by Jake Parent
In that moment, a horrible picture came into her mind: Anise, frightened and crying above a grave with her mother in it.
Then, almost completely by instinct, she gathered her strength and jumped out of the water, pulling herself onto the steps.
Cristina couldn’t breathe. Her long, thick hair was plastered over her face, covering her eyes and mouth.
Panicked lungs gasped as they searched for oxygen.
“Woah there,” Jack said.
He wiped the hair away with his hand. Her breathing started to settle. He looked at her with serious worry, until suddenly her panting turned into a giggle, and then a full-on laugh.
Jack probably thought she’d hit her head.
“I’m fine,” she said, repeating it with relief. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jack said, shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have brought you this way, I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Cristina stood, offering a hand for him to slap.
“Don’t be sorry. That was pretty damn awesome!”
He looked a bit shocked, but softly tapped her hand with his own.
Together, they made their way up the stairs.
Behind them, another waved crashed over the outcropping, this time completely filling the pathway with water.
17
Cristina finally pulled up in front of the library, after getting lost only about a dozen times.
Pleasure Point’s small downtown area was no more than six blocks long, but somehow she kept ending up at the same stone statue of a surfer. She only found the small, grey building after accidentally driving in the wrong direction down a poorly marked one-way street.
It was Thursday. The day of her date with Casey. She was almost as excited about it as she was about seeing Anise in just 24 hours.
A blanket of fog had come in early and hadn’t yet burned off. In the damp mist, the entire town seemed more withdrawn and cautious. And definitely a lot colder. She stood next to the Civic, pulling on a hoodie with the California flag emblazoned across the chest, identical to the one she had tattooed on her forearm.
A small spiral notebook in hand, she made her way into the building.
Since Cristina was embarrassingly bad with technology, Jordan had agreed to help her look some stuff up about what had happened in her house.
She just knew there had to be something she was missing. Especially given what Jack had said about the possible connection to this cult, something that wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles.
And then there were the dreams.
For the past three nights, ever since going through the news clippings more thoroughly, Cristina had been visited by a series of vivid nightmares.
Each was similar, beginning with her lying in bed. The room dark. A faint knock coming from downstairs. Not the door. Something else. Quiet, hollow, but steady as a metronome. She stood, trying to turn on the lights, but none of the switches did anything.
The knock grew louder as she crept down the stairs in the dark, feeling strangely like she had little or no control over her body. By the time she reached the living room, the sound reminded her of a fleshy fist pounding against the top of a table.
It was coming from the hall closet.
She watched as her hand reached out on its own. Her fingers gripped the metal doorknob. Touching it was painful, like holding a handful of ice cubes.
The door felt impossibly heavy. The hinges creaked like they hadn’t moved in a thousand years. Inside, swinging from the end of a short rope, rhythmically bumping into the closet’s back wall, was the body of Amanda Stewart-Walker.
Cristina was again drawn forward, unwillingly inched toward the putrid stench of death. The smell washed over her, soaking her hair and skin with the rotten-fruit-and-cinnamon fragrance of decaying flesh.
She’d been pulled almost half-way into the closet when the corpse’s eyes opened.
Black pupils dug into her. Questioning. Accusing.
Blood-crusted lips parted, revealing a swollen, purple tongue. Out poured a gurgling wail, so horrible and so close to Cristina’s ear that she awoke, herself screaming as the image of the hanging woman faded away.
The next night was eerily similar.
She was pulled down the stairs. Toward the closet door. Willed to open it by some force she didn’t understand. Only, this time, it wasn’t Amanda hanging by the neck, body rapping against the wall. It was Cristina herself. Not decayed yet, but blue and bloated and definitely dead. And not hanging from a rope, but from the end of a familiar belt with shiny silver studs. One that had been the source of so much pain.
The third night was the worst.
This time there were two rhythmic knocks. One after the other. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. Tap, tap. And two belts in the closet. One for Cristina, and the other slightly shorter. Hanging from the end of the second belt, wearing her favorite polka dot pajamas, was Anise. Her eyes, so vibrant and filled with wonder in life, now no more alive than dull pieces of sea glass.
Everything about the dreams had frightened Cristina. Coming to the library was her way of turning fear into action. She knew the nightmares were probably just her mind trying to solve the mystery of what had happened in her home. It was natural to want to know.
Walking into the building, Cristina immediately felt lost. She hadn’t been in a library since before she’d dropped out of high school. In fact, she was kind of surprised they even existed anymore.
“I thought everything was online now,” she said after she found Jordan sitting at a computer terminal.
Annoyed, Jordan said, “It’s one of the biggest problems with research nowadays. Everyone thinks the fine people at Google have all the answers.”
They grabbed a free computer and quickly found the same articles Cristina had already seen. Then she saw the photo of Annie standing in front of the house, a stuffed hippo clutched in one hand. The same picture Anise had found. The one Cristina had for some reason felt compelled to dump in the trash.
