The look on his face told me he had done everything he could.
Of some nineteen-hundred of us who had gone into that citadel, I guessed that less than five hundred had come back. Just thinking about that makes it seem even less real. It is not possible to lose that many people in one go. It can’t be. But it was. I had seen some of their bodies. Bloody and battered and torn. People will tell you that war is horror. It is pain and suffering. But it isn’t. It is worse than that. War is numbness. Numbness for things you must do, like leaving loved ones behind. Numbness for having to carry on as if it doesn’t matter. Numbness towards the things that you have seen.
And if you aren’t numbed... well then you have to feel. And that is a whole lot worse.
Celus and his friend sat with Dad.
“This isn’t over yet,” Celus said.
Dad just looked at him.
“Ryan will be back today. And he’ll have his aides with him. They’ll know what’s happened. We have to protect these people.”
Dad continued to stare, his eyes vacant.
“What can we do?” It was the voice of Larry.
Larry Layton was an evangelical hothead. A real firebrand. Randall and I had always given him a wide berth.
Celus shrugged. “Do you... this is a war. I’m sorry that you people have got involved in the way you have, but...” his voice trailed off.
“Well, then we fight!” Larry replied loudly, stamping his feet and standing up. “They’ve taken from us... our homes. This place ain’t no home for us no more. It’s... a... a... a war memorial now.”
There was a general muttering of agreement, but I could see these people were in no mood to fight. The pavilion felt big and empty without the full congregation. It was as if we had collectively been winded.
“Larry,” Celus said, “Man, I respect you. You know that right. Hell, I saw you pull one of those staves and try to have a go back. What happened?”
“They... they wouldn’t go down.”
Celus nodded. “Wouldn’t go down. You all hear that. Larry tried to cave in the skull of one of those men last night, and it just bounced off him. Like it was made of rubber.”
“How do we kill them?” someone from the back said.
“What about that samurai guy?” another voice asked.
“Whoa guys. One at a time. The samurai guy... we have a difficult relationship. He ain’t exactly on our side, and if we get in his way, he will roll straight over us. But he is set against... the thing we have been fighting. Now as for killing those things...”
Celus pulled out a pendant from underneath his shirt. A small round metal amulet hung from a leather string and those of us near enough collectively leaned forward to look at it. From my position, I could not make out the design on it.
Dad looked up at him. “The Gates of Namlu?”
Celus nodded and then continued addressing what remained of the congregation. “The things we fought... that killed your friends. They’re not human. It’s a bit difficult to describe. Imagine the wind is trapped in a cave by an avalanche. You can release it by clearing the rubble away, but you’ve gotta be quick before more rocks fall.”
Even through my fatigue, this made no sense to me. I could see that I was not alone.
“Bullets. Knives... just about anything you can imagine. It won’t work. These things will just get back up. You need to keep their wound open long enough for their wind to escape.”
There was silence for a moment.
“You’re saying that they’re trapped souls, aren’tcha?” Larry said. “Like golems or somethin’.”
Celus looked uncomfortable with the analogy. “Something like that.”
“That thing,” Larry pointed to Celus’ pendant, “That set ‘em free?”
“Yes.”
“How many have you got?”
“Just this one. They’re not the sort of thing you can buy from Wal-Mart.”
“Well, then we just hold ‘em down and do ‘em one at a time! Get some payback! There’s only three of ‘em with the congressman.”
“Larry,” Dad spoke, his voice tinny and strained, “You want to kill the Congressman’s aides and then tell him they were something unholy? How many hours will it be before the Man has a whole Special Ops team in here shooting the place up? One? Two?”
Larry thought about this. “Then we kill him too. Hell, he’s probably on their side anyway.”
A collective groan could be heard around the pavilion.
Dad spoke again. “Larry... I love your energy... but what’ll we do when they send someone to look for him? They’ll be in radio contact, the whole time. C’mon.”
“What about if it looks like an accident? No wait...” more groans had gone up, and Larry was being heckled to shut the hell up. “Ok. Ok, try this, and then I swear I’ll be quiet. They wanna shut us down, right? So we let ‘em in. I tell Ryan I want to go home – that I’ve had enough. We all get on the plane, and that’s when I get ‘em. All of them. The plane goes down. You tell the Russians, and they get you out of here before the Man comes back.”
For a moment there was silence.
Celus looked to Dad. “Could work. Gets you some place safe.”
“Larry,” Dad said. “What about you?”
“He,” Larry nodded at Celus, “couldn’t save Emily. I ain’t blamin’ him. Nor his little friend neither. But she’s gone. I gotta be honest with you Dad, I’ve gone with her. You know what I mean? We’ve been doin’ somethin’ we shouldn’t be doin’. I gotta fix that.”
There was a collective murmur around the pavilion. We all felt like that. Like our arms had been torn off. Another man stood. Jim McElvane. He had only recently arrived but had been active in the Temple for years, running security in San Francisco. He had lost his eldest daughter the night before, and his wife had been dead for years.
“You can’t do it on your own. There’ll be too many of them. I’ll go with you,” Jim said.
