The Children of Red Peak

by Craig DiLouie

  24

  ASCEND (3)

  Drawing strength from Deacon’s sweating hand, Beth forced herself to climb the last steps to the second summit, which provided a view to a short series of stairs leading up to the mountain’s red crown.

  There, they let go of each other to catch their breath. She spread her arms and swayed in the breeze, her limbs slick and sunburned, her clothes dusty.

  To the west, the sun plunged toward the Sierra Nevadas.

  “I think you’re right,” she gasped.

  Sweat dripped from Deacon’s tangled hair into the dirt. “About what?”

  “It wants us to suffer.”

  She wasn’t joking. The stairway had a purpose, she saw that now. Along the way, she’d shed everything that slowed her down. Her memories, her tangled feelings about Deacon, her worry of what they’d find at the top. Her very sense of self. The harsh climb purged all of it. She’d sweated it out of her.

  And along the way, the silence had reached inside her mind. Beth would be making the last part of the climb without any cares other than finishing it. Her mind and body a stripped-down, empty vessel.

  “Long is the way, and hard,” Deacon said.

  David completed the quote. “That out of Hell leads up to the Light.”

  Or night, Beth thought, watching the sun bleed into the mountains.

  She shrugged off her pack and chugged the last of her water. The air was cooler here. The final summit wasn’t far. Small mercies, and maybe a promise of bigger mercies to come.

  “We’re almost there,” Angela said, still looking surprisingly rested. “Let’s make the most of the daylight.”

  Deacon held out his hand again. “Shall we?”

  Beth took it. She marched with renewed vigor, pulling him along. After her hypnosis session, she believed she’d been left behind, and this feeling had returned. That she’d come too late, and everyone had ascended. With each step, the mountain’s true summit appeared to recede farther out of reach.

  Deacon squeezed her hand. “Can you feel it?”

  “What?” she managed.

  He either didn’t have enough breath to answer, or there was simply no way to put it into words. The latter more likely, because she felt it now too.

  The mountain’s powerful atmosphere seemed to respond to her attention by almost physically pushing back. Judging by the loud grunting, all of them were having the same experience. Angela struggled in particular, snarling at each step. David cried out in panic.

  We were invited, Beth thought.

  Her mind flashed to the raucous worship at their Tehachapi church, the Family singing and waving and opening themselves to inhabitation by the Spirit.

  We invite you.

  Beth drew a deep breath and opened herself to the energy, which reversed from resisting to fill and flow through her. The mountain seemed to sing, a single vibrating om that resonated in her chest.

  The pilgrimage ended with her staggering onto the summit, bathed in the dying sun’s red glare. The others arrived gasping moments later.

  “Wow,” Deacon said.

  Beth nodded, still fighting to catch her breath. The barrier defied comprehension. But that wasn’t what impressed them now.

  Under a dimming sky, the mountain’s desolate flat peak stretched to the horizon, charcoal-black rock vined with rust. At the center of the otherwise empty crown, a large cubical stone stood like an altar, similarly rusted with iron oxides and hematite. Behind it, a tall, old wood cross thrust from the ground at an angle, the famous cross that had burned but was not consumed.

  Whatever happened to the people they loved, it had all started here.

  She shuddered. The cross still had old spikes jutting from its arms and stem.

  “Does anybody else think that was weird?” David said. “That wasn’t in our heads. There was something going on.”

  “Something,” Beth agreed.

  “So why aren’t we getting the hell out of here while we can?”

  Nobody answered. They’d all come too far to turn back now.

  “I’m staying,” Deacon said.

  He started forward, hesitantly at first but with greater determination as nothing strange happened.

  Angela looked at her brother. “You coming or going?”

  David looked back down the slope with longing. “Damn it.” He turned to glare at his sister. “You could have warned us. You’ve been here before.”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  Beth held out her hand. “Come on, David. Remember to breathe.”

  He took her hand, and together they walked across the open ground to join Deacon at the altar and cross.

  Angela crouched in front of the altar. “This was made. See?”

  She was right. The stone had been roughly hewn into a cubic shape with primitive tools. Deep grooves radiated from the center down each of its four sides like a falling cross. Beth imagined blood flowing along these channels from a sacrifice, making her shudder again.

  “Look closer.” David’s sister pointed. “These are petroglyphs.”

  The stone was dense with them, neatly arranged in rows, unlike the haphazard Native carvings of their childhood hangout. Time had worn them to an almost illegible smoothness. Beth’s mind fleshed out the detail, producing a snapshot of rich symbols that looked vaguely Mesoamerican, Aztec, or Mayan, but far cruder. Then they collapsed into a meaningless pattern in her mind’s eye.

  Beth shifted her attention to the cross behind the altar, planted by the Wardites a century earlier. Old-time religion paired with something far more ancient. Their shadows seemed impossibly long in the dying light, as if grasping for something.

  “Amazing, how it survived being burned,” Deacon murmured, running his hand along the cross’s charred, fire-blackened skin.

