Ella had a lot of questions, but they were for the man to answer, not this human Barbie doll.
‘I’m looking for someone,’ she told Christine, describing the man as best she could. Stocky. Dark hair. Strong jaw. Well dressed. As she spoke it occurred to her how vague and generic she made him sound.
‘He’s the person who recruited me, and I really, really need to speak to him. Tonight, if possible. Do you know him?’
Christine’s face fell. ‘I don’t think so. Sorry. Although I wish I did from your description. But if he’s at camp then he’ll be at community dinner. Everyone comes to community dinner.’
‘Everyone?’ Ella mentioned the group of women she’d passed driving through the camp just now. How they looked half starved.
‘Ah, yes, well they were probably on operations,’ replied Christine, echoing Agnes’s confidence that somehow that made it all OK. ‘Discipline and self-denial are all part of the program.’
At that moment a very fat man with a straggly beard and long hair growing down on either side of a premature bald patch burst into the cabin, a look of almost maniacal excitement on his face. ‘You’re here at last then?’ he said, staring fixedly at Ella.
‘Do I know you?’ Ella frowned.
‘Not yet,’ his smile broadened. ‘But I know you. Everybody does. You’re quite the celebrity around here, Miss Praeger. Jackson.’ He thrust a bear-like paw towards her. ‘I’m a friend of Chrissie’s.’
‘He’s a pain in my ass,’ corrected Christine, although it was said with obvious affection. ‘Jackson thinks he’s more important than the rest of us because he works in systems and is a genius.’
‘She’s just being bitchy because she wants my body and knows she can’t have it,’ Jackson told Ella, deadpan. Ella hesitated, then laughed.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve heard. But I’m not part of your Group. I’m only at Camp Hope because of a man who turned up to my grandmother’s funeral. He told me he had information about my parents and … other things. Maybe you’ve heard of them? William and Rachel Praeger? They joined The Group decades ago, before I was born.’
Jackson and Christine exchanged glances.
‘Sorry, I don’t know about them,’ said Jackson. ‘But we’ve heard about you. That you have special capabilities that could be vital to our work.’
‘And that it’s super-important we make you feel welcome,’ Christine added, sincerely.
‘So, you know: Welcome,’ said Jackson.
‘Thanks,’ said Ella. ‘But you haven’t heard of my mother and father?’
Both Jackson and Christine shook their heads.
‘Perhaps you know the man who recruited me?’ she asked Jackson, describing him again. ‘Christine said she doesn’t.’
‘Sorry. It’s not ringing a bell for me either,’ Jackson said, apologetically.
No one seemed to know anything, other than the fact that Ella herself was ‘important’ and ‘expected’ and ‘different’, like some sort of magical unicorn they’d been told to wait for, and who had now miraculously appeared among them.
I’m like the messiah of a religion I’ve never heard of and don’t understand, she thought. A mix of fatigue and extreme anger washed over Ella.
‘I’m sorry.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘I seem to have made a mistake. I should never have come here. I need to leave.’
‘Leave?’ Christine looked aghast. ‘But, you can’t leave. You’ve literally only just arrived.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ella again, to Christine and Jackson. ‘Good luck with everything. It was nice to meet you both.’
She grabbed her suitcase and turned on her heel out of the cabin without a second glance. It had been a long and grueling day, coming here, and her hopes had been so high after last night. But it had all been for nothing. The man had lured her here under false pretenses. She didn’t believe that anyone at Camp Hope knew her parents. The man had delivered Ella to his group of misfits and weirdoes, like a good little brainwashed boy, and then disappeared. Again.
Jackson seemed pleasant, and perhaps Christine was nice enough too in her own pneumatic, giggly way. But it was a carefully controlled ‘nice’. A cult nice, a ‘be patient, all will be revealed’ nice, designed to suck Ella into whatever cause it was that ‘The Group’ believed in, without actually answering any of her questions.
She marched up the winding maze of paths towards the front gates. She passed only a few people along the way, some of whom gave her curious glances, although no one intervened. Everybody else was obviously on the way to community dinner. Reaching the gates at last, her heart pounded as she approached the two men on duty.
‘I need to leave,’ she blurted. ‘Now.’
‘Leave?’ the first man looked puzzled.
‘Yes,’ Ella said firmly, although inside her panic was mounting. What if they wouldn’t let her out? What if they tried to keep her a prisoner here?
‘Are you sure?’ the second man asked, compounding Ella’s anxiety. ‘It’s very late. Where will you go?’
‘Just open the gates,’ Ella demanded.
He hesitated.
‘Open them!’
To her surprise and relief, the man shrugged and did as she asked, pressing a button that caused the camp gates to swing open. Outside, beyond the softly floodlit glow of Camp Hope, the pitch-dark forest stretched endlessly out in front of her. Ella hesitated. Where am I going to go? she wondered. It suddenly struck her that she had no idea in which direction her car was parked, and Agnes must have driven her at least a few miles away from that spot. There’d be bears out there, and mountain lions, and heaven knew what else. Her phone was dead and she was unarmed. Should she turn back and wait till morning?
‘Leaving us so soon, Ella?’ Ella spun around. The man’s voice rang out in her head as clearly as if she were watching television or listening to the radio in her room. As ever he sounded supremely calm and unconcerned. Amused, almost. It was infuriating.
‘Where are you?!’ Ella’s exasperated voice rang out through the trees. There must be a camera up there somewhere, hidden in the canopy, but in this light she couldn’t see it. ‘Answer me!’
‘No need to shout. You’re free to go at any time, of course,’ he continued, his voice patronizingly slow and patient, as if Ella were the crazy one, not him. ‘This isn’t a prison.’
‘It might as well be,’ Ella yelled into the darkness, aware that anyone listening to her must think her completely insane, having a confrontational conversation with an imaginary friend. ‘Everyone inside is completely brainwashed.’
‘Don’t be so dramatic.’
So there were listening devices out there too? There must be, or how could he be hearing her?
‘How are you doing this? How are you speaking to me? Transmitting …?’
‘Be patient,’ said the man. ‘The answers you seek are all here, Ella, I promise you that. About your parents. Your past. Your future.’
‘No,’ she shot back. ‘They aren’t. No one knows anything.’
A long sigh. ‘They do. Trust me.’
‘Why should I?’ said Ella furiously. ‘Why should I trust you when you won’t tell me who you are, or where you are, or anything at all? And