There was no one in the kitchen so Jacob walked on through to the sitting room.
The TV was on but silent, some daytime game show with an orange-faced, slick-haired host and a female assistant of indeterminable age crushed into a green dress that revealed an impressive amount of cleavage for this time of the morning. On any other day he might have lingered a while over that, but today he was distracted.
Two half-filled cups of coffee had been left close together on the wicker table in the center of the room, beside his mother’s crochet magazines and the TV guide.
Layers of milk had risen and congealed to form thick rings around the edge of each cup and across the surface of their contents.
Something’s not right.
The patchwork woolen blanket his mom always wrapped herself in whenever she sat to watch TV had been thrown back over the arm of the chair but he couldn’t hear her movements anywhere in the house.
It wasn’t as if she was out. She never went out anywhere these days, not even to the trash cans at the end of the drive.
‘Be a love,’ she’d say, tugging on his arm, ‘pop this in the trash before your dad gets home and starts on about the smell.’ And he would, because none of them wanted his dad to get started. Though more often than not it was unavoidable; he’d always find something to ‘start’ about.
Jacob looked around the room but as much as he tried he couldn’t make sense of anything. Nothing was clear, and the longer he looked the less clear it became. He squinted his eyes at his father’s armchair but all he could really see was a vague outline of the seat no one dared sit in when his dad was around and no one wanted to when he wasn’t.
An old familiar weight dropped into his stomach, uncomfortable and unwelcome.
There was something in his hand. He looked down to find it was a black plastic rectangle, the games console he’d taken from his brother’s room while he was away in camp. Of course. His brother would be back tomorrow and he was returning it before he found it was gone.
His legs took him toward the stairs and now he saw with startling clarity the worn brown and orange-flecked stair carpet beneath his battered white trainers.
With each step he wanted to stop, a growing sense of unease spreading upward, his legs growing heavier, his whole being weighing him down, even the console growing unbearably lead-like in his hand so that he imagined he felt the tendons on the inside of his wrist stretching just to keep hold of it.
Halfway to the first floor a smell hit his stomach, one so fierce it travelled from his nostrils to his gut and back up to his throat making him want to heave. He was edging closer to the landing and to the door he didn’t want to go through.
Not this time. Not again.
He wanted to turn, urged himself to stop and go back down the stairs, back through the rear porch, back to Kelly’s house, to her thin pale arms and scattered beauty spots, to the smell of her bed sheets, to the night they’d spent wrapped in each other while her parents were away. Why did he come home? Why did he care about the fucking console or what his shit-for-brains brother would say when he found it gone?
But it was too late. He was already there at the white door with its chipped paint, and his trembling fingers were turning the handle, his hand hesitant before pushing the door wide. He squeezed his eyes shut tight to what he couldn’t remember was inside even though the smell still hit the back of his throat, stripping it raw. That same smell that carried sometimes on the breeze from the meat pastries factory, but heavier, rawer, and so thick it clogged his senses until there was nothing else in the entire world but that stench.
And even with his eyes closed something flashed before them.
Red.
Red on white.
He edged backward out of the room, away from the image he didn’t want to see with his eyes open or shut. He shuffled back a step, then another, until he knocked up against something hard that took his legs from under him. It was the wooden bannister and he was toppling over it.
Now weightless, he was falling, away from the room, away from what was inside, the console slipping from his hand, his eyes squeezing shut as he prepared to hit the stairs beneath with all his weight. And as he anticipated the thump that would surely
hurt, someone grabbed for him. With a hand on each arm they yanked at him and called his name. Once, twice, louder. So loud that his eyelids flew open and he fell straight into the depths of two huge and bottomless pale green pools.
*
‘Jacob.’
A familiar voice called across the hall. Breakfast had finished and the men were clearing away the dishes. He paused in his sweeping and did his best to smile as Michael weaved in and out of the tables to reach him. ‘I wondered when you might wish to draw up an agenda for our property search.’
