Delaney spoke as if life outside the settlement was a perilous place for the Indigo Family. Watching their rapt, smiling faces, it was obvious they worshipped him. Their unquestioning devotion made Sorcha feel uncomfortable, especially when they glanced at her with the same hungry expectancy. As he looked around she noticed an attractive older woman with an indigo dot on her forehead, long plaited graying hair, hoop earrings and large glasses, sitting on one of the outlying tables. Unlike the others, she didn’t appear transfixed by her father. Instead she smiled warmly at Sorcha and, when she caught her eye, gave a little wave. Sorcha didn’t recognize her but the woman’s natural gesture and smile made her feel like she knew her. Then Delaney stopped speaking, the food was served and Sorcha was enveloped in a flurry of activity.
As Sorcha thought of the woman and wondered who she was, she didn’t notice another pair of eyes staring at her. The large man stood alone, concealed behind the slaughterhouse on the edge of the settlement. Behind him was an anonymous white four-wheel drive. Unlike the others, his face expressed no joy or excitement at Sorcha’s return. His unblinking eyes were as cold as those of a predator watching its prey.
Chapter 33
Connor Delaney’s call so alarmed Nathan Fox that he cancelled his afternoon appointments and caught the first plane to Sacramento in northern California. After the hour-and-a-half flight he arrived at the Delaney Stud Farm at 2:40 p.m. Located only twenty minutes from the airport, the manicured lush grasslands, white paddock fences and clapboard stable blocks seemed a million miles away from the bustle and noise of the Californian capital. Gleaming chestnut horses cantering in front of the main house completed the idyllic scene.
Despite the obvious beauty of his property, Connor Delaney’s worried eyes expressed no pleasure when he surveyed it. He seemed to see only the peeling paint and other signs of neglect that years of financial woe had forced upon him. After a brisk greeting, the horse breeder led Fox to the veranda of the big house and pointed to the neighboring golf and country club. “That’s new. All that land once belonged to the family until Regan took out his inheritance and almost bankrupted me,” he said bitterly. “I had to sell off primed land just to survive.”
Like a smudged version of his attractive, charismatic younger brother, Connor Delaney was shorter and heavier, with thinning hair. He was more serious and anxious, too. As a psychiatrist, Fox had come across his type often: the dull but dutiful older son who obeyed the rules and put in the hard work, only to see a charming but feckless younger sibling flout every rule and steal all the prizes. Connor pointed to the paddock. “You ride, Dr. Fox?”
“I learned as a child.”
“I’ve got two horses saddled up. We could talk and ride.”
Fox laughed. “As long as they’re good-natured. I haven’t ridden in a while.”
Connor smiled and something about the way his mouth moved reminded Fox of Sorcha. “Don’t worry, old Stan’s not got an ornery bone in his body. We’ll just walk them, stretch their legs.” Connor led him to the stables and within minutes Fox was riding a bay gelding out into the paddock. He had only ever been a competent rider but it felt surprisingly good to be on horseback again, especially in this setting. Connor rode beside him. “So tell me. What’s your patient got to do with Regan?”
Fox hesitated, not wanting to say too much. “We were treating her for amnesia. Your brother recognized her and came to take her home.”
“Back to his cult?”
“Yes.”
Connor frowned. “The only reason Regan came for her was because he needed her for his Great Work.”
“Great Work?”
“It’s what he calls his insane, all-consuming project. The Great Work was a term used in European medieval alchemy to refer to as the successful transmutation of base metal into gold. It also had a spiritual meaning: converting base humans into something more divine, free from the constraints of the material world and closer to gods. I don’t know the details of Regan’s Great Work but I know it involves the mothú.” Connor leaned back in his saddle, warming to his theme. “To understand my brother and his cult you’ve first got to understand out family history and his obsession with the Delaney mothú.”
“There’s a long history of synaesthesia in your family?”
His host smiled. “Synaesthesia? I forgot that’s what you shrinks call it. Yeah, we’ve got history, centuries of it. We come from an old line of Irish Travelers, or Pavees, as we prefer to call ourselves. The Delaneys are one of the oldest families on the road. We traveled the length and breadth of Ireland before crossing to England and eventually America. Unlike the thieves and con artists that give Pavees a bad name, we’ve always taken pride in earning an honest wage through our skill with horses, for which Buffers — non-Travelers — pay handsomely.
“Initially we trained, treated and bred horses for the gentry but soon we became breeders in our own right, focusing on thoroughbreds. We know all about bloodlines and selective breeding because for centuries we’ve practiced it on our own family. My ancestors believed superstitiously that the Delaneys’ identity and success lay in the mothú, the sense — what you call synaesthesia. It’s been in the family for generations and not just by accident. We actively sought out partners who had synaesthesia, marrying cousins and sometimes even closer family members in order to keep the mothú within the bloodline. The superstition was so strong it didn’t matter which kind of synaesthesia we had and it didn’t really matter if it helped with horses or business. The mothú was seen as a special badge of birth that gave us status within the family.
