Sometimes, children grow up seemingly unaffected by the events around them. It’s rare, of course: children are barometers of their environments. However, at times, occasionally, when no one expects it, the child learns a parallel way of life, alongside the standard one that everyone sees.
Or so the girl had read in a book somewhere.
Theories about the mind and what motivates human behaviour had always fascinated her father. He could talk for hours and hours about psychological experiments on human beings. That was, if anyone would listen. Most people grew bored by his long explanations and didactic lectures. But she never did.
He told her about all the important human behavioural trials that had been conducted over the course of the last few hundred years, or as long as psychology had been something to study. She sat in awe as he narrated the experiments. He told her about Stanley Milgram and how, in 1971, he conducted an investigation that showed, when in the presence of an authority figure, volunteers willingly turned up a dial applying a fake electric shock to actors, even going beyond what they were told was a level of pain so great that the subject might die. It went some way to understanding why Hitler was able to become so powerful, despite the brutality of his regime.
Her father also told her about Little Albert in the 1950s: a nine-month-old baby who was taught to develop irrational fears in a laboratory environment. He was gradually manipulated into being scared to death of rats: perhaps the most controversial of all of tests.
She knew Bobo’s Doll inside out and found that experiment particularly funny: the idea that behaviour – mean or kind – is copied from adults was obvious to her. In the experiment, children were shown adults treating the doll in varying ways: from kind to pure nasty. The children copied.
One that she wished she could have taken part in was the Stanford University prison experiment in 1961. She would have loved to have been both a prisoner and a guard.
It would seem that the general public had more backbone for such inquiries back then, and she wished she’d lived through such an era where whinging and moaning about rights and conduct was less prevalent. She loved listening to her father talk of it. There were no longer experiments of the same calibre; scientists and doctors simply could no longer get away with it. She knew that her views were controversial. The majority of ordinary folk simply couldn’t stomach it.
She acknowledged that she hadn’t been raised in a standard way, or one that could be termed as normal or conformist, but that’s why she liked it. It satisfied her need to understand, and that’s why she took the pain. Pain was a mere stepping stone to salvation, and once that fine lesson was learned, then all the others fell into place. No test is ever easy, because if it was, then it wouldn’t be a test: there’d be no progression.
But her father had grown quiet, of late.
The farmhouse, their home for now, was situated on the edge of a small lake (they called them tarns in Cumbria) and it hadn’t changed for hundreds of years. It was where she’d gone after leaving the hospital. She hadn’t meant to cause trouble. She’d had an incident, a moment; a shadow had fallen across her mind and she’d forgotten where – and who – she was. It was becoming more frequent as her learning progressed, and her father had known it would be the way. He’d told her that he’d been waiting for it; watching out for it to occur, knowing that with a mind such as hers, it was bound to happen.
‘Am I your experiment, Daddy?’ She’d been six years old when she’d asked that question.
‘Not at all, my darling! I don’t need to conduct an investigation into you to discover how you behave: I already know. It’s only the weak who need to be constantly appraised in case they make a mistake and no one spots it. They have to continually analyse and judge test cases of people who they call criminals, simply because they’re scared of them, when in actual fact, violence, aggression, hate, revenge and rage are all quite natural. Take the lioness…’
This was his favourite story. The one where the lioness fought to the death to save her cubs from an aggressive male. All involved knew she stood no chance, and that all the cubs would die as challengers to his authority, but the lioness still defended them.
‘Why do you think she did that?’ Her father asked.
‘Because she loved them?’
‘No, my dear, because it’s her instinct. She has no power whatsoever over her behaviour because it is hardwired through her DNA. Humans are different. We know nothing when we’re born – it’s pathetic – we have to learn everything, and that’s where mothers and fathers come in.’
‘But you said that my instinct is strong.’
‘And I was right, Daphne. But you had to be shown where to find it.’
Her father had become an old man, and she missed his smile and his praise. They’d moved into the farmhouse when Mother was left it by an old relative of hers who passed away with no family. It was worth nothing. The farm had been run down years ago, leaving no livestock to manage and the money dried up, but the bricks and mortar stayed. Built of Lakeland slate, a metre thick, the structure was sound, if cold and bleak. The land was handsome and Father had plans to develop it. Before he and Mother grew sick.
They sowed seeds and planted potatoes.
And they took donations from visitors.
The first time she’d understood what visiting was for, she’d been afraid. Father had explained to her that some people – like themselves – acquire the knowledge of the true meaning of the world and worship that instead of what those ignorant fools revere and champion in today’s godless world. The girl knew she was different, and that her family was different, and that if anyone ever found out about their visitors and their prayers, then Mother and Father would be taken away.
It remained a secret.
It was a huge burden but one she got used to. In hospital it wasn’t that she’d lost her ability to speak; it simply had been that she hadn’t wanted to. She’d lost the need to use words a long time ago: they were not required. She still made sounds when she was alone. She read poetry and she sang songs, but she no longer used the common language; or very rarely. The noise that people created was excruciatingly painful to her, and that was the main reason that she’d jumped out of the window – because she couldn’t stand the din. The nurses cackled and the trolleys scraped. The farm was silent and calm, and it was home. Father and Mother had stopped asking where she went.
Her room was cold and she went to her small wardrobe for another blanket. She rarely heard sounds at the farm and it was a comfort. If Mother or Father wanted her, they’d come to her room for her. But they no longer did. She sat on her bed and opened a book. It was her diary that she wrote in every day, and she also drew pictures in it. Today she worked on an image that she’d committed to memory not so long ago.
It was a boy. His face was soft and round and he had deep eyes. When they looked at one another, they’d connected. No one had noticed but them. It had felt like a thousand knives going into her: a mere moment in time, but she knew that she came to him in his dreams too. She closed her eyes and imagined them clinging to the rock, the wind billowing her hair away from her neck. His eyes fell onto her hungrily, and he sank to his knees in the mud of the field, where the ancient stones stood proud.
She wanted to touch him so badly that it caused her physical pain. It was an experience that she had never had before now. She didn’t understand it and she felt melancholy, as if coming down off a potion that she’d never taken before. It left her with a hangover-like state that was ugly and maddening. The only thing that would make it better would be to see him again.
She lay back on the bed and felt the breeze coming in from the window. There wasn’t a sound outside in the empty fields but she could smell life. Soon, the day and night would be equal and the spirits would command superiority. The year was dying, but inside, she was emerging with life anew, and a fire that she dreamed of lighting every time she thought of him.
A single fly landed on her blanket. It looked fat and about to pop. The place needed a good clean, it had begun to smell. She reached her hand under the bed covers and slid it into her underwear, where it was soft and warm.
The boy’s eyes filled her head, and she began to feel hot. Her skin tingled, and she moved her hand back and forth.
‘Callum,’ she whispered. ‘I know your father.’