#2 White Sheets

by H. D. Gordon

  I should have been relieved. After all, I’d dodged one heck of a bullet. But somehow, I wasn’t relieved at all. Somehow, a feeling in my gut told me that I’d lost the only opportunity I would be getting to nip this thing in the bud.

  And it would turn out I was right.

  Chapter 49

  Middle Man

  As soon as Joe was gone, and the office door shut behind Sharon, he jumped up from his seat, tore his dark glasses off his face, tossed them atop his desk and strode over to her. He didn’t stop until he was inches from her face, standing over her and staring down his red nose at her. A tiny bit of satisfaction swirled through him as she cringed a little under his gaze. But not enough satisfaction. Not nearly enough. He’d worked up an appetite for some physical activity, and his stupid bitch of a wife had waltzed right in and fucked that up.

  The bitch had some fucking nerve!

  His hand reared back on its own and swung forward fast, the back of it connecting hard with the bone in her cheek. He watched through a red haze as her head snapped to the side, a small cry of pain escaping her mouth. Her eyes did not grow wide, but they did grow moist, and her hand came up and cupped her already swelling cheek.

  Serves her fucking right!

  He grabbed her by the shirtfront in his two fists, gripping the fabric hard enough to turn his hard knuckles bone-white. Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke only inches from her face, his neck craned down and his dark eyes were pitiless.

  “Don’t you ever come through that fucking door without permission,” he spat. When she just stared up at him, a certain amount of chill in her own eyes, he shook her hard, rattling her the way an angry child would a toy. “Do you understand me? Say it. Say you understand me.”

  Sharon stared back at him, not blinking, not breaking eye contact either. He had to give it to her, she was a brave little bitch. In an emotionless voice, she said, “I understand.”

  He pulled her closer, lifting her off her heels by her shirtfront so that their noses were nearly touching. “What was that?” he said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “I understand, Father,” she said, in that same flat tone.

  Satisfied, for now, at least, he released her, making her stumble back against the office door. As he returned to his chair behind his desk, he flopped down and wondered what had happened to the good woman he had married. Sharon hadn’t always been like this. No, when he’d married her all those years ago, she’d been a fun, kind, God-fearing woman, and now…well, she was different; not right. Her proximity to him was probably the only thing that was keeping the devil at bay. Obviously she had forgotten how damn lucky she was to have him. He would have to see to it that she remembered. But first, there were apparently other matters that required his attention.

  And for Sharon’s sake, they better be some fucking important matters.

  He laced his fingers together and rested them over his midsection, leaning back in his leather chair and releasing a long breath. “All right, I forgive you,” he said. “What was so important that you felt the need to interrupt me during important business?”

  She was silent for a moment, just staring at him with that emotionless expression on her face, one side of which had gone an angry red where he’d struck her. “Sara Ross, the reporter from the Kansas City Sun called,” she said.

  He’d been rearranging some things on his desk, but his head jerked up now. “What the fuck does that little bitch want now?”

  Sharon’s lips didn’t so much as twitch, but there was a certain gleam in her eyes that said she was smiling on the inside. It made his anger flare, but was forgotten once he heard what she said next.

  “She claims to have spoken to former Family members,” she said. “She says they’re accusing you of…all kinds of things.”

  His eyes narrowed, his hands balling into fists. “What kinds of things?”

  She stared at him for several seconds in that blank way. Then, in the same robotic voice, she said, “Statutory rape, assault, brainwashing children, and Miss Ross said that was just to name a few. Of course,” she paused, “I told her that was ridiculous.”

  He stood from his seat so fast that his leather wingback chair tipped over and slammed against the bookshelf behind it, knocking a few knickknacks to the floor. Spittle flew from his lips as he spoke, and his eyes blazed with murderous intent. “That lying, scheming little cunt,” he growled. “Who the fuck does she think she is? I allow her to come into my home, to question my people, and this is how she repays me? By slandering me to my own wife. What a dirty, devil-worshipping little cunt. She has to be stopped. This is fucking blasphemy!”

  Sharon said nothing to this, but that didn’t matter. He’d all but forgotten she was even there. He needed to talk to Bobby and Dorie, needed to get an update on how their little mission was going, needed to tell them that the situation had just jumped from yellow to orange, and if they couldn’t do what the fuck he’d sent them out to do, it was fast heading into the red. They needed to find Sara Ross and Beth Johnson and eliminate this threat once and for all. No more fucking around.

  If there were traitors on the outside, there was more than likely traitors on the inside as well. And he had a way to flush them out. You bet your ass, he did.

  He snatched his cell phone from the drawer in his desk and hit the button to call Dorie’s cell phone. As he placed it to his ear, he looked up and saw that Sharon was still in the room. “Is that all?” he snapped. “Anything else that’s so fucking important it can’t wait?”

  Sharon met his stare and held it. Then she shook her head slowly. “No, Father,” she said. “There’s nothing else.”

