Current break count: ring finger, eye socket, rib, nose, big toe (right foot).
Obviously, I look amazing. Holly’s been keeping me on painkillers, but she admits that it’s strange how mobile I’ve managed to be considerin what’s happening to me. Then again, that seems to apply to all of us. Maybe Angela’s spell – is that the word? – doesn’t want us incapacitated.
Susan is rotting – she’s lost six teeth so far, her hair is starting to come out, and… there’s a smell.
Rita’s taken on more of a shunting gait, a little Chaplin-esque, or like a mannequin. The stone-like lesions – or not lesions, I suppose, as it’s what her flesh has turned into – are spreading across her hip, feet, arms.
Holly’s thinner. Which we expected. What we didn’t expect was… the bump. When I met her at the hospital I assumed Angela had detected a pregnancy that was already there, judging by how far along she was. But now… the bump is growing faster than a normal pregnancy, even as she loses weight (no matter how much she keeps eating, we’ve tried that). It’s like whatever’s in there is… feeding on her. None of us want to ask the question of whether it’s a baby or not.
And Imran?
Well.
I should mention that we’re on a train now, I’ll check in with updates, just want there to be a rolling record in the draft folder if things go south.
Carapace’s latest retret is called “HIS HIGHER CONNECTION” – the flyer seemed to imply it was for Christians looking for love. Different from ours. Different from Schmooze+, where Seb went and lost his head. But… the same, in a way. What is the search for love but an obsession? That’s what Angela seems attracted to – people with obsessional thinking.
Aunt Nóirín’s with us. We told her evything – it didn’t take that much convincing, once she saw our symptoms, and saw my big toe snap completely on its own. She was an Irishwoman who moved to London in the 70s, she’s seen it all.
And she demanded that she come with us. I tried to talk her down, but she told me to wisht and pointed out that Angela knows who all of us are – if we actually want someone to walk in the doors of this place, they’ll need a fresh face. Nóirín did always love a Bond marathon.
So we enrolled her in “HIS HIGHER CONNECTION”.
We boarded the train about an hour ago, bags and laptops in tow, not quite sure what our plan was – get information about Angela and how to stop this? Or kill her? Kill all of them? Assuming… assumin they can be killed?
I was pontificating on this when Imran burst into flames.
He was in the gangway between carriages, on his way back from the toilets, when I saw him go up – it was his arm again, a recurring issue, but it caught on his jumper, soon it was engulfing him.
I like to think of myself as good in an emergency, but before I could move, Rita was up – pulling a portable fire extinguisher from her bag, banging on the electronic door to get through to him, and putting him out.
He lay on the ground, in pain. Luckily the alarms didn’t go off.
Rita held him, for a little while, and I began to wonder if Angela was giving them what they’d asked for – their marriage back.
I’ll write again when we ge to Liverpool.
-—————————————————————————————————————————————–
We did a pass of the building. It’s an old decommissioned school, red brick, not far from what Nóirín called the Paddy Wigwam (the very un-PC nickname for the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool).
There weren’t any signs outside, but as we hid in a café within eyeline, we saw a van arrive, and people get out. Ezra was driving. Once again I was reminded of my weakness for a sinewy man. Or maybe it’s Angela’s spell. Or maybe I’m just a horny piece of shit.
While we waited, Holly called the hospital, got an update on a patient that came in two days ago – he was one of us. This jittery 19-year-old who’d barely spoken to anyone for the whole weekend of Angela’s retreat. Apparently he’d come to Ocras because he’d been dragged through the mud after he said the wrong thing to the wrong person at a protst and got filmed, the online mob coming for him. Seemed inconsequential but… we don’t choose the objects of our obsession.
He’d tracked us down, turning up on Holly’s doorstep, just… crying.
That was his thing.
He couldn’t stop crying. It was dehydrating him, badly. Sunken eyes, parched lips, dizzy, confused. And crying. Always crying.
She admitte him to hospital, asked them to keep an eye on him.
Holly spoke quietly into her phone, then put it down.
“He had a heart attack this morning. Hydration isn’t working. He’s on life support.”
