There were other things to love about LA apart from the rich diversity. Because Anthea knew nothing about it, she was genuinely delighted by all the tourist attractions and the famous sights. She loved riding on the bus past a long, straight residential street lined by towering palm trees. She loved the strange, thick colors of the air in the mornings and evenings. She loved the way the early morning light shone on the mountains and the strange comfort of the bowl-like feeling to the landscape. She could spend an entire day in a single park or garden, admiring every plant and view. She loved that there were urban trails to explore and hidden walls covered in colorful paintings that changed from month to month. She loved the faded signs, the crumbling bricks, the thick air that distorted everything, she even grew to love the constant sound of cars moving on the streets and highways.
Slowly, her coworkers and the staff at the library began to recognize a strangeness to Anthea, as though she was missing a crucial bit of programming that they all relied on to operate. She didn’t mind, and had learned to dispel most of the strangeness by explaining that she’d been homeschooled by her grandparents, who were very strict. She became a comfortable liar, blending the truth with easy fictions so easily that she almost believed her own backstory. The everyday struggles faded away and she began, for the first time, to feel that she wasn’t just surviving anymore—she was living her live. LA was alive in ways that Anthea had never experienced, and slowly, slowly, she came to life as well.
Despite the years she’d spent the city, acclimating to the constant awareness that she was surrounded by people and noise, Anthea was still always on guard. The life she had lived in the camp had encouraged fear of eternal damnation, suspicion of others, and the worldly things that entered an unguarded heart to pollute it. When she left that life behind, her carefully cultivated soul-guard had quickly morphed into real-world practical caution.
She had learned a number of tricks to determine if someone had been in her house while she was out. She learned the many ways that a car could be sabotaged and kept mirrors on a telescopic pole in her purse to check for devices in the undercarriage. She knew she could never truly rely on the LAPD or her FBI caseworkers to protect her, so she took responsibility for her own safety very seriously.
Her first caseworker had told her the sobering statistics about people who escape from a cult. It was the first time she had ever heard the word ‘cult’, and she paid careful attention to the many ways that the government expected her to fall apart in her newly unmoored existence. Drug abuse, depression, suicide, or even joining another cult. Anthea was having none of that. She enrolled in basic self-defense classes, read up on criminal psychology, cult psychology and deprogramming, even attended a support group for abused women. She never stood out or spoke up, just sat quietly and listened sadly as she learned to recognize the patterns of abusers.
Hers was a lifestyle of inconvenience. It meant making sacrifices and choices constantly. Should she park her car where she could see it from inside a building while she was away from it, or away from prying eyes so she could perform her detailed inspections without attracting attention? It meant constantly changing her schedule and her routine but not seeming to. She must perform the same series of actions every day, but she also needed to not be seen to be predictable. So she changed her driving routes, sometimes came home unexpectedly in the middle of the day, made excuses to work remotely or attend trainings in other parts of the city, and, after careful vetting of course, hired various work-people to come to the house at seemingly random times.
Strangers were the most difficult. Anthea was very afraid that her mother would find her again, and she suspected every new person to be Mother Agatha’s potential agent. She couldn’t even put her finger on why she was so afraid of being found. What could her mother do to her now? Anthea reassured herself that her newfound knowledge of the world and her adulthood protected her against many of the dangers she’d faced as a child, but there were other ways she could be taken in. It didn’t do to dwell on the specifics, just to be prepared. Meeting a new person presented countless opportunities for danger and Anthea was alert to all of them. Threats came from the most unlikely sources: a slightly too clean-cut look, a too-willing smile, a too-far stare, a too-familiar expression, all these things were clues that this person might have had an agenda, but the most obvious red flag was their language.
When she’d first left the camp to work for Joel in the video store, she became aware that the language of the outside world differed from her own in many ways. The words she used marked her as something other, and she began to carefully note these instances.
At Joel’s insistence, she stopped throwing around the word ‘polluted’ to mean ‘worldly’. A video store off some no-name highway wasn’t a bustling business by any means, but it wasn’t helped along by reminding customers of the doom their film choices wrought upon their mortal souls.
After she escaped, she discovered a number of other words that had completely different implications in the rest of the world: ‘light’, ‘witness’, ‘research’, ‘murmur’, ‘awake’, ‘bride’, ‘disassociation’, ‘fading’; and some that were unique to her own situation: ‘slave’, ‘elder’, ‘disfellowship’, ‘keep sweet’. When she began to master this new, worldly dialect, she found that the old words from her youth gave her power. She would carefully use them in conversation with strangers to watch their reactions. Some of her prepared phrases were almost too subtle to work, others were wildly convoluted. “Could you shed new light on that?” “No, I haven’t heard of that but it sounds interesting. Do you have any recommendations for research?” “Oh yes, I’ve heard of that, but just murmurs.”
