The Night We Burned

by S. F. Kosa

“We should take her to the emergency room,” says Arman, gently removing the earbud from my left ear. He and Noah exchange looks over me. “St. Charles is about fifteen minutes away, but that’s from the car.”

  “Which is a few miles away.” Noah curses as he gives me a once-over. “Can you walk? Anything else broken?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. It feels like all of me just shattered. Nausea coils in my stomach.

  “She doesn’t look like she weighs much,” says Arman. He has wide-set eyes and a heart-shaped face, a narrow chin for a man, and a ghosting of familiar features. Arman grimaces as he peers at my wrist. “I can carry her.”

  He slides his arms beneath me and rises with me held against him. Arman’s stouter than Noah is, short and wide instead of tall and lean, as he picks his way down the path, back to the car with me like a child in his arms. I hold in a scream behind the wall of my teeth, clenched so tightly that no one could ever pry them open.

  “Dora,” says Noah. “Any chance you parked your car nearby? Ours is up at Sawyer Park.”

  “Riverbend,” I tell him, gasping as Arman stumbles against a tree. His jacket smells like woodsmoke and weed. His body smells of sweat and beer. I’ve ruined their hike.

  “Awesome,” says Noah, full of shaky fake cheer. “We’ll be there in a sec. Keys?”

  “I have a pocket in my leggings…”

  It might take Arman a minute to reach the lot, or maybe ten, or maybe thirty. I lose track, tumbling in the mouth of the beast that’s chewing me up from the inside out. I overhear Noah tell a few people I’m going to be all right, that they’re taking me to a hospital, like he wants to make sure people don’t think they’ve mugged me on the trail and are taking me away to murder me. It would be easy enough to do if they wanted to. I’m in no shape to put up a fight.

  I laugh at my own morbid thoughts as I’m carried across the parking lot, which causes Arman to give me a worried look.

  Noah asks, “Are you delirious or just enjoying this experience?”

  “Neither,” I say with a gasp as Arman shifts my body so Noah can get at the back pocket of my leggings. I cry out as he pushes too hard against the exact spot on my spine that’s been killing me for weeks.

  Noah takes me from Arman and loads me into the back seat, somehow managing through it all to keep my arm pinned against my chest. Once I’m buckled in, he scoots in close and presses my hand to my shoulder, keeping it from flopping painfully. He, too, smells of beer and weed.

  They talk to me constantly as we drive to the hospital, with Noah telling me about how he broke his leg skiing when he was eleven and Arman telling me that he fell out of a tree when he was a kid and broke his arm, but his mom didn’t believe him about how badly it hurt and didn’t take him to the hospital for almost a week.

  Arman pulls into the emergency bay at the hospital. Noah flings open the door and carries me into the ER while Arman drives my car away to park it. There’s a chaos of faces, a chaos of noise, the chaos inside me, with Noah telling the nurse I fell on the trail and might have multiple broken bones. I lift my head as he talks to the reception desk lady. Our eyes meet, mine and hers.

  The memory of the first time we met explodes like a bomb in my skull. I can almost smell the cinnamon.

  Spots ooze into my vision. Words lose their edges and become droning, buzzing nothing. I can’t fight my way to the surface of this. I don’t even know which way is up to safety. For all I know, I’m swimming deeper into darkness. Into danger. It’s her, I know it’s her, it can’t be her.

  Please don’t let it be her.

  My pleading thoughts fall silent as the darkness swallows me whole.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Retreat

  June 24, 2000

  Parvaneh sat up, pulling the sheet around her body. Next to her, Darius breathed in slow pulls of air, his body relaxed in sleep. In the candlelight, she imagined him younger, before he’d become aware of the reality that lay beneath the trappings of the exterior world. He’d told her how he’d followed all the rules, obeyed Mommy and Daddy, gone to college, gotten a job, gotten rich…and the whole time, he’d felt like a fish on land, knowing he was in the wrong place and that his soul would die if he didn’t figure out where he belonged and how to get there. And once he did, once he saw the world as it truly was, he was consumed with the desire to share it with people who could see it too.