“Almost a hundred years ago my grandfather, Seamus broke away from the British and Irish Delaneys and came to America with a string of thoroughbred stallions and brood mares. He moved here to California and set up business. His family — he had three daughters and one son, my father — still kept itself to itself and observed the traditions but over time things changed. As the family became more successful they became more embedded in Buffer society. First they traveled, taking their horses and expertise wherever the work was, then they rented a spread and people began to come to them, and finally they bought this land and settled down. My grandfather and then my father realized that to build on their success they had to network, become more mainstream and fit in. We were all sent to the best Buffer schools and almost overnight the mothú, the backbone of our family tradition, went from being seen as a prized gift and badge of honor to an embarrassment, a superstitious quirk we were all happy to dispense with. All except for Regan, of course. He wasn’t happy at all.”
“Why not?”
“Like most Delaneys, I inherited a basic form of synaesthesia: grapheme-color. I see letters and numbers as colors. It doesn’t really affect my life and I don’t regard it as particularly significant. Regan was very different, though. He claimed to have every form of synaesthesia you can think of — and some you can’t.”
“Can you give me examples?”
“Sure. I don’t know the scientific names for them all but he claimed to see letters as colors, feel what others were feeling, see auras…” Connor proceeded to list all the forms Sorcha had exhibited in Fox’s first session. “Like I said, He claimed to have every sort you can imagine.”
“You sound like you didn’t believe him?”
“You could never be sure what to believe with Regan. The family were kind of embarrassed because if he did have a freak form of the mothú it would almost certainly be a genetic mutation due to the generations of inbreeding. Unsurprisingly, he supported the traditional family view that the mothú marked him as special, which of course meant he was really special, unique.
“His conviction was reinforced by the fact that everything came easy to him: he was beautiful, bright, charming and doted on — however he behaved. When he was younger he used to bring rocks and bricks and chunks of rubble home and make them into weird sculptures and mosaics. Never explained why. When he got older he had his pick of women and screwed around like it
was going out of fashion. I can’t recall one woman who refused him. Part of his bizarre courting ritual was to make extreme claims about his mothú.”
“Such as?”
Connor frowned and shook his head. “You really want to know all this stuff?”
“Please.”
“When he reached puberty he claimed that every time he had an orgasm he had an out-of-body experience. He believed his soul literally left his body. Said he could sense things beyond the physical world, beyond the veil dividing life and death.”
Fox had read that synaesthetes made up a high proportion of those claiming to have out-of-body experiences. “Were any of his claims ever tested?”
Connor Delaney grimaced. “No. The guy’s an egotistical liar with no conscience. He’d say no and do anything to promote himself and get what he wants. He only got his veterinary qualifications, which were important to the family business, to please Dad.”
“What did your father think of him?”
“He thought the sun shone out of his ass,” Connor spat. “In Dad’s eyes, Regan could do no wrong. Then one day a horse Regan was treating kicked him in the head. He recovered but complained of splitting headaches and became increasingly obsessed with sex and death and, of course, his goddamn mothú. He began reading books on the occult and world religions, searching for anything that reinforced his convictions. He spent hours poring over the Old Testament. Ever heard of the Nephilim?”
“No.”
“The Nephilim appear in the Old Testament, in both Genesis and Numbers. According to the Bible, angels known as the Grigori were sent down to earth to watch men. In time these ‘sons of gods’ saw how beautiful the ‘daughters of men’ were and mated with them, injecting their divine blood into the human gene pool. The progeny of these couplings were the Nephilim, hybrid beings with superhuman senses and powers, and Regan became convinced that the mothú in all its forms was some kind of angelic trait, a throwback to these angel-human crossbreeds and a vestige of divine power. Basically, anyone with the mothú was a descendant of the Nephilim and had divine blood in their veins. Everyone else was just a base human. Of course, Regan, with his extreme synaesthesia, saw himself as purer than most — a throwback to the original fallen Grigori rather than the half-breed Nephilim. He wanted the family to reinstate the importance of the mothú but none of us took him seriously. Then he met Aurora, who had just returned from India, her head filled with New Age nonsense. Aurora claimed to be a healer and she took Regan very seriously. She reinforced and validated every fantasy he had about himself.
“How?”
“Aurora was part of a New Age commune that called itself the Indigo Family. Many of them had followed the hippy trail to India and been influenced by Eastern mystics and gurus. Aurora introduced Regan to chakras, the third eye and all these other New Age concepts. He claimed she cured his headaches using crystals. Aurora was an emotion-color synaesthete who saw auras and she believed Regan’s aura was unique. When she took him to meet the rest of the Indigo Family, most of whom were fellow synaesthetes, they embraced him too. Apparently synaesthetes have an aura which ranges from turquoise through blue to purple-indigo, hence the cult’s name, whereas non-synaesthetes, or sub-synaesthetes as Regan liked to call them, have auras at the ‘lower’ end of the color spectrum: from red, through orange and yellow, to green. To show their particular aura many cult members painted a colored spot here like the Hindu do.” Connor pressed a finger to the middle of his forehead, leaving a white mark. “Something to do with the sixth chakra or the third eye, which they believe helps them see into the spiritual realm. Like I said, most in the cult had blue or indigo auras but Aurora said that Regan’s was even purer, higher up the spiritual spectrum, beyond indigo. Whatever the hell that means.”
