They were Feathering’s friends.
They were likeme.
Mordue sighed. ‘It was a few months later, once we were all in the thick of it, that we came together and formed the Society. We met in the Observatory, back then, and we tried our best to restrain each other during the transformations. We didn’t have the facilities we do now – we created this clubhouse while the university was closed – so we made do with crude supplies. Handcuffs and old pipes. But we weren’t infallible, and neither were the old pipes. Accidents happened.’
My jaw clenched. ‘Accidents? Or murders?’
‘Or suicides,’ Mordue said quietly. ‘Janie jumped. It’s the only one I remember. She’d killed her boyfriend Sam, while lost in the unfettered darkness. The guilt ate her alive. As for Dawn and Fiona . . . none of us can remember. By the time they died, the darkness had pretty much consumed us all. Maybe they jumped. Maybe they were pushed. We don’t know.’
‘Their bodies were ravaged,’ I whispered. ‘Dawn and Fiona. Slit throats and stabbed torsos, claw marks up and down their arms . . .’
Mordue and Feathering said nothing. I felt cold to my bones.
I was sitting in an enclosed room with possible murderers.
Worse, I was sympathising with them.
‘What happened when Carvell closed?’
Feathering grimaced. ‘We lived here in secret for a decade. We’re estranged from our families, our friends, our loved ones.’
As I watched Mordue press the heels of her hands into her eyes, I suddenly couldn’t believe that I’d never noticed the unbearable grief they both carried. They seemed laden with it, pressing on their shoulders and chest, drawing the corners of their mouths down, misting their pupils like fog over the North Sea.
They had lost their lives to Sister Maria’s ritual. And before long, I would too.