Outside (23 page)

She shakes her head, staring at the screen.

Noise on the other side of the door startles both of us.

“Hide that,” I hiss, gesturing at the phone. “Pretend you’re still tied up.”

She clasps her hands behind the chair, still holding the phone, and not a moment too soon.

The door flies open and Alaina’s mother helps Shovel Guy inside.

“I told you not to move!” She barks at me, abandoning Shovel Guy, who collapses against a rotting bookshelf.

“Mother, please,” Alaina pleads. “Don’t hurt him!”

Her mother thunders across the room and kicks me square in the chest, knocking me onto my back. All the air goes out of my lungs. “He’s evil, Alaina! A vile, wicked sinner who wants nothing more than to turn you from your true calling!” She kicks me again, this time in the ribs and I wheeze, doubling over. I should’ve punched her when I had the chance.

“No! He…” Alaina’s eyes shift to me. “He can be saved!”

“I decide who is worth saving, not you! And if you contradict me again, you’ll regret it!” She turns to Shovel Guy. “Get another chair.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ALAINA

It’s agonizing having to sit still and watch Mother and Elder Hanson mistreat Adam. They tie him to a chair with an old extension cord that Elder Hanson found in one of the many old crates in the room and set him directly in front of me. I hold his phone in my unbound hands, silently praying that the police show up soon.

Elder Hanson punches Adam. “That’s for pushing me down the stairs!”

Adam blinks, but doesn’t say anything, even when blood starts to trickle from his lip piercing. He keeps his eyes on me and I know that when this is all over, if we survive, he’ll never want to see me again.

“I want you to understand something, Alaina,” Mother says.

I can’t bring myself to look at her. I can’t look away from Adam, even when my vision starts to blur behind unshed tears.

“You are better than
this
.” She nudges his leg with her foot. “This boy doesn’t love you. He’s using you. They all are. Disguising themselves as saviors, telling you that they have all the answers.”

“That’s not true,” I say, shaking my head.

She leans down until she’s an inch from my face and smiles. “It
is
true. Ask him. Ask him if he loves you.” She straightens and I blink back a fresh wave of tears.

“No,” I whisper.

She laughs. “Of course! Because you already know! No one loves you except for me.”

“Beth loves me,” I say.

“Beth was being paid by the state to take care of you,” Mother snaps. “She loves that monthly stipend she gets for letting you live in her house. She doesn’t love
you
.”

I falter. Does Beth get money for keeping me? Is that how she was able to buy all those clothes for me? And why she insisted it was no big deal when I got fired from my paper route? Did she agree to take me in for material reasons?

“I bet she didn’t tell you about that, did she?” Mother walks behind Adam. “You see, Alaina? They’re all liars. They turned you against me, turned you against the Lord, for their own selfish gain.”

A fat, hot tear rolls down my cheek as I stare at Adam. I don’t want it to be true, but it almost makes sense.

He shakes his head slightly. “Don’t listen.”

Elder Hanson hits Adam again and I push the doubts out of my head. Not everyone who showed me kindness had something to gain. Jacki, for one, was kind when she had no reason to be. The same for Serena.

I glance at Drew’s lifeless body. This boy that I barely know, have never spoken to directly, risked himself for me. No, Mother is definitely wrong. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her. “Why not just let me go?”

“Because,” she says, her tone softening. “You’re my daughter. You’re all I have. And the Lord has spoken to me and told me that you have a great destiny.”

I shake my head. “Mother, women of the Lord do not speak directly
with
the Lord. You know that.”

She scoffs and raises her chin. “The ways of the deceiver will be as a blindfold on the eyes of the weak.”

I don’t recognize that scripture at all, but she’s been spouting strange pseudo-scriptures since she came for me earlier today.

Glancing at Elder Hanson, I can’t help wondering how he came to be involved in all of this. “I thought you were in prison.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but Mother steps between us. “Do not address him directly! Have you forgotten everything you’ve been taught?”

My eyebrows pull together. I’ve been speaking out of turn since I got here and she hasn’t said a word. She’s claiming to be the Lord’s mouthpiece, though we’ve been taught that women can never hold that role. But when I address Elder Hanson directly, she decides to enforce the rules. “I’m sorry. I’m just unclear on which rules we’re bending and which we’re sticking to now.”

My sass earns me a hard smack across the face and Adam shifts in his chair, clenching his jaw. “You’ve lived among them for too long,” Mother says. “You speak like them. Disrespectful. Rude. We’ll have to fix all of that before you can be taken.”

“Taken?” I ask.

Her eyes light up. “Soon you will be taken in by the Lord and he will grant you the same power he has granted me.”

I glance at Adam who scowls up at Mother. I start to ask her what that means when the phone slips between my fingers. I cringe even before it clatters to the floor.

Mother’s eyes blaze. “What is that?”

“A phone,” I say.

She steps toward me. If she gets any closer she’ll discover that my hands are untied. My eyes dart to Adam, panicked, silently asking him what I should do.

He sticks his leg out and hooks his foot around Mother’s ankle, sending her sprawling to the floor. Elder Hanson growls and turns on Adam. Mother starts to push herself to her feet and that’s when I see it; a broken broom handle lying against Drew’s shoes.

I bolt from the chair, tipping it in the process as the loosened ropes fall away, and grab the handle. Spinning around, I close my eyes and swing as hard as I can. A sickening crunch is followed by a howl and I open my eyes. Elder Hanson clutches his face with both hands as blood spurts from between his fingers. He lumbers toward me.

