The Followers

by Rebecca Wait

  Without another word they made their way to the bed, and Thomas forgot for a while his feeling of dread. But afterwards it was back, even stronger than before. As they lay curled together, he said, ‘It could be like this every night. Imagine if we never had to be parted.’

  Esther didn’t reply.

  He’d had time to think about it further, but still nothing was clear. It seemed best to use the simplest words, to stick to the simplest truth. He said, with more firmness than he felt, ‘We can’t stay here.’

  ‘We can’t leave,’ Esther said.

  ‘We can’t stay.’

  ‘Thomas, don’t start this again. I thought you were feeling better.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t go on.’

  ‘You’re not making sense.’

  ‘That’s because I don’t know how. None of us knows how any more.’ He had to do better. He had to make his brain work again and his thoughts flow clearly, so he could persuade her, so she would see they couldn’t stay.

  ‘It’s all wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s not what we wanted in the beginning. It changed, and none of us noticed it changing. We thought we were moving closer to God, but I think we were leaving God behind.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Esther twisted round to face him. She was shaking her head as though she had water in her ears.

  ‘There’s another way for us to live,’ Thomas said. When she didn’t speak, he rushed on. ‘We could leave here, go south. There’s a job down there for me. I already asked them about transferring. There’s a store in Southampton I could manage. I’d find us somewhere to live, I’d take care of everything. We could be happy. Think of it, Esther, being by the sea. And there would be no one but the two of us, and nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘Nothing to be afraid of?’ she said softly. ‘What about Gehenna? What about hell?’

  ‘I know how frightening it is for you,’ he said. ‘You haven’t left the Ark for so long. But it’s OK out there, I promise. It’s the same as it always was. Good and bad. I’d look after you. I’d never leave you.’

  ‘Turn away from this wickedness,’ she said. She put her hands to his face. ‘Please, Thomas. Let me ask Nathaniel to pray for you.’

  She would never come with him, Thomas thought. And he couldn’t stay. The two realizations came together in his mind and took on a nightmare quality, a trickle of horror that ran the full length of his body and turned him cold.

  He said, ‘You have to come.’ But he was warding off the truth with his useless words. He was causing her agony every time he raised the subject, could see how she was torn between the knowledge that she should report him and her need to protect him. He was making her suffer. It hurt him, right in the centre of his chest, and he understood now why people talked about the heart breaking.

  He put his arms around her again, because there was nothing more to be done, and nothing more to be said. He felt her body against him, familiar and strange. He’d loved her so long, but still she was unknowable. This life had made her unknowable.

  Whatever impulse had started all this would carry him on. He himself was worn out; he could do nothing further. In rare moments he allowed himself to wonder if it was the true God returning, the God of his childhood, come to save him; Jesus, endlessly loving, endlessly forgiving. The idea made him tearful but it never stayed long. Mostly there was just numbness and panic taking turns with one another, and always, always this sensation of falling.

  5

  Stephanie should have known better than to be surprised at how quickly she became pregnant. Within a couple of weeks, she found she’d missed her period. Of course Nathaniel had succeeded. He had gone about it with an almost frightening determination. Once every few days turned into twice a night, pragmatic and without prelude. How could she help getting pregnant unless her body deliberately resisted him?

  And of course she was delighted. She carried the news to him proudly, a little shyly.

  ‘I’m almost certain,’ she said.

  If she had expected praise, she was disappointed. She received a small nod of his head, and a satisfied ‘Right.’

  But after they’d waited another few weeks to be absolutely sure, there was a celebration dinner, and Stephanie felt herself basking in the joy and congratulations of the others. This was what Nathaniel had wanted for her, she thought. The kind of satisfaction that comes from accepting a will greater than your own; fulfilling your true purpose.

  (‘You feel God at last, don’t you?’ he’d said to her. ‘Finally, you’ve let Him in. Well done, little one.’)

