by Tim Pratt
“Except Bridget is dead,” Darrin said.
Nicholas didn’t answer, just swirled the liquor in his glass. After a while, he sighed. “Yeah, but she made her choice. Ismael doesn’t force people to do anything. He just helps them out.”
That wasn’t quite true, Darrin knew—Harczos had told him about Ismael’s ability to project his emotions, and about his occasional acts of outright murder. “What is Ismael doing now?” Darrin said. “I know he’s got some kind of plan, a plan B, since things with me fell through.”
“Sorry. I told you, that’s NDA territory. I didn’t sign anything, but let’s just say, me and him have an understanding.”
“Okay,” he said. “Now, Arturo.”
Arturo and Orville stepped in from the hallway, where they’d been lurking and listening, and crept up behind Nicholas’s chair. Arturo threw a rope around Nicholas and leaned back, pulling it tight, pinning Nicholas into the seat. Darrin walked over, avoiding Nicholas’s kicking feet, and he and Orville grabbed the arms of the chair and dragged it into the kitchen, where there was an entryway to the briarpatch Darrin had found after days of searching.
They dragged the chair through a shadow beside the refrigerator and on into the briarpatch. This place was close to the edge of a rocky promontory, beneath a black starless sky lit only by an aurora the colour of rainbows in an oil slick, and by the ruby glow of fires pulsing far below. The air reeked of something that wasn’t quite sulphur. Arturo tied the rope, throwing a few more loops around Nicholas to secure him in place. At first, Nicholas cursed at them, then went silent as Arturo, Darrin, and Orville all formed a semicircle before him. Bridget loomed up from the darkness, scowling at him. She’d never liked Nicholas, and he hadn’t given her a reason to change her mind.
“What, is this some Mafia-style bullshit?” Nicholas said, his face mostly shadowed. “I told you, I’m immortal now. You don’t scare me.”
“Let’s say you are immortal,” Darrin said. “Do you think it would hurt if we kicked your chair off this rock, to bounce down into that chasm, into the fire?”
“You wouldn’t do it in a million years,” Nicholas said, but his voice was fake-confident, a flavour of bravado Darrin had heard often over the years of their friendship.
“You conspired against me with Ismael. You fucked Echo in front of me. You knew she was a lying psychopath, and you didn’t tell me. The fact that you got me fired from my job is actually at the bottom of the list of bad shit you did to me. If I ever owed you anything, Nicholas, from friendship to brotherhood to goodwill, you burned through it. These are my friends now, Arturo and Orville and Bridget, and you’re my enemy. I will push you over if you don’t tell me everything you know about Ismael, about what he’s doing, and about where I can find him. Do you understand?”
Nicholas didn’t answer. Darrin went to the chair and put his foot against the base, shoving the chair a few inches closer to the precipice. Orville gasped, and Arturo shushed him. “I asked if you understood, Nicholas,” Darrin said. “Answer me, bro.”
“Yeah, shit, yeah, quit it!” Nicholas said. “Hell, I don’t owe Ismael anything now, I’ll help you out. Me and you go back, Darrin, there’s no need for this kind of crap.”
“Right,” Darrin said. “Now talk.”
Nicholas swallowed, then began. “These past months, while you’ve been gone, Ismael’s been making new friends. Taking on new students. Like, a few dozen of them. I mean . . . I guess you’d call it a cult. Ismael gave them all the same spiel he did Bridget—come to the briarpatch, get a glimpse of heaven, and all you have to do to live there forever is die. They’re all hard-core, true believers. They’re going to march out to the Golden Gate Bridge one morning and then jump, all at once, like massive tandem base-jumping, but with no parachutes.”
“Why?” Darrin said. “Is he just trying to, what, mass-produce transcendence?”
