Liz Jensen - The Rapture

‘No need to check out this one,’ murmurs Frazer Melville, pointing to the next entry. July 29th. Hurricane in the southern Atlantic. Rio de Janeiro. ‘Or the next.’

August 16th. Northern Pakistan and Kashmir. Earth tremors. ‘ That rings a bell,’ says Frazer Melville. Googling it swiftly, he shoots me a confirming glance. My chest tightens.

‘Read me the rest.’

‘August 22nd. Istanbul. Earthquake.

‘September 5th. Bangladesh. Heavy rains, massive flooding.

‘September 13th. Mumbai. Cyclone.

‘September 20th. Hong Kong. Storms leading to fires.

‘October 4th. Volcano. Samoa.’

The next event is dated October 12th. It says, simply, Tribulation. There’s no indication of what this means, or how it will be triggered. Or where it will happen.

Frazer Melville doesn’t speak for a long time. ‘For the sake of argument, let’s say she did predict all these events accurately. Not just Rio and Istanbul, but all the previous ones. Which we can have no way of confirming. But let’s assume it.’

‘OK. Then what?’

‘Then such a high number of correct predictions — and note, not a single false one. You can’t call this coincidence. Or even lucky guessing.’

‘Which leaves us where?’

‘Looking for a scientific explanation.’ He breathes in deeply and exhales. ‘It’s quite a long shot, but it’s a hypothesis. In the absence of anything else…’

‘Go on,’ I say, urgently interested. Bethany’s list has unnerved me more than I’m prepared to admit.

‘None of these events happen out of the blue. The day the volcano erupts, or the hurricane hits, or the earthquake strikes, or the geyser appears, is the climax of a process that will have begun some time before. In some cases, years previously. We have to look at meteorology and geology quite differently, of course, in terms of timescale. Weather can be brewing for a week or more before it becomes violent, for example. Whereas the Istanbul quake has been on the cards for years, with the pressure building up along the faultline. So let’s hypothesise that Bethany is picking up otherwise undetectable signals — let’s call them vibrations — relating to events that are already on their way to happening. Let’s say that in each case, she’s sensing the beginning of a build-up of pressure, whether it’s atmospheric or underground. And then let’s hypothesise that she’s somehow been able to imagine very accurately the time it will take to develop into an event, and where it will manifest itself. She knows the globe pretty well, for someone of her age. But in any case I’d suggest it’s more about instinct than knowledge. It’s known that the pressure along the faultline that led to the Istanbul quake has been moving steadily east. But it’s basically a question of the deeper earth structures shifting along a timeline. And Bethany somehow picking up the pressure changes.’

‘Just instinctively?’

He shakes his head. ‘No. There has to be a reason. A physical connection between Bethany and these… phenomena. Perhaps a kind of magnetism, or even something sonar.’

‘Go on.’

‘There’s a kind of directional magnetism that enables birds to know which direction to fly in when they migrate. It’s well known that animals pick up a lot.’ I remember Dr Ehmet using a parallel with cats and dogs, to explain Bethany Krall’s need for ECT. ‘If there was an earth tremor fifty kilometres away, many species would sense it. Let’s imagine that in Bethany’s case, the ECT gives her extra sensitivity to energy fluctuations. Or just an awareness of when natural flows are disrupted enough to trigger some radical event.’

‘It feels quite far-fetched. But as a theory, I certainly prefer it to the notion that Bethany’s some kind of New Age eco-psychic. The question is, how far does it go? And what’s it for? And where does this biblical stuff about the Tribulation fit in?’

Frazer Melville shakes his head. My mind’s racing. Joy seemed to think Bethany’s father held a clue. If I went along to one of Leonard Krall’s sermons, might I get an insight into the genesis of her visions?

But first, there is a question I need to ask Frazer Melville, a question that has been nagging at me since the day he met Bethany. It’s delicate. Is now the time to ask it? Maybe we are not ready for personal confessions. But the particular circumstances demand a particular kind of honesty. Frazer Melville takes my hand and squeezes it. A tiny gesture of closeness that reassures me.

‘When do we start telling people?’

He says, ‘Not just when, but what. And who. And how. I mean, I announce to the renowned Dutch meteorologist Cees van Haven, in conjunction with no one, that Bangladesh is in for another flood. I can just hear him laughing. And that India is to expect another cyclone — hey. Unprecedented. And I e-mail Melina to tell her that Hong Kong will be hit by storms leading to fires. She’ll think I’ve gone nuts. Then I tell a Chinese vulcanologist colleague about an eruption in Samoa. Well, Samoa’s on the Pacific Rim, where there’s regular volcanic activity, so no surprises there either.’

‘The difference is that you give precise dates.’

‘And the dates come and go, and if Bethany’s right, they say it’s coincidence, and if she’s wrong, I’m stuck with egg on my face. And then just as I’m signing off I say, Oh, PS, the Tribulation , otherwise known to religious fanatics as seven years of hell on earth, preceded by a celestial airlift of the faithful known as the Rapture, is due on October the twelfth, but we don’t know what it is, let alone where it kicks off.’

‘No need for the PS. These are scientists. Leave God right out of it.’

‘OK then, scrub God, but mention that this vague but paradoxically cast-iron prediction of a natural disaster emanates from a child psychopath who murdered her own mum and has just stabbed a fellow-inmate in the bollocks with a piece of Scandinavia. But I can’t name her for privacy reasons.’

‘So leave that out of it too.’

He sighs. ‘With no scientific evidence to back it up… Look what happened to Joy McConey.’ He’s doing something origami-like with his notes.

‘Are you talking yourself out of this?’

He stops and smiles. The green fish in his eye ignites. ‘No, my little sex goddess on wheels. This is my way of talking myself in.’

We sit for a moment in silence.

‘When you met Bethany, and I left her alone with you in my office, she said something to you,’ I begin. ‘Something that made you miserable.’

My remark has an effect more dramatic than anything I could have envisioned. Frazer Melville has leaped to his feet, and suddenly he’s offering me coffee, politely, as though we don’t know each other, as though we have not been here for two hours, as though we have never made love. ‘It’s no trouble to make some,’ he says, pointing at a toxic-looking percolator in the corner.

‘I seem to have hit a nerve,’ I say calmly. ‘Come back and sit.’

‘It was nothing,’ he says, returning reluctantly to his chair. But he shifts it slightly away from me as he does so, widening the space between us.

‘That’s not my feeling. My feeling is she said something you’d rather not face or discuss. But maybe you need to.’ He looks at his spread hands. I am getting closer now, and he’d rather I wasn’t.

‘One day after she’d had ECT, Bethany touched my wrist, like she was feeling my pulse,’ I tell him. ‘And then she said things about me — about my car accident — that I can’t understand her knowing. That I can’t explain away.’ There. I have raised it.

‘No need to tell me,’ he says quickly. ‘If it’s painful.’ So someone died. You had two hearts and one was gone. But you never found out how the two of you would be together.