“Let’s go,” Brian ordered, pushing the man forward.
With a feeling of dread spreading outward from his stomach through his body, Gary followed the two of them into the Home.
Reyn hesitated for a second, then came in as well, closing the door behind him.
Twenty-one
The coffins had been removed, but Joan was still in the same room.
It was the fact that they’d taken the coffins that preyed upon her mind. What had been done with her parents’ bodies? Had her mom and dad been given a proper burial? Had they been dumped in a ditch? Cremated? Plowed into one of the fields? Were they rotting in one of the basements? She did not know, and the lack of closure and confirmation was driving her crazy.
Which was probably the point.
The coffins had been removed several hours after she had been deposited in the room. She’d been held against the wall by two big-boned women, while two muscular young men had taken away first the caskets and then the sawhorses. She’d already screamed herself hoarse and cried more tears than she would have thought possible, though she had not been able to look again into those open boxes at her parents. Neither the men nor the women had spoken to her, though she’d demanded to know what they were doing, and after everything had been taken out, the women had pushed her down on the floor and left themselves, locking the door behind them.
That had been a long time ago, and in the interim she had slept on the floor and peed in a bedpan that had been left for her use. Overhead, the skylight slits had turned dark, then light, and she estimated that she’d been in the room for at least twenty-four hours when the door opened again.
“Eat or die,” said the middle-aged man who dropped a canvas sack of food in front of her, and it was clear from his voice that he didn’t care which one she did. He was not one of the Children, but she did not know where he stood in the Home, and she turned away from him, facing the wall, refusing to give him the satisfaction of interaction.
He left.
Without taking or emptying the bedpan.
After several minutes, Joan opened the sack, removing its contents. She sniffed the food that had been brought: a crusty piece of bread, a stick of celery, a cold baked potato and, to drink, a canteen of water. All of it smelled earthy, like fertile soil, and all of it smelled the same. She refused to eat anything, and in a gesture of defiance she picked up the potato and threw it at the wall. The bread and celery followed. The water she poured onto the floor.
The door to the room opened immediately, and two men strode in. One of them she recognized as Barnabas, a former friend of her dad’s. They’d obviously had her under surveillance and had been watching her as she threw the food and dumped the water. She expected them to lecture or chastise her, perhaps even force-feed her, but instead they merely walked in, Barnabas picked up the sack and they both turned around and left.
Joan stared after them, frowning, as the door closed, then locked. There was an odor in the air, as though someone wearing a heavy floral perfume had just left the room. The scent had not been there only seconds before, and almost immediately after noticing it, her head began to feel strange. It was the way she’d felt at Burning Man, just prior to being knocked out. That memory had not been part of her consciousness until this very moment, but she recognized its accuracy the instant it was recalled, and then…
… and then…
… the door opened and her dad walked in, carrying a tray of mushrooms that looked like little angry people. He was dead and wearing the same expression he’d had in the coffin, that terrible wide-eyed, openmouthed look of surprise, and he approached her on awkward feet, offering her one of the mushrooms. She turned away, and her mom was standing in the corner, screaming, though the sound that came out of her mouth was the chirping of crickets. Her hair was on fire, and the skin of her forehead was starting to melt from the heat and drip onto her eyelashes like pinkish peach rubber cement.
Joan wanted to run away but her feet were nailed to the floor.
There was a noise above her, a roaring, like the sound of a waterfall, and when she looked up, the ceiling was not the ceiling but a giant version of Father’s face. His mouth was open, and that was where the roaring noise was coming from. Father was breathing in, sucking all of the air out of the room, and even though her feet were nailed to the floor, Joan could feel the power of the suction. Then her mom and dad and everything around her were vacuumed up, her feet were yanked painfully from the floor, and she was sucked into the blackness of Father’s open mouth.
Joan awoke in a bed.
She was in a room she recognized but could not instantly place. There were simple square end tables on either side of the bed, and against the wall opposite her stood a plain pine dresser. Glancing to her left, she saw a window.
It came to her then. This had been her bedroom. This was the room in which she’d grown up. There were differences now, such as the style of furniture, but the placement of everything remained the same as it had been throughout her childhood.
She sat up slowly. Her upper arms felt sore, as though they’d been squeezed too hard by careless fingers, and beneath the rough, shapeless cloth of her blouse, her bra was missing. There was an uncomfortable sensation between her legs, and when she pulled out the waistband of her pants and underwear, she saw that someone had stuffed a wadded cloth down there. Joan understood what had happened, and the only reason she had not been raped, she knew, was because she was having her period. Because she was cursed and unclean.
Thank God for small favors.
No. Not God.
She refused to thank God for anything.
There were voices coming from the living room, and for a disorienting moment, she thought that her parents were out there, discussing the events of the day, that they had never left the Home, that the past five years had been nothing but a dream. It was a moment of euphoria, for despite the fact that they were trapped here under Father’s rule, her parents were once again alive and well.
Then she heard the voices more clearly, and the man’s voice was not her dad’s and the woman’s voice was not her mom’s. Joan tried to get out of bed, but her head felt as though it had been slammed against a wall. Her brain seemed huge and swollen, and a heavy, crashing pain made her stop moving and cry out. Seconds later, the man and woman who’d been talking in the other room came hurrying in, solicitous looks on both of their faces. He was tall and clean-shaven, with longish hair parted in the middle. She was one of the Children, although the only indication of that was the fact that two of her fingers were fused together. Joan had never seen either of them before.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked, concerned. She was speaking the Language.
“Yes,” Joan said in kind, careful not to aggravate her headache by moving too much or too quickly.
“You must have been tired.” The woman placed a kiss on Joan’s forehead. “I’m glad you’re finally up, dear.”
Joan frowned. What was going on here?
The man smiled, patting her shoulder. “Hungry?”
They were pretending she was part of their family!
Joan recoiled. She didn’t know why they were going through this charade or what they hoped to accomplish, and without moving her head, she shifted her eyes, looking from one to the other. This was Father’s doing. Nothing happened in the Home without his approval, and he obviously wanted these two to act like parents to her, though whether they were doing so in order to obtain information or merely as part of some larger brainwashing scheme remained to be seen.