The Cult of Rohesia: Nicolas (1/3)

“You're not alone,” Michelle insists.

She has no idea what she's talking about.

“I mean it, Nicolas! You're not alone.”

“Well, no. Technically not. Not right now.” It's better not to argue with her. Not unless you're bored and looking to pass some time. If there's one thing Michelle hates, it's letting anyone else have the last word. Letting anyone else's clumsy phrasing go unexplored is another thing she seldom does.

“Emilie will miss you if you die.”

That wasn't very creative of you, Michelle. I expected better. “She'll get used to it.” But you certainly won't let me get by with that alone, will you? “Did you know she never cried, when the others passed? It'll be the same with me.”

That isn't strictly true. She spent plenty of time alone, in the little cemetery behind the House. Perhaps she cried then. Or maybe in her room. I doubt Michelle would go as far as to ask Emilie whether what I'm saying right now is true, though.

“The only reason she doesn't want to lose me is because I've always been there,” I add. “It would be like a piece of furniture breaking. A shame, but nothing she couldn't move on from.”

Emilie and Michelle are more alike than they probably think. The biggest difference between them is Emilie doesn't care what anyone thinks of her, so she says whatever she wants, whenever she feels like saying it. Michelle, on the other hand, cares immensely, so she tries to hold anything disagreeable in. It comes out in passive-aggressive little spikes, made all the worse by her keen observations of the people around her.

It's not that she slices me to ribbons all on her own, though. I met her already perforated. Then again, she certainly takes advantage of it. She must realize what she's doing.

But for the moment, she has nothing to say. I can see that she's thinking. If I wanted, I could probably distract her. But I won't. There's nothing she can say that could make me feel worse than I already do.

“I let you go once, Nicolas,” she tells me.

Let me go, eh? What could she possibly be referring to?

Michelle continues. “I regret it. I'll never do it again.”

I can't help but laugh. “You're going to need more than pretty words if you want to hold onto me.”

It's not true, because she's not holding onto me at all. I'm the only one who can do that. But the romance of it amuses me.

She never apologizes. Not for anything that counts, at least. I shouldn't like that about her. It mostly only causes me pain. But then again, so does everything else.

<<>>

It's happening, in spite of Dora. In spite of Mark. Both of them are here. I bite back the temptation to request that they all put me out of my misery by leaving.

I suppose on some level I always knew this would continue. The House picks the people it does with purpose. It wouldn't choose anyone who won't follow the path it presents us with, even if some of them seem reluctant at first.

I wonder how Jeanne felt on this night, over a century ago. She'd just lost her second husband. None of us knew that at the time, of course. Maybe they simply weren't as close. After all, he was her second husband. It's not unlikely that he had a wife before her, too. Maybe more than one.

He was the oldest member of her first cohort. Did she lust after him even before her first husband died? It's none of my business, but I'll take any train of thought that takes me away from what lies in my immediate future.

We descend.

I avoid Mark's eyes as he walks into the middle of the circle. I'm sure he's avoiding mine, too.

This feels like a crime. I watched this boy grow up, never once thinking ahead to the possibility of—this. Was it stupid of me? Would it have been better to have distanced myself from him, keeping this future in the back of my mind at all times, letting it color our relationship from the beginning?

I hope the person I was to him was worth the pain of this moment. The pain of breaking whatever taboo it is we're breaking, at least. I suppose that could be part of what makes the Rite powerful. It would have been an issue no matter who from the last cohort had survived. I don't think Jeanne knew Ronnie or Cathy particularly well before they came to the House, though, so it can't be necessary.

My body is disobeying my heart. I knew it would. The ritual wouldn't necessitate my being aroused if I wasn't capable of it. I haven't been in this state in months. No, actually, it's never been like this. The feeling always came from someone else, before, or at least the idea of someone else. Now it seems to come from nowhere at all, independent of my will.

I mustn't dwell on it. All that matters is—no, I won't even finish that sentence.

I can feel everyone's eyes on me as the ritual progresses. This isn't fair. I didn't think this would be the price I'd have to pay for the life I've lead until now.

Technically, it wasn't. I could have walked away, with no repercussions other than my own guilt, and even that wouldn't have lasted long. But somehow, it seemed worse than this.

