Grey

by Kayley Barratt

  Duncan moves towards the boy, placing his hand on his shoulder. The boy flinches, straightening with anxiety. “Do you renounce your sin before the eyes of the Lord?” Duncan says.

  “Yes,” the boy says quietly.

  “Louder!”

  “Yes!” the boy shouts. “I repent.”

  “I did not ask you to repent, I asked you to renounce.”

  “I renounce my sin,” the boy says, his lips tremble as he looks around the chapel. “I kissed her. I’m sorry.”

  Duncan lifts his eyes up, above the boy’s head and the boy squeezes his eyes shut as Duncan removes his hand from his shoulder. “Group A. Do you accept his renouncement?”

  The men’s group A responds by shouting in disgust and curses. His renouncement isn’t good enough for them.

  “Group B,” Duncan says. “Do you accept his renouncement?”

  Group B are silent, they’re more conservative, more observant—they make their judgement by thinking it through, not by reacting on impulse. Eventually, as though they all think with one mind, their voices deliver the conclusion together.

  “No,” they all shout.

  Duncan’s eyes stray further, to the back of the chapel, to the final group. “Group C. Will you accept his renouncement?”

  I stare at the group across from me, the group that A and B are also glaring at, as if they’re anticipating a predictable yes. The young boys are confused, they’re glancing up at the older generations to make the decision for them—they’re not sure if it’s a test or not.

  Suddenly, I’m beginning to think that too. Is it a test? Or is it a genuine renouncement? What will happen to the boy if all groups refuse him?

  I’m now feeling more afraid for the girl. She might be too weak to have her renouncement now, but it will have to come sooner or later and with Duncan putting all the blame on her, I’m not even sure that my group will allow her to join. Then again, I don’t know them well enough to assume that. I only know Ruth and she did just save my life, so maybe there’s more defiance in group C than I first thought.

  “Group C!” Duncan shouts. “I need an answer!”

  “Yes,” one of the members says, he is an older man with white hair and a thick beard. “We accept.”

  Both genders from A and B protest with glares. But the women of group C all hold small smiles around me, as though we are all thinking as one, no matter what gender we are. There is a dangerous silence that occurs, as Duncan processes the group’s answer.

  Finally, he smiles. “The Lord has spoken. Andrew will now join group C. He is to be included in all activities, but will not be permitted to work night shifts.”

  Duncan pulls Andrew to his feet and the boy flicks his eyes open. Duncan pushes him by his shoulders and Andrew begins walking down the steps of the stage, stumbling down the path between the snarling groups that act like they want to rip his throat out. He reaches the back in a daze and I look at him as he moves past me, joining the opposite side.

  “The slut, Carol, will receive her renouncement tomorrow morning,” Duncan says. “I encourage all the women to refrain from making your decision until you have heard her speak. Always remember, it is the devil that possesses, but he only possesses the weak. Is Carol too weak to resist him? Is Carol too riddled with sin to continue our journey? Make your choice wisely. May the Lord be with you.”

  “May the lord be with you,” all the women say in unison.

  Duncan leaves the stage, exiting through the gap of a curtain around the side. We all wait as the supervisors and leaders begin to walk around the platform above us, making their way back to us.

  I seize my chance at conversation while they are distracted. “Our group will accept her, won’t they?” I say to Ruth.

  Ruth gives me a deep frown. “It’s always hard to tell. We have before. But, this is a difficult situation. Letting someone in always comes with a consequence. That consequence is that we will become even further away from ever joining group B.”

  “So?” I say.

  “The closer to B, the closer to A,” she says.

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Why would you want to join group A?”

  “Because joining group A is the only way out of here,” she says. “They don’t keep people here forever. They are eventually released back into the outside.”

  “At what cost?” I say. There must be a catch, I doubt Duncan would casually let people go without some kind of insurance. The first thing I’d do is go to the police. He must know that.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “No one does. But it does happen. I’ve seen it. Some vanish discreetly, but when someone is given permission to leave, when their time here is fulfilled, he holds a public send off. And we watch the person be driven out of the gates. Either that or they become a leader.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough.”

  I read over her face. She isn’t a teenager, she’s a grown woman, possibly in her late twenties to early thirties. It’s unlikely that she was forced here by her parents, it’s even more unlikely that she would leave behind her life on the outside to join here voluntarily. So, how did she come to join?

  It’s something I deeply want to know, but I don’t have the chance to ask because the leaders have joined us. I turn around, coming face-to-face with Madam Katelyn, who stares into me with her familiar, arrogant smirk.

  “Group C,” she says. “Follow me.”

  She turns, limping herself slowly up the steps as the other leaders gather around the top, waiting impatiently for her to leave. I’m the first member of the line and I’m the first to exit the grim chapel.

  The sky is darker than when I entered, the sun is finally setting behind the distant horizon of beyond the fence. I find it hard to believe that I’ve only been here a day—merely a few hours. It feels much longer, it feels timeless.

  It was only the other night that I was sitting beside Nathan on that balcony—gazing at the gentle stars with my head tilted on his chest. It was only the other night that I danced and I laughed, and I counted my blessings that I was lucky enough to have him in my life. It was only the other night that I was free. That I was whole. That I was oblivious to this secret society that would take in good people and make them bend their souls to obedience.