We looked at each other.
Then Nóirín said it was about time she kept her appointment with “HIS HIGHER CONNECTION”.
-—————————————————————————————————————————————–
We’re in.
After about an hour, Nóirín met us at the pre-agreed point, a fire exit at the back of the school. It was rustd, creaky – when it opened we all held our breath, like we were terrified it would be Angela, even though that was who we came here for.
Nóirín was wearing a black smock, like the ones we’d been given when we’d gone to Ocras. She told us that soon as they’d arrived, they’d been asked to change, surrender their phones – and the entrance to the building was locked. On the way to get us she’d seen loose chains, padlocks… like maybe they were planning to do the same to the emegrency exits. This wasn’t the middle of the woods, they had to make sure there was no way of someone making a break for it.
“We’ve also been… paired up.”
She seemed almost embarrassed.
“Soon as we walked in the door – ‘here’s Michael, he’s a builder and the love of your life, good luck’. Tall guy, bit on the hairy side for me, but you know… beggars can’t be choosers. Beggars and undercover spies.”
I think she was actually enjoying this.
They were all brought into a main hall, and Maddy had led things. No sign of Angela yet. Maddy explained that love “isn’t a roll of the dice, it’s a choice”. Your usual romance babble, but they seemed very forceful – Nóirín and Michael had been given a room to share, an office converted into a bedroom, with a single double bed.
“Who knows, I might get my hole after all.”
Nóirín has a way with words.
She brought us inside, closing the emergency exit behind us with a rusty thwack. She had to get back to her room, she explained – she’d told Michael she’d gone to the toilet.
The school was big, dusty. Mostly empty, but there were noticeboards still imprinted with the shadow of old posters, parts of the board that hadn’t been bleached by the sun.
A French clasroom. A science lab. A metalwork room.
We knew we were looking for more information on what had been done to us – but were less in agreement over what to do if we ran into Angela. Rita and Imran were very much in the “kill her” camp, Holly vehemently disagreed (perhaps she was wondering what would happen to her “pregnancy” if Angela wasn’t around), while I argued that just because Angela was dead it wouldn’t necessarily mean what was happening to us would stop… and we’d have lost the person who might know how to fix it.
Susan was quiet, as ever. Refusing to be drawn. Maybe she really didn’t care.
She led the way, spitting a tooth on to the tiled floor of the corridor as we began our search.
Most of the rooms were empty – at one point we turned a corner and saw a couple standing outside an office. We’d wandered into the part of the school that was being used for bedroms, so did a one-eighty, figuring Angela’s office (assuming she had one here) would be at the other end of the building.
Eventually, we found it.
That’s where I am now, in the corner, updating this, hoping it’s still bouncing to the cloud, maybe to be found by someone and posted here. We’ve agreed to stay here until Nóirín can get in touch again.
The Polaroids aren’t hidden here – they’re on the wall, posted in neat pairs. Couples. Almost all straight, but one or two same-sex couples, which I wondered about – did these people attending a Christian retreat know they were going to be paired up like that?
There’s red string connecting each pair, but we checked and there’s no writing on the Polaorids. There is one word scrawled in chalk on the blackboard opposite, however.
“HEARTS”.
Holly, Rita and Imran are arguing over what it means. Susan’s staring out the window.
I don’t know whether to tell them what Ezra said to me.
It was while we were searching the corridors – we hadn’t split up, but we’d fanned out a little. Peeking through classroom windows, half looking for something, half fearful of fiding something.
The others had rounded a corner, and I looked in the window of a Geography classroom (there was the torn edge of a world map on the wall, Alaska and the North Pacific peeking out)…
…and I came face to face with Ezra.
We stood there, looking at each other through the dusty glass.
I took a punt. Opened the door.
“You can’t tell anyone we’re here. Okay?”
I stared at him. He looked… really rough. Hungry. Nt like… not like Holly, but like there was something being drained out of him. His skin seemed to be fading to a dull grey. He stared back at me, a long five, ten seconds…
…then grabbed my hand.
“We do this because we have to.”
Then he let me go. I re-joined the others.
