The Cult of Rohesia: Dora (1/3)

Thank fuck. I've been kicking myself the entire past month for not getting this girl's number.

I have no idea why she even came back. It doesn't sound like she's being blackmailed into coming here. Nicolas and Louise are clearly insane. Someone died in their seat last time, and I can only assume it was their fault since they acted like they were expecting it. I can't figure out what they did to him, though. I don't think it was the bread or the wine, otherwise why didn't the others die, too?

We're still in the hallway. Louise's back is turned. "Give me your number," I whisper, thrusting my phone into her hands. I know that sounds forward, but given the situation we're in, I have very plausible deniability if Michelle's not into girls.

She blinks at me, then taps away at my phone. I hope she doesn't find it creepy that I put her name on the contact form. Just her first name. I never overheard her last name. Should be fine. She puts it back in my hand before we get to the dining room. I text her my number from under the table as soon as we've sat down.

"Perfect," Nicolas says when he sees us. We're the last to arrive. He was chattier last time. I think he's avoiding eye contact with Michelle. Why? Did he do something to her last time after I left? She's looking at her phone.

… huh. Both twins are here. Could've sworn one of them died last time. The other one was definitely insisting he was cold and had no pulse. Which, I mean, I guess you can get that way for a little while and not die? That must have been what happened. Or maybe they're triplets and the third one didn't come last time.

Louise goes around filling wine glasses like before. Last time, I specifically told her I didn't want any. I even covered the glass with my hand. She grabbed it and filled it anyway. I've never seen someone fill a wine glass so cattily. I have a plan this time, but it's making my heart pound. I'm going to knock the glass on the floor before she can—

Nope. Too late. I chickened out. My hands are shaking. Well, what's she going to do? Force me to drink it? Fat chance. Now that she's not behind me, I text Michelle again. "Any idea what they really want us here for?"

I watch her fingers speed over her screen. She's got chipped patches of purple polish still on her nails. "No. Nicolas just made more of the same kind of claims as Louise after you left."

"Guys, this is awkward as fuck. Can you, like, talk more, or something?" the twin sitting across from me says.

I take the opportunity to glare at him. Then I look pointedly back at my phone. I don't think he's in on whatever this is, but that doesn't give him any right to be annoying.

"Don't be like that, Dora. I can tell you're texting, you know," he says.

I'm not looking up. "Wonder why they won't tell us?" Would be nice to at least know why the other one conked out the way he did last time. I can't think of any allergy that would make him keel over like that. At worst, his throat would've swelled up, but then he would have been coughing. Maybe he's narcoleptic?

"What would you like us to talk about, Michael?" Nicolas says dryly.

"I dunno. Maybe you could catch Dora up on what happened last time?"

"Leave Dora alone, Michael," says the girl on my other side. Emilie. She was kind of a bitch last month. May or may not be in on the blackmail. Definitely acts like she knows something about my mom, but I don't know if she actually does. Nicolas kept cutting her off.

"Sorry, Emilie." That tone change. I glance up and get an eyeful of Michael giving Emilie the sappiest, most sickening half-smile I have ever seen. I don't even want to know what face Emilie's making in response—

Michael's brother collapsed again. Michael gets up with Nicolas and helps him carry him out of the room. So he more or less expected it this time, too. That's a change. Is there a reason, beyond the precedent set last time? That's not much of a reason to get so comfortable with your brother fainting out of nowhere. Unless they know why it happened now. I'll have to ask Michelle.

I'm about to get up and leave, but then I get a message from her: “Stay.”

I risk raising my eyebrows at her. Michelle makes eye contact with me and holds it for a couple seconds. I guess I'm staying.

"So what's for dinner this time, Louise?" I ask.

"Chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I know that's not much protein for you, but I'm sure it'll be better than nothing, and I wasn't sure if you would bother to stay this time," she tells me.

"Sounds like a meal," I say back. "So what's your connection to all this?" I'm pretty sure she's not in the same boat as the rest of us, whatever that even means.

"I'm Nicolas's niece.” But she looks older than him. How would that work? "You remember what I said about the house protecting you from illness and death, right? Nicolas is much older than he looks."