  I notice that the other supervisors of group C are leading their own lines and now it suddenly makes sense. We’re separated by dorms. I feel relief at the thought of Ruth being in the same dorm as me, along with the young teenage girl and other women of all ages.

  We get halfway across the grounds, when suddenly, the line is halted. I peek around Madam Katelyn to see Elijah standing before her.

  “Apologies for the interjection,” Elijah says. “Pastor wants a word with Elizabeth.”

  I stiffen at the sound of my name; my throat begins to squeeze tightly as I ponder over reasons as to what he would want to talk to me about.

  “Take her,” Madam Katelyn says, disinterested either way.

  Elijah nods at me and I walk out of the line, keeping my eyes down as I succumb to the sudden summoning. Elijah begins walking in the opposite direction and I match his footsteps as I drag myself besides him.

  Once we’re around a corner of a building, he pauses, checking his surroundings.

  “I thought you were taking me to Duncan?” I say.

  “I am,” he says. “But first, there’s something you need to know.”

  Chapter 18

  I press my back into the harsh brick of the random building we are pausing beside, waiting for Elijah to elaborate. He’s occupied with scanning around each direction, his attention drifting to every little noise, no matter how insignificant.

  “What is it?” I say quietly, bored with his silence.

  “Keep walking,” he says. “This way.”

  He continues walking and I push myself from the wall, walking quickly to catch up to him as I try to match his giant strides that are exhausting me, he’s so tall.
We walk in silence for a few seconds, before he turns me down a secluded pathway that leads to the entrance of another orange-bricked cabin.

  “You did good back there,” he whispers. “It’s not easy to watch.”

  “Seriously?” I say, anger rises in my voice. “It not easy? Are you joking? No one should be watching that at all. It shouldn’t even be happening at all.”

  “I understand,” he says. “It’s your first day and you’re probably in shock by what you’ve witnessed today. But, there’s more to it than you think.”

  “It’s a cult,” I whisper. “I’ve worked that much out.”

  “It didn’t used to be,” he says. “Not since…”

  “Since?” I say, scanning over the side of his face. He still refuses to look me in the eye, like he has difficulty with it.

  “That’s not important. What is important is what is going to happen. Pastor likes to test new members, to provoke sin or distrust from them. He’s paranoid that some of the volunteers only join to investigate the academy, so he holds extreme public punishments to drown out the fearless moles. In most cases, they will just watch along. In other cases, they will scream or try to stop the renouncement. In your case, you did both. You controlled yourself, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “Is that what you wanted me to know?” I say.

  "I told you not to react to anything."

  “I didn’t,” I say. “I stayed silent.”

  “You walked out into the aisle, every leader was watching you. And they also saw the member pull you back.”

  “Ruth?” I say. I grab his arm, halting our walk, making him meet my frantic gaze. “Will she be alright?”

  “What do you think?” he says. His face falls sad, almost weak, as he stares into my eyes with a longing for something that I’m not sure about. “Ruth will be punished, severely. It’s against the rules to intervene with a member’s choice to sin. Pastor is now going to test you again.”

  “I’ll have to do something to spare Ruth?”

  He nods. “That’s how this works.”

  “Is this a game to him?” I ask. “These are people’s lives.”

  He steps forwards, breathing down onto me with sharp, hollow breaths. “Listen to me carefully. You’re a member here now, you’re a part of this now. You have to do as they say and you have to control yourself. It’s the only way to remain who you are.”

  “Yeah, I’ve caught on to that part,” I say. “Group A and B seem fun.”

  “Is this a game to you?” he accuses. “I can tell you’re intelligent and with that comes responsibility. Manipulating your way through the system won’t get you anywhere. However intelligent you are, Pastor will always be a step ahead. And that’s why group A and B are the way they are.” “But you’re not,” I question, reading his bright, green eyes. “Why are you helping me? Why are you different to them?”

  He swallows, turning his face away. “I’m not. Like I said before, none of us can be helped.”

  He’s in denial. How can he not see that he’s helping me? How can he not differentiate between speaking to me like a human being and commanding me like I’m a slave? He is different and he is still in control of his own mind. I’m not even sure I played a part in that anymore, I don’t believe he’s ever truly been gone—he’s just awakened. Perhaps, in a way, I helped him, perhaps, I contributed to waking him up, but he mustn’t had been that far brainwashed for it to work so easily. And that is the hope. That is the only hope any member here can have—remembering who they are.

  We approach the entrance to the building, leaving that conversation dangling behind us as we move on to the other part of his warning.

  “What is this place?” I say, staring down at the first step up to the door before I place my foot upon it.

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, he looks upwards with an expression of longing and sadness, before delivering his fear-provoking reply. “Medical.”

  Chapter 19

  Medical. That word ignites unwanted fear into me as I take in its unfortunate definition. A place for medicine, a place for resting, a place for healing, a place for the injured. I am not injured. I am exhausted, sleep-deprived, weak and hungry—but not to the extreme amount that I require care. It is not for my own benefit that I am here, it is for someone else’s.

