The Cult of Rohesia: Michelle (2/3)

I'd normally be asleep right now. Maybe I'm actually dreaming. That might explain how I'm back at the house at six a.m. on Sunday, standing around in the kitchen with Mark (every bit as alive as Nicolas predicted), Michael, Emilie, and Nicolas—in his pajamas and bathrobe, pouring himself a glass of wine.

I don't mean to judge. I mean, I'm a guest in his house, basically. It would be rude to judge. Oh my god, he's looking my way. Was I staring? Do I look like I'm judging—

"You don't like milk?" Nicolas asks. He's eyeing my bowl of dry cereal. Phew.

"I'm lactose intolerant." Also, cereal is like chips except sweet. Do we douse chips in some savory equivalent to milk and eat them with a spoon? No. Generally, we do not.

"Can you eat these?" Nicolas holds up a chilled English muffin from the fridge. I nod because I don't know what to say. He puts two of them in the toaster oven (this kitchen is insane. There's also a fireplace being used as storage for packaged food, a cast-iron stove, and a conventional oven and stovetop).

Is one of them for me? Why is he being so nice? Or is he going to eat both to mess with me? I'm honestly not sure which I'd prefer. I don't know how to respond to any of this. Someone else please say something.

"Michael and I should go home and change, if we're going to church." Thank you, Mark.

"We probably have something you could borrow," Nicolas says between sips of wine as he watches the toaster oven. "That way you'll have time to take a shower before we leave." Michael looks less than pleased to hear that.

Nicolas hands me a plate with one of the English muffins on it, then a jar of jelly and a butter knife. I put the rest of my cereal on top of the jelly on the muffin halves so I don't have to hold more than one dish. We're all too busy eating to say anything now. That gives me a little room to think.

Did Mark really even die? Did I imagine it? Did we all? Michael sounded pretty excited over the phone. And he was here all of yesterday, too. I'm pretty sure he would have noticed if Mark was somehow cunningly disguised as a corpse but still breathing a little or something. Or maybe this was all a hoax and him and Mark were in on it. Probably Emilie, too. I can't imagine her not being in on it if the twins were.

I don't think that's it, though. For one, it would make me and Dora the only targets, which seems unlikely to say the least—especially since no one made any effort to stop either of us from leaving.

“So you're a morning person, Michelle,” Nicolas says when he's finished his wine.

I feel a yawn coming on, like even my body wants to dispute everything that comes out of his mouth. “Not really.”

“Michael, did you wake her up?”

Michael did indeed. He smirks and takes a bite of cereal.

“You know, if you reward behavior like that, Michelle, he'll probably do it again,” Nicolas tells me.

He's toying with us. Michael even looks amused. I don't want to get sucked in, but I don't know what to say that won't accomplish exactly that. Unless I change the subject entirely. "So why exactly did Mark have to die for the stuff you were talking about on Friday to kick in?"

Nicolas responds like he was waiting for me to say exactly what I said. "As you can see, Michelle, Mark's not dead."

“I didn't say he was dead. I said he died.”

"Hmm. You admit there's a difference, then—"

"Wait. What do you mean, I died?" Mark asks.

"She means you were cold, blue, and not breathing for well over twenty-four hours," Michael tells him.

"That's impossible."

Thank you, Mark. "Yeah, it is, Nicolas. Care to explain?" I ask.

"I said on Friday I didn't have an explanation, and that hasn't changed."

I don't know how he expects any of us to accept any of what he says when he keeps holding back information like this. “So you won't explain anything. We're supposed to just go along with this and not ask questions.”

Nicolas shrugs and takes a bite. When he finishes, he says, “That is the only way you'll have any chance of understanding what you saw on Friday, yes.”

“That was what you did, but you don't seem like you understand.”

“I said a chance, Michelle. Maybe you'll see something different than me that will lead you to a better understanding one day.”

He doesn't seem to care all that much about the “how” or “why” of this, though. Maybe he really can't explain it, and that's why. “Is that why you went along with it when you were our age?”

Nicolas sighs. “No, I actually can't say it was.”

“Then why did you?”

Nicolas shrugs and chews. “You have friends, Michelle, yes? Parents who care about you and encourage you to pursue your own interests? A bright future, all planned out already, no room for any—” he pauses for a second, “—disruptions to what you thought was real?”

