The Night We Burned

by S. F. Kosa

  Eszter looked out at the meeting hall. “He says we’re being tested. We have to prove ourselves worthy.”

  “Well, I guess I did. And tomorrow, I bet I have to prove myself worthy again.”

  Eszter’s smile was ghostly. “You could leave,” she murmured. “Tomorrow, when we’re cleaning in town.”

  Maybe she should. Maybe it was the only way to save herself—and her child. But…where could she go? She had no education, no skills, no job. No car, no license. No money, no accounts, no insurance. No name, no family. No community, not if she left the Oracles. Parvaneh turned to Eszter. In the faint glow from the dorm’s windows, the shadows were not kind to her round, heavy face. “Why would you even suggest that?” It felt like a trick, just like the poisoned milk. Or…a test. “Are you trying to get me to leave?”

  Eszter’s face was unreadable. “Only if you want to.”

  “I’m fully committed.”

  Eszter nodded. “I guess we all are.” She turned and went back inside, leaving the stars to Parvaneh.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bend, Oregon

  December 13, present day

  After reading Miles’s text a few more times, I call the hospital. I need to warn Essie, but I also need to get myself on the same page with her. It’s not too late to get this thing back on the rails. I know she works in the evening and it’s only early afternoon, but I have to take the chance. She knows I work at the Hatchet. And she’d already met Miles, for god’s sake, even if he doesn’t realize it. She called him “Mr. Connover,” so he’d given her his name, made himself easy to find. I’m such a fool. I could have made her my ally, and instead I’ve pushed her toward the enemy. And not for the first time.

  Essie’s not at work. I do my best to weasel contact information out of the attendant who is, but she just tells me she’ll give Essie a message.

  Then I text Miles, choosing every word carefully.

  If you give me Shari Redmond’s contact info, I’ll be all set to fact-check tomorrow. Streamlining so you can get it to Valentina ASAP.

  Laptop on my thighs, aggravated as hell at the stiff, itchy cast on my left arm, I edit one of Kieran’s stories and wait for the ping of Miles’s response. The pain is slightly better today, but it makes me feel vulnerable. Not as vulnerable as this, though: I can’t figure out how the person who left the meditation stone on Hailey and Martin’s doorstep found me. Who would even know who I am besides Essie? Did she tell someone? Did Hailey voice her suspicions to one of her friends in town?

  For a moment, I consider Max, a.k.a. Gil. He thought we’d met before. Did he make the connection? But the rocks were left for me and Essie before I met him. Michelle Bathhouse has a motive, as do other family members of people killed in that fire. Could one of them have tracked me down before I even remembered they existed?

  Then there’s Arman and Noah. Arman is just a kid, though, and Noah seems totally in charge. Does he have some game going that I haven’t yet figured out? I open my laptop and Google Noah Perry. Not much apart from his bylines at the Quest. I sign into my fake Facebook account and try to find him there, even as I wonder if people his age are even on Facebook anymore.

  They might be, but he’s not. So I look on Twitter and then Instagram, and there he is. A few hundred followers. Posts dating back to 2017. He’s a bit of an adventurer. There are pics of him in Patagonia and Nepal. Pics of him in NYC with a pretty young woman with long, shiny, brown hair. It turns out those light roots I saw are blond, and he’s just dyed it in the last few months. His profile is the Robert Frost quote: Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. After that, it just says: Fully. Committed.

  I shiver. To me, that phrase means something very specific.

  On the one hand, Noah seems like a normal young guy. Attractive, outgoing, from a wealthy enough family that he’s been able to travel all over the world.

  On the other, he makes me nervous. He’s too eager. Does he know about the meditation stones? Would Arman have told him?

  How could Arman have known, though? He was barely a toddler when the Retreat burned. His mustache is still peach fuzz. There’s no way he’d remember details about life on the compound.