‘No need, brother. I thought I’d go today.’
‘Really? So soon?’ Michael frowned at his first protégé. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a little longer to plan, discuss options?’
‘I see no reason to delay. As you’ve specifically assigned me this task, it’s probably best I begin immediately.’
The unspoken question in his reply was thinly disguised and Michael hesitated before replying. ‘Of course. Well, if you’re sure. If there is anything you need...’
Jacob looked around the room. ‘I’ll take some of the others with me, if that’s okay.’
His eyes fell upon two of the youngest recruits who were chatting and laughing as they walked out to the courtyard. He nodded in their direction. ‘Perhaps Daniel and Aaron. It will help them to feel involved, lay down roots within the Tribe’s future.’
‘Great idea.’ Michael smiled. ‘I’ve no doubt you’ll bear in mind practicalities and necessities as you look, Jacob. Immediate needs being water, food, warmth and sanitation, of course.’
Jacob looked around them at the dwelling they’d inhabited for the past five years, a building that looked on the surface as though it should have been condemned years ago, but in practice had been adapted into functional albeit basic living quarters.
‘You built an ingenious working model here in the warehouse, Michael. It’s a good example for me to base the search on.’
‘We built it, Jacob, not I alone.’
He gave a curt nod but didn’t agree. Michael had been the one to lead them in those early years, back when Jacob had barely been capable of knowing when to use the bathroom, let alone how to construct a latrine system using holes in the ground and sawdust.
He and Samuel, the Tribe’s first two members, had merely rode along on the coat-tails of Michael’s eccentric vision for this new way of life because anything was better than the alternative – an almost inevitable early death. For one of them it still had been, before the new way of life had properly come into effect, before its potential to heal could be fully realized.
It was hard for him to contemplate now how Samuel’s act of self-destruction had felt then like more of a brave escape than a tragic loss. He’d cursed himself repeatedly at the time, for not being strong enough to do the same.
Michael touched a hand to his arm. ‘Are you okay, Jacob?’
Loosening his tight grip on the brush handle, Jacob answered with a small smile, but silently berated his wandering mind. ‘A bit tired, brother, that’s all.’
Michael pulled out two chairs from the nearest table and said in a hushed voice,
‘Here, let’s sit. You look pale. Would you like to talk?’
Jacob sat but narrowed his eyes at his mentor. ‘Michael, you’re not to ask me that.
Besides, distraction and purpose are cures of any problem.’
But Michael didn’t seem to immediately agree with his own doctrine. Instead he watched him closely. Too close, Jacob thought, and shuffled in the plastic seat.
‘For you I make an exception,’ the older man replied, and under his breath added,
‘You are like a son to me, Jacob, you know that. If you need me...’
Green eyes flashed into his mind. He was trying hard to keep them out, but this show of comradeship from Michael wasn’t helping. Perhaps he should tell him, all about the Outsider and how he’d risked everything by dropping her at the hospital, how he’d had nightmares since, ones that somehow felt like they were once real.
But what good would it do apart from deviate him further from his path? While his first year with Michael had been hard, harder than anything he’d ever done, the last four years had taught him a way of thinking, of being, that removed everything that threatened self-harm or destruction. Through meditation and mindfulness he had learned to control what affected him, and the person he’d become was the person he wanted to continue to be. He wouldn’t just throw all that away for an Outsider he’d never see again.
Better to pretend it never happened at all.
‘Really, Michael. Lack of sleep is all.’ He returned Michael’s gaze and smiled as best he could. ‘But as we’re breaking all the rules of intrusive communication, can I ask why you’ve passed this new role onto me? Wouldn’t you prefer to do it yourself ?’
Michael didn’t hesitate. ‘Well that’s easy, brother. You are the right man for the job. Besides, I need to train you up. You’ll guide the men one day.’
On top of everything else he’s a better liar than me, thought Jacob. But remembering the Tribe’s values even if his mentor didn’t, he chose not to push further.
