The Girl and the Twisted End

  Copyright © 2022 by A.J. Rivers

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Also by A.J. Rivers

  Then

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

  Quick. Simple. Clean.

  She knew what to do, and how to do it. When to tighten. When to breathe. When to walk away.

  How did she get here? How did it come to this?

  It was never supposed to be this way.

  Marie clawed at the ground at her sides, the rough surface scraping away the skin of her fingertips and pressing back her nails as she searched for something, anything, to grab onto. She didn’t know if there was anything there. She didn’t know why she was searching.

  She wouldn’t be able to pry away the ground and find something to save her. No one was beneath her waiting to take hold and pull her back from the edge.

  Her eyes closed tightly, and she could feel the aching burn of tears swirling over their surface. It stung like they were etching the membranes, melting the veins to bring out the blood.

  The rush of adrenaline through her body tried to combat the gray coming to the edges of her thoughts and the heavy panic coming to depleted muscles and malfunctioning lungs.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It had never been this way.

  I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.

  The words echoed through her mind. She knew who said them, but she didn’t. She wished she could make sense of the fragments of voices that hung loosely together in her thoughts to make up the warning. She had only just heard them. Or maybe it was days, months, years before. Someone said them to her. To warn her, to chastise her, to mold her into something she should be, or make her spring back to what she had been before.

  She wanted to hear something else as the ache spread behind her eyes and down the base of her skull to her throat. She wanted other words to come to her as the gray settled in.

  Her fingers dug harder at the ground and then in the air and then on skin. On hair, on clothes, on blood, on nothing. Maybe she could tatter them all, peel them all away and find something else to hold onto. Something that would remind her heart to beat and her lungs to fill and her brain to fire and pulse and stay awake.

  But those were the only words. The same ones she’d heard, coming to her in thin, fragile layers of voices. At least her mind was giving her that. If she couldn’t have strength, she could have comfort.

  But it was a taunting kind of comfort.

  She was glad for the voices, even if she couldn’t make them form any other words. She was beginning to understand there would be nothing after this, and she didn’t want the last things she heard to be the other sounds around her. She wanted those voices to surround her, to fill her ears and her head, to protect her at least from that part of her suffering. No matter how hard she clawed and reached, she would find nothing to save her life.

  But the memory of the voices could save her final seconds. They could shield at least a part of her. Even if they were also tormenting her.

  Marie thought she didn’t need to hear that warning, to give it any weight.

  She believed she had known what she was getting into. She always had before. It would be just like all the other times. The meeting place didn’t matter that much. It wasn’t familiar, but they rarely were. What mattered was what was waiting there. Like she always did, she would go, get what she needed, and leave. It would carry her through long enough until she needed more, then the pattern would happen again.

  She knew the realities. She accepted the risks.

  But it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

  Something went wrong. She didn’t know until it was far too late to go back, to change her mind, to stop. By the time she realized it, there was nothing she could do.

  As her body shut down, she wished she could speak and have the words stay crystallized in the air around her so that they’d be there when someone found her. There were so many things she’d want to say. She wondered what she’d choose. Then there was nothing left to wonder.

  Mere steps away, a pair of eyes dry and painful, marked with scattered lines of reflected blood, watched for Marie’s chest to rise again.

  The light of a phone intruded on the funeral shroud of night over her.

  Then a voice, outside of her mind, beyond the protections of silenced memories, calm and steady.

  “It’s me. I have a situation that needs to be cleaned up.”

  Now

  “The whole thing started in 1972 when Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles met and started on what they called a ‘spiritual journey.’”

  “A lot of young people did that around that time,” Dean says, reaching forward to turn the computer slightly to see the screen better. “I’ve talked to a bunch of the old PIs from those days. Teenagers, even people in their early twenties, would get it in their minds that they needed to ‘find themselves’ and disappeared into the ether.”

  “Do people generally misplace themselves?” Xavier asks. “I always just assumed other people were the ones who had lost me. But maybe that only applies to when I know where I am.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he means,” I say. “They were trying to figure out who they were. Usually because they didn’t like what their parents thought they should be. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s similar to what was going on with these two when they met. The difference being these two weren’t nearly as young as you would want them to be.

