The Garden of Darkness

by Gillian Murray Kendall

  “I spent a lot of nights like this hiding from the Cured,” said Dante. “I was always afraid they’d find me in the moonlight.”

  “Where do you come from?” asked Ramah.

  “Half way across the country. I walked here, mostly. The Cured were everywhere in the cities. I didn’t sleep much. Not really.”

  “Maybe you should go inside,” said Clare.

  “No. I’ll wait. I like you.”

  As soon as Clare gave Bear the signal, he galloped through the lush grass, perhaps in pursuit of a rabbit, or following the scent of a pheasant, or, Clare thought, just for the joy of it. Then, out of nowhere, a long wail split open the night. Bear raced to Clare’s side. Then Jem was at her other side with Ramah close behind.

  “It’s a Cured,” said Dante. “Master got rid of three of them, but now two more are in the territory. Sometimes, at night, they come right up to the perimeter. We don’t see them during the day.”

  “Do they speak to you?” asked Clare. She thought of Dinah.

  “They make noises. That’s all.”

  When they re-entered the dining hall, all faces turned to them.

  “Tell us your story,” said one of the younger girls. And so Jem did, embellishing where it seemed harmless and still leaving out significant pieces of information.

  “Tell us about before Pest,” said a small boy with deep brown eyes.

  “Don’t you remember?” asked Clare, but he shook his head.

  And so Clare talked about her life before Pest. The children were especially excited to learn that Clare had been a cheerleader, and they pulled back the tables so that she could do a cartwheel. Her ankle felt fine, so she did a back flip as well.

  “Lordy,” said Jem when she was done. “It’s like being at a pep rally.”

  “Did you have pom-poms?” asked a young girl.

  Clare assured them that she had had pom-poms.

  Jem laughed.

  It was late before Britta and Doug sent the children to their rooms. Clare felt a hand on her arm as one of the children passed by on her way to bed.

  “I wanted to make sure you’re real,” she said.

  Clare, Jem and Ramah went back to the tapestry room and started getting ready for the night. Clare and Ramah would share the big bed.

  There was a scratching noise at the door. Jem opened it, and Dante entered the room and stood awkwardly. Jem motioned him to the small bed.

  Dante sat and looked profoundly uncomfortable.

  “I’ve been holding back,” he said finally.

  “Spit it out,” said Clare. Bear padded over to her and sat at her feet.

  “Master will want you to stay.” Dante looked unhappy.

  “There’s something else too,” said Ramah. “Isn’t there?”

  “This place is a sanctuary. It’s the only loving home any of us is ever likely to see. You can’t forget that.”

  “You must be leaving out something pretty bad,” observed Ramah.

  “It’s just that the way things work here might sound peculiar to a newcomer.”

  “Try us,” said Jem.

  Dante looked troubled. “Being cured isn’t the main point,” he said. “Master’s cured, of course. And he’ll cure those who are close to Pest. At least,” Dante hesitated, “he promises that. To the new children.”

  “Just how many children has he actually cured?” asked Ramah.

  “Actually,” said Dante. “None. He has another, bigger project.”

  “A project bigger than the cure for Pest?” Clare sounded doubtful.

  “I don’t think you three are going to like this.”

  “We’re waiting,” said Clare.

  Dante stood up and walked to the window. He turned back to them, his face miserable.

  “Don’t get mad,” he said.

  “No guarantees,” said Ramah.

  Dante crossed the room and sat on the little bed again. He looked down at his hands.

  “Master’s going to start the world over again,” said Dante. “He’s going to match us up—the special ones, anyway—and then—and then we’ll have babies. And then we’ll fill the gaps that Pest has left.”

  Clare looked at Dante, appalled.

  “He calls it his ‘brave new world.’ That’s from The Tempest. By William Shakespeare.”

  “That’s very edifying,” said Clare. “Thank you.”

