The Special Ones (20 page)
Rage boils inside me now, surging just beneath the skin. It’s so difficult to witness this evil, these lies, without losing control. To accept that this is the way everything is meant to go and that I must accept it as part of the process. We Special Ones have endured similar trials before, and will survive them again.
I spend the day inside, watching as the story spreads, my feelings swinging violently back and forth. It is, on the one hand, devastating to have my little world ripped apart like this. To hear it described so negatively. The media keeps referring to it as ‘the prison farm’, and this rankles every time. Yet I also feel proud – deeply so – at how strongly the world reacts to Esther. Her calm, composed face is soon everywhere. Everyone adores her.
It’s late on that first, frenzied day when the networks start showing scenes of Esther’s reunion with her parents. ‘Emotions are overflowing here!’ declares one particularly vapid reporter as the camera zooms in on the family arriving at the police station.
It’s quite clear that the overflowing emotions are all coming from Esther’s mother and (to a lesser degree) her father. Esther embraces her parents, but she doesn’t go overboard with fake feelings. And why would she? These two people are not her real family.
Esther remains polite but reserved as the media jostle around, bombarding her with questions. There’s only one point, when yet another reporter asks her
how does it feel to be free?
that Esther’s expression switches over into annoyance. ‘I won’t be free until the others have been found,’ she says, in a snippet the networks play over and over again.
‘But they have been,’ another reporter says.
Esther shakes her head. ‘No, there are others. Ones who left the farm before.’
‘What do you mean?’ ask several reporters simultaneously, as the cameras flash. ‘Where did they go?’
Esther’s face tightens. ‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out.’
I have to smile. Esther looks so serious, pretending that she cares about the fate of the others. I dare say she fools the reporters, but she doesn’t fool me. I know that her real interest, whether she realises it yet or not, is to reconnect with me.
The next day, someone discovers the link between the farm and the Special Ones portal, and the headlines change to
DAWN RAID ON CULT.
The force against my chest presses harder.
How could anyone refer to us as a cult? It’s laughable. The Special Ones is a philosophy that defies any traditional definition. We don’t force people join us. We don’t force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. People willingly seek advice from the Special Ones and buy our homemade products – bowls, knives, aprons, scarves – from the online store. No-one, I reassure myself, could possibly see the Special Ones as a
cult
.
After this my teachings begin to appear, first circulating online and eventually appearing on the TV networks. I am confident that they can’t be linked back to me, and so I allow myself to feel some small amount of pride in these films. I know our followers cherish them, even now as they’re being used as base entertainment. Making the films consumed a lot of my time – not just the hours spent fast-forwarding through footage to choose the best, most inspirational scenes from the day to use, but also the compiling, the editing and uploading. Yet I always knew it was worth it.
By that evening, however, my feelings have changed. Inevitably Harry appears in some of the films, although I tried wherever possible to keep him out. Watching them now, I find myself discovering little clues as to what had been developing between him and Esther, right there in front of me. I see the feeling compressed into those three-second glances – far more powerful and concentrated than anything a lingering gaze could convey. And the
not quite
touches of their bodies now strike me as almost pornographic.
Did they think they could get away with it? Deceive me? One thing, at least, is very clear to me now. There will be a reckoning.
The next morning, I wake up in front of the television with an anxious, niggling feeling, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a minute or two. I do not need to leave for work until late in the afternoon, but I get dressed anyway.
The problem, I realise, is that I want to go and check on my possessions. Now, immediately, rather than waiting for darkness like I usually do. It’s not that I’m worried the police will locate what I have hidden there yet, but whenever I think of the factory I feel uneasy. In the end I decide to go with my instinct and drive out there, despite the risks. Now that everything is in flux, it’s time to make a decision about what to do with them. I also need to confirm that there’s nothing there – fingerprints, DNA – that will link the site to me.
I take my father’s car, loading it up with everything I’ll need. His car is a fuel-guzzling, wasteful monster, but there’s no denying it’s spacious. The empty water drum and the box of supplies fit easily into the boot. It’s possible to fit a person in there with room to spare.
I keep my possessions in the factory whose crumbling tower can be seen distantly from the farm – I found the two locations on the same day. Although it’s probably more accurate to say I simply remembered where they were.
After I’d retaken possession of the Special Ones photograph, I began meditating, often sitting cross-legged on my school bedroom floor for an entire night – while the others slept around me – trying to re-create the experience I’d had in Mr Mills’s office. Meditation, especially when combined with medication, was the best way I’d found to tap back into my former life and the lives of the other Special Ones. It brought me such joy to reconnect with them. We had come from different parts of the country, drawn together by our shared philosophy on the way a life should be lived (with purity, with simplicity, with economy), and lived together in harmony in a perfect, self-sustaining farmhouse.
