Agnes at the End of the World

by Kelly McWilliams

  Inside the claustrophobic trailer, Agnes felt her world expanding with dizzying speed. She couldn’t get enough. Beyond Red Creek, there was so much more world than she’d ever imagined. So much more life.

  But that world was also battling Petra. She caught glimpses of the Virus in fearful messages, prayers, pleas.

  Opera House burning. Y can’t I stop crying? #PetrifiedAustralia

  Auditions canceled, theaters closed. #RIPNYC

  Help. Lost cat. Tan, white. #Milly

  But Agnes wasn’t afraid for these strangers. She believed in their world, with its schools and its scientists. In the end, they’d solve Petra.

  She had to believe that, despite the pictures of a burning courthouse, the blazing human Nest, or the articles predicting famine. She’d just discovered Outside; it wouldn’t be fair to her brothers and sisters if it was already over.

  AVOID CONTACT WITH INFECTED PEOPLE AND ANIMALS, a banner abruptly flashed, blinking a red warning behind the phone’s glass. CALL YOUR HOSPITAL AT THE FIRST SIGN OF FEVER.

  Hastily, she closed the disturbing message. Shut it down and shut it out.

  She wasn’t ignoring the Outside’s darkness, exactly. She just wanted to soak up a little more hope—a little more good—while she braced herself for escape.

  She scrolled back to a story about a teenage sports team.

  HUGE TURNOUT FOR STATE CHAMPIONSHIP LAST WEEK!!! TY!!!!

  Thou hast set my feet in a large room, she thought with amazement.

  She read for hours, and though the bathroom was dark, her mind blazed with color and a glowing, unstoppable light.

  16

  AGNES

  Soon will come a night of fire and brimstone. Outsiders will atone for their wickedness with blood and pain.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  Inside out and upside down.

  That’s what Agnes’s world felt like now. What had once been holy—the Prophet and his patriarchs—seemed a horror, and what was once a horror—life on the Outside—now appeared a haven.

  How could she have been so blind?

  On Pangaea, she’d seen how people looked when they were free, how filled with incautious joy their eyes could be. Mary, Faith, Sam, and Ezekiel might’ve grown up to be like them one day. Instead they were here, with Red Creek warping them.

  I have to get the children out.

  The trouble was, they wanted to stay.

  “Sam, would you ever want to see Outside?”

  “You mean, all the evil and sex and sin? No way!”

  “Yeah, gross,” echoed the twins.

  “But what if it’s not as bad as we think? What if there are good people out there?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Mary. “They’ll all be dead soon. Chicken-fried sinners.”

  Faith laughed. “Good riddance!”

  And then there was Beth. Stubborn, foolish, frightened Beth.

  After evening prayers, Father announced she’d be married next Sunday.

  In the middle of the night, Agnes pinched her until she couldn’t pretend to be sleeping anymore.

  “Jeez, Agnes, what is it?”

  Agnes propped herself up on her elbow. Demanded, “Do you really want to marry him?”

  Beth turned her head so Agnes couldn’t see her face. “Yes,” she said with surprising feeling. “More than anything.”

  Agnes bit the inside of her cheek, feeling trapped. A month ago, Beth had flirted with rebellion. Now she acted like an entirely different person.

  “Don’t you think there’s something… suspicious about the way the marriage was arranged?”

  Beth recoiled. “You’re just jealous because he chose me over you.”

  Agnes’s jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Beth arched a brow.

  “I’m not jealous. I’m scared for you.”

  Her sister’s face softened and hope revived. Agnes extended her small finger, and Beth very nearly took it.

  But Agnes spoke too soon. “You were right, before. Something is wrong with this place. I’m sorry I didn’t—”

  “Stop!” Beth covered her ears and curled into a ball. “Nothing about me was right before. Nothing! And you should look to yourself. I heard you talking to the kids. You’re in rebellion.”

  Agnes felt as helpless as a bird slamming against a storm window. She could batter herself to pieces, but Beth was so entrenched in her newfound piety she couldn’t see beyond her future as Matthew Jameson’s wife.