Swallowing hard, I raise the handle again. This time, though, Mother grabs the other end before I can swing. She pulls and the wood slides against my skin, delivering deep, painful splinters into my palms.

Elder Hanson grabs me around the waist with his bloody hands, lifting me off my feet and I scream, thrashing wildly. Bringing both of my legs up, I plant my feet firmly against Mother and kick off as hard as I can. She falls backward, landing on Drew, taking the broom handle with her. Elder Hanson stumbles back, still holding me, slamming into the stained glass window. For a moment, no one moves as the glass gives way behind us.

Adam and Mother watch in horrified silence as Elder Hanson teeters on the edge. He releases me to grab the edge of the window but it’s no use. I fall with a thud to the floor as he disappears through the gaping black hole.

The candles in the room flicker violently as air rushes in through the broken window.

“Gregory.” Mother breathes Elder Hanson’s first name as she scrambles to her feet.

I cover my mouth with both hands. I think I just killed an Elder.

Edging away from the window, I crawl over to Adam’s side as Mother goes to the window and peers down at the ground far below.

“Adam,” I whisper from behind my shaking hands. I want to throw up. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Look,” he says, nodding at Mother.

Across the room, blue and red lights flicker across her face before one bright white light illuminates the entire room and she shields her eyes. Outside, someone speaks through a megaphone and tells Mother to put her hands up and not to move.

“Untie me,” Adam says.

I go to work on the cord around his wrists, but my hands and fingers won’t stop shaking. Finally after several tries, I loosen one of the knots and Adam is able to get his hands free. He works at getting the rest of the knots undone.

Mother turns to me, her face drawn. The broom handle still clenched tightly in her fist. “For the wages of sin is death.”

I definitely recognize that scripture, and before I can react, she’s on me pressing the broom handle across my throat, dragging me away from Adam, toward the door.

Adam shouts, straining against the cords as Mother yanks me to my feet. I gasp for air and pull at the handle, but the harder I fight, the harder she chokes me.

“All you had to do was obey,” she growls, tugging me backward, toward the stairs. “Now you’re a murderer. How’s that feel, Alaina? To know you murdered a man because you insist on resisting the Lord.”

“Mother,” I plead in a hoarse, whisper. “I didn’t mean to.” I stumble down the first few steps and pull at her hands.

“Stop resisting the Lord!” She pulls me again and I lose my balance, knocking into her, but catch myself before we both fall.

The stairway is suddenly filled with light. “Stop right there! Hands where we can see them!”

Mother pulls me around in front of her, like a shield. Dark figures crowd the bottom of the stairway, pointing flashlights directly in our faces. Mother releases me and I drop, coughing and gasping for air.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” Mother says, lifting the broken broom handle. “I shall not want.”

I look up at my mother as I rub my throat and suck in oxygen.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Without warning, she plunges the sharp, splintered end of the handle into her stomach.

I open my mouth to scream as she pitches forward and tumbles down the stairs, but nothing comes out. She lands at an awkward angle at the feet of the police officers with the handle sticking out of her body and we all watch as a dark stain spreads across her white dress.

I get to my feet just as Adam reaches me.

“No one move,” an officer shouts at us.

I’m unable to look away as Mother’s body shudders and twitches below us. Two people kneel beside her and start to administer first aid. One of them leans down close to her head and listens as she whispers something.

“Let’s get her out of here,” the other one says.

One of the police officers starts up the stairs toward Adam and me. “Anyone else up there?”

“Drew,” Adam says. “He’s hurt.”

The officer gestures to the other two waiting at the bottom of the stairs and the three of them move past us.

Adam cautiously puts his arm around me. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head, unable to speak as they load Mother onto a stretcher.

“Come on,” Adam says, guiding me forward.

With heavy, clumsy steps, we walk down the stairs together and out of the church I grew up attending. We walk past the lump under the white sheet on the steps of the church where Elder Hanson lay.

I glance to my right at the tiny house I lived in for fifteen years and then to my left at the Elders’ Chambers where I was flogged.

“Ms. Roberts?”

I realize Adam and I are sitting in the back of an ambulance, though I don’t remember actually getting in. The doors are still open and one of the paramedics is speaking to me.

“Is she alive?” I ask.

The paramedic nods. “She is. She’s on her way to the hospital now. The police would like to speak with you if you’re up for it.”

August 14th

Summerton – Two people are dead after what police are calling a kidnapping gone wrong. Twenty-year-old Gregory Hanson and thirty-four-year-old Leah Roberts, members of the Shiloh cult that was raided earlier this summer, abducted Leah’s fifteen-year-old daughter and brought her back to the abandoned compound yesterday evening. The girl, who was originally found beaten in a shed during the raid in June, managed to escape with minor injuries when her friends came looking for her.

Gregory Hanson was pronounced dead at the scene after falling more than fifty feet from the upper floor of a church located on the property. Leah Roberts remains hospitalized in critical condition after stabbing herself in the stomach. Eighteen-year-old Drew Jessup of Sugarloaf, Georgia, was also taken to the hospital where he later died of injuries sustained from blunt force trauma.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ADAM

“Hey! Check it out! You’re dead!” I laugh and hold up the newspaper so Drew can see it.

He smiles, barely moving his head to look.

“So much for fact-checking, huh?” I say. “This is a keeper.” I fold up the paper.

A nurse opens the hospital room door and sticks her head in. “Knock-knock,” she says. “Time to change your dressing.” She lets herself in and crosses the room.