In disbelief, she went back the way she came and pulled at the garage door. It wouldn’t budge. She slapped an opened palm across the window in anger, calling Stu’s name. Inside, tiny orange pipe embers burned out the darkness, revealing the faint outline of a face behind it.
“Stu, what the fuck?” she screamed out.
A young man dressed in overalls and carrying a toolkit appeared behind her. Melanie saw him reflected in the window.
“Miss,” he said, “is there a problem?”
“Only with your boss,” she said. “I need that gate unlocked.”
The young guy stared at her, gawking.
Melanie glanced through the window and saw the hot outline of Stu’s craggy face disappearing into the black. With the next puff, his nose and lips glowed again, only now there were others standing on either side of him. Half of their faces emblazoned by the pipe. They watched without expression.
“Just let me get out of here.” She was angry and without patience.
The kid went to the gate and she followed. “Sorry about that, miss.”
“It’s not your fault. But your boss is a prick.”
“Between you and I…” He leaned into the window as she got back behind the wheel and lowered his voice along with his stance. “…he’s not exactly a fan.”
“Great. Then he won’t be bothering me for my autograph.”
“He thinks you’re out to make a name for yourself.”
“Perfect.”
“Don’t worry, miss, I did all the work on your car so you’re in good shape. I just, uh, wouldn’t be spending any more time here than you need to.”
“I appreciate it.” Melanie offered the warmest smile her mood would allow—a faint uptick at the corners of her mouth. Then she slammed the pedal and left Stu’s Garage in the dust. It was the kind of recklessness Trish Brady would’ve approved of.
She called Nate from the road, curious to know how he was going to go about proving Hoyt’s death, but there was no answer. The next call was to Forest Grove P.D., where they encouraged her to come by and wait for his return.
That was the safest option considering every minute here revealed someone else that hated her. But she was feeling rebellious now. Hearing that you’re someone’s inspiration had that effect, and Melanie guessed that her relationship with Trish was more than a little symbiotic. Now that they were both fighting their own fights, Melanie wanted to go at it a little harder. Otherwise, all of this was for nothing.
Concussion be damned.
It was probably a terrible decision, but she headed for Last Mile Gas. If Trish could fly in the face of an entire community, collecting signatures to reverse a ruling that had gone uncontested by the people of Forest Grove, Melanie wasn’t going to be the one who got scared off.
Yeah, but no one’s tried killing Trish Brady.
She pulled into the parking lot, thinking that there was enough daylight to accomplish what she wanted. Hopefully, Jed was around and would answer a few more questions. The place remained quiet and closed—likely because Jed was gone. It got her thinking about Desiree, and if the old woman had been killed last night. Was Nate just trying to marginalize her shock as much as possible by keeping it from her?
How chivalrous.
It was obvious that Jed wasn’t here. She threw the car into drive, ready to leave, when an eighteen wheeler pulled off the road and rolled to a stop behind her. She couldn’t see the cab’s windshield from her rearview, but remembered the old man mentioning a small stream of loyal patrons.
The truck’s horn blared and she jumped at the noise. Melanie climbed out of her car and walked toward the cab on hesitant feet, the horn blaring for a second time.
The cab’s power window dropped and a man wearing a salt and pepper beard leaned out. “You’re a welcome sight from the rough old grump who usually pumps my gas.” The smile fell off his face. “Wait, nothing happened to him, did it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t work here. I’m just trying to figure out where he is myself.”
“Well shit, I’ve got to be in Stamford by one and I’m not making very good time.”
She pointed to the house. “I was just about to see if he didn’t run back there for some reason. Kind of in desperate need of a filler up,” and to drive her motive home she added, “and I’d sort of like to make sure Jed’s okay myself.”
The driver killed the truck’s engine, took off his mesh CAT: Diesel Power hat and tossed it aside. “Sure, I’ve got some time. Otherwise, I’m headed to town to try to find another pump and I don’t know these backwater sticks so well. No offense.”
“Believe me, none taken. I’ll go check the house if you want to wait here.”
“Shouldn’t I come with you? What if something’s wrong and the guy broke a hip? Who’s going to help him, you?”
His sexism was charming. Melanie decided she didn’t need the pleasure of his company, and instead suggested he check the garage. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Works for me.”
Melanie smiled and headed off. When she neared the overgrowth leading up to the house, it became too easy to picture Hoyt waiting in the woods around here. She turned and called out for the trucker.
He came around the corner and lit a cigarette.
“Be careful,” she said, “there’s been some weird stuff happening. If you could just…well, don’t lose sight of me.”
“Fair enough,” he said and walked until he was dead center between the garage and the woods. “I’ll smoke this right here, and you’ll never leave my sight.”
Great.
She hurried off, thinking it was good having him here in case there was a repeat of yesterday. She was dumb for doing this, and wouldn’t have bothered at all if not for the arrival of company. There was a driving need to know what happened to Jed—and to know what he was talking about before Sam’s interruption.
Nobody came to the door, so she circled the house and peeked through whatever windows she could reach. The place was lifeless. The backyard matched the front and Melanie pushed through neglected overgrowth, forcing her way toward a dilapidated shack at the back of the property.
