CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
My gaze fell upon the bulging veins crawling along his forearms and knuckles, the sight oddly alluring. I wanted to trace my fingers over the blue lines, following them until they disappeared beneath his sleeves.
The sound of the projector connecting with Nathaniel’s computer snapped my attention away from his hands and onto my laptop which I had yet to open.
“What’s the uh…plan for today?” I asked.
We had finished the bulk of our secondary research, but our report still needed to be written.
“Let’s work on the structure and maybe writing our introduction and first paragraph,” Nathaniel said. He gestured to the screen which illustrated a suggested structure he must have set up prior to this session. “Our introduction will list these points which will make up our four paragraphs.”
I read through the four paragraph topics.
1) Cults as a breeding ground for psychological manipulation, 2) Vulnerable members of society more susceptible to the psychological manipulation of cults, 3) People with psychological disorders more susceptible to the psychological manipulation of cults, 4) Anyone is susceptible to psychological manipulation.
“Is there anything you want to add or change?” Nathaniel asked.
“Are we including any evidence of people not falling for the psychological manipulation of cults?” I asked.
Nathaniel paused. “Oh, I thought we were arguing that anyone is susceptible.”
“We are,” I said. “But I thought you wanted to earn extra credit and observe some cults for yourself. Unless you think you will be manipulated?”
A long silence hung in the air.
“How did you know about that?”
I shrugged. “You’re obnoxiously loud in hallways.”
“Listen, I–”
“It’s whatever,” I cut him off. “Do what you want.”
“You’re mad at me.”
“I’m not.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Nathaniel nodded. “You mentioned the other day something about a cult with your mother…” he said. “…were you part of it too?”
“No,” I scoffed. “I mean…yes. But it wasn’t really…I don’t know. I didn’t experience the manipulation, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Nathaniel nodded, and I thought he would drop it, but unfortunately his curiosity was unmasked. “Could she still be with the cult? Your mother, that is. You said she went missing. I’m assuming the police already checked with them and everything…?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, though I didn’t really know the details. My father kept me in the dark regarding the police investigation, he didn’t even want me talking to the detectives. “She mustn’t have been there.”
Nathaniel nodded, and this time, he dropped it.
As promised, Marianne entered with a tray of fruits, biscuits and cheese as well as two glasses of water.
We thanked her before proceeding with our introduction and first paragraph.
I allocated myself the introduction and research while Nathaniel tackled paragraph one.
We exchanged brief comments here and there, but mostly we worked in silence.
Once we’d finished our first draft, we took a ten-minute break to eat the rest of the snacks. Nathaniel’s curiosity flared up again.
“What was the cult called? The one your mum moved to?” he asked.
“God’s Soldiers Church,” I answered, mouth souring at the taste of that name on my lips.
“Do you remember much about it?”
I shrugged. “Not really. I remember a little about the leader…Joe. He and my mother got close and…I guess he kind of fed her delusions.”
“Delusions?”
“She uh…she thought my brother and I were possessed by demons,” I said.
But that wasn’t because of Joe.
Nathaniel’s lips parted, words failing him as he blinked, repeatedly, a grape frozen halfway to his mouth.
“Basically,” I went on before I had to endure any sympathy, “Joe validated her delusions and made it worse. My mother believed in everything he said.”
Nathaniel shifted in his seat, grape returning to his small plate of untouched food. “Did she tell you…why she believed you and your brother were…possessed?”
“I was a bad kid,” I shrugged. “I was disobedient, disrespectful…occasionally violent. And Auden…he was mute. He never said a word until my mother left. His silence unnerved her, I think. His tantrums, too. I think she believed that because we weren’t angels, we were devils.”
“Did you believe it?”
“What?”
“That you were possessed by the Devil?”
I waited, expectantly, for the Devil’s voice in my head. His taunts. His laughter. But he was silent, his absence more unnerving than his presence.
“No, of course not,” I lied. “That would be crazy.”
“You were a kid, though. It would have been understandable if you did start to believe it.”
“I’m not crazy,” I said defensively.
Nathaniel threw his hands up in the air. “I never said you were.”
I fell silent and reached for my glass of water, swallowing it all in one go to avoid further commentary on my history with my mother and the Devil.
I wanted to blame my mother, and the cult, for the Devil inside my head. But he was there long before the God’s Soldiers Church, long before my mother’s psychological manipulation. The truth was that he had always been there. And my mother had always known. She’d seen him, too.