  I go to Google Arman, but I realize I don’t know his last name. I dictate a note into my phone to find out. Next, I search for Children of Darius. Nothing relevant to the Oracles in the results. That doesn’t mean it’s not somewhere on the dark web or in some shadowed corner I can’t find. But it does make me wonder if Noah isn’t being honest. It doesn’t make him a killer, though. Why would a kid his age, obviously from a rich family, stalk and murder a bunch of cult survivors? Just for the thrill? It doesn’t make sense.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Miles. Still buzzing with a jumble of questions, I answer. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “I’m driving back,” he says. “Should be there around ten.”

  “Do you have Es—Shari’s number?” I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping he doesn’t notice my mistake.

  “Her name’s Essie Green,” he says. “I’ll get you the info when I’m not driving. Did you know you’ve already met her?”

  “I did?”

  “At the hospital. Lady who was collecting your insurance info.”

  “You’re kidding. Really?”

  “Mm-hmm. Before she found me, I had contacted her mother in Portland. Michelle Bathhouse had given me her info. Bernice Redmond didn’t want to give me any information about her daughter; I guess they’ve had a falling out, but she also said Shari wanted to start her life over and Bernice wasn’t going to get in the way of that. But nineteen years ago, Bernice got custody of a little boy who was on the compound the night of the fire. He’s Shari’s son, but Bernice raised him while Shari was in prison. His name is Jamal Redmond, and he’s a junior at Oregon State.”

  His tone is strange. Flat and sharp. It’s making my heart rate spike. “And?”

  “He said he’d been looking for his half siblings for years. Even put his genetic info on all the sites to put himself out there. And guess what.”

  “What?”

  “Nada. Nothing.”

  “As in, he hasn’t been contacted?”

  “Exactly, Dora, but isn’t this how the Children of Darius supposedly finds people?”

  I reach for the glass of water by the nightstand, suddenly parched. Wondering if Noah Perry has constructed a massive prank and the joke’s on all of us.

  “I should have dug into this before pushing the story on you.” I can’t believe I let this stupid story distract me. I tell Miles about the results of my internet scavenger hunt. “At this point,” I conclude, “I’m wondering if Noah just found this kid Arman and paid him to go along.” Arman, who Noah tells me was born and raised in Bend, couldn’t even give Noah the name of one place to get ice cream in town. And Noah kept speaking for him. Covering for him. I probably just fooled myself into thinking he looked familiar.

  “You don’t think he’s the one doing all of this, do you?” I ask.

  “Not really,” he says. “But I do think you should be careful. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t realize who he’s stepping on as he goes for the prize. Anyway, I’ll be back tonight, and we need to talk this through. I’m about to call Ben Ransom and suggest that he do some extra patrols in Essie’s neighborhood. I already told her about Marie—I wasn’t going to let someone get killed just so I could get a story.”

  “Because you’ve confirmed that Marie Heckender was murdered the same way Arnold Moore was,” I guess.

  “Like I said, we’ll have a sit-down when I get back. Gotta go make some calls. Talk to you soon.” And he’s gone.

  But his mention of Essie Green’s neighborhood gives me an idea, one I can’t believe I didn’t think of before. It takes me only a few minutes of online digging to come up wit
h the Bend address for Essie Green. Car key in hand, I head out. A cold rain has begun to fall, chilling me from head to foot as I cross the parking lot. It’s late afternoon, but the light has faded quickly, any scraps of sun swallowed by thick thunderheads. I program Essie’s address into my GPS and hit the road, cursing at the awkwardness of my left arm.

  Essie lives in southeast Bend, just off Wilson Avenue, in a neighborhood of little ranch homes, scrubby lawns, and abundant trailers and old pickups in the driveways. I turn onto her road and slow to a crawl. I’m trying to make out the number on a rusty mailbox when flashing police lights fill my rearview mirror.

  I pull over immediately, my heart rate approaching 150. With a shaking hand, I dig through my glove compartment for the registration and proof of insurance. By the time I come up with it, there’s a cop at my window. I roll it down. “Hi, Officer.” His name tag says Montenaro. I can’t make out his face because he’s shining a flashlight into mine.

  “License and registration,” he says.

  I hand everything over. “Can I ask why you stopped me?”

