26

SCARLETT

I woke up to the two crazy people—who were my parents—watching over me. They looked perfectly normal, well dressed, and friendly. It was only when they opened their mouths that you realized how batshit they were.

“Good morning, Scarlett,” Donald said. “Did you sleep well?”

“You kidnapped me yesterday. Didn’t sleep too well, no.”

“You are our daughter. We are not the ones who took you from where you belong. But that doesn’t matter now because you are home,” Fiona said.

“I’m not your daughter. You don’t murder your daughter.”

She shook her head. “No, Scarlett, you don’t understand.” Damn right I don’t. “You are the Light. You are going to lead us to a higher plane, a better existence. It is not death; it is eternal life in a much better place than this.”

“But I’ll be dead.”

Donald covered Fiona’s hand with his giant one. “Perhaps we should show our daughter around and explain properly.”

I didn’t want to go anywhere with them, but I did want to look around and try to find a way to escape. I also wanted to scream and shout at Noah. His betrayal stung deep. I felt sick whenever I thought about what he’d done. Not only had he brought me here to be killed, but he’d also made me love him first. He was evil.

“That is a good idea, love,” Fiona said to Donald, returning his sickening smile. “We’ll give you ten minutes to get dressed, Scarlett.”

I watched them stand in sync and leave my prison cell of a room. They were my parents. They made me and they wanted to kill me. The door closed and was locked. My room was nice, I’d give them that much. They gave me nice things to…what? Soften the blow for when they stuck a knife through my heart?

Ignoring the hysteria building, I got out of bed and opened the wardrobe. Everything in there was pretty. Lots of long dresses. I dressed in a floor-length white-and-yellow sundress and brushed my hair. It felt pointless, but I had to keep it together.

If I had a chance at escaping, I had to get out of this room as much as possible. Maybe I could pretend that I’d converted to whatever crap it was they believed. If they trusted me, I could get out. I’d glanced through the She Is the Light book last night but on page one, where it basically referred to me as a door that needed opening—not a person—I threw it back on the bookshelf.

Taking a deep breath, I slipped on a pair of sandals, knocked on the door, and waited. The lock clicked and then my mother was standing before me. I couldn’t just go from telling them all to get lost to being a converted Eternal Light member because they’d know it was fake, so I scowled.

“You look beautiful, Scarlett.”

“Where’re you taking me?” I asked coldly.

“We will meet your father outside and show you around.”

“Will Noah be there?”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “He is around, yes.”

I wanted to refuse to go. He was the last person on the planet I wanted to see.

“Well, he can go to hell.”

Wisely, she said nothing and just pursed her lips. In her eyes, he was a damn hero. To me he was the enemy. He was the worst one, pretending to love me.

Arsehole.

I followed her out of the cute, log-cabin style house and stood on the deck. All the other houses were the same, and I had a feeling they’d built them all themselves. A large meadow to the left of the settlement stretched on as far as the eye could see and to the right was thick forest. I had no idea where I was or where the nearest town was.

A sense of hopelessness knocked the air from my lungs and I fought to stay positive. It wasn’t over yet. I had to focus on that. I wasn’t doomed yet.

Gulping, I took another step, following Fiona. I can do this. The forest was probably my best bet. If I ran across the meadow, they would see me straightaway. But I wasn’t sure when I’d be left alone long enough to make my escape. And I had no idea how big the forest was.

I was getting ahead of myself. First I had to work out how I would escape and then I could worry about where I would escape to. For now, just fall in line.

“How many people live here?” I asked emotionlessly. I wanted to sound bored for a while longer. I had to remain angry for another day or so before slowly starting to fit in. There was a danger that they’d see through it, but my options were limited to two: fight or die.

“Thirty-nine,” she replied.

That was what I was dying for—thirty-nine people who could supposedly live for eternity in some magical world Donald and Fiona cooked up. Still, people had been killed for less.

“Wow, that’s a lot of people you’ve brainwashed. Nice one.”

She stopped and turned to me. I worried that I’d overstepped. If she thought I believed they’d been completely brainwashed, then she wouldn’t trust me when I started to listen. Had I gone too far?

