Authors: RJ Astruc
The god has no nose, no eyes, no mouth, just this cloud of twisting worms that bends and flexes against the wind.
The god I have worshipped and loved my whole life is a headless giant, half plant, half maggot.
A monster.
Looking upon the god, I feel no thrill of devotion.
I am here for the god
, I tell myself. But in his presence I feel only fear, pure, naked, fear.
But I’m alone in my terror. The faith full around me start to cry and chant, not prayers but wordless chattering. They stumble toward the god, bleating, and the god, in his infinite majesty, lowers his hands to meet them, to draw them to his body.
I start to back away. One step, and then another, my feet sinking deep into the mud.
The god reaches out to his faith full.
Where the god’s fingers touch, plants grow. A flower bursts out of a woman’s shoulder, its petals springing open to display a yellow heart. Another woman is on all fours as a vine snakes out of her knee and winds its way around her neck and arms, sprouting leaves as it goes. A man in the simple smock of a Father clutches his head and staggers this way and that, until there is a wet, slick sound and a white bud emerges from the back of his skull.
I see the man’s face before he falls into the mud.
The man is Father Nerve.
Things go dark for a time. The sun is swallowed by the clouds. I feel as if I’m dreaming. Everything seems disconnected. The mud licks at my calves with a lizard’s tongue. I’m aware, distantly, of tall blue flames in the fields and the howls of dying sheep. I see people bursting into flowers and melting into the earth. I’m grabbed by someone; I push them away, only to find I’m not touching a living person but the smooth surface of a vine. The god’s fingers drive into the ground and take root. I touch my face and it comes away covered in black ash. I scream. The rest of the faith full launch themselves forward to meet their fates, like animals running blindly into a slaughter house. I fumble my way backward, still screaming.
Then I feel a hand against the back of my neck and spin around.
It’s Mrs. Piedmont.
She’s still clean, still immaculately presented, in her simple black smock. Her eyes are dark and hollow as the holes of the god.
“Mrs. P-Piedmont,” I gasp. “He’s killing them all.”
“What did you think the god was?” Mrs. Piedmont asks. “Did you think he would be tame?”
I stare at her.
“I th-thought… I th-thought….”
“Get out of here, Ennaline,” says Mrs. Piedmont. “This is no place for the faith less.”
I run.
T
HEN
I
wake up.
I’m lying in a double bed with white cotton sheets and four pillows with lace edges. The bed is in a small room half the size of my room in the temple. There’s a bedside table with a lamp and a window with a Venetian blind. The room has the plasticky musk smell of spray air-fresheners. The wallpaper is pastel yellow and gray and has a floral motif where it touches the ceiling.
I rub my eyes.
The room is still there.
I rub them again.
No change.
I sit up, pulling my knees underneath me. Still, nothing changes. The sheets crinkle around my waist, and the bed squeaks slightly as I move. It’s all normal, unbelievably normal. There are clothes laid out at the bottom of the bed: a T-shirt, underpants, a bra, and a pair of jeans. They’re in my size—in fact, I’m fairly sure the pants and bra really are mine, clothes I left behind in our mad dash to the Piedmonts’ property.
Normally I’d say my prayers to the god before I got out of bed, and then go to the temple kitchen to prepare breakfast with the twins. Then we’d pray with Father Nerve, and then pray again outside, with our hands and foreheads pressed against the earth. It seems almost blasphemous to get out of bed without saying
anything.
But do I really care about blasphemy now?
It occurs to me that if I’m no longer faith full, I’ll have a lot more time on my hands.
So I climb out of bed and get dressed. The fresh T-shirt and jeans feel weird against my skin, like they don’t really belong on me. As a companion of Father Nerve, I’ve always been expected to dress conservatively or in the simple smocks of the faith full. The last time I dressed casually, I was a little kid.
Two doors lead out of the room. I try the first one and find a bathroom with a toilet and shower in it. An
en suite
, I realize—I’ve never seen one before. I try the taps. The water comes out warm immediately. I wash my hands, which feels good, and then I wash my face, which feels even better. And then I take off all my clothes again and have a shower with the water on as hot as I can stand it, until I feel I’ve
burned
all traces of the god’s foul stink out of my skin.
