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I keep my dislike for the pure/impure dynamic forced on women to myself. “Did he tell you a last name at all?”
“Pastor, my name is Gwen Proctor. I’m a private investigator, looking to follow up on the disappearance of a young man named Remy Landry. He was a member of your church, and—” He hangs up on me.
It’s just a message board, I tell myself. Old-school tech that predates modern social media by a decade. Used by old losers like me. It ought to be harmless.
Because just being an innocent wife of a monster, a victim in and of herself, isn’t an option. You started it, asshole. You hated her hard enough to come across the country to torment her.
The message spelled out in black slide-in letters says BEHOLD! I COME QUICKLY! and I have to snort-laugh at the double meaning that was probably unintentional. This doesn’t look like a place that has a sly sense of humor, at least not at Jesus’s expense.
I channel the woman I used to be, back when my name was Gina Royal: hesitant, uncertain, submissive. I change my body language. I thicken my voice and make it more timid. “Please. I really need his help!”
I’m reading him the second I see him. He fits the southern-pastor profile: dark hair swept back in a stiff style that hasn’t been popular anywhere else since the 1980s, milk-pale skin, a sober dark-blue suit. No tie, but then, he’s not at the pulpit today, so this must be his version of Casual Friday. He seems to be genuinely welcoming, if a little frustrated at staying late.
He looks like I’ve punched him, and his eyes go so wide I can see white all around. He’s scared. That’s a surprise. Somehow I’d expected him to be aggressive.
She has an accent, but it isn’t from Tennessee. Sounds more northern states to me. Maybe even as far as Maine or Vermont.
I spot Carol because she’s sitting close to a group of Amish or Mennonite travelers; the women are in neat, long dresses with aprons and bonnets, the men in uncomfortable-looking square suits with beards bristling down over their starched shirts.
Carol has big, dark eyes. Doe eyes. I can see why a young college-age man would be so drawn to her; there’s a real vulnerability there, a fragility that would appeal to someone who has an instinct for protection. And predators, I think. Melvin would have loved her. Just as I appealed to him, coming to him as an innocent girl fresh from a religious home. Looking at this young woman, I see myself, and I want to shake her and scream at her to wake up.
Chillingly, she’s heavily marked the passages that have to do with the subjugation of women, with the note memorize.
This is a King James Version Bible. She’s not Catholic. She’s some flavor of Protestant, apparently. And Protestant churches have pastors, not priests or fathers.
“Women especially. We had no say in anything. Not even in ourselves.” She’s talking around something dreadful, I can tell that from the tension in her body, as if she’s tiptoeing along a cliff’s edge.
Vulnerable, no self-worth . . . ideal for a cult. Though she probably hadn’t brought them much material wealth, being accepted and feeling loved would have made her loyal. It was a minor miracle she’d broken free, actually. Most people don’t leave until things get so bad they just can’t excuse it anymore, they’re rescued . . . or they die.
She plays vulnerable with great skill. But she’s not vulnerable. Not where it counts. There’s an iron to her that shows only in flashes, and quickly vanishes beneath the camouflage.
“Like Wolfhunter?” Wolfhunter had been a toxic tangle, but at the rotten heart of it had been a nasty cult, with a cruel philosophy of oppressing women. Chattel. Carol had said that. Most of the cult was dead; the leader, I’d heard, had gotten away. But surely that wasn’t the same cult that Carol meant. As far as I knew, it hadn’t been recruiting openly like this one.
“Officer, my name is Gwen Proctor—” “I know what your name is,” she snaps. “You have the right to stay silent, and you’d best use it.”
Gwen’s not easily fooled, or easily manipulated. This Carol must have been really, really good to pull it off.
“You realize that the story’s about to break that she’s been arrested for assault, right? The circumstances will be gas on a bonfire. The fact that a young woman accused Gwen of holding her prisoner—”
Javier is a good friend, a good dude and retired marine; he calls me Chair Force, and I call him Jarhead, and we’re still brothers in arms in every sense.
Vee is one messed-up kid. I care about her, but . . . there’s no denying how much baggage she carries. She had problems even before her mom’s death, and I can’t imagine that made things better. I don’t want Lanny caught up in her drama.