  Pregnancy was easier this time round. With Judith, Stephanie had piled on weight, she’d felt sick all the time, her whole body was sore and stretched; Judith had kicked and fought inside her. Now, though, she experienced almost no nausea, and no cramps. There was just a little blood, as there had been whilst she was carrying Judith. It must be so straightforward, Stephanie thought, because this time Nathaniel was looking after her – and God as well.

  But still, the process felt strangely detached from her. She remembered that there had been a pleasure in carrying Judith, despite her discomfort. The baby had been part of her, a fat, hot, growing thing. It had been at the centre of her. This time, she occasionally had to remind herself that she was pregnant. It felt almost as though she’d been entrusted with something that didn’t belong to her, and must hold it carefully until its true owner came back.

  She’d been wary about telling Judith – their relationship was so precarious these days – but Judith had taken the news calmly.

  ‘Oh,’ was all she had said, and Stephanie was reminded dispiritingly of Nathaniel’s reaction.

  ‘A little brother for you,’ she said. ‘Won’t that be great?’

  ‘I’m not very interested in babies,’ Judith said. Then, ‘How do you know it’s a boy?’

  ‘Nathaniel said so.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Aren’t you excited?’

  ‘Not really,’ Judith said, wandering off again.

  This new composure on Judith’s part troubled Stephanie. It appeared to be a stage beyond her original anger, and Stephanie had a vague, saddening impression that there could be no going back. Judith had wanted things from her once. Now she wanted nothing.

  Unexpectedly, she found herself thinking more and more about her own mother. Perhaps it was the hormones. She remembered how she’d clung to her mum during her pregnancy with Judith, once the initial stage of wonder and proud independence had passed. It had been superseded by terror, and Stephanie had looked to her mum for reassurance as she hadn’t done since she was small. Her mum had been brisk and practical each time Stephanie grew hysterical; a woman who came into her own in a crisis.

  Now, Stephanie was surprised to find she missed her, though they hadn’t had a satisfactory conversation for years. She and her mum had so little in common; they’d been fatally mismatched as mother and daughter. But perhaps she loved her mum after all. And probably her mum loved her, even if she wasn’t the kind of woman to say it.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said to Nathaniel that night. He rarely visited her room these days, saying it would disturb the growing baby, and relief at seeing him made her unusually talkative.

  ‘What’s funny?’ he said.

  ‘My mother will never see this baby.’

  ‘What’s funny about that?’ he said, and she was relieved his smile was in place.

  ‘I mean, he’ll be her grandchild. And she’ll never know anything about him.’

  ‘And why should she?’ Nathaniel said, and she recognized it instantly, the change in his voice.

  ‘It just seems – a shame. In a way,’ she said.

  ‘Would you like to go back and see her?’

  ‘No, I don’t want that.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to visit, to show her the baby?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about that. Honestly, I wasn’t. I just thought it was sad. Just in one sense.’ She tried to smile at him. ‘Mostly, it’
s wonderful.’

  She thought he would have hit her again, were it not for the baby.

  He said, ‘You choose now of all times, now of all times, to turn your face back to Gehenna? You wait until you’re carrying my child to turn back to the world?’

  ‘No! I didn’t mean it. Sorry.’

  ‘The time for stumbling is long gone,’ he said. ‘You had your chance. Now if you stumble, you bring down not only yourself but the whole Ark.’

  She allowed herself to cry, because she had seen that sometimes it softened him. After some hesitation, he put his arms around her.

  ‘You’re not yourself,’ he said. ‘Pregnancy makes women fearful. You’re very vulnerable.’ He stroked her hair. ‘Let me protect you, little one.’ She relaxed against him. After a moment, he pulled back to look at her. ‘But make no mistake, Sarah. If you give the devil a way in, you will be punished, even if I have to wait until after the birth.’

  She nodded, barely afraid. She would give him no reason to punish her.

  6

  It would be kinder, Thomas realized in the end, not to say goodbye. What right did he have to stir up her doubts and fears, to make her choose between him and God, him and Nathaniel?

  He had imagined one final evening with Esther, when he would cling to her and memorize every part of her, every gesture and expression, every word she said, the sound of her voice and the smell of her skin. But Nathaniel took her on that last night, and in the end Thomas was grateful. It would have been too much to bear, knowing it was the last time.

