The Prestige Read Free

to cover them.
    There was an extra twist this time. With some relish, Wickham informed me that someone
     from the sect had phoned to ask if the
    
    
     Chronicle
    
    
     was planning to cover the story, and if so had asked for me in person. They had seen some
     of my earlier articles, thought I showed the right degree of honest scepticism, and could
     therefore be relied on for a forthright article. In spite of this, or perhaps because of
     it, it seemed likely to prove yet another dud.
    A Californian religious sect called the Rapturous Church of Christ Jesus had established a
     community in a large country house in a Derbyshire village. One of the women members had
     died of natural causes a few days earlier. Her GP was present, as was her daughter. As she
     lay paralysed, on the point of death, a man had entered the room. He stood beside the bed
     and made soothing gestures with his hands. The woman died soon after, and the man
     immediately left the room without speaking to the other two. He was not seen afterwards.
     He had been recognized by the woman's daughter, and by two members of the sect who had
     come into the room while he was there, as the man who had founded the sect. This was
     Father Patrick Franklin, and the sect had grown up around him because of his claimed
     ability to bilocate.
    The incident was newsworthy for two reasons. It was the first of Franklin's bilocations to
     have been witnessed by non-members of the sect, one of whom happened to be a professional
     woman with a local reputation. And the other reason was that Franklin's whereabouts on the
     day in question could be firmly established: he was known to be an inmate of the
     California State Penitentiary, and as Sonja had just confirmed to me on the phone he was
     still there.

The Prestige
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    The community was established on the outskirts of the Peak District village of Caldlow,
     once a centre of slate mining, now heavily dependent on day trippers. There was a National
     Trust shop in the centre of the village, a pony trekking club, several gift shops and an
     hotel. As I drove through, the chill rain was drizzling through the valley, obscuring the
     rocky heights on each side.
    I stopped in the village for a cup of tea, thinking I might talk to some of the locals
     about the Rapturous Church, but apart from me the café was empty, and the woman who worked
     behind the counter said she drove in daily from Chesterfield.
    While I was sitting there, wondering whether to take the opportunity to grab some lunch
     before going on, my brother unexpectedly made contact with me. The sensation was so
     distinct, so urgent, that I turned my head in surprise, thinking for a moment that someone
     in the room had addressed me. I closed my eyes, lowered my face, and listened for more.
    No words. Nothing explicit. Nothing I could answer or write down or even put into words
     for myself. But it amounted to anticipation, happiness, excitement, pleasure,
     encouragement.
    I tried to send back: what is this for? Why was I being welcomed? What are you encouraging
     me to do? Is it something about this religious community?
    I waited, knowing that these experiences never took the form of a dialogue, so that
     raising questions would not receive any kind of answer, but I was hoping another signal
     would come from him. I tried to reach out mentally to him, thinking perhaps his contact
     with me was a way of getting me to communicate with him, but in this sense I could feel
     nothing of him there.
    My expression must have revealed something of my churned-up inner feelings, because the
     woman behind the counter was staring at me curiously. I swallowed the rest of my tea,
     returned the cup and saucer to the counter, smiled politely, then hurried out to the car.
     As I sat down and slammed the door, a second message came from my brother. It was the same
     as the first, a direct urging of me to arrive, to be there with him. It was