After the Fire

by Will Hill

  “I’ll write to you,” she says. “There are still some things I want to ask you, once we aren’t being supervised.”

  I think back to what I whispered in her ear, during the first SSI session I took part in, and smile at her. She grins right back.

  “And you can come and visit me,” she continues. “When they let you out.”

  “I’d like that,” I say. “You’ll have to ask your uncle though.”

  She grins. “He’ll say yes,” she says. “I know he will. He sent me a picture of his house. It’s huge.”

  “He must have done well for himself.”

  “I think he’s rich,” she says. “I didn’t quite understand what he does for a living, something to do with hedges, I think, but whatever it is must pay him a lot of money.”

  “It’s going to be great,” I say. “I know you’re going to be happy.”

  She nods, then her smile fades. “So are you, you know,” she says. “When you get out of here you can go wherever you want. You can do anything.”

  I nod.

  “We survived, Moonbeam,” she says. “You have to remember to be happy about that.”

  I laugh. “So wise.”

  She narrows her eyes. “I’m serious,” she says. “Promise me you’ll remember.”

  “I promise,” I say.

  She leans forward and hugs me, her arms tight around my ribs, and I hug her back with all my strength and I smile, because she’s right. We did survive.

  Both of us – all of us – left some of ourselves in the fire, but we made it out.

  We’re still here.

  The door opens and Agent Carlyle and Doctor Hernandez walk into Interview Room 1. They sit down in their usual chairs and both men smile at me as Agent Carlyle sets a thick folder down on the desk in front of him.

  “Good morning, Moonbeam,” he says. “All good?”

  I smile. “Maybe seventy per cent good?”

  “Not bad,” he says. “How’s the hand?”

  The bandages finally got taken off yesterday afternoon. There are shiny ridges on my fingers and loops of white scar tissue on my palm and the new skin is bright pink, like a baby’s. Nurse Harrow seemed really pleased though, and kept telling me it could have been worse, could have been a lot worse.

  I guess she’s probably right.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “It feels like the skin has been stretched too far, but it’s okay.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he says. “Now, I’ve been authorized to provide you with some information, but only if you want to hear it. You’re allowed to say no.”

  Cold trickles through me, a sensation that almost makes me feel nostalgic. “About my mom?” I ask.

  Doctor Hernandez shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, Moonbeam,” he says. “This is regarding Father John.”

  An involuntary shudder runs through me and I grimace. I hate the fact that even just the mention of his name is still capable of provoking a physical reaction in me. It’s probably been two or three days since I last thought about him, maybe even a week, because I’ve been making a conscious effort not to let him into my mind, but he loomed so large over the lives of the people I called my Family that I know I’ll never be totally rid of him. At least his voice, which I thought for a while was going to torment me for ever, has fallen silent.

  “What about him?” I ask.

  “I told you he was being investigated for a long time before the fire at The Lord’s Legion compound,” says Agent Carlyle. “That investigation is still ongoing, and it’s likely to be at least another year before it’s completed and submitted to the Justice Department. However, my Section Chief has authorized me to share the first draft of the headline summary with you, if you want to hear it.”

  “What does it say?” I ask.

  “Most of the information won’t be news to you,” he says. “But it does describe some of what he did and who he was before he arrived in Layton County. You told us that everyone was forbidden from speculating about that period of his life, so I thought you might be interested in hearing the truth.”

  “I am,” I say instantly. “Tell me.”

  Doctor Hernandez smiles as Agent Carlyle opens the folder.

  “John Parson,” he says. “Born March twenty-third 1971 in Modesto, California, to Charles and Laurie Parson. They divorced in 1974 and as far as we can tell Parson’s mother raised him largely on her own. Pretty unremarkable childhood, average high school transcripts, a couple of misdemeanour cautions for underage drinking and DUI, no record of any college attendance. In 1990 he was co-signatory on an apartment lease in Echo Park, in east Los Angeles. No tax returns have ever been filed that match his social security number, so we can’t be certain how he made a living during his time in LA, but a number of Parson’s known associates from that period told us he was at least an occasional musician, playing club gigs for cash. It was also around this time, according to their statements, that he started using and dealing heroin. Do you know—”

  “I know what heroin is,” I say.

  “You told us that one of Father John’s favourite sermon topics was the evils of addiction,” says Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod.

  “And he believed prescription drugs were tools of The Serpent.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  He gives me a smile, and writes quickly in one of his notebooks.

  “Parson was arrested by the LAPD in the summer of 1992,” says Agent Carlyle. “He pled guilty to possession with intent to distribute and was sentenced to three years in state prison, two of them suspended. He served three months.”

  I frown. “Why so little?”

  “Overcrowding,” he says. “It was a non-violent crime, so they let him out when they needed his cell for someone worse. It’s pretty common. But it wasn’t long before he was back inside anyway. The following May he cracked a neighbour’s head open with a baseball bat and was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He did eight years in Kern Valley, broke probation ten days after being released, and went back inside for nine more months. His penal records show that it was during this last stretch that he started taking Bible study classes, and announced that he had been born again. I talked to his block captain from that time and he said nobody bought it for a single second. It was, and I quote, ‘bullshit, pure and simple’.”

