by Sarah Dalton
He shook his head vigorously. “No. Brother Bram is kind to me.”
I stopped walking and crouched down so that we were on the same level. “If you are scared, or you think someone is going to hurt you, I want you to come straight to me. Do you understand? You come straight to me.”
“Not Brother Bram?”
“Not Brother Bram.” I held his gaze. His hand was still in mine, but it’d gone clammy and cold. His face was pale against the bright red of his coat.
When we started to walk again, I realised that I’d crossed a line. My thoughts had changed, possibly forever. I’d stopped thinking that everything was fine. I’d stopped believing in Bram being a good person underneath his strange behaviour. I’d begun to realise that I didn’t trust Brother Bram, and I didn’t ever want to be alone with him. Bram was Father’s favourite, so believing this meant that in some way, I didn’t believe in everything Father said. The thought made me feel sick, but it was there anyhow, churning and turning sour in my stomach.
“Willa, come see this,” Jack called from up ahead.
I turned to Alfie. “Shall we race?”
For once he broke out into a genuine grin. I let go of his hand and assumed a pose I’d seen runners do on the TVs in the windows of electronics shops. Alfie copied me, and I counted to three before shouting, “Go!” For the first few strides, I flat-out ran, feeling the wind pull my hair back from my face, and then I slowed down to a near walk, letting Alfie beat me. I put my hands on my knees and pretended to be out of breath.
“You got me, kiddo.” I waggled my finger at him and he giggled.
Then I saw Jack. His eyes were bright with wonder. “Have you seen this?”
I pulled up my head and followed his gaze. We were at the top of a huge hill. Just a few meters from us a jagged stone jutted out from the edge of the huge mound we were standing on. I inched forward so that I could see the landscape. The stone felt solid beneath my feet. Solid and ancient, like it had been here since God made the world. Standing on this spot, I almost felt like God himself, which was a dangerous thing to feel. It was a cliff face that plummeted down, a drop that made me feel weak at the knees. I had to hold on to Jack’s arm to stay safe. We kept the children behind us, but we couldn’t help but stare at the view before us. The mist hung low, like puffs of smoke seeping out from the fields.
“You wanna be careful there,” said an unfamiliar voice.
As I spun around to face the speaker, I slipped, moving perilously close to the rock’s edge. Jack lifted my arm, forcing me to balance. I took a couple of shaky steps forward, moving away from the edge. My heart pounded against my ribs, making my pulse thud in my ears.
The speaker was a woman in a black waterproof coat. Her hair was white, and her skin was so pale that you could hardly tell where her hair started and her skin stopped. Her lips were washed out, and her eyebrows non-existent. In the centre of her face were two small, round, black eyes. They never blinked. They were locked on to me.
“You wanna be careful there,” she repeated. “It’s Nooman’s Point.”
“What’s Nooman’s Point?” Jack asked.
It was only when I heard his voice that I realised I was shocked that anyone else could see the woman. She was so strange, so spectral, that I thought she was some dreamlike hallucination, like the boy from my dream.
“Used t’be No Man’s Point. That’s what they called it. No man should ever walk here, that’s why. They gets the call, you see.”
“What call?” I said the words, but they felt disconnected from me, as though I was not in control of my body.
“Call of the void. They all want to jump.” And then she did something that made my blood run cold. She began to laugh. “They all jump.”
The woman walked off, still chuckling to herself as though the thought of people committing suicide was hilarious.
I turned back towards the edge, staring out into the mist. She wasn’t wrong. There was something almost sucking me towards the edge. I felt it lingering on my skin. I backed away and stepped back onto the grass, appalled at the magnetic pull I felt towards the edge.
“Come on,” I said, trying to ignore the tremor in my voice. “We should get back to the farm.”