  The shadows disappeared as the sun bled into the mountains and became a glimmer on the horizon. The anniversary mere hours away. Beth didn’t care about the cross. She opened her mind to the energy that permeated this place, trying to silence her thoughts so she could hear its song again.

  The mountain remained silent, as if ignoring her.

  “Yeah, amazing.” David agreed with Deacon, then looked up in alarm at the darkening sky. “Can we head back now? There’s nobody home.”

  Deacon frowned at the cross like he wanted to kick it. “That’s it?”

  “It was always it, if you ask me. All in their heads.”

  This was Beth’s cue to say they’d gained something valuable by coming here. Catharsis and reflection. They’d confronted their collective past and flooded its dark corners with the light of rational scrutiny. They’d go home better equipped to live in the present. Years of psychological training provided the framework and the words. She’d tell them that not every mystery had to be solved. That the important thing was to let the dead rest and go on with life.

  No. Beth wasn’t going to say any of it.

  She hadn’t come here to define what had happened, package it in a way she could accept it. She’d come to see it define itself on its own terms.

  She wanted the god of Red Peak to reveal itself at last.

  The wind moaned across the mountaintop, whistled in its crevasses.

  She raised her hands and said in a loud, clear voice, “We invite you.”

  The altar exploded in a rush of fire.

  25

  CHOOSE

  Red flames danced around the altar before hurtling into the atmosphere in a blinding eruption. David screamed as his friends disappeared in the flash. He crumpled to his knees, covering his eyes with his arm, his heart ringing in alarm.

  Impossible. Insane. Unbelievable, though he himself had witnessed it.

  He curled in a fetal ball on the dirt, quivering with mindless terror.

  IT was here. The thing the Family worshipped. Something he couldn’t believe existed, yet undeniably real, vast and ancient and powerful.

  David struggled against its presence like a fly pinned to a
wall, scrutinized by a primordial force that could destroy with a mere thought.

  The light dimmed. His breathing steadied.

  He ventured to open his eyes.

  His friends were gone. The pillar of fire had extinguished, though the sky glowed like a hot coal in its aftermath.

  A boy stood on the altar, fists clenched at his sides, his unruly hair a shining crimson halo framing his face.

  “Hello,” said the boy.

  David blinked at him in further disbelief. “Dex?”

  It was his son in almost every respect, right down to his Minecraft T-shirt.

  The boy grinned. “Guess again.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You don’t know? You came a long way to see me.”

  David pushed himself onto his knees but was still too weak to stand. “You’re putting all this into my head. It’s a trick.”

  “You tricked yourself,” Dexter told him.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You see me as you want to see me. You hear my thoughts in words of your choosing. You could not bear to see or hear me as I really am.”

  “You can’t be real.” He slapped himself as if trying to wake himself up from a dream. “I’m hallucinating.”

  A psychotic break, shredding the reality he could no longer process.

  “Want to see a magic trick?” Chuckling, the boy tossed a coin and slapped it against his forearm. “Madness or belief?”

  David covered his face in his hands. “No. I’m not doing this.”

  “You don’t need to do anything, Daddy.”

  He dropped his hands to gape at his daughter. “Please stop.”

  “Then stop yourself.” Alyssa hopped off the altar and reached for him, making him flinch. She cupped his face in her hands. “You always take care of us and protect us. Let me help you for once.”

  “What are you? Are you God?”

  “If God is everything, I am God,” his daughter said.

  “You trick people. You hurt them. You’re the Devil.”

  She shrugged. “If God is everything, I am the Devil.”

  Both and neither. “What are you?”

  “I am what I am, as you name me,” the girl said.

  “Did we… create you?”

  She laughed, Alyssa’s adorable hee, hee, hee, though edged with a deep bass that rumbled across the sky. “I have always been. If you made me out of wishes, you made me as I am, both alpha and omega.”

  David wagged his head to make her release him. His friends had come here to know the entity that had destroyed their families, but it stubbornly remained unknowable, inviting him to come up with any understanding that satisfied him.

  No wonder Jeremiah Peale had fallen under its spell. He’d probably seen Jesus in a white robe or an angel complete with halo and wings, commanding him to deliver his tribe for salvation.

  David stood and gazed across the desolate ground, dark under the glowing sky. Where was Angela? Where were his friends?

  What did this thing want from him?

  “Where’s my mom now?” he said. “Did you take Emily too?”

  “David.”

  Dressed in her yoga attire, Claire reached for him. He knew it was an illusion, another trick, but he couldn’t refuse her touch. She enveloped him in a hug.

  And he understood. The creature wanted him to obey it.

  Like Claire, it wanted unconditional love, the same as it loved David with all its heart.

  What he didn’t understand was why this was so important to the entity. If it was so powerful, what did it gain from human pain, and why did he have a choice?

  “We complete each other,” Claire murmured into his ear. “Namaste.”

  “What you made Mom do wasn’t love.”

  “It’s the purest love in existence,” she whispered.

  She melted into him, the skin of her soft arms sliding against his shoulders as her hands caressed the back of his neck. Her breath hot against his cheek.

  Gritting his teeth, he turned his head away from her. “You hurt them for nothing. Just because you could.”