“It is not brainwashing, Scarlett. From the age of four you have had your mind trapped within society’s walls. Free it now. Let me help you, and you will see the truth. You are the Light.”

I wanted to laugh in her face. I was human. Who does she think she is? I wondered if she’d always been like that—crazy—or if someone made her believe the things she lived by. Eternal Light was older than me. They were going to kill me when I was four and you didn’t just decide to do that five minutes after creating a cult or religion—or whatever they wanted to call it.

Half of me wanted to appeal to her as her biological daughter. I thought it was just ingrained in you when you gave birth: protect child at all cost. That was how it was supposed to be. Parents were meant to die for their children, not be the ones hurting them.

“We’ll see,” I replied, walking down the stairs.

Three people stood on high alert, spinning to face me, thinking I was going to run, ready to pounce. They didn’t give me much credit if they thought I would run in broad daylight with everyone around.

Fiona held her hand up and they immediately relaxed. “Do not be alarmed. I am just showing Scarlett around.”

One of them, a plump lady wearing a long skirt and apron, nodded. She looked maternal. Surely she wouldn’t stand by as someone drove a knife into me…or however they were going to do it?

“Welcome, Scarlett. I am Judith,” the plump lady said. “This is my husband, Bill, and son, Terry. Oh, it is lovely to see you again. It has been so long, sweetheart.”

She knew me before, when I was just a little child. My heart sank with the realization that she wouldn’t help; if she had been willing to stand back and let a four-year-old be killed, then she wouldn’t help me at sixteen.

I gritted my teeth and stared. What’s wrong with you?

“Ah, there are my two girls,” Donald said, coming out of one of the houses.

“And there you are,” Fiona replied. “Are you joining us on the tour?”

“I wish I could, but I have business to attend to. Will you be all right on your own?”

Fiona nodded. “Of course.”

What did he think I was going to do? Could I even do anything? Could I hurt her to get away? I’d never even squished a spider, even though I was scared of them. What a stupid, irrational fear. I was scared of a small bug with eight legs when there were people like this in the world.

“Mother-daughter bonding time, huh?” I muttered dryly. “Perhaps after the tour we could drown a litter of bunnies. Or do you only do that to your child?” I was now definitely going too far, but I couldn’t hold back when my stomach tied in knots and I wanted to scream.

Everyone fell silent. Fiona and Donald watched me cautiously.

“I can explain everything, Scarlett, but please keep an open mind,” Fiona said. Hilarious that she would tell me—repeatedly—to keep an open mind when hers was so closed.

“It’s all right,” Donald said to Judith and her family, who just stood there openmouthed. “Her mind has been closed off. We have discussed that. This is not a surprise, and we are here to help and not to judge, remember?”

Judith’s husband nodded. “Right, of course. Despite what you may have heard, Scarlett, we are not bad people. You will see that soon.”

I smiled sarcastically and turned to Fiona. “Can we go now?” Standing around listening to that garbage spout out of their mouths was just making me feel ill. I wouldn’t see the “light” or anything else, so talking about it was pointless.

Fiona took me past the ten wooden houses and past a field before the meadow that was home to different kinds of crops. No wonder Noah only ate “real” and organic food; it was all he’d ever had.

No, don’t think of him.

Ridiculously, I still loved who I thought he was, and every time I thought about what he’d done, it sent sharp, stabbing pains through my heart. He could’ve just befriended me; he didn’t have to make me fall for him first.

In the distance, I saw Bethan and Finn picking what looked like potatoes. I didn’t know where Shaun or Noah were and I didn’t care.

Ahead of us was a larger wooden building and beside that a small lake that looked out of place for the location. “What’s that?” I asked, lifting my chin to the place in front of us.

“That is our community hall, where we meet most nights, where we will celebrate being reunited with you.”

“Will you kill me in there too?”

I wanted to say it as plainly and bluntly as I could in the hope that it would register something in her. She was killing her child. She had to understand that.

“I will show you where the rituals will take place and explain everything fully, so you won’t still believe we are taking your life.”

“You do know how death works, right? And how many rituals?” I swallowed glass. What were they going to do to me?

