Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

“Family,” Jack said.

“Family indeed,” Jane replied.

“But the great work was destroyed. The Temple of Demeter was sacked. The Christians took over, and the mysteries were thought to be destroyed, the knowledge gone. But knowledge lives on. The rituals continue. Which is why we did what we did this morning. The psychic, of course.”

“Why her? What did she do?”

“We needed a victim, someone in the right general area. Someone whose death would arouse suspicion. Someone we couldn’t be linked to. A relatively insecure building where it was easy to get in and out. She was perfect. The death of a psychic so close to the Wexford grounds—we’ve put enough in play to keep your friends busy for a while. And Jack had a blood debt to pay. In the original mysteries, it was thought you had to be free of ‘blood guilt,’ that you couldn’t have killed anyone. But we are performing the advanced mysteries now, and now a blood debt is required. You need to meet it in order to be initiated.”

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside was a piece of cloth, soaked in blood.

“Jack has proven himself ready,” Jane said. “As has Devina.”

“Mum’s boyfriend,” Devina said lightly.

“And you?” I asked Jane.

“The man in Yorkshire,” she said. “The one I told you about, the one who attacked me. It may sound horrible, Rory, but we have all removed people from society who needed to be removed…”

“What did the psychic ever do?” I said. “She was innocent!”

“You think that’s innocent? Someone who pretends to see into the future? Someone who tricks people for money? It’s because of people like her that the good name of the true religion is sullied and lost.”

I know a true believer when I see one—that high fervor, that total conviction, the calm that explodes into emotion in a moment. I was in a car full of conviction, full of belief in ancient Greek rituals and destroying death. And murderers.

The detour was taking us through a series of very tight lanes, barely wide enough to hold a car. Outside, England was normal and quiet, just living a December day. People would be getting ready for Christmas. Doing their jobs. Thinking about what to have for dinner. Cyclists rode past us on occasion. All that separated me from that world was a car door. But I could not get out.

“I would have fallen in with people like that,” Jane finally went on, “New Agers, nonsense spiritualists, but I was lucky. I met my friends. They taught me about the true history of the sight. They had used their wealth to invest in knowledge. They traveled to India, to Egypt, to Greece. They collected books. They talked to seers. They brought the knowledge back to London, and they made the ultimate sacrifice to help us all, to gain control of our own destinies. It’s been left to me to continue their work, to help them…and now…you. You are a transformed being. You are proof that what we believe is correct and possible.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just…”

“You don’t even know what you are,” Jane said. “But we will show you your true potential. And then…”

And then we all jerked forward, all at once, with the impact.

We’d plowed directly into the side of a police car.

I suppose, on some level, I’d suspected it. Like everything else today, I hadn’t really understood it fully—it made no sense—but it shouldn’t have surprised me. I had reached the point where surprises were no longer really possible.

The police car had come shooting out of a small lane just as our car had approached it, and had taken a heavy impact in the passenger’s side. Our car made a sickly sound, but was still running. The door of the police car opened, and Stephen stepped out, a trickle of blood running down the side of his face. At the same moment, there was a thud and a hiss on one side of the back of the car. Then a clank, then a similar thud and hiss on the other side. Boo and Callum then approached the back windows at the same moment. Boo had a crowbar in her hand. They had taken out the tires.

All of which would have attracted a lot of attention, but we were between two blind sides of buildings on a small street. The crash itself probably didn’t make that much noise.

Stephen approached the driver’s window like a policeman performing a normal traffic stop. He was walking stiffly, and he wiped away the blood on the side of his face.

Jane rolled down the window.

“Hello, Officer,” she said politely. “You’ve ruined my car.”

“I’d like Rory to get out,” Stephen replied.

“And why should she do that? I don’t think you have any legal right to remove her.”

“She’s a minor who’s been reported missing. Either she gets out or I assure you that the full weight of the London police force will be brought to bear on this car.”

“Well, I don’t think Rory wants to leave, do you, Rory?”

I did not reply.

“This is all quite illegal,” Jane said. “Police brutality doesn’t even begin to cover it. We certainly won’t be jailed for this.”

“You’re right,” Stephen replied. “Now get out.”

Boo was wedging the crowbar into the space between the door and the body of the car on Devina’s side. She popped the door open, grabbed Devina, and pulled her out. Callum remained on Jack’s side, his hands pressed against the glass of the window.

“Get out of the car, Rory,” Stephen said. “This is over.”

I slid over toward the open door. Boo pushed Devina aside and took me by the shoulders.

“You all right?”

“Fine.”

Devina didn’t move—she just stared at us both.

“Come on,” Boo said, guiding me away. “Come on. We need to leave now.”

But I stayed where I was.

“You are making a mistake,” Jane said. “If you try to take me, that will be kidnapping. You will be prosecuted. I’m going to call my solicitor about this vandalization of my car and assault on my young friends. You’ll never hear the end of this.”

“I look forward to it,” Stephen said. “You’ll be walking home. Which will be under surveillance. As will every vehicle registered to it, and every person known to have lived under its roof. Nothing you do from now on will be unobserved. On the street, cameras will turn and focus on you. And if anything happens to anyone connected with Rory’s life, I’ll personally see to it that every moment of what remains of your miserable life is spent in the maximum amount of suffering.”

He said all of that as if rattling off a grocery list.

“Oh, you do go on, don’t you?” Jane said.

“Come on,” Boo said again. And this time, she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Boo was strong. She could have thrown me over her shoulder if she felt like it.

The police car was clearly not drivable, so Boo hustled me away, back down the lane.

“I can’t go,” I said. “They know—”

“We can’t stay, Ror. Come on, come on, we can’t stay here.”

Someone turned down the lane and saw the crash. She started to walk toward us. Boo pulled me harder, shoving the crowbar inside of her coat. Callum joined us in a few smooth strides.

“Just keep walking,” he said, taking my arm on the other side. “Walk away. Let Stephen deal with this.”

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“Stephen put his phone in your pocket when we were at Dawn’s. It sounds like he didn’t think you were going to listen to him and go back to school. We used it as a GPS. Who are those people?”

“That was my therapist,” I said.

“And that’s put me off therapy for life,” Callum replied. “Do you have money? We know you emptied your bank account.”

I had forgotten about the roll of fifties and twenties in my pocket. When I reached in for it, I felt the phone.