Borderliners (15 page)

He smiled, as if sharing a private joke with me. But I didn’t get it.

‘You’re not religious?’

I shook my head, keen for him to continue.

‘No. I’m not one to make assumptions. As David Hume said, “
A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.”’

‘Well, I’m not. Simply not.’

Tony’s mouth twisted into a half smile. ‘I understand. But much of the bad press religion gets is borne of ignorance. And propaganda. I can understand why so many people turn away. Many truths are hidden.’

I screwed up my eyes and merely nodded.

‘There’s a lot of corruption in some of our bigger churches - you know which ones I mean. And people are fed up with it. This is why smaller organisations take hold. You often find they are started by people who have broken ranks with traditional religious institutions.’

‘You also find some real crazies amongst those groups. I end up treating some of the people they come into contact with.’

I regretted the comment but it was too late. I could not unsay it. But in any case, it didn’t seem to matter as he was still talking.

‘Something unexpected happened to me here. I got emotionally connected. I thought, maybe
you
could identify with this. I don't wish to be presumptuous Elena, but you seem fairly isolated yourself.’

‘Possibly,’ I muttered. 'But these things are always dependent on your perception. Some of us quite like our own company, thanks very much.’

‘Some of us would dearly love to enjoy our own company,’ he replied, lighting up another roll-up. ‘It’s not a luxury which has been afforded to me.’

I looked over at him and caught sight of his rueful smile. Was I being insensitive? I wasn't sure.

‘Is that what you wanted to confide in me?’ I caught sight of a clock in the hallway. There were clocks everywhere in this house, marking time, whispering warnings and reminders that time was not on my side.

‘No, not quite,’ he smiled, taking another thoughtful drag on his roll-up. ‘I just wanted to tell you more. You see, some things are so clear to me and yet others, not at all.’

He was talking in riddles and my patience was fraying around the edges, burning down like his roll-up. I sighed.

‘You know, I decided to join the Charismatics. It was an odd decision.’

I coughed.

‘I’m not always like this. I can't always rationalise. I need other people, like you do, like everybody does. What I've been searching for, it's this. It's this contact with a community unified by something more, something unseen.’

‘I sense a ‘but’ in here somewhere.’ The clocks were oppressing me.

Tony finished his roll-up and stubbed it out on the desk before brushing the ash into his hand. He continued talking with a pile of ash sitting loosely in his palm. ‘Elena, you’re right.’ His tone was different. ‘I’m not sure now. There's something not right. I don’t think it’s the voices.’

I considered this. ‘Tony, you don't have to stay here and you don't have to join the Charismatic Community. You're an adult. If it’s not right, you have choices.’

He looked panicked. ‘I can’t leave,’ he said, his voice low.

I tutted. ‘Yes you can. Where do you want to go? Where is home, I'll drive you.’

‘Home isn't home. If I go home, I can't be sure I'll be well. I don't know if I’m going to make it. The voices, they aren't so bad here. You don't understand.’

‘Tony,’ I said, ‘You know what I do for a living. I’m not going to pretend to understand you. That’s not what I do, anyway. But I appreciate what you're saying. It sounds like you need to manage your situation - that’s what you're telling me, I think. However, if you will permit me, I don't think this community can help you. It may appear that they can, but I would be very cautious.’

Tony looked in the direction of the window for a few long seconds before speaking again. ‘Please, read through the file. Read through all of it.’

I looked down at the folder which felt like hot coals on my lap, weighty and full of dark promise. ‘OK, I’ll take it away to read.’ I said as the room closed in on me even further. ‘But Tony?’ I caught his eye and held it for a heartbeat. ‘Please, heed my advice and get out of here.’

I wedged the file under my arm and tip-toed out of the room down the stairs to the waiting front door. Tony followed me down but made no effort to come any further as I hurried back to my house. Thoughts of devils in ballgowns swirled about in my head but I tried not to panic.
Reserve judgement, be rational,
I thought. Once my front door was safely shut behind me, I sat down in my living room and started to read.