  “Why would he pretend?” I ask.

  “Judges have a tendency to look kindly on criminals who find God in prison and claim to have seen the error of their ways,” says Agent Carlyle. “Not all of them, not by any means, but a decent number. And when you’re a double felon who broke probation last time you were released, anything is worth a try.”

  “Desperate people do desperate things,” says Doctor Hernandez. “I’d think you would understand that better than most.”

  No shit.

  I nod.

  “Whether it was a true-blue conversion or whether it was bullshit is something we’re not likely to ever know for certain,” says Agent Carlyle. “But either way, Parson clearly decided to stick with it. In 2002 he joined a splinter group of the Seventh Day Adventists called The Lambs of God and moved out to their compound in Nevada. He stayed for almost two years, until he was forced to leave. Former members have told us that Parson denounced the group’s leader as a servant of the Devil and tried to overthrow him.”

  “Sound familiar?” asks Doctor Hernandez.

  I nod, and give him a tight smile.

  “Amos Andrews apparently left Nevada with him,” says Agent Carlyle, turning the pages in his folder. “After that, there’s no record of either of their movements until after they arrived at The Lord’s Legion. I don’t think we need to go over the rest of it again.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so either.”

  Agent Carlyle smiles.

  “So he was exactly what my mom said,” I say. “A snake-oil salesman.”

  He nods. “She had him pegged,” he says. “She saw right through him.” />
  “Shame nobody else did,” I say.

  Neither man responds, but I can’t blame them. There’s nothing to say to that.

  “Thank you for telling me,” I say, when it becomes clear that it’s going to be down to me to break the silence. “I appreciate it.”

  Agent Carlyle nods. “You’re welcome.”

  “Do you want to continue with this session?” asks Doctor Hernandez. “You can go back to your room if you need time to think about what you’ve heard.”

  I shake my head. “I’m good,” I say, because I’ve spent more than enough time in that room. “Tell me what’s going on outside.”

  Doctor Hernandez sits back in his chair as Agent Carlyle launches into a long story about how he got called into his daughter’s school because she corrected one of her English teachers and the school is trying to suspend her. I listen, and I nod and smile in the right places, but my mind is somewhere else.

  I’m thinking about Father John, about how so many people could have their lives ruined and ended because they placed their Faith in a man about as far from Holy as it’s possible to be. And although a little bit of me is proud that I saw through him in the end, most of me is just thinking about what a waste it all was.

  What a terrible, pointless waste.

  I’m the last one, now. I’m all that’s left.

  A couple from Houston came to collect Jeremiah this morning. I saw them waiting in the lobby as Nurse Harrow escorted me to Interview Room 1, standing nervously by the reception desk with a bag full of toys clutched in their hands and shiny hope on their faces. They’ve been to see Jeremiah half a dozen times over the last couple of weeks, but I hadn’t seen them until today. They looked like nice people.

  Doctor Hernandez let me out of our session for five minutes to say goodbye to Jeremiah. He gave me a hug in the corridor and I hugged him back and told him to be good. He said he’d try and I told him I guessed that would have to do and he laughed and hugged me again. There was still something behind his eyes that I didn’t like, a remnant of the harm that was done to him, like a bruise nobody can see, but as he let one of the nurses take his hand and lead him into the lobby to meet his new family, I was able to just about convince myself that he’ll be all right, in time.

  I hope he will be, him and all the others.

  Including myself.

  In twenty-three days I will turn eighteen and officially be an adult. On that day I become legally responsible for myself, which doesn’t sound quite as scary as it once did.

  The investigation into The Lord’s Legion – just like Agent Carlyle predicted – is not going to result in charges being brought against any of its juvenile members, including me. What I did inside the Big House has been recorded and filed away and nothing is going to happen about it. I don’t know whether they’ve decided not to believe what I told them or whether it’s been marked down as self-defence or whether they’ve just concluded they don’t have enough evidence to prosecute me, but for whatever reason, it’s done.

  It’s over.

  Agent Carlyle wasn’t able to tell me himself – the initial conclusions were issued on a day when he was in Dallas and he didn’t want me to have to wait until he got here to find out – so Doctor Hernandez gave me the news.

  I cried for about half an hour. Not because I was sad, or even because I was happy, but because I was relieved. It felt like the end of something, as though I might – might – be able to finally look towards whatever is ahead of me, rather than back over my shoulder. Because what comes next has started to occupy more and more of my thoughts.

  About a week ago Doctor Hernandez told me that I will be allowed to leave the George W. Bush Municipal Center – if I want to, that is – on my birthday. There are a whole lot of meetings I have to attend – about money and rent and ID and dozens of other things – before they let me go and I’ll have to check in with his office in Austin once a week, but once I’m out, I can go wherever I want.

  I don’t have the slightest clue where that might be, but I guess I’ll work it out.

  I guess I’ll have to.

  There are three days left till my birthday.

