making the woman go with an -
other guy. Our only attachment could be to Katherine, and Katherine alone. It seemed to me that the worst part of ourselves was being groomed. And that the most cunning among us were better off in the new regime.’ Susan stopped speaking and looked at the floor, if he weren’t mistaken, in shame.
Kyle exchanged glances with Dan, who raised his eyebrows questioningly. Kyle shook his head, mouthed keep rolling .
‘You never saw her once. You never heard her speak at all in the last year. But it seems the more removed she was from you, the worse her behaviour became.’
Susan raised her weary face. ‘Yes. Through The Seven, she was becoming more and more despotic. We were all given lockets filled with mana. Locks of her hair. We had to carry them around our necks. Like talismans. We were told they had power. And gifts from her were called holy relics. They were always expensive and seemed unworldly to us, because we had nothing. Just our uniforms. We were living like 55
ADAM NEVILL
beggars and she was buying expensive jewellery for her favourites. I don’t think anyone wanted to admit we had all been taken in. But we’d been fooled by some streetwise madam. Who’d learned Scientology techniques for mind control in a woman’s prison. Who’d been sent there for running a bloody brothel!’
Susan closed her eyes and let out another long sigh of frustration and fatigue. Kyle let her sit like that in silence for a minute. She was the real deal, authentic.
‘Susan, it’s been claimed she thought she was a saint. Did any of you really think she was actually holy?’
‘I never. It was another reason I left. I don’t know where it started exactly, but people began to say all kinds of things about her. I remember Brother Ethan calling her a “living saint”. And a terrible argument broke out because I laughed.
You see, the Gathering was never about God in that way. The whole point was not to be like an organized religion, and here we were with high priests and a bloody living saint controlling us. It was so disappointing for a lot of us. But I had given so much to the Gathering, part of me just kept refusing to give up on it all. A lot of us felt the same way.
‘But in the sessions we were being told by The Seven that Katherine was so advanced in her rebirth that she was transforming back to the original holy spirit. Her lifelong search for the divine in herself had succeeded. So all of her actions were now divine and allowable. Whatever her nature suggested to her was justifiable. We were told that she was evolving beyond the mortal stage and by following her we were becoming an elect. The blessed . Because we were so innocent. Under her guidance we had unravelled ourselves 56
LAST DAYS
all the way back to original innocence. Like angels. And anyone could be exploited by the blessed elect in the pursuit of their goals, because of our purity. And because she had been through something she called the seven stages of the soul, she would be capable of achieving what we were told was called “complete divinity”. The Seven once told us that she could not be with us, because she was incarnating. She was ascending.
‘And her holiness had attracted the company of others.
Presences . Who had imparted the power of prophecy to her.
We were told that she had been in direct contact with these
“presences”. That was when the atmosphere really changed.’
‘The holy dread?’
Susan nodded.
‘How did it change? Was it a physical change?’
‘Yes. Yes it was. In the early hours of the morning, the sessions would reach their peak. People would be exhausted. Weak.
Worn out from crying, and from confessing, and from withstanding the terrible bullying. And it was at those times that we were told that “beings” or “presences” were amongst us.’
Kyle knew it was time to ask another of Max’s questions.
‘Did you see anything materialize? Or was this a sense of an
other guy. Our only attachment could be to Katherine, and Katherine alone. It seemed to me that the worst part of ourselves was being groomed. And that the most cunning among us were better off in the new regime.’ Susan stopped speaking and looked at the floor, if he weren’t mistaken, in shame.
Kyle exchanged glances with Dan, who raised his eyebrows questioningly. Kyle shook his head, mouthed keep rolling .
‘You never saw her once. You never heard her speak at all in the last year. But it seems the more removed she was from you, the worse her behaviour became.’
Susan raised her weary face. ‘Yes. Through The Seven, she was becoming more and more despotic. We were all given lockets filled with mana. Locks of her hair. We had to carry them around our necks. Like talismans. We were told they had power. And gifts from her were called holy relics. They were always expensive and seemed unworldly to us, because we had nothing. Just our uniforms. We were living like 55
ADAM NEVILL
beggars and she was buying expensive jewellery for her favourites. I don’t think anyone wanted to admit we had all been taken in. But we’d been fooled by some streetwise madam. Who’d learned Scientology techniques for mind control in a woman’s prison. Who’d been sent there for running a bloody brothel!’
Susan closed her eyes and let out another long sigh of frustration and fatigue. Kyle let her sit like that in silence for a minute. She was the real deal, authentic.
‘Susan, it’s been claimed she thought she was a saint. Did any of you really think she was actually holy?’
‘I never. It was another reason I left. I don’t know where it started exactly, but people began to say all kinds of things about her. I remember Brother Ethan calling her a “living saint”. And a terrible argument broke out because I laughed.
You see, the Gathering was never about God in that way. The whole point was not to be like an organized religion, and here we were with high priests and a bloody living saint controlling us. It was so disappointing for a lot of us. But I had given so much to the Gathering, part of me just kept refusing to give up on it all. A lot of us felt the same way.
‘But in the sessions we were being told by The Seven that Katherine was so advanced in her rebirth that she was transforming back to the original holy spirit. Her lifelong search for the divine in herself had succeeded. So all of her actions were now divine and allowable. Whatever her nature suggested to her was justifiable. We were told that she was evolving beyond the mortal stage and by following her we were becoming an elect. The blessed . Because we were so innocent. Under her guidance we had unravelled ourselves 56
LAST DAYS
all the way back to original innocence. Like angels. And anyone could be exploited by the blessed elect in the pursuit of their goals, because of our purity. And because she had been through something she called the seven stages of the soul, she would be capable of achieving what we were told was called “complete divinity”. The Seven once told us that she could not be with us, because she was incarnating. She was ascending.
‘And her holiness had attracted the company of others.
Presences . Who had imparted the power of prophecy to her.
We were told that she had been in direct contact with these
“presences”. That was when the atmosphere really changed.’
‘The holy dread?’
Susan nodded.
‘How did it change? Was it a physical change?’
‘Yes. Yes it was. In the early hours of the morning, the sessions would reach their peak. People would be exhausted. Weak.
Worn out from crying, and from confessing, and from withstanding the terrible bullying. And it was at those times that we were told that “beings” or “presences” were amongst us.’
Kyle knew it was time to ask another of Max’s questions.
‘Did you see anything materialize? Or was this a sense of an
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