The Children of Red Peak Page 14

  The package was from Emily, as battered and heavy as the past.

  Like her mother, her friend had reached out from the grave to present a mirage of some elusive, final truth. Holding the parcel, Beth sensed the answers it offered would only lead to more questions.

  A chain that would only be solved by returning to Red Peak.

  She opened it.

  10

  PROTECT

  Behind the wheel of his Toyota, David sped south out of Modesto with the windows down to enjoy the invigorating rush of air. Every mile delivered him farther from chaos and closer to the security of home and work.

  Only one task stood in his way.

  “Damn it,” he said. He rolled up the windows and thumbed a button on his cell phone. Then he set the phone on his lap while it dialed in speaker mode.

  Angela answered. “I was wondering when you’d call.”

  “Hey, sis.” He fished in his breast pocket for a Marlboro and bent his head to light it. One last cigarette, and then he could put them away for a while.

  “Hey yourself, you little shit. What’s up?”

  “I’m driving home from a conference in San Francisco. How’s life in Vegas?”

  “I don’t have all day, David,” she grated. “Talk.”

  He forced a deep breath. “It was horrible.”

  “Which is why I told you not to go. Did you see Deacon and Beth?”

  “Deek is like this hedonist rocker now, if you can believe it,” David told her. “Beth is a psychologist.” Thinking about her gave him a twinge of arousal and irritation. “She said we should all go back to the mountain.”

  The line went quiet for a while. “Why does she want to do that?”

  He didn’t want to tell her about the proposal, but Beth wasn’t the type to let it go. Best his sister hear it from him before Beth got to her.

  “She thinks we’ll remember everything that happened and have a big catharsis and this will somehow make us happy instead of very, very sad.”

  “I’ve already been back,” she said.

  Here we go. Easy as pushing a button.

  “I know.”

  Angela had her own special way of avoiding acceptance of the tragedy. She believed someone or something had duped the Family into destroying itself, and had returned to Red Peak numerous times to search for clues.

  She’d never stopped seeking justice for Josh and Mom, and in so doing had become as obsessed with the Medford Mystery as its many fans and conspiracy theorists, people she otherwise despised.

  “If you ever want to go, I’ll take—”

  “Thank you.” He’d already known what she was going to say.

  “Fine. I have to warn you about something. A production company called me. They’re making a documentary about Medford. The fifteenth anniversary.”

  “What did you tell them?” He knew the answer to that as well, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  “I told them if they came anywhere near me with a camera, the Las Vegas Police Department would bury them alive in the desert.”

  David chuckled. “That’s my sis.”

  “Just a heads-up, they will probably try to hump your leg too.”

  “I’ll just tell them you’re my sister.”

  “It’s not these documentary guys that worry me,” Angela said. “The crystal anniversary is bringing out the weirdos, and we live in an age of zero privacy. Watch yourself.”

  His smile faded. “I will. Thanks.”

  “Give a visit out there some more thought, if only to go see Mom. That would be a good excuse to get us all out there.”

  Heat rose in his chest. Where were you when we put Emily in the ground?

  “I just paid my respects to the dead.”

  “She wasn’t family,” Angela said. “Not to me. We owe Mom this much.”

  “My exit is coming up,” David lied. “I have to go.”

  “Run along then, David.”

  “I love you, sis.”

  “You’re all I have left.” She hung up.

  Angela said that whenever he told her he loved her, and every time, she made it sound like the most disappointing thing in the world.

  David waited for his garage door to open with warm, calm satisfaction, like an explorer returning to the mother ship after a long journey in deep space. Once inside, he hauled his luggage out of the trunk and entered his house.

  Comforting sounds and smells greeted him. Claire was cooking in the kitchen, and judging by the delicious smell, she was preparing spaghetti carbonara, a family favorite. His children were home. Alyssa nattered away at her mother while Dexter watched TV in the living room.

  David smiled at the routine, completely content. He often found himself cowering in the lion’s den of the chaotic outside world, but here, among his tribe, he was the lion, ready to tear apart anyone who threatened his blood.

  The conversation in the kitchen stopped. “David, is that you?”

  “I’m home,” he called.

  “Hi,” Alyssa said.

  David deflated a little. His kids used to come running to the door to hurl themselves laughing at him, but they’d grown a little old for that now. Dexter was starting third grade in the fall. At nine, Alyssa was an early bloomer the way her aunt Angela had been, and had grown moody.

  He walked into the kitchen and gave Claire an obligatory kiss while she stirred the spaghetti in the boiling pot. “Hi, wife.”

  She was a tall woman, regal even when frying bacon, still trim and youthful after bringing two children into the world and living for them instead of herself. Her red hair was cut into a short, boyish bob, accentuating her slim neck, the sight of which had once filled him with a strange consumptive longing. She still wore her outfit from doing yoga, one of her addictions.

  Claire turned to wrap her arms around him. “You’re home for good?”

  “Until the weekend.”

  “We missed you.”

  “I’m glad to be home.” He gently stepped out of her embrace and sat on one of the stools next to his daughter. “What are you doing there?”

  “I’m drawing a cat,” Alyssa said.

  “I see that. You’re so talented.”