She had a number of opportunities to try these phrases out on Cyrus. All she wanted to know from him was that he wasn’t her mother’s pawn, that he wasn’t insinuating himself into her life in order to betray her to Agatha. She didn’t really suspect that he was, but she had to be sure.
The problem was that Cyrus' world was so full of the language of arcane spiritual nonsense she couldn’t get a direct answer. Like her, he seemed to be a creature of a different time. Sometimes he’d get excited about something and slip into linguistic habits more suited to the previous century. Or when he was tired, she could swear that he had a foreign accent. She knew that he spoke several languages, some of this world and some not, but until his fatigue-induced accent appeared, she’d always assumed that English was his first language.
Cyrus respected Anthea’s privacy and pointedly did not ask her questions about her past. She felt that it was only fair to return this respect by not prying into his past either, but she was just so unendingly curious. As she spent more time with him, Anthea found that she wanted to know everything about him because she liked him, not because she was afraid he was a threat.
It was an unusual combination of feelings for her. She’d had friends in the camp, if you could call them that. The girls her own age had always been in and out of her house, and she theirs. They all spent time together reading The Book and studying Message because they had no one else, and some of them did form genuine bonds. As far as she knew, this was the only life she had ever had.
But Anthea always felt an uncomfortable competitiveness lurked just beneath their carefully sweet faces, like everyone around her was ready at any moment to shun someone else completely. It had happened before, and it would always happen again. Accusations of pollution would be levied against someone and suddenly it was as though they had never existed, even in their own families.
In hindsight, Anthea supposed everyone in the camp had become brittle with anxiety from constantly living on that knife’s edge. Walk the narrow path precisely. If you falter even for a moment, you’re cut off from heaven, from family, from friendship, from warmth and laughter and safety. Forever. It was exhausting.
The leadership in the compound had relied on a group of men, the Helpmeets, to receive prophesy and instruction from another group of men outside the compoun
d. Those outside men, in turn, received their instruction from another man who was known only as Message. Message’s voice played constantly on shortwave radios throughout the compound. The Helpmeets were tasked with ensuring all the children born into the group understood that they were part of Heavenly Father’s special generation of purified and chosen saints.
Their faith had survived the apocalypse, and all that was left in the world were demons inhabiting the souls of men. The boys in the compound were trained in physical arts after their age of accountability, which was 10 years earlier than the girls’, and warped into sinewy, unfeeling brutality by the Helpmeets. The girls were instructed by the women in how to strengthen their future husband’s witness to become the perfect godly brides by keeping sweet, keeping house, and bearing children. And all the children knew that they would one day be called upon to go into the world and purify the demons in the flesh. The End was coming, they were reminded to such a degree that they lived more in their imagined spiritual afterlives than their present ones.
If you had asked her at the time, Anthea wouldn’t have been able to explain why she was so afraid of The Helpmeets. It was similar to the vague, ill-defined, but certain fear that her mother could still hurt her. Mother Agatha was a constant, lurking presence in Anthea’s memory. She had always seemed to be immediately aware of Anthea’s moments of individualism and would alternate between trying to smooth them over with the Helpmeets or publicly berating her as an example.
When she was 12, Anthea was once forced to read The Book on the shortwave radio for 24 hours without rest. Her transgression was that she had given a hug to another boy her age. He’d been upset over something that had happened in the boys’ house, and she told him she would pray with him, which she did. But none of that good intention had mattered to her mother when another little girl had murmured about Anthea directly to a Helpmeet.
After her reading, Mother Agatha insisted that Anthea be assigned to a month of solitary research, a type of trial-disfellowshipping designed to show people in the compound just how bereft they would be without the company. No one had ever put a child through this particular ordeal, but not for lack of desire. Children were usually sent to the Holy House. This was an adult punishment. No one spoke to you, looked at you, acknowledged you, came into your home unannounced, or allowed you to take part in any group activity.
Anthea had loved it. Time passed much the same as it always did, but for the first time Anthea was rested and peaceful enough to sort out her own thoughts. And what thoughts they were! She spent hours and hours staring into the pages of her maps and animal books, playing with her business card dolls, exercising her imagination. It also gave her the opportunity to observe her mother for the first time as something other than silent and compliant child. Because Anthea was being shunned, she wasn’t allowed any contact with the other brides or children. While she was usually perfectly happy to eat alone and do her own chores, she did miss the sound of voices. She began listening at doors and around corners to the conversations her mother would have with the brides who came to her, nervously, for advice.
“Oh, Mother Agatha, I don’t know how to save this child. Every time he bathes, he touches… those things. And he’s so young that he doesn’t know the danger he’s doing! I’ve prayed and researched, and he isn’t improving. I’m just… I’m so afraid,” one had sobbed at their dining room table late one evening. “He must have been born polluted, I must have been impure. You must help me be clean again, please!"