Fox nodded. “I guess she confirmed your brother’s belief that his synaesthesia was a kind of superpower.”
“Totally. The cult’s and his belief systems aligned perfectly.” Connor laughed humorlessly. “This was where the madness really got serious. The Indigo Family reinforced all his prejudices and self-delusions, removing any vestigial constraints. Within months, although he still spent time on the family business, he was the cult’s leader in all but name. Then the suicides happened.”
“What suicides?”
“About ten members of the Indigo Family were found dead in a stone barn in the commune. The details of their deaths were mysterious and suicide was suspected but two other family members told the police they saw Regan lead them into the barn and then come out alone. When the police came for him, he later bragged that the cops had to fight off half the commune to get to him.”
“What happened?”
“The two witnesses vanished and the cops released him a few days later due to lack of evidence. The commune welcomed him back like a persecuted messiah. It was clear he’d found his place in the world. Soon after that they started calling him the Seer.”
“The Seer?”
“Something to do with the third eye. He was always exaggerating what he could see, boasting about his powers.” Connor sneered when he said ‘powers’.
Fox thought of Sorcha’s gift. “I know many of the visual aspects of synaesthesia, such as seeing colors, can seem like hallucinations but did he ever claim to see anything significantly out of the ordinary which you thought might be genuine?”
Connor Delaney looked like he was about to laugh. Then he stopped himself and turned back to the house, which was now some distance away. “There was one time,” he said quietly. “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He kicked his horse’s flanks and broke into a canter. Fox followed.
Back in the house Connor led Fox upstairs to a large bedroom. “Our father died in this room,” Connor said. “He’d been ill for some weeks and died in great pain. Only I was with him when he passed but after his body had been moved Regan insisted on sitting in here for hours on end. When I asked why, he told me he was reliving our father’s death — even though he hadn’t been here when it happened. He believed that if he relived the experience enough times he’d see where his spirit had gone. See beyond the veil. He took the headboard for a keepsake. “Said it made him feel closer to Dad. What freaked me out at the time, though, was he told me exactly how he’d died. Details only I knew. Details I’d told no one about.”
Fox said nothing but the story made him wonder if Regan Delaney shared his daughter’s death-echo synaesthesia. If so, why hadn’t he reacted when Fox showed him into Sorcha’s original room at Tranquil Waters?
Connor continued. “Two days later the will was read. Our father was an old-time patriarch and left little to our female cousins. The bulk of his inheritance went to Regan and me, half each — even though I was the oldest and had done most to build the business. Regan immediately demanded his share in cash because he wanted to buy up a large chunk of Oregon wilderness so he could lead his cult — what he now called his real family — to a new promised land.”
“Do you know where in Oregon he set up his cult?”
“I’ve got geographical coordinates in the legal files but it’s in the middle of nowhere. I told him his plans would bankrupt the family business but he didn’t care. Eventually, to keep the business I had to sell land and horses and take out a crippling loan to pay off Regan’s share. The pressure made my wife leave me. My brother waked away with millions and took three of my best thoroughbreds. He even stole the Delaney family Bible, which contains the family tree and had been handed down to the first-born male for centuries.”
“Why take horses if he wanted out of the business?”
“He thought the purity of their bloodline mirrored his own. Ninety-five per cent of the hundreds of thousands of thoroughbreds on earth come from one foundation stallion in England, back in the late seventeenth century. The other five per cent come from two other stallions in England. Every thoroughbred in the entire world comes from the loins of three stallions.” Connor Delaney shook his head. “I don’t blame the Indigo Famil
y for all this, though. In fact I almost feel sorry for them. Cults are often accused of brainwashing their members and hijacking their lives. But my brother did the hijacking. He took a commune of harmless hippies and misfits who dabbled in crystals, wore colorful tie-dyed clothes and wanted to heal the world and turned them into a hardcore cult focused on achieving his Great Work. The last time I saw them, just before they went off to Oregon, they’d already become a pretty strict, well-organized community — a sort of Rainbow Amish.”
“What exactly do you think your brother’s Great Work is?”
Connor shrugged. “I can’t say for sure.” Then his eyes narrowed. “But I can tell you one thing. It’ll be hugely ambitious and he’ll be totally ruthless. You must understand that my brother doesn’t just believe he and his Indigo Family are descended from fallen angels who bred with humans. He wants to recreate the golden age when these ancestors of his — these most pure of thoroughbreds — once walked the earth.” Shaking his head at the preposterousness of what he was saying, Connor led Fox out of the bedroom and back toward the stairs. He smiled. “It’s funny you being a psychiatrist because it’s felt like therapy getting all this shit off my chest.”
Colour of Death, The Page 17