  My morning sessions are every other day now, and there’s no SSI any more because there’s nobody left for me to have supervised interaction with. I can tell Nurse Harrow that I need to see Doctor Hernandez and he’ll normally knock on my door within an hour, or call if he’s gone back to Austin, but I try not to; he invested so much of himself in me and my Brothers and Sisters, devoted so much time to us all, that it seems only fair that he starts to get at least some of his life back.

  Agent Carlyle is gone. He told me his boss had given him a three-month leave of absence, which seemed like the decent thing to do. His family must have missed him in those long, dark days after the fire, when he spent pretty much every waking minute either here or in the smouldering ruins of The Base. Especially his daughter, who is only four months younger than me; he told me several times that I would like her, and I’m sure I would. He gave me his card before he hugged me for the last time and said goodbye, and told me not to hesitate to call him if I ever need anything. I thanked him, and told him I would, but I don’t think I will. I think he’s done enough.

  They both have.

  Most of the time my door isn’t locked any more. I can’t leave the secure unit, and they still lock me in at night, but during the day I can pretty much come and go as I please. There’s a library near the Group Therapy rooms that I sometimes go and sit in. Most days I go outside and walk around the yard. But I still spend most of my time in my room.

  I’ve stopped drawing. The house and the cliffs and the water were something I could turn to when I needed them, something I could hold onto that was mine. They served their purpose. Doctor Hernandez suggested I keep a diary, so I tried for about a week, but I didn’t take to it.

  I don’t need to write down the things that happened to me, the things I’ve seen. They’re burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.

  Nurse Harrow says “Happy birthday” to me as she opens my door just before ten o’clock. She didn’t say it when she brought in my breakfast, but somebody must have told her in the meantime and it’s really nice of her so I’m not going to say anything.

  I smile and follow her into the corridor and automatically turn left towards Interview Room 1. But she turns right, towards the lobby and the canteen and the Group Therapy room. We never go that way any more, not since Jeremiah left.

  I ask her what’s going on but she doesn’t answer, which is also weird. Nurse Harrow has been kind to me since the day I arrived, and I can’t think of any reason why she would suddenly just start ignoring me. I walk beside her in silence and with each step I put my feet down a little heavier than usual, so the sound of them thudding into the plastic floor tiles echoes down the corridor. I know she notices, but she still doesn’t say anything.

  We round the corner and I see Doctor Hernandez standing in front of the Group Therapy room door. He smiles at me as Nurse Harrow turns back, and I walk the rest of the way to meet him on my own.

  “Good morning, Moonbeam,” he says. He’s standing very upright and there’s something oddly formal in his voice. “Happy birthday.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “Everything okay?”

  He nods. “Everything’s fine,” he says. “I’m sorry for the change in routine, but there’s something I need you to see.”

  “All right,” I say. “What is it?”

  He gestures towards the door. “Wait in there,” he says. “While you do, I want you to think about what today means, and I want you to make sure your mind is open. Remember that I’m right out here if you need me.”

  I frown. “What’s going on?”

  Doctor Hernandez shakes his head. “I’m right out here,” he repeats, and opens the door. I walk through it, bracing myself for whatever is waiting for me, but the room I came to know really well over the last few months is almost empty. The tables and sofas are go
ne, as are the boxes of toys and piles of paper and tubs of crayons. Two plastic chairs facing each other in the centre of the room are all that’s left.

  I turn back to ask Doctor Hernandez what this is all about, my frown deepening, but the door is closed.

  I’m on my own.

  I walk slowly towards the chairs, wondering if this is some last part of Doctor Hernandez’s process that I don’t understand, like a final test to decide whether they should actually let me out of here or not. I hear the door open again behind me and I turn towards it, my increasing annoyance clear in my voice as I speak.

  “I don’t know what you want me to—”

  Everything stops.

  My body turns as hard as concrete and as heavy as lead and all the clocks stop ticking and the world stops spinning through space because my mom is standing in the doorway.

  She has a hand over her mouth and there are tears in her eyes and she’s looking right at me and I can’t move and I can’t even think because it’s my mom, it really is, I’m sure of it, and the first thought that manages to take shape in my mind, the only thought, is that I must be dreaming, because nothing else makes sense.

  She looks much older than the last time I saw her, like she’s aged a lot more than she should have in the three years that have passed since she was Banished; her hair has streaks of grey in it and her skin is pale and there are lines around her neck and across her forehead, but the eyes – her eyes – are the same.

  We stare at each other, the distance between us as vast as the widest ocean. Memories and emotions crash against each other, pain and relief and anger and grief and joy flooding through me in a torrent that I can’t process, can’t swallow down, and I can’t do anything other than try to breathe and hope I survive.

  She takes a step towards me and I’m suddenly sure I’m going to faint, going to crumple to the floor in a heap. The voice in the back of my head shouts that I’m stronger than this, that I didn’t make it through everything I made it through just to fall apart at the last minute, and I know it’s right. I answer it with a silent scream that reverberates through my skull, and my head clears and feeling returns to my legs and I stand still as my mom comes towards me, as slowly and carefully as if she were approaching a wild animal.