“It’s fine,” Vee says to Lanny. “Not that I don’t like your bed.” She winks, and I open my mouth to ask how many times that’s happened, but then I think better of it. Lanny’s face has blotched scarlet, and she looks deeply shocked that Vee’s said that in front of me.
She faces me again. “What if I told you ol’ Vern ran off to join up with Father Tom?”
Not enough coffee in the world for this day.
That cannot be a coincidence. But why the hell would they hire us to investigate Remy if they’d actually taken him? Because they know we’re not going to find him. They want to find Carol. Holy shit. We’ve been played. Carol knew someone would come looking.
Vernon Carr. I remember him vividly: a bitter, lean old man who wasn’t above kidnapping, abusing, and murdering women. He’d had his own little cult out there. Creepy.
I shout, “What did I just say?” I never yell at my kids, never, and I see both of them flinch and it makes me heartsick, but they move.
She’s trying so hard to be the adult right now. She’s scared to death, and she’s holding on to Vee for support.
“Fact is, you live ’round here, Ms. Proctor. You’re our neighbor. They’re strangers come in to do you harm.” He smiles. It’s cold, and I see the predator under the friendly disguise.
Please, Sam, I pray, in the quiet moments between questions. Please stay alive. Please watch over our son. I know he will, if it’s humanly possible. But the thought of losing one of them, or both of them . . . it destroys me.
The hard look fades, and I see the vulnerable child underneath. The one who crossed a hundred miles of hard country to get to us. To safety. To some hope of acceptance.
She turns toward me and waits. I walk closer. Close enough that we could hug, if we’re so inclined. We are not.
There is almost nothing on the Assembly of Saints except for a passing reference to a long-expired church in the northwest, an entirely different group. The only mobile groups I can find seem to be Romany travelers or groups of elderly retirees with a yen to see the country on the open road.
FOR THE MAN IS NOT OF THE WOMAN: BUT THE WOMAN OF THE MAN. NEITHER WAS THE MAN CREATED FOR THE WOMAN; BUT THE WOMAN FOR THE MAN.—I CORINTHIANS 11:8–9
“I met him once. Father Tom. He came to our house to recruit my momma. She told him to shoo, and he left. But he was . . .” She pauses, thinking about it. “I thought I liked him back then. He was real nice to me.”
She needs that, as much as or more than my own kids. And she nearly glows under the light of that small encouragement.
“Dad?” he blurts out, and I feel a complicated rush of emotion. Fear. Intense love. Rage that I can’t get to him. He doesn’t call me Dad often, and when he does, it means his defenses are low.
Or, if that isn’t possible, at least get him home safe. Because that’s my job. He calls me Dad, and I need to live up to that.
As long as I’m alive, he’ll work to please them and keep me safe. Kill me, and he’ll close up. From Caleb’s attitude toward the boy, they’d like to recruit him.
“Hey, it’s Jesus,” I say. “Is this heaven?”
Alert and neutral, always accept food and drink but never ask for it. The training comes back fast, as it was meant to.
And that’s Connor’s weakness. He needs love the way a sponge needs water. And from a father figure, doubly true. If they spot his weak points—and they will, they’re experts at this game, predators always are—then they’ll know how to get to him. Good cult indoctrinators can pull it off in just a couple of weeks at the most. And that’s on adults.
he’s telling me to be strong. I’m not strong. I feel cracked all along the edges.
Run if you can. Wait if you have to. Do what you have to do to survive.
Maybe I shouldn’t eat anything here. Isn’t there some Greek story about how if you eat and drink in the underworld, you can’t leave?
I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody with that name before. It’s pretty.
I don’t like that, and she has to see it, because immediately she draws back, like I’m about to hit her.
“I know you probably are thinking of ways to get out of here. But Connor: don’t try. They’re watching you. Break the rules, and the man they brought in with you will pay the price. Do you understand?”
Harmony stares at me for a long moment, then starts to leave. It’s weird. She doesn’t look like my mom, but there’s something about her. Maybe it’s the angry look. I don’t feel like she’s angry at me. Just . . . angry.