Hang on I think someone’s comi
-—————————————————————————————————————————————–
It’s over.
We’re on the train back. My head hurts. I won’t sleep tonight. I’ll keep seeing them, I can already tell I’ll keep seeing them when I close my eyes.
It was Maddy who found us, in Angela’s office. Rita had grabbed the Polaroids off the wall, stuffing them in in her bag, papers from Angela’s desk as well, random scrawlings it seemed, but you never know, could be useful.
Then Maddy was standing in the dorway.
We all froze.
I stared at Maddy, thinking of Ezra. She looked pale, like him. Sapped.
“Wait, wait, okay? We just want to—”
But Susan was moving, sudddenly striding across the room – I saw some of her hair come loose, a few strands floating in the shafts of afternoon light as she rushed at Maddy.
But Maddy was quick. She smiled, closed her eyes…
…and slammed the door closed on her own hand. Hard enough to shatter a few bones, it looked like. A glass panel in the door came loose, crashing to the floor.
But Maddy didn’t look like she’d hurt herself. Instead… it was us.
The pain. I felt it rushing in on me – my nose, my rib, my big toe… whatever pain I thought I’d been expereincing was nothing compared to what I guess I should have been feeling all this time. I fell against a table.
Imran too, collapsing against the wall, clutching at his arm for a split second before his hand shot away again – the pain of the burn. Pulling back his sleeve, trying to let it breathe.
Rita grabbing her hip, immobilised, like the bits of her that were turning to marble were crunching, scraping up against the rest of her.
And Susan vomitin up bile. More. Maybe bits of her.
Holly just fainted clear through a desk. All out of energy.
I don’t know if the pain caused me to black out, or it was Maddy, or my memory’s just scrambled from the agony… but the next thing I can remember we were in the main hall.
All the couples were, maybe fifteen or sixteen of them. I saw that not everyone was wearing black smocks – one half of each couple was wearing a matching white set of soft, muslin overshirts and slacks. Barefoot.
They all had that soft look in their eyes that I remembered from the first night we took psilocybin. Things wer moving fast here, faster than it had for us. Maybe Angela wasn’t asking for signed permission any more. I wondered why they were in such a hurry.
I was lying on the ground. I actually checked my arms first, to make sure that I wasn’t handcuffed to Leila or someone else, but no. The others – Susan, Rita, Imran, Holly – were beside me, weak, pained, unable to stand up.
And there was Angela. Front and centre. The other staff in an arc surrounding us. Looking weak as well. Hungry.
Angela spoke.
“Have you figured it out yet?”
She was loking at me.
I reached for a comment, some swear word, but I’d barely got a “Fu—” out before she launched a kick into my broken rib. I nearly blacked out from the pain.
I could see Nóirín standing there, on the far side of the room, looking at me – I shook my head, “don’t intervene”. But I didn’ know if she was really… there. Or if she’d drank the kool aid.
“Have you figured it out?”
I thought about that sticker on the inside of the bathroom stall. Of calling Ocras. Those nights in the woods. The three words – “open”, “break”, “bind”. Leila licking my feet. Leila falling down the stairs. Leila handcuffed to me, her neck sliding back into place. And wat Ezra said to me.
I opened my mouth, but it was Susan that spoke.
“You’re trying to live.”
Angela looked at her.
“You were so angry that our retreat ended early, and now you all look fairly… peaky.”
Susan punctuated this by spitting out more bile on the floor beside her.
“But you had to end it early, because of Leila. Your daughter. I get that. Whatever you were planning to get from us, you had to funnel it into her.”
Angela knellllt down beside Susan, brushed a finger through her hair. Some came loose.
“We do what we need to feed. We bind ourselves to you in order to obtain what sustains us. What happened to Leila depleted the process…”
She looked at the assembled couples.
“…but there are others.”
Imran was glaring at her.
“And killing us? Burning us? Breaking our bones? Is that just for fun?”
“That’s not our choice. We link ourselves to you, we feed, but… the process… it’s like… ever try to squeeze toothpaste out of a tube?”
Her brow furrowed.
“You’re the tube.”