I can't exactly say “no,” though I don't like the way he worded that.

Nicolas continues. “I didn't. That was why. Don't worry about eighteen-year-old me. He was nothing like you.”

Wah. Poor Nicolas. Give me a break. “What about now, then?” The only reason I don't rub his self-pity in his face more is I don't want a repeat of Friday with him flouncing out of the room.

“An obligation to the woman who saved my life, to pass on everything she taught me now that she can't. Nothing more.”

There has to be more to it than that. “What happens if we turn you down?”

"You'll get to turn into the wrinkly old crank you so clearly aspire to be and die forty or fifty years younger," Nicolas says, with a smug smile. Like that would be such a terrible thing. Am I supposed to be offended? Scared?

No. He's trying to distract me from something. Isn't he? "And what happens to you, Nicolas?"

The subtlety of the shift in his smile only makes the end result more horrifying. "I get to go into the ground and be with Thomas," he says. "Which is exactly where I belong."

He doesn't even say he'll see Thomas. It doesn't sound like he believes in an afterlife. Maybe he doesn't believe in souls at all. That in itself doesn't bother me. I don't think I believe in any of that, either. The disturbing thing is the way he makes turning into soil sound so much better than any other possibility.

“You need to be more careful with him, Michelle,” Emilie says once he's gone upstairs.

How the hell am I supposed to do that? Am I supposed to just nod my head at any outrageous claim he makes and pretend I buy every word of it? Never ask for clarification no matter how vague he gets?

Annnnd now I have to use the toilet. Which is probably upstairs. Maybe not, maybe that weird door on the ground floor leads to a bathroom. "Hey, is there a bathroom downstairs?" I ask Emilie.

“Upstairs. First door on the right,” she says.

Ugh. Okay. Fine. Here we go. Can't be worse than wetting the driver's seat on my way home.

When I get to the top of the stairs, Nicolas is looking at the framed photos hanging on the wall near the couch. I don't think he's noticing me. Doesn't say anything when I come out of the bathroom, either, but when I get to the stairs, Emilie and the twins are coming up. Nicolas takes Mark down the hall to one of the other rooms, and Michael goes with Emilie.

That leaves me alone with the photos. There's ten of them, and it looks like they mostly have the same six people. The most recent-looking one has Emilie in it. There's another with a toddler that must also be her. Funnily enough, I'm not seeing Nicolas in any of them.

Or at least, not the more recent ones. There's one that looks far older than it has any right to be, and all the women in it are wearing long skirts. There's a kid in it who might maybe be Nicolas, with a cautious smile and Thomas's arm around his shoulders. There's no mistaking Thomas even with that hideous center part and slicked-down hair. You can pick him out because his eyes are set a little farther apart than average and he always has such a warm smile. Actually, if that is Nicolas next to him, he should be eighteen or nineteen, but he looks more like fifteen.

"Do you believe me when I say you'll live to be over a hundred yet?" Nicolas says from just behind me. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you."

"It's fine," I say. What else? Should I feel weird that he caught me looking at these? I don't see why. “How come Thomas is in all of these, but you aren't?”

I can feel the smugness radiating from behind me before I even turn around to look. “Are you sure of that?” Nicolas says.

I look again. There's a fourth woman in most of the photos, and she's always next to Thomas. She looks like a fashion plate. Blue eyeshadow in the sixties. Hair past her shoulders in the seventies and permed in the eighties. Bobbed in the nineties. Side-swept bangs in the aughts. Wait a minute. That nose. I point at the the one with the biggest hair and look at Nicolas for confirmation.

He nods. Kill me now.

Michael comes out of Emilie's room wearing a tacky grey sweater with pink swans and purple and white hearts. It's a little snug on him, but as long as he keeps his arms down, I guess it'll fit well enough. He stands next to me and looks at the photos, then points to a tall, thin man with brown hair and a modest mustache in one of the photos. "Is that Emilie's dad?" he asks.

Nicolas winces. "Jeanne was always tight-lipped about Emilie's father."

Then Emilie herself comes out of her room in a pink and red plaid jumper worn over a cream-colored turtleneck.