  He peers at my documents. “Dora Rodriguez,” he says. “From Seattle.”

  “I’m down here for work,” I babble. “My folks live here.”

  “We’ve been warned of some suspicious activity in this area, Ms. Rodriguez.” He looks my car over. “One of the homeowners reported seeing an old blue Corolla like this one cruising the streets slowly. Your family lives in this neighborhood?”

  I shake my head and grasp the steering wheel with my left hand, making sure the cast is visible. “They live in the Old Mill District,” I tell him. “I’ve actually never been in this neighborhood before. I’m just here…” My voice trails off as everything slides into place like the tumblers on a lock. Suspicious activity in the area. Him noting my out-of-state status and probably my plates. Miles telling me only an hour ago that he was about to call the police chief and ask them to do more patrols. I’m making myself look guilty as hell. At this point, if Essie knew I was here, she’d probably tell them all about me. I swallow hard and grin. “Honestly? I got turned around in the dark and the rain. I haven’t been to Bend in a while, and it’s changed a lot!”

  He glances toward the passenger seat, where my phone screen has gone mercifully dark. A moment ago, Google Maps would have betrayed me. “You need some directions?”

  “Yes! I’m headed to Root Down? I don’t even think it was here when I last visited!”

  He gives me cursory directions to the café before telling me I’m free to go. Shaken to the core, I slowly drive away, knowing there’s no way I’ll even get close to Essie this evening. And I don’t think I can go back to the hospital again; it would raise too much suspicion.

  By the time I pull into the hotel parking lot, I’ve got a text from Hailey. Half expecting it to be about my ill-timed visit to Essie’s neighborhood, I read it immediately.

  Got a call from Gina today. Complaining about a reporter named Dora from the Hatchet. Says she’s going to contact the management because you stole her information.

  I so do not need this. I didn’t steal anything, I dictate. She wanted to tell me all about little green men, and it wasn’t usable information.

  She said she gave you names of cult members who were never accounted for and might still be alive. She thinks one of them killed Arnie. Is there something you want to tell me?

  I want to scream. Are you suggesting that I’m a murderer? I am, but that’s not the point.

  No, Christy. But I do think you’re a liar.

  Her words hit me like a blow to the chest. It doesn’t matter that she’s right. She was one of the only people in the world who really seemed to care about me. Now I’ve ruined it. Because that’s what I do, I guess. Telling myself it was the only way to be safe, when really it just left me isolated. The rain washes tears off my face as I trudge through the downpour back to my room. I strip off my wet clothes, take a Vicodin, and fall onto the bed, exhausted and aching.

  When the phone rips me from sleep, I register the time, 6:07 a.m., a second before I answer. It’s Valentina. “Dora,” she says when I answer. “Where are you?”

  “At my hotel,” I say blearily, shaking myself out of the opioid haze. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Miles,” she says. “He’s been in an accident.”

  “Oh my god,” I whisper. “Is he okay?”

  “No,” she says. “He’s at the hospital in Bend. They called me from his phone. I’ve got to break a story before we get scooped, so I can’t get down there until tonight. I was hoping—”

  I’m already on my feet. “I’ll go right now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bend, Oregon

  December 14, 2000

  Parvaneh climbed into the van and leaned back against the seat. The air smelled of bleach as Eszter slid the door shut. She clumsily fell onto the seat next to Parvaneh and clutched at her belly, looking stricken. Parvaneh raised her head. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh,” she said in a squeaky voice. “I just felt a…pang.”

  Ladonna glanced back from the driver’s seat. “As in, you might be pregnant again?”

  Eszter shot Parvaneh an anxious look and shook her head. “As in, I might need the bathroom soon.” She continued to hold on to her belly as she fastened her seat belt with her other hand.

  Ladonna snorted. “I’ll get us on the road as soon as Fabia gets our stuff loaded.”

  The rear doors of the van slammed, and a moment later, Fabia got into the front passenger seat. She rubbed her hands together. “I hate winter. My hands are like hamburger.”

