Sins of the Mother

by August Norman

  He shook his head. “Not gone, Magda. She’s ascended.” He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. “It’s a miracle.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  “ARE YOU KIDDING me?” Caitlin swiped her phone shut and walked to the bathroom to pee. If the next entry has Linda making appearances three days later, some Israelites named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John have a winning plagiarism suit.

  “Is this really who I’m related to?” she said, talking out loud again, the thought too ridiculous to keep in.

  She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and then got her phone out. No signal, no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth networks available. She settled for the time: 7:12.

  More than the hour the lawyer had estimated.

  Caitlin grabbed her bag and went for the door, lightly pushing on the wood. Apparently, her touch was too light. The door didn’t give. She pushed harder, but the door, the one without a lock, wouldn’t budge.

  What have I let you stupid fire-worshiping witches do?

  She pounded on the surface. “This shit’s not cool.”

  No one answered.

  Don’t freak out. Not yet.

  Caitlin had spent the early years of her career covering the downtown LA crime beat, which meant multiple trips to the infamous Men’s Central Jail, which had exposed her to locks other than standard dead bolts. Either the Dayans were using their God’s juju to keep the door sealed, or they’d installed electromagnetic locks that were controlled from the hallway.

  She looked the door up and down. Sure enough, a metal plate on the doorjamb met the surface of the door. She didn’t remember any technical specs from her old jailhouse tours, but she doubted her chances of overpowering the door were any better than those of the seventeen thousand men crammed into Central.

  “Who’s the stupid witch now?” she muttered.

  Seriously, no need to freak out. They know you’re expected back in town tomorrow. They know people know where you are. They’re just keeping you from wandering the grounds while they do whatever it is they do.

  She’d said it to herself, so she mostly believed it. Still, two years ago in Indiana, she’d promised herself she’d never sit in a cage again.

  She crossed over to the window she’d looked out earlier. Solid and sealed, no way to open it. The sun was nearly down, but dots of light stretched from the fire at the top of the hill down toward the building in a steadily moving line of handheld candles.

  Must be the services Gwendolyn mentioned.

  But surely they wouldn’t all be there at the same time. Not in a compound guarded by women with semiautomatic rifles.

  Think, stupid. What did Deputy Swagger say?

  Back at Central, a short deputy who made up any difference between his and Caitlin’s height with swagger had spent five minutes showing off the small bit of the jail’s security he commanded.

  Electromagnets need electricity. Take away the spark and the bond fails. Just like the bedroom, know what I mean?

  Caitlin had let him mansplain away, all the while using the cell phone he should have taken from her to snap exclusive photos of a video monitor showing a high-profile inmate. Of course, jails had backup generators, and he’d gone on and on about the difference between fail-safe and fail-secure. Jails and banks used fail-secure, meaning if the power was cut, the door locked automatically. Commercial properties used fail-safe. If you could cut the power or even disrupt the surface of a strike plate, the magnetic field would dissipate and the bond would fail.

  She opened her bag, found her Bitch Book, and turned to the picture of Maya Aronson.

  “What did you get us into?”

  She tapped the photo and slid one of the paper clips off the edge.

  She couldn’t disrupt the lock until it was open, but once it was, a simple bit of metal might stop the bond from resealing.

  So how do you get someone to open a door they don’t want to open?

  The Dayans might love their hilltop fires, but Caitlin doubted they liked them indoors.

  She ripped an early page from the book, grabbed her lighter from her bag, and found the smoke alarm. A minute later, standing on top of the bathroom counter, her offering from the Bitch Book gave off enough smoke to bring the magical screech of the alarm. She climbed down, left the pages burning in the sink, slung her bag over her shoulder, and waited by the door with the paper clip in hand.

  For a second, she contemplated attacking whoever came through the door. Beyond growing up aware of the constant dangers facing women due to her dad’s job, Caitlin had spent a year in her twenties learning Wing Chun. She didn’t come close to mastery, but she had learned to defend herself. She also knew that the odds of stripping a semiautomatic rifle off an opponent and walking away unharmed were in the winning-lottery-ticket range. She clung to the paper clip and pushed an ear against the door.