  When he kissed her goodbye in the morning and she said ‘See you later,’ he felt himself coming loose from the world. He said, ‘I love you so much,’ and she smiled up at him because it wasn’t the kind of thing he usually said out loud.

  It was Seth’s turn to drive, so Thomas got in the back of the car. It wasn’t one of Nathaniel’s days for going to the town, but he came forward and tapped on Thomas’s window. Thomas wound it down.

  ‘You look rough,’ Nathaniel said. ‘Are you alright?’

  How did he always know? He had always known everything. ‘Getting ill, I think,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Are you well enough to go to work?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thomas said. ‘Thanks.’

  Nathaniel kept his eyes on him a moment longer. Thomas felt sick; it was possible that Esther had reported him after all. He wouldn’t blame her.

  Then Nathaniel stepped back. ‘Drink plenty of water today,’ he said at last. ‘We need you well, Thomas.’

  Thomas nodded. He would never see Nathaniel again. It seemed impossible. ‘Yes, prophet,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ said Seth. ‘Off we go.’

  He turned the engine on and the car moved away. Thomas twisted his neck to look through the back window, squinting against the morning sun. Nathaniel was a dark shape against the wall of the big house. Thomas focused on Esther instead. The light had turned her hair to gold. She stretched her hand to the sky and held it there. He saw her growing smaller, and the two houses growing smaller behind her, until the road dipped and everything disappeared from view.

  7

  It was cold but they were used to the cold. Moses and Judith had tramped a long way across the moors and descended into a hollow they sometimes visited, a place where the ground fell away and turf walls rose up on all sides, lined with heather and bracken. They had discovered today that it was possible to push your way behind the bracken into a dip in the side of the wall, and let the overgrowth fall back in front of you like a curtain.

  Moses watched Judith disappear.

  ‘I could hide here,’ she said, ‘and never be found. Nobody would ever see me again.’

  ‘God would see you,’ Moses said.

  There was a pause, then her voice from behind the curtain said, ‘Is your God a good God?’

  It was strange hearing this question from a disembodied voice. He’d often imagined this was how the devil would address him when the time for his temptation came; only the devil wouldn’t speak in Judith’s voice.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. Then, so there was no confusion, ‘He’s your God, too.’

  ‘If God’s so good,’ Judith said, ‘why are you scared of Him?’

  Moses was beginning to see the danger of the curtain. It had freed Judith to say whatever was in her mind. ‘Because of all my wickedness,’ he answered.

  ‘I don’t think you’re wicked.’

  ‘That’s because you’re wicked too.’ There was silence for a while, and he was afraid he’d hurt her feelings, so he added, ‘I like you, though.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’re all wicked.’

  ‘Especially Ezra.’ She emerged, dishevelled, with sprigs of heather in her hair. ‘You try it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hiding.’

  He did as he was told, pushing his way through and making himself as small as possible. Judith rearranged the bracken and heather overhang in front of him.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ she said. ‘I can’t see you at all.’

  ‘I can see you.’ He could, through the tiny gaps in the heather, see a Judith who was bright in the winter sun and fractured into a thousand pieces.

  ‘We could play hide and seek here with the others,’ she said. ‘They’d never find us. We’d win every time.’

  ‘We’d have to take it in turns to use the hiding place,’ Moses said. He pushed his way out so they were face to face again.

  ‘I don’t want to play with them anyway,’ Judith said. She looked around, swung her arms out a few times restlessly. Her mood was changing, Moses saw, the way it sometimes did, switching in an instant like the weather on the moors, when the sky darkened and the wind rose out of nowhere. He’d spent a lifetime trying to gauge the mood of the moors but they were impossible to predict. You’d be playing in bright sunshine one moment, then shivering and wet the next, the only warning before the rain fell that sudden chill in the air, that stillness and pause that never gave you time to run for shelter.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Judith said, and there was already a bite in her voice, the undercurrent of impatience he could always detect. Her temper had got worse, he thought, in the month since they’d made the announcement about the baby. In a moment she’d be talking angrily about her friend Megan, or her Game Boy, or McDonald’s, or any other subject from the list of forbidden, mysterious things that had been taken from her. He always found himself wanting to listen and wanting to run away at the same time.

