I was twelve when the Society started openly killing people.
I still remember the day we came to school and saw the body. It was displayed carefully on the front gate, swinging harmlessly against the metal bars of what would soon become our prison.
“Don’t look!” My Dad shouted as soon as he realised what it was, grabbing both me and Melissa and roughly turning us around – but not before I had caught a glimpse of the horrible bloated face; or the wide, unseeing, glassy violet eyes.
“Readers,” I remember whispering at the time. “They’re killing Readers.”
Melissa went white under her olive skin and gripped her book tightly.
Dad floored the accelerator and shoved hard at the wheel, screeching away from the school and back down the road.
“No,” he practically snarled. “I’ll be damned if my girls go there!”
Of course, he had no choice.
The very next day, he took both Melissa and I aside and crouched down in front of us. Melissa’s older brother, Sebastian, sat off quietly to the side.
“I want you to promise me you’ll take care of each other,” he said quietly. “You have to go back. To school.”
Melissa was pale and trembling, but there was a stubborn look in her eyes as she squared her shoulders determinedly under her denim jacket.
“Why?” I burst out, not nearly as composed as my best friend. “Why do we have to go back? They’re killing Readers!”
“I know.” Dad said solemnly, taking my chin in his rough hands and looking squarely into my eyes. “I know. But you have to go.” He hesitated.
“What?” I snapped, my twelve-year-old mind in no mood for playing games. “What’s the matter?”
“If you don’t go, they’re going to take you away from me,” Dad admitted in a soft voice. “They’re already rounding up kids who won’t go to school and shipping them out. I can’t…” his voice broke slightly, and I reached out hastily to pat him on the head (well, I tried to. His head was too high for me, so I ended up settling on his shoulder.
“It’ll be all right,” I told him. That’s what he always told me when things were bad, and I felt as though someone needed to tell him that. “I promise,” I added – just like he always did.
Dad managed to crack a smile.
“Here, Lissa,” he stood up and pulled something out of his pocket. “These are for you.”
Melissa eyed the small, brown box that would soon become her world suspiciously, taking it from his hand.
“Contact lenses,” he said, voice reassuring. “They’ll change the colour of your eyes.”
“Why?” Melissa tentatively opened the small box and stared at the twin lenses with weary fascination.
“Because Isa was right. They’re killing Readers.”
Melissa clutched at the box convulsively as she stared at him.
“Why?” I said, unable to get the (glassy, staring, dead) eyes out of my head. “Why? Why? Why?” I suddenly shouted, fighting the urge to be sick. “Why would they kill people like Lissa?”
“Because they are afraid.” Dad grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a crushing hug.
Sebastian watched us all impassively.
“I don’t want to die,” Melissa said softly, swallowing.
I almost jumped as the familiar-yet-unfamiliar voice invaded the sudden silence. Sebastian barely spoke around me; I got the distinct impression that he didn’t like me. That was fine – I didn’t like him, either.
“You won’t die, because I won’t let you.” Sebastian stared at his little sister with grave eyes. “I won’t let them get you.”
Melissa nodded, lip trembling as she stared at him.
Then she gave a small cry and launched her lithe body into his arms, hugging him so hard around the neck that his eyes bulged slightly.
“We’ll protect you,” Dad added softly, for my benefit. “Okay?”
And so we went back to school.
It was deathly quiet during the day, with the teacher’s afraid to raise their voices. Some of the kids tried to be normal, but the stink of the rotting body that was still strung up on the front gate – no one had been brave enough to take it down – made it impossible to keep up the act for the long.
During our break times, Sebastian stuck to us like a dark, comforting shadow. If someone approached us, he’d growl and bare his teeth like an attack dog.
No one bothered us after that.
Melissa found the new contact lenses itchy and uncomfortable, but the only time she dared to take them off was when she was at my place.
“They sting my eyes and make me want to cry,” she admitted to me one after a particularly trying day. A member of the Society had come – once again – to oversee the education that we were getting. We had spent most of the day avoiding her, with Melissa not taking her eyes (her beautiful, lovely, large eyes) from her shoes.
“Then they don’t fit right,” I said.
“I know, but I already told your Dad. He said that it’s too dangerous to try and get another pair.”
I licked my lips nervously and nodded.
It took a while to realise what was happening – almost a year, in fact. At the time, the only people I really cared about were my Dad and Melissa. Sebastian was thrown in by default – if Lissa’s brother got hurt, she would be hurt.
So when Dad stayed up late, listening to the news, I was always trying to distract my best friend.
What I eventually pieced together was this: a key member of the group that called themselves ‘The Society of Revealing Light’ had been elected as Prime Minister of Australia – and had then proceeded – though careful, subtle subterfuge – to take over the government. Over the course of almost ten years, seemingly inconsequential laws and bills had been passed.
The Society slowly but surely began to gain more power.
By the time anyone had bothered to connect the dots, it was already too late.
People had fought back against the sudden onslaught of arrests and murders; of course they had. They were Australians. By then, though, The Society had already controlled most of the police force and military; any rebellion had been quickly crushed with ruthless efficiency.