  Despite the alarm, she was able to hear footsteps approaching, then the tiniest of buzzing noises. She grabbed the door handle and pulled.

  A woman in red tumbled through the doorway. As she was easily four inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than her, Caitlin again considered drilling her first responder in the throat. Instead, she put a foot into the open doorway and reached out her hand to help the woman up.

  “The door was stuck. We must have pulled at the same time.”

  The woman’s eyes, startled at first, calmed as they met Caitlin’s smiling face. “Where’s the fire?”

  “Top of the hill. Is it time to meet with Desmond?”

  Cursed with unfortunate forward-jutting front teeth and flat brown hair, the woman shook off her disorientation, giving Caitlin the distinct impression of a stunned mouse. It took a second, but Caitlin recognized the same woman who’d sold her shorts in Daya’s Gifts two days before.

  Mouse Girl looked around the room, then settled on the smoke rising from the sink. “What happened here?”

  Still in the doorway, Caitlin ran the paper clip along the doorjamb. Nothing happened. Of course. The strike plate wouldn’t be magnetized once the door had been unlocked. “Yeah, sorry. I dropped a cigarette onto something I was reading, then myself. I can’t even explain it, really. Just me at my most awkward.”

  She pulled the door back and forth, waving the air with her hand. “I thought it was out, then the alarm started going off. So what’s with this door? I pulled and it wouldn’t open. You didn’t lock me in here, did you?”

  The mousy woman waved her hand over the alarm, and the shrill noise cut out. “There’s no smoking in here.”

  “It was my last one anyway.” Caitlin pushed the door all the way open and faced into the hallway. “Is Gwendolyn almost done with the ceremony? I’ve got to get back to town.”

  Still no one around; no door-release switches on the wall either. Either her guard had a handheld remote, or … Caitlin looked out into the hall above the door and saw the white plastic dome of a motion sensor.

  “She’ll be back soon,” the Mouse said, walking Caitlin’s way. “Desmond was almost finished.”

  “You were up there, at the top of the hill?”

  Mouse shook her head. “Just down the hall.”

  “Cameras, huh?” Caitlin moved aside so she could return to her post. “Smart thinking. That way you can do your job without missing out. You sold me shorts, right? In Daya’s Gifts?”

  In the hall, the Mouse broke into the fakest of smiles, almost to the point of weasel. “Please don’t smoke again.”

  “Sure thing.” Caitlin stepped back into the room, palming the paper clip instead of sliding it against the jamb. “And thanks for coming to my rescue. Sorry you missed part of the ceremony.”

  The Mouse remained in place until the door shut completely. Caitlin dropped to her knees, put her ear against the door, and listened to the woman walking back the way she’d come. Seconds later she heard the slight buzz and faint pop of the electromagnetic lock coming back to life.

  She wasn’t worried about the paper clip anymore. First she
opened the drawer of red clothing and picked a red blouse and drawstring pants that would cover her outfit. Then she went to the tiny closet area, pulled the flat-red dress off a wire hanger, and twisted the end of the hanger until it was straight.

  Finally, she pulled two things from her bag: another page from the Bitch Book and a brand-new stick of gum. A few chews of Peppermint Extra stuck the paper to the end of the coat hanger, and a single push of the paper and hanger under the door caught the eye of the motion detector, unlocking the door.

  She stepped into the hall, but no alarms went off. Five closed doors down to her left, the sound of Desmond’s televised voice emanated from an open doorway before a marked exit with a crossbar push panel. Caitlin walked to the right, passing two open doorways to darkened rooms similar to the one she’d been in, motion sensors and all. Another exit waited at the far end of the hall, but a hundred feet from the door, a pair of excited female voices came from an opening on the left.

  “But no one’s seen her for weeks.”

  “What else could it be?”