Am I being compelled, without realizing it? That would undermine everything I've said to reassure the others that these Rites are safe. But I could have been compelled to say that, too.

How did Jeanne take being the center of attention like this? I never thought about how she must have felt, not until she was already dead. The spectacle of her hand inside another woman, in front of all of us, stunned me on its own. Keeping my own composure and playing my role was all I was capable of. If anything, I wondered how Ronnie felt.

I can imagine exactly how this feels to Mark. In fact, I'm struggling not to. I know I'm hurting him. There's no way around it, not entirely, though I'm doing my best. We both chose this. There's nothing else to be done about it. Soon, we can stop.

Whenever I close my eyes, I see Thomas watching me and sobbing. I can't help it. It's not rational. Even if he were here, and he could see, if he didn't want this to happen, he shouldn't have died. It's all my own imagination, though, and I can turn the same logic back on myself.

Would he really have handled any of this better than me? As far as the others are concerned, I think so. But inwardly, he'd probably be just as much of a mess. Maybe what I'm doing is sparing him from this experience. If I think of it that way, I can continue.

But then, finally, Mark is finished with me. Whenever Ronnie or Cathy doubled themselves, Jeanne said a little prayer over their unconscious bodies, but I was never able to hear what she said. And she never told me, either.

I don't know if it's necessary or not. Did John do the same? Or did she add that element in herself? Even if it wasn't necessary before, is it necessary now?

Even if it isn't, maybe it's a way to keep her memory alive. I bow my head and clasp my hands and hope for Mark's safety, now and after he comes back. And then when the others are gone, I blow the candles out.

I need to be done with this, but they're all outside, and I have to tell them to stay out of the basement. The important thing is that no one disrupts Mark's sleeping body, but avoiding the basement entirely is the best way to ensure that.

The entryway light is making me sick. Just when I'm thinking of going outside after them, they come back. I tell them what they need to know, then all but run to the bathroom.

Once the door is closed behind me, I cough, but the weight in my stomach won't come up. I suppose that's not surprising. I haven't eaten in about thirty hours. I want to cry now that no one is watching, but the tears won't come. None of it will come out.

I'll never be rid of this terrible feeling, this disgust at myself and everything I know. It's all tainted now. All of it. Why did I do this to myself? Jeanne is dead. Dead people can't care. Nothing I do for her now makes a difference.

Somehow, eventually, I find myself emerging from my pit of despair. I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, dry heaving, and it just occurred to me that this is the only bathroom in the house. There's an outhouse outside, sure, but it's cold out, and I'm not sure all of the others know it's there. At any rate, Jeanne's room is probably empty now. I can hide in there if I want.

But I don't. I need a drink, for one. And with that, food, though I can't say whether I'll be able to keep much down.

And when I come out of the hallway, back in my jeans and one of Cathy's old flannel shirts, I see Dora, alone, sitting on the couch with a plate of toast. Not Michelle or Emilie. Not Michael. Dora. She asks if I'm hungry.

Now that I'm not, I realize I probably shouldn't be alone. Not if I see the slightest reason to keep living. I got through one ritual. Intellectually, I can only assume I'm capable of more. But I can't bear to think about it, and I shouldn't think about what may happen if I try.

Dora tolerates my presence. We go to the kitchen. The kitchen has wine. The warmth of it working on my body helps, but only a little. I don't offer Dora any since I recall her saying she doesn't drink. But I linger while she makes herself tea, then follow her out.

Why we're sitting on the stairs, I'm not sure, but I can't be bothered to move. And then:

"Hey, Nicolas? Can we start over?"

The question mystifies me. "How do you mean?"

She stumbles through what sounds distinctly like an apology for her past behavior. Or all but an apology. Even the attempt to apologize is the last thing I ever thought I'd hear from her.

I don't know what to say. But I—I'm not displeased. When I acknowledge her, she repeats herself.

"I was wrong. I'm sorry."

I still don't know what to say, so I repeat myself too, and touch her shoulder as gently as I can. I don't know if that's acceptable to her now, but I also can't think of anything else to do. It does the job.

Michelle comes back to rescue us from our silence. It sounds like she saw her parents' home on fire in her vision. That suits her. Provides immediate and concrete confirmation of the validity of what she saw. Not that she should need it, with how immersive those visions are. But I know she does. I've worked out that much about her so far.