  ‘Let’s play Saul on the Road to Damascus,’ he said.

  ‘No. That’s boring.’

  ‘Or Casting out Demons?’

  ‘I don’t want to play any of your games,’ Judith said. ‘I’m fed up with them. There’s nothing to do here.’

  ‘There’s loads,’ he protested. ‘The moors, the forest, the river.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting activities,’ she snapped, ‘you’re just listing bits of landscape. There’s nothing to do with any of them.’

  He frowned at her. ‘You said you liked the forest. Remember when you were Samson, bringing the pillars down? And when we were Absalom and Joab? The battle of Ephraim’s Wood?’

  ‘Those games are stupid,’ she said. Then, bafflingly, ‘I want to go to Laser Quest.’

  He forced himself not to ask what Laser Quest was. Searching for some way to impress her, he said, ‘We tried to build a bridge across the river once. It was exciting and dangerous.’ Seeing he had at least a sliver of her attention, he went on, ‘We used a fallen tree trunk. We all had to hold it just to lift it. Even Abigail and Mary.’ He reflected happily for a moment – he’d been invited specially to help by Peter and Jonathan. ‘We lifted it right up together, then dropped it across the river like a bridge.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’ Judith said. ‘Did it fall off the edge?’

  ‘No. It worked fine.’

  ‘You said you tried to make a bridge. So something must have gone wrong.’

  Once again, he m
arvelled at the sharpness of her mind. Nothing got past her. (This was also what the prophet said about the devil.)

  ‘We had it all ready,’ he said. ‘But when it was finished, no one wanted to go across it.’

  ‘Were you afraid of falling in?’

  ‘Yes. But mainly of crossing into Gehenna.’

  ‘That’s stupid.’

  ‘The river marks where the Ark stops and Gehenna begins.’

  ‘So if you’d crossed it,’ Judith said, ‘would the devil have suddenly grabbed you?’

  Moses didn’t like the way she said it. ‘I don’t know what would have happened.’

  ‘What became of your bridge, then?’

  ‘We pushed it off the edge into the river.’ He paused. ‘I suppose it wasn’t really a bridge.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You can’t call something a bridge if it can’t be used to go across anything,’ Moses said. ‘It was just a tree trunk. It never changed into a bridge.’

  Judith narrowed her eyes at him, but he felt pleased to have beaten her at her own game. He had, he felt, regained her respect.

  ‘We’d better be getting back,’ she said.

  They scrambled out of the hollow, and as they headed back towards the houses, she said, ‘If you want, we can play Twelve Spies on the way.’

  ‘Alright.’ He tried to conceal his pleasure. ‘I’ll be Igal, son of Joseph, from the tribe of Issachar. Who will you be?’

  ‘I’ll be Sethur, son of Michael, from the tribe of Asher.’

  They crouched down low and began to creep over the moorland, pausing sometimes to duck behind rocks and hillocks and survey the enemy territory.

  It was Judith who noticed it as they drew closer to the houses.

  ‘The car’s there,’ she said.

  Moses was a little way away from her, scouting the regions to the east, so he had to shout at her to repeat it.

  ‘I said, the car’s there.’

  He came over to join her. ‘It’s too early for them to be back.’ Already, he felt the first shiver of unease. ‘Why would they be back now?’

  ‘Perhaps one of them’s ill,’ Judith said. ‘I was ill at school once, my throat was so sore I couldn’t talk, and they called Mum to take me home. She had to leave work and she was annoyed at first, but then she saw I was really ill and we both put on our pyjamas and got the duvet from her bed and watched TV all day, and she made me hot chocolate for my throat.’ She was smiling at the memory, but then the smile was gone. ‘I hate her,’ she said, but softly, almost to herself.