  “We’re not sure who he’s going to match first,” Dante said. He looked at their expressions. “It’s not weird. Not when you think about it. No weirder than Pest.”

  “And what does the Master get out of this?” asked Ramah.

  “He gets what we all get,” said Dante quietly. “A world with people in it. He thinks we don’t have the luxury—that’s what he said, the ‘luxury’—of waiting until we’ve grown up to start the world over. Sometimes, to those of us who’ve been here a while, he stops talking about the cure.”

  “That’s—” Jem seemed at a loss for words.

  “That’s interesting,” said Ramah. “Even though it’s not quite what I thought was going on here. Still.”

  “I hope you’ll decide to stay on,” said Dante hopefully.

  Clare didn’t know how to convey to him that their staying under those circumstances was an impossibility beyond impossibilities.

  “I should just set Bear on you,” she said finally.

  “No,” he said. “Please don’t.”

  “We need to look around some more,” Jem said. “This place has secrets. Like those photographs.”

  “We’ve looked at the upper floors,” said Clare. There was a silence.

  “Do you have a basement?” asked Ramah.

  Dante blanched.

  Clare thought of the basement of the gold house that they had explored in Fallon. Of the terrible smell of decay underlying everything. Of descents into Hell.

  “What’s the matter?” Jem asked Dante.

  “We’re not allowed in the basement.”

  “Make an exception.”

  “There aren’t any. Exceptions.”

  “Dante,” said Clare. “We’re just going to go, anyway. You’re only making it more appealing.”

  “I’ll ask Britta if it’s all right,” said Dante, and he hurriedly left the room.

  “Seems like Britta’s very much in charge here,” said Jem.

  “I don’t like her,” said Clare.

  “She can’t handle a goat,” said Ramah.

  “A brave new world,” said Clare. “I don’t think Dante’s read as much as he thinks he has.”

  “It’s a cult,” said Ramah abruptly.

  “You think?” asked Jem.

  “Yes.”

  “Whatever it is,” said Clare, “when Master’s away, Britta’s the head of it. I think we need to get out of here.”

  “We need the cure,” said Jem firmly. He didn’t look at Clare as he spoke, but she knew: he was thinking of her.

  “If he has the cure,” said Ramah. And she was only stating what Clare was already thinking.

  The three of them sat in the darkness on the big bed.

  Clare looked out the window. The moon had cleared the trees and now cast giant shadows onto the lawn.

  “I could stay here,” she said, “and you two could go back to Thyme House.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Ramah laughed. “I can just see you matched to Doug.”

  Jem was not amused. “We’re not leaving you.”

  “Ramah, at least, should go back,” said Clare.

  “I don’t think so,” said Ramah. “Cults are interesting.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was Dante again.

  “Britta says that, when Master’s come back, you can do all the exploring you want.”

  “I bet you don’t even like Britta,” said Clare.

  Dante looked startled. “That’s not the point.” But when he said it, Clare thought that some small thing had given way inside of him. Clare felt that they had begun to
slip into Dante’s psyche, and that if he spent just a little more time with them, they could open him like an oyster.

  “Do you want to come with us or not?” asked Jem.

  “Yes,” said Dante meekly. “I do.”

  CLARE SLIPPED DOWN a staircase, opened a door and let Bear loose in the compound. For what they were planning, Bear was likely to be a liability rather than an asset. Jem took the heavy flashlight from his bag.

  No one was roaming the halls; they could hear the sounds of snoring and the rustling of bedclothes and mutterings of uneasy sleep, but everything else was silent. Even the Cured had given up wailing. Dante took them to the door to the basement. The door had a small jagged mouth for a Yale key.

  “I can’t pick this,” said Ramah. Jem leaned forward and turned the handle, and the door swung open.

  It was a deep basement. The passage was narrow, and they had to go single file. Clare didn’t count the stairs, but before they came to the bottom, her ankle had begun to hurt. She’d already put a lot of stress on it, but it wasn’t just her ankle; she ached all over. And she had a headache behind her eyes.

