by H. D. Gordon
Ross nodded once, taking one last look around at the land, as if there was something hiding behind the oak trees, some detail she must have missed. Dorie decided instantly that the bitch’s curiosity belied her words.
“Well, thank you again for your hospitality,” Ross said, opening her car door. “I suppose I’ll give your regards to the family members of Anna and Beth, tell them everything is just fine,” she paused and looked at Beth and Anna. “If that’s what you want, ladies?”
Beth and Anna nodded. Anna said, “Please tell them we are wonderful and we love them. We are on a glorious spiritual journey here, and they needn’t worry.”
Ross nodded again and got in her car. Dorie came to stand beside Father as they watched the bitch drive away.
Dorie kept her voice low enough so that only Father could hear. “You trust her?” Dorie asked.
Father raised a hand and waved at the retreating car, a smile still on his lips. Voice low, his lips barely twitched as he spoke between clenched teeth. “Not one fucking bit.”
Chapter 30
Ross
Sara Ross looked in her rearview mirror, where she saw the reverend and the other ranch residents waving her a cheery goodbye. She took one hand off the steering wheel and raised it in a return wave. She hated to admit it, but there seemed to be no story here. She sighed as she passed beneath the wooden sign that read The Family Ranch. She had been so sure. The family members who’d come to her about their loved ones had been so sure.
But honestly, as far as she could tell, the reverend and his unconventional “family” lived in a way that was unordinary, but not in any obvious way bad or dangerous. Perhaps Beth Johnson’s mother and Anna Mendez’s father and brother were just using her as a way to speak to Beth and Anna, who obviously could contact them if they wanted. Beth and Anna had told her as much. They’d seemed genuinely happy at the church’s ranch. Had she just been a pawn in someone’s scheme? And if so, what was the point of it?
Sara spent the whole hour drive back to the city thinking about it. Was there something she didn’t know about the concerned family members? Was there a reason Beth and Anna wanted to stay away from them? After all, many of the residents of the ranch had been abused women and addicts who had left behind a troubled life. Or, were there legitimate concerns with the ranch? Could all of those smiles have been hiding ugly secrets? Was there a story buried beneath those manicured lawns and perfect flower beds? The only thing she was sure of was that she was being deceived. The question was, by whom?
She just needed a little more time to do a little more digging. Coming back to the office today basically empty handed was not what she’d wanted, but she would never forgive herself if she walked away now, only to have some other journalist figure out the story and break the news first.
And something in her gut told her there was a story. The same way her gut had told her the reverend Ron Reynolds was more than he made himself out to be.
It was just too bad her gut couldn’t have told her how fine a line she was walking, how close the ice she’d unknowingly stepped onto was to breaking.
Chapter 31
Joe
When the feeling I knew so well struck me in the gut, it could not have happened at a worse time or place. I mean, it could not have been worse timing. I was in my mother’s kitchen, listening to her usual rant about my choice of clothing, watching her put away the groceries I delivered to her every week.
She put a can of soup in a cupboard and paused, looking out the window over the sink, where Michael was waiting in his black BMW. I knew I should have had him park down the street. The car, while nice, was not something that went unnoticed.
My mother turned to me, her one good eyebrow raised. (The other eyebrow had been burned off in an incident involving a fire and my father, but that’s a part of my tale I’ve told before, and don’t care to tell again.) “Is that a boy?” she asked, leaning over the sink on her tiptoes to get a better look. “He’s handsome. Is he with you?” The incredulity in her voice could not have been thicker.
I let out a low breath, not wanting to deal with her nonsense today, not with everything else I had going on. I nodded, then shrugged, turning to leave. Now that the groceries were delivered, there was really no reason to linger. She could ponder the question of why a handsome, obviously well-off young man like Michael was driving me around, without me around while she did it. Suddenly, the things I had been planning on telling her all day didn’t feel like they needed to be told. She probably wouldn’t have cared, anyway.
“Well, who is he?” she asked.
I didn’t look over my shoulder as I answered. “A fuh-friend,” I said. “See you nuh-next week.” But that was the thing, maybe I wouldn’t see her next week.
Then it happened. I paused in my tracks, my hand gripping the edge of the counter nearest me, hardly able to hear my mother telling me how ungrateful I was, or some of her other usual nonsense. All I could concentrate on was the throbbing and itching of my hand. My left hand.
I turned back around to face her, my breathing growing harsher, as though the walls were closing in around me. My vision blurred, became almost tunnel-like. “A puh-puh-pencil,” I stammered out. “Guh-get me a pencil.”
“Well,” my mother huffed, “If you want someone to do something for you—”
“Mom!” I yelled. “Get me th-th-the duh-damn puh-pencil.” I wasn’t looking at her, so I didn’t see her reaction to my rare outburst. I was too busy tearing one of the brown paper grocery bags apart with my shaking hands, taking a piece of the brown paper and smoothing it out atop the counter.
