The Power(14)

‘Oh!’ says Savannah, as her shoulder flies upward, ‘I felt someone walk over my grave!’

‘Huh,’ says Victoria, as Allie jangles her brain a little, ‘I have a headache. I can’t … I can’t think straight.’

‘Fuck!’ shouts Abigail, as her knee buckles. ‘Got a fucking cramp from the water.’

It doesn’t take much power to do it, and it doesn’t hurt them. They never know it was Allie, like the eels in the tank, her head just above the waterline, her eyes wide and steady.

After a few months, some of the other girls start to talk about moving on from the convent. It’s occurred to Allie – or Eve, as she is trying to think of herself, even in private – that some of the others might have secrets, too, might also be hiding here until the heat dies down.

One of the girls, they call her Gordy, because her surname’s Gordon, asks Allie to come with her. ‘We’re going to Baltimore,’ she says. ‘My mom’s family has people there, they’ll help us get set up.’ She shifts her shoulders. ‘I’d like your company along the way.’

Eve has made friends in a way Allie has always found difficult. Eve is kind and quiet and watchful, where Allie was spiky and complicated.

She cannot go back to where she came from and, what, indeed, would there be to return for? But there will be no great hunt for her. She looks different now, anyway, her face longer and leaner, her frame taller. It is that time in life when children start to wear their adult faces. She could walk north to Baltimore, or move on to some other nowhere town and take a job as a waitress. In three years’ time, no one back in Jacksonville would know her for certain. Or she could stay here. When Gordy says, ‘Come away,’ Allie knows she wants to stay. She is happier here than she has ever been.

She listens at doors and around corners. She has always had this habit. A child in danger must learn to pay more attention to the adults than a child loved and cherished.

That is how she hears the nuns arguing between themselves, and how she learns she might not have the chance to stay at all.

It is Sister Veronica, her face like granite, whose voice Allie hears through the door of their small sitting room.

‘Have you seen it?’ she is saying. ‘Have you seen it working?’

‘We have all seen it,’ rumbles the abbess.

‘Then how can you doubt what it is?’

‘Fairy stories,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia. ‘Children’s games.’

Sister Veronica’s voice is so loud it makes the door tremble a little, and Allie takes a pace back.

‘Are the Gospels themselves fairy tales? Was Our Lord a liar? Do you tell me that there has never been a demon, that when He cast out devils from men He was playing a game?’

‘No one is saying that, Veronica. No one is doubting the Gospels.’

‘Have you seen it on the news reports? Have you seen what they do? They have powers that men are not meant to know. From where does this power come? We all know the answer. The Lord told us where these powers come from. We all know.’

There is a silence in the room.

Sister Maria Ignacia speaks softly. ‘I have heard that it is caused by pollution. There was an interesting piece in the newspaper. Pollution in the atmosphere causing certain mutations in the –’

‘It is the Devil. The Devil walks abroad and tests the innocent and the guilty, giving powers to the damned, as he has always done.’

‘Oh no,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia, ‘I have seen the good in their faces. They are children, we have a duty to care for them.’

‘You would see good in the face of Satan himself if he arrived at your door with a pitiful story and a hungry belly.’

‘And would I be wrong to do so? If Satan needed feeding?’

Sister Veronica gives a laugh like a dog’s bark.

‘Good intentions! Good intentions pave the road to Hell.’

The abbess speaks over them all. ‘We have already asked for guidance to the Diocesan Council. They are praying on it. In the meantime, the Lord told us to suffer the little children.’

‘Younger girls awaken it in older women. This is the Devil working in the world, passing from hand to hand as Eve passed the apple to Adam.’

‘We cannot simply throw children out on to the street.’

‘The Devil will gather them to his bosom.’

‘Or they will starve,’ says Sister Maria Ignacia.

Allie thinks it over for a long time. She could move on. But she likes it here.

The voice says: You heard what she said. Eve passed the apple to Adam.

Allie thinks, Maybe she was right to do it. Maybe that’s what the world needed. A bit of shaking up. Something new.

The voice says: That’s my girl.

Allie thinks, Are you God?

The voice says: Who do you say that I am?

Allie thinks, I know that you speak to me in my hour of need. I know that you have guided me on the true path. Tell me what to do now. Tell me.

The voice says: If the world didn’t need shaking up, why would this power have come alive now?

Allie thinks, God is telling the world that there is to be a new order. That the old way is overturned. The old centuries are done. Just as Jesus told the people of Israel that God’s desires had changed, the time of the Gospels is over and there must be a new doctrine.