I snort and smirk at Michelle, but she doesn't smile back. "There are photos upstairs," she says. "They could be staged and doctored, I guess, but—that'd be a lot of trouble. There's a photo of Nicolas that looks like it was taken some time in the thirties at the latest. And photos from throughout the time between then and now, too."

"They're real," Emilie said. "I'm in some of them. I know where most of the dead people in the photos are buried, too."

"How do you know they haven't just been lying to you your whole life?" That sounds a little harsh out loud, but this is Emilie we're talking about. She laughed about me and my mom living out of a car.

"Because they're my family." Emilie finishes her wine.

Then Nicolas and Michael come back. Almost a half hour later, Michelle gets a text, and it's not from me.

"That's my mom," she says. “Thanks for dinner, Louise.” Then she walks out. What happened to staying? Am I supposed to follow her? I'm gonna follow her.

But she isn't leaving. She's talking to someone at the door.

“Are you sure it's all right for me to come in?” Looks and sounds like it could be her mom, at any rate.

“Just trust me,” Michelle says. “You have to see this.”

It doesn't take more convincing for the woman to come in. She jumps when she sees me on the stairs.

I shake my head and hold up my hands. “I'm not stopping you.” But now I want to know what Michelle wants to show her so badly. So after I let them pass, I follow them up the stairs. All the way to the top.

We come out into a living room with lots of windows and a fireplace. And Michael's brother, asleep on the couch. Michelle leads the woman toward him. “Take a look. What do you think?”

The woman lets out a piercing gasp once she's gotten a good look.

“Check his pulse,” Michelle says, calmly.

Her hands tremble as she reaches for Michael's brother's neck. She feels all over, like she's looking for something but can't find it.

The stairs creak with purpose in succession. Almost like someone's running up them, but not quite fast or loud enough. Nicolas emerges a minute later.

Michelle's mother doesn't even give him a chance to speak. “Nicolas! How did this happen?” Her voice has to be an octave higher than it was before.

This is great. Michelle's brilliant. I grin at her, but she won't look back at me. She's staring at the wall in what appears to be dread.

"Mrs. Simard, I know how this looks, but I promise you you have nothing to worry about," Nicolas insists. "This is only a part of the initiation process. I went through it, Thomas—"

"Nicolas, this boy is dead! Look at him!" Go Mrs. Simard.

"Mrs. Simard, I need you to look at this logically. The only reason Michelle called you to come see this now is because she knows Mark will be fine on Sunday, and then there won't be any sign he was ever like this. His current condition is temporary—"

"There's nothing temporary about death, Nicolas, and this boy is dead," Mrs. Simard cries.

Nicolas looks pointedly at Michelle, like he expects her to help him. She won't look at him, either. Michael's up here too, now.

"And since he is dead, there is nothing paramedics can do for him at this point," Nicolas finally says. "Take a photo if you'd like. Report me to the police for murder if Mark isn't up again on Sunday. I guarantee you he will be."

"How can you be so calm with a corpse on your couch?"

"Technically, it's not really his couch," Michael says from behind Nicolas.

So of course, Mrs. Simard turns on him. "Your brother is lying dead on this couch. How can you talk to me like that right now?"

Michael shrugs. "I admit it was pretty upsetting last month? But I'm kind of used to it by now." Really?

"I know this must be hard to accept, Mrs. Simard, but you must trust me when I tell you there's nothing to fear. Or at least, trust me until Sunday. In the mean time, can I interest you in a glass of wine?"

A glass of wine. A glass of wine. Really, Nicolas?

"No! Come on, Michelle."

I follow them down the stairs. "Mrs. Simard, I have something to show you too," I whisper. Once we're all closer to the door, I pull a piece of paper from my pocket.

I took it with me because it has the address of the house on it. Above that, typed, it says: "We know what Julie did. Unless Dora comes to us at 18:00 on 20 March, it will come back to haunt both of you."

It came in an envelope with ancient newspaper clipping of a story about unknown vandals blowing up cars in a dealership outside Ottawa. I hate to imagine how they got it. Did they manage to track down a newspaper from the nineties two decades after the fact? Or did someone save it from when it was published? Is Nicolas a hoarder? Anyway, I don't know much about my mom's life before I was born, but the way her hands trembled when I showed her the newspaper clipping told me all I needed to know.