  “This is it,” said Jem, and stopped. Clare, behind him on the stairs, started to fall forward and almost knocked him over.

  “Easy,” said Jem.

  “Flashlight out of my eyes, please,” said Clare. “My headache’s bad enough.”

  Finally they all huddled together at the end of a long, wide hallway. Clare felt air coming from under the nearest door.

  “This is a lot more scary than I imagined,” whispered Dante. “I didn’t picture the dark.”

  “Nobody pictures the dark,” said Ramah. “That’s the nature of dark.”

  Jem stepped up to the door. As he did, it slowly swung open, and cool air rushed out into the hall.

  The room was filled with naked dolls. And gazing at them were hundreds and hundreds of small eyes. Some of the dolls with porcelain heads had fallen on the floor and smashed open like vandalized Halloween pumpkins. In places, there were dolls altogether without eyes, as if a rapacious crow had plucked them out. It was a flesh-colored wall embedded with a thousand sightless blue eyes.

  Jem, Ramah and Dante automatically looked at Clare.

  “Maybe you should go back,” said Jem.

  “No,” said Clare.

  “They all have blue eyes,” said Ramah.

  “All the children in those pictures we found had blue eyes, too,” said Jem. “Remember? I remember I noticed because—because I noticed.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” said Clare uneasily.

  “It does,” said Jem. “I think it means that, for some reason, Master is obsessed with blue-eyed children. But none of those children in the photographs had eyes that were a really deep blue.” He lifted his gaze and looked her in the face. “Not blue and dark as the wine dark sea. Not like yours, Clare.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  PEST

  DARK AS THE wine dark sea.

  It was true that her eyes were very blue—a strange deep blue. People noticed; Mirri had noticed that first day.

  “I don’t understand,” said Clare. “What do you think the Master does? Collect children with blue eyes?”

  “Even that angel upstairs had blue eyes,” said Jem. “And those dolls. Keeping those dolls around just isn’t normal.”

  “Master liked Eliza’s blue eyes,” Dante said. “But she disappeared. We’re not supposed to mention her name anymore. Master likes his blue-eyed children best, though—he talks about their recessive genes.”

  “But what does he have in mind?” asked Clare.

  “It’s a cult,” said Ramah. “People in cults don’t think analytically. Not in a way that’s easy to follow. Usually any logic there is circles back to who’s got power.”

  “You know a lot about it,” said Dante.

  “Yes,” said Ramah.

  They moved out of the doll room into the hallway. Yellow light spilled out into the darkness from under a far door, and they could see a shadow moving back and forth, back and forth.

  “I’m scared,” said Dante.

  “That makes sense,” said Ramah.

  The movement stopped. Jem took Clare’s hand.

  “It knows we’re here,” he said.

  “Why did you have to say ‘it’?” whispered Dante.

  The door opened, and light poured into the hallway.

  A figure stood silhouetted in the doorway. The man was big, much bigger and taller than any of them, although Clare realized that they weren’t used to adults anymore. She had guessed, on the night in the woods, that he was fifty or so, and she saw that she had probably been right. But she hadn’t noticed then that his face had smile lines around his eyes and mouth. It was a soft face, gentle and inviting.

  “It’s Master,” said Dante, with relief and anxiety mixed in his voice.

  “It’s you,” said Clare to the man, and Jem and Ramah and Dante looked at her, startled.

  “It would have been less complicated if you had come with me then,” said the Master to Clare.

  Clare couldn’t think how it could possibly have been simpler if she had left in the night with the Master, but then the pain in her head had spread to her neck, and she couldn’t think very well. She only knew that the Master was the adult, and she didn’t have to be responsible anymore. This was the moment she had been waiting for since she had watched her father and stepmother die. The Master would care for them all; he would give them the cure; they would go home. It would be as he had said: everything would be all right.