  Tonight, he’d told her that he believed she had it within her to see more clearly than any of his other followers. He’d told her that her soul had wings, that he could teach it to fly—it was why he’d named her Parvaneh. Like he’d known, right from the start, what they could do together. He’d told her that when she surrendered to him totally, she was blessing him, too, making it easier for his own soul to delve deeper into the mysteries of the consciousness.

  He’d told her he needed her, especially now.

  “You should get back to the dorm,” he said. “It’s better for the others, to see you there.”

  She turned to see him watching her. “What will they do, if they know we’re—”

  He reached for her hand. “It’s important for you to remind them that I’m helping you to reach your potential as an Oracle, which will help all of us in our journey.” He squeezed her fingers. “To protect them from weak thoughts and impulses. How I help you reach your potential should stay between us for the good of everyone else.”

  Parvaneh bit her lip. “I was wondering…before we started…doing this, you had a lot of evening meditation sessions with other Oracles.”

  He gave her a somber look. “See? Even you, who have come so far in the last few months—even you are vulnerable to that poison. You’re jealous.”

  “No! I’m not,” she said. “It’s just, with all the pregnancies, all the babies—”

  “Do you doubt my motives and decisions?”

  “No.”

  “Do you doubt me when I tell you that you’re special to me? Do you think I’m lying?”

  She shook her head.

  He kissed her fingertips. “Do you think you are ready for all my honesty? It’s hard sometimes, being responsible for so many people.” His eyes closed. “Sometimes it’s very tiring.”

  She took his face in her hands. “I don’t want to put more burden on you. Tell me whatever you want or need to tell me. I trust you completely.”

  He sighed. “There have been times that I have given of my body in order to advance the development of some of my Oracles. Some people need to be freed of their inhibitions, their past traumas. Some need to overwrite the pain of past relationships or abuse. Sometimes I make sacrifices for the good of others because I know that’s what the consciousness requires of me. And sometimes it touches me, tells me to prepare a home for another soul it wants to give us. I’ve committed my life to its will—I have no choice.”

  “Is that what this is?” she whispered.

  “No. This is different. And perhaps I’m being selfish, grasping this wonderful thing for myself. Has it harmed you?”

  She laughed. “It’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  He leaned against her, touched his forehead to hers. “For me too. But I want to protect our fellow Oracles from the envy that might result from our connection. Does that make sense?”

  She nodded, though she couldn’t help thinking about how badly she wanted to rub it in Fabia’s stupid face. The thing that would stop her from doing that was Octavia. She could tell from the way Octavia and Darius interacted that they had been together, and now she, Parvaneh, had taken Octavia’s place. But she liked Octavia. She didn’t want her to feel jealous or sad.

  “They know you’re devoted to each and every person’s unique path,” she said. “That’s obvious, right down to the meditation stones you make for all of us.”

  He pulled her toward him for a kiss. “T
hank you for saying that. It helps keep my energy up. It sustains me. Now go, so you’re in your bed before it gets too late.”

  She pulled her robe over her head. “Should I…?” She gestured at the door to the closet.

  He nodded. “It would be distracting to the others to see you come out of my cabin.”

  She slid the closet door wide and turned on the light, revealing the ladder descending to the tunnel. He’d explained his design of the compound, to protect all its members and his own ability to lead them. The meeting hall, situated in the center, was flanked by the dining hall and the men’s dorm on either side, with the women’s dorm next to the men’s and the children’s dorm next to the dining hall. A three-mile-long gravel road connecting the compound to a county highway was located across the clearing and surrounded on either side by dense woods. The pastures and gardens where they raised their food were down the trail to the south of the dining hall. Darius’s private quarters were nestled in the woods approximately fifty yards southeast of the meeting hall—and they were connected to his office in the meeting hall by an underground tunnel. It was a rickety thing, wooden bolsters holding back encroaching earth, fallen lumps of dirt and rocks littering the path, more each passing day, it seemed. Parvaneh had taken to jogging along, partially hunched over, to get back to the surface as quickly as she could. Whenever she was down there, it felt like the entire thing was about to collapse on her. But she never complained—Darius hadn’t constructed it to be pretty. He’d constructed this system to allow him to focus entirely on his purpose without distraction.

