The Boundless Sublime (35 page)

‘I know you said you weren’t hungry,’ she said. ‘But I used soy milk. And the blueberries are organic.’

She looked so proud, I couldn’t bear to refuse. My mouth and stomach tried to rebel, to tell me that I was doing something wrong. But I chewed and swallowed, drinking half the tea and a few good spoonfuls of the porridge.

I could do this.

I wasn’t going back to the Institute. To Daddy. I was here, in the world.

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said to Mum. ‘That I left.’

Mum shook her head and smiled. ‘We don’t need to talk about that now.’

An hour later, I felt a twisting pain in my stomach and only just made it to the toilet in time, crouching over the bowl and heaving up what little I had eaten, along with foul strings of bile.

I spent the rest of the day in my room, googling obsessively, reading testimonies from people who had escaped from cults, and gone on to rebuild their lives. I told myself I was looking for coping strategies, ways to ease my transition back into the real world. But I was lying to myself. Those stories were like a drug to me. I picked over them like a vulture, gobbling up scandals and lawsuits and breakdowns.

I read dozens of stories of people who grew up like Fox, not knowing anything about the outside world. I read about them slowly coming around, the veil lifting from their eyes. I read about them escaping and starting new lives. I remembered Fox asking me to leave with him. Saw the despair in his eyes, and the burning flash of hope. Why had I said no? What right did I have to keep Fox imprisoned? I wasn’t like the people I’d read about online. I wasn’t born in the Institute. I should have known better. I chose to go there. I chose to stay.

I found nothing about the Quintus Septum. Anywhere. Not a single hit. Not a whisper, on any conspiracy websites or anything. It didn’t exist.

Or is that what they want you to think
?

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Daddy had made them up. He’d taken a couple of impressive-sounding Latin words and used them to create some kind of fictitious villain to unite us. To create fear. To draw us closer together, closer to him. To make us more obedient.

Maybe
.
Or maybe the Quintus Septum are that good. So clever that they can cover their tracks. So secret that they can hide even from the million eyes of the internet
.

I couldn’t shut out his voice. I just had to keep telling myself it was a fiction, to focus on what was real. But I’d forgotten how to tell the difference.

I kept thinking of the promise I’d made to Val, that I’d help the Monkey, that I’d find her a real family. I hadn’t mentioned the Monkeys to the police, or to the psychiatrist, even though I knew I should have. Perhaps it was because I knew that if I did, it would be the end of the Institute. And even though logically I knew that would be a good thing, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it yet. But I would. Soon.

I tried to find mention of the other Institute members online, but I didn’t know anyone’s real name. Daddy had separated us so utterly from our lives, our families, our names. I couldn’t reach out to other ex-members. I couldn’t find people’s families. Once I was out, I was out forever. I was utterly alone.

Or was I?

I remembered Maggie’s jade pendant, the tiny letters engraved on the back.

Jiao Wei Qin.

I reached for the keyboard with trembling fingers.

It was surprisingly easy to find her. I found newspaper articles about her being missing, and a website her parents had set up with her photo, and contact details should anyone come across her. There was an email address.

I felt a sudden wave of nausea at the thought of reaching out to them, and snapped the lid closed on my laptop. Maybe later. Maybe another day. One step at a time.

I ate a few mouthfuls of salad at dinner, and managed to keep it down this time. Then I retreated to the safety and silence of my room. Mum hadn’t mentioned returning to the hospital like she’d promised the doctors we would, and I didn’t want to say anything that would remind her. I waited until I was sure she was asleep, then I crept downstairs into the kitchen, moving silently as if I was on a Hush-Hush mission. Mum was obviously trying to stock the fridge with things I’d eat – soy milk and vegetables and hummus. I pushed it all aside and dug deep, finding individually wrapped cheese slices and ridged plastic juice bottles. I opened jars of mustard, jam and relish, sniffing the contents. I dipped a finger into each jar, so it made just the lightest brush of contact with the contents. I lifted the finger to my lips, letting a minuscule amount of food spread onto my tongue. It was wrong. Forbidden. Dangerous. I stood there for hours, locked in a cycle of temptation and resistance.

When thin daylight eventually started to bleed in through the cracks in the blinds, I slunk back to my room and climbed into bed, pulling the covers up over my head.

I slept fitfully until noon, managing to successfully avoid Mum and the questions I was sure she wanted to ask. I emerged for lunch, chewing on a few carrot and celery sticks coated with an almost invisible layer of hummus. Then
I went back to bed until Mum summoned me for dinner, proudly showing me the healthy stir-fry she’d prepared. I stretched my lips in a smile and sat opposite her, cutting my food into smaller and smaller pieces, pushing it around on my plate and placing the occasional morsel in my mouth, making sure the metal of the fork didn’t touch my lips. Even though the vegetables were only lightly cooked, they felt rubbery in my mouth, and I suppressed a wave of panic at the thought of eating anything that wasn’t raw. The rest I arranged in little piles, or hid in my napkin. I’d told myself that tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow I’d eat it all.