Before I leave the bathroom, I take a good look at my face in the mirror. It’s the same plain face I’ve always had, although my cheeks are now very flushed from the shower’s heat. I expected to look different. Older, perhaps, or with some mark, some evidence of the god on my skin.
But I’m still me, still Ennaline Whitehall.
It all feels like a dream. Or a nightmare. I pinch my cheek, and it hurts, so I guess
I
must be real. I’m still not convinced about the rest of the world, though.
When I go back into the bedroom, my hair still wound up in a towel, the twins are waiting for me.
“W
E
HAD
to leave without you. We wanted you to come, of course. But if you didn’t, we’d already decided we’d go anyway.”
“We didn’t know what our parents were planning for us. We didn’t want to wait around to find out.”
“We’re sorry, though,” says Ray, taking my hand in his. “And we
did
come back. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, um.” It’s hard for me to focus on their apologies. I’m still struggling to come to terms with the fact they’re
here
, with
me
, and we’re all (as far as I know) safe. “What happened?”
“We got Theo to drive back. We picked you up about three miles from home. From our parents’ home, I mean. You were looking pretty bad, your clothes were in rags, and you were covered in this disgusting dirt that smelled like… ugh, like the world’s stinkiest fertilizer. We almost didn’t recognize you. When you got into the car you sort of collapsed.”
“Where am I?”
“Billingtown. It’s like, a highway town. Couple of shops and this motel. About twenty miles away from faith full country. We’ve been staying here since we found you. Which was two days ago.”
“Two days?”
“Well, one and a half days. You seemed like you needed your sleep. Theo said we shouldn’t wake you.” Ray squeezes my hand. “He said we should watch you carefully, too. Make sure you didn’t have nightmares.”
“How does he—how
did
he know about this?”
“We told you. It’s happened before.”
“What happened to everyone else? All the faith full? There were hundreds out there at the ranch. Maybe thousands, by the end. All the faith full I’ve ever met. All the faith full in the state, I’d bet.”
Ro and Ray exchange looks. “We don’t know,” Ro says, in a tone that suggests they’re expecting the worst possible outcome.
I think about the bud that grew from Father Nerve’s head. My stomach churns, even though I haven’t eaten anything for ages. “How did I survive it?” I ask.
“We don’t know. We didn’t see anyone else running away. Just you. But… but Theo says that the pull the god has on people… it’s sort of, you know, a passion thing.” Ray blushes and takes his hand away. “It’s a desire. Deep down. It makes people crazy in their hormones. And last night we were talking—”
“To each other, not to Theo,” says Ro quickly.
“—last night we were talking, and we thought it might have something to do with… with the reason you wouldn’t marry us. You know, the thing….”
“My coldness,” I say.
“That’s the one.”
My greatest source of angst, and it might have saved my life. The god either didn’t want me, or couldn’t have me. I don’t know how to feel about that. Obviously I’m happy to be alive, but at the same time it makes me feel like even more of an anomaly than before. I curl up on the bed and hug my knees to my chest.
“We’re so happy you’re alive,” says Ray quickly. “It doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s a miracle.”
“No more miracles,” I say.
“Fair enough.”
I chew my thumbnail. I’m still trying to reorient myself, to reorganize my brain around a world that doesn’t include the god—or at least, doesn’t include
love
for the god. At school I’ve heard people talk about losing faith in their god, but I doubt somehow that their revelation came after a horrifying face-to-face encounter with him. “What are we going to do now? How do we even live without…?” I have to swallow hard before I can bring myself to say it. “Without faith?”
“I don’t know,” says Ro. “Like everyone else, I guess.”
“We’ve got each other,” says Ray. “That’s all we really need, isn’t it?”
“Father Nerve is dead. I think… I think I saw him die.”
The twins shift instinctively toward each other for comfort.
“What about our parents?” Ro asks quietly.
The memory of Mrs. Piedmont’s dark, fathomless eyes flashes in my mind.
“I’m not sure,” I say, which is the truth. “Maybe they made it out. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”
“We’ve been trying not to think about it,” says Ro. “I suppose we can keep on
not
thinking about it.”