  “I wish you could see yourself as I do,” Agnes said. “I wish you could see that you deserve compassion, not punishment.”

  Beth’s shoulders shook, but she didn’t speak.

  Agnes prayed: Lord, how can I help them see? Why won’t you open their eyes, as you’ve opened mine?

  She wanted to show them the phone—her own window into the real world. But Beth, in her bewilderment and hurt, was just crazed enough to betray her.

  Miserable beyond words, Agnes twisted and tossed in her bed.

  On Pangaea, there were no images of girls married to old men.

  She’d spent a long time gazing at a young couple, a girl and a boy. The girl had written I LOVE MATT!!! beneath a photo of them smiling outside an ice cream shop. She wore shiny pink paint on her lips and frayed shorts. He wore a cap and a goofy smile.

  Agnes drank in the image until her eyes smarted, because the girl reminded her of Beth. If they’d been raised a mile outside Red Creek, her sister might be holding hands with a boy at an ice cream shop, too. She might be posting photos on Pangaea and studying for exams.

  But Beth wasn’t born a mile outside Red Creek, and instead of enjoying the last years of her childhood, she was living like a penitent, preparing to marry a man old enough to be her father.

  Agnes waited until her sister’s breath evened out. Then she locked herself inside the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  Danny? Is there stuff online about Red Creek?

  Why do you ask?

  She could practically see the line forming between his eyes, wrinkling the bridge of freckles across his nose.

  People must talk about us. They talk about everything else.

  True. If you want, you can google it.

  She only hesitated a moment.

  Links to newspaper articles cropped up in droves.

  As did the words: cult, brainwashing, human rights abuses.

  Agnes’s mind reeled as she clicked from page to page.

  In Red Creek, Arizona, the “Prophet” Jacob Rollins is a prime example of a malevolent, narcissistic personality who demands his people suppress critical thinking in order to replace their will with his own, one article said. As of this writing, the Red Creek compound has existed for nearly eighty years. Generations of children have been raised under a harsh, unforgiving system of total indoctrination. The cult is considered “highly dangerous” by state law enforcement…

  She collapsed on the bathroom floor.

  I just looked up Red Creek, Danny texted. It’s pretty harsh. Are you okay?

  Agnes wept, feeling like an exile in her own home.

  “God gave me a second chance,” Beth had been saying all day. “I won’t mess it up.”

  It was upside down and inside out—but Agnes felt exactly the same.

  “You’ll have to deliver Mother’s dinner from now on.”

  Beth spoke coolly, around a mouthful of pins. Agnes was horrified to find her buried in a pile of old lace. Their mother’s wedding dress. Already, the twins were touching it reverently.

  “Why me? Why now?”

  “I’m too busy with wedding chores. This dress has got to be hemmed three inches, and I want these pearls on the bust.”

  Panic blossomed in Agnes’s chest. She hadn’t conversed with her mother in years. “It only takes a minute,” she insisted. “You know she prefers you.”

  Her sister’s cheeks pinked, almost as if she were ashamed. But she didn’t drop her eyes.

 
; Reluctantly loading a tray with food, Agnes wondered about their mother.

  Had she ever tried to escape? Had she ever tried to save her kids?

  Oddly, she found herself remembering Sarah Shiner—her ancestor on Father’s side. She had run from Jeremiah Rollins, but she’d left a son behind. How had she lived with the pain?

  “Mother?” she called. “It’s me, Agnes.”

  No answer. She never answered to anyone but Beth.

  Luckily, Father had broken the door’s lock long ago. Agnes pushed, and the hinges creaked open. The bedroom curtains were tightly drawn against the light. Agnes felt submerged, like she was trying to breathe dark water.

  Her mother hauled herself upright, patting her matted, unwashed hair. Seeing Agnes, her eyes lit with fiery accusation.

  “I’ve heard you, you know. Talking to the kids. Feeling them out,” her mother whispered. “You’re spending lots of time locked in the bathroom, too. Taking lots of showers.”