“Can we print this?” she asked Jordan.
“Yah, of course. Just put in your library card and it will charge the printing fee to your account.”
“Uh, yah, I don’t have one of those.”
“OK,” Jordan said with disapproving eyebrows.
Cristina shrugged, slightly embarrassed.
Jordan sighed. “We can use mine. What exactly do you want to print?”
“Just the picture for now.”
With a click, the printer next to the bank of computers whirred to life. A few moments later, it shot out a black and white copy of the photo.
Cristina stared at the image, drawn to the little girl’s eyes. They were sweet, but at the same time infinitely sad. Almost as if she could sense fate barreling toward her like a ghostly, runaway freight train.
Shaking off her own feeling of impending doom, Cristina went back to peering over Jordan’s shoulder. In addition to the local paper’s coverage, several national articles appeared in the search results as well.
Most of the big newspapers focused their coverage similarly to the local ones, filling articles with lots of vague speculation and few specific details. But these bigger publications added a dash of sensationalism for extra flavor. Cristina thought most of the headlines read a bit like something you would see in the checkout line at the supermarket. And when she scanned through a few, there really wasn’t much, if any, new information.
After clicking on a couple more, she started to get discouraged.
“OK,” she said. “All this seems pretty familiar. What else can we search for? What do you know about that crazy drug cult that used to be active around here? What was the name of it again?”
“Hmm,” Jordan looked at her, seeming puzzled but intrigued. “That’s interesting. The group was called New Horizon. I remember coming across some information about them and the founder for my book research. His name is Charles Walters, I believe. But what makes you think he or his group
had anything to do with the girl? I’m pretty sure he was arrested before she was killed.”
“My neighbor Jack mentioned it. I don’t know, maybe something he picked up that wasn’t public. He’s lived in Pleasure Point his whole life, so he probably has a lot of connections.”
Jordan nodded and then typed in a new set of search terms.
The results page had about a dozen hits.
“Anything specifically about Annie?” Cristina asked.
Jordan tried including her name in the search, but the query came back blank.
Cristina said, “Hmm . . . OK, go back to what we had.” She nudged Jordan out of the seat and sat down herself. “I’m going to hang here for a bit and go through these. If you have something to do, don’t let me keep you.”
“I’m at your disposal until the noon meeting. I’ll be over in the non-fiction stacks if you need me. But it would appear that you have things figured out.”
Jordan offered an encouraging smile and walked around the corner.
Cristina began reading.
She soon discovered that Walters wasn’t actually the one who founded New Horizon after all. He actually took over the organization following the original founder’s death.
The best source of information Cristina found was an investigative report on New Horizon, written by a journalist named Duke Thompson.
Thompson first outlined the group’s philosophy, as he’d seen it laid out in a short book written by the original founder. The organization believed that humanity had gone too far down a destructive path. The only solution left now was to enlighten the human race, both through the use of mind-altering substances, and also by cleansing it with blood.
Thompson called the text – known within New Horizon as “The Handbook” – a “winding diatribe against modernity” and “a pseudo-religious doctrine designed to lure in the vulnerable, depraved, and forgotten citizens of our society.”
After gaining membership and spending more than a year undercover, Thompson concluded that, “Although the group may have started as a genuine attempt to make sense of a Nixonian world hell-bent on rejecting the counterculture of the 1960’s and 70’s, New Horizon has since become primarily a minor drug cartel run by members of California’s most notorious motorcycle gang.”
“Like most cults,” the article continued, “this group is full of rituals, from secret handshakes, to orgies, to the sacrificial killing of animals. However, most of the more extreme activities are practiced only by a few of the group’s most hardcore adherents. The majority of those involved in the organization seem interested solely in taking over abandoned buildings within the scenic beach town of Pleasure Point and its surrounding areas, the end goal being the establishment of drug manufacturing and distribution facilities for profit.
“Lower ranked members are tasked with activities that include enlisting new members, getting recruits high for the first time, and then making sure the fresh meat consistently buys product only from the group.”
Cristina had spent her fair share of time snorting, smoking, and shooting dope in abandoned buildings, and had never heard of any organization like that, much less some crazy end-of-the-world philosophy.
Shit, she thought. I probably would’ve jumped on that bandwagon when I was at my worst.
The other interesting article she found was written a year later by the same author. A follow up to the first report, this one was published after Charles Walters had been arrested for a laundry list of crimes: murder, drug dealing, kidnapping, rape, lewd behavior with a minor, arson, theft, and arms trafficking.
Cristina was baffled.
How does a guy like that get away with doing dirt for so long?
It turned out Walters had been playing both sides of the fence. While running New Horizon, he also worked for the federal government as an informant. In exchange for the Feds turning a blind eye to his drug dealing activity, Walters ratted out arms dealers who were selling weapons to terrorist organizations in South America and the Middle East.