  And now, it allowed her to return to the others without emerging directly from Darius’s cottage in full view of anyone who happened to be walking between the barns and gardens, a distraction none of them needed. She descended the stairs, using happy thoughts to beat back her fear of being buried alive. Darius wanted and needed her. The knowledge was a heady kind of drug running through her veins, healing all the wounds of the past.

  She was grinning by the time she climbed the ladder to the meeting hall and emerged into the closet in the private office Darius had designed as the place where he spent most of his time. The safe, set into the wall across from the closet trapdoor, winked in the light from the office. He’d showed her what was in it—stacks of cash and a few gold bars. He’d told her he was planning to use the resources to build a special new retreat far from Bend, a place only for the most devoted Oracles. He’d promised they’d go there together someday, maybe soon.

  She pressed her ear to the door to the meeting hall and heard a few murmured voices. But they grew fainter after a few minutes, and then she heard the door to the meeting hall shut. She emerged into the big room, letting the office door close and lock with a click. He’d told her the code, another sign of his trust in her. She hurried down the aisle and let herself out at the back. Within a few minutes, she was walking into the women’s dorm and heading straight for the bathroom.

  Ladonna was at the counter, brushing her teeth. Their eyes met in the mirror right before she spat into the sink, Ladonna’s big and brown and impossible to read. Parvaneh ducked into a stall.

  “Where have you been?” Ladonna asked.

  “Meeting with Darius,” she replied.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  She came out of the stall to find Ladonna leaning against the counter. She looked tired since having her baby three months ago, and dark circles hung like weights beneath her eyes.

  “What?” asked Parvaneh.

  Ladonna shook her head. “I noticed you finally got your stone.”

  “I’m grateful to Darius for being willing to train me.”

  “He’s generous that way,” Ladonna said. “With all of us.”

  Parvaneh nodded eagerly; she had no intention of letting Ladonna know how Darius felt about her. “He loves all of us and wants us to meet our potential.”

  “He took me off the cleaning crew so you could take my place.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t give me that pitying look. I’ve been dragging ever since I dropped the baby. You did me a favor.” She gave Parvaneh’s shoulder a squeeze. “You don’t have to look so nervous.” She arched an eyebrow. “But you should take a shower before you go to bed.”

  Parvaneh’s cheeks burned as Ladonna trudged from the bathroom. She bowed her head and inhaled salt and sweat, the scent of Darius and what they’d done together. She stepped into a shower stall, rinsed off, and put her robe back on. Then she quickly brushed her teeth and headed back to the room she shared with Fabia, Eszter, and Zana, a girl about Parvaneh’s age or maybe a few years older, with very short hair and a quiet, tentative manner. The lights were out as Parvaneh slipped inside and crawled up to the top bunk across from Eszter.

  “You’re late. Again,” Fabia muttered in the dark.

  “I was meditating,” Parvaneh said.

  “It’s disgusting, seeing you throw yourself at him,” Fabia said.

  “Shut up,” snapped Eszter, breaking out of her usual patient tone. “Stop picking on her. Stop sowing discord.”

  Fabia grunted. “I’m not the one constantly begging for special attention.”

  Anger flashed hot inside Parvaneh. “Why don’t you focus on your own enlightenment instead of constantly sniping at everyone else?”

  “I’m focused on the well-being of the group.”

  “If you care about the group,” Zana said into the dark, “then please be quiet and let us sleep. Who cares where she was? She’s here with us now, and if she was meeting with Darius before, then that’s his decision, and we’re supposed to be trusting him.”