  Agnes went white. All those hours reading Pangaea, running water to disguise any sound… She was a fool to forget that her mother might wonder. The dinner tray felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Trembling, she set it on the edge of the bed, then leapt back, like the woman might bite.

  And who knew? Maybe she would.

  Agnes tried to imagine her mother’s arms holding her as a child or cradling her brothers and sisters. But imagination failed.

  “Never thought you’d be the one to run. I always thought Beth.”

  Fear squeezed Agnes’s throat closed, because she knew this could be the end. If her mother told Father…

  “Don’t worry.” Her voice was like wind sweeping through pines. “I won’t tell. But I’m surprised. I expected your sister to get the hell out of here. Never you.”

  Agnes didn’t know what hurt more—that she’d always seemed a lost cause to her mother, or that Beth really might be lost.

  “You’re wrong,” she stuttered. “I’m not going to run.”

  Her mother chuckled dryly. “You will. But you’re going about it all wrong, trying to get the kids on your side. That’s hopeless. You’ll only ever make it out alone.”

  Her mother came alive, standing, knocking the dinner tray with its sad cup of soup to the floor. She gripped Agnes’s arm.

  “Promise me you’ll run. Promise.”

  “Mother—” She gazed at the sickly arm that gripped her. There were sores, deep infected cuts where she’d picked relentlessly at the skin. Even her lips were tattered by her own biting teeth. Her mother was destroying herself, bit by tiny bit.

  “Don’t try to take the children. They’re not yours. They’re not even mine. They’re creatures of the church.”

  Agnes ripped her arm away and ran.

  But the words had been uttered.

  You can’t take them with you.

  Shaking, she told herself her mother didn’t know anything, that she was just a stranger eavesdropping on their lives from the other side of her bedroom wall.

  Only that wasn’t the truth. And Agnes knew it.

  By the time her Outsider mother understood Red Creek’s ways, it was too late. The trap had snapped shut the day Agnes was born. Her mother may have wanted to escape, but her children—brainwashed—were heavy shackles. They’d weighed her down in rushing waters, and she’d drowned.

  She was drowning still.

  She’d told Agnes to run. But if she couldn’t take the children, what on earth would be the point?

  Her mind flashed on Ezekiel as a toddler, looking up at her as she bent to lift him from his crib. Flashed on the twins, dissolving into giggles over a private joke. Flashed on Sam racing across the meadow, his chest thrust out and his head thrown back in delight.

  Generations of children have been raised under a harsh, unforgiving system…

  She had to get the children out. But she couldn’t make it out with the children. It was inside out and upside down.

  “God can’t mean for me to run alone,” she whispered.

  She thought again of Sarah Shiner, her great-grandmother, and the only woman she knew who’d escaped. What if she’d left her son behind because she had no choice?

  Her back against the door, Agnes slid to the floor.

  She heard Beth lecturing Mary in the other room. “The Prophet made a mistake with Matthew Jameson and Agnes, but now he’s corrected it, see? Anyway, I’ll make a prettier bride…”

  17

  AGNES

  Woman, rest in the knowledge that God has ordained your husband for you.

  —PROPHET JACOB ROLLINS

  Agnes wasn’t like her mother. She’d struggle and claw for every last ounce of air before she gave in to drowning despair. She swore she’d keep trying with the kids, and keep attending the Prophet’s sermons, even when church was hellish.

  Truly, it was.

  That first Sunday in August, glassy-eyed people waited for the Prophet to tell them what to do, what to wear, and how to live. And Agnes, who’d known the faithful all her life, didn’t blame them. It was comforting to believe you lived hand-in-hand with God’s will, and that you were one of His chosen. Who wouldn’t find solace in that?

  She watched Beth anxiously eyeing stern-faced Matthew Jameson. The man never looked at her once—but Cory Jameson did.

  Agnes watched him stealing furtive glances, his eyes confused beneath a sweep of golden hair. At heart, he was only a child, too.

