The one who would solve the problem. The one my parents could rely on.
I stopped cracking jokes. I stopped getting wasted on Friday nights. I shelved my dreams and forced myself to focus on the only thing that mattered.
My brother.
I decided to take a leave of absence from school. I sublet my apartment. I packed a small bag and drove with my brother to head cross country to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
I hadn’t planned to stay.
I honestly thought I’d be able to talk David out of his ridiculous plan before actually getting to this place called The Retreat.
But he wouldn’t hear me. He was shut down and closed off to anything and everything I had to say. Traveling with him was a long and miserable experience. He didn’t speak to me. He barely acknowledged I was there.
It wasn’t until we ended up in the tiny mountain town of Whistle Valley, Virginia that he changed. His eyes lost their dull sheen. He seemed a bit more lucid.
The people of Whistle Valley didn’t have nice things to say about the group my brother insisted he was joining.
“Complete and total psychos,” the man working at the small convenience store stated when I asked where The Retreat was. David was outside. Tight spaces were difficult for him. He hadn’t walked inside a store since returning from Afghanistan. He insisted on sleeping with the windows open and wouldn’t shower with the bathroom door closed.
“Really? Why?” I asked, putting a few candy bars and a bottle of water on the counter.
“You talking about those people on the mountain?” A woman behind me asked.
“You’ve been up there haven’t you, Nell?” the clerk asked.
The lady, older with greying brown hair and a haggard expression dropped her basket of groceries on the counter and gave me a stern once over. Clearly judging me for something and I hadn’t even said much.
“My brother has land up there. Right next to the Carter place. He says there’s a whole bunch of ’em there. Worshipping the sun or something. Bunch of crazies if you ask me. We’ve been trying to find a way to get them off that land for fifteen years.”
“Why? Are they a nuisance?” I asked.
“One or two of them come down a couple times a year for items. First aid supplies and the like. They don’t talk to ya. They won’t look at ya. They just get what they need and leave. Sometimes there’s trouble. The boys round here don’t tolerate their kind. Sometimes there’s a scuffle or two. They just stand there and take it. They don’t fight back. Bit strange if you ask me,” the clerk answered.
I frowned. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
The woman huffed. “Don’t you know what they are?”
I shook my head.
She leaned in close, her voice dropping to a whisper that was still loud enough for everyone in a five-foot radius to hear her. “They’re acult.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “You one of ’em?”
I didn’t answer. I thanked the clerk, took my bag of junk food, and left the store. I found David waiting in the car, windows all the way down, his eyes closed as if he had fallen asleep.
“I don’t think you should go,” I said, breaking the quiet between us.
David opened his eyes, his gaze hard and penetrating. “We’re not going through this again, Baz. I’m going. With or without you driving me there.”
I tried to talk him out of it. I told him what the woman called these people he deemed his new family.
“They’re a cult, D,” I argued. My heart fluttered in my chest. I was nervous. I was fucking scared.
Scared for my brother and this insanity he seemed intent on thrusting himself into.
David looked at me with something almost like loathing. I was taken aback. He had never looked at me that way. Even when we were kids and I drove him nuts following him and his friends around, he was never hateful. He never looked at me as though he wished I would disappear.
“You’re speaking from a place of ignorance. A place ofhate,” he spat at me, his skin flushed with vehemence. “Pastor Carter wants the best for people. He only wants to save us for the end.”
“The end? Are you listening to yourself? This is exactly the sort of shit that made those people drink the poisoned Kool-Aid at Jonestown.” I knew I was getting nowhere. I knew that my derision would only build the case for David to run off into the mountains with the whacko cult. But I couldn’t stop myself.