He was apparently well-protected until he decided to burn three ATF agents alive in their Suburban. A national manhunt followed, one that lasted almost six months, eventually leading to Walters being arrested while trying to cross the border into Mexico.
After a quick trial, he was found guilty of almost everything they put on him.
During sentencing, he took the stand and gave a lengthy speech about how the end of days was coming, saying there was nothing the federal government or any other earthly power could do to stop it.
Cristina was a bit surprised at the passion with which the guy seemed to actually believe all the crap he was spewing. Then again, she probably shouldn’t have been. She’d never been religious at all, but growing up watching the 9/11 attacks happen on TV – as well as a steady stream of other violent events around the world – it never ceased to amaze her how dangerous a person was when they were willing to trade their own life for the lives of others, especially in the name of a particular belief.
Personally, Cristina thought all organized religions were primarily just ways of controlling people. Even the 12-step program that had saved her life could get that way in the wrong hands. Sometimes, instead of using the recovery philosophy to empower people, there were those who liked to twist it around in ways that made others fearful. And, as Cristina knew all too well, a scared person is the easiest to manipulate.
The article finished by saying that Walters’s trial and conviction forced the group’s leadership into hiding. And when Cristina scrolled through the search results, the last news article mentioning Walters or New Horizon was dated more than a year before Annie had disappeared. That made it seem highly unlikely there was any link between the organization and the murder.
Cristina rubbed her eyes.
Staring at a computer screen had made her mind go numb.
There were still so many questions floating around in her head, maybe even more than when she’d started, but at least she’d filled in a few blanks.
She wondered if it would be enough to stop the nightmares.
18
Cristina wandered the library until she found Jordan near a shelf full of books on philosophy.
“Are you sure you don’t want to attend the noon meeting with me?” Jordan asked without looking up from Human, All Too Human.
Cristina thought about it. She really wanted to. But she also felt like she had a ton of stuff to do before her date. So she said her goodbyes and made the drive back home.
Out of town. Up the winding hill. Under the canopy of trees.
Parked in front of the mailbox at the bottom of the driveway, she discovered she already had some junk mail: a menu for a pizza place, a credit card application, and a coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond. There was also a thick, beige envelope.
She grabbed it all, drove up to the house, and headed inside, glancing as she did toward Mr. Psycho’s place. It was quiet, looking exactly as it had for the past week. She’d yet to hear so much as a sneeze come from that direction.
Standing in the hallway, away from the closet door, she used her knife to slice open the envelope.
“Mother fucker!” she yelled at the tri-folded stack of paper inside.
On a piece of stationery that included a finely monogramed “WCIII” in a box at the top, the following letter was typed:
Ms. Rodriguez,
Contained in this package is a summons to appear in court at 9 AM on Friday, May 31. At that time, an evaluation will be conducted as to the custody status of your daughter Anise.
Prior to these proceedings, you have been ordered by Judge Angelo Peterson, Family Court Division 1, to undergo urine and hair analyses using one of the certified laboratories listed in the attached directory.
Failure to obtain these tests and/or to appear at the assigned date and time will result in your being found in contempt of court, a charge punishable by fine, jail time, or both. It could also affect your custody standing.
Thank
you for your thorough and prompt cooperation in this matter.
Any questions can be directed either to the clerk for Family Court Division 1, or to my office. Contact information for both can be found below.
Sincerely,
Walden Chester III, Esq.
Attorney for Mr. Anthony Stevens
May 31st.
Next Friday.
As in a week from tomorrow.
Cristina wanted to laugh. And cry. And take her knife and stab Walden Chester III, Esq in the goddamn heart. Anthony, too. Along with whoever this stupid asshole judge was that would even entertain her ex making a claim for custody after what he’d done.
“This is fucking bullshit!” she yelled, throwing the papers into the air. “A fucking drug test? What, Anthony? Did you tell them I was getting high when you met me? Did you tell them how you found me in a bar one day selling myself for dope? How you made me your little brown-skin slave? Huh?! HUH!?”
She slammed the blade of her knife into the wood-paneled wall. Unsatisfied, she wiggled it out, cracking the thin wood as she did. She stabbed the wall several more times, grunting a little louder with each thrust.
Then came the tears.
With the knife’s silver handle still protruding from the wall, she collapsed to the floor, eyes dripping like a broken pipe.
“Why?!” she asked the world, her voice cracking. “What did I do to deserve this? I’ve been doing everything right. Why can’t I just move on? Why can’t he leave me alone?”
All the worst possible scenarios flashed through her mind. She just knew that, somehow, someway, Walden Chester III, high-price-scumbag-attorney was going to find some legal trick he could use to take her baby away.
The system was rigged for it.
Cristina had seen it before. When she was sent to the girl’s detention camp for stealing. Forced to give a blow job to a fat guard. All while her friend Marcy – the one who actually stole the stupid makeup from Target in the first place – only had to do three days of community service. Her family had money and hired a lawyer. Probably Walden Chester III for all Cristina knew.