There were monasteries that were flouncy, adorned debutantes, showing off on the ballroom floor with their spiderweb arches, delicate carvings and high curved windows. This monastery was one of the grim-faced old chaperones stuck in the corner, sucking its teeth at the frivolity before it.
The entrance was a simple gothic arch of stone with a thick oak double door.
‘We’ll do a sweep of the ground floor first.’ The chief of the security team was called Len, a no-nonsense, stocky man in his fifties. He had been unfailingly polite, but Thea got the distinct impression that he thought this was as much a waste of time as Harriet did. ‘Best to stay with me. The floors in these old places can be lethal.’
The sky had started to darken and bruise, turning a Hallowe’en green at the skyline as fresh snow built up.
‘We’ll have to make this quick,’ Len had said. ‘We don’t want to be caught in that.’
Based on what Thea had told them, they had decided to skip the main nave and chapel and head towards the two-storeyed living quarters, where the windows looked out over the path the three of them had taken about a week ago.
‘They could be long gone now,’ Ethan muttered to her.
Thea was glad she’d pushed for him to accompany them. It had been a last-minute idea, one she had been surprised to find had been allowed.
‘Really? He can come too?’ she had said to Harriet.
‘I pulled some strings,’ Harriet had replied, pushing her glasses higher up her nose. ‘And Rory, your sleep technician, he put in a good word. In my opinion, if it gets this foolishness sorted out quickly, you can take the whole Centre with you.’
Despite it being mid-morning, the inside of the monastery was a wet cold that, when breathed in, would grow like mould on the bones and stiffen the fingers.
‘Mind your step, miss.’ Len helped Thea over a pile of fallen rubble.
Her mind was still stuck in what she had seen yesterday in the hospital room: tortoise-Richard and his rage, that wild-eyed glare as he had struggled and then the realization at the end when he’d locked gazes with her. What had happened? What had the trial done to him?
They hurried through the echoing main nave and Thea only caught a glimpse of empty pews, broken glass and a ceiling so high it was lost in the gloom. Once, in this place, people had lit candles and prayed. There had been warmth and devotion; but also in this place there had been abuse and unhappiness: dark corners where darker things could be hidden.
They moved on.
The monks’ living quarters resembled an abandoned council office. The monastery had been active until the late 1980s and so the living quarters hadn’t been able to escape a safety door and carpet tile renovation. A corridor stretched out before them with doors on the one side leading to each monk’s room. Next to Thea was an old noticeboard, the sort that was covered by sliding Perspex that locked with a key. There was a lone notice left, reminding everyone of the fire evacuation route and a cluster of pins huddled in one corner, ready and waiting to never be used again. A fluorescent strip light hung at a drunken angle just above their heads.
As the security team went first, opening doors and flashing torchlight around, Ethan and Thea followed.
‘How’s Rosie?’ Ethan asked.
The carpet squelched under Thea’s feet and, when she touched it, the plaster on the wall felt springy and alive.
‘They say she’s doing well. There doesn’t seem to be any damage to her brain, at least, and her other injuries are healing.’
Still the machine beeped, still Rosie had not moved.
‘So? What’s Phase Two like?’ Thea whispered to Ethan.
‘Well, it’s like … sleep.’ He peered in through an open door. ‘I slept for the whole night. No nightmares, nothing. There was some wave music stuff at the start, or whales, or something.’
Thea stared into one of the rooms. A plant grew in through the window, its narrow leaves like fingers reaching up. The bed was still there but the slats were broken and jagged and black mould darkened the walls. It was a bare, miserable box. Maybe the monk who had lived here had been jolly and well-liked, maybe he’d told jokes to the other monks and believed in a just and fair God. Maybe, though, he had been cruel and twisted out of shape, maddened by the silence, thinking a loving God would forgive him no matter what he did.
Thea couldn’t get the tremor out of her voice: ‘Ethan, I didn’t sleep. Again. And I don’t feel terrible for it; in fact, I feel fine.’ She paused. ‘I can’t help thinking how Delores could just start testing on me whether I said I was leaving or not.’
Ethan remained silent but gently moved her hand away from her temple. She’d been scratching at the disc and the skin around it felt sore.
‘Don’t you just want to get these bloody things off sometimes?’ she said.
Ethan tapped his torch against his hand thoughtfully. ‘You know, a week or so ago, I’d have said yes. If you’d left then, I’d have gone with you. But today? After the night I’ve had. The sleep. I feel … God, I can’t explain it. I just don’t want to go back to how it was.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ Thea sighed. Then, in a smaller voice: ‘What if I’m wrong about this place? What if no one’s here? It’s just me, isn’t it? I’m the only one who saw anything.’
He took a moment to stop and look at her, so intently it made Thea shift her feet uncomfortably. But, finally, he said, ‘I believe you.’
That made two people at least. The problem was Thea wasn’t sure if she believed herself anymore.
‘There’s no one here, miss,’ Len said to her, while around her the rest of the security team assembled in the courtyard, blinking in the daylight. ‘We’ve scoured the whole place and there are drones currently mapping the rest of the island.’
Thea was acutely aware of everyone looking at her, these men in their black combat gear, the expressions on their faces, all of them thinking that she’d wasted their time. The hysterical woman, can’t even trust her own eyes, making a drama out of nothing, out of an accident. Stupid, hysterical woman.
‘It was worth checking though, Thea.’ Ethan was being supportive, which was worse in a way, because perhaps he didn’t believe her now either; he just liked her enough to not want to make her feel bad.
Her cheeks grew hot.
‘What about the lighthouse?’ Thea asked.
Had they checked that? Someone could have run there quite easily.
Something like annoyance flickered across Len’s stony face and he took a deep breath. His men shuffled their feet and muttered quietly to one another.
‘Look, Miss Mackenzie, you’ve led us a merry dance all morning. The drones will map the lighthouse. Right now though, that’s not our main concern. See that vicious-looking patch of sky there? I’ve got orders to get us all back before that bitch hits. So, if you wouldn’t mind?’
There were a few sniggers.
Thea had a choice then. After all, she was used to it. She had been the good little girl for her entire life so she could do it again: behave and do what the sensible man said.
Or …
They hadn’t checked the lighthouse. She caught Ethan’s eye and a muscle twitched in his jaw. He nodded ever so slightly.
Her cheeks continued to burn but she didn’t have any dignity left to lose. ‘Well, I’ll go and check on my own.’
Len rubbed the bridge of his nose. He sighed. Thea held his gaze. She might not be crazy, not just yet, that face in the monastery window might still be real and the lighthouse might be all the proof she needed. She was going there.
‘I’m afraid I have orders,’ he said, reaching into the back of his waistband.
It had never happened to Thea before and it all happened so quickly her brain didn’t have a chance to tell the rest of her body what to do. One minute Len was reaching behind him and Ethan was standing next to her, then suddenly Ethan had thrown himself at Len, knocking the older man to the ground, where the two of them grappled for control of what was now, very definitely, a gun.
‘Run!’ Ethan yelled as the other men closed in.
Fight or flight, it was called. Thea had hoped that, in such a situation, she would fight, that she wouldn’t just stand there and gawp, feeling as if her body were a very long way away. She wouldn’t freeze up, or roll over. She would instead, for example – try and grab the gun.
Fight or flight. The world moved very slowly. She may have hoped for fight but there, in the moment, she found out her first instinct. Ethan yelled at her again. ‘Run!’
So she did. She scrambled back onto the path and then barrelled straight across it into woodland, moving without really thinking, knowing she couldn’t outrun any of those men, if they came after her.
But she could hide.