  He waved a hand, dismissing her. He was already busy giving directions to Dorie, so he didn’t notice when Sharon’s eyes flicked down to the silver letter opener on the top of his desk right before she slipped out the door.

  Chapter 50

  Joe

  The rest of Wednesday passed in a blur. I was questioned by Fae about why I hadn’t attended dinner, and I told her I wasn’t feeling well, which wasn’t exactly a lie. I did feel sick, just not in the sense I let on.

  I could tell Fae was still suspicious of me, but she started to warm up again once it became apparent that I hadn’t ratted her out to the reverend about Madison’s drawing. On top of that, I got the feeling she understood the reason why I could be so shaken after having paid a solo visit to the reverend’s office. In fact, as I remembered my first night at the ranch, and the way Fae had left our room in the middle of the night only to return in tears, I thought she just might understand perfectly. All the puzzle pieces were starting to fall into place, and the picture they were beginning to reveal was even uglier than I could have ever imagined.

  That night, despite my growing physical exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep. I kept replaying the reverend’s last words over and over in my head, wondering just when we would be “continuing our conversation”. Not only that, but part of me was waiting to be dragged from my bed at any moment and hauled back to that dreaded white house to be punished for my thwarted attempt on the reverend’s life. The more I replayed the horrible scene in my head, the more convinced I became that Sharon had seen me holding the letter opener.

  Then again, maybe not everyone was as brainwashed by the man as I’d at first thought. The deeper I sank into the situation, the more I began to see that fear—not loyalty—was the driving force of this entire operation. But even if that were true, that only made it all the more dangerous. A strong enough fear could make people do crazy things, including turning on their “family” members.

  But no one came to bother me, and I flipped in and out of consciousness with no drifting in between. One minute, I would be staring into the darkness of the bedroom, and the next moment I was out like a light. Back and forth, I went. It made for an even more exhausting night than if I’d just stayed up the whole time. By the time the sun was beginning to lighten the room, I was already sitting up in my bed, awake before my two roomma
tes for the first time.

  Thursday started out the same way as the day before, and the day before that. I went to breakfast, to the childcare room, to lunch, back to the childcare room, and finally, to dinner, where the only event worth mentioning took place.

  I was sitting in the cafeteria at my now usual table. Fae was seated across from me, and Troy sat at my side. They were the only two people, other than the children, that I was able to have any real interaction with (I’d given up on speaking to Kayla again in the near future; her schedule didn’t intersect with mine). So, I was starting to grow fond of them both, even though my better instincts ensured I kept them at a safe distance. I was willing to bet in other circumstances, in a different reality from the one we’d all found ourselves in, Troy and Fae could be decent people. People I could be friends with, even. In this reality, however, that belief, if trusted, could very well get me killed.

  I was starting to learn that in this ‘family’, it was every man for himself, and as the days passed, and the scene in my drawing drew nearer and nearer, I knew in my gut that I was standing on a floor that would not hold for much longer. We all were. This may seem obvious, but as my body grew weaker and weaker, going about the strict routine had a way of making a docile mind.

  Luckily, the thing that happened at Thursday night’s dinner snapped me right back on my toes.

  The meal was in full swing, everyone having found their seats and eating their portions of food eagerly. I was shoving a bite of chicken and rice in my mouth, listening to one of Troy’s stories about the time he’d climbed a tree on the edge of the Grand Canyon to get a better look and lost his balance.

  “Why in God’s name would you climb a tree at the Grand Canyon?” Fae asked around a bite of broccoli, an amused smile on her face. “I mean, that’s got to be a record for stupidity.”

  Troy laughed. “Hey, I was eight years old, all right? Give me a break. It seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time. Anyway, it wasn’t a big tree or anything, and it wasn’t hanging out over the edge of the hole, either. It was just really close to the edge.” He gave a big, slightly sheepish smile. “Long story short, I lost my balance and fell.”

  Troy tossed a piece of chicken into his mouth and swung his leg around so that we could see it. Pushing up his khaki shorts revealed a long, ugly scar there. “And, I got this to show for it,” he said. “On the way down my leg got ripped clean open by a branch.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded in a self-satisfied way. “I didn’t even go to the hospital and get stitches, my mother just poured peroxide over it in the tub every night before bed. Pretty manly, huh?”

  Fae and I both laughed at that. Even though I was about as keyed up over everything as a person could be, I had to admit that Troy’s stories were a good dose of comedic relief that I desperately needed.

  “Sure,” Fae said, and winked at me. “Manly in a look-out-for-that-tree kind of way.”

  Troy clutched a hand over his heart. “You wound me, Harper,” he said, and slung an arm around my shoulders. “You should be more like Joe here. She never says anything to hurt me.”

  Fae rolled her eyes. “Joe never says anything at all,” she said, and then she looked at me with a certain gleam behind her eyes. “But you’re right, it’s one of the reasons I like her so much too. People who know how to hold their tongues don’t get enough credit.”

