“That’s four,” Michael says, keeping score.
“SWAT shows up and the siege begins,” she goes on. “It lasts for a day and half. No one from the house will answer the phone or talk to anyone. Since the family now has three police issued automatic assault rifles, no one will go up to the door.”
“What broke it?”
“You did.”
Michael stares at the photo in the paper. He does not know the house, but he may recognize the door. It has a window instead of a peephole, a little hinged door on the inside looking out through a metal grate.
“You opened the door,” says Rebecca. “You walked outside into the sunlight and said everyone was dead.”
“Was I crying?”
“What an odd question,” she says.
“Was I?”
“No. Not at all. Reports said you were “calm beyond your years.” You escorted the police into the house and pointed to the row of bodies hanging from a support beam. Greg, Leslie, Christopher, and Lynette had hanged themselves an hour before you opened the door.”
“Is that what I survived?”
“Not just that.” She sighs. “In the house, they found things to tie the family to the deaths of over a hundred other people. Watches and rings, wallets and keepsakes. They found rope, cord and wire—all scabbed in blood. They found drugs and pagan idols. In your pocket, they found a Cub Scout neckerchief knotted into a garrote. Blood stains on it. It was when they took that away from you that you finally cried.”
“What kind of idols?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“All of them hanged themselves?”
“Yes. Mass suicide. No signs of force. Hands weren’t tied.”
“Who were they?”
“We think the other kids were like you, kidnapped and brought up in the family. We never identified who they were, only that they weren’t biologically related to anyone else in the group.”
“How bad was I when they found me?”
“Physically, you were fine. There was no sign of physical abuse. You were healthy and strong. They’d educated you. You could read very well, and knew math. You could even drive a car. You were ahead of your grade a long ways. But you were not well. You were emotionally abused. You refused to cooperate with the police. You wouldn’t tell them anything about the family, where they went, what they did. You attacked a policeman. Several actually. And you stole things, but that’s minor.”
“I attacked policemen?” He laughs. “I was seven.”
“Yes. You nearly killed one. You broke his voice box, put him in the hospital. You could take on any one of them, maybe two. They dealt with you in threes. You were kept in solitary for weeks while we tried to figure out what to do with you.”
“How was I then?”
“Spooky,” she says. “You kept talking about your mother, how she looked out for you, how she would always look after you. How she would hold you in her many arms and kiss you with a mouthful of ashes.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“There was every indication that you’d witnessed many killings.”
“That’s terrible,” he says, knowing he needs to sound shocked, hoping he does.
“There were also indications, like your scarf, that you may have even participated in some. That was the real horror of it.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“That’s good,” she says. “That means we were successful.”
Rebecca Brennan relaxes, happy to be moving away from the disease and to the cure.
“Since the sixties we’ve had psychologists and doctors on staff to help victims of cults. You were brought to them.”
“Cult? I thought it was a single family.”
“The manner of the abuse, the religious overtones, amoral behavior and violence merited the attention of the best we had. You were brainwashed,” she says.
From what she said before, he thought he’d been educated. Hadn’t these “cultists” taught him how read and reason, drive a car, and defend himself? One man’s education is another man’s brainwashing.
“You were in intensive therapy for a while. Then we tried to place you with the Dipesto family. Your sessions continued but you didn’t mesh well with that family.”
“My fault or theirs?”
“Both.”
“What did I do?”
“You stole things,” she says. “Candy mostly. Sugar. You fixated on sugar, but you also took toys, money and jewelry too.”
“Oh,” he says.
“You also lied a lot.”
“I was probably ashamed.” He thinks that’s what she wants to hear.
“It was more than that. You lied for the sake of lying. It was a kind of game to you. You concocted such fanciful stories. Some of them were very clever, very good. You had one neighbor kid convinced you were Chinese and had undergone eyelid surgery.”
“That’s funny.”
“Some were cute and silly, but you also told hateful things. You told the counselors at the school that your foster family was beating you.”
“Were they?”
She looks scandalized. “No. Of course not.”
“Looking for attention?”
“Probably, but you didn’t get the kind you needed. You lied to an old woman down the street, told her some tale about you needing a place to sleep while your parents fought. You took two thousand-dollars worth of jewelry from her.”
Michael can’t wholly conceal a smile. “I wish I could remember some of this,” he says.
“After the Dipesto’s, we brought you back for a while, then we tried the Taylors. By then you were doing pretty well. The doctors said you were fit to be adopted.”
“What did I do to them?”
“Actually, that time it wasn’t your fault. I think that family really liked you. They hated to see you go.”
“Then what happened?”
“They’d lied on their foster agreement. They couldn’t afford you. Even with the stipend they lost their apartment. The mother got arrested. A physical altercation at a grocery store. You were involved.”
“I remember a little of that,” Michael says.