Chapter Four
We got beds. Some were from our old home, shipped up to the farm in a big lorry with our cooker and fridge. Some were new. The delivery men seemed afraid of us. They stared at us all, sometimes looking at each other and shaking their heads. Aunty Cassie handed them a leaflet before they went. She took hold of the tallest one’s hand and told him she’d pray for him. He pulled his hand free with a frown. As the van drove away, the leaflets fluttered onto the mud. Not everyone wanted to be saved.
That night, I had bad dreams about Nooman’s Point. On the way home from our walk the day before, Jack had said that we probably shouldn’t go there again, and I remember thinking he was right. When I think of my dreams from that time, I shudder even now. Somehow, they’ve never left me, not even for a moment.
It was always the little boy. I dreamt of him at Nooman’s Point wearing Alfie’s coat. He kept pointing to the rock jutting out from the cliff, and shouting something. But there wasn’t any sound in my dream. It was all silent. I could see his lips move, but I couldn’t hear anything. I wanted to scream each time I woke up, but I clamped my hands over my mouth instead. I didn’t want to wake up everyone in the commune. Each time, Alfie was asleep next to me, so I told myself everything was okay.
The next day, it was my turn to go into the town. I decided to take Jack with me. It was always good to take someone with you to the towns, just in case. Our job was to hand out our leaflets and ask for donations for our cause. Mother Ariel dressed me up in an outfit especially for it. I needed to look older, you see, so that no one took me away into the ‘system’. Mother Ariel had grown up in the system and she hated it. She went through lots of foster families, and she said that some of them weren’t very nice to her at all. She never said what had happened, but the expression on her face made me never want to ask. I didn’t want that to happen to me. I didn’t want to be split up from Mother Ariel or Jack. It was safe at the commune. At least I thought it was.
Brother Jacob took us into the town. It was my first glimpse of the place. The signpost said ‘Buxton’ and the main street was quite busy, but not scary busy. The shop fronts were clean and most of them were small. Brother Jacob took us outside a shop called Spar and handed us each a wad of leaflets and a bucket for spare change.
“Meet me at the end of the street at five, all right?” he said. Brother Jacob was tall and thickset. He had a wide neck and bushy eyebrows. “If you don’t get at least fifty quid after a few hours, you’ve got to do the thing, all right?”
I’d never talked back to Brother Jacob, nor would I ever try. I’d never talked back to anyone before, come to think of it.
I nodded. I hated doing the little act I’d been taught, but sometimes I had to do difficult things to stay on God’s path. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.
He walked off, smoking a cigarette, leaving us with a cloud of smoke blowing into our faces. I swatted it away with my hand.
“That’s over five hours,” Jack complained. “And we’ve hardly got any fruit.”
“What did Mother Ariel give us?” I asked.
“Nuts, dried fruit, and some apples. There’s a flask of water, too. What if we need the bathroom? I can’t see a toilet here.”
“We’ll have to ask in one of these establishments, I guess.” I looked doubtfully at the cafes and bars that lined the street.
“I hate this,” Jack said. “I hate coming into the towns and begging for money.”
“They’re donations from the public,” I said in shock. “From good people whose souls might be saved through charity.”
Jack pursed his lips. I got the feeling he wanted to say more but didn’t think I wanted to hear it.
We gave out our leaflets to passers-by with blank faces
. A few took them. A few veered away from our hands, and others took the leaflets, made a disgusted noise and crumpled them up in their palms.
“God bless you,” I said with a bright smile.
I rattled the bucket, but not many people threw coins into it. There was a bright sign on the front saying ‘Congregation of Angels: Charity for the Most Worthy’ but even still, people didn’t put money in. One old lady put in five pence and then talked to us for fifteen minutes, scaring away other potential donors. She told us all about her late husband’s death, and how he had suffered terribly with his pain. Then she told us about her infected ankle. I found myself backing away from her hairy chin and the big wart on her face, but Jack was patient and kind with her. She gave us an extra twenty pence and left. Then a homeless man who smelled like alcohol shooed us away from his ‘corner’ and told us to go do our begging somewhere else. Jack started to argue with him, but I pulled him away and we went to the other side of the street.
