‘Oh, but it’s not like that. If you only open your mind and your heart, you’ll see—’
‘I’ll see horror and pain and confusion. I’ve seen enough of it already. There is nothing healthy or sane about this place. And there never was. It’s wrong. It’s very wrong. And you bloody know it. Hazzard was a criminal. A fraud. His entire enterprise was based upon deception and extortion. And it’s over. Long over. Surely you can see that? No good has ever come of what he started, for anyone, least of all for him. He got lucky with something. Something extraordinary but terrible. Something ghastly that should never have been attempted. You cannot possibly expect that anyone sane would want anything to do with it. There is no light. There is no ascent. Not any more, Joyce. What little I know has made me sure of that. And the two of you are maintaining a madman’s final scam. So what is the point of carrying on? You are wasting your lives.’
‘You mustn’t say that. You mustn’t say things like that here.’ Joyce’s eyes widened and she struggled to resist them straying once more to the white door at the end of the corridor. And then she looked at Seb and mouthed the word, please.
Seb stepped closer to her. Her entire body was trembling. When he gripped the outside of her arms, she dipped her head and collapsed against him as if she hadn’t been held in a long time. When she looked up at him, her face stricken with fear, she sniffed back her tears and whispered, ‘Please, help us. We need you. We can’t fail. We can’t fail him or he’ll never let us go . . .’
‘We can leave. I have a car. I’ll take you with me. Today.’
‘Would you?’ she said, and then sobbed.
‘Yes.’
And then the woman seemed to remember something crucial and she regained control of herself. She began to smile like an imbecile. ‘We’ve forgone temptation and earthly comforts for a reason, Seb. Our purpose here is greater. We’re wedded to that and that alone. You must try to understand. You and I, we couldn’t be together. Not in that way.’
‘What?’ Seb released her shoulders. ‘I never suggested anything of the sort.’
‘Please. Don’t be embarrassed. The earthly conditions are full of temptations and distractions, and so much pain. There is only pain and misery when we are earthbound, and we can never truly know ourselves. You know that. We’ve read your books. Some of them. Well, bits of them. Bits of one of them, at least. But we’ve read enough to know that you understand this better than anyone. It’s in your vision, the pain. We’re all earthbound prisoners and it’s not possible to ever find our true potential. But there are other places, and it is to those that we must reach into. Like he said, “Into wonder we must walk.”’
‘Jesus. How did you become . . . this . . . ?’
Joyce frowned at Seb, as if he had asked her a stupid question. ‘I was called and I came.’ She said this with an air of self-importance and her eyes shone with something approaching awe. ‘Oh, I was much younger back then. A child really. Nineteen, or eighteen, I don’t much remember. And the society had seen better days when we arrived, but the commitment lasts much longer than what we call life, Sebastian.’
Seb stared at her with abject revulsion. ‘You murdered Ewan. You killed a man. You and Veronica and . . .’ Seb looked at the white door . . . ‘that thing, up there, and whatever else is still coming out of here. You all did it.’
Joyce recoiled from him and clasped her hands together, squeezing her eyes shut at the recall of something so unpleasant. ‘Ewan . . . He stole from us. He was trusted . . .’
‘Did he deserve that?’
‘He came here with an agenda. That wasn’t right. That has never been permitted. Ego, self-interest . . . No, no, no. And he was warned . . . He was warned about what . . .’
‘Joyce. You killed a man. How many others have you murdered?’
‘He said he was a poet. A poet? But he wasn’t capable . . . It wasn’t satisfactory. We were all very disappointed in his . . . ability. And the drinking!’
Joyce returned her attention to the white door in the passageway, the door that led to the next floor of the dark house. She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘When he enquired about Ewan, he was not pleased. You can’t imagine . . . And it was with great regret that he called upon one who is forever lost . . . but he only did it to protect us. Don’t you see? No one has ventured as far as him, or discovered so much in the light, and in the darkness too.’ For the last two words she uttered, her whispered voice became so faint as to be almost undetectable, but Seb heard her.
‘That thing that came to my home,’ he whispered. ‘How do I . . . get rid of it. You have to tell me.’
‘It is not permitted.’
Seb grabbed her arms again. They felt especially thin and unpleasant as he squeezed the near-rotten wool that hung from her old bones. ‘That thing, in the hood. Tell me how to get rid of it!’
‘Ewan. It was sent for Ewan.’
‘Is it here? Thin Len?’
Joyce’s eyes grew wide. ‘Sometimes.’