  “He has little people for pets. See?”

  “Very creative. How are you? Is everything okay?”

  “Dex is really annoying and I wish I was an only child.”

  “Relationships come and go,” David said. “But you’ll always have your brother. Ten, twenty years from now, Dex will be your best friend. You’ll see.”

  “No, I won’t,” his daughter deadpanned.

  Based on his own relationship with Angela, he didn’t really believe it either. “At least try to be kind. Never be cruel.”

  “A documentary film producer called while you were away,” Claire said.

  David flinched. “On the house phone? What’d they say?”

  She poured out the boiling spaghetti into a colander. “He’s doing a show on the Family of the Living Spirit cult and wanted to interview you.”

  “Right,” he said. “He wants to talk to me about exit counseling.”

  “You’ll be on TV, Daddy?” Alyssa asked him. “Are you famous?”

  David gave her a smile. “No.” Not in any way he might want to be, anyhow. “Is everything okay at camp?” Claire had enrolled her in a two-week drama camp. “Is Ellie still bothering you?”

  “She’s being nicer now.”

  “If she ever touches you again, I’ll have to talk to her dad, and I won’t be so nice about it. Make sure she knows that.”

  “It’s all working itself out, Daddy.” Alyssa went back to her drawing.

  David watched his daughter flesh out her picture with a fierce love that poured from his body at the atomic level. He took the lion thing too far, he knew. He wasn’t a helicopter parent, he was more like a helicopter with a squad of commandos aboard.

  He understood he shouldn’t try to solve all his daughter’s problems nor fight his son’s battl
es. He couldn’t help himself; they were his world. Humanity might be alone in the universe, but if you had family, you weren’t alone. She and Dexter were his real immortality. Just as he was everything to them, provider and protector, a responsibility he regarded as sacred. David’s father had divorced his mom and now lived in Maine, about as far away from his errant progeny as he could get and still be in America. His mother joined the Family and died at Red Peak. In a few years, Alyssa would be David’s age when he went to the mountain.

  He’d vowed that what happened to him would never touch his kids. Soon, she and Dexter would leave the nest and have the rest of their lives to discover how cruel the world could be.

  Until then, he’d show them its beauty, as all children deserved. In return, they would show him a childhood free from pain.

  David curled up next to Dexter on the boy’s little bed and read him his favorite book, a story about dog heaven. Claire had brought it home after they’d been forced to put down Gunner, the family’s golden retriever, who’d developed bone cancer. Dexter loved seeing the dogs frolicking in open fields and eating their biscuits and took great pleasure in the idea Gunner was there too.

  Tonight, his son turned thoughtful. “Daddy?”

  “Yeah, Dex?”

  “Is Heaven a real place?”

  As Alyssa was growing up, David had expected this question. He’d dreaded it more than talking about the birds and the bees. While Claire had a spiritual bent and took the kids to various houses of worship to expose them to different religions and cultures, David was raising them to be skeptics. Eventually, they could form whatever religious beliefs they wanted, but at least these beliefs would be theirs. Other than having a skeptical, open mind, he refused to force anything on them.

  So he answered Dexter the same way he had his daughter when she’d asked, the only way he knew how. “Some people believe it is, some people don’t.”

  “So what about God. Is God real?”

  “Same. Some people think so, others don’t. What do you believe?”

  Snug in his pajamas, his son nestled against him. Bedtime always made him extra affectionate. “I believe in everything.”

  David chuckled. “Heaven and God and even Zeus?”

  “Yup.”

  “What about Thor?”

  “Especially Thor.”

  “Well, I guess that makes you an omnitheist.”

  “What’s that, Daddy?”

  “It means you believe in everything.”

  “Om-knee-thee-ist,” said Dexter. “That’s me. Omni-me-ist.”

  “Some people are happy believing in things they can’t see. Others want proof.”

  “You can’t see love.”

  David smiled at the boy’s cleverness. “Love is provable. It comes from the brain. The big question is whether God does too. Anyway, it’s not what people believe that’s a problem. If you ask me, the world needs more omni-me-ists. It’s what they do with that belief, if they do bad things.”

  Dexter thought about it. “Like blow up a building.”

  Hearing his seven-year-old son describe religious terrorism was heartbreaking. “Yes, like that.”

  “God wants everybody to be good, though, right?”

  “They say real change starts at home.” David leaned closer to his son and said conspiratorially, “I think if God exists, he’d want you to be nicer to your sister.”

  Dexter gave him a devilish grin. “Yeah, but Thor told me I should be really annoying.”

  “That darn Thor. All right, Dex. Time for sleep.” David kissed his son and tucked the blanket around the boy’s chin. “Sleep tight.”

  “Good night, toilet seat.”

  He chuckled at their routine. “Good night, poopy diaper.”

  “Good night, stinky farts.”

  David went to the door. “Sleep tight, Dex. I’ll be watching over you.”

  “You’re the best daddy. Good night.”

  He turned out the light and shut the door. As always, his son’s innocence and love filled him up until it turned into a strange melancholy. Sometimes, love hurt, but that was the best kind of love.

  After putting Alyssa to bed, David headed to his living room, where Claire sat on the couch watching one of her TV shows.

