Borderliners (16 page)

I found a parking space on the road outside the Charismatics’ meeting hall. With no front patio or garden the building bordered the side of this residential street in an unusual manner. The distant bells had stopped, giving way to an unnatural silence which, even the birds, who had been circling just minutes before, didn’t dare break. Even the sound of my heels tapping on the pavement bounced off the terraced houses opposite. I hesitated, suffering a moment of doubt, before crossing the road and trying a large, blue door on the front of the building. It was resolutely shut.

There was a voice on the pavement behind me. ‘You need to go right round to the back, dear.’

It was an older lady, cane in hand, eyes dancing. I wondered how I had neither heard or noticed her coming, but nodded in thanks as I made for a passageway which led to the back of the building. My pavement companion, dressed in a light violet-coloured brushed coat and matching beret observed me for a moment from behind sharp, crinkly eyes, before turning away to concentrate on shuffling onwards.

By now the congregation inside had fallen silent again, its unison of singing voices, now separated into individuals sitting on bare, wooden chairs. I observed them for a minute as I stood, framed in the doorway at the back of the hall, feeling a change of energy develop in the air around me as I did so. Holding my breath, I nevertheless attracted backward glances, some curious, some indifferent, none friendly. I caught sight of Iain at the front, who was staring at me from the lectern, and Julia who was in the front row with Tony by her side.

Fixing a smile to my face, I moved forward from the doorway to sit in an empty back row, my heels clattering loudly on the cold tiled floor to draw yet more backward glances. Iain did not start speaking until I was safely seated and even then I felt my breathing itself was too loud.

‘So!’ Iain was saying from his position at the top, mousy head inclined towards his congregation who had fallen silent. Even families with children were silent, nobody coughed, fidgeted or cleared their throat.

‘These days you just have to look around you and you’ll see so many lost souls in this modern and individualistic world of ours: people who think they have it all, a nice house, a great car, a comfortable job. But what does all this mean? That’s right, absolutely nothing, for as it says in the Bible, ‘it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the gates of Heaven’.

Iain paused, his eyes flickering over the congregation coming briefly to rest on me before he moved on. ‘One of our jobs as Charismatics is to fund the cause so that more of us will be able to help others in the future. This is why, when you join us, we ask you to give up your excess money.’ There was a pregnant pause and a cluster of rustling and movement broke out in the room. ‘And with this, I’m happy to welcome our new followers, and especially someone who has given more generously than most.’ He took in a breath. ‘Welcome to you all. We are happy to have you here!’

He strode down from the lectern to the front row, his arms open wide as he did so. At the same time, an unpleasant sensation rose up in my throat - a physical reaction to my aloneness at the back, which felt more acute as the congregation surged forwards in dribs and drabs to greet a group of people at the front, Tony among them. They took it in turns to shake hands and whisper words of encouragement. After most people had returned to their seats, Iain stepped up and opened his arms once again towards the congregation.

‘As you know, some of our flock have been unwell.’

Muttering flowed around the room as I tried to ignore a nasty lurch in the pit of my stomach. I glanced at Tony’s head in the front row, aware that I was frowning, unable to plaster the pleasant smile back on to my face.

‘But they will be cured by our community!’

Nodding rippled across the mass of heads ahead of me, and, I noticed, some people were even crying, shoulders hunched and shaking. Here there was no clock to mark time and it felt eternal. At once I saw the identities of several people in the congregation, their outlines jumping out at me in brilliant colour and definition as I recognised their more familiar body language. This outpouring of emotion had unleashed a peculiar combination of gesture and movement which I had seen a thousand times before, albeit behind the closed doors of my consulting room. And indeed, some of my own patients were here: Linda and others. As I looked around the room, I saw raw emotion, pure terror and a tell-tale willingness to let go and let someone else take charge.

‘Sponsors, please come to the front with our new candidates!’ Iain announced, and the group in the front row stood up and stood in a circle around him.

‘Are you ready to begin your journey?’ he asked as his audience twitched, emotion bubbling back up to the surface.