Nathaniel typed something on his laptop, scrolling for a few minutes before he turned his screen around to face me. “Is this him?”
I stared at the photo of Joe. He looked just as I remembered, only older. A shiver spread from the top of my neck down to my tailbone, the memory of Joe standing beside my mother, speaking in tongues, one I had not wanted to revisit. “Yes.”
“He looks like a politician,” Nathaniel commented.
I snorted.
Nathaniel proceeded to scroll through the God’s Soldiers social media account until he found a group photo. “Come look at this,” he said. I moved around to stand behind him, peering over his shoulder. “Can you see your mum?”
I studied the photo, scanning faces for my mother.
There was a woman with long brown hair flowing down her dark green cardigan and a taller woman with blonde hair wearing a pink floral dress.
Three men in suits, nearly identical in their balding scalps and their lifeless eyes, stood behind them, one woman with dark curls and pale lips in between them.
“No,” I sighed. “She’s either just not in this photo or not there at all.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want an online presence,” Nathaniel suggested, “you know, since she disappeared and…”
His voice trailed off, my discomfort evident in the way I peeled myself away from the computer.
“Have you ever tried to contact him?” Nathaniel asked, gesturing to the photograph of a smiling Joe. “To find your mum?”
I shook my head. “No. My dad must have when she first went missing but he didn’t really talk about it so it mustn't have led to anything.”
“Weird.”
“Hm?”
“You said he validated her delusions. If she ran away, leaving everything she has ever known, wouldn’t it have made sense to go with the one person telling her she is right?” Nathaniel shook his head. “It’s weird. I think he knows something. He probably lied to your dad.”
Not surprising, the Devil spoke up, considering he was sleeping with his wife.
I grimaced at the memory.
“You should contact him. Even if she wasn’t there at the time, she might be there now,” Nathaniel said.
“They both think I have the Devil in me,” I reminded him. “And I won’t put Auden through that again. She almost killed us during that exorcism. I want nothing to do with her.”
“Wait, exorcism?” Nathaniel asked in alarm.
“Attempted exorcism.”
“Look,” Nathaniel breathed out, “obviously she had dangerous delusions, but she’s your mother, don’t you want to find her and finally understand what happened?”
You have to tell him, the Devil said, you have to tell him her delusions were right.
“I want nothing to do with her,” I said coldly.
Nathaniel opened his mouth only to close it when I returned my attention to my laptop and the assignment we were supposed to be working on.
I knew he wanted to observe a cult for extra credit, and I wasn’t going to sacrifice my own wellbeing for it, nor was I going to risk him obtaining a higher grade from my trauma.
***
Nathaniel drove me home as promised and I prepared dinner for Auden who was studying in the living room. A low hum of music drifted from his headphones, and I turned on the television to watch the news.
A stabbing in London, a terror plot thwarted, the world crumbling all around us. God had abandoned everyone, it seemed.
I switched off the news and approached Auden, peeling off his headphones as I placed a plate of food down in front of him. It was his favourite. His safe food. Chicken schnitzel and salad.
“What are you working on?” I asked, moving his homework aside so he didn’t spill food all over it.
“Macbeth,” he answered as he reached for his knife and fork.
I sat down beside him with my own plate. “Macbeth, huh? That’s my favourite Shakespeare play.”
“Why?”
“All the death,” I joked.
Auden did not share my sense of humour, though he did say, “I am enjoying it.”
“What are you up to?” I asked.
“Banquo’s ghost.”
“Oh yeah, I remember that part.”
“It’s not really a ghost, though. It’s a metaphor.”
“A metaphor, huh? For what?”
“For Macbeth’s guilt and descent into madness.”
I shifted uncomfortably and reached for my fork, hand trembling.
Guilt. Madness. Insanity. Like Banquo’s ghost, the Devil wasn’t real.
He was a metaphor. But he’d been with me since I was four, stranded outside in the cold, waiting to be forgiven for not eating my dinner. What sins of mine did he represent?
“What are you working on?” Auden broke through my thoughts, his question catching me off guard.
“Hm?”
“For university,” he said, “you were working on an assignment today, weren’t you?”
“Oh, uh…yeah. It’s nothing interesting,” I shrugged, “but last week I took a personality test, that was cool.”
“What’d you get?”
“INFJ.”
“That’s my one too!” he beamed.