The Running Grave полностью

‘’Aven’t you finished reading The Answer yet?’ snapped spiky-haired Vivienne. ‘We must’ve entered the Season of the Stolen Prophet. Red’s his colour.’

‘Very good, Vivienne,’ called Becca Pirbright, smiling from a few beds away, and Vivienne visibly preened herself.

But there was something else on Robin’s bed beside her folded scarlet tracksuit: a box of hair colour remover with a slip of paper lying on top of it, with what she recognised as a quotation from The Answer printed on it.

The False Self craves that which is artificial and unnatural.

The True Self craves that which is genuine and natural.

Robin glanced across the dormitory and saw green-haired Penny Brown also examining a box of hair colour remover. Their eyes met; Robin smiled and pointed towards the bathroom and Penny, smiling back, nodded.

To Robin’s surprise, Louise was standing at the sink, carefully shaving her head in the mirror. Their eyes met briefly. Louise dropped her gaze first. Having towelled off her now completely bald pate, she left the bathroom without speaking.

‘People were telling me,’ whispered Penny, ‘that she’s been shaved for, like, a year.’

‘Wow,’ said Robin. ‘D’you know why?’

Penny shook her head.

Tired as she was, and resentful that she had to give up valuable sleeping time to removing her blue hair dye, Robin was nevertheless glad for the opportunity to talk freely to another church member, especially one whose daily routine differed so markedly from her own.

‘How’re you doing? I’ve barely seen you since we were in Fire Group together.’

‘Great,’ said Penny. ‘Really great.’

Her round face was slimmer than it had been on arrival at the farm and there were shadows beneath her eyes. Side by side at the bathroom mirror, Robin and Penny opened the boxes and began to apply the product to their hair.

‘If this is the start of the Season of the Stolen Prophet,’ said Penny, ‘we’ll be seeing a proper Manifestation soon.’

She sounded both excited and frightened.

‘It was incredible, seeing the Drowned Prophet appear, wasn’t it?’ said Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Penny. ‘That’s what really – I mean, once you’ve seen that, there’s no going back to normal life, is there? Like, the proof.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Robin. ‘I felt the same.’

Penny looked disconsolately at her reflection, with her green hair now covered in a thick white paste.

‘It was growing out anyway,’ she said, with an air of trying to convince herself she was happy to be doing what she was doing.

‘So what have you been up to?’ asked Robin.

‘Um, loads of stuff,’ said Penny. ‘Cooking, working on the vegetable patch. I’ve been helping with Jacob as well. And we had a really good talk this morning, on spirit bonding.’

‘Really?’ said Robin. ‘I haven’t had that yet… how’s Jacob doing?’

‘He’s definitely getting better,’ said Penny, evidently under the impression that Robin knew all about Jacob.

‘Oh, good,’ said Robin. ‘I heard he wasn’t too well.’

‘I mean, he hasn’t been, obviously,’ said Penny. Her manner was somewhere between anxious and cagey. ‘It’s like, difficult, isn’t it? Because someone like that, they can’t understand about the false self and the pure spirit, and that’s why they can’t heal themselves.’

‘Right,’ said Robin, nodding, ‘but you think he’s getting better?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Penny. ‘Definitely.’

‘It’s nice of Mazu to have him in the farmhouse,’ said Robin, subtly probing.

‘Yeah,’ said Penny again, ‘but he couldn’t be in the dormitory with all his problems.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Robin, carefully feeling her way. ‘Dr Zhou seems so nice.’

‘Yeah, it’s really lucky Jacob’s got Dr Zhou, because it’d be a nightmare if he was on the outside,’ said Penny. ‘They euthanise people like Jacob out there.’

‘D’you think so?’ asked Robin.

‘Of course they do,’ said Penny, in disbelief at Robin’s naivety. ‘The state doesn’t want to look after them, so they’re just quietly done away with by the NHS – the Nazi Hate Squad, Dr Zhou calls it,’ she added, before looking anxiously in the mirror at her hair and saying, ‘How long d’you think it’s been on? It’s hard to know, without a watch or anything…’

‘Maybe five minutes?’ said Robin. Seeking to capitalise on Penny’s mention of the lack of watches, and encourage the girl to share anything negative she might have noticed about the UHC, she said lightly,

‘Funny, having to get our dye out. Mazu’s hair can’t be naturally that black, can it? She’s in her forties and she hasn’t got a single bit of grey.’

Penny’s demeanour changed instantly.

‘Critiquing people’s looks is pure materialist judgement.’

‘I’m not—’

‘Flesh is unimportant. Spirit is all-important.’

Her tone was didactic, but her eyes were fearful.

‘I know, but if it doesn’t matter what we look like, why have we got to take out our hair dye?’ said Robin reasonably.

‘Because – it was on the bit of paper on the box. The true self is natural.’