Bells in the distance reminded me it was Sunday, the day of so-called worship, and my least favourite day of the week. It was the one in which I was at my lowest ebb. Today was worse. I was light headed from lack of sleep, having sat up most of the night reading through the file. The clippings dated back to the late eighties. One of them talked about Julia and Iain’s arrival in the village in 1984. Then there followed thirty or more clippings to do with villager disappearances or deaths, each of them around the same time of year – this time of year.

I sat up in bed and shoved the file under my bed. Weak sunlight reached through to touch me through my bedroom curtains which were open just a crack, and the smell of coal smoke seeped through my open window. In the winter it was difficult to forget the deep rooted mining origins of the village. I could tell the older people on the street had already lit the coal fires which powered their heating and water system in the winter. Was it winter yet, I pondered? Not quite, but the weather was turning.

Slipping on my dressing gown, I skipped down the stairs, two at a time, turning left at the bottom to go into the kitchen, which faced the front of the street. Opening the blinds I saw that the ubiquitous dog walkers were already out in force, clad in thicker coats than yesterday. As steam erupted from my
caffettiera
, I turned the diary over in my mind. For a few moments I had co-existed in two worlds: the dream world and the real one.

A shrill noise cut through my thoughts, causing me to spill coffee on my hand. I ran into the hall and stopped short. There was nobody on the other side of the front door, and when I opened it wide, my driveway lay empty. It was deathly silent and the neighbouring houses were sleepy and quiet. Nevertheless, my eyes were yanked downwards to a package waiting on my doorstep, which must have been left there just moments before. Galvanized into action, I stepped over the package to stride to the end of the drive. A quick scan of the street showed no sign of anybody. I shook my head. Given there were no cars or people around, it should have been possible to see who had left the package.

Taking careful, slow steps, I retreated, pausing at the front door to bend down to pick up the package. Clicking the door shut behind me, I lugged it into the hallway. It was so heavy, my arms hurt. Once in the living room, I dumped it down on the coffee table, tearing it open slightly as I did so. A slither of burnished gold glinted beneath the torn wrappings and, taking a deep breath, I ripped the brown paper right off to reveal a book inside:
‘Man Myth and Magic’
.
Volume four
. I noticed there was a piece of paper sticking out of the top and I opened the book at the marked page without a second thought, jumping backwards as a folded piece of paper with the same mature, forward slanting hand fell out into my lap. I opened it up, and read:

The High Priestess

Within two pillars, a turning point

Twixt old and new, to her head anoint

With promise of secret paths aligned

A price too high and much maligned

Split crescent moon, a world disjoint

Leaving sword, chalice, pentacle and staff

Confused and naive, I heard her laugh

With a smile which didn’t reach her eyes

A knowing glance both sinister and wise

Hinting at truths on her behalf

Scrolls opened to burn up at her feet

So she bathed and wallowed in the heat

Of wisdom and their heady choice

Decision posed, an inner voice

But danger beckoned, to chaos wreak

I unscrewed my facial muscles and took a deep breath. It looked like it had been penned by Tony, but I couldn’t understand why he had left it on my doorstep within the pages of this tome. He must have taken it from the New Age Shop, and yet I didn’t realise he even had an interest in the place. I wondered if he had been there looking for something to do with his PhD. Even so, it was a bit left field. Why hadn’t he given it to me with the file?

I closed my eyes. My thoughts flitted around, contemplating Tony’s condition and his studies. I had a covert interest in such matters too, as desolation and spiritual isolation within modern society was something I saw growing all around me, something I saw rising up like a tidal wave in the communal subconscious of my patients. The narrowness of the old world sat uncomfortably with new scientific discovery and I often wondered if people were being forced into making choices which no longer made sense. Either or. Science or religion. Where life no longer made sense in terms of one or the other was where you found the borderline. People on the edge. Tortured souls, neither here nor there, subject to rifts in their world which weren't supposed to be there. Man-made cracks and gateways to nowhere. Maybe purgatory was this; not a place beyond the grave but a real man-made gap into which poured the deadliest corruption.