We sit in silence for a time. I can’t remember the last time I heard silence,
real
silence, a silence that wasn’t simply a pause between prayers. Sunlight streams underneath the Venetian blinds and warms my toes. I wriggle them. I used to think the god was responsible for the rise of the sun each day. Now? I don’t think a rotting monster that rose out of a sheep field could create something as beautiful and life-giving as the sun.
“I don’t know what I’ll do with myself,” I admit. “If this was a normal day, we’d be at prayer.”
“You could get a hobby.”
This suggestion comes from Theo. He’s appeared in the doorway, leaning his hip against the jamb. Looking at his face—his smug, handsome face—I’m flooded with a mixture of feelings: gratefulness, fear, and hate. I still don’t understand who he is, or even
what
he is. I want to punch him and sob on his shoulder, but in the end, politeness wins out.
“Hello, Theo,” I say, looking at the floor. “Thank you so much for—”
“We should move,” Theo says, talking over my head to the twins.
“We’re leaving already?” I gasp, clutching at my towel-wrapped hair.
“Five minutes, in the car,” says Theo and disappears again.
“What? Why?” I ask the twins.
“He wants to make sure it’s over,” says Ro. “Sometimes it isn’t.”
T
HE
AREA
around the Piedmonts’ property is cordoned off with orange police tape. Ambulances and police cars are parked by the gates. Farther up the road are the cars of local gossips and passing gawkers. The four of us pile out of Theo’s car and run down to join the crowds that have gathered outside the cordon.
It’s impossible to see the ranch from the road, but even from back here I can see the ridges have collapsed back into the earth. The only things that remain are the signs of overgrowth. Here and there, bursts of giant ferns and wild flowers sprout out of the grass, looking almost comically out of place. The Piedmonts’ sheep—those that weren’t burned alive—are placidly grazing on them.
“Some kind of cult,” I hear a woman saying. “Think it was those creepy faith full ones.”
“Like Jonestown,” says another. “Except here on our doorstep.”
“I heard they can’t find the bodies. Crazy. There are about two hundred abandoned cars parked in there. Two hundred. That many people can’t go missing, can they?”
“Maybe it’s the rapture,” says the first woman, clutching at the cross at her neck. “A faith full rapture. But they weren’t Christian, were they?”
“Mormon, I think.”
“No, it’s that other one. The Arabic one. Baha’i? Bah-hay?”
“Pagans, I heard. Worshipping ‘mother earth’ stuff. Witchcraft.”
I slide away from the conversation, feeling sick. It’s the first time I’ve heard what the faith full looked like from someone on the outside. Did people really know so little about us? I’d always thought the nature of our faith was well known to everyone in the wider community.
The twins, after a lot of waving and shouting, manage to draw the attention of a policeman.
“Did anyone survive?” Ro asks. “Please, sir, did anyone make it?”
“I know as much as anyone else here, kid,” says the policeman; then he narrows his eyes. “Did you know someone who was staying here? Do you know the Piedmont family?”
“Our par—” Ray begins, but Ro drags him away quickly.
“No, sir,” he says over his shoulder, “we just wanted to know what was going on.”
Together, they squeeze out of the crowd and find a seat on the fence overlooking their childhood home. I can tell from the shaking of Ray’s body that he’s crying….
I feel a hand on my shoulder. Theo. It occurs to me that this is probably the first time I’ve ever had physical contact with the faith less.
“Your god is gone,” says Theo. “It won’t be back. Not in the next decade, at least.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve got my ways.”
“What about the twins’ parents? What about Father Nerve? And all the other faith full who came here?”
Theo shrugs. It’s clearly not a shrug that means
I don’t know
but a shrug that means
I don’t care
. I still don’t see how Theo fits into this. I’ve heard people talk about guardian angels, but I get the feeling that the twins—and in particular, me—are largely incidental to Theo’s plans.
“I’ve got to go,” he says. “You work out what you need to with the twins. You’re all minors with a minimal understanding of the world outside your cult and no mode of transport, so I’d suggest you throw yourself on the mercy of the authorities as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter what you tell them about what happened here, no one will believe it.”