Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

“Eat something,” Jane said, presenting the plate once again. “It will make it easier.”

“What’s in there?”

“It’s just a little hash, darling,” she said. “You’ve been enjoying them so far. Perfectly harmless.”

She held up the plate, and I shook my head. She shrugged and set it down.

“Up to you,” she said. “It was for your benefit.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“No harm will come to you if you cooperate. I can promise that. Anyone with the sight is my brother or sister, and I take that very, very seriously. If you struggle, Jack will hurt you. But if you remain calm, you will be released.”

That wasn’t much of a choice, so I stopped struggling. Jane nodded and Devina released me at once.

“Jack,” Jane said, “let her go.”

The grip remained.

“Jack. I said let her go .”

My arms were released. Jane reached over and rubbed them. “My apologies,” she said. “My apologies. Truly. The things that have happened in the last twenty-four hours, they were not part of the original plan. With the news that you would likely be departing soon, we had to work very quickly. I’ve always been honest with you, Rory, and I’ll continue to be honest with you. Everything about your old life ends right now . The sooner you accept that, the easier things will be for you. But what happens next…that’s really up to you. And I’ve come to explain the possibilities. The good news is, the possibilities are much, much better than your current state of affairs.”

“Where’s Charlotte?” I asked.

“Charlotte is in a safe place. She’s already gone off to the country. You’ll see her today. She’s absolutely fine. She knew that you came here, and we couldn’t have that knowledge getting around. So we had to take her along as well. But I assure you she’ll remain safe as long as you remain with us. You’re a terminus, the first instance of a human terminus that I’ve ever come across. We’re all very excited about it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, Rory,” she said. “We’ve been with you for weeks. We followed you to Bristol. We’ve seen how special you are. And now everything is coming together. You are the sign we’ve been waiting for. You’ll help us, and we’ll help you.”

“I don’t want to help you.”

“You care about Charlotte, and those friends of yours in the flat near Waterloo, and…what’s the address again, Jack?

“Seventy-seven Woodland Road,” he said.

That was, in fact, my parents’ address in Bristol. He then rattled off our home address in Louisiana, my Uncle Bick’s address, my Aunt Diane’s address, and my parents’ work addresses, both in England and in America. And that’s when everything got very cold.

“Which is why I say that everything is different now,” Jane said. “We don’t want to force you. Come of your own will. And once you come with us, you’ll see. You’ll see that what we’re doing is right. You’ll be glad. It’s just an awkward adjustment period, but it won’t last. Come now. It’s time to go. Time to go to the country.”

23

AS IT HAPPENS, I KNOW A BIT ABOUT SURVIVAL. TO A POINT, I know this because I come from Bénouville, Louisiana, where hurricane preparedness is a topic of conversation every summer. Did you stock up on bottled water? Batteries? Canned food and granola bars? Do you have bleach for when the water goes down and the mold comes? Do you have a radio? Flashlights?

But the nitty-gritty stuff I know because my neighbor is a nutjob. A nutjob with a lot of practical skills. I mean Billy Mack, who lives down the street.

Billy was never quite the same after Hurricane Katrina. A lot of people weren’t the same after that. A lot of people went without food and water and help, and a lot of people developed an interest in survival skills. Billy Mack took this to an extreme. He has a boat on his porch roof, tethered to one of the second-story windows. Billy is also the founder of the People’s Church of Universal People, a religion he runs out of his garage. As part of his mission, he sometimes goes up and down the street, handing out pamphlets. His religion is a kind of apocalypse-come-hither thing mixed with the Army Rangers field guide. He believes that the end times are coming, and people in his religion will not only be right with God, but they’ll have the proper supplies on hand.

I don’t spend a lot of time with Billy Mack, but we get the pamphlets. And right on the front they say things like, “A human being can survive for three to five days without food or water. Jesus needs you to be ready for His coming. Do YOU have the supplies you need?”

The pamphlets probably had all kinds of good tips for how to deal with situations like the one I was in now. But I’d never gotten past the front cover before I put them in the recycle bin. I was sorry for that now. Billy was the kind of person who always had a knife strapped to his shin. He would have had ideas about how to deal with this.

“This” was sitting in the back of the car with Devina on one side and Jack on the other. Jane was at the wheel, chatting merrily as if this was a perfectly normal trip, talking about “traffic problems on the A4.”

As we went, everything seemed to slip away from me, like the buildings were fading from existence as I saw them for the last time. The roads were rolled up. The spare sky went into a box. Because, I felt sure, I would not come this way again. I looked at the names on the signs of places we were passing—Fulham, Hammersmith, Chiswick. I could try to fight, I could throw myself against the back window or grab Jane by the neck or do something…That something would only get me pushed down in the seat. It would get me hurt, and it would get people I love killed.

I was going to the country.

“We’re coming up on Barnes, now,” Jane said. “It’s where Marc Bolan died. You probably have never heard of Marc Bolan, but he was one of my favorites. Crashed into a tree. Terrible and shocking. When we do our work, Marc is one person I’d love to help.”

“What work?” I asked.

“We’re going to defeat death,” she said. It was very matter of fact, like she was saying, “We’re going to have a bake sale.”

“Oh,” is all I could manage.

“Have you ever heard of the Eleusinian Mysteries, Rory?” Jane smoothly negotiated a roundabout. “In ancient Greece, it was understood that Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, presided over the fecundity of the earth. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and taken to the underworld. Demeter forced him to return her daughter, but you see, Persephone had done the one thing that you shouldn’t do in Hades—she had eaten the food of the dead—and was forced to return to the underworld part of each year. In their honor, the Greeks had the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which initiates were shown the real nature of life and death. Now, we think these things are just stories—except, of course, that the ancient Greeks were correct. Death, as you have noticed, is not the fixed state that most people believe it is. Do you agree?”

“Sure?” I said, because it seemed like the right thing to say to this terrifying speech that seemed to be going into a deeply bad place.

“They may have spun a colorful tale around it, but they were aware of the reality of life and death. Their mysteries, their rituals—they were experiments. And those experiments started to bring about changes. They made us, Rory. Those who achieved the highest of the mysteries, the hierophants and the initiates, they developed the sight. They began to perforate the wall between the living and the dead. Somewhere, far, far back in your family history, there was a great mystic, someone who achieved this wonderful state. We are all, in that sense, related.”