I thought about Tony and his state of mind. And I thought about Julia and Iain. For a few weeks now, the only connection between us had been the juxtaposition of our bricks and mortar. It was if they were aware of my suspicions and had closed ranks. Some people now appeared not to recognise me outside of the surgery. It wasn’t that people looked away when they saw me coming, or that they were hostile, it was much worse than that. They didn’t see me at all.

Just as I was about to close the book and stash it away, some more bits of paper fluttered out from within the pages. I jumped down and scrabbled about on the floor to pick them up. The bits of paper were fragile, yellowing pieces of newspaper. Like the clippings from the file they looked a few years old, in fact they were even older than those from the clippings file. I squinted at the small print. The first was dated 15 February 1985 and the other three were from late 1987.

A small voice in my head told me to look closer and a crawling sensation of dread crept up my spine as I read through.

In 1984 a newly married couple, Julia and Iain Walsh, had started a small community in a village in the Scottish Highlands. It was quasi-religious, the article said. Quasi-religious? I wrinkled my nose and read on. After a few months a young girl who’d belonged to the community had died. The coroner had pronounced the death suicide but the girl’s family had contested this, pointing the finger at Iain Walsh. It seemed they thought he’d persuaded her to take an overdose. There had been a police investigation but they hadn’t found anything which could prove the family’s allegations and in the end Iain’s name had been cleared. Then, in 1986, Julia and Iain had reappeared in another village, this time in Yorkshire.

The articles from 1987 all cited the same incident. Three deaths following a secret ceremony on 31 October. All three victims had committed suicide, all had been members of a community a certain Pippa and John French had set up in the village a few months before. In addition, the victims had paid money into the couple’s bank account shortly before they had died. There were accusations that the couple had used mind control techniques and threats on the people who had joined their community. Investigations were ongoing, the articles said. I held the last clipping between my finger and thumb, afraid of it, almost as if it might burst into flames at any moment. It had to be them. Clearly, Julia and Iain had been through a few villages before they’d perfected their techniques. People had died, just as people were dying here. Nothing had been proved.

Someone cared enough to keep a memento of what had gone before. They had all but buried it and these hidden newspaper articles were all that remained. I didn’t need to ask myself why. It was a common enough phenomenon among sociopaths, but this fact alone sent alarm pulsing through my body. These people were far more dangerous than I’d first thought.

As I stared at the encroaching dusk which pressed on my window, I thought about my friends and family who were far away from this place. As far as Dan was concerned, I lived in a mundane village just like any other with all the most typical idiosyncrasies. He didn’t set much store by my experiences with the Charismatics, my reports of the villagers’ mental ill health, or by the general hostility I encountered. But if ever there was a time when I needed some friendly company, it was now. The temperature of the air around me seemed to plummet as I considered the old newspaper articles and their implications.

Turning my attention back to the golden binder, I flicked through it, inhaling a musty smell as I did so. The book was full of information about various different legends, superstitions and the various traditions different peoples had followed throughout the ages. There was a fair bit about the supernatural. I shivered slightly as I leafed through the pages. The book functioned as a kind of dictionary of mystic and supernatural beliefs and practises. The volume I was holding was number four, one of the volumes which had gone missing from the shop. Just as I registered this, the pages fell open at a different location to reveal a second, small piece of paper which fluttered out of the gilt-edged pages. In the same slanting italics, someone had written:
‘Hide this away from the Queen Bee.’

With a sinking feeling I remembered Tony had asked me to go to his welcome prayers that evening. I couldn’t understand why he was joining the Community, nor why he had ignored my advice to steer clear, but I owed it to him go. In the light of what I’d seen that afternoon, I owned it to the whole community to go. Julia and Iain needed watching, and not by their own community members but I also knew that in order to get the police involved I would need more evidence. My mouth set in a hard line, I went back upstairs, put my hair up into a top knot - to give me even more height - pulled on a pair of leggings, a fleece, a bomber jacket and a pair of long boots before grabbing my bag and keys and leaving the house.