The Children of Red Peak Read online

  “This is it, brothers and sisters,” the Reverend said. “We’ve traveled a long, hard road together. The road the world scorned and forgot about. The high road. It’s led us here. Now it just needs to take us a little farther to our eternal reward.”

  The door closed with a pneumatic hiss. The bus rumbled onto the rutted dirt track that would deliver the Family out of the wilderness and back into a world that David recalled as a hazy dream after three long years.

  He gazed for the last time across the green fields that had fed him. The cabins stood dark and empty as the Temple. His stomach flipped as he felt caught between leaving home and heading to an adventure. Regret and excitement.

  And just like that, the farm was gone. Oaks filled the windows. David turned but saw only dust in their wake. Somewhere behind, the rest of the caravan followed. The congregants quieted as the bus rolled onto the main road and built up speed. Many hadn’t set foot outside the farm in years.

  Mrs. Blanchard sang, “Oh, this is a joy indeed, when from the Earth we’ve soared, to be from ill and sorrows freed, forever with the Lord!”

  Across the bus, others joined in. “In all that heaven of bliss, we never shall record, a sweeter, deeper joy than this, forever with the Lord.”

  David hummed and clapped along with the rhythm.

  The hymn finished, and the Family settled in for the hundred-mile journey that would take them to Red Peak. Outside, the land turned brown and dry and patched with scrub. Hills covered in chaparral rolled into stark mountains. God was everywhere, but this was where he lived, in the deep wilderness far from the cities awash with sin. On desolate and windy peaks.

  After driving two hours, the convoy crawled through a small town offering motels, gas stations, and restaurants. Murmurs passed the news that this was Medford, and they were close. When the bus stopped at a traffic light, David gazed out the window at a service station. An ordinary family gassed up their minivan, oblivious to the apocalypse rushing toward them.

  The bus started moving again.

  He tilted his head toward Angela. “Sorry I got mad at you this morning.”

  His sister patted his knee. “It’s okay.”

  If he was going to Heaven, he wanted to go there with a clean slate.

  “I like Josh,” David said. “I’m glad you like each other.”

  “Josh has a good heart. I trust him.”

  “You’re good too.”

  Good enough to enter Heaven, he hoped.

  “Quit trying to score points with God.” Angela crossed her arms.

  At the front, Jeremiah rose from his seat. “Get ready!”

  “Amen!” Mom whooped.

  They left the highway and turned onto a dirt road that snaked east into the mountains. The atmosphere became thick and charged as the Family leaned toward the windows. The bus shuddered over the path where slopes of soaring hills joined to form a long gorge. Stones cracked against the undercarriage. Joshua trees dotted the dry, rocky soil, which David imagined as madmen running through the desert.

  “There it is,” the Reverend said. “On our left, you can see Red Peak.”

  David craned his neck for a view. From this vantage point, the mountain looked like a mesa with its flat top and cliff flanks defying all but the most experienced climbers. Much of it was dark, blackened by basalt outcroppings. Aztec sandstone girdled the crown in crimson bands.

  As the bus crept closer, Red Peak appeared to grow in height and mass while revealing a long rocky slope providing a path to the summit, rippled with false summits like a giant’s staircase. The Family’s new home was no longer a lush, fertile valley, but a lifeless rock in the middle of a desert wilderness.

  However majestic, the monolith struck him as foreboding. Not menacing or evil, but callous and uncaring. Whatever its promise, Red Peak inspired awe and something else—a deep, primordial fear.

  Even at his age, David understood that the holy mountain would deliver tests before it bestowed its blessings.

  12

  HELP

  David loaded his suitcase into his Toyota and started the short drive to the Holiday Inn near the airport. There, he’d meet the Turner family, which had rented a suite for the intervention staged to rescue their son Kyle.

  Though this job was in Fresno, he’d decided to stay at the hotel instead of his house because of the typical intensity of counseling sessions. He’d never known one to be simple or easy. Eight hours a day, three to five days. Cults exerted mind control by discrediting all external information sources, redefining the past, and fostering emotional dependency. They convinced members that the group was the only real family they had.

  While participation in an exit counseling meeting was voluntary, things could get heavy. Shouting, crying, the bitter airing of a family’s dirty laundry. Sessions had a lot in common with drug addiction interventions.

  At the end of it, he hoped to see Kyle leave The Restoration with strong bonds with his family and an awareness of what support he’d need to transition to an independent life. Leaving might subject the young man to withdrawal.

  He parked in the hotel’s spacious lot and smoked a Marlboro in the morning’s rising heat, steeling himself for a grueling weekend. While he’d learned not to get too invested with his clients, it was exhausting work. Sometimes, when the cultist started to open up and David gained traction, the day’s session might turn into a marathon of up to fourteen straight hours of talking.

  He met the client at the restaurant’s breakfast buffet. John and Amelia Turner were a handsome couple in their fifties and surprisingly chipper, more excited than anxious.

  After ordering coffee, David said, “Did you learn anything new about the group?”

  “It’s religious,” Amelia said.

  “They believe the end of the world is coming,” John added. “That’s what has us thinking about him. It’s changed him.”