  She paused it with the remote. “Hey, stranger. How did everything go with your client?”

  “Okay,” he said and hated himself for lying.

  “Do you think she’ll leave?”

  “No. I think she’ll stay in the cult forever.” The best lies always lay wrapped in the truth. “I just couldn’t get through.” Body tensed, he remained at the entrance, half in and half out of the room.

  “That’s too bad. I’m sorry to hear it.” Claire patted the cushion next to her. “Do you want to talk about it? We could boil some tea. I’d like to hear how your conference went.”

  “I have to work.” He just wanted to be alone. “Sorry.”

  His wife stared at him, then turned her show back on. “Fine.”

  “Tomorrow night, okay?”

  “Yup.” She’d stopped listening to him.

  David walked off toward the den he’d converted into a home office, his chest burning with anger. He could tell she was irritated with him. He was working, providing for his family. His job wasn’t nine to five like hers.

  His desk and computer greeted him with the potential of hours of focus. He often retreated to his office at night and worked in solitude and the comforting fantasy everyone in the world was asleep except him. The surge of relief he felt quickly turned to more anger, this time directed at himself. He wasn’t being fair to her, he knew. Lately, it seemed he was always working.

  Sitting at his desk, David thought about going back and surprising her. Maybe in a few minutes. An hour, tops. Yes, that was a perfect compromise.

  He pulled a notepad toward him to sketch out the intervention for his next client, a middle-aged couple here in Fresno who claimed their son Kyle was steadily isolating himself in a new religious movement. The couple couldn’t tell him much about the group, only that it was called The Restoration and appeared to be a small Christian doomsday cult.

  That meant his first step was to determine if Kyle was in fact actually in a cult. Only method separated a new religious movement and a cult. If the group used mind control to force obedience and dependency on its members, which it exploited, then it fit the popular definition of a cult. The difference was the level of harm.

  No matter how much David learned, he still had a hard time determining whether Jeremiah Peale’s Family of the Living Spirit was a cult. Yes, the group offered its members a pure ideal articulated by a beloved leader. It stifled critical thought by promoting a self-identity as being real Christians and regarding all other Christians as half-baked backsliders. New members were love-bombed. All had to obey a rigid orthodoxy, and those who didn’t toe the line might be cast out.

  All of which made the Family zealous, not a cult. Their brand of Christianity was charismatic, and they’d taken their God very seriously. Jeremiah Peale had started the community as a group of like-minded people who wanted to express their lives as a continual act of worship. They believed the Holy Spirit was real and could be drawn upon to strengthen and enlighten them in accepting God’s rewards and tests. They’d believed God had chosen them and that they had to meet their creator halfway by purifying themselves, purify as in repent—to make oneself righteous, which in turn meant observing Christian doctrine and law. David recalled the community during the years at the farm as being rigid on rules but otherwise caring and joyful for a child. He’d always felt warm, safe, and loved.

  At Red Peak, the community changed, and there was no doubt what it had become. Manipulation, group confessions, hard labor, starvation. Inducing trance states that cultivated suggestibility and furthered thought control. Mutilations, mass suicide, murder. In the desert, the Family became the worst sort of cult, joining a long, horrifying list with the likes of Peoples Temple and Heaven’s
Gate.

  A Google search produced nothing about The Restoration, same with the cult databases. This wasn’t surprising, as many cults consisted of a handful of members. A typical intervention lasted three to five days. He’d need the first day just to learn about the group from Kyle and profile its beliefs and techniques. Once he pinned all that down, he could follow his proven script.

  Switching gears, David answered his emails, confirming with John and Amelia Turner that he’d see them Saturday morning for their son’s session. He read an endless email from a mother terrified for her daughter, who she believed was in a sex cult, and replied to her questions about exit counseling, though the whole thing smelled like run-of-the-mill polyamory. Some therapists he’d met at the conference had written to him. An email from the producer making the Medford documentary he answered last, sending back a terse but polite no.

  Claire had left his snail mail on the side of his cluttered desk. A handwritten thank-you letter from a grateful family, which he opened first. An invoice, junk mail, and finally a big box sealed in packing tape.

  The sender was Emily Hayes, Bakersfield.

  Her voice burst in his ears, as if she stood next to him.

  We’ll go to Heaven together.

  His first thought was to put the package in the closet he used to store office supplies, heave it onto the highest shelf, and revisit it when he was ready. Whatever Emily had sent him, he doubted it would make him happy. Curiosity didn’t always kill the cat. Sometimes, instead, it gave the cat nightmares.

  He’d be ready tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

  Tear off the Band-Aid, he heard Beth say at the funeral home.

  “Damn it.”

  David picked up his scissors and sliced the flaps open. He reached into the box and removed a rubber-banded stack of newspaper and magazine clippings, along with pages printed from the internet. The first headline read: 118 MISSING, FEARED DEAD IN MEDFORD.

  Emily had done her homework. Everything one might want to learn about the official story of the Family’s self-destruction was here, right up to articles written in anticipation of the fifteen-year anniversary.

  Under that, he found another stack of paper bounded in a cross of rubber bands.