Chapter 11 Malin
MALIN
It’s been more than ten years since I’ve seen some of the people who are brought in from the New World Order Temple. Jonathan Clark is one of the guys I hated the most. I think he’s one of the very few I told Ryan I didn’t like. He made me uncomfortable. There was something slimy about him.
He was transfixed by a child named Emily. Emily was younger than I. Not by a lot, I don’t think. Maybe a year or more. She joined our church when I was six or so.
There’s a common belief among all people that children are innocent. They’re not old enough to be corrupted by the world, to have sinned. Which I find hypocritical since it’s generally accepted that infants are baptized, and that’s a form of sin-washing. But I digress.
In NWOT, everyone can be sinful. In their actions. In their thoughts. In their expressions. In their intentions. This includes children.
From early on, Jonathan preyed on Emily. He convinced her parents that she needed extra cleansing because she was always so angry. Disobedient. She threw fits when they came into worship.
There’s a rule that the louder a person is during cleansing, the more it hurts, the more sinful they are, and the more cleansing they need. The pain felt is reflective of how deeply the sin is attached to them.
Emily was always very, very loud. Screaming and fighting and crying. Every time she went in for cleansings. Which was often.
Sometimes, Jonathan would take Emily home because she needed longer cleansings than could be performed at the temple. She’d stay the night. Once, I heard she stayed for an entire week, and she was still screaming.
I know now that all that bullshit is a lie. I know now that pain does not equal sin.
I’d forgotten about Jonathan Clark once we left the US for Ryan’s island. He didn’t join us. I didn’t ask why because I was glad to be away from him. Forgetting him meant I forgot about Emily.
Now that Jonathan is tied to the chair in the room where the cultists are delivered to me, I remember her. I remember all the cleansings.
I remember hearing her being raped through the walls along with so many other members of the church, and I wonder—those adults knew what was taking place and not a single fucking person called the cops. Her parents let it happen.
Jonathan stares at me. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t appear to recognize me. Maybe I’m waiting for him to. Not many of them do. Ten years change a person.
Something else occurs to me as I look at him, too. If someone is going to know who I am, it’s going to be Jonathan. He’s in my very earliest memories. He should know how Ryan came across me. He should know who I am.
I don’t know if I want the answer. It’s not like someone in the Van Doren family can’t track that answer down if I really want to know. Like so many questions regarding my childhood, this is right up there with ones I’m not sure I want the answer to.
“Do I know you?” Jonathan asks. Perhaps he’s tired of the silence.
“He’s a good man. One of my most loyal followers,” Ryan’s voice says in my head. I’ve heard that response many times. That’s why I stopped complaining about him.
“Yes,” I answer. “I’m not one of your victims, though I think that’s not for your lack of trying.”
The one time he got into an altercation with Ryan was because he put his hand on my shoulder. Ryan was furious. I belonged to him, and no one could touch me but him. Not even his most loyal cronies.
Jonathan frowns. He’s thinking now, which is why there’s a beat before he answers, “I’ve never hurt anyone, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know you’re not that delusional. None of the disciples is. You took joy in hurting your victims, simply because you were allowed to rape people and call it doing God’s work.”
His eyes flash. He looks around. Does he hear Ryan, too? No, that’s not it. He’s looking to see if someone else is overhearing this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hisses.
“Yes, you do. That’s why you’re squirming. Honestly, I think you should be raped. An eye for an eye. Over and over and over again. How many times would it take to punish you like for like, though? Years, probably. A decade?”
Anger flashes in his eyes. He presses his lips together and doesn’t answer. Maybe he thinks keeping silent is going to keep him off the hook.
“In this room, your Fifth Amendment isn’t going to help you. You’re going to die whether you talk to me or not.”
He scoffs. “You think you can kill me?”
I hold up the knife in my hand, and his eyes are trained on it. “You’re tied up and I have a knife,” I point out. “Do you think you’re going to live?”
His chest heaves now. A bead of sweat trickles down his temple. “You’ll have to live the rest of your life knowing you killed an innocent man,” he warns.
“You’re right. Killing an innocent person would bother me.
Interestingly, killing bad men hasn’t bothered me yet.
We both know you’re not innocent. Killing you assures that you can’t hurt anyone else again, and that does feel good.
But trust me when I tell you that the things that haunt me aren’t because I’ve killed a person.
It’s because I’m a victim just like all the kids you hurt. Emily specifically.”
Something flashes in his eyes. Is it fear? Understanding? Resigning to his fate?
“Who are you?” he asks.
“The one you were never allowed to touch, and it really pissed you off.”
There it is. I see comprehension.
“William?”
“You were there when Ryan acquired me. Weren’t you?”
“You’re mine! You were always mine.”