Susan tried to reach out and graab her but Angela was up, lightning quick. And she kicked me again. I roared in pain. Angela looked back to Susan.
“You hide it well, but you care for him. Remember…”
Angela tapped her chest.
“…I’m in there with you.”
I looked up at Angela, then at Maddy, Ezra, Leila, the others.
“That’s why they lok at you the way they do. They’re not followers, or worshippers, or family, or employees… they’re pack animals, just hoping they’ll find the next meal.”
I stared at Leila.
“She’s not your mother – she’s a fucking psychopath.”
Angela launched another kick – but I just laughed. Because I could see out of the corner of my eye, what was happening. Nóirín had got on of the doors open. Obviously she hadn’t taken whatever Angela had slipped into their morning coffees. She was tugging on the sleeves of nearby couples, gently ushering them towards the door – as they moved, you could see something sparking within them. Not waking up, but at least realising where they were.
The point was they were moving – and I had to keep Angela talking. Or I would have, but then Holly piped up.
“What about my baby?”
Angela softend. Seemed she liked Holly. She went over, sat beside her, rubbing her belly.
“Don’t worry. He’ll survive all this.”
“It’s a boy?”
Angela said nothing. Hollllly just smiled. I couldn’t help but wonder why Angela wasn’t answering the question – maybe because then she’d have to say it’s not a boy… because boys are human.
But then there was a scuffle. The people Nóirín was sneaking out were waking up properly, panicking… and it drew Angela’s attention. The others.
The room was half-empity by this point – a lot of them had gotten out. I think those ones were okay, in the end. But the rest…
Angela didn’t move. She just looked at me with such rage – like I’d spoiled her fun again. Then she looked to Maddy, and nodded her head.
Maddy took a knife from her pocket – I hadn’t noticed that – and suddenly plunged it into her chest, right where her heart would be.
She winced. But just a wince. Like a papercut. Or stubbing your toe.
It was the others that were really reacting – the men and women in their black and white smocks, the ones who were still in the room, started clutching their chests. Faces locked in strange grimaces.
Heart attacks.
It took about three or four minutes before they finally stopped moving. Imran was crying. Rita was starin at a spot on the wall, jaw clenched shut, probably having a panic attack but trying to keep a lid on it.
I think I’d given up. If she could do that so easily, then…
“She won’t kill us.”
It was Susan again. Angela turned to her.
“She won’t kill us becaus right now even if we’re ‘depleted’ we’re the only energy source they’ve got. We spoiled it for them. Again.”
Angela leaned down to her. A smile.
“Oh I like you.”
A beat, then…
“You’ll see him soon.”
And then they left us.
I’m in the last train carrrrrriage. Nóirín’s beside me. She’s fine. Said she felt a little twinge in her chest, but… she wasn’t really checked into the process, didn’t take the psilocybin, barely listened to anything Angela said. She wasn’t… up for being bound.
But she hasn’t really talked much, on the journey.
We feel doomed.
-—————————————————————————————————————————————–
Oh God.
He’s looking at me.
He’s actually looking at me.
And he actually… he actually feels like him.
“You’ll see him soon.”
That’s wat Angela had said, and she meant it.
Susan called me in the middle of the night, crying, screaming, said to check if there was one outside my door.
I did. There was a package sittin outside Nóirín’s – huge, four feet by four foot easily, and deep. I managed to drag it into the corridor and get the door closed, before I grabbed a kitchen knife and opened it. I had Susan on speaker, but she’d gone silent. She was muttering to herself.
I cut open the package, and it was…
…I can’t believe I’m actually typing this but it was…
…Derek. The man I’d loved. Or… “loved”, quotation marks model’s own, depending on how you see a crush that ends with pushing someone through a sheet of glass.
Derek was in the box. I gasped, thouhgt it was his dead body, but then he opened his eyes. And looked at me. And smiled.
And I realised it wasn’t Derek. Not really.
Because Susan had found another one of these on her doorstep.
Except hers looked exactly like her son.
Angela must have sent them to us.
Then Derek winked at me. And said “hi beautiful”.
And my leg snapped in two.