But the farmhouse. Where was it? I could picture it so clearly in my mind and I ached with longing to be there.
It wasn’t until after the tragedy, after I’d dropped out of school and moved back into the family home, that it finally happened. I woke one morning with a strong urge to go for a drive. So, after consuming the last of my pill collection, I took off that morning in an almost trance-like state. I took no map and paid no attention to the road signs. It felt like the car itself was deciding which direction to go.
The car drove me away from the city and, after a couple of hours of winding through country lanes and dirt tracks, I found myself on a remote piece of land. It was obvious from the tangle of weeds that grew there and the broken-down fencing that the place hadn’t been used in a long time. Something drew me towards it, the shining edge of a memory.
I parked the car and walked through an overgrown garden, finding myself in front of an old wooden farmhouse – dilapidated and long abandoned, though the stone chimney stood intact. It had a big front verandah shaded by a tall, lemon-scented gum, its silvery leaves gleaming as they caught the sun.
Heart pounding, I turned around, pulling something into my mind from long ago.
There will be a tower.
And, yes, jutting up on the horizon to the right of the farmhouse, there it was: a distant factory tower, the word
OWN
just visible on the side facing me. My entire body tingled. It wasn’t just that this place was perfect for my needs. It was also that I recognised it from my meditation sessions. This was where the Special Ones had lived before. I was sure of it.
I had not cried since that very last time my father locked me in the cellar, and this time the tears fell not from anger but from relief. Instinct, guided by a buried memory, had led me directly to the Special Ones’ original farmhouse. This place had been waiting for me all this time. For us to return.
The last thing I did before leaving the property that day was to gather up a selection of herbs, succulents and wildflowers, my hand drawn naturally to particular ones. I took them home and pulverised them into a liquid, which I poured into one of two small purple bottles I’d found buried at the back of my mother’s cupboard.
That evening I began work on the first of the remembering books, the words flowing from me in a steady, effortless stream.
After I claimed the farmhouse as my own, restoring it was my first priority. But when I got around to investigating the old factory, I recognised that it, too, would be useful for storage.
The site was surrounded by
KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY
signs but, judging from the amount of rust, I doubted the owner would be around very often to bother me. I climbed in through a hole in the fencing and stood for a moment, admiring the tower. On the other side, the word
FAMILY’S
was spelled out in bricks, vertically from the top of the tower down.
FAMILY’S OWN.
I wondered briefly what had been made here. Biscuits maybe, or soap. Not that it mattered.
I scouted the space inside the main building first, with its heavy wooden doors still firmly attached to their hinges. People made things to last in the olden days. The space, although beautiful, with light filtering in from small, high windows, was too open for my needs. Even the tower was not suitable. But what piqued my interest immediately was the vast storage area under the floor – the sort of place where things could be hidden and not found again. This is where I keep my possessions.
The first time I was in this police station – just after Harry left, only days ago – everyone treated me like I was the most important person in the world. They fussed around, couldn’t do enough for me. Someone brought a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, draped a coat across my shoulders. And everything, every tiny thing I had to say, was vitally interesting to them.
That’s all changed now.
I’ve made Dad drive me here and as I walk in, two of the officers hurry over to bar the door against the crowd that’s followed us from the house. The sergeant comes out of his office when he hears the commotion. ‘Hello, Tess,’ he says, his cheerfulness sounding a little forced. ‘Back again so soon! You can just call me, you know. Probably easier that way.’
His eyes flick over to the people outside calling my name and trying to take pictures of me on their phones.
‘I did call,’ I say. ‘Lots of times. But they kept telling me you were busy.’
The sergeant gestures to his office. ‘Well, come in. Let’s talk.’
My dad starts to follow me in, but I stop him. ‘Can you wait here?’
‘Really?’ he says. ‘Are you sure?’ He’s relieved, though, I can tell. He clearly hates hearing about what happened.
‘I’m sure.’
‘Well, I’m here if you need me,’ he says as I walk into the office. The sergeant clicks the door closed behind me.
‘I’ve had some more ideas about where he might be keeping the missing girls,’ I tell him before I’ve sat down. ‘It’d have to be somewhere –’
‘Tess,’ says the sergeant, taking a seat behind his desk. ‘What I’m going to say will sound blunt, but I need you to understand. There’s very little chance that those girls are still alive. We believe we’re dealing with a psychopath here, and in our experience, once a victim has ceased to be of interest to someone like that, they tend to be disposed of pretty quickly.’ He presses his fingertips together and points them at me. ‘We are searching for bodies, Tess, not living people.’