Jonathan frowns. “He’s dead. That’s what all the reports say. Is he here? Is he mad at me? Is that what this is about? I didn’t know what I was supposed to do when he died!”
He’s a little frantic now. Fighting his restraints, though I don’t think that’s conscious. More like reflex. He’s nervous.
Something I’ve never considered is how Ryan kept his disciples under his thumb. There’s obvious fear in Jonathan’s expression now.
“He’s dead. He died right in front of me. Several bullets to the chest and head,” I say, shivering at the memory. “He took his last breath with my hands on him and my tears mixing with his blood as I screamed.”
Jonathan’s lips press together, and I think I see sympathy. Is a man like Jonathan even capable of sympathy?
“Now tell me—who am I?”
“William,” he answers.
“Before that. Where did I come from?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t my job to keep track,” he snaps.
I cross the room with long strides and slam my knife into his clavicle. He screams. Ryan screams at me to stop. I don’t remove the knife until Jonathan’s screams turn to whimpers. Then I pull it out roughly. He whines again.
“Has your memory been refreshed?”
“I don’t know,” he stammers. “He just showed up with you one day. I don’t know where you came from.”
“You’re mine, William. You’ve always been mine.”
“Was I an infant?” I ask, ignoring Ryan’s voice.
“No. One. Maybe just older or younger.”
“Was I given to him by a member of the temple? Did someone drop me off? Did he coerce someone to hand me over?”
“I don’t know!” he insists. “I didn’t ask. You don’t question Ryan. You know that.”
“Who would know where I came from?”
“Ryan would.”
“No one else?”
Jonathan shakes his head. “He kept some things to himself entirely. Trusted no one with them. You were one of those things, William. The one thing most precious to him that he never allowed another person to come near was you. You were his angel. His most prized possession. He loved you more than anything.”
Great. A secret Ryan took to his grave. I turn away, my eyes seeking out the camera, knowing that Ellory is watching.
“I don’t really need to know,” I tell Ellory through the camera. “I just thought… if someone was going to have the answer, it would be him.”
Of course, I don’t receive a response. There isn’t a speaker here.
“But if you can find Emily…?”
“I don’t know where Emily is,” Jonathan says. “She disappeared shortly after the massacre on the island.”
“Did you kill her?” I ask, turning to face him again.
“Of course not. I’d never kill her. She was… everything.”
“You’re sick.”
He sighs. I’m surprised that he looks tired. His shoulders sag. He doesn’t argue, but he no longer looks defensive and angry.
These are really sick men. Men who prey on little kids and try to call it something else. They try to legitimize it.
“Would you still think that way if she hadn’t disappeared? Now that she’s an adult?” I muse.
“Yes,” he mutters. “Just as Ryan would still love you.”
“Exactly!”
“What was Emily’s last name?” I ask. “What do you know about her?”
“Roffleheiser. She had an older brother and two little sisters. Her parents were Ulyses and Frannie. They showed up one day at the temple door for worship. And just like that, the family disappeared as suddenly as they had come.”
I frown. That’s weird.
“Do you have anything worthwhile to tell me? About me or about Emily?”
Jonathan looks at me. He shakes his head.
“You want to show some remorse in hopes you’ll get into heaven?”
“No,” he answers. “There’s no such place.”
I plunge the knife into his neck and watch as he chokes on his blood.
As he dies, Ryan somehow gets mixed up in his body, and he’s screaming at me.
Scream-laughing. Is that even a thing? It makes me feel jittery.
Unbalanced. I pull the knife out and slam it into his face.
Over and over, trying to get Ryan out of Jonathan’s body.
Blood sprays me. It’s warm and sticky and tastes gross in the air. The more it lingers, the louder Ryan becomes. I slice and stab Jonathan until I’m on the floor, on my knees, trying to breathe as I imagine Ryan standing over me.
Laughing. Scolding me. Telling me how I’ve become such a shit boy since he’s died. I’d never have turned out so awful if he were still alive to keep me on track. Still here to cleanse me of my sins.
I drop my knife and cover my ears with the palms of my hands, trying to drown him out. But I can still hear his bitter laughter. I can feel him hovering around me.
When he was first dead, his presence in my mind was a comfort. But he’s become convoluted over the decade. His memory has morphed into something horrible. Something evil. Arguably, he was always those things.
Maybe since I’ve learned the truth of what Ryan was and what he did to me, the rosy image I had of him began to slip away, and I imagined the villain that lurked underneath. The one I was never aware enough to see.
Now I know who Ryan Johnston really is. I just want him to go away. I’d do anything to make him go away.
I get to my feet and stumble to the door. It opens, and I’m relieved to find Gracen standing there. Without thinking, I dive into his arms and press my face into his chest so I can breathe him in and drown Ryan out.