by David Risen
“And I’m just supposed to swallow all of this shit on blind faith?”
Lauren nodded. “Yes. Because you know me, and you realize that I would never be a party to something bad.”
Rider sneered. “I’m sure that’s what the Branch Davidians told their children in Waco, Texas.”
“This is not a cult, Rider,” Lauren said. “We’re not even a religion. Our order stems from an ancient religion, but we’re a secret society entrusted with the security of mortality.”
He gave her a cynical look. “So Amelia is bad? Is that what you bitches are sellin?”
Sister Jacobs shook her head. “No, she’s not. Her balance is lost, and that’s very dangerous. We have to weaken her to restore her balance, but she’s grown so powerful that we can’t control her. We can only keep her chasing her tail and far away from anything that might cause real harm.”
Rider glared. “And where does Lauren fit into all this?”
Lauren shook her head. “We tried to keep you out of this, Rider,” she pleaded. “But once you had a taste, curiosity sent you hurling down a path that we simply cannot allow.”
Rider’s chin twitched with the onset of tears. “So you’re up for all this? What they’re doin to me?”
She looked down at her feet again. “None of us wanted this, but you gave us no choice. We have to take you out of this for the sake of everyone.”
“Fuck you!”
She looked at him. “You don’t have to trust them, Rider. Trust me. They’re going to help you. Don’t fight.”
Rider shook his head. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Whatever. If you want me gone, I might as well go. There’s nothing left for me here, anyway.”
Sister Jacobs knelt by his head again and caressed his cheek. “Just let the spell carry you off to sleep. I promise that when you awaken, your life will be much less complicated.”
Part Two:
The Abysmal Patron
“Dad, were you ever afraid of the dark?”
Nick Carcer studied his little girl. Aurora lay in her twin canopy bed swallowed completely by her satin white comforter with big, pink polka dots, and white lace around the canopy.
The only light in the room came from a touch lamp beside her bed with a pink shade.
Her long, brown hair – still a little damp from her before bedtime bath – moistened the pillow sham.
Her dark eyes glistened with vulnerability, and somehow, Nick knew what she needed. He smiled compassionately.
“Sure. Grams used to leave the light on in my bedroom until I was asleep.”
“How did you get over it?”
He looked up to the plaster ceiling.
“The older I got, the more I realized that the dark wasn’t what scared me. I was afraid of closing my eyes and not waking up again.”
Her dark, eight-year-old eyes lit with a question.
“Do you think all that stuff they tell us at school about heaven and hell is real?”
Nick sighed. “Your mother does, and I guess Einstein did, too.”
She furled her brow. “Who’s Einstein?”
He grinned. “One of the smartest men ever.”
“Well, what do you think?”
He looked away from her.
“I don’t know; I’ve never died. I’d like to think it’s true.”
She frowned. “But you don’t.”
Nick made a wry face.
It never ceased to amaze him how quickly she homed in on things. She was only eight, and she already had the gut of a seasoned reporter.
“I hope it’s true,” he responded.
“Then why do you think it isn’t?”
He gave her a wan smile. “I guess it’s just the way I think. I went to school a very long time to be a reporter, and like all reporters, I don’t like to accept anything that I can’t prove.”
She stared at him blankly as if she weren’t completely following him.
Nick bunched his lips together and decided on a different tactic. “Do you know what faith is?”
She shook her head.
“The teachers talk about it at school.”
He gave her a knowing look. “To have faith is to believe in something that you can’t prove just because they said so.”
She craned her head right and looked out the dark window as she processed his response.
“I think it’s true,” she offered.
Nick’s eyes narrowed with interest.
“I think God and the angels are all real.”
He cocked his head to the right inquisitively. “Why?”
“I just do.”
Nick patted her hand. “That’s great, honey.”
And he started to stand.
“But I don’t think God is really like the school says.”
Nick sat back down. “What do you mean?”
She made the closest thing to a stern and intellectual face that an eight-year old girl could muster.
“They say God knows everything, and he’s always watching. They say he loves everyone, but he’ll be mean to you if you do bad things.”
Nick rubbed his bristly chin. “I guess.”
Nick wasn’t sure where she was going.
“Well, if God is always watching, why are so many people starving?”
He licked his lips and leaned forward – shifting uncomfortably in the white, wooden chair they placed in her bedroom for this very purpose.
“Your teachers would tell you that God has a reason for everything, and we can’t always understand it.”
She made a sour face. “That’s a bunch of poopie!”
Nick chuckled. “You sure you’re only eight?”
She gave him another blank look.
Nick studied her for a moment and then started to rise from his chair again.
“I think he’s hiding,” she blurted.
Nick sat back down. “Why?”
“I think it makes him sad when people do bad things to each other, and he doesn’t want to see or hear it.”
Nick stared out the window without seeing. “I guess that could be it.”
She smiled with satisfaction.