  “I understand,” David said.

  “We don’t want to talk him out of being Christian. Which makes us a little concerned about your own beliefs.”

  David wasn’t surprised to hear this, as it was common in his field. “What I believe or don’t believe is not important. My counseling separates belief from action. And what Kyle believes doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is what Kyle does for the group, or allows the group to make him do.”

  John and Amelia exchanged a glance that was difficult to read.

  Amelia said, “You were in a cult, is that right? Growing up?”

  David waited until the server poured his coffee. “That’s right.”

  “Then you understand,” Amelia said.

  “There are a lot of charlatans in your line of work,” John added.

  David sweetened the coffee and stirred. “I don’t know about ‘a lot.’ Some, yes. The field isn’t licensed, and reputation is the only thing that regulates us.”

  “We did our homework,” John said. “You’re the real deal.”

  “A basic thought reform approach will be to try to get Kyle thinking for himself and viewing his group from a different perspective. I’ll ask lots of questions that will stimulate him to use critical thought, and anytime he does, I’ll give him positive feedback. I’ll educate him about how groups like this manipulate their members and encourage him to apply that knowledge to his own group.” He drank his coffee. “Who else from the family will be here today?”

  The man smiled. “Everybody. All the family and friends he’s got.”

  “Well, they all need to be aware that Kyle may act different than they’re used to,” David warned. “Not just defensive, but hostile, on top of other personality changes. A group behaving like a cult brainwashes its members to depend on the leader and obey.”

  “We won’t have any trouble with him,” John said.

  “The biggest problem is cultists are taught to discard anything outsiders might say. Right now, he might consider you outsiders.”

  “We’re his family,” Amelia assured him. “He loves us mo
re than anything.”

  David hoped she was right.

  After breakfast, they went upstairs to prepare the suite. David and John set up folding chairs to supplement the existing furniture while Amelia called room service to order a few pots of coffee.

  The room filled with family and friends, sixteen people in all. They found somewhere to sit and eyed David with fawning smiles, as if he was a cult leader himself. Nobody spoke, the room quiet enough he heard the purr of the air-conditioning.

  Unsettled by the attention, he again wondered why cult leaders put so much energy and effort into brainwashing others to love them. The only answer he’d ever been able to come up with was that they were narcissistic psychopaths—charming, manipulative, dishonest, and utterly lacking in empathy. Cult leaders demanded worship because they felt entitled to it as superior people, and created fantasies to justify their delusions of grandeur.

  As David poured himself another coffee, he again reflected on Jeremiah Peale. The Reverend hadn’t been a narcissist. If anything, he’d empathized with other people too much; he and the Deacon he remembered proved alike that way. Otherwise, every action he’d taken, he’d done with humility. While the Family starved at Red Peak, the Reverend had eaten less than anyone while working harder. On the last night, he’d even washed their feet as Christ had his disciples.

  Peale was a good man. Of that, David had no doubt. But he’d heard the voice of God, and it told him to do terrible things.

  The door to the suite opened to admit a handsome young man in a black T-shirt and jeans, his longish hair an unkempt mop, his smile open and disarming. John and Amelia hugged him and then turned to present David.

  “This is him,” Amelia said, her eyes bright.

  “So you’re David Young.” Kyle held out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “You have?” David hadn’t expected the man to exude such confidence, cordiality, familiarity. He shook the offered hand. “What do you know, exactly?”

  The young man gestured to the couch. “Please sit.”

  David’s instincts went haywire. Something wasn’t right. The friends and family grinned at him and Kyle as if they expected some type of entertainment rather than an intense emotional dialogue to sever ties with a destructive cult.

  He sat with a frown. “You aren’t a member of a religious group.”

  Kyle took his own seat on the couch, nestling between his parents. “Is that what you think? I guess we can all go home then.”

  “You’re the leader, aren’t you?”

  “Excellent.” Kyle laughed. “I’d like to tell you a story.” He accepted a glass of water from one of his friends and sipped it. “It’s about St. Thomas Aquinas.”

  “Okay,” David said, disturbed he’d already lost control of the meeting.

  “Thomas grew up in the Kingdom of Sicily in the 1200s. His family raised him to eventually run an abbey of monks, but he had other ideas. He wanted to join this new group called the Order of Preachers, what we now know as the Dominicans. These friars believed in bringing God’s Word direct to the people. His mother didn’t like it and arranged an intervention by his brothers, who imprisoned him. After some time, his family let him go, and he went on to produce writings in theology, metaphysics, and ethics that dominated Catholic philosophy for centuries. He was known to levitate in a state of ecstasy, and during one of these times, an icon of the crucified Christ spoke to him. The Pope made him a saint for it.” He drank again from his glass and produced another charming smile.

  “That’s an interesting story,” David said. “But I don’t—”

  “Bear with me, as I have another for you. Some years earlier, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, founded the Order of Friars Minor, also called the Franciscans, the gray friars. Long before that, he was just another rich kid who liked fancy clothes and spending his dad’s money. After selling some stuff from his dad’s store to give to a church, his dad beat him, tied him up, and locked him in a small room. Francis renounced his inheritance and followed in Christ’s footsteps by dedicating himself to a life of poverty, chastity, and charity. He was struck by a vision of a seraph on a cross and became the first man to receive the stigmata, the five wounds of Christ. They made him a saint too. Don’t you see?”

  David threw a questioning glance at John, who gave him a nod encouraging him to play along. “I’d like to hear you say it.”

  “You can’t deprogram a man bound for sainthood.”

  “Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about,” David said, taking advantage of the break to wrestle back control of the conversation. He leaned forward on the couch. “This group of yours—”

  Kyle guffawed, and to David’s surprise, his family and friends laughed too.

  “David, I’m afraid you don’t see what’s happening here.”

  He sat back in his chair. His gaze swept the smiling faces. Something was very, very wrong. “Why don’t you tell me.”

  Kyle said, “We are The Restoration.”

  The surge of anger in David’s chest evaporated. A cold, gnawing fear replaced it. “I don’t understand.”

  “This is your intervention, David Young. We’re here to rescue you.”

  David swallowed hard. Past Kyle’s beatific face, the suite’s door seemed temptingly close yet too far for him to make a run for it.

  If the leader of The Restoration didn’t want him to leave, he wasn’t going anywhere. The people surrounding Kyle weren’t his real blood relations, but they were his family.

  “Right now, I’m hoping I don’t need to be rescued,” David said, his body tingling.

  “Fifteen years is a long time to wander the desert.”

  “People know I’m here. If I’m missed, the police will come.”

  Kyle chuckled. “This is an exit counseling session, not deprogramming.”

  “You want to talk to me. That’s all.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And I can leave anytime I want.” David still didn’t trust it.

  “Would you have met with us otherwise?”

  He considered. “It depends why you want so bad to talk to me.”

  “Why? Why.” He laughed. “You’re David Young!”

  The room burst into applause. David flinched, bewildered.

  Amelia said, “I’m sorry I lied about being Kyle’s mother. It has been such an honor to finally meet you.”

  The rest called out similar sentiments.

  David stared back at the smiling faces. “I still don’t understand.”

  Kyle said, “Red Peak, of course.”

  “What about it?”

  “I have to tell you one last story,” the young man said. “May I?”

  David leaned back on the couch and folded his arms. “Go ahead.”

  Kyle stood and wandered the room, sharing smiles with his followers. “For years, a group of people meets online in a private chat room to talk about the Medford Mystery, and coalesces around a theory, which takes on a life of its own. The voice, the strange lights and sounds, the missing bodies, the utter dedication to self-immolation. They do enough research and write enough posts to fill a library on the subject.”

  He paused to lay his hand on a woman’s head before moving on. “Eventually, one of them proposes to take their group offline and put their theory to a very real test. At a hotel, they meet in person for the first time. They decide to follow in the Family of the Living Spirit’s footsteps.”

  David twisted in his seat so he could keep his eyes on the man. “What’s this theory?”

  Kyle crossed in front of the couch until he stood over him. “That the Family actually did talk to God and went to Heaven. That’s the first doctrine. The second is that the door is still open.”

  “Jesus Christ.” These people weren’t a cult. They were a bunch of cosplaying fans, but even that could be dangerous. “You should all go home.”

  They gazed back at him with fanatical intensity. They weren’t a cult,
but eager to become one, if that’s what it took to solve the mystery. They’d found purpose in the Medford story, some kind of hope and meaning. Wanting to be a part of something bigger than oneself, something real, was a basic human trait. They weren’t going back to their old lives, which they no doubt regarded as empty.

  David tried a different tack.

  “Look, everything you think you know about Medford came from police reports, and most of that came from the survivors. We were in shock. A handful of brainwashed kids. I honestly don’t even remember what I told the police. I was hiding in a closet in the Temple while almost everybody I loved drank poison and stabbed or shot anybody who refused to die.”

  “I’ll get straight to the point,” Kyle said. “We’re going to Red Peak and want you to come with us. We want you to lead us.”

  “Can I have some water?”

  His mouth had turned to cotton. A beaming woman rushed to the sink to fill a glass and handed it to him with both hands like an offering. He gulped half of it, thinking hard about how to turn this around, how to perform exit counseling on an entire group of people.

  “You want to follow in their footsteps?” David said. “Now I’m going to tell you a story.”

  Kyle resumed his seat between John and Amelia. “We’re here to learn.”

  “The Family didn’t just drive up there and go to Heaven. The Spirit told the Reverend we had to purify ourselves for the ascension first. Months of hunger and mutilations. Group confessions and hard labor until nobody could think for themselves anymore. Only then were we ready to die.”

  The would-be pilgrims shrank a little, and David was relieved to see doubt cross their blissful faces. They were obsessed with solving the mystery, not so interested in chopping off body parts.

  Kyle said, “What did the Spirit promise in return?”

  “Eternal life.” He added bitterly, “Milk and honey. Seventy-two virgins.”

  “Eternal life,” the man said, “is plenty enough.”

  “Then go at it like everybody else, and die of old age.”

  “Why wait? Compared to eternity, this so-called existence on Earth is an illusion. Don’t you want to finish what you started? See your mother again?”