“Ismael has this idea. A theory. He thinks that so many souls tearing free of their bodies all at once might make, like, pinpricks in reality. See, imagine if a portal to the better world opens up underneath all of them at the same time. That’s a lot of passages all at once, like punching holes in a piece of construction paper with the tip of a pen. If you punch enough holes, you don’t have a piece of paper anymore, so much as a bunch of empty space with scraps of paper around it. Ismael thinks if he opens enough holes to the better world all at once, it’ll loosen reality so he’ll be able to pass through bodily. So he’ll jump from the bridge a moment after his followers do, and, he hopes, fall into the light after them.”
“And if it doesn’t work, he’ll just bounce away to safety in the briarpatch,” Darrin said.
“Pretty much,” Nicholas agreed.
Darrin pushed for more details, and Nicholas seemed genuinely eager to provide what he could. “Okay,” Darrin said at last. “One more thing. I need you to give a message to Ismael.”
3
“Ismael won’t believe us,” Bridget said. They were all lying belly-down on the ridge of a hill overlooking the compound below, trying to stay out of sight. Even Bridget had to keep a low profile; if Ismael had taught any of his new pupils to travel to and from the briarpatch, to perceive the hidden pathways of the world, then they might be able to see her, and a horde of angry cultists running up the hill toward them would really spoil their reconnaissance mission.
“Probably not.” Darrin peered through binoculars at the property below—Ismael’s “place in the country.” Darrin had sent Nicholas with a message: if Ismael would meet him peacefully, Darrin would take him to the better world. But Ismael would probably think it was a trick, even though Darrin meant it sincerely. Darrin hadn’t told Harczos his plan, for fear Harczos would try to stop him. That might still be a problem, but Darrin would deal with it when the time came.
Ismael had been a busy man during the months Darrin and the others had wandered the briarpatch. Having failed to get Darrin’s help achieving his goal, he was well on his way to enacting his backup plan. Darrin passed the binoculars to Arturo.
“I see maybe twenty-five, thirty people down there. Probably more in the buildings.” The old farm below was only a few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, on the Marin side, where—if you had enough money—you could experience rural peacefulness within sight of the lights of San Francisco.
“That could have been me,” Orville said, lying on his back and staring up at the sky. “If Ismael had been that organized when I first talked to him, I’d be down there getting excited about jumping off a bridge.”
“You gotta admit he has a good schtick,” Arturo said. “Most cult leaders have to get by on charisma and psychological tricks. Ismael can take his people by the hand and lead them to a no-shit, magical, other world. It must be pretty easy for him to convince them. And now he’s got them all down there, with their heads shaved, dressed in white. . . .”
“Taking away their individuality.” Bridget ran the zipper of her red coat up and down, up and down. “Making sure they’ve given up on their old lives. Brainwashing them. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened with me.”
“You’d think the cops would do somethin’ about it,” Arturo said.
Bridget shook her head. “They might start paying attention if he had hundreds of followers instead of fifty, or if they were selling drugs of stockpiling weapons. But California’s full of little communes and cults and compounds. Lots of new age types and hippies, and plenty of fringe religious groups too. It’s not illegal to be a weirdo, and cops around here tend to be careful about not trampling on religious rights. I doubt Ismael is talking about mass suicide in public, anyway. As far as anybody knows, they’re just looking for meaning in their lives. Like I was.”
“Even if Ismael does believe me, I’m not sure he’d leave these people behind,” Darrin said. Without the binoculars, Ismael’s cultists were just a handful of wh
ite specks moving around the ugly, functional buildings of the compound. They looked like sheep. “He thinks he’s helping them, taking them to the better world.” He shook his head. “I don’t even think his plan will work though. It’s crazy, right?”
Orville rolled over. “I don’t know. When I jumped from the bridge, and saw the light below me, it really did look like a portal opening up that I would pass through, you know? Multiply that by fifty or so. . . .”
Darrin grunted.
