1
Fear is good. Fear is necessary to protect us from dangerous situations. Fear that exceeds that basic need for survival is but a construct of the mind, self-imposed or influenced from outside sources. There are those, lacking in conscience or moral fibre and with the darkest of vanities, who will impose models of fear upon the unsuspecting and the innocent for reasons of control and power which are rarely disclosed to the victim.
“You will behave today or you’ll get the slipper!” said father, “I expect not a sound from either of you, you embarrassed us last time!”
Our father was a short man with an even shorter patience for his children. He carried himself with a completely unjustified air of self-importance which intensely annoyed my mother. No one could ever understand why she was with him.
“Get your suits on and make sure to scrub behind your ears! Brush your teeth!”
I always despised getting ready for the meetings, more than I did attending them. An hour of nausea inducing stress being forced to look and behave as adults when all I wanted to do was make forts out of bed sheets and pillows. Image was massively important to them, righteousness with a smile. My younger brother and I always sought to disrupt this process in the vain hope that our parents would decide to stay home instead. It rarely worked. My two older sisters who, like me and my brother shared the same room, were equally if not more discontent. Suits for the boys, ankle length dresses for the girls.
“We’re leaving in ten minutes! Make sure you have everything!”
The Lord’s Hall, as a child I found the name of our meeting place confusing. Was the Lord here? Why was it his hall? I’ve never seen him. It was quite a large building, a peaked roof and enough room to sit 150 or so. The walls outside were whitewashed with regular large windows which were protected by wire mesh. It had an upper floor in the roof space, though that was never used as far as I knew. The stage ran the width of the building along one side opposite the main entrance, a long crimson curtain and plastic flower arrangements provided the backdrop. Upon entering the main doors we’d always be greeted by an unpleasant musty odour and an attendant who would greet us with the customary ‘brother’ or ‘sister’. I suppose this was to create the illusion of close bonds within the congregation which as time passed I saw to be distinctly untrue.
The socialising before and after the main event was always stuffy and false. A lot of smiles, handshakes and rigid unwanted hugs. A sea of faces trying to hide a head full of contradictions and contempt. It’s all in the eyes. We always tried to find other children to spend our few remaining minutes of freedom with before we were subjected to two hours of heavy indoctrination and intense boredom. The congregation, like most others I later found, comprised mostly of the elderly and middle aged parents with young children. Once the children became old enough to think for themselves and found their own feet in the world the strict regimes and self-deprecation encouraged by the Order held no allure. I felt from even that age that something was very wrong. Something that everyone else refused to acknowledge even though their twisted faces betrayed their feigned ignorance. Something profound and disturbing and perhaps so far beyond normal human comprehension that it penetrated our dimensions of sense as a mere feeling of unease unable to take form in image or words. They knew something was wrong, they just didn’t know what.
The meeting began and ended with songs sung by the entire congregation. Though these were not to be called ‘hymns’. The order made every attempt to distance itself from mainstream Christianity even though it took its teachings from the same work of fiction albeit a very literal interpretation. After each song a prayer would be given by an elder or minister, often by an impassioned elder who would relish thanking the Lord for all the pitiful graces he had been blessed with that day. They work so hard for such little return and then they thank the Lord for what little they receive? There isn’t a single happy person in this room, besides the truly delusional. I would never say ‘amen’ at the end of the prayer, much to the aggravation of my parents. For the next two hours various talks and readings would be given on different passages from the bible and other publications provided by the Order. The most interesting part of the meeting, to me at least, came at the start of the second hour. Here an elder would discuss events within the congregation and the Order at large and occasionally would announce the ‘cleansing of the fold’ and one or more names would be read out. Names of people that were not present in the hall.
“They had committed acts against the Lord and were unwilling to show repentance for their sins. They are hereby removed from the Order and the Lord’s protection.”
This was one of the strangest and most disturbing acts I had to witness as a child and made me realise just how little these people cared for each other despite their enthusiasm to display otherwise. And, I’m sure, played a large part in my inability to form close relationships later in life. Following the announcement the people whose names had been on the list were as good as dead to the Order and its followers. They were never mentioned again, not by their friends and not by their family. They were ostracised in the name of the Lord. What could make parents abandon their own children? I did not understand. Could this happen to me?
Followers of the Order were not allowed to associate with people outside the Order. It was an inclusive society designed from the ground up for the purpose of intimate manipulation of its subjects. Those that had been a part of the Order and had been removed through cleansing were considered little better than slaves of Satan and strict non communication rules were imposed. The impact of losing friends and family, basically a person’s entire social network and everyone they thought loved them, unfortunately led on more than one occasion to that persons untimely death at their own hand. It was odd how quickly these announcements were passed over. In just a short amount of time several people’s lives could have been destroyed but without a moment’s hesitation the next talker would be invited to the stage as if nothing of importance had happened.
