Page 91 of Killing Mind

Again, he shrugged. ‘Couldn’t say.’

‘How about She—’

‘Yeah, I’m not gonna remember anyone. We don’t talk about family members to zom… people not at the Farm.’

‘But you’re no longer there.’

He smiled. ‘But I will be. As soon as I get the chance. I’ll be right back where I belong.’

Kim was flummoxed. According to his mother Eric had been at the Farm for almost three years, but he’d been away from Jake and his influence for months. What the hell was it about the place?

‘Did the Farm help you in some way, Eric?’ she asked.

‘Err… yeah. It’s my home. Jake and the others helped me understand that I wasn’t a freak, that I wasn’t wrong.’

‘About what?’

‘My parents. See, I never liked them. Even as a kid I didn’t want to be around them. The guilt I felt for my feelings ate away at me and made me hate them even more. Jake explained that I was normal.’ He smiled. ‘Jake called it Transfamily. He explained that I’d just been born into the wrong family. It wasn’t my fault. I had no control. It was like a weight had been lifted. He told me it was time to break the chains, be my own person and start to take care of myself. He taught me how to meditate. We talked every night.’

‘Eric, did people at the Farm ever want to leave? Go back to their old life?’

He laughed. ‘Never, why would they?’

‘But what if?…’

‘They didn’t. It’s a family. You don’t leave your family.’

‘Did Jake ask you to steal from your parents?’

He wasn’t offended by the question and shook his head.

‘No, but look at it this way: if a couple divorces all the possessions are shared. Each party gets something of their own. They decide to leave the family and they walk away with items accrued during the marriage. What does a kid get if they decide to leave the family? Nothing. How is that fair? They’ve been a part of it too. They deserve something.’

Kim wondered who had planted that seed into his mind and left it to grow.

She wasn’t going to argue that with divorce each parent had likely contributed financially throughout the marriage. Eric’s argument had nothing to do with money.

‘So, what’s this Facebook group you’ve tried to join?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Haters, all of them. Just didn’t get what the place was about.’

‘So, you tried to join to abuse them?’

‘Put ’em right. It’s my home they’re slating.’

‘So, you didn’t appreciate your mother instructing Kane Devlin to bring you home?’ she asked.

‘The Farm is my home and the man is an idiot.’

There was no anger, aggression or hostility in his tone as he spoke of the man, more an observational amusement.

‘He didn’t manage to change your opinion of the Farm or Jake?’

Eric laughed out loud. ‘The twat needs to update his processes. I knew everything he was going to say and do. We talk about shit like that at home. He was never gonna get to me.’

Throughout their exchange Kim had wondered on what grounds this man was being kept here. Other than being biased in his devotion to the Farm he seemed perfectly balanced, rational and certainly able to lead a normal life. He seemed to be making no effort to regain control of his former life. A part of her wondered if there was something in him that needed the feeling of being institutionalised: the order, the routine.

‘So, when you get out of here you’ll go straight back to Jake and Unity Farm?’