I’ve kept on being aware of sky since I lived in Norfolk. Up at Ivinghoe Beacon sky is paramount. Everything around you bleeds into it. The blended grey here tonight gives a feel of mystery. Late December, frosty smell to the air. I love it. And it helps that I’m entirely sceptical. Because I mean to say if someone believed the world was about to end, if they really thought that… Well it would be unimaginable. They’d probably lose the power of speech. If that’s where I was at I’d most likely be a shivering mass on the ground somewhere, all senses lost except fear. I am shivering but it’s only the cold and this, well, I’m not sure what exactly… excitement.

I feel excited to be here, just to see what’s going to happen tomorrow. That’s why I came, because it’s an adventure. You know. Perdita, this friend of mine, called me up and asked me if I knew about the Mayan Prophecy. Had I heard about the prediction about the world coming to an end? Well, I would have laughed outright if it wasn’t for the tone of Perdita’s voice. In fact the laugh was half risen in my throat but I stopped it coming out. Hearing her seriousness I did a double take, just asked Perdy to tell me more about it; never saying whether I’d heard of it at all, or whether I thought it was a load of nonsense, or whatever. My response was enough to make her happy and I realised that part of the tone of her voice was due to fearing that I was going to be scathing. She knew me after all and was afraid that I would simply laugh at her. Well she’d been right up to a point. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings over something so important to her however ridiculous it seemed to be. But it’s a good job she couldn’t see me in the flesh. My twisted up mouth biting down the laugh, my body angled forward with the effort of trying to keep a straight face.  A thing that helped me stop laughing was that I was touched. Perdy had got in with a group of people who believed they were going to be saved when the Armageddon hit. I realised that though it was hard for Perdy to tell me about this she’d gone ahead anyway, which was brave. She knew I was likely to take the piss and yet she had exposed herself in the hope of helping me. She cared. That was so kind. It was a sweet thing to do. So I tried my best to put on a serious voice too and I asked her how the end of the world would happen and also how this group would be able to save themselves. Well, it was like opening the floodgates. All of Perdy’s fears came bursting through. My effort to stop laughing was no longer needed. I was now worried about where my friend was at. Her head was full of talk of fire and disaster, of people unwilling to look destruction in the face. She had tried to help others to save themselves she said but all except for this one friend, Marc, they hadn’t listened. I heard the rise of hysteria in her voice and decided there and then to see what I could do to calm her. I was just wondering how I could manage it when Perdy herself gave me a clue about this. She wanted me to meet up with this bunch of people – the ones who believed they were going to be saved, I mean. Normally I’d have run a mile from cranks like these but as I’m saying, I now saw I had to do what I could for my mate. They’d obviously somehow got Perdy in their power. If I came along and met up with them – as was Perdy’s dearest wish, apparently, well who knew? I might be able to show them up for what they were. A load of hysterics, or whatever. Discrediting them might be the only way of opening Perdy’s eyes to the truth. The trouble with Perdy was that she was a sweet person and entirely trusting. She obviously had taken these people at face value. They believed in themselves, or acted as if they did, and Perdy was entirely taken in. It’s often seemed to me that Perdy doesn’t know how to stand up for herself. That’s not to say that she’s stupid or anything. She is quite bright in some ways. Likes reading and that, and has her thoughtful side. But I have to say she can be gullible.

“Ok,” I say cautiously to Perdy, when I can get a word in, and because she’s off on one she doesn’t hear me at first.

“You mean you will? You’ll come and meet up with the people I’ve told you about?”

“Yes, for sure,” I tell her and I make sure to keep any hint of sarcasm out of my voice. I can tell from Perdy’s reaction that she’s a bit taken aback that I’m agreeing with what she’s asking and it’ll probably pass through her mind that I’m having her on.

“Oh, that’s good,” she says after a minute, and I hear her relax. “Is Thursday alright for you?”

And that’s how I got roped in. I met them and felt they weren’t too dangerous. Not that I agreed with one word they said. They told me about going to a special destination where they would be saved. It was secret, this guy Trev said, but would be revealed a bit later on. Well so, Perdy wanted me in and I was at a bit of a loose end just at the mo. Plus the mystery factor, plus adventure with a capital A.