"Oh my god, did you do that braid yourself?" Michael says. I didn't notice the French braid until he mentioned it. "Like, in the last couple minutes? That's amazing. You're magic."

Emilie smiles at him and makes eye contact when most girls I know would look away. "Practice makes perfect."

"No shit," he says. Is that why she treats him like a person and the rest of us like nuisances? Because he keeps flattering her? I don't know if I can do that convincingly.

Somehow, I survive the next hour and change before we leave for church. The other three got in a car with Nicolas. There's no point in him giving me a ride since I'll have to come back here for the van, anyway. When we get into town and they turn toward the church, I keep going. My parents stopped making me go to church when I started high school. I see no reason to start again.

<<>>

“Did you tell your grandparents?” I ask, softly. “About what happened at the house?”

It's been almost two weeks now. Mark found me in the cafeteria last week. He kept walking past the table my friends and I were sitting at. At first, I thought it was coincidence. But by the end of our lunch period, I started to wonder. The next day, he did it again, and I counted. He made at least five passes within the half hour we had to eat, but didn't say anything. The day after that, we made eye contact a few times. He quit hovering after that. I sat with him toward the end of the week even though I wasn't looking forward to my friends asking about it.

We mostly talked about Michael. I asked what lunch period he had, and that lead to Mark telling me the whole story of how they'd been separated most of their lives but found each other online in February. Also how Michael always changes the subject whenever Mark asks him about his life before this year.

“I don't know how to ask him when exactly he planned on going back without coming off like I want him to leave,” Mark told me. “But when Grandma and Grandpa told us we were both supposed to start going to Emilie's every month, he—I don't know. He went right along with it. Told me he hadn't bought return tickets, so it was fine. But I don't know how he's going to graduate like this. He must be missing classes.”

The unspoken part of this was, of course: why would Michael buy one-way bus tickets from California to Quebec to stay with people he didn't really know? Maybe he just didn't have the money for round-trip tickets, but even if that was the case, why didn't he wait to leave until he could afford it? The weather certainly would have been better if he had.

Their grandparents are acting almost as weird. Mark never told them Michael was coming—thought they might not believe Michael was really his twin unless they saw the two of them together. And yet, they didn't seem the least bit surprised when he turned up. Mark's grandma had even changed the sheets in the spare room. Mark doesn't know how to ask them how they knew. Or, if they did in fact know in advance, why they didn't tell him. He doesn't want to sound like he's accusing them of anything.

Ostensibly, I'm at their house to study. But what I really want to do is ask them about Emilie and Nicolas and the house. Neither of us told the other we didn't want to talk about it at school, where anyone could overhear us. We simply don't.

Mark shakes his head at my question and keeps his eyes on his homework.

“I did,” Michael says. I'm pretty sure he's not doing homework on his phone. It doesn't rule out the possibility that he's taking online classes. But it sure makes it seem less likely.

Mark looks up at him questioningly, with wide eyes and furrowed eyebrows.

“I only said you were unconscious through Saturday. Played it off like you were just sleeping, and I was wondering if you did that often.”

Mark's shoulders sag, presumably in relief. He closes his eyes for a second.

“She got this weird smile on her face. Said strange things happen in that house, but we'd know more about it than she did.”

“You think she knows more than she's letting on?” I ask.

“She sure acts like it.”

“She trusts Nicolas,” Mark says. “Or rather, she had a lot of—I don't know if respect is the word. More like reverence. She had a lot of it for Emilie's mom. Said she used to teach Sunday school when she and Grandpa were kids.”

I let that sink in before I respond. “And when your grandma was a kid, she would have looked about forty. And stayed that way your grandma's whole life.”

Mark nods. “And Nicolas was the same way. She remembers the others from their group, too.”

So photographic and eye witness evidence says Nicolas isn't lying about the long life and aging, then. That doesn't mean he's telling us the whole truth, though. We sit in silence for a few minutes.

“I don't know how to tell my parents I'm not going back,” I finally say.

Michael looks startled. “What? Why not?”

“What do you mean, 'why not?' It was creepy.”

“What if Nicolas dies?” he asks.

“We don't have any proof he would.”

“Fine, fair, but like, what about the not-aging thing? You really don't care?”