“We should have stayed there,” Jack said, shrugging my hand away. There were a couple of beads of sweat on his forehead and he seemed agitated, like he couldn’t stand still. “We shouldn’t let people treat us like that.”
“He’s a lost soul, Jack. We’re supposed to turn the other cheek.”
“Fuck that.”
I drew in a sharp breath. “Only Satan uses such foul language.”
Jack reached out and touched my hand. He was calmer. His shoulders dropped and he stopped fidgeting. “I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated.”
“What are you frustrated about, Brother Jack? I want to help.”
I saw him wince a little at the word ‘brother’. He hated it when I was formal with him. He would rather that we talked like we were friends, or like we weren’t part of the congregation at all.
“I’m frustrated with myself and the fact that I never question anything. I hate that Mother Blu is ill and I can’t fix her. And I’m frustrated with Father Merciful and how he orders us around. I’m frustrated with Bram and how no one seems to see him the way I do. I don’t trust him. Not one little bit. I don’t think you should ever be alone with him. He doesn’t see you as a sister the way I do.”
“Are you losing your faith?” I asked in a quiet voice. After a few long moments in which Jack didn’t answer, I said, “You’re not the only one who sees Bram differently from the others, and I think you’re right not to trust him. I don’t trust him either, and I will never be alone with him, never again.”
Jack let out a long breath.
I couldn’t help but smile at his expression. “You worry too much, Jack.” But as I said the words, the niggle at my stomach reminded me that I’d been worrying, too. A lot more than usual.
“It’s ever since that night when we took the medicine. Something changed.”
The smile faded from my face. “I don’t know what you mean. Father Merciful explained—”
“You do know what I mean. I’ve seen you acting differently. You can’t hide it from me.”
I tried to shake his words away, but they lingered, like Brother Jacob’s cigarette smoke.
“I’m going to leave,” he said.
I almost dropped my leaflets. “What?”
“One of these days, I’m going to leave, and I’m going to take Mother Blu with me. She needs help, and no one will give it to her here.”
“That’s not fair,” I snapped. “We pray for her every night. Father Merciful heals her personally.”
Jack’s expression hardened. He stared at one brick in the shop building wall, as though hoping it’d explode. “She’s worse every time she comes back from her ‘personal healing sessions’.” He spat the words out like they were dirty. “He hurts her. I know it.”
“How can you say that about him? Father is good. You know that.”
“Then why did he name me Jackal? Why did he do that? He looked at a tiny baby and thought he saw something evil in me.”
“You don’t know that was what he thought,” I said in my softest voice. Sometimes Jack needed to be reassured.
“I’ve tried to be good. I’ve prayed, meditated, I’ve done everything he told us to do. I took the medicine and would have died for him. But I don’t want to do it anymore.” He kicked a stone away with the toe of his shoe.
There was nothing I could say. All I could do was go back to handing out the leaflets.
A smart middle-aged woman with mousy brown hair took a leaflet, stopped, and turned to me. The bright red piece of paper fluttered in her hand.
“Congregation of Angels,” she said. “It sounds peaceful.”
“A peaceful family,” I agreed.
“And you must be the angels.” She smiled at us both. Her eyes were a pale grey that should’ve been cold, yet somehow they were warm and kind. “Tell me more about the Congregation of Angels.”
I beamed. This was my time to shine. I knew the speech by heart. “God smiles on us all, but some of us reject that smile without even knowing. At Congregation of Angels we walk on the path of righteousness. We believe in the Messenger of God, who talks through our leader, Father Merciful. We are a happy, loving family who pray for love and understanding to spread through the world. We’re dedicated to delivering God’s message to the world, that there is more to life than money and greed. There is also love.”
“That’s beautiful,” she said. “It sounds like such a wonderful place. Do you live near here?”