Minah came to see me.

She stood in the doorway to my room for a moment, and I could tell she was considering turning around and walking straight out. I could see her taking in my sunken, yellowed skin and peeling lips. My dead, limp hair. The purple hollows under my eyes. The skin pulled tight over my cracked red knuckles. I was a monster.

‘Your mum called me,’ Minah said. ‘Said you were back.’

We made awkward small talk. Minah told me about her latest art project – something involving dismembered plastic dolls in apothecary jars – and updated me on school gossip. I nodded and made appropriate noises. It seemed bizarre to me that school was still happening – that every day people got out of bed and went and sat in a classroom, taking notes and learning about dates and numbers and words. Minah’s world seemed so … small. So insignificant. We’d always talked about big ideas, but now I realised that her life was shallow, only skimming the surface of reality. There was no profundity. No depth. She couldn’t see the world for what it truly was.

Like Daddy can.

Like Fox could.

Minah must have noticed the flash of pain that passed over my face as I thought about Fox. She looked down at her hands and picked a flake of paint off her fingernail. ‘Um,’ she said. ‘So … are you okay?’

Of course I wasn’t. I was dying inside. Rotting away like the toxicant piece of meat that I was. I’d given up my chance at sublimation. Given up happiness and purpose and strength, for weakness and doubt and aphotic water.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I’m okay.’

‘Your mum went crazy, you know,’ she said. ‘When she got your note.’

I felt a sickening pang of guilt.

‘She came over to my place and grilled me on where you’d been going and what you’d been doing. She … she was pretty wild. All skinny and pale, like a ghost. But she was full of fire – desperate to find you. I told her about the guy you’d been seeing – Fox – and how he lived in a commune in that big red house on the hill. She went over there, but the people in the red house said they didn’t know you. She knocked on every door in the neighbourhood, but nobody knew anything. She called the police, but still nothing. There were announcements about it at school. I put up a Facebook page.’

I remembered talking to Mum on the phone the first time. She had been so worried. ‘I didn’t know,’ I said at last. ‘That she was looking for me. I didn’t think she would.’

‘She’s your
mum
. Of course she’d look for you.’

Minah’s face was wrinkled in disbelief and disapproval. Minah. Rebellious, devil-may-care Minah thought that I was a bad daughter. That I didn’t care.

Was she right?

‘Then she called me again, said you’d been in touch. She said she’d spoken to you twice, and that you were okay.
She wanted me to take down the Facebook page, because you weren’t missing anymore. She seemed so calm. That was a few months ago.’

Daddy said I had persuaded her with my enhanced powers of communication. Could that be true? I could barely remember the phone conversation, I’d been so wrapped up in my own guilt and what I’d believed were Daddy’s powers of healing. Could he have faked the call? I tried to remember how the voice on the other end had sounded. In my memory, it had sounded like Mum, but could I trust my own recollections?

Minah leaned forward. ‘What was it like? The cult?’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It was …’

Transformative. Soul-destroying. The greatest thing that had ever happened to me, and the worst.

‘Rituals? Drugs? Sex stuff?’

I shook my head. ‘Nothing like that,’ I lied.

‘So what did you
do
all day?’

‘Just … stuff. Gardening. Cleaning. Preparing meals.’

Getting beaten and locked away for weeks. Playing blackjack. Cutting off an innocent girl’s finger. Uncovering possible evidence of murder.

Minah looked disappointed. ‘Right. So why did you leave?’

The people in the cults I’d read about online had made a clean break. They realised that they’d been living a lie, and then left. One man described it as like being in a fairground haunted house and seeing the lights come on – once you’d seen the mechanics of it all, it was impossible to be scared again.

I knew what Daddy had done. I knew he was a liar. After seeing the website Maggie’s parents had set up, I knew she hadn’t left the Institute. Daddy had killed her. Fox too. He was a murderer and a liar, and I knew I should hate him.

But I couldn’t get his voice out of my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Quintus Septum. About the possibilities of sublimation. About the friends I’d left behind. I’d seen the haunted house with the lights on, but I was still terrified.

Minah was watching me, waiting for a response.

I shrugged. ‘I guess … I wanted answers. About things.’

‘Was it because of him?’ asked Minah. ‘Because of Fox?’

Hearing his name brought a fresh stab of grief. I hesitated. Could I trust Minah? I had to trust someone.

‘He— he’s dead,’ I said. Saying it out loud made it real, and something broke inside me. ‘He died. Because of something I did. Something
we
did.’

Minah raised her eyebrows, but didn’t press me.

‘I just …’ I swallowed. ‘I want to know who he really was.’

I pulled the creased photo of baby Fox and his mother from my desk drawer. ‘This is him, and his mother. I want to find her. Tell her about him.’

Minah took the photo and frowned, rubbing the paper between her fingers. ‘You … you think this is Fox and his mother?’