The relief of returning home after a meeting was one of the most enjoyable sensations I care to relate. Taking off my tie, unbuttoning my shirt and reverting back to the child I was. Even though often time, it was too late to stay up and play and would be sent straight to bed. There was always a strange sombre air after a cleansing had taken place. Again what was left unspoken spoke to me in volumes. People were affected by these events but were too afraid to say anything lest they be cleansed themselves! It was a vicious cycle of control.
We lived in a three bedroomed semi-detached house on a dead end road in an area dominated by the elderly and old families who stretched back generations. At the back of our house there was a deep trench dense with trees which we called the Devil’s Ditch. It was formed by an old train line which used to run through but was removed long before I was born. We used to spend a lot of time playing down there despite the protestations of our parents. I would frequently scare my brother at night telling him the devil was going to come out of the dark ditch and take him away, for which to this day I feel inexplicably guilty. At night all that could be seen at the end of our long shrub bordered garden were crooked bent trees forming an arch to a realm of complete darkness. I’d often swear in the darkness I could see things moving at the end of the garden though I would never say anything. People never believe children.
Friends were hard to come by. Not being allowed to make friends outside of the congregation severely limited my choices, I had nothing in common with those people. I felt like an alien in my own home and hated that I couldn’t bring friends back from school. Well if I could make friends at school that were. My family were viewed with superstitious disdain which wouldn’t have been out of place in Salem all those years ago. We were weird and unconventional. We didn’t participate in the community or mingle with the locals. I entirely sympathise with their concern. Needless to say school for me, for my siblings, and probably for every other child born into the Order was a painful decade of persistent bullying which only added to the sense of self worthlessness and guilt already being driven into our minds by the Order. It did not stop me trying to make friends outside the boundaries, though I think those that did choose to spend time with me did so more out of curiosity then any attempt at true friendship. The distance between who I wanted to be and who I was, became an unbearable burden which only grew as time passed.
The previous meeting was on a Thursday night. The next meeting was on a Sunday. Sunday meetings were always busier and lighter on the fanatical dogma which was due to the Sunday meetings being open to the public. New followers would be scouted and recruited through the ministry. The ministry was carried out by most ranks of the Order but ministers were, as part of their role, required to preach the ‘good news’ full time. The main strategy in luring in new followers was to go door to door exalting the benefits of serving our God. These benefits included being able to contact lost loved ones, resurrection into a paradise, perfection amongst many others. Ridiculous from the first but there were people out there desperate enough that they were willing to believe anything to alleviate their inner turmoil. Perhaps they couldn’t come to terms with the death of a loved one or perhaps they were old and afraid of what death would mean for them, it was the weak and the scared we preyed upon.
I preferred the Sunday meetings as they were held in the afternoon so when they were finished I would still have time to play when we returned home. Once the whole family had eaten lunch, washed and changed we’d all pile into the car and make our way to the Lord’s Hall. I remember travelling in that car being a particularly bad experience. My father was a window cleaner and so the interior had the not so pleasant aroma of old dish clothes, dirty water and diesel. Most members of the Order worked menial jobs as higher education was discouraged. Educated people are harder to deceive.
I remember this particular Sunday being an oddly sunny day. Odd because it had been overcast and raining for the past week yet today there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. At that age being stuck in a musty old hall for two hours being religiously assaulted during perfect tree climbing weather was tantamount to torture. The slipper most often made its appearance on Sundays.
After the usual pleasantries and ceremony the discourse began and I retreated into my imagination. Almost immediately after I began daydreaming of owning my own Tracy island play set and thinking of all the things I’d do when I got home I heard the door open. I spied through the gap in the back of my chair, careful not to draw the attention of my parents, as muted whispers followed between the door attendant and the visitor. For a moment I thought the man was going to be asked to leave but after silent contemplation the attendant moved aside and with an outstretched arm indicated an empty seat on the very back row. The man moved with a certain smoothness, very sure of his footing and made surprisingly little noise as his black heeled boots contacted the old wooden floor. He was wearing black trousers with a crease down the middle of each leg and a deep burgundy shirt, the sleeves of which he immediately proceeded to roll up revealing tattoos of snakes coiled about each arm with their heads terminating on the backs’ of his hands. He had distinctly angled featured. A 45o pointed nose, a pointed chin and pointed cheek bones and even the crown of his bald head had a slight pyramidal accent. The man carried a persistent smirk as if he knew something terrible about the man who he was staring at so intently. His stare, aimed at the man on the stage, did not falter throughout the entire first hour and I could swear I didn’t once see his dark eyes blink. After the speaker, an elder named Russel, had stepped down from the stage the strange tattooed man made his exit speaking to no one on his way out. I would realise much later on that it was because of this man I felt so deeply unsettled for the rest of that day.