“We’re living in a farmhouse a few miles away. The address is written on the back of the leaflet, see?” I pointed it out on the red paper. The new addresses had been written by hand since we didn’t yet have a printer set up at the farm.
“How many are living there?” she asked.
“Oh, there are dozens of us.”
“Sounds beautiful,” she said. “Thanks so much for talking to me.”
“Of course,” I replied. “God loves you.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she walked away.
“You said too much,” Jack said as the woman walked out of hearing distance. “She was asking too many questions.”
“She was just curious,” I replied. “I only told her the truth.”
“I want you to come with me when I go,” Jack said.
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and shook the donation bucket. “There’s nowhere near fifty pounds here. I’ll have to do the trick.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t like you doing it.”
“Stay close just in case.”
The trick was, I went up to people and told them that I had lost my bus fare and needed five pounds to get home. Aunt Cassie had shown me how to do it a few years before. You had to find the right person. They were usually men, a bit overweight, sometimes balding, over forty years old. I was very good at the trick, but sometimes the men talked to me for too long. I’d only do it if Jack stayed really close. I didn’t really feel like doing the trick that day; I was already drained from my nightmares and Jack’s admissions, but Brother Jacob had said we should come home with at least fifty pounds. I didn’t want to let the others down.
Chapter Five
Brother Jacob was impressed when I handed him the bucket. There were notes in there, some of them ten pounds. The old men always felt sorry for me. Some of them gave me hot coffee, but I waited until they were around the corner and dumped it into a bin. Once, I took a sip of some hot chocolate with cream. It tasted like Satan and Heaven all mixed up, and then I had a tummy ache for the rest of the day.
We were driven back to the farm in Jacob’s pickup truck, squashed in along the front seat. The exhilaration from being in the town surrounded by people began to wear off, and as we got closer to the farm, my chest tightened. I rubbed my sternum and prayed for it to go away. I didn’t want to feel this dread about my new home, but I couldn’t help it. There was something about the place that made the hair rise on the backs of my arms. Jack flashed me a concerned look.
We pulled up the long drive, gravel crunching
beneath the tyres. It was still light, but the sky was filled with clouds. They were thick and dark, blocking out the evening sun. My stomach growled. It was halfway between hunger and nausea.
When we got closer to the farm, something seemed wrong. There were too many people outside. They should’ve still been cleaning the house and the barn, not crowding around the courtyard. Jacob noticed it too, because he leaned forward and frowned. Jack looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Then at least three of my Aunties came running towards the truck. The first was Aunty Cassie.
“Have you seen him? Did you see him on your way back?” Cassie pulled open the door before Jack had time to reach the door handle. The handbrake went up as she pushed her head into the truck. “Have you seen Alfie?”
“Alfie is missing?” I said. The tightening in my chest spread down through my insides, squeezing every organ. My stomach was a hard ball of iron.
I dreamt about the bad man.
Cassie staggered back with her hand over her mouth. Mother Ariel tried to put an arm around her, but Cassie shrugged her away. “I thought… I thought you would have seen him. We’ve looked everywhere.” She broke into sobs.
I hurried out of the truck after Jack, moving towards Cassie. “When did he go?”
It was Mother Ariel who responded. “He’s been missing since lunchtime, Willa. No one has seen him.”
The wind hit my face and took my breath away. I staggered back, one, two steps, and then I was crying.
“Where have you looked?” Jacob asked. “How far have you been?”
“We’ve searched the house, the barn, and the fields,” Mother Ariel said.
“You’ve not been farther than the fields?” Jacob asked. “What about the moors?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“We should arrange groups of search parties,” Jacob said. “Sister Cassie, Sister Susan and the children will stay in the farmhouse. Alfie might find his way back, and his mother should be here in case. The rest of us will go in groups of four or five. Sister Ariel, Willa, Jack and Brother Noah, you are one group. Where did you take Alfie on a walk yesterday?”