The Society preached that there was only One True Way; that Readers – people who drew mesmerising power from books – were agents of the Archfiend, and must be burnt at the stake. That some people were ‘above’ others, that those who chose the Way were ‘pure’ and that those who did not were considered ‘lesser beings’.
Of course, it was okay to kill lesser beings. They didn’t qualify at humans, after all.
Agents of the Society – called Priestesses, since they were almost always female – were sent out to almost every corner of Australia with one message: kill anyone who stood against the Society.
What followed was a bloodbath of historic proportions.
Since my family had lived in a small, well off part of the Blue Mountains, things weren’t as bad for us as it was for the people in the larger cities. It’s said that the streets of Sydney flooded with blood, and that the body count in Melbourne reached so high that they had had to stack the bodies in the gutters.
Perth was turned into a ghost-town.
Only three people were killed in my town – three courageous, tragic people – who had protested when members of The Society came to collect and kill the most powerful Reader we had.
They were slaughtered and strung up around town.
No one protested much after that.
“Do you think people still remember what I am?” Melissa whispered one day after class, just before Dad came to pick us up. It had been almost
“What?” I hissed back, eyeing the rest of the school’s population wearily. They all bunched together uneasily, like they could sense something was amiss with us.
The final bell rang – the one for older kids – and Sebastian tore out of the classroom with his jacket still half done-up and his bag held in one hand.
“Hey,” he puffed quietly as he came to a stop in front of us.
“Hey,” Melissa beamed at her older brother, while I just watched on impassively.
I had never liked Sebastian, strange as it may seem. He made me uncomfortable to be around; maybe it was the way he dressed. Always in black – never a hint of colour, from his heavy jacket to his scruffy sneakers. Ironically, his hair was a pure, startling white that seemed to burn at my eyes every time I looked at it. Or maybe it was his height – I hated how he towered over me, even though he was only fifteen; just three years older.
The only reason we even communicated – infrequently as that may have been – was because of our mutual love for Melissa. He adored his little sister almost as much as I did.
So I just watched impassively and silently begged my Dad to hurry up.
“So? Do you?” Melissa said once she turned back to me.
“Do I what?” I asked blankly, my mind still focusing on the hostiles around us.
“Think that they remember that I’m a Read –”
Sebastian grabbed his sister and shoved his hand in front of her face, so that her words were cut off abruptly.
I had never seen him so furious.
“Never,” he hissed, voice shaking, “Ever say that again. Okay?” his eyes darted wildly around, like he was frightened that someone had heard our whispered conversation.
Perhaps he was right to be worried. Already, people were giving us strange looks.
“Idiot!” I slapped Sebastian’s hand away from my best friend. “Calm down! You’re just drawing more attention to yourself, nitwit!”
Sebastian glowered at me, black eyes burning, but he reluctantly nodded.
“Okay,” he said, allowing me to draw Melissa away from him with inscrutable eyes.
“You brother is a psycho,” I muttered as I scanned around for Dad’s car.
“What? He is!” I turned to glare at him. He was watching us, of course – making sure that I didn’t get Melissa into any trouble, most likely. “His hair makes him look like a demon.”
“Isa!” She cried, horrified. Fat tears welled up in her eyes. “Please don’t talk like that. He’s my brother! I can’t understand why you don’t like him.”
I nodded, guilt already clawing at my stomach. It wasn’t just hurting Melissa – if the wrong person had heard my comment, they might just have dragged Sebastian off to the Priestess for no other reason than to claim he was a demon.
He could have been killed because of my petty rivalry.
Dad’s broken-down black car came slowly into the school parking lot – past the newly-barbed fence that still held the bones of the Reader. The body had long-ago decomposed away, and the bones had been individually attached to the gate. Now, it looked like some hellish apparition of a horror movie; sometimes, I just stared at it as we drove (despite the many warnings of Dad and Sebastian) thinking: this couldn’t be real.
“Get in,” he said tersely, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles.
We all obeyed instantly, Sebastian grabbing my bag when I fumbled with it and shoving it into the back with almost no hesitation.
Around us, people were doing the same thing; it had become common practice for the school to be deserted in under five minutes.
“What’s going on?” Sebastian demanded as soon as we were out of sight of the school. “What’s the matter?”
“As soon as we get home, grab the shovel,” Dad said without taking his eyes from the road. “You’re going to help me dig.”
Silence filled the car as we all turned to stare at him.
“Y-you haven’t – ah – k-killed someone, have you?” Melissa asked tentatively, instinctively cringing.
“What?” Dad was startled enough to turn to glare at her. “Of course not!”
“Okay, then,” Melissa said in a small voice.
We all lived in a small cabin in the Blue Mountains, as far away from the town as possible. The road was all dirt, and every once in a while a tree fell down and blocked us off from civilisation.
When we pulled into our house – a lovely construction of wood that blended in perfectly with the surrounding trees – Dad slammed on the brakes and hopped out, Sebastian not far behind him.
Then they started to dig the room that would, one day, serve as Melissa’s crypt.