“I’m glad you came to me, sister,” her mother had said, “The Helpmeets would not understand our burdens as mothers. They concern themselves only with grown boys and leave us alone to toil in our motherly mission at the most dangerous and critical times. If they were to find out about his… pollution, they would take him away from you,” said Agatha calmly.
The distraught young mother began to breathe harder as sobs wracked her thin shoulders.
“Be at peace, my sister. I won’t murmur of your shame to the men. But you must teach him that those things are the center of pain, not of earthly pleasure. By whatever means necessary. To save him, he must no longer experience the pleasure of touch.”
The woman looked up from her clenched fists into Mother Agatha’s stern face, “But, I don’t know how,” she snuffled.
“You’ll learn. And if you cannot, then perhaps I will murmur.”
Anthea hadn’t understood much of that conversation, but she sat in the darkened hallway mulling it over, when the back of her neck began to prickle. She turned slowly toward the kitchen. Her mother was standing at the end of the hallway, staring threateningly at her.
“My child,” she said softly, “Come here.”
Anthea uncurled her frozen limbs and walked stiffly down the hall. She stood silently, trembling before her mother.
The hard lines of Agatha’s face did not move as she calmly brought her hand up to cup Anthea’s cheek, and then reached back and violently slapped her. Anthea stumbled and fell sideways onto her knees, cowering.
“You deserved this, and more,” Mother Agatha said in a low voice. After a moment, she crouched down to where Anthea was on the floor. She placed her hand again on Anthea’s smarting cheek.
“Child, are you so weak?” Her thumb moved to the place where a tear had begun to form. Anthea went very still and did not respond.
“Do not make me punish you again,” her mother whispered.
With that, she stood up and walked away, leaving Anthea shaking in the darkness.
She felt a twinge of that darkness now as she headed over to meet Cyrus. Anthea was no longer sure that she believed in demons, and Cyrus’ glib offer to summon one that morning had seemed almost funny. But, if they were real, they couldn’t be all that different from the demon who’d raised her.
Chapter 6
Curiosity
“You should know before we get too far into this that I don’t believe you.” Anthea was standing in Cyrus’ dim garage next to his work bench. There were boxes and plastic bins piled high on shelves against every wall, but despite the clutter, it was not disorganized.
“If it helps, I already knew that, but why bring it up?” He was standing at a workbench, measuring out various ingredients from the jars on the shelves and mixing them into various cups and bowls. He had been explaining their various contents to Anthea, but she had found it difficult to concentrate until she confessed.
“I just didn’t want you to think you had to perform for me, too,” she said simply. He looked up at her.
“Perform? Anthea, it’s not a performance. What I do is real,” he said with a small smile and turned back to his task.
“Do you seriously expect me to believe that?”
“What you believe is your business,” he said with that same smile. It was irritating her and he knew it.
“Then why hire me, if you knew I didn’t?” Anthea was not ready to let this go. Her curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she was determined to learn everything she could about this man and his ‘business.’
He let out a small sigh.
“I hired you because you’re skeptical. Because you’re smart, and cautious, and your resolve is steel.”
“How can you know any of that about me? How did you know I didn’t believe?” She wasn’t suspicious, not yet anyway, but she was intrigued.
He turned back to her and grinned, “I’d tell you, but it would require some faith.”
She didn’t take the bait.
“What kind of faith?” This was a topic Anthea was comfortable discussing, and she hoped it would allow her to address her real concern with his business.
“The kind of faith that I hope to inspire in other people,” he answered grandiosely.
“In weak, stupid, naive people, you mean,” she said. “The kind who would follow anyone anywhere."
“No, I prefer my followers to be desperate, empty, and searching.” Cyrus’ face and manner had taken on a steely steadfastness, as th
ough he had finally settled in to argue with her properly and would not concede.
“So you’re a predator. You seek out the hurting and hook them,” Anthea said, although it was against her better judgement. She was, after all, alone in a garage with a man she had only met once before. A man who was mixing up arcane-looking chemicals in front of her. A man who probably knew that no one in the world knew where Anthea was at that very moment, and no one would ask him any questions if something happened to her.
If there was ever a time to keep sweet, this was it. But Anthea just couldn’t resist pressing him.
“No, Anthea, I provide a service to people with a specific need.”
“By exploiting their weaknesses and charging them money for their own vulnerability?”
He tossed her a hurt glare as he turned away from the work bench, hands full of cups and bowls, and started toward the center of the garage. He’d painted a large pentagram in the center of the concrete floor and began placing his items in various locations within the pentagram. She watched him fussily moving things about. Even years after her escape from the camp, pentagrams still made her nervous. When he’d finished, he stood up to his full height and turned to her.
“Did I or did I not fix all their phones the other night?” he asked.
“You did, but-”
“And did I not also provide them with a sense of control over an intangible problem?”
How to Disappear Completely Page 4