  In front of her, Mrs. King’s needles clicked over a baby’s jumper. The Mrs. Hearns whispered to each other, voices leashed because their husband was liberal with the rod. Magda twisted the ear of a boisterous younger girl hard enough to bring tears to the child’s eyes. Mr. Sayles played the half-tuned organ, marching dutifully through the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” When he was done, his wives applauded politely, and he flashed a broken-toothed smile.

  A regular Sunday, except for the anger that throbbed in Agnes’s bones as she thought how much, and how cruelly, they’d been betrayed—the women and children, in particular.

  Did Father and the patriarchs believe their own lies? Were they demons feeding on the faith of others, or simply greedy fools? Mr. Jameson bowed his head to pray, and she thought how much easier it must be to turn your cheek when you had five wives and plenty of children and, even better, dominion over them all.

  Agnes studied Sam and Ezekiel, both of whom were meant to be patriarchs one day. Sweet as they were now, how would Red Creek change them? In the end, would they be able to distinguish between truth and lies? And if so, what would they choose?

  And then there were the girls—Mary, Faith, and oh, God, Beth—who had no choices.

  On Pangaea, Agnes had seen universities, hospitals, schools. If Red Creek had its way, the kids would never know any of that.

  As for the Virus plaguing the Outside—well, it couldn’t last forever, could it?

  The Prophet arrived; the congregation abruptly hushed.

  Sam whispered eagerly, “Think he’ll preach the Rapture?”

  Surrounded by people she’d known forever, Agnes had never felt so alone.

  The Prophet wore night-black robes and a silky smile. As always, he oozed confidence and charm and something else—a caginess she’d once mistaken for holiness.

  Agnes had seen him take the pulpit countless times. She knew his sweeping gestures better than her own. She could’ve recognized his lilting, hypnotic voice anywhere, but now she heard it as a sharp razor, working deceitfully. His eyes were crow black, glittering in his too-narrow face. He surveyed his people greedily, hungrily.

  The Prophet was a liar, but was he evil? Who but an evil man would use a people’s faith against them?

  His smile grew, and she thought, Maybe a mad one.

  A malevolent, narcissistic personality, the article had said.

  Without warning, the prayer space opened up inside her, and she smothered a gasp.

  She felt it ripple out, spreading through the building like invisible water, its currents
frightfully strong. She looked down at Ezekiel to see if he could feel it, too. He smiled up at her, giving no sign that he felt—or heard—anything.

  But Agnes could hear.

  She heard the hearts of the faithful thrumming in unison. She heard the stitch in the silty, troubled souls of Beth and Cory. She heard the Bibles humming from the pockets of the pews. Such a shock to find the prayer space even here, ringing in such sharp contrast to the Prophet’s falsity.

  The prayer space truly is God’s voice.

  There were no words and no commandments. No shaming rules or crushing Laws. Only this constant singing. This ever-present hum.

  It was just as she’d suspected as a child. But why did she alone seem to hear it?

  Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

  “No,” she whispered decisively, her horror building. “Oh no. Not me.”

  That old quote from the Book of Jeremiah—every atom of her upbringing revolted against it, heaving the blasphemous thought overboard.

  “People, do you believe the Rapture is near?”

  In the prayer space, the Prophet’s voice was like icy ground in the midst of green gardens, a place where nothing good could grow.

  “Do you believe we’ll soon witness the coming of the Lord?”

  Shouted assents and murmured amens.

  “Do you believe we’ll soon descend into the Underground Temple?”

  Amen!

  “Liars,” the Prophet growled, and the faithful fell silent. “Lucky for you, God in His wisdom has sent a sign. A red devil to fortify your faith.”

  Ezekiel’s eyes snapped to hers. Though she’d told him the red javelina was only sick, deep in his mind where nightmares lived, he believed in demons just as he’d been raised to do.

  Frightened, his breathing quickened.

  Could the prayer space help her?

  As a child, she’d never thought to actually use it, as she used her eyes and ears. It was probably blasphemy even to try, but she had to be ready for whatever trick the Prophet planned to play.