  But she had discovered in all her time with the others, and even before, that things happen. That just when it seems that you’re sitting safely beside the great road, you find that you’re actually smack in the middle, where the traffic is.

  The Master stepped aside to let them into the room.

  “Jem,” she murmured.

  “Clare?”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  The room that the Master led them into was one of light and shadow. Hurricane lanterns illuminated high ceilings and walls filled with niches. Everywhere they looked there were paintings and statues and tapestries. A large painting with four children in it dominated the room.

  “It’s not hard to collect art anymore,” said the Master, as they looked around wonderingly.

  “This is beautiful,” said Ramah.

  “Clare needs to sit down,” said Jem.

  “You should all sit down,” said the Master. “And tell me why you’re down here.”

  “We were exploring,” said Dante. “We weren’t prowling. They wanted to explore. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I went with them.”

  Ramah cast Dante a look of utter contempt.

  “We passed the room full of dolls,” said Jem. “We didn’t like them.” The Master laughed.

  “I found them when I first came to Haven,” he said. “Which is what I call this place. I should get rid of them. I suspect they were a child’s toys.”

  All the ‘I’s strung together in his sentences annoyed Clare, but she was finding it hard to focus.

  “This wasn’t always your home?” she asked.

  “Oh, no,” said the Master. “I lived and worked in the city, but after Pest I needed a place where I could offer help to the survivors I found.”

  “That’s very good of you,” said Jem. Clare recognized his tone; Jem did not like the Master.

  “But we’re not really survivors in the long run,” said Ramah. “Pest’ll eventually get us. True?”

  “True,” said the Master. “The rash indicates the presence of Pest. You may notice it in other ways as well. Perhaps, without even realizing it, you’re becoming more lethargic. Maybe you don’t really feel all that well. The symptoms depend on the child.”

  Clare certainly wasn’t feeling very well at all. But she suddenly found herself remembering Mirri saying, “I feel terrific.”

  “And you have the cure,” said Jem.

  “I do,�
� said the Master.

  “And you’re going to cure us all,” said Jem.

  “I am. But you have to wait here until you’re on the very cusp of Pest. I can’t cure you before that. And my price for the cure is fair—you need to help me rebuild the world.”

  “We heard about that,” said Jem sharply.

  “Careful,” said Ramah quietly.

  “We heard you want to pair us up as if we were sheep or cattle.”

  “Sheep and cattle don’t pair off,” murmured Ramah.

  “I don’t think you understand,” said the Master. “Let’s go upstairs. We can talk more there. Nobody has to be part of the new world if they don’t want to be, and I allow personal preferences. I could match up you two, for example.” He nodded at Clare and Jem. “If you want.”

  Jem looked away.

  “That’s just wrong,” said Clare. “Personal preferences or not.”

  The Master’s eye lingered on Clare for a long moment.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I’m upsetting you, and I don’t mean to.” Holding a hurricane lamp, he ushered them out of the room. Then he held up the light and gazed into Clare’s eyes.

  “Really remarkable,” he said.

  On their way to the stairs, they passed the doll room again. Clare felt cool air brush her cheeks, and she shivered.

  The Master walked in front of them with the lantern, and his long shadow covered them all as they went up the stairs. He turned down a hallway and then went up another flight to reach the airy regions of the central house. Behind her, Clare could hear Dante whispering apologies to Ramah. And Jem—Jem was at her elbow, as if he knew how tired she was and was ready to steady her if she stumbled.

  They passed a window, and Clare thought she detected the first light of dawn on the horizon. Finally the Master stopped in front of a door they had not seen before.

  “Dante,” said the Master. “You go to bed. When it’s time for breakfast, tell them all I’m back.”

  Dante turned and left.

  The Master used a heavy key to unlock the door.

  This room was the mirror opposite of the room in the basement. Big windows let in the weak light of dawn; the furniture was spare. There were two Madonnas on the wall and what looked like several portraits, although it was still too dark to tell. But there was nothing like the riot of color and form they had seen below.