He had his doubts. His glimpse of the light had been an issue of perception, not a physical process at all. Maybe the force of dozens of people jumping all at once would tear apart reality more seriously, but it seemed like a long shot. But then, what did Ismael care? He’d spent months getting the group together, and he’d send them all to their deaths, but if it didn’t work the way he hoped, so what? He’d only wasted time, and time was one thing he had in ample measure. He wouldn’t regret the deaths of his followers . . . and neither would they, assuming they all made it safely through to the light. But it would still be a tragedy, as much as Jonestown, as much as Heaven’s Gate, a bunch of deluded people led away from their best interests at a madman’s behest.
“I doubt I could even get in to see him,” Darrin said.
“Nah,” Arturo said. “He’s got a couple guys at the gate, watchin’ the road. Maybe you could find a path through the briarpatch into the place, get to his inner sanctum or whatever, but who knows if those guys are armed? All it takes is one bullet and, bam, you bounce out to someplace in the briarpatch, who knows how deep?”
Darrin nodded. “But we know where he’s going, and when. Nicholas told us that much, and I doubt Ismael would change his plans just because we know about them. He’s got a brainwashed army down there, so what can we do to stop them?”
Ismael intended to march his people to the bridge in eight days, once the last of them was properly prepared. Nicholas had finally admitted that if Ismael succeeded in passing on to the better world, all the estates of the people committing suicide would be willed to Nicholas in a few months through a series of blind trusts. Nicholas was no better than a grave robber, and perilously close to an accessory to mass murder.
“Well, exactly,” Bridget said. “What can we do? Park the Wendigo outside their gates so they can’t get out? There are only four of us, and I’m not much good in a fight. You want to run up to Ismael when he leads the march and try to convince him you’re on the level, ask him to leave those people behind?”
Darrin sighed. “No. I have an idea. It sucks, and it’ll take just about all the time we have left to even try, but I can’t think of anything else.”
4
“So that’s the plan,” Darrin said after a few days of travel into the briarpatch. He sat uncomfortably on a rough wooden stool at the base of an equally rough wooden throne on a raised dais. A breeze blew through the white pavilion, carrying with it the smell of smoke and bears.
Echo sprawled in her high seat. “Huh. I’m not so clear on what’s in it for me. Things are pretty cushy here. Why leave?”
“Do you still hate Ismael?”
Echo laughed. “Does a bear shit in my throne room?”
Darrin glanced and sniffed around. The answer was definitively yes. “So help me for that reason. To ruin his plans. To get back at him.”
Echo looked at the ceiling and hummed thoughtfully. “But you want to let him go to the better world, right? I don’t want him to fulfil his life’s dream.”
“No, no,” Darrin said. He’d hated lying to Harczos, but had no qualms about doing so with Echo. “We’re going to tell him we’re taking him to the better world. But it’s a trick. We’ll tie him up and take him as deep in the briarpatch as we can and we’ll dump him. We’ll give him a fake map to the light of a better world and let him waste a few decades looking for it.” Darrin rooted around in his pack and came up with one of his thick sheaves of maps. “See? I already made the map.”
Echo clapped her hands. “Sounds fun, Darrin. When you can’t kill somebody or even really torture them much without them disappearing, I guess psychological torment’s the best you can do. I never knew you had this perverse streak. I would’ve made things between us a lot kinkier if I had. Okay. Me and the bears will be there. It’ll take us a few days to make the trip anyway. You mind if we take a few of the cultists back with us when we’re done? We can always use more recruits.”
Darrin hesitated. “What if I do mind?”
Echo shrugged. “I’ll do it anyway. I just won’t expect applause.”
He shook his head. “I won’t let you take people against their will. If that’s your price, I’ll find another way.” He stood up.
She rolled her eyes. “Sit down, Darrin. Don’t be a drama queen. Some of these people are ready to jump off a bridge from what you told me. I’m not looking for hostages. I’m looking for converts. If they want to come with me, willingly, what do you care?”