Mrs. Simard still looks confused. "Who are Julie and Dora?"

"I'm Dora, Julie's my mom. When she saw the address on the note, she looked scared shitless," I say. That's a little bit of an embellishment, but it's close enough to the truth.

"And then she sent you here anyway?"

I shake my head. "No. I chose to come for her sake. She doesn't know I'm here." That's technically true, for this month. Last month, she gave me a ride here and waited next to the highway with a baseball bat and a can of mace in case I didn't come out quickly enough. This month, I told her I needed to help a friend move, and I'd pick her up from work.

"That's—that's very brave of you." Mrs. Simard looks stuck for words.

Eventually, she gives up and heads out the door, Michelle in tow. I leave just behind them.

<<>>

In May, I'm the last to arrive. Michelle smiles at me when I walk in. Michael and Emilie are chatting about something, but I don't have enough context to understand what. Mark's listening but not really talking.

He looks so calm. How can he look like that when he knows he's going to—to do whatever it was he keeps doing at these things? I'm not going to call it dying if I know he'll wake up from it. It's not right.

"Dora, how were your finals?" Nicolas asks.

"They were shit," I say. I don't like the false intimacy, but I'm not going to let him see it. "Finals are always shit." I'm not going to ask him how his month was, either.

"You passed, right?" Michelle asks. "You'll still graduate?"

"I already did that. They were college classes." I'm only taking as many as I can afford to pay for. Mom insists I work on a degree instead of helping her save money for housing.

"But you passed them?"

"Yeah, I passed."

"That's good." She pushes her plate and wine glass toward the middle of the table—

No. Oh no. Fuck. "Michelle?" Fuck. She's not answering. She pushed her plate and glass away, then suddenly her eyes lost focus and all the tension left her body and she slumped over. Fuck. Her eyes are open, but there's no one home.

I hear Nicolas's chair scraping against the floor. He's coming to get her. Fuck. "Don't touch her," I say before I can think better of it.

"We have to get her upstairs," he says.

"She's not dead—don't fucking touch her!" I say. I'm making a fool of myself, aren't I?

Nicolas's giving me a weird look. Not frowning. Not smirking. Not quite pity, either. Maybe you could accurately describe it as a searching look. Whatever the hell that means. "She can't stay here, Dora. Why don't you help me carry her?"

"Where are you taking her?" I don't know why I'm asking. I know where.

"Just upstairs. There's a couch she can stay on until she wakes up. It'll be much more comfortable than a chair at the dining room table." He's talking to me like I'm a child. I want to throw up.

"Dora, why don't I help you instead?" Mark asks. He looks sympathetic. Can I trust him? Hell, what exactly do I think Nicolas is going to do? I don't know. I can't think of anything. All I can say is I can't stand the idea of him carrying Michelle anywhere. Mark might be okay, though.

"Fine." Getting up the stairs is a struggle, but we make it eventually.

It's hard to get a read on Mark's reaction. He won't stop looking at Michelle. He doesn't look upset, but he doesn't look calm, either. Not like how Nicolas and Michael looked when he died last time.

"Did you know this was going to happen?" I try.

He shakes his head. "I'm trying to figure out why it was her this time. Or I guess, why it was me the last couple times. If it was random, then why was it me two weeks in a row?"

My heart beats faster. Something's becoming clear, but not clear enough that I can articulate it. "What do you and Michelle have in common that the rest of us don't?"

Mark shakes his head again. "I don't think it's like that. If it could happen to her, why couldn't it happen to any of us?"

Ohh. Oh no. Yeah, that was it. But—fuck. I don't like this. This is not okay. "So you're saying that could have been, like, Emilie? Michael? Me?"

He nods. "Yeah. My guess is it'll happen to all of us, eventually."

Oh fuck. I can't keep coming here, then, can I? "Mark, don't the rest of you have anywhere you need to be? What the hell are you going to tell Michelle's parents?"

Mark stiffens. "I'm not going to tell them anything," he blurts out. "Nicolas can deal with them."

Nicolas can deal with them? Ha! "What about her job? Does she work? What if she gets fired over this?"