“They were petty criminals too,” Rebecca says. “Not a good situation.”
“Then the Hilchens?”
She refers to her box and nods. “Yes, they were your last family in California. That lasted about eight months. You stole candy from a 7-Eleven, and when the older boy told the parents, you attacked him and hurt him badly. They pressed charges.”
That isn’t how he remembers it, but he likes that story better than his right now.
She continues, “You were no longer a celebrity then. Budget cuts had gutted the cult-survivor program. People forgot who you were and what you went through. They saw only a violent troubled youth like so many others in California. Foster care was over. You were going into the penal system.”
“For stealing candy?”
“For attempted murder.”
“Oh.”
“Your public defender called me. The best I could do for you was to get you out of California to a better detention center.”
“The Dormitory in Utah.”
“Yes.”
“It saved my life.”
“I lost track of you,” she says.” When you were ten, I contacted Utah to see what happened to you. Your life may have been saved there in Utah, but you did it yourself.”
She hands him a faxed letter.
He reads: “You’ll be happy to know Miss Brennan, that Michael has made a complete turnaround in attitude and discipline. When Michael first came here, he was wild and dangerous. Half his first year was spent in solitary as much for the safety of the other kids as his own. We were all sure that he would be institutionalized permanently, but that is not the case.
“I wish I could claim credit for it, but it was all Michael’s doing. From one day to the next, after his first year, he chose to cooperate and settled in. He became a model student (we don’
t call them inmates) and though he kept to himself, he also kept himself out of trouble. Now, after a year of consistently excellent behavior, we are ready to look again for a foster family and return him to society.
“Thank you so much for your interest. I’m happy to report real progress with your old ward.”
It was signed Principal Young. They didn’t call him warden.
Michael hands the paper back.
“How was I deprogrammed? Shock therapy? Drugs?”
“Oh no.” She is scandalized. “This isn’t the dark ages. Counselors. Love. Talking. Exercises. The most radical thing we might have tried would have been hypnosis, but that was already out of vogue then.”
“I don’t remember any of this.”
“That was one thing they did. I remember the exercise. It was to remember the things you want to forget, look at them once, and then put them in a hole where they can’t hurt you anymore.”
“Really? Michael laughs. It’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.
“It seems to have worked,” she says. “It’s just a mental exercise to insulate you from danger. We all do it naturally. It’s for survival.”
“Sounds like I was taught to repress things.”
“Forget them,” she corrects. “We all learn to repress certain behavior, certain acts and even thoughts to be part of society. It is part of our socialization. We learn to conform and be part of the group.”
“I thought we are all supposed to be individuals.” Too late Michael tries to make it sound like a joke.
“Within a narrow band of acceptable behavior and attitude, that’s true,” she says. “Considering the possibilities, it’s actually a pretty narrow band. Anyone outside it is a criminal or a madman—threats to society. I’m not going to argue good or evil, right and wrong. I’m talking only about practical adaptation, pragmatic functioning that allows a single living being to interact successfully with other single living beings who’ve all formed together into a society.”
“You sound like a text book.”
“I wrote one,” she says.
“That explains it.”
“Michael, the goal of a social worker is to help someone who is having a hard time adapting to be part of society. The goal of a jailer is to keep those who can’t be part of society away from it. It’s the natural order of things.”
“That makes sense,” he says.
“There were those who thought you should never be allowed back,” she says with some remembered gravity. “There were even those at the Barstow house who thought it would have been a blessing for you to have died there with the others.”
“God, was I that bad?”
“No,” she says. “You were quiet and calculating. You were spooky. Psychologists were lining up to get baselines, doing dissertations, and calculating your future failures based on actuarial morbidity charts or some such bullshit. You were Baby Michael, the remains of the beautiful innocent little child who asked for none and deserved none of the evil that fell on you. You’re damn right we taught you to repress what happened. We wanted to save you. It was either that, a jail cell, a straitjacket, or a coffin.” She wipes her eyes. They’re wild and righteous, full of accusation and denial.
“It’s okay, Rebecca. I’m fine.”
“Which is a miracle,” she says. “To be honest, nobody thought it worked. When you were shipped off to Utah, you were still a creepy little boy. And dangerous.”
“The sugar lobby has some answering to do, right?” he says trying to defuse the tension.
“We couldn’t tell with you. We thought several times you were coming around, but then the Dipestos and the Hilchens. We knew, or rather we thought, it was hopeless. Little did we know it would just take more time.”
“I grew up,” he says.
“That might have been it. I’d like to know how it worked. Many people would.”
“Should I go on a talk show circuit?”
“No,” she says, putting on a smile. “You’ve opened the box, you’ve looked inside. Now bury it again. Live a happy, stable life. You are a success.”
“I don’t know about that. I lost my job.”
