn Hobbes really had returned, how long did they have before Melody would be counted as his next victim?