Nick thought about her explanation a moment, and finally smiled with acceptance of his daughter’s overwhelming wit. He started to stand, and she pulled him back down.
“Daddy, I have a question.”
He sat back down and folded his hands in his lap.
“Okay?”
“If God has existed forever, and he was floating around in nothing before he created heaven and earth, don’t you think he was lonely?”
Nick was at a loss.
“I don’t think I’m the best person to be asking religious questions. Ask your mom, she likes that stuff.”
“I think he was,” she interrupted. “And that’s why he created us.”
Nick stared at her a moment longer wondering just what in the hell they were teaching her at that damn private Christian school. Then he patted her hand.
“Go to sleep. You’re already up thirty minutes past your bedtime.”
He stood up and turned for the door behind him.
“Daddy?” Aurora said.
He sighed and faced her.
“Please don’t turn off the light after I go to sleep.”
Nick smiled. “Okay. Good night.”
“Good night,” she replied.
He turned and started downstairs.
Nick found his way to the kitchen. Dena Carcer sat at the cream-colored center island with the imitation wood Formica top reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson.
Nick knew better than to bother her while she read, so he quietly made his way to the counter on the opposite side of the island, opened the drawer by the stove, and picked a wax paper dose of Goody power out of the box within.
He walked over to the refrigerator on the right wall, opened the stainless-steel door, and pulled a can of Dr. Pepper out of the twelve-pack in the bottom.
&
nbsp; He cracked the can open and then refolded the wax paper so that the powder collected in the center. Then he shook the powder out into his mouth and chased it with a hefty swallow of the soft drink.
He leaned against the counter and stared into the cabinets above the dishwasher opposite him.
“That was quite an article in your magazine, today.”
Nick turned his head and looked at Dena. “I didn’t think you read that kind of crap.”
She smirked. “I hope you can back all that up.”
Nick grinned. “You’re worried about libel?”
Her eyebrows spiked.
Dena Carcer was an exotic-looking woman. She had a dark tan and raven hair peppered with blond highlights. If she hadn’t cared so much that the world views her as an intellect, she could have just as easily landed a job as a model.
“These are powerful people that you’re calling out,” she replied.
Nick nodded.
“Your days as a linebacker at UGA are over. You should really consider less explosive topics.”
Nick shrugged. “Someone needs to say something. The Supreme Court ruled a while ago that you couldn’t put people in jail for not being able to pay, but the State Courts are pretty much ignoring them. If you have money, you pay and get out of trouble; if you don’t, you can count on going back to jail as often as the judge likes.
She gave him a holier-than-thou look. “Which would be fine if that were all you discussed, but the article was an admonishment to the entire judicial system.”
He nodded. “Which part? Are you talking about the fact that most of our prisons in this country are privatized, and the corporations running them have an agreement with the system that we’ll keep them all 90 percent occupied? Or are you talking about the private funds judges get for campaigns? Are you discussing the incestuous personal relationships that judges have with lawyers?”
She shook her head. “I agree. It’s not fair, but again, these are powerful people, and it’s still one of the fairest systems in the world.”
Nick huffed. “No, it’s not. The United States is the second most incarcerated country in the world. The first is a little country no one knows anything about. Where I’m sittin, that’s not freedom.”
She sighed. “I just don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew. Dirty people play dirty – expecting them to play the game by the rules is foolish and naïve.”
Nick smiled. “So, what are you up to the next few days?”
She sighed. “I’ve gotta go babysit the sycophants. We have VIPs coming in from Germany – suppliers, and I’ve got to go along with the political envoy while they tickle each other under the chins and plot world domination.”
Nick gave her a screwed-up grin. “Try to get a little dirt on the dick bags for me.”
She gave him a long face. “Very funny.”
Nick gave her a screwed-up grin. “Have you ever considered how contradictory our marriage is?”
Her eyes bulged.
“I’m off trying to save the world from fatheads with fat wallets while you’re off making them as much money as you possibly can.”
She grinned and cocked her head. “I guess it pays the bills, right?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah.”
She looked toward the French door that led out into the hallway. “Did you finally get her to sleep?”
Nick offered her a pensive, paternal smile. “She’s scared of the dark, and she’s afraid that I’ll come in and cut off her lamp after she goes to sleep.”
Dena smiled, too, and looked back down at her book.
“Why in hell are we sending her to a Christian School? I don’t give a rat’s ass about religion, you don’t even go to church once a year.”
“She’s a Legacy. I went to Children of God, so did my mother and her mother.”
Nick shook his head.
“Do you know what she asked me?”
Dena gave him an irritated look.
“She’s way too young to have crap like that rolling around in her head.”
Dena shook her head. “We’re not having this conversation again. Children of God is a great school and she’s a Legacy. She will go to Children of God, and that’s the end of it. I’m sorry that religious discussions make you uncomfortable.”