“Be thankful that these are the kinds of problems you have,” she said. “Focus on the positive.”
Michael sits back holding his tepid tea, trying to mesh the story he just heard with his own life. Knowing what happened, seeing what lay on the other side of the dam is one thing, breaking down the barrier and letting it flood over you is something else.
“Now tell me about your life. Your kids. Don’t worry about losing your job. Things like that always happen for a reason. It frees you up to do what you should be doing. That’s what I think.”
“I’ll tell you another time, Rebecca. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now.”
“That’s understandable.” She puts her hand on his knee and squeezes it affectionately.
“Thanks for talking to me,” he says.
“Has any of this helped?”
“Not as much as I thought it would.”
“What were you hoping for?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I was convinced that once I knew where I came from, I’d be different.”
“If you’d have told me that at the beginning, I’d never have talked to you,” she says.
“No harm then. None of this sounds real. Nothing you’ve said has anything to do with me. Just a ghost story in sunny California.” He puts his cup down. “I should go,” he says.
“You are a survivor, Michael.”
“Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever feel adrift, like a ship without course or purpose?”
“I used to,” she says. “Then I found happiness in service. Being part of something bigger than yourself will give you what you’re looking for. Connect with people. You’ve been given great gifts. Give back.”
“What great gifts have I been given?”
She shakes her head. “Think positively, Michael. You’ve been given life and a second chance. You have a family, broken and imperfect, but still yours. You have your health and your mind. A good soul. Someone’s looking out for you.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
He stands in front of Rebecca Brennan’s house and admits to himself he was wrong. The house looks sad and lonely now—a disappointment, not the promise keeper it had before. He’d built it all up in his mind believing that something life-changing would happen when he came to know his past. But it hasn’t. Just a little while ago, he’d stood at this spot frightened out of his mind that some malevolent force had brought him here. He’d been convinced that some invisible hand had steered him along, knowing that what he would find would transform him forever into something whole and true.
But he is the same. It was a lie.
He looks at the house, sees Rebecca watching him from her window, waves and walks away.
It’s a midlife crisis. He’s divorced without a girlfriend. This started when he was dissatisfied with his job and his life, when he was homeless by design. He’d been yearning for a change, hoping for adventure, needing to believe that he was special. It’s low-level madness to think the universe is talking to you. He found a grave in what now seems to him to be an obvious place. The other detectives were lazy and too eager to blame the driver instead of a hijacking. There was nothing special about that or his discovery. Just luck, a return to form. He used to be good at this kind of thing. Why should he now blame a momentary return to competency on some divine plan? Madness. Egotism. Couple that with a fever, Ebola or cholera or whatever it was that dropped in that day and filled his mind with hallucinated demons, blood bowls, and fetishes. A virus, not virtue; disease, not destiny. Brain damage that effects his vision, sees auras and misfires to interpret light and shadows as monsters. He’s sick and instead of looking for a cure, instead of returning to the hospital, seeking a specialist, he goes to Connecticut for a bedlam convention with another crazy.
&
nbsp; The visit with Brennan did change his life. It saved it. He was out in the deep end, drowning in delusion; sleepwalking into trains. It was a wakeup call.
He finds a bus bench and sits. A young mother with a stroller scoots as far away from him as possible. Natural order. Safety first.
He’s been Hammond, Kalson, Dipesto, Taylor, Hilchen and Oswald. Knowing these names tells him nothing. Who is he? What does it matter who he was? It’s who he is that’s important. He needs to get his shit together. Get a real job. A house. He needs to get laid.
His phone rings, Marimba with accompanying vibrations. Reality in his pocket.
“Hello,” he answers with cheer in his voice, forced but present.
“Oswald, this is Craig McCallister. Didn’t you get my message?”
“Sorry, I’ve been sick. I slept for days. Just now on my feet again.”
“Same crap you had before? Where are you? I know you checked yourself out of the hospital.”
“I’m in beautiful downtown Berkeley watching a sunset on a bus bench.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Getting real,” he says.
“You sound good. You sound friendly. Not at all like yourself.”
“Thanks.”
“Sorry. But you sound good.”
“I was in a weird place. Midlife crap, then I got sick and all that.”
“Yeah, what was that all about?”
“They never found out.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re doing better. I went up to Idaho and did that fire thing. I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do. I wrote down some notes and sent in a report, and now Roy’s all pissed with me.”
“Let me guess, you concluded it was an accident?”
“From everything I saw, yeah, I did.”
“Live and learn.”
“So I’m calling because I got Roy to give you your job back. I shamed him pretty hard for dumping you like he did, with you in the hospital and all.”
“He was going to fire me anyway.”
“Maybe not. You found Isaac Lowe. That’s something.”
“Didn’t get paid, and messed up the Idaho thing.”
“I messed that up.”
“Because I wasn’t there.”
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