Mark shakes his head. "She doesn't have a job that I know of. I don't think she had plans for this weekend." But there's a little bit of doubt in his voice.

"What are you going to do if there are consequences? How are you going to make up for it?"

"It's not my responsibility," Mark says, and boy does he sound certain of that. Asshole. "This isn't my fault. I didn't do this to her."

Ugh. I guess he's not wrong. Or at least, I believe him. And really, the hypothetical job I don't even think Michelle actually has isn't the issue here. My job is. No one ever warned me I might be out of commission with no warning for an entire weekend. Not even Nicolas.

Right. He's the one I should really be mad at. I head back down to the dining room. "Nicolas! You never said that could happen to any of us!"

Nicolas doesn't move, except for his eyes, looking up at me as coolly as ever. "I never said it wouldn't."

"That's not fucking good enough! We have lives, you know!"

"Let's be clear," Emilie cuts in. "We're all going to die at one of these dinners, and then come back to life the following Sunday. Yes?" She's looking at Nicolas, not me.

"As long as the five of you keep coming back, yes," Nicolas says. He's not looking her in the eye.

"And if we don't?" Now seems like the time to cover my bases. I've gone without knowing what this was for too long. Maybe I can get answers out of Nicolas where Michelle can't.

Why the hell is Michael smiling like that? I can't tell if he thinks something's funny or if he's nervous. He's looking at the ceiling, at any rate.

Nicolas looks me in the eye and smiles, but only with his lips. "What do you think will happen?"

"I don't know what to think. That's why I'm asking you!"

He shrugs. "Well, I have no idea how you'll prevent your mother's arrest in that case—"

"So you admit to leaving those notes?"

Nicolas looks away for a second or two, then back at me. "Yes."

"Why the fuck have you been blackmailing us? What do you get out of this?"

Now he's shaking his head. "Not blackmail, Dora. We have something you need. I can't tell you what, exactly, because I won't know until you've received it. But I can tell you that you'll need us if you want to help your mother."

I don't believe this. "Could you possibly be even a little bit more cryptic, Nicolas?"

He chuckles. "Information, Dora. In the same way that I knew what you look like, where to find you, and what to tell you to get you to come here, you'll find out how to protect your mother. That's what we're offering you."

"Why can't you just tell me now?"

"Because I don't know. And I can't find out without five more people to perform the rite with me. And neither can anyone else. That's why you need to keep coming."

"What do you mean, 'rite'? You're saying that's how you found out about me?"

"Yes."

“You didn't answer my first question.”

Nicolas stays quiet for a moment. “I'll tell you once all of you have died and come back.”

“Why, though?” Michael asks. “Why wait?”

"Michael, if I tell you more than you need to know, you'll run screaming," Nicolas tells him. Almost like it's a joke. But it clearly isn't.

"Wow, that's incredibly reassuring! Since I already feel like running away and screaming, why don't you just tell us everything you know now?" I ask.

"Michael, not you," Nicolas says. He sounds like he's trying not to laugh. "You don't have anything to worry about, Dora."

I don't know what to even say to that, and apparently neither does anyone else. Until Mark speaks up. "How much have you had to drink, Nicolas?"

That does it. Nicolas's laughing now. "It's been—" he checks his watch, "—fifteen minutes, Mark. To answer your question, not enough."

So he's drunk. Or he will be. I'm going to have to leave sooner or later, and sooner would be better. If it weren't for one thing. "What about Michelle?"

"What about Michelle?" Nicolas asks back.

"Does she have anything to worry about? Like how Michael does, but I don't?"

He looks at me for a second before answering. It's the same way he was looking at me when I was telling him not to touch Michelle earlier. I hate this. "No, Dora. That much, I can promise you."

Oh, he can promise me that, eh? I don't recall the word "promise" coming up when he was telling me about all the supposedly valuable information he had to offer me. But it's time I got going. I want to write this all down for Michelle before I forget any of it. Especially after what Michael said. "I have to leave now."

"We'll see you next month," Nicolas says after me. I don't like letting him have the last word, but I also don't want to continue this conversation. It's not like I can think of anything to say, anyway. The last thing I hear going down the stairs is Michael asking why he's different from me or Michelle.