I wonder how much they'll change over time? What will stay the same, what won't? If nothing else, I'm sure tonight's events will leave their mark on all of them. But what about the next time? What will Dora be like in a year? Two? What about Michelle, or Emilie? It's harder to think about the twins. I can only imagine them as being in pain from it all. But maybe Michael will grow from it, at least. I hope Mark grows in spite of it. Oh, but he'd surely be better off without me.

This is why I shouldn't be alone.

<<>>

I'd feel bad for depriving Michelle of a bed to sleep in, but Emilie tells me she slept on the floor last night, too.

This is the one person I know I have to be present for when they wake up. A couple decades ago, I had a vision of Dora sitting on this couch, morbidly pale, asking how someone knew she liked Moroccan mint tea with milk and sugar.

It was mixed in with the sight of her mother's crimes that became a photo of the destroyed cars in a newspaper dated a few days in the future, then a typed note being folded into an envelope with a clipping of the newspaper article and a piece of notebook paper with an address in Ottawa written on it in my handwriting on the table that didn't get put in the envelope (it was the very same note I wrote after the vision, detailing everything I saw). Then the envelope being taped to a front door, followed by a view over the shoulders of police officers in body armor breaking down the same door after dark. I watched them read a much older Julie her rights and escort her from the house. Almost out of my sight, Dora stood mutely by, clutching something small and cylindrical in one hand. All this later became one of Emilie's favorite bedtime stories for some reason.

I never once thought Dora was talking to me in the first part. Not until the past year or so. Come to think of it, my actual sight in that vision was hazy. I did, in fact, wonder who she was talking to. It was her voice that came through the most clearly, and the sight of her face. And the mug of tea in her hands, beige with a brightly colored bouquet of chrysanthemums, carnations, pansies, and black-eyed Susans.

I could see the pair of tiny little pansies on the mug, but not the person who gave it to her. How damning, in hindsight. I remember finding the mug amidst the donations to Jeanne's surplus store while Thomas and I looked for old blankets to protect some of my seedlings from the sudden, late frost predicted for that night.

He was so excited when I told him how it matched the one I'd seen. I was excited, too. He probably caught it from me. You'd think we would have gotten tired of those moments of coincidence or déjà vu, but they didn't happen quite as often as you'd expect. Mostly, the magic stayed contained within the Rites. The times when it didn't never ceased to thrill us.

I remember showing it to Thomas, handing it to him to look at. And I remember looking at it in his hands, thinking how I was stealing another glimpse of a future him that I wouldn't live to know. I imagined him as the one handing the mug to Dora in my vision, and myself as the invisible connection between them. I was nearly one hundred years old—and so naive.

And now that mug is sitting ready in the kitchen cabinet downstairs. Thomas is in his grave. I'm waiting here in his place, and Dora is on the couch. And Michelle is sitting up in her sleeping bag, rubbing her eyes.

“Did you get much sleep?” I ask her. She can't have.

“Not really,” she murmurs.

I doubt Michelle understands why Dora holds her in such blatantly higher regard, but she must at least notice. Is she here out of reciprocity, then? Or is it for the sake of the continuation of the Rites?

If you believed her words alone, then the latter would be impossible. And yet, it's been six months, and she's still with us. Her curiosity must be in charge.

“Do you love her?” I ask anyway. It's still dark out. We have time.

“Who?”

Clearly not. I nod in Dora's general direction.

“Oh,” Michelle says. “Right. Of course. That makes all of you. I guess you must all be right, then.”

All of who? Has she consulted the others on this? I raise my eyebrows and wait for clarification.

“You're not the only one who thinks she's in love with me,” she tells me.

“I asked about your feelings, not Dora's.” I'd feel bad about pressing for answers if she weren't in the habit of cross-examining everything I say.

She sighs and looks at Dora. “Would it be wrong of me not to?”

That would be a “no,” then, but what a way to put it. “It would be wrong to pretend otherwise, if you don't.”

Michelle looks away and nods to herself.

“Love isn't a choice, Michelle,” I tell her. “And even if it were, you don't owe it to anyone.”

“I know,” she says. Then she looks at Dora again, presumably for signs of life. “But I feel bad for her.”

Reciprocity it is, then. “Pity never helped anyone.”