  Parvaneh shuddered and gazed out the window as they rolled through the parking lot, taking in the stares of a few locals, the bright colors of their coats and hats, the strange, superficial film of ordinary that clung to all of it, the cars, the shopping carts, the grocery bags brimming with cartons of orange juice and cans of Diet Coke and bags of Lay’s potato chips and round heads of lettuce. She watched a mother taking her child out of a car seat and cooing to it as she strapped the kid into a cart. It all seemed unreal. Like scenes from a movie.

  She ran her hand over the swell of her belly. She’d lain awake so many nights recently, wondering if she needed to rejoin that world for the sake of her daughter. Fearing that if she didn’t, it wouldn’t only be her on that altar someday—these days it felt like anything could happen at any moment. She was supposed to think of the little one inside her as a shell, a body waiting for a soul, but that was harder each time she felt a kick. Somehow, it only made things outside of her body more confusing.

  “Did you hear what Kazem was saying this morning at breakfast?” she said to no one in particular. “The cow we sacrificed last week?” They’d had to meditate over it in the freezing barn while it bled out, and afterward, Parvaneh had thrown up behind a tree. “He didn’t have enough refrigerator and freezer space to save all the meat. Some of it went bad.”

  “The hogs are having litters of piglets, though,” said Fabia. “He said that too.” She cast a narrow-eyed glance at Parvaneh. “You doubt Darius’s decisions?”

  Parvaneh clenched her jaw and shook her head. “It was just a statement of fact,” she said when she could speak without screaming.

  “But your tone,” said Eszter. “Your tone is so hostile.”

  Parvaneh’s entire body flushed with a poisonous heat. Eszter had been saying things like this for the past two weeks, commenting every single time Parvaneh didn’t look appropriately serene and content. Like she wanted to get Parvaneh in trouble.

  Her hand froze over her abdomen as the baby kicked. Eszter was watching, and suddenly it all made sense. She was jealous. She’d lost her baby.

  Fabia, too, was greedily eyeing Parvaneh’s swollen belly. “You’ll be off cleaning duty soon,” she said.

  “I worked it until the very end,” Es
zter said.

  “Yeah, but your baby came before it should have,” said Ladonna. “I shouldn’t have sent you to run after that boy.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Eszter said quickly. “It all happened according to the will of the consciousness. Just like everything that’s happening now. I’m moving forward.” Her eyes had gone unfocused, peering through the windshield at the road ahead, the van carrying them closer to the compound, their secluded society of blood and death.

  That was what it had become. After Octavia, after Eszter’s tragedy, after the visit from the cops and the looming threat of a search warrant, Darius had shown flashes of joy and confidence, but he hadn’t been the same. He was worried. Looking for something to save them all as the new millennium began. Parvaneh just wanted things to go back to the way they’d been in the spring and summer, when everyone was happy, when Darius had thought she was special, when he’d whispered wonderful secrets into her ear, when she’d known she belonged, finally. But it seemed like he’d turned to Eszter for comfort—and as much as Parvaneh didn’t want to blame someone who had lost so much, it seemed like Eszter had only made things worse. What killed Parvaneh was that she had been in Eszter’s position only a few short months ago. Things had been peaceful, then. Better. With one terrible event, though, Eszter had replaced her. Everything had changed.

  Now, as the days grew shorter and the nights had turned frigid, the current on the air crackled with danger. One word out of line, and you could be whipped until you bled to help you back to the path. It had happened to Parvaneh last week, after Eszter had expressed concern about Parvaneh’s commitment in front of Darius, simply because she’d been caught playing with Xerxes near the barns and had been late to help Basir with dinner. For some reason, Eszter had been snooping around in the woods, spying, and had seen them there and tattled. And because Eszter had so much influence with Darius now, so much power, it seemed, her tattling had instant and painful results.

  Darius had made Xerxes watch while everyone whipped Parvaneh, while she buried her face against her arm and clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming. He’d wanted to teach the boy a lesson: when even one of them strayed, they all suffered. Xerxes had cried until he was exhausted, and he had refused to even look at Parvaneh ever since. Because of Eszter. Or because Parvaneh really had strayed.