  Caitlin stepped back and hid just inside the closest dark bedroom as the women passed.

  “But Daya, really?”

  A third voice, the Mouse down the hall, joined them. “What are you doing? We can’t leave our stations.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s going to tell us about Daya.”

  The other voice spoke in agreement. “I need to be there.”

  There was a pause; then the first woman spoke again. “We’re going. Stay if you like, but we need to know.”

  Caitlin heard the clang of the far door’s panic bar and the sounds of people walking outside before the exit clicked shut again. She took a deep breath and looked down the hall.

  Of the three, the loyal Mouse still lingered in the guard’s station. The volume of Desmond’s voice doubled to the point of distortion.

  “… an event so special, that God is sending each of us a message we can’t ignore …”

  The broadcast cut off completely, leaving only the Mouse’s shuffling sounds behind.

  “I’m coming, Desmond,” the woman said. The door clanged open again, then closed with a satisfying click.

  Caitlin ventured another glance into the hall. No one around. Whatever was happening at the top of the hill was too big to miss.

  She could run. Away from the row house, through the fields, past the yarn barn, into the motor pool—maybe find some keys, take a car, drive away. Unguarded, she could also explore the grounds, find Desmond’s records, maybe even her mother’s actual room.

  But how could she?

  A cult was performing a secret ceremony. Her inner journalist wanted to know what the hell was happening at the top of that hill. Pulling even stronger, her thirteen-old-self needed to know why they’d abandoned the greater world, their careers, and their loved ones.

  She counted to ten, then walked down the hall and out the door after them.

  CHAPTER

  31

  SOME PEOPLE WENT to shit after a six-pack. Johnny just felt focused. Nobody’d found Bergman yet, but he had a guess where she’d be—at the top of the hill with the rest of the Dogs. While he’d been thrown into lockup for nothing, Leslie Kramer had seen the reporter riding away in a Dayan town car with that lawyer of theirs—and Caitlin Bergman was the daughter of the bitch who’d ruined the Promise handoff.

  Which meant Promise had never come down from that hill.

  He’d been to the Dogs’ front gate before, close enough to know they carried serious firepower, not to mention maintained a stable of red town cars and a few white Jeeps. Even with his buzz, he knew better than to shoot his way in all by himself without knowing the lay of the land. With Gunner and Tom driving the county in search of Bergman’s truck, tonight was all about recon. Of course, he’d fuck some shit up if the opportunity presented itself.

  He parked on the same logging road from the week before, then hiked to the site of the failed exchange. No sign of life. He crossed the firebreak and moved onto the edge of the Dayan property. Without the flashes of last time’s lightning, he had to search to find the way, barely more than a buck trail over pine needles. He took the narrow path slowly, once again checking the way with his scope every hundred feet. After half a mile, he picked up the pace. Nobody’d be guarding this approach. That was why the bitch had picked it in the first place.

  Another quarter mile of serious hill humping led to a stretch of paved road. He wiped a line of sweat off his forehead and blew a quiet belch. He could have been louder. The only sounds beside his heavy breathing came from the wind rustling through the timber. He considered moving onto the road but caught the path’s wider and more traveled continuation on the opposite side.

  A wooden sign, white lettering over a red triangle, read The Climb. Fifty feet further up the trail, another sign read Only You Can Save the Daughters.

  “Fucking-A right,” Johnny said between huffs. “I’m coming for you, Promise.”

  CHAPTER

  32

  MORE THAN ONE path led up toward the fire, each walkway lit by store-bought tiki torches; citronella, judging from the smell. Caitlin crouched behind a row of bushes to wait until the Mouse caught up with the other guards.

  Fifty feet up the hill, she found a spot where she could see most of the group from the safety of a clump of rocks. Desmond stood on another raised dais, this one a foot-high brick semicircle ten feet in front of the largest bonfire Caitlin had ever seen. Below him, dozens of women in red sat on the ground, all attention on his words and movement. “And in her name, we ask for unity within the Light.”