‘Everyone, please welcome our new Charismatics!’

Clapping broke out amongst the congregation but I didn’t join in. I was glad people could not see me unless they turned around, as I was sure my face looked thunderous. I couldn’t understand why this ceremony was so basic, so lacking in substance. Like Iain himself, somehow.

After the ceremony, I got up to leave but found myself thwarted as two figures drew level with the end of my aisle. Tony looked hunched and unkempt, his eyes bereft of their usual sad twinkle. Julia, on the other hand, looked triumphant and more arrogant than ever. I rose up and stumbled through the narrow space between my row and the one in front in order to join them.

‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ It was an innocent enquiry, but Julia’s raised eyebrow belied a hostility she hid with the rest of her body language.

‘If you remember, my friend asked me to come here today.’ I stated flatly, my eyes resting on Tony.

‘And your friend did well to ask you. New people are always welcome here,’ Julia replied.

‘I found it most interesting, actually.’ I met Julia’s eyes, holding her gaze until she looked away. ‘But I need to go now, I have work to do.’

‘On a Sunday?’ exclaimed Julia. ‘Then you won’t be able to join us for coffee?’

Keen to escape, I opened my mouth to reply when I caught sight of Iain laying his hands on the heads of Linda and another young woman. My mouth remained open until I remembered to shut it again. Iain’s eyes were closed and he was babbling, clutching the women’s hair as he did so, causing them to sway with him. He stopped abruptly and the women fell to the floor, blubbing and begging Iain to continue. After a few seconds he held up his arms.

‘You’re not familiar with the traditions of Charismatics?’ Julia was saying, eyeing me carefully.

‘What?’ My face was antagonistic as I digested what I had seen.

‘You’ve not seen people speak in tongues before?’ Julia sounded as if we were talking about the weather. ‘Iain has that gift - it’s a great honour.’

I snorted and turned on my heel to leave without looking back at where Julia was still standing, glaring at my retreating back. Tony had disappeared. And it was then that I knew. I would not be at peace until I got to the bottom of this. I needed to catch Julia red-handed.

I’m so tired. I can identify with Blake, where he says,
‘Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night’.

Evil has appeared from nowhere.

I hear voices everywhere.

They are calling to me and it is more insistent by the day.

They are only quiet when Julia chants, soothed by the ethereal melody her voice creates. But something is wrong.

This afternoon I went for a long walk, hours and hours. Walking through the lanes outside the village, it was like being in a different world, one where there were no others, only me and nature all around. Pure silence. What a dream come true that would be.

After I’d been walking for an hour or so I came across a narrow lane which veered off from the main road. Following it through a wooded area to a small clearing, I was surprised by a large barn which stood in the centre. There was a front entrance at one end marked by a heavy wooden door. The clearing it sat at the centre of was completely circular and the trees seemed to bow to it. I felt its presence speak to me: its power beckoned, so I continued to walk until I was at the door. A broken sensation of neglect surrounded the place. Despite the sun, the walls of the barn were dark and damp to the touch as I edged round to the door at the front. When I reached it, I was surprised to hear voices carrying over from the depths of the barn to where I was standing. I peeked in, picking up the outline of shelves in the foreground. Green refracted light twinkled from somewhere further in. A musty smell reached out to touch me and I felt intoxicated by its odour.

I froze as a voice leapt out, sharper than the murmur I had picked up before.

‘I was wondering if you could show us more respect.’ Julia, I thought. It continued. ‘Our organisation…We see the future, we are open to the messages of the Spirit. It’s known as having the Charismatic gift.’

Somebody answered but I could neither see nor hear who they were. A crash cut into the conversation before I heard Julia’s voice again, this time raised. ‘Let this be a warning to you - your evil will not go unpunished!’

I hid behind a bush, afraid of meeting Julia head on.

She came rushing from the barn, hair swinging like a glossy chestnut curtain behind her. As she emerged into daylight she stopped suddenly, her batwing jumper falling down on one shoulder, her chest heaving - a rare sight given her usual iron control. In the doorway she sniffed the air.