Perdy and I got camping gear together. You can’t just sit about on Ivinghoe Beacon in late December even when you’re about to be taken elsewhere. Elsewhere was the way most of the people in the group talked about where they’d be going to. When they said the word they often looked up at the sky. Wistfully, it seemed to me. I started off by questioning this one or that one about where they thought it would be but they were always cagey and I stopped asking as it caused something like embarrassment. Just because they didn’t know most probably and felt silly to have the matter drawn out into the open. Asking made me an outsider. Someone like a journalist, or a judge, who had a kind of professional reason for being here. For I soon began to sense this visceral connection between all of them. There was a photographer who to start with was questioning too but after a while I suddenly noticed he wasn’t doing that any more. And the minute I looked at him I saw at once that he wasn’t the same person he’d started off by being. Not at all. It wasn’t just expediency that kept him quiet now. That same look was in his eyes that I saw in the eyes of everyone here. He had this visceral connectivity to all the others, was submerged if you like, into the group. It amazed me seeing this change. I got a sense of how the group, any group which someone is a part of, and feels a strong bond with, is a kind of primeval force. This idea once I’d had it scared me at the same time as amazing me. I could see the good in it. It was a quality which would be useful to have in a society, to a certain point. Everybody relating in a close way with one another, deeply identifying with the whole.  But it was also the spirit necessary for fighting a war. There was something blind going on. Blind longing, blind fulfilment. Reason hardly entered into things. And I could see this group-thing had happened here, with these people. So I stopped with the questions, and as well as feeling slightly afraid of causing some kind of negative reaction against myself, I realised that none of the people here had really thought about what was going on with them. I even saw that they enjoyed the blind hope situation. The dangerous craziness of that was a kind of big turn on.

Now we’ve arrived at Ivinghoe Beacon. Perdita and I set up our tent and we’ve slept here one night. She is more and more attached to the group. In the morning we walk out across the open terrain. I must say I love it here. The air, the wildness, being high up. Marc just bowled up. Perdy said he was coming. I see him standing in the wind, his hair with a tousled look. He’s not unattractive, I see that and wonder if this is why Perdy invited him. When I see his eyes I recognise I am not being fair, I have not taken into account the serious way people who are here, feel. Marc has only just arrived but he is one of them. Trev comes over to me as I stand with Marc and Perdy near our tent. He asks me how I am finding all of this. He is looking at me with a querying gaze. Nothing wrong with that I tell myself but I’m just wondering all the same if he’s trying to find out if I’m with the rest of them or on my own. What I realise is, you can’t be on your own and be here. It can’t work. This is a one in all in situation.

This guy Trev, I quite like him. He’s not a bullshitter and he’s not too self-obsessed. There’s a calm and thoughtful something about him and I guess that’s what has drawn some of the people who are here. Dan comes over too. He’s another of the central people here. I haven’t spoken to Dan much. I went to his flat in Southwark and met him but he didn’t really communicate. He seems a lot more open than he did before. I look into Dan’s eyes. He has that same kind of stare that they all have, even Perdy now, I’ve noticed. I know how they look but at first I don’t like to say it, even to myself. OK, I will. They look possessed. Not self-possessed, I don’t mean that, although they look that too. How I’d put it is, one half of their mind is pleased with themselves and has no further questions, the other half is looking outwards towards something or to someone. And this other thing has them in its grip. I don’t know how I see all of this in the people here but I do. As I’ve said, they don’t seem like scary types. When Trev and Dan come over and speak to me I’m even more convinced they’re all ok. And yet. I ask myself if I would like to be at one with the rest of them or whether I’d rather be alone. If alone, surely I ought to think of leaving. I mean Perdy has other friends here. I just don’t know.

I am walking now with Dan and Trev across the hilly ground. We are all looking up into sky, as if we’ll witness the first traces of what will be coming to us; as if to see who is coming to save us.

*

Jay Merill lives in London UK and is Writer in Residence at Women in Publishing. Jay is runner up in the 2018 Alpine Fellowship Prize, a Pushcart Prize nominee, is the recipient of an Award from Arts Council England and the winner of the Salt Short Story Prize. She is the author of two short story collections (both Salt): God of the Pigeons and Astral Bodies. Jay is currently working on a third short story collection. She has a story forthcoming in Occulum and some already published in such literary magazines as 3:AM Magazine, A-Minor, Bare Fiction Magazine, CHEAP POP Lit, Crannog, Entropy, Gravel, Heavy Feather Review, Hobart, Jellyfish Review, The Literateur, Litro, The Lonely Crowd, Lunch Ticket, The Manchester Review, Minor Literature[s], Pithead Chapel, Spelk, Storgy, Unthology 10, upstreet Literary Journal and Wigleaf.