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‘How d’you explain the things the prophet does at Chapman Farm, if she’s not real, though?’
‘Like, what kind of things?’ said Flora.
‘The Manifestations.’
‘You mean, like, in the pool and in the woods?’
‘I know they use little girls, dressed up like her, in the woods, I’m not stupid,’ said Will. ‘But that doesn’t mean they don’t become her, when they’re doing it.’
‘What do you mean by that, Will?’ asked Prudence.
‘Well, it’s like transubstantiation, isn’t it?’ said Will. He might have been back on the vegetable patch again, lecturing Robin on church doctrine. ‘The wafer they give you in communion isn’t really the body of Christ, but it is. Same thing. And that dummy thing they make rise up out of the baptismal pool, it’s just symbolic. It’s not her, but it is her.’
‘Is that one of the Higher-Level Truths?’ Robin asked. ‘That the little girls dressed up like Daiyu, and the dummy without eyes, are Daiyu?’
‘Don’t call her Daiyu,’ said Will angrily. ‘It’s disrespectful. And no,’ he added, ‘I worked that stuff out for myself.’
He seemed to feel he needed to justify himself, because he said forcefully,
‘Look, I know a lot of it’s bullshit. I saw the hypocrisy, how Papa J gets to do stuff nobody else is allowed to – he can marry, and he gets to keep his kids and his grandkids because his bloodline’s special, and everyone else has got to make the Living Sacrifice, and the alcohol in the farmhouse, and the smarming around celebrities even though that’s all supposed to be bullshit – I know Papa J’s not a messiah, and that they do really bad things at that farm, but you can’t say they haven’t got something right, because you’ve seen it,’ he said to Flora, ‘and you have too!’ he added to Robin. ‘The spirit world’s real!’
There was a short silence, broken by Prudence.
‘Why d’you think nobody in the church ever admits they dress up little girls at night, and use a dummy to rise up out of the baptismal pool, Will? Because a lot of people believe they’re literally seeing something supernatural, don’t they?’
‘Some of them might,’ said Will defensively, ‘but not all of them. Anyway, the Drowned Prophet does come back for real. She materialises out of thin air!’
‘But if the other things are a trick…’ suggested Flora.
‘That doesn’t follow. Yeah, OK, sometimes they’re just showing us representations of the prophet, but other times, she genuinely comes… it’s like, in churches, having a model of Jesus on the wall. Nobody’s pretending it’s literally him. But when the Drowned Prophet appears as a spirit, and moves around and everything – there’s no other explanation for it. There’s no projector, and she’s not a puppet – it’s her, it’s really her.’
‘Are you talking about when she manifests like a ghost, in the basement room?’ asked Robin.
‘Not just in the basement,’ said Will. ‘She does it in the temple, too.’
‘Is the audience always sitting in the dark when that happens?’ asked Robin. ‘And do they sometimes make you clear the room before she appears? They made us leave the basement for a while before we saw her manifest. Is the audience always in front of her when she manifests, not sitting round the stage?’
‘Yeah, it was always like that,’ said Flora, when Will didn’t answer. ‘Why?’
‘Because I might be able to explain how they do it,’ said Robin. ‘A man I work with suggested it could be an old illusion called Pepper’s ghost. I looked it up. You need a glass screen, which is at an angle to the audience, and a hidden side room. Then a figure in the side room is slightly illuminated, and the lights on stage go down, and the audience sees the reflection of the supposed ghost in the glass, and it’s transparent and looks as though it’s onstage.’
Silence followed these words. Then, startling everyone in the room, Flora said loudly,
‘Oh my God.’
The other three looked at her. Flora was gazing through her hair at Robin in what appeared to be awe.
‘That’s it. That’s how they do it. Oh. My. God.’
Flora began to laugh.
‘I can’t believe it!’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ve never been able to work that one out, it’s always been the one that made me doubt… a reflection on glass – that’s it, that makes total sense! They only ever did it where there was a side room. And if we were in temple, we all had to sit face-on to the stage.’
‘I think,’ said Robin, ‘the temple at Chapman Farm was designed like a theatre. That upper balcony where members never sit, those recesses… I think it’s been constructed to enable large-scale illusions.’
‘You can’t be sure of that,’ said Will, who now appeared deeply uneasy.
‘The Drowned Prophet isn’t real,’ Flora told Will. ‘She’s not.’