I extended my hand in her direction, my eyes locked on the blank brown paper before me, the itching and throbbing in my left hand growing worse and worse. It shook as I held it out, and a moment later, my mother placed a pencil in it. As soon as it had the utensil, it whipped down to the brown page and began its confident dance. My heart dropped down to my shoes and melted on the kitchen floor as I watched the captured scene unfold in fluid strokes. The pain in my hand eased as it slowed to a stop a few minutes later.
I took a deep breath, what seemed like the first air I’d drawn in ages, and moved my hand off of the page. I didn’t get a chance to process a clear thought before I heard my mother gasp beside me, reminding me of just where I was and what had happened. My mother had always known something was different about me, but she’d never witnessed nor seen one of my drawings.
I dragged my eyes away from the paper and looked up into her wide, horrified eyes, which were staring down at what my left hand had rendered. Then they snapped up to mine, bluer and colder than I’d ever seen them before. “You got the devil in you!” she shrieked, so loudly my whole body cringed visibly. “I’ve always known it and now there’s no denying it!”
I shrank backward, more surprised by her explosion than I probably should have been. Stumbling out of the kitchen, I made sure to grab my most recent drawing and stuff it into my jeans pocket as my dear mother shouted shrilly after me.
“You get out of here! Take the devil with you! Take the devil with you!” she yelled. “And don’t come back! Don’t you come ba—”
I shut the door to her cursed house and stepped out into the summer sun, which was somehow incredibly more blinding than it had been only a handful of minutes ago. I felt the traitorous sting of coming tears and swallowed them back. I tried to tell myself to just breathe, but the usual mantra was doing nothing for my suddenly fried nerves. One might think that my mother’s treatment of me was the thing that was shaking me so, but actually, it was the drawing in my pocket that seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. How could there be another already? I hadn’t even finished dealing with the last one yet.
Now I felt lightheaded as I stumbled down the porch steps and onto the stone path that led to the driveway…where Michael was getting out of his car. He came forward and wrapped me in his arms, and I felt like I could breathe again, if only barely.
“Are you okay?” h
e asked, voice tight and full of concern. “What happened?”
I clung to him the way a drowning person clings to a life raft. Then I managed to shake myself off and stand up straight, not comfortable with the way I was feeling so dependent. “I’ll t-t-tell you,” I said. “Juh-just get me out of huh-here f-first, puh-please.”
Michael led me around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for me. I took a seat inside, and he shut it behind me, hurrying over to the driver’s side. Moments later we were driving away from my mother’s house. I watched it recede in the side mirror, wondering if I would ever see it again, thinking the answer was probably not, no matter how things turned out.
Instead of being sad about this, I felt oddly relieved, and wondered why it had taken so long to get to this point with her. I was doing her a favor by dropping off groceries every week because she was too afraid to leave her house. Knowing her, though, it was a possibility that she would call when she ran out of food next week asking rudely why I hadn’t made the delivery. And knowing me, I would feel guilty and just do it. This wasn’t the first time she’d gone off on me like that. Not by a long shot.
But this wasn’t like those times. She saw you draw. She was standing over your shoulder while you did it.
I told the voice in my head to shut up, knowing that the thoughts were right despite me not wanting to hear them. This week was turning out to be a doozy. I may as well do an exhibit of my work with the way things were going. Of course, I was just avoiding the real issue, which was drawn on a piece of a grocery sack in my front pocket.
“Alright,” Michael said slowly. “You gonna tell me what just happened in there?”
I stared out the windshield. “Sh-she’s guh-going to die,” I said, swallowing past the tightness in my throat as the image I’d just drawn went flashing through my head.
The car gave a lurch as Michael’s foot fell on the brakes. He pulled over to the side of the road and took my shaking hands into his. His deep brown eyes held mine the way an anchor holds a ship. “Just breathe,” he said. “Just breathe.” He paused, his hand coming up and resting on my cheek, thumb brushing away a stray tear. “Who exactly are you talking about, my love? Who’s going to die?”
I pulled my hand from his and reached into my pocket. Pulling out the brown piece of paper where the dead lady was drawn, I handed it to him.
Michael took the crumpled paper and hesitated. He looked at it, and then up at me. “Is this…?”
I nodded.
“Another one already? Is that usually how it happens?”
I nodded again to his first question and shook my head to his second. I didn’t miss the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. But his hands were steady as he unfolded the paper. I could tell just by the way his brow was furrowed that he was apprehensive, and I couldn’t blame him. I’d been dealing with this sort of thing my entire life and it was still hard to swallow. I couldn’t even imagine how he must have been feeling about all of this.
As Michael smoothed out the paper, making the dead woman I’d drawn fully visible, I cringed a little at the gore. Despite it being drawn in lead, the picture screamed red. It was just a woman. Well, a woman whose throat had been slit. Lead-colored blood marred her shirt, her hands, had splashed up on her open-mouthed face, which was in full view. There was a pool of the gray blood surrounding her body, which had just been left exactly how it must have fallen.