I don't like thinking about it. It's hard to accept it could even be possible. But even if it is: “Nothing's free, Michael. What's the point of living a long life if you're miserable the whole time? Or isolated?”

“You don't have any proof it'll be like that.”

“Not being able to tell people is a red flag in itself.”

“No one said you can't.”

“Michael, if I tell my mom Mark was literally dead for half the weekend but then it wore off on Sunday, do you seriously think she'd believe me?”

“That's not the same as not being able to tell her, though.”

“How many other things are going to come up that no one else will believe? How many have to happen before we stop bothering to keep up close relationships outside of the group?”

“I don't know, Michelle, at what point would you choose not to make friends outside the group?”

Eeesh. What happened to “staying sharp?” “I know it all seems fine now, but that's how cults work.” I've researched them. They're fascinating. As long as no one you know is falling for them, at least. “They lull you into a sense of false security, make a bunch of outrageous promises, and the next thing you know you're selling all your stuff so you can give the money to the group and compulsively doing whatever the leader says even if it literally kills you.”

“It's not like Nicolas or Emilie need money,” Mark says. “So that's probably not going to happen.”

“Yeah, and it didn't sound like they were looking for more members, either,” Michael says. Then he snaps his fingers. “I got it. If someone dies again next month? Text one of your parents. Tell them to come by and have a look. They'll have to believe you.”

“Nicolas stole your phone when you tried that.”

“That's why I said 'text.'”

“What if he or Louise doesn't let her in the house?”

“Then it'll look super fucking sketchy. Just try it. All I'm saying.”

“What if it doesn't happen again?”

“Then don't text her. Come on, Michelle. Just try it.”

<<>>

Mom's knuckles are white from her grip on the steering wheel. She's been grinding her teeth and scowling at the road the whole way home. I've never seen her like this before. Or the way she was at the house when she saw Mark.

She sure read Nicolas the riot act. I almost felt sorry for him. Then again, she didn't call an ambulance, either.

“I'm sorry, Michelle,” she says when we finally pull into our driveway. “I really thought Thomas and the rest of them were good people. But after the way Nicolas acted tonight, I can see I misjudged them. And I put you in danger. You're not going back there next month.”

“Thanks.” It's my choice, actually, but I know she means well.

<<>>

It's May. In a couple weeks, I'll graduate high school. I got accepted to my top choice university. Right now, I'm sitting with Mark in his car at a strip mall just outside Ottawa.

We went with a grocery list from Louise to this little gourmet shop, but Emilie ditched us for a fabric store as soon as we got here, and Michael went with her. I've got a box of books to sell for my mom after that, then we'll head to a café I like near the book store. I figure I'll feel better about fasting if the last thing I ate was really good.

The books are mostly New Age bullshit. She went on a cleaning spree on Easter and threw any books she had about anything magic or fantastical in a box. But her books are all over the house, so she keeps finding more.

I didn't know how to tell her I decided to go back. Something about the intensity of her reaction to what she saw really drove home the reality of it all for me. I can't imagine there are any books that would tell me exactly where this rabbit hole leads, so that means I have to find out for myself. Maybe I'll even manage to write one. I'm still not looking forward to facing Louise and Nicolas after what happened last time, but I'm guessing they'll at least be happier if I show up than if I don't.

“We've only got a few hours until we have to start fasting,” I say. The café isn't super fancy, but definitely sit-down. And it's popular, too, so getting our food will take time.

Mark may or may not be texting one of them. "They won't be too long,” he says after a minute.

“Are you scared to go back?” I ask after a couple more minutes, just to break the silence.

“A little,” he admits.

“You said it was like fainting and being asleep, right?”

Mark chuckles. Only once. I guess it's more of an amused huff. The first time I noticed him make that sound I was afraid he was irritated at something I'd said. “That's not what I'm scared of.”

“Then what?” After all, it wasn't like he did anything to bring down my mother's wrath on Nicolas last time.

He cranes his neck as he looks out the window. “I don't know if I could handle seeing Michael dead. Or Emilie, I guess.”

Ohhh. Oh, god. I hadn't thought of it happening to someone else, but didn't Nicolas say it had happened to both him and Emilie's mom? Was it just them? Or does it happen to everyone in the group? Will it happen to me?

I think it's going to happen to me.