‘That will be a long apprenticeship then, brother,’ he joked instead. But even as Michael laughed, Jacob thought he saw more than humor shining in his friend’s dark brown eyes.
*
It had taken them best part of the day to reach the large industrial quarter further outside of the city and to root around the empty buildings they found there. But as the three men walked back in the failing light, Jacob was disappointed they hadn’t come across anything even close to suitable. Unsafe floors or stairs, lack of grounds for composting or growing food and no natural water source were all issues that hindered progress.
He committed the area to memory and relented instead to come another day to try again. Perhaps this move would not be as easy as he thought. Or was it that he simply didn’t have the vision Michael had? Would Michael have viewed the buildings they’d seen today with a different outlook? Perhaps he would envisage answers to the problems that Jacob simply couldn’t. He’d discuss it with him later.
Maybe persuade him to come and see for himself. And let him know that he wasn’t the right man for the job after all.
He looked up, his thoughts interrupted by the laughter of his two associates. The Tribe way of life meant that the atmosphere was usually calm and peaceful at the warehouse, even subdued. So to hear pure unrestrained laughter was pleasant to the ears.
‘Share the joke, brothers?’ Jacob asked with a smile as they squeezed through a gap in a corrugated metal fence.
Aaron, their newest recruit, looked to the floor and kicked at loose stones with his oversized boots. Barely nineteen, he was also their youngest ever member.
They didn’t usually accept them into the Tribe so young. Michael, though devoted to the tribe he’d created, was loathe to take boys in before they’d had a chance to learn for themselves what life could offer them. He wanted them to be sure when they joined the Tribe that they knew what they were committing to and what they were leaving behind.
But Aaron had been desperate, thrown out of his home by a family who’d run out of patience with his shy demeanor and overactive imagination, mistaking it for laziness and a lack of ambition. He’d been on the streets barely a month when Michael saw him hovering in places a young adult shouldn’t.
‘A boy like him in a world like that will be dead within three months,’ Michael had said, and Jacob knew all too well this was no exaggeration.
Aaron, like the other members, had been both grateful and relieved for the acceptance the Tribe provided, and had settled in well. But he was by far the quietest of their group.
‘Couldn’t possibly share, Jacob,’ Daniel replied to the request, and the pair sniggered some more.
He laughed anyway. ‘Okay, brothers. Have it your way. I’m only glad you’ve got more out of this trip than I have.’
‘Yes, brother, it’s been anything but fruitless,’ Daniel said, his eyes glinting.
Jacob noticed the shy smile and barely visible flush in Aaron’s cheeks, the swagger in Daniel’s stride, his cheeky self-confidence on full display. And just for one heartbreaking moment he wondered what he was witnessing.
These were two young boys for whom happiness hadn’t come that easy. Christ, he understood what that was like. But now the Tribe was giving them what it was always meant to give them – a home, security, a place free from judgement and expectation – so much more than either of them had probably ever had. It didn’t matter who they were as people, who they’d once been, not even who they might still become. The Tribe gave them all the things they needed to live a life of pure contentment.
Which meant no heartache allowed.
According to Michael’s doctrine, it was long-term intimate relationships in particular that led to jealousies, resentments and bitterness. Destructive emotions that messed with people’s heads, with who they really were, what they should and shouldn’t do.
It hadn’t happened in the Tribe up until now, but the values of the doctrine were clear. Anyone forming a long-term relationship, whether inside or outside of the Tribe, would be evicted before their relationship brought upset to those involved or others in close proximity.
Jacob looked away from the pair. These boys were young and bashful, and it probably didn’t mean anything. He knew suspicions of a breach to the doctrine were supposed to be discussed with Michael, but he didn’t think he’d be able to, not on the basis of shy smiles and flushed cheeks.
Instead, he marched ahead of the two boys, his boots striking the ground with renewed pace, keen to get back before it got too dark. Or at least, before he was witness to anything else that would make him have to be the one to bring their happy new existence so abruptly to an end.