I pulled my eyes away, unable to look at it any longer. My voice came out choked as I looked up at Michael instead. “Huh-her,” I said, answering his question about who was going to die with the picture and that one word.
Closing my eyes against the summer sun shining in through the windshield, I rested my head back against the leather seat, thankful that it felt cool against the back of my neck. I felt as though I’d stepped into a whirlwind I couldn’t find my way out of, and things were just spinning more and more out of control. Two drawings in less than one week. More people added to the list of those who knew my secret. The decision to infiltrate a dangerous cult led by a psychopathic creep. It suddenly seemed like too much.
“I know her,” Michael said.
My eyes popped open and I looked over at him. “What?” I asked.
He brought my drawing close to his face and studied it. Then he nodded once and pointed down at the page. “Yeah,” he said. “Crazy, right? She did a story about my poetry when I won the Young Poets Award at UMMS last year. She’s a reporter for the Kansas City Sun. Her name was…something Ross. Sandra…or Sydney…or Sara…something like that, but her last name was Ross.”
I looked down at the dead women, then back up at him. “You sh-sure?” I asked.
Michael’s lip curled back in distaste as he looked down at the paper again. “Well, when I met her she was…alive, so she wasn’t quite this…uh, gory, but yeah, that’s her. I’m pretty sure. I remember because it was the first and only time I’ve ever been interviewed by someone about my work. It was a pretty big deal for me. I still have the newspaper with the piece Ross wrote about my award.”
I nodded slowly, wondering at how everything in life always connected. What were the odds that Michael would know the victim in my drawing? Or the odds that he would be with me when I drew it? Or that Kayla and Kyle, the only friends I’d ever really had, should be involved with my other drawing? It was this running line of thoughts, of webbed connections that made me make my next leap. And my ever-reliable gut told me it was the right leap as soon as the words left my mouth.
“She’s duh-doing a story,” I mumbled. “On them. Guh-getting t-too close, so they k-k-kill her. All connected. It’s uh-all connected.” I let out a short laugh that probably sounded more crazy than amused. I was talking to myself more than to Michael, who’d I’d all but forgotten was beside me. It was all still a jumble, but it was slowly beginning to work itself out in my brain. I was the one getting closer. I just needed to figure stuff out, and do it quickly.
“You think the reverend will be behind this?” Michael asked, holding up the brown paper. “How’d you come to that conclusion? Are your drawings always connected?”
I shook my head in answer, not really able to concentrate on what he was saying. It was obvious my powers—if that’s what you wanted to call them—were getting stronger, and because of that the danger was growing as well. As I sat in Michael’s car that day, internalizing all the recent events, visualizing the way all the strings were entwined, and to where each of them led, I got the distinct feeling of being on a metaphorical chessboard, playing against a divine opponent, who not only knew the next fifty moves he would make, but what all my next moves would be as well. That’s the best way I can describe it.
More simply, I felt a little like I was losing my mind, when in reality, it was the rest of the world that had gone insane.
“Can you f-find her?” I asked Michael, pulling myself out of my musings.
Michael had been messing around on his cell phone while I was off in my head, and he turned the screen toward me now. It was a picture of the woman in my drawing, Sara Ross, smiling at what looked like was a company picnic or something. I looked at the website and saw that it belonged to the Kansas City Sun.
I snatched the phone from Michael’s hand, earning a chuckle from him. Scrolling down the screen, I saw that Sara Ross wrote a small section in The Sun that featured hometown stories, which made sense, when I thought about it. Ross had probably somehow come across information about Heaven’s Temple and thought there was story there. Maybe even a story that could make the career of a young reporter.
I handed Michael back his phone and held up the drawing of Ross with her throat slit. She was a pretty young women, with honey hair and kind eyes. Smart enough to sense something off about the Temple and Reverend Reynolds, but not experienced enough to know she was playing too close to the fire.
“What are we going to do?” Michael asked.
I rubbed my forehead. That was the million dollar question,
wasn’t it? Every instinct in me said the very fact that Ross was a reporter meant I should stay away from her. Far away. I wanted to have dealings with the press about as much as I wanted to have dealings with the government; not at all. Also, I had a dinner date that was getting closer with every passing minute, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. I didn’t have time to go concerning myself with some foolish reporter.
Then again, was I just supposed to let her die? I couldn’t, because if people deserved to die because of doing foolish things, I would surely be first on that list.
I sighed and folded up the drawing, replacing it in my pocket. “We wuh-warn her,” I said, speaking slowly to get the words out fluently. “It’s uh-all we can do.”
It’s all you’re willing to do, said that stupid little voice in my head. The one that was there for the sole purpose of making me feel guilty.
Michael’s warm hand cupped my cheek then, and he leaned over and placed the gentlest of kisses on my lips, settling my troubled soul, if only for a second. He held my face close, and in a voice hardly a whisper, he said, “It’s more than most would do, my love. So much more than most would do.”