  I gave a weak smile and opened my mouth to respond, but as I did so, the speakers that were posted all around the cafeteria clicked on and the reverend’s voice sounded through them, cutting off any thought I had the way a guillotine removes a head from the neck. It was the first time I’d heard his voice since what had happened in his office.

  “Good evening, my children,” he said, after a small report from the speakers. I had to grit my teeth to suppress a shudder. The reverend’s voice coming from all those speakers, surrounding me on every side, was enough to make me lose my appetite even though I’d been starving just a moment ago. Even my one allotted chocolate-covered pretzel was no longer tempting.

  “I hope you are all enjoying your dinner, and I’m sorry I couldn’t be there with you this evening. I’ve been very busy lately handling matters concerning our safety, battling those who wish to destroy the lives we’ve built.”

  I looked around the cafeteria, and was surprised to see genuine fear come over most of the faces. The mothers had drawn their children close and every man in the room was sitting at straight-backed attention.

  “These people make up lies and stories about us, say that we live like a bunch of Jesus freak perverts.”

  There were small gasps from the crowd now. I snuck a look at Fae to see her jaw clench just slightly at the reverend’s last word. It was a reaction that would have gone unnoticed by most everyone, but not by me, because it made me cringe just the same. Perverts. Right.

  “I’m afraid they’re coming for us, my children, and when they do, they plan to cage us and torture us, the Lord has told me so.”

  Now a silence fell over the big room, a sort of collectively held breath, a simultaneous stalling of the heart. Even I was part of it, because the feeling of terror surrounding me was too potent to ignore, like an obnoxious perfume coming off all of us.

  “But you don’t have to worry anymore, my children, because I am leading you to safety. In fact, we are halfway there already, halfway to heaven…”

  Now the hearts in the room were thumping, and thumping hard, like a pulsing of the walls. Alarm bells started going off in my head and all it took was a short glance around at the expressions of the others to see that I was not the only one. I didn’t know exactly where this way going, but I knew it was not good.

  “Will you follow me, my children? Heaven is waiting for us. The devil is strong, but we are stronger, and we are halfway there…

  Silence. His next words dropped like bombs.

  “The food you’ve all just eaten was prepared with a sacred elixir. I’ve eaten it too. Our conversion will be quick and painless, not like the deaths the government plans to give us. Our conversion into the life everlasting will be a statement, a beautiful testament to the greatness of our cause…”

  There was a moment then, right after he said this, where time seemed to stop, as if the insane words took a minute to soak through the skin. Nobody moved, blinked or breathed. My mind was flying a mile a minute, an endless stream of questions that raced through my head at the speed of light. Had I been mistaken? Did I really just eat poison? Was this a trick? A way to flush out traitors? Where did I go wrong? This wasn’t right…was it? Did I really just eat poison? Was it too late? Were we all about to die?

  These thoughts were cut off when Madison’s mother—Christine, I’d learned her name was—stood up from her table across the cafeteria. My heart dropped as a realization hit me, and I willed her with everything I had to sit down, but I could see just from the horrified look on her face that she would be doing no such thing.

  “What the hell is this?” Christine asked, reaching down and taking Madison into her arms. My heart cracked when I saw the look on the little girl’s face reflected the feeling in my gut. “Is this some kind of joke?” Christine continued, looking all around at everyone with wide, shocked eyes. “What the hell is going here?

  I held very still, and so did everyone else, not a single other person even willing to meet Christine’s eyes, which were filling up with tears as she saw this too. A small movement in the corner of my eye made me look over at Troy, who had a composed look on his face, but whose hands were balled into tight fists under the table.

  I saw him move as if to stand, and my hand shot out and gripped his hand under the table before he could do so. He froze, and I brought my eyes up slowly to his, giving my head the tiniest of shakes and praying he would listen. Troy stared at me for several short moments that seemed like forever, his eyes practically staring through me. I knew we hadn’t known each other long, but I could only hope he would trust me here.

  Someone else stood up
then, a middle-aged man with a balding head. “She’s right,” he said. “This isn’t right. This isn’t what I signed up for. It’s downright crazy.”

  I felt Troy shift again, and my hand tightened on his, probably hard enough to hurt, but I needed him to keep his peace. I just hoped my instincts were right, and this was a ruse, a way to flush out the non-believers. It had to be, because this wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Never once had one of my drawings been wrong, and I had no choice but to trust myself. Either way, if I was wrong, and we really had just ingested poison, we were all dead anyway.

  The man who had spoken began making his way toward the exit, cursing the reverend as he went, people turning their heads and shying away from him the whole way. Christine just stood there, clutching Madison to her chest and looking like a person who needed to escape, but had nowhere to escape to.

  Madison’s head turned then, and her striking green gaze settled on me from across the room. Perhaps it was just the tension, the highly explosive situation we were in, but I could swear those green eyes pleaded to me, asked me without words to help her. To help her and her mother, who had just unwittingly marked them both as traitors and targets.