There seemed to be something of a consensus growing, and three others stepped forward.
“Ok,” Celus said. “That’s enough. Too many and they’ll get suspicious. You just hole up in one of the huts. When the Congressman comes past, you make your case. You’ll need this,” Celus took his pendant and gave it to Larry.
“What about you?” Dad asked.
Celus looked at his friend. “We should get out of here. We can’t let the Congressman’s aides see us, and the Cossacks and I... we’ve got history. Best not to shake things up with them. Can we use your radio to call our helo in?”
“The FCC will be monitoring it. They’ll tell Ryan.”
Celus turned to his friend. “Walk to the airstrip?”
The older man nodded.
“You’d best go through the jungle,” Dad said. “You wouldn’t want to meet Ryan on the road.”
It didn’t take long for a rucksack of provisions to be put together, and the two of them made their way to the edge of the estate before being swallowed by the jungle.
It was maybe an hour or so later that the familiar Jeeps of the Congressman’s convoy were spotted on the road. Few people were interested in engaging with the delegation and those that were no longer in the pavilion spread themselves about, pretending to look busy. Marcy showed Ryan and his entourage around, telling them that most of the townsfolk were in the jungle harvesting fruits.
It was around noon that I saw the delegation nearing the hut which housed Larry and Jim and the others. Marcy waited outside whilst they went in, and it was not long before they came back out again, this time with all five of the would-be deserters. Ryan had some sort of conversation with Marcy and I saw her step back from the group, putting up her hands as if to say “Fine!”
They made their way back to the Jeeps, and I heard the engines gun hard as they exited the compound, no doubt thinking they had scored a major victory. Marcy gave it a few minutes and headed to the pavilion.
I jogged across the square to join her. “Well?”
Chris, the woman who had tended to me earlier, helped spread the message, and it was not long before there was a steady stream of the nine-hundred or so remaining Temple members into the pavilion.
Marcy had been in the radio hut, and sensing the growing impatience of the crowd, Dad went in after her. Twenty minutes passed. Then thirty. It was a full hour before they came out. Dad was ashen, and Marcy had been crying. They both went into the pavilion and we followed them, desperately seeking news of our rescue.
“I... I've always tried my best to give you a good life,” Dad began, addressing the crowd. “In spite... in spite of it... of all of my trying.... a handful of damned souls, with their lies, have made our lives impossible. There's no way to detach ourselves from what's happened today.
“The... uh... The Russian’s aren’t coming. The Man knows about what we... something went wrong with Larry. They uh... They didn’t get up in the air. There was a gun fight or something at Kaituma. It’s all over the wires. The... uh, the Congressman got killed. But the aides... his creatures... they escaped. They... they’ve sent for... they radioed for their support. There’s a team on their way now. Maybe a few hours out. Maybe more. Maybe less.
“The Russians... they were listening-in to the wire. They won’t get dragged in now that... this whole thing has gone public. We’re all wanted for murder.”
The silence was absolute.
“I don’t have any easy answers for you,” Dad continued. “Uh... we can sit here and wait for the catastrophe that's going to happen... it’ll be a catastrophe. They’ll come for us... just parachute in here. You know that. I know that. They’ll want the children... but you can't steal people's children. You can't take off with people's children without expecting a violent reaction. They never let us live in peace. Now they won’t let us die in peace.
“I'm going to be just as plain as I know how to tell you. I've never lied to you. I never... never lied to any of you. I know that's what's gonna happen. That's what the Man intends to do, and he will do it. So we can run. We can go into the jungle. I... I don’t know how long we’ll last out there. I don’t know if the Man will catch up with us or not. He’s good at that kind of thing. Learned it in ‘Nam.
“Or we can stay here. We... we could fight, we’ve got enough guns. It won’t be much of a fight. There’ll be plenty more of them than us. You’ll have to see... see them shoot the children. You’ll have to feel the pain of being shot. I... I don’t know.
“But Marcy... me and Marcy have got to talking. We don’t much like the jungle anymore. It ain’t been as kind to us as we’d hoped. And you know what I think about meeting the Man. So... so my... our opinion is that we’ll do ourselves a kindness. We got a potion like they used... in ancient Rome or Greece.
“I know what you’re thinking. It’s a sin. But... no, it’s not. Because it’s not suicide. It’s not, because we’re already dead. We just don’t know it yet. It’ll be a revolutionary act. That’s all I got to say. I won’t force nobody. You can go your own way. But Marcy and me, we need to lie down... we just cannot continue like this anymore... being treated like animals.”
No-one said anything.
Ujara, an old hand at Jonestown, spoke up. “Ah... Dad? You know I followed you from Indiana, to ‘Frisco and now to here... I guess... I guess I’m saying I ain’t done following you yet...”
People started to applaud. I knew I should be appalled by what I was hearing, but after the revelations of the past twenty-four hours, it seemed like the best solution. The Man was coming. I wasn’t going to let Him take me or my boys. As for the jungle... well it was like Dad had said – it hadn’t been kind to us so far. And there was no god here that I wanted to worship.