“There are seven in total,” she said as we reached the heavy, wooden double doors. “Please, come inside.” I weighed my options and took a look over my shoulder. There were too many people about for me to run. One against thirty-nine was not good odds. I couldn’t be reckless.

With trembling hands, I stepped inside. Chairs were stacked along one side, but the room was relatively bare; a few tables were dotted around holding large jugs of fresh wildflowers. Paintings of nature—the meadow, flowers, trees, water—hung on the walls, and glass lanterns hung from the vaulted ceiling.

Everything they’d done was beautifully simple. They were just insane.

“So you come in here to do what?”

“This is where we hold meetings and celebrations if the weather isn’t nice. This is where we give thanks for you on your birthday, my beautiful daughter. Our savior.”

“Savior? Who’s threatening you? As long as you’re not off sacrificing people, no one’s gonna care that you’re here.”

“If they hadn’t taken you, I would’ve raised you and you wouldn’t be so disrespectful.”

“If they hadn’t taken me, I’d be dead.”

“You would be at peace, waiting for us to join you. We have the chance to live another life. This is not the only one we can have, Scarlett.”

She believed that totally. She stared straight into my eyes and said it with so much conviction.

“How can you be so sure?” I whispered, purposefully widening my eyes.

The corner of her mouth twitched. She thought that was the first crack: that my mind was beginning to open. Good.

“Faith, my darling. I would not risk my daughter for something I was not completely sure of.”

There it was. My appeal to the mother in her plan vanished with her words. Not that I had had much hope for it.

I stood in their pretty barn and knew that my only option was running.

“But what if you’re wrong?”

I felt the tingle of tears and blinked rapidly. She wasn’t going to see me cry. I wouldn’t crumble in front of them.

“I am not. That I can promise you. Now, let me show you the outdoor communal eating area before dinner is served.”

“Will you tell me more about the rituals?”

“Of course. I can tell you some,” she replied, smiling. Some.

I couldn’t work her out. One minute she was cautious of me, suspicious even, and the next, she was grinning like I’d just converted to her church of crazy.

“So?” I pressed, not totally sure if I even wanted to know.

“Most involve us calling upon nature, chanting, if you will. The first one is a cleansing and the call will be for nature to accept you and accept us. Ritual two,” she started, closing the doors behind us, “links us to you. We have to become one entity to follow you into eternity.”

I gritted my teeth. “And how long will I be in eternity alone until you all follow? You killing yourselves after or waiting out your cozy, little lives here until you die old, fat, and happy?”

“It is not what you think, Scarlett. You will be happy. You will be at peace.”

“So you are living out your lives here. Lovely. And I was perfectly peaceful back home.”

“You will understand if you allow yourself to open your mind to us.”

“Perhaps you’ll understand if you open your mind to what’s really going on,” I said. “What’re the other rituals?”

“They are much alike. There is a binding that will then bind us as a whole.”

“I thought I’d already be linked to you all with that first one?”

“That is slightly different. We need a piece of you, so we are physically linked, each one of us to you, and then we need to be spiritually bound as a community.”

That made absolutely no sense. But then, what did here?

“Right. Lots of chanting, cleansing, and binding.”

She smiled and it looked a lot like mine. She may have looked like my mum, but she certainly wasn’t. “Ritual one that will take place tomorrow will be in the lake. But don’t worry. The water is clean.”

She was murdering me in seven days’ time but thought I’d worry about a little dirty water.

I was speechless for a second before replying, “Great.”

“You will be dressed in a white gown and stand in the middle of the lake. It is not too deep, perhaps waist height on you. Donald and I will bless you, and then we will leave. For ten minutes, we will stand near the lake and say a few words.”

“Where will I be?”

“In the water still. To be cleansed you need to be alone. We don’t want to contaminate the blessed area by staying. You are the key to everything, Scarlett. We don’t want to get in the way of your light.”

Then let me go.

“What time are you doing this cleansing?”

“Tomorrow at noon. The water should have warmed up a little.”

I found myself almost thanking her, but fortunately I caught myself. I had nothing to thank her for. I turned away, unable to look at her anymore.