An hour later, I reached the study room Nathaniel had secured us on the third floor. He was seated at the long, dark brown desk, the collar of his white shirt unbuttoned to reveal soft, golden skin. His long black coat hung off the chair behind him like a shadow, his brown knitted sweater the same shade as his eyes.
I averted my gaze as I stepped inside, Nathaniel peering up at me with a small, almost nervous smile.
“Hi,” he said.
I greeted him with a nod and what I hoped to be a polite smile as I stepped inside and placed my laptop down across from his, the desk already cluttered with annotated articles. An empty takeaway cup had tipped over, a drop of coffee soaking through Nathaniel’s opened notebook.
“I was just working on paragraph two,” he said, fingers drumming against his laptop as he updated me on the progress he’d made. “I found several articles analysing the isolation tactics cult leaders employ during recruitment stages. It’s a way to maintain control. By severing a person’s connection with the outside world…they have the power to determine what they think, feel and do.”
“The perfect way to have their power unquestioned," I murmured.
“I want to know your thoughts on this,” he said, sliding a book toward me, “there’s a section on emotional control. It explores how guilt and fear are used to enforce isolation. Should I elaborate on this in my paragraph?”
I opened the book to the bookmarked section and skimmed through it before raising my eyes to meet his. “Yeah, definitely. It’s a good way to detail how the manipulation process works.”
“Perfect."
“I’ll start on paragraph three,” I said, “Religious psychosis, right?”
“Definitely,” Nathaniel nodded, “but make sure you referencehowcults facilitate an environment that breeds psychosis, with examples.”
“Obviously,” I said, suppressing an eye roll, “cults breed psychosis by telling their members they’re special, chosen. That will be my main point.”
“Good, good. Just checking we’re on the same page.”
We divided our tasks and worked in a comfortable silence, with only the soft rhythm of typing and the occasional scratch of pen on paper. But my mind wandered. The Devil seeped inside my head like spilled ink, darkening all my thoughts.
My mother’s face appeared behind my eyelids with every blink, the wordshelp me, find me, save merepeating in my head like a broken record. It meant something, ithadto. Maybe she was speaking to me through God, and this was her means of communication—of asking for help. For over ten years I had been ignoring her, trying to forget her, but maybe it was time I finally found her and solved the mystery of why she disappeared. Of why she left me to succumb to Hell’s fire.
Maybe youareinsane. You really think she is able to find you in your dreams?
The God’s Soldiers website lit up my screen before I even processed what I was doing, Joe’s smiling face in the left-handcorner as I exited the pop-up ad asking for donations for their church.
I clicked the ‘contact us’ section and found an email address. I wanted to reach out to Joe, ask where to find him, but my email had my name in it, and I feared he would recognise it. There probably weren't a lot of Augustus Saints around.
Nathaniel clicked his pen, instantly snatching my attention.Hewas my solution. Joe would have no reason to recognise a Nathaniel Carrington email address. It was the perfect plan…except that I would have toinvolveNathaniel. And he already knew too much about me already.
You could just kill him afterwards, you know.
“Nathaniel,” I spoke up, forcing my voice to remain steady despite the anxiety coursing through my veins. “Can I use your email?”
Nathaniel ceased chewing on his pen lid and raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “My email? Why?”
“I want to contact the God’s Soldiers to find an address,” I explained. “I want to find my mother. But I’m afraid that Joe will recognise my name and not help me. He won’t recognise your name, though.”
Nathaniel leaned forward with interest. “You’re going to look for your mother?”
I nodded.
“Well shit, yeah, of course you can,” he said, sliding his laptop toward me, his email open. “What brought this on?”
I didn’t answer. My fingers, as if controlled by an invisible puppeteer, typed in Joe’s email address and began to form the body of the email. Nathaniel moved to sit beside me, his shoulder pressed against mine.
“You sound too urgent,” he said, shoving me aside to take his laptop. “You’ll scare him away.”
“How is ‘I am looking for a like-minded community’ too urgent?” I complained.
“No normal person talks like that,” Nathaniel said.