Ujara continued. “So... what I guess I’m saying is... have you got enough of your potion for me too?”
Dad smiled, and I realised that it had been a long time since I had seen him smile... really smile. “We got enough for everyone if that’s what you want. We... we got some cyanide in gold-cleaning stock. You shouldn’t feel a thing.”
And that’s how we decided it. I’ve been recording for hours now. I don’t suppose there is much time left. But we are resolved. We are all united. A quick and painless exit in defiance of the Man’s violence. I’ve told my boys they’ll be seeing Daddy again real soon. I hope we do.
So you see. We are responsible. But we are not to blame.
*
“She killed her own sons?” Danielle asked incredulously.
“She did. All nine hundred of them committed suicide.”
Danielle sat in stunned silence, trying to take it all in. “Ok,” she said eventually, leaning forward. “Just how much of that can you really verify? I mean, on the one hand, it sounds convincing, but on the other... well they could be taken for a bunch of cultists.”
“Oh they were, and still are by the history books. But a lot of her testimony stacks up. Broadly the timelines are as Izzy described, with the exceptions of Tim Stoen. A number of times she claimed to have seen him in Guyana, whereas official history says he was elsewhere.
“There was a formal investigation, and Stoen, in particular, was singled out for aggravating the situation, probably at the behest of the CIA. But the description of Congressman Ryan, the failure of the harvests, the rallies, the newspaper articles, and the outbreak of diarrhoea and vomiting. Even the murders. All independently documented facts.”
Danielle took it all in. “What about Celus and George?”
“You remember the first account? George’s disciplinary hearing? Sam Cotrahens said that he saw Celus with George just after they got back from holiday in November seventy-eight. He couldn’t remember exactly where they had gone but thought it Guinea or...”
“Guyana,” Danielle nearly whispered. “It really was them? Not just a coincidence of names?”
“Almost certainly. Izzy’s testament is the only one to refer to Celus and George by name, but there are several others that describe Celus and his strange friend, and the descriptions match.”
“But the visions… how could that have really happened?”
“Do you remember that Jonestown briefly shared some of its facilities with the gold prospecting company? Have a guess which company that was?”
Danielle shook her head.
“A subsidiary of Corvus.”
Danielle raised an eyebrow. “Kethron’s company?”
“Uh-huh. The same subsidiary that had the contract in the fifties for supplying the CIA with LSD, and other mind-control chemicals, for their experiments.”
“What? What were they doing prospecting for gold?”
“According to the company reports from the time, they weren’t. They were testing a variant of LSD on primates. Instead of having to build a whole new compound, they had their experiment site a few kilometres into the jungle but rented welfare facilities in Jonestown. But, the project was a failure and was shut down.”
Danielle was confused. “Why?”
“A large percentage of the primates got ill and died. Vomiting, diarrhoea, and vasoconstriction of the extremities – presents itself as something similar to frostbite.”
“That’s almost exactly what Isabelle described as affecting Jonestown. Do you think that whatever chemicals they were using got into the water system?”
“Officially no. There were no industrial accidents. No clean-up required. A clean safety report.”
Danielle thought for a moment. “How did Celus know what was going on?”
“There is someone that matches his description in Indiana in fifty-two and fifty-three, right about the time that Jim Jones was radicalised. That’s probably not the right word to use. Jim Jones was a lot more political than he was religious. But you
get my drift.
“There are religions – the Gnostics, the Bogomils, the Cathars – that have subscribed to asceticism, an intense frugality if you will... well that was Jim Jones all over. I think he probably got that from Celus. What happened later...? I’m not sure. I suspect that someone corrupted his message. Probably in the sixties.”
“Who?” Danielle was already drawing up a mental list of names.
“I can’t be certain. I have some ideas, but I can’t prove it. But one minute Jim Jones is preaching to a minority congregation about giving up worldly possessions, and the next everyone is seeing God? That was probably the giveaway. Celus got wind - albeit too late - that his one-time protégé was seeing The Creator and then with the media reports of the sickness he put two and two together.”
“You’ve lost me. You’re saying that Corvus corrupted Jim Jones?”
“Almost certainly yes. Or one of their subsidiaries. I think that Corvus has been involved with this whole thing for a very, very long time indeed. But, like I said, I can’t prove it. What I can prove is that Celus knew exactly what sort of poison was being used on Jonestown because he had run the same experiment himself, nearly thirty years before.”
Danielle was incredulous. If Celus was experimenting in the same way as Corvus, how was he any better? “What? Where?” she asked.
“France, fifty-one.”
The story concludes in “The Beggar of Beliefs” – out now
Acknowledgements
There are so many people who have had an input into this story, from editing to recommendations and on to possible routes to publication, that it will be difficult to thank all of you.
Firstly to my wife and daughter, Jennifer and Jasmine, who have put up with seeing considerably less of me than they deserve, and my keeping of the most unsocial of hours. I love you both more than words can ever say.
To my most trusted instructor, Soke Kevin Pell of Ishin Ryu Ju-Jitsu, who has stood by, inspired, and supported me ever since the first day I met him. A true father to us all.
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