Nick stared at her for a moment. He hated it when she decided things such as this without considering his opinion, but from the moment she was born, it was a foregone conclusion that she would attend Children of God Primary School. That was one of their considerations for moving to Darien, Georgia.
He never liked the idea of any religious schools. They had a habit of passing on their mythology as fact, and by the time children came out the other end of it, they would never be able to unlearn the religion. It became as much a part of their body of factual knowledge as the Scientific Method, and they would weigh all decisions against it whether they wanted to or not for the rest of their lives.
Narrow, dogmatic views irritated him. In his world, there were no exclusive rights or wrongs and exceptions to every rule, and he viewed religions for what he thought they were, control harnesses to keep the masses from revolting, the morally deficient from having their way with others, and a pacifier to keep the whining brats from spending their entire lives fretting about death.
“So, if she were a legacy at Auschwitz, would you send her there, too?”
Dena rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just being dramatic.”
Nick pushed himself off the counter. “I just want her to be a freethinker. Let her draw her own conclusions about creation and creator.”
Dena sighed. “As her parents, it’s our job to teach her about God.”
Nick nodded. “Maybe so, but what do we really know about God? I’m a journalist, and you’re a businesswoman. All of our knowledge consists of what we see around us and the shit they shoveled into our heads during Sunday School.”
She gave him a tired look. “What’s this really about, Nick? Are you still mad at Grams for making you turn off the cartoons and go to church?”
He gave her a wounded look. “Maybe.”
He shook it off. “I just don’t want to shove anything down her throat that I’m not completely sure about.”
She sat her book face down, stood, and crossed the kitchen and then she draped her arms over his shoulders.
“I went to Children of God, and I turned out okay, right?”
Nick shrugged.
She grinned. “I think we should go upstairs and discuss this with less clothes.”
Nick gave her a screwed-up smile.
Nick was ten minutes late getting to work the next morning.
All the gray-carpeted cubicles inside the offices of The Georgia Crawler, a monthly news magazine, were empty as everyone gathered in the conference room for the staff meeting.
Nick eased the thin door open and slipped into the back of the standing-room only conference room.
Evan Randolph, a fifty-something African-American man with a pleasant demeanor and Nick’s Editor-in-chief, looked up from the head of the conference table.
“There’s the late man of the hour, now. I was just discussing how your article made us relevant again. We’ve had threatening phone calls from ivy-league mouthpieces all morning, and Atlanta is pretty shaken up.”
Nick sank as all his colleagues, most of whom he’d known only a month, peered back at him with thinly veiled contempt.
“News guys, I want follow-up stories. Nick, you’ve got lists of the biggest offenders, right?”
Nick nodded.
“Distribute your source material among the other guys, and I want you on the next big thing. The story we discussed yesterday sounds good.”
Nick nodded again. He didn’t like the spotlight. That’s why he never went for television news, and now everyone in the office would be gunning for him.
“Let’s get to it people! We’ve got thirty days until the next issue.”
Everyone stood and filed out of t
he conference room.
Nick exchanged looks with Evan.
Nick’s eyes said, “Why did you do that to me?”
Evan’s face responded, I don’t know what you’re talkin about.
Then he turned out of the conference room, and passed to his cubicle to find a swarm of his counterparts gathered around.
Nick gave them a look of passing irritation. “I’ll email the list to Larry.”
They all gave him looks of varying frustration and dispersed.
He sat behind his desk and found an envelope addressed to him on the top of his blotter.
He pulled a silver letter opener from his middle desk drawer and opened the envelope. A single sheet of paper lay folded within. He smoothed it out on the corner of his desk. The text was Calibri (Body), 11 point.
Generic paper.
Dear Mr. Carcer,
This is the biggest story of your career. Look up the following individuals:
Lauren Fields –Rider, Bridgeton, GA
Lauren Fields, Hartford, CT
Sister Mary Ruth, Sisters of Divinity House, Sacramento, CA
Alyssa J. Rider, Bridgeton, GA
Miranda Clovis, Bridgeton, GA
Dorothy Desdemona, Hartford, CT
Sister Mary Celeste, Sisters of Divinity House, Sacramento, CA
Blake Rider, Bridgeton, GA
I’ll be in touch,
A.L.
Nick rolled his eyes. Nevertheless, he opened his web browser to Google and typed in the first name on the list, Lauren Fields-Rider.
The web browser returned several listings: A Facebook page, a faculty directory at Bridgeton University, and a number of scholarly journals concerning Anthropology.
Nick clicked on the Facebook page.
Her profile photo revealed an intelligent, attractive, but mousey-looking woman with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, narrow, rectangular glasses with black frames, wearing a gray turtleneck.
A feeling of déjà vu gripped him.
She looked familiar.
He went back to Google and typed Lauren Fields, Hartford, CT. Google returned only with Alumni listing for a St. Landry’s Catholic Primary and High school. And several Security sites offering a background profile.