  The women reached out to each other, joined hands, and raised them toward the flames.

  “Linda,” they chanted. “All-seeing, benevolent mother. We ask for your guidance on our path.”

  Their heads dropped, and Desmond continued. “Through vision and painting, through dream and nightmare, Linda set our course for our journey here to God’s Hill.”

  Caitlin kept back a smile. According to the story she’d read, Linda’s great vision had ended more than two years ago with a cataclysm that didn’t happen, yet there they were, chanting along like every word was golden.

  “She rose,” they said. “Her gift passed to Daya.”

  Desmond took the verbal baton and ran. “And Daya continued Linda’s ways, through words and through deeds. The Dayans grew, focused and purified.”

  A woman on the far right raised her hand, and the female chorus spoke as one. “The men were sent.”

  “Away for purity,” Desmond offered.

  “Away by design,” the chorus answered.

  “And you became—”

  “The Daughters of God.”

  Desmond clasped his hands together. “You are the Daughters of God, the ones who ascend on the last day, called by name, and known to all.”

  They joined in. “Unique, powerful, and necessary.”

  Desmond again: “Ready to build God’s new world. Others have faltered. Others have doubted. Linda’s day came—”

  “And went,” they answered.

  “A testament to your progress, a sign that the Dayans’ work pleased the Lord, extending the time on earth. And then, the Five. Doubts, each and every one, but Daya stopped them, shared her vision, and—”

  “Their doubts disappeared.”

  “The next day?”

  “The Five ascended.”

  “Exactly. Which brings us to now, my daughters.” Desmond looked side to side, taking his time, as if to make eye contact with every woman present. “I started our fire with a message from Daya. Her words, comforting and hopeful as they were, were not the entire message.”

  Caitlin shifted back onto her heels, the words circling in her mind. The Five ascended. Like Linda Sperry, five other Daughters must have pulled a disappearing act for five times the miracle, sometime after Linda’s day. Convenient, since that whole end-of-the-world-thing hadn’t happened.

  The echo of Desmond’s voice
turned her focus back toward the fire.

  “You may have noticed I’ve been absent this last week,” he continued. “Not physically, of course, but if we’ve spoken, you know that I’ve been less than generous with my time.”

  He gazed into the fire, then sat on the rock wall at the back of the dais.

  “This journey has had its travails, to be sure, but none perhaps as dire as this past week. As I’m sure you’ve heard, our Magda is gone. Sadly, I cannot say she has gone in the tradition of Linda and the Five. Her body was found beaten and disfigured. As expected, the local police seem unwilling to find those responsible. In times like these, even my faith is tested. Magda, who witnessed Linda’s ascension, who has done so much, has been a shepherd, a guide to so many, lost to the hands of hatred and ignorance.”

  Maybe Desmond’s tears were real, maybe it was the smoke, but he wiped his eyes and stood again.

  “My daughters. This pain, like the pains we all fought and cast off to be here on God’s Hill, this new pain threatened to pull me down. Then Daya, sweet Daya, came to me last night.”

  The women in red shifted noticeably at the second mention of Daya’s name.

  Desmond raised both hands. “ ‘Do not weep for Magda,’ she told me, ‘for I have seen the way.’ ”

  He shifted direction slightly, as if performing the conversation between the two. “ ‘The way?’ I asked. ‘Magda was not with us when she left, so her name will not be read. She will miss the Light.’ ”

  The women nodded along with this, as if familiar with the concept.

  “Daya touched me then, both hands at my forehead—” He looked out at them. “You know of her gift to heal.”

  Again they nodded.

  “ ‘My love,’ she said. ‘Magda will not be lost, nor cast off, for the Spirit has shown me the way.’ I felt a calm course through my body, the pure beam of light that many of you have felt when hearing a message. ‘This loss is not a tragedy, but a painful gift, as when a mother dies in childbirth. For Magda’s death means a rebirth for the Daughters.’ ”