  “It’s easy to understand a teenager wanting to venture forth on their own, away from their parents’ influence. They think there’s got to be more to life than what they’ve known. So they go out and figure something out on their own—and maybe make some pretty terrible decisions in the process. But most people get themselves together by the time they are really grown. But these two were already in their forties by the time they met and started up what they thought of as their own religion.”

  “Which actually means a cult,” Dean intuits.

  I nod. “That’s pretty how these things go, right? They went through a couple of different names. They started out as The UFO Two. Then when they got some people behind them, they became Human Individual Metamorphosis.”

  “I’ve done that,” Xavier says. “I don’t recommend it.”

  “And Total Overcomers Anonymous. The one they are actually known by in this day and age, they didn’t even start using until the last couple of years before the end. That was Heaven’s Gate.”

  “I like Total Overcomers Anonymous better,” Xavier says. �
��It sounds more supportive.”

  “And that’s what we all need in our cults—emotional support,” Dean adds sarcastically.

  I stare at him for a few seconds. “Actually, I think that’s exactly why people join cults.”

  He thinks about it for a moment, opens his mouth like he’s going to respond, then snaps it closed again and gives a single nod.

  “Valid. Anyway, Heaven’s Gate.”

  “Yes,” I continue. “Heaven’s Gate. They believed human bodies were just vehicles for the actual soul and that after what they called the ‘classroom’ period of being on Earth was over, a ship would come and take them to the planet of Heaven. And Applewhite believed his body had the same alien spirit presence that used to live in Jesus, and it was his duty to bring the group forth to a new evolutionary level of spiritual ascendance. Or something like that. It’s all a little complicated. Anyway, along the way, things went a little sideways when Nettles died.”

  “She was murdered?” Dean asks. “The apple guy got her?”

  “No. Applewhite didn’t kill her. She died of cancer.”

  “People tend to do that,” Xavier says. “Even in cult circumstances.”

  “Yes,” I say, pointing to him. “But they didn’t think so. Remember, they thought they were going to walk up onto a spaceship and it was going to whisk them away to the next plane of existence. They didn’t think they could actually die. Then one of their leaders up and died. So, that ruined that whole belief system. So, Applegate decided that it meant she had gone off to prepare the ship and everything for them, and that when they were ready, they wouldn’t be able to bring their Earth vehicles with them.

  “But in the more than two decades of learning and preparing on Earth that they’d gone through, none of them had figured out how to just climb up out of their vessels when the time came. Which brings us to the big plan… mass suicide. They’d all die like their leader did and then hop on her ship.”

  “Which was coming on the Hale-Bopp comet,” Dean says.

  “Right,” I nod.

  “Yeah, I retained that part. There’s just too much crazy in that detail not to hang onto it. Besides, I can appreciate wanting a comet to be more than just a flaming ball of potential devastation and demise for the planet.”

  “I mean, yes, that is somewhat more hopeful. The thirty-nine people still left in the cult didn’t so much avoid their demise, but I can see where you’re coming from,” I say.

  “They wanted to give meaning to the death of their leader,” Xavier offers. “It went against all they had believed in. It shattered their entire reality. All they could do was gather up the little bits and hope they could make something new out of them. They didn’t believe they would die, but then she did. They had to make it mean something. They couldn’t just experience her death and accept that they’d been completely wrong. It would be too painful.

  “They’d put all of themselves into following that belief, into preparing themselves for something. They’d already gone from their families, gotten rid of worldly possessions, and completely devoted themselves to this cause. It was the only way they could comprehend it.”

  “Sunk cost fallacy,” Dean mutters.

  Xavier shakes his head. “More than that. This wasn’t some cynical calculation of costs or benefits, or an attempt to save face from the humiliation, uncertainty, and grief of trying to find normalcy again. These were true believers. They had no choice but to believe. Because it was the meaning they’d been seeking from the beginning. Going back wasn’t even an option. It was like a revelation being granted to them. And they knew—not just believed, but knew—that Nettles’s death was part of the process, and when they heard the comet was coming, it was the sign they’d been waiting for. They’d chosen to live like their leaders, and now they were going to transcend like them, too.”

  “That’s exactly what they decided to do,” I added. “So when the comet approached, and the thought of all of them getting sick spontaneously was a bit far-fetched even for this crowd, they settled on spiking their pudding with phenobarbital. Applesauce for the ones who didn’t like pudding. While wearing bags over their heads.”

  “Well, that’s not an elegