The Children of Red Peak

by Craig DiLouie

  Angela stood and clapped dust from her hands.

  She said, “If you want to say goodbye, come with me.”

  Beth followed without question. She was satisfied to be moving again, to be doing something, anything. Memories haunted the camp, vengeful and needy, both happy and horrifying. The musky, bitter smells of the creosote and sagebrush threatened to bring them to life in her mind.

  Angela led them across Red Peak’s northern flank, and after a few steps Beth knew where they were headed.

  The black basalt wall and its petroglyphs jutted from the slope where she remembered. Hundreds of carvings spoke prophecies and dreams. Stick men with shining heads received enlightenment. The winged creature promised a vision quest to the hungry and patient. The Great Spirit presided over it all.

  Down the rocky incline, the Wardites’ camp had suffered over the intervening years, its cabins reduced to their foundations, the steepled church with its broken back wilted further toward its center.

  Beth studied the carvings. “Something’s wrong with it.”

  Deacon squinted. “What?”

  “There are way more crosses than I remember. Aren’t there?”

  Crosses had once dotted the wall face’s periphery. Someone had carved scores of fresh symbols along the edge.

  “Yes.” Angela crouched next to the black rock. “I carved them.” She ran her fingers along a series of the crosses. “One for every member of the Family. This is their memorial.”

  “How many times have you come back here?” Deacon asked.

  “Once a year, around this time, so this makes fifteen. Emily wanted to come too, but she wouldn’t go without the rest of you.”

  “Did you ever, you know, go up?”

  Beth tilted her gaze toward Red Peak’s summit looming above them. On this slope, no false summits blocked one’s view all the way to the top.

  “Yup,” Angela said.

  “Nothing happened, apparently,” Deacon said.

  David sighed, though Beth couldn’t tell if it was from exasperation or relief. “Well, that’s pretty telling.”

  “What it tells me is the thing up there doesn’t like me very much,” Angela said.

  “You have to want it,” Deacon said. “You have to love it.”

  David shook his head. “That kind of thinking is how this whole thing started.”

  “How about we go up with an open mind, then?”

  He sighed again, this time in resignation. “Fine.”

  Angela said, “If you have anything to say to your loved ones, do it now. We have a long climb ahead of us.”

  Beth touched two of the crosses, claiming them for her parents. Mom and her nonstop chatter about God and the other members, keeping her world turning by defining it with words. Mom, whose silence and sacrifice had haunted Beth for so long. Daddy and his quiet, patient suffering to keep his family together so he could go on protecting his only daughter, his miracle baby girl. Daddy, who’d tried to escape in search of rescue but in the end crossed over with his wife, the father who’d given Beth the final push to run instead of drink.

  She’d waited for her mother to speak ever since.

  Goodbye, she thought. I love you. I miss you. I forgive you.

  Then she stepped back from the rock, ready to make the climb to the top of the holy mountain, where she hoped to stop running long enough to listen.

  22

  ASCEND (1)

  The sandstone stairway wound up from the camp to the first false summit. Drenched with sweat, David labored toward the top in the afternoon sun’s oven heat.

  This place. God, what a mistake, coming back here.

  For a short time, it had once been something like home, but it now struck him as sinister, producing a sense of unease that clung like a foul aftertaste. Seeing the Temple had triggered a menacing flashback. The Family hobbling out of the dark, their eyes shining with a manic, hopeful light. A strange, alien feeling overtaking him, the idea he didn’t know them anymore and they were coming to drag him to the mountaintop and kill him. Now, as then, he wanted to hide.

  He took another step. Another, huffing and puffing.

  Then he faltered, the same as he had when long ago he’d tried to climb Red Peak with Deacon. The closer one crept to the top, the more threatening and powerful the mountain seemed to become. The angrier.

  When he was twelve, he’d trekked up the slopes to ask God not to destroy the world, only to be stunned into flight by a single heretical thought. That he didn’t want to meet a God who would kill most of the world. That such a God was something to be feared, not loved.

  That was when he still believed with all his heart. A long time ago, but he remembered what it felt like.

  Ahead of him, Angela turned with a warning stare. “Keep going.”

  “We should stop and rest.”

  “At the first summit.”

  “This is stupid. You understand that, right? We’re wasting our time.”

  Worse, what they were doing was dangerous. David had studied cult behavior long enough to believe that his friends inched toward taking over for their parents. How wonderful, not to have to think. To surrender control to an all-powerful, invisible being. To have a simple and irrefutable worldview handed to you. To be solely privy to mysterion, the ritual secrets God shared with his chosen.

  Just as faith could move mountains, it could also level them.

  His sister waited until he started moving again, matching his stride. She’d reached a point of no return. If he ran, he had no doubt she’d force him up the slope, frog-marching him if she had to. She wore her service weapon holstered on her hip, a reminder who was in charge.

  “I always hated the saccharine bullshit,” Angela said. “Praise the little baby Jesus and all the phony insider jokes and everybody talking like they were performing for an audience of one, Jesus Christ himself.”

  David shrugged. “I kind of liked it.” It had once been a source of pride, in fact.

  “Yeah? That’s nice for you. Me, I was one a-men! from blowing my brains out. Mom was the worst. So goddamn smug about the sinners getting theirs. The way she’d say Jesus like she was gushing about her new boyfriend. The way she’d talk about God killing everybody like it was cool.”

  “Yeah.” David had detested that last part as well.

  “After she cut up her face, I hated her. I hated her stupid faith that got us mixed up with a bunch of goddamn lunatics who were going to get us all killed. The love she had for some invisible guy who made her happier than her own kids did.”

  This time, he said nothing, letting her push it off her chest.

  “It wasn’t until years later that I got over my bullshit,” Angela said. “I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her, alone with two kids. Dad sneaking off to hotel rooms with another woman until one day he didn’t come back.”

  David nodded. “He was having an affair.”

  “How did you know? I never told you that.”

  “I pieced it together way later.”

  “Her faith saved her,” she went on. “The church gave her a new life and a reason to wake up in the morning, besides feeding two kids. Her belief in God turned the whole stupid show into a test that actually meant something. She took it all too far, but I get it now, where it came from. She was broken.”

  He nodded again. He remembered wishing he could see what his mother saw when she beheld Eden in the woods. She hadn’t seen paradise, apparently, but her own personal salvation.

  “But you know what?” she said. “In the end, even though she’d gone all in, she put us first. When push came to shove, Mom chose us over what she believed. She tried to get us out.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” David asked.

  “We owe her. She died for us.” Angela glared, still radiating anger. “The least we can do is find out what happened to her and maybe even why.”

  His sister was right. What they were doing here wasn’t stupid. Wasn’t a waste of time. Was the lea
st they could do. Was, in fact, the right thing to do.

  This time, there could be no hiding. With all his excuses gone, all he had left was his dread. “Just give me one minute.”

  He stopped to slide one of his Marlboros from its box. His hands trembled as he lit it. The smoke burned his stretched lungs, and he coughed into his fist. Sweat poured off him from the heat and the climb.

  Angela paused with him, directing her gaze down the mountainside to make sure the rest of her ducklings were in line. Beth and Deacon plodded up the slope about fifty yards behind, taking their time.

  “I’m no better than Mom,” David said. “I should be home playing with my kids. Making things right with Claire. But here I am, looking for God.”

  “You’ll be home with them soon.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted me to say?” Angela took a nip from her canteen and spat. “I thought you didn’t believe this was anything but a wilderness hike.”

  David unzipped his backpack and yanked out a towel. His body continued to sweat in waves in the desert’s furnace heat, and stopping had only made him hotter. He wiped his face and looked up at the false summit, which appeared much nearer now. The truth seemed to hover just out of reach up there. He wasn’t so sure anymore that this was only a hike. He was beginning to doubt his doubt.

  “I don’t know what this is,” he admitted.

  Above him, the false summit brooded in afternoon sunshine. Mountaintops always evoked a sense of awe, but this one was special. An atmosphere of power blanketed it. In all the bright, empty glare above Red Peak, something seemed to wait. The dead rocks and dirt appeared alive, pulsing in the heat.

  Or maybe he was simply projecting his fears onto this place. Giving it a personality. Maybe the truth, begging to be known, also waited for him to write it. With all its vast nothing, the mountain provided a blank slate for yearning souls. The emptiness did not like being ignored. It demanded translation. It wanted meaning, could not exist without a human brain to create and complete it.

  The Wardites, the Family, and now him.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Angela said.

  David tested another drag on his cigarette and decided to put it out in favor of taking a swig from his own water bottle. He returned his towel and bottle to his backpack and shouldered it. He caught his breath.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  In the past few weeks, he’d suffered watching almost all his Band-Aids tear away one by one, exposing his wounds to air and light, scrutiny and judgment. Only one remained.

  Angela studied him. “You sure? I know this is hard for you.”

  He’d keep going, not because of what he might owe his mother, but because of what he knew he owed his sister.

  Maybe she’d forgive him after this. Maybe he’d forgive himself.

  “I’m saying you can back out if you want,” she said. “I know you want to.”

  David didn’t answer her. Instead, he put his foot forward. Did it again.

  Step by step, he ascended his past to an uncertain future.

  23

  ASCEND (2)

  Deacon staggered up the last steps to the first summit, which revealed another long slope leading to the second. The group stopped to rest. Too much smoking over the years had him wheezing, though that didn’t prevent him craving a cigarette now. He dug into his pocket for his pack before withdrawing empty-handed. This pilgrimage, he reminded himself, demanded a sense of sacrifice.

  He sat on the rock ledge and took a long pull from his water bottle. The Family’s derelict camp appeared tiny from this height. Already light-headed from the sun’s heat and blinding light, he was starting to feel sick, his stomach churning. He didn’t know what he’d find at the final summit, but he knew what he might.

  Up there, something that defied human comprehension could be waiting.

  The same as when he’d tried to make the climb as a kid, the mountain seemed to shift without actually moving, as if taking notice of him.

  Yes, there was likely nothing. All in his head. They were probably all crazy. Occam’s razor strikes again. It was also possible they weren’t crazy at all, or rather, that they’d finally become sane again after so long.

  A refreshing breeze washed over the mountain, drying the sweat that covered him and replenishing him with a second wind. He glanced at Beth sitting nearby, eyes closed, her face raised to catch the breeze.

  “We’d better get back to it,” Angela said, triggering a flurry of groans.

  Deacon watched her athletic body arch in a stretch. “I never could believe you ran the whole way up, but now I’m starting to get it. You’re a machine.”

  She hadn’t just jogged up the mountain back in 2005. She’d also walked all the way to the sheriff’s substation in Medford, making the desert trek without food and water on sheer willpower alone.

  He’d been right to be a little afraid of her when they were kids.

  “It’s like Mom always said. A little exercise would do me a world of good.” She shrugged. “I was young and on a mission that night.”

  “You’re still young.”

  “Still on a mission,” she corrected him. “That I can wholeheartedly agree with. After the second false summit, a short walk will take us to the top.”

  With that, she started up the next set of stairs.

  Deacon worked his way back onto his feet. “Where’s a decent walking stick when you need one, huh?”

  David returned a brief smile. “Up Shepherd Wright’s ass.” Completing a very old routine.

  Deacon laughed. “I missed you, man.”

  His friend’s smile strengthened. “Yeah.”

  “Talk to me.” He grunted as his muscles protested at resuming the climb. “Take my mind off my sore feet.”

  “Tell me what it’s like being on a stage performing,” David said.

  “When the vibe is pumped and the crowd is connecting with the band, I feel like God.” Starving for love and getting it in spades, not to mention the sense of power. “When the audience isn’t happy, I feel like Satan.” Ruining everyone’s night but plowing ahead anyway. “Either way, it’s the greatest thing I ever did.”

  “Your mom loved music. I know she’d be proud of you.”

  Deacon’s face hardened. “My mom.” Everything led back to the Family.

  David caught his expression. “Sorry if I—”

  “No problem. I’ll tell you something about Mom, though. She was my first fan. Music was big around my house. My first memories are of her singing at the kitchen sink. Can I tell you something funny?”

  “Sure,” David said.

  “The last night, when everybody left the mess hall and was heading over to the Temple, she was a wreck. She’d always had a thing for the old Reverend. Which I didn’t mind, not one bit. My real dad’s dead, and the Rev was like a dad to me. I told her we should get away, like Angela said. You know what she told me?”

  His friend shook his head, grunting with the exertion of the climb.

  “Mom told me I should run, but she was staying. If God wanted her to die, then that’s what she’d do. If the Rev was dying, then so was she. She stopped crying while she said it. She actually looked happy. She couldn’t wait to rid herself of the body she hated and become spirit. She couldn’t live without the man she loved. In the end, Mom chose suicide over her own son.”

  “Come on,” David said. “She loved you.”

  “Sure, she did. My first fan. She just loved Jesus more. Maybe even the Rev.”

  “In seven years, I’ll be my mom’s age when she died. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, maybe it’s because I have kids, but I feel like I understand her now.”

  “My mom made me what I am today,” Deacon said.

  Someone who put himself first.

  A man who didn’t know how to truly love because he couldn’t love himself.

  Screw it. To hell with suffering and sacrif
ice. He took out his crumpled pack of Camels, extracted a wilted cigarette, and torched its tip with his lighter.

  It was the best he ever had. “Do you want one?”

  David shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  He turned to see Beth toiling behind them. “You go ahead. I’m gonna take a break.”

  “Already?” David caught him staring at Beth and smiled. “Ah. Sure. Can I tell you something I learned the hard way?”

  “Sure, man.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  Something shifted in his chest. “You might be right.”

  “You should get that tattooed on your arm.”

  His friend marched off, leaving Deacon chuckling. He smoked while Beth crossed the distance separating them and stopped panting a few feet downslope.

  Resting her hands on her knees to catch her breath, she cast an irritated eye at him. “I thought we said everything that needed saying.”

  That wasn’t remotely true, but Deacon understood that words didn’t matter anymore. She already knew he loved her but that it wasn’t enough for him to change. They couldn’t be together, not in the way they both wanted.

  What she didn’t know was how beautiful she was to him and that he’d never belong to another, something words couldn’t express, not a tattoo, not even a song.

  He smiled. “What makes you think I want to say anything?”

  “You’ve got that look. Like a dam about to break, and there’s a marriage proposal or a speech about human nature or a song on the other side of it.”

  He said, “Silence can fool, you know.”

  Her irritation deepened before it gave way to a smile, the smile to one of those belly guffaws that had always made him laugh along with her. Her laugh turned into a coughing fit from all the dust in the air.

  “You,” she rasped, “are a piece of work.”

  That Deacon already knew, no reminders needed. It was tattooed on his life.

  He extended his hand. She took it, and they resumed their climb holding on to each other, onward and upward toward the next false summit.

  While they weren’t equipped to ever be a couple, they’d be together during this journey, right to the end.