Darrin rubbed his eyes. “Echo, if you hurt them—”
She shook her head. “Why would I hurt them? I’m the mama bear here, Darrin. Any of my people can leave any time they want. But they like being here. They just want someone to be the leader. Just like Ismael’s little cultists do. At least I won’t convince them it’s a good idea to jump off a bridge.”
Darrin sighed. Echo seemed less sadistic since joining up with the bears, certainly, but he was under no illusions. He was dealing with a devil but she was his best chance to stop Ismael, who was a worse devil, if only by virtue of the fact that he’d be around causing trouble for centuries. Giving up a few people to Echo’s cult in order to save them from Ismael’s cult was hardly a clear win, but the alternative was worse. “Fine,” he said and had the surreal experience of shaking the hand of his old lover, the queen of the bears.
5
Ismael woke on the morning of the great leap with more than his usual amount of trepidation. I have allowed myself to hope, he thought. Thus, I am sure to be disappointed. He’d allowed himself to hope about Darrin too, and that had ended as badly as anything ever had.
Ismael emerged from his room and went down the stairs into his private dining room. His followers ate together in a converted barn, but Ismael preferred privacy. Nicholas was waiting for him at the table, wearing a suit of all things, even though they had a three mile hike in the pre-dawn air ahead of them. Ismael sat and took one of the croissants from the box Nicholas had brought.
“You think Darrin and his merry men are going to try to stop us?” Nicholas said.
Ismael shrugged. “We have them outnumbered. And you have your pistol. If Darrin approaches, shoot him in the chest. The briarpatch will lift him out of our way.”
Nicholas grimaced. “Sure. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to shoot at Darrin.”
“Mmm,” Ismael said, nibbling the pastry he didn’t have much of an appetite for. “Are my people gathered in the yard?”
“Yeah. Doing spontaneous calisthenics to clear their minds.”
“Good,” Ismael said. He’d always worried that trying to teach many people at once would be more difficult than single prospects, like Bridget and many others before her, but the opposite had proven true. Once you had a group of dedicated people, they created a normalizing atmosphere, and new recruits could be assimilated quickly. Limiting their food intake, reinforcing their places as part of a group—not as individuals—all the tried-and-true approaches of cult leaders worked well for him. But unlike Jim Jones or David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite, Ismael did have a true revelation, and could offer real salvation.
All these desperate people—runaways, recent divorcees and widows, disillusioned hippies, all the types susceptible to cults like this—wanted someone to show them miracles, and take responsibility for their lives. They’d all been across the bridge behind his shed, and seen their own corpses.
They’d all been to the scenic overlook, and seen the light. They knew what they were going toward. They were 47 empty vessels, waiting to be filled with light.
And, with luck, Ismael would be able to go with them. He imagined a serene pool of light appearing below him when they all jumped from the bridge, and Ismael himself falling down, and through, and finally into the light he’d so longed for.
And if it didn’t work, well, he’d try again, with a bigger group.
Ismael put down the pastry and rose. “It’s time.” Out in the courtyard, lit only by the light of the moon and stars, his people were gathered, dressed in their white clothes—no colours, and nothing they’d owned before—wearing simple walking shoes. “My people!” he shouted. “What will you do this morning?”
“Leap!” they shouted back, in one thunderous voice.
“How will you leap?”
“Headfirst!”
“Where will you land?”
“In a better world!”
“Let us go.” He began walking, with Nicholas by his side. The followers mostly didn’t like Nicholas, seeing him rightly as an outsider, but they understood he was the caretaker of worldly necessities, helping to keep them insulated from the miseries and indignities of the wider world. They’d signed all their possessions and estates over to a trust, which Nicholas administered, keeping the farm running. Someone had to tend to worldly matters, at least until they managed to leave that world behind. . . .
The electric gates swung open, and Ismael led his people up the compound’s long driveway toward the road to the bridge. The lights of San Francisco twinkled in the distance like earthbound stars.
