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“That’s a good idea.”

We hurried down the hall which led to Elena’s old bedroom. It was just as small and dingy as the rest of the women’s rooms.

Lauren opened the small cupboard and pulled out one of Elena’s long gray dresses. “She always looked nice, even in dresses as drab as this,” she said with a wry smile.

“She did,” I replied, sitting down on Elena’s old bed with a heavy sigh. I grabbed her old pillow and brought it to my face to take in the sweet scent of her hair. Then I looked around the room, trying to imagine that this was all some sort of dream. I could wake up to find that nothing had ever happened, and Elena would come waltzing through that door, rosy-cheeked and alive. How nice that would be.

Something caught my eye a moment later. Frowning, I scooted closer to the head of the bed and peered at the wall. In tiny letters, someone had scratched three words into the stone.

Please help me.

My heart quickened. For several minutes, I simply sat there, staring at the writing and trying to make sense of it. Did Elena write this? It certainly looked like it, but why would she do it? How long ago?

It couldn’t be a message begging for someone to help her leave New Eden. There was no hope of the words being seen by anyone outside of the commune. If anything, the scrawled message was deliberately hidden, etched out behind the bars of the bedhead and placed low on the wall. Usually the pillow would cover that area, so if I hadn’t taken it away to smell it, I wouldn’t have spotted the words at all.

Elena must have written it when she was possessed by the Devil. She was too terrified to tell anyone about the possession but also too scared to keep it to herself entirely. And so she scratched out those words, probably with a hair pin by candlelight in the darkest depths of the night, hoping our God would see it and help her.

“What are you looking at?” Lauren asked. I quickly sat up and looked at her over my shoulder. She had turned away from the cupboard and was staring over at me, forehead wrinkled with curiosity.

I hurriedly replaced the pillow. For some reason, I felt like I shouldn’t share the message with anyone else. Not even Lauren. It was private. Elena’s innermost thoughts. I shouldn’t have looked at it.

“Nothing. I was just fluffing up the pillow,” I said.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have come in here,” Lauren said, sitting beside me. As she spoke, she wrapped her arms around me in an affectionate hug. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I nodded slowly and whispered my response. “Maybe I have...”

* * *

“In the old times,we had lots of sinful literature like books and magazines, and we also had devices called telephones which people could use to communicate all their private thoughts to friends far away. These objects could be used by evil people to make good women stray from their true path and commit some of the worst sins… lust and adultery.”

I stood in the center of the stage, slowly and clearly enunciating each word so the children in the audience would understand. Faith Formation had begun, and it was time for me to perform my play with Mason.

We’d spent some time together rehearsing our lines over the last couple of days, but my father had been there watching us the whole time, so I hadn’t had a chance to speak with Mason about anything other than the play, much to my chagrin.

Fortunately, my father wasn’t here in the common room this evening. He and the other Elders hardly ever attended Faith Formation. They always said they had important business to attend to, but I thought they simply found the plays boring.

I couldn’t blame them. I found them quite boring too. There wasn’t a large selection of plays to choose from to represent each theme, which meant we’d all seen every one of them a hundred times, and none of us were proper actors, so it wasn’t exactly entertaining. The scripts were stilted and quite stupid as well, to be honest. I didn’t remember much from the old times, but I recalled enough to know that no one back then ever spoke the way they did in these plays.

I went and sat down on a chair in the middle of the stage. Beside it was a sheaf of papers; a prop used to represent a magazine from the old times. In my hand was a cup from the kitchen, which was meant to represent a telephone.

I picked up the papers and put them in my lap, and then I held the cup to my ear. “Hello, Amy,” I said. “I am calling you to tell you about this magazine I have been reading. It is nothing like His Word. There are all sorts of sinful images and words within it.”

I paused for a few seconds. Some of the children’s eyes widened. A few others leaned forward, curious to learn what the magazine said.

“In one of the articles, it has photos of men and women with no clothes on, and it says that premarital sexual relations are a good thing. It says women should act like whores and have relations with every single man they see, young or old. Day or night. It also says that adultery is good. So even though I am a married woman, this magazine is telling me that I should have relations with other men while my husband is away. What do you think I should do?”

I paused again, pretending to wait for a response. “You really think I should disregard His Word and do what the magazine says?” I said in a shocked tone. “It does sound very exciting, but isn’t that how the Devil slips in? He makes things seem so wonderful and tempting, and then he—”

On my right, Mason stepped onto the stage. He wore black pants and a dark red button-down shirt. “Hi,” he said, waving at me.

I looked at him, trying to ignore the blush spreading over my cheeks. Hopefully, if anyone in the audience noticed it, they would just think I was embarrassed to be up here staging this silly play in front of everyone.

“Sorry, I have to hang up the telephone now,” I said into the cup. “I have a visitor.”

I put the cup down and stood up. “Hello,” I said to Mason. “I’m Mrs. Smith. You’re my new neighbor, aren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation with your friend.”

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