  “Zana’s right,” said Eszter. “You trust him or you don’t—”

  “I do,” Fabia said quickly.

  “Then trust him to know how to treat each of us,” Parvaneh said. “And let’s get to sleep. It’s a long day tomorrow.” Then she lay in the silence that followed, grinning up at the ceiling as she remembered how Darius had treated her, knowing that she was finally exactly where she was supposed to be.

  The eight of them exited the RE/MAX real estate office, mops and vacuum and spray bottles packed into their buckets, their gloves still on and their robes smelling of cleaning fluid. Parvaneh bustled over to Octavia to relieve her of a stack of sponges she’d been about to drop all over the strip mall’s dirty sidewalk. “Do you really think we need so many people to clean a single office suite?” she asked. “What if we split up into two crews? We have enough people on the compound to do four, if you think about it. This could really be a business.”

  Octavia gave her a grateful look as she handed over the sponges and a spray bottle. “We’d need another van if we had more than eight.”

  “I can mention it to Darius.”

  “Oh, here we go,” said Fabia. She rolled her eyes as the other women murmured their disapproval.

  “I’m sorry,” Parvaneh said to Fabia. “I didn’t realize you wanted us to make as little money as possible to support our family.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Excuse me,” said a man who had just parked his red Nissan outside the diner next to the real estate office. He had a bag slung across his chest and was wearing a backward baseball cap. “I saw you guys here last week. Do you mind if I ask if you’re a religious group or something?” He gestured at them. “With the robes?”

  “We’re the Oracles of Innocence,” Fabia said quickly, just as Octavia had opened her mouth to speak. “We’re just normal people…but everybody’s looking for peace and enlightenment, right? We’re on that path.”

  “The Oracles…of Innocence? Is that some kind of cult?”

  “We’re a group of like-minded people,” said Octavia. “But you can call us whatever you’d like if it makes you feel more comfortable to label us.”

  “Do you go to church?” Fabia said peevishly. “Are you a member of a cult?”

 
; Eszter put her hand on Fabia’s arm, murmuring for her to be quiet, but Fabia shook her off.

  “I meant no offense,” said the guy. “What’s with the cleaning supplies?”

  “We have agreements with several local businesses,” Octavia said. “We provide cleaning services at a very low and fair price.”

  “And we’re always looking for more business,” Parvaneh told him, offering her prettiest smile.

  The guy smiled back. “My name’s Joel. I work for the Bend Bulletin. It’s a pretty cool angle, a group like yours offering affordable cleaning. I could put a little item in the paper if you guys would like.”

  “That would be great!” Fabia announced.

  “Fabia, I don’t think—” Eszter began.

  “It’s perfect advertising, both for the Oracles and the business,” said Fabia. “We can have him put the number in the article.” They had one phone at the compound—it was in Darius’s office.

  “I can definitely do that,” Joel said, opening his bag to reveal a camera inside. “Could I get a picture?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should ask Darius first,” Parvaneh said, taking in the concerned expressions of Octavia and Eszter. “He should decide.” The others—Zana, Roshanak, Laleh, and Minu—looked intrigued but unsure.

  But Fabia was righteous in her certainty. “Don’t you guys know anything about marketing? Step one, people have to know you exist.” She turned to Parvaneh. “Weren’t you just suggesting we could do more business if we split up?”

  Parvaneh gritted her teeth. Eszter frowned. Octavia said, “I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

  “Perfect,” the guy said, pulling his camera from his bag. “Just get closer together. And smile!”

  Fabia’s smugness hadn’t receded by the time they returned to the compound. She chattered about her father—who she hated, if her endless complaints could be believed—who had taught her all about marketing and business. As soon as they’d put their supplies away and cleaned up for dinner, Fabia paraded into the dining hall and sat down at one of the long tables, right next to Darius. “We had a very good day,” she told him as the rest of them sat down.