  Elijah opens the squeaky, red door that leads into a pasty, quiet room that is set up like a genuine waiting room. There are chairs around the entrance, pushed against the rim of the walls, and a woman wearing a white jacket and thick glasses is standing behind a desk in front of me while scribbling something down onto paper.

  From inside here, everything looks normal. Like I have just walked in from the busy streets of the city and I am waiting to see a doctor that can make everything better—like millions of other people across the world. I blink a few times to process how far from reality I’m travelling.

  This is not an ordinary reception. This is not an ordinary waiting room. That is not an ordinary woman hired to do good. It’s all an illusion.

  Elijah ignores the woman, who also ignores us and he points his eyes at the row of chairs. “Take a seat.”

  “Why are we—”

  “Take a seat,” he says.

  I bite the bottom of my lip and I wander backwards into one of the chairs, slumping into the wood that digs into my spine. Elijah disappears around the corner of the desk, I hear a door slam shut and it causes my body to jolt.

  I begin to count my heartbeats as the seconds pass. I scroll my eyes over the room, observing the woman that just continues to write, then I direct my attention to the chairs, then to the concrete floor, then to the pasty, grey walls. The seconds turn to minutes, my heartbeats turn sour and misplaced. I play with the rim of my sleeves, twiddling the cotton in between my fingertips.

  The few minutes turn into several, then into an hour. By then, my eyes are beginning to close and I can’t keep them open anymore. I rest my head into the board of the chair, gently letting my body slip further down until I’m comfortable. I wrap my arms around my chest, letting my face roll sideways as my subconscious fights to be let through.

  Just then, a slam occurs from across the room. I snap my eyes open, straightening my body up the chair and I unfold my arms, swallowing down anger at the inconvenient timing. I should have closed my eyes and slept the moment Elijah left me here. I could have just had a lovely hour nap.

  I relinquish those thoughts as one of the leader’s walks into the light from around the desk; he is a handsome man with curly blonde locks and a sharp, defined nose that doesn’t quite fit right between his petite, long-lashed eyes.

  “Elizabeth,” he calls, scanning around the room.

  I glance around me, becoming paranoid that I’m not the only one waiting here, but I am, I’m alone. Yet, he calls as though others are here. Yet again, it is like being in a genuine doctor’s surgery—only the doctors are the ones in need of a mental examination.

  I slide to my feet, pulling my sleeves to cover my hands. His eyes flicker to me and I pace towards him, with the mind set of running in the opposite direction.

  “Pastor will see you now,” he says. “Follow me.”

  Follow me. I’m sick of hearing those words. I’m sick of following, I’m sick of being patronised, I’m sick of forever being taken somewhere. For once, I want someone to follow me. I trudge behind him through the side door, scowling at the back of his head. I’ve never done so much scowling in one day before, it’s not a nice feeling. It’s the feeling that someone has authority over me, that someone is making me do something I don’t want to do and the more I linger on that thought, the more I become aware that I might be scowling for a very long time.

  The leader leads me into a narrow corridor that stretches for several feet and as I take my time reaching the end, I notice the peculiar noises coming from the closed doors astride me. Behind the walls are bizarre sounds that don’t resemble words, but resemble something like a caged animal. It is not screaming, no
r is it crying, but it’s a strange notion of vibrations that collaborate to create some kind of other-worldly language. The noises grow so loud that I pause beside a door, my hand moving towards the handle hesitantly. The sane part of my brain is telling me that I really shouldn’t look, because there’s a slight chance I’m going to be left traumatised by what I find lurking inside—but the curiosity is too much. My hand reaches the handle, ready to give in to temptation, ready to just open it for a second, just to catch a glimpse of whatever is inside.

  “Elizabeth,” the leader says from the end of the corridor. “You don’t want to do that.”

  I swallow, pulling my hand back from the handle and I turn to meet his eyes. “What’s in there?”

  “It’s off limits,” he says. “Medical is this way.”

  “Wait, so, this isn’t medical?” I ask, scanning my eyes to the other doors.

  “No. This is the psychiatric unit.”

  I press my ear to the wall as the strange noises continue, I can’t hear any word being spoken, by a doctor or otherwise. I just hear those vibrations, they’re scarily zombie-like. “Psychiatric unit?” I repeat, moving my ear away. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Why would they need a psychiatric unit when everybody here is already psychotic? How much more mental can the people here get? What group would they be classed as? Would they even be grouped?

  Whatever is making those noises, doesn’t even sound human, what is Duncan doing here?

  “I won’t tell you again,” he says. “This way.”

  The tone in his voice causes me to surrender my inquisition and I reluctantly glide myself down the corridor, peering over my shoulder to hear those noises one last time before they vanish behind me.

  Duncan knows that I’d be passing down this hallway, he knows that I’m capable of relying on instinct, to know when something is wrong. He wanted me to hear them, he wanted to scare me and he wanted to show me something that could happen to me if I step out of line. I don’t know what lies behind those doors and I don’t know what illusion those people are being forced into—but I’m going to find out.