  “They sacrificed. They gave up desire and meat. Do you want to see your mother again? Emily?” She writhed against him. “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You know what to do. To be with them forever.” Her words tickled his ear. “A leap of faith.”

  “You want me to trust you, after what you did?”

  Claire stepped back from him and crossed her arms with a glare David knew all too well, speaking words he also recognized. “You’re disappointing.”

  She could erase his existence with a sigh.

  She said, “Do you know who I am? What you are compared to me?”

  “I don’t want it. I…”

  He was tired of the tricks, but the entity wasn’t tricking him. David had conjured Dexter, Alyssa, Claire himself. Through them, he’d expressed to himself his innate desire to run and hide. To simply walk away from the pain of his life.

  He was also telling himself what he wanted most in the world. Something he already had, if only he’d accept it.

  “Why did you come to Oz, then?” she said. “What do you want from me?”

  David wanted to stop being afraid. “What I want, I have to give myself.”

  “You want nothing I can give?”

  “I just want to go home.” To the thing he wanted most of all, his family.

  His wife’s eyes blazed like twin pools of black fire.

  “Then earn it,” she said in a voice that thundered across the ether.

  26

  SEEK

  Alone, Deacon lay cowering in the dust while the fire soared overhead.

  A figure emerged from the writhing flames to grin down at him.

  “Well, look at you,” the man said. “You went and grew up.”

  Deacon cried out. “Reverend? Is that you?”

  The same suit jacket worn over a black T-shirt and jeans. The same leather boots. The side part coming undone in a tangle over his forehead. Cheshire cat smile beaming. Half rascal, half choir boy.

  Jeremiah Peale hopped off the altar. The terrifying jet of fire seemed to reverse direction and collapse, pouring back into the stone until it expired. In its place, the Wardite cross ignited to burn with surprising energy.

  Deacon rose onto his elbows, still gaping. “It is you.”

  Theories flitted through his brain. Peale had harnessed a great power. The Family was still alive, living somewhere near the mountain. He was seeing a ghost.

  “No, son,” the man said. “I’m not who you think I am. Sorry about that.”

  All his theories collapsed into a singular idea. “You’re it, aren’t you? You’re…” The monster? The god? God?

  “I am that which I am. You wanted me to appear this way.”

  Deacon looked around at the alien sky. “And I’m hallucinating all this.”

  “It’s real enough. Just different, is all.” Peale extended one of his big paws. “Stand up, boy. Let me have a look at you.”

  Deacon took the man’s hand and grunted in surprise at the strong, substantial grip. The Reverend hauled him up to stand on trembling legs.

  “You left a boy and came back a man,” Peale said. “The prodigal son returns.”

  “What are you doing? What do you want from me?”

  The man chuckled. “You came to me, remember? You called, I answered.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Deacon said.

  “Of course you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have come to visit. I suppose you want to talk a bit about your mama.”

  He shook his head and decided to roll with it. “Is she alive? Is she happy?”

  “You think she ditched you, her own blood, all those years back, and that’s what you want to know, if she’s happy.”

  “Is she?”

  “She is indeed.” He tilted his head. “Let’s walk and talk.”

  Deacon fol
lowed the man across black rock under a rust sky. “I’m glad it’s you, you know.”

  “Him,” the thing corrected. “Think of it as a mask so you can talk to me without losing a few screws.”

  “I missed him. Is he there too? On the other side?”

  “He suffered more than most, and he earned his place. Like your mama, now he longs to hear your joyful singing again.”

  Deacon shot a glance over his shoulder toward the cross burning behind the altar. He shuddered. “I’m glad he made it. I always thought he did.”

  “See that?” The Reverend winked. “I told you that you believed.”

  Enough, apparently, to take it in stride that he was talking to a dead man, a dead man who might have been God, a dead man who might still be alive in a world of light on the other side of a vast, empty void.

  “How does it all work, Rev?”

  Heaven and Hell, good and evil, free will and the Plan, why bad things happened to good people, and whether there was such a thing as the divine sound, the frequencies still echoing from the primordial thought that created everything.

  “You want it all, huh?” Peale chuckled again. “Does it matter? You didn’t come to talk theology. Anyway, it’d hardly be called faith if you had all the answers. Understanding comes on the other side, and by then, it won’t be nearly as important.”

  “How about the end of the world? Does it happen? Can you tell me that?”

  “Oh, sure. You do it to yourselves. It’s already started. But your world already ended long ago, didn’t it, boy?”

  They reached the eastern edge of the peak, where Deacon expected to see the Wardite settlement rotting at the base of the mountain. Instead, gently rolling clouds girdled the peak, thicker than tule fog and pulsing with light and mysteries.

  The Reverend didn’t say why he was showing him this, but one message seemed clear. Outside of Red Peak, everything was fog, a fleeting, meaningless dream. Deacon knew nothing, and he’d die knowing nothing. The only thing that mattered was here, now, and the choice he knew he’d have to make.

  “You think your mama didn’t love you,” the Reverend said. “She did and does now. She loved you enough to let you go and wander the Earth until you returned.”