It sat open-faced and was edged into a cove of Douglas-firs. She peered inside and hoped the old man hadn’t had some kind of heart attack. The thing was deeper than it looked; its walls lined with old and rusted farm implements. Boxes were stacked floor-to-ceiling, each one marked with a year—plenty to pique her curiosity.
She pulled the top box—1979—onto her shoulder and struggled to guide it to the ground without dropping it. Before opening the flaps, she lifted onto the tips of her toes to make sure the trucker was still there. A puff of smoke drifted into the sky overhead where he would’ve been and she took a deep breath.
The box was stuffed with credit card slips and invoices from 1979. Last Mile Gas looked like it cleaned up in the days before downtown development. She thumbed her way through until finding a familiar name on an invoice: Peter Dugan.
He bought the property back in ’78, and worked for nearly a decade on bringing the grounds up to snuff. Spent an entire year landscaping. Then he tackled the cabin interiors. The exteriors. Dugan owned other businesses so the restoration process had been slow.
She brushed aside the box and looked for an older one. Probably a goose chase, but she shuffled the stacks until the 1969 box was retrievable.
“Where you at?” The trucker called from the top of his lungs.
“Be right down,” she shouted.
She yanked the box into the open and a coat of dust kicked up into her face. She rubbed her eyes and sneezed while leafing through the landfill of papers inside. This was the closest she’d come to—anything.
It was true that her wellbeing was at stake but the urge to run was, for the first time in her life, on equal footing with her desire to stay. As much as she longed for the idea of sharing a bed with her cat, she was tired of being the victim. Hated the way it felt and while
she wanted to run, there was a good book here somewhere—an untold story.
A new career dangling just outside of her reach.
She flipped through every paper, leaving the useless ones in a stack on her left. They were flimsy, yellowed, and mostly faded. Grocery and garage invoices smudged beneath her fingers as she searched.
She was halfway through the pile when she found it: An itemized carbon invoice addressed to Camp Forest Grove. She stared at it as if it were a mirage. A two thousand dollar order consisting of canned items, meats, cheeses, water, bread and basic medical supplies. Back when this place was apparently called Last Mile Gas & Convenience. The invoice was dated March 16, 1969 and Melanie knew at once that it was exactly what she needed.
The name atop the invoice was Tullus Abblon, and it was made out to something called The Church of the Obviate.
Her eyes widened as the plot thickened.
Now she had a name.
THE HALL OF THE ARRIVAL
1968
Something was wrong.
Zohra didn’t know what, because no woman was allowed to visit the Hall of the Arrival.
That’s what they were calling it now that construction was complete. It took a little over one calendar year, and the going had been slow. They gathered materials on a shoestring budget, and the Elder had to loan brothers and sisters out as weekend labor in order to trade for what they needed.
Those who weren’t on loan were not content to wait around, and instead took shovels and pickaxes to the earth, loosening and digging out a basement beside the master cabin. They got ten feet deep and fashioned a small makeshift ladder to help with their ascents. Then they used a crude pulley system to remove buckets of rock and soil as they worked. Eventually, contractors from Forest Grove arrived and laid down a proper concrete slab.
Seasons came and went as the men built the framework for an expansion to the existing bunkhouse. In the winter, when the ground froze, they stayed warm and grew their numbers.
Zohra went on a university tour with Brother Peter during the winter semester. Instead of using the church’s transportation, they hitchhiked all the way to up New Haven and made the collective rounds. She and Peter were on the younger side, so they could infiltrate campuses as students. They convinced two teenage boys and a twenty-something girl to repent and submit, hitchhiking back with them after nearly two months away.
She spent the rest of the winter cobbling thicker tunics for the colder months, and the Elder worked hard to convert their latest devotees.
All men were required to work toward the completion of the Hall of the Arrival, and their usual responsibilities were handed off to the women. Zohra trekked into town for the essential supplies. It was a task she came to dread, because that kind-eyed officer that had thrown her and Jessica out of town was sometimes there. On more than one occasion, she ran into him gassing up his car or enjoying coffee and donuts.
It was not her place to complain, however, considering the Elder once wrangled edible garbage from restaurant dumpsters as their only source of sustenance. He finally acquiesced that Christ’s devout soldiers deserved better, allowing the purchase of basic goods and supplies.
While Zohra’s double duty was shopping, Jessica led the parish in nightly prayer, taking on a teacher’s responsibility. If the girl remained conflicted after a shaky first year, she kept all misgivings to herself.
At first thaw, the men went back to work, drilling and chiseling around the clock. The main cabin bunk became a housing quarters divided into five rooms with two gigantic living areas—one for men and the other for women. There was a much smaller hideaway for the three children living with them, and the center offered a spacious area dedicated to nightly prayer and assembly. The home had been outfitted with an indoor dining area for the harshest weather, and a small storage room off of it.
The Elder would not answer questions about the Hall of the Arrival. One night at dinner, Jessica asked when the women might have an opportunity to see the fruits of their labors. The Elder’s eyes, usually empathetic, were glassy orbs of indifference.
“When we are strong enough to resist.”
The women exchanged glances and it was Zohra who dared taking the question one step further. “To…resist? What are you resisting, Elder? Do we not face mortal challenges together?”
“Even now we are tested,” he said. “Your flesh tempts us all.”
The Elder dined with his assembly every night, but the conversation—once so jovial and inviting—was now segmented and uncomfortable. The women attempted to reflect upon the day’s hardships but the men had no interest in contributing. They ate in silence, steel silverware scraping against plates. When finished, they disappeared back beneath the earth and were gone for the night.
Occasionally, the Elder would surface for nightly lecture, even though his punctuality was sporadic. It fell to Jessica to take his place much more often than not. When he did show, his sermons were nothing more than reiterations of oft-studied bible passages. The passion was gone from his voice, leaving tired monotone in its place.
After one of Jessica’s sermons, she took Zohra by the arm while the rest of the assembly shuffled back to their bunks in quiet confusion. Her eyes were distressed. “Something troubles me, sister.”
Just one thing? Zohra suggested they talk outside.
Clear of prying ears, Jessica said, “You and Peter came back from New Haven with three recruits. Two boys and a girl. We’ve seen the men sup at night. But where is the girl?”
“Resistant to change, maybe? It’s not easy to leave your corrupted life behind. You of all people should understand that, sister.”
“So that’s it? You think she is simply being reconditioned? For three months?”
“I will admit that it would be a most extreme example. But what else could have happened to her?”
“I don’t know, sister. Maybe she ‘tempted’ them.”
When Zohra went back inside, she overheard some men talking about the Hall of the Arrival. Originally, they were digging beneath the lake, but found the soil loose and unworkable. The tunnels they wanted couldn’t be sustained so they turned inward and burrowed beneath the forest instead. Work progressed and the men lined the walkways with overhead shoring that supported the earth’s weight above them. Something about running corrugated galvanized steel sheets along the ceiling, supported by 2x12 lumbers.
According to these brothers, they were far enough down to begin widening the tunnels into a subterranean layer of worship when they found it.
Something.
They discussed this in hushed voices. When a woman neared, they moved from earshot. Their behavior was odd, and grew stranger with every passing day. They worked in rotating shifts and soon the Elder stopped surfacing entirely. Dinners were drenched in uncomfortable silence. Men wouldn’t look at the opposite sex while they ate, and when they weren’t eating, they only slept or worked.
Women found it difficult to sleep at night. Construction sounds were constant. Breaking rocks, shuffling soil, various grunts, and other ambient signs of physical toil echoed without end. They did not dare complain, though. Nor did they dare speak about it. Until the fear they shared grew too large to ignore.
Zohra woke one morning to find the men moving new materials into the basement, passing wood and tools hand-to-hand in an effort to get them down through the trapdoor with efficiency.
Their faces were as cold as the Elder’s, and stained with so much dirt and grime that they couldn’t have been cleaned in days. Hands were blistered and bloodied as if they’d been worked to death and beyond. As they passed wooden beams from one set of hands to the next, Brother Peter packed the supply closet with shotguns and rifles.
That was the last time any of them had been seen.
They weren’t coming up to sleep anymore. Instead, chanting and singing joined the evening chorus of rigorous labor. The women awoke in nightly cold sweats, launching up from beneath their covers in unison. Their hearts
pounded so hard they could hear each other’s.
Rest was harder to come by. They tossed and turned while insane laugher floated up through the hole in the hallway.
Because of this, Zohra’s latest resupply trip was a welcome one. She took the van down the road to Last Mile Gas & Convenience, compelled to abandon the Obviate entirely.
And where will you go?
Zohra watched the young cashier pack the water and bread into a large box when she saw Kind Eyes in the parking lot.
His patrol car sat at the filling station and he was moseying her way as she pulled open the door, wrestling with the box of groceries in her arms.
“Let me help you with that,” Kind Eyes insisted.
“I can manage,” she said, “I always do.”
“Hey, at least they’re not making you walk around barefoot anymore.”
Zohra didn’t appreciate the mockery. Last time she had seen him, it had been all “hey, is this your van? You’re trading up!” She stomped past him with a huff and the officer darted after her. They had nothing to talk about, though that did not stop him from grasping at straws.
“I’m sorry if that was rude. I only thought you could use a hand loading your van.”
This kind of interaction—friendly and superfluous—was forbidden by the Elder. The policeman was being nice but that was a luxury she didn’t need. Or want. “Apology accepted, sir.”
“Say, I don’t suppose you’d want to tell me all about your religion? I, uh, noticed you and yours haven’t been around town much. Guess you took it to heart when I said you couldn’t be running around bothering folks. I felt a little guilty about that.”
“You should. We weren’t bothering anyone.”
“I’m trying to help you.”
“Let me guess, you think we’re all a bunch of wackos out there, right?”
“You’re not. I can tell just by looking at you. Maybe you got dealt a bad hand, I don’t know. But you’re not like the rest of them.”
Under The Blade Page 17