‘Dirty bastards,’ she muttered, before moving off towards the lane. I stayed where I was for a further five minutes until I heard a car’s engine in the distance.

I contemplated Blake and Kafka for a while, juxtaposing them in my head, until my mind quietened enough for me to listen out for any further sign of my host on the country road behind me. Unable to discern any, I came out from the bushes and walked into the barn. Inside, I saw that the bookshelves held crystals and wooden carvings with prices on, whilst incense sticks burned silently in alcoves, and the whole space was bathed in green half-light. Old hard-back books lined some of the higher shelves. A woman I could not age, dressed in a long, shapeless black dress, emerged from the gloom at the back of the barn, uncertain as she regarded me, but all I wanted was to look at the books and just sit for a while. She disappeared, happy enough to let me do that.

The books engrossed me for an inordinate length of time. There was a set of periodicals bound in burnished golden colours called
‘Man Myth and Magic’
and my heart jumped in recognition as I came across them. I’d collected the same series of magazines in my teens, looking forward to each new golden binder which would appear in the post once I’d amassed a volume’s worth of periodicals. My mother, of course, had thrown them out a few years ago, concerned for my state of mind. Meddling but well intentioned.

I opened a volume up and traced my finger along the lined drawings of horned beasts. I flicked through passages, marked in alphabetical order, which spanned anything from Grimm’s fairy tales through to far more sinister superstitions. The minutes passed and lengthened into hours. When I could read no more, I put the last book down and shuffled over to the assistant, my leg leaden from crouching in one position for so long.

‘Those are not for sale,’ she said, the smoke from her roll-up reaching my nostrils.

‘Mind if I have a drag?’ I asked, but she stubbed it out and got up.

‘It’s closing time.’

I thought about her afterwards. Of her conversation with my host. Of her business there. I discovered it was a so-called ‘New Age’ shop but it felt like more like a brush with the occult. And it wasn’t until I got home that I realised my own dark spirits had been completely silent for hours.

Once home from the community prayer meeting, I sprang out of my car and slammed the door, pausing for a minute to take stock of my surroundings. The street was grey and silent, as ever, like an eternal no-man’s land. It was as if the village wanted to echo my state of mind, to show me the extent of my own emptiness inside. I bit the top of my thumbnail off as I considered this, ripping a sliver of skin out from under it. I sighed. Although it was nearly lunchtime I wasn’t hungry. It was a long time since I’d felt much like eating anything for pleasure.

I opened up the house and wandered through to my sitting room to sit down, pulling out the Tarot pack from beneath the coffee table where I had left them. Shuffling them as I had liked to as a child, I noted how they felt sharp between my fingertips, almost as if they were from a much newer pack. They were thicker and slightly larger than normal cards. From an adult’s perspective I thought it odd my grandmother had such a pack of cards in her possession and I now wondered where she had got them from. I berated myself for never having asked her.

Closing my eyes I picked out five cards at random to lie out on the table. When I opened them again to review what had come out, I caught my breath. A woman sat in a high throne between two columns, next to her a tramp or a traveller, a man hanging from a tree by his foot, a stylised moon and a skeleton holding a scythe. I let out a long, low whistle and sat, staring down at the cards for a while, trying to still my mind which was jumping about in panic.

An image floated around in my mind’s eye: Tony, his eyes dull and his face drawn and pale. I looked down at the cards remembering, once again, how it wasn’t supposed to be a good omen to draw Death and The Moon together. But just as this thought meandered about in my mind, a revving noise outside signalled I had company. I looked at my watch: 1pm exactly.

Through the glass of my door I glimpsed a flash of red Alfa Romeo and realised immediately who had come to visit. Opening the door, I smiled. The way Dan strode towards the front door reminded me of how unflustered he always was. I’d had numerous crises at university and he had always been the calm and collected one who listened and then put in a few, well-chosen words to soften my angst or put things in perspective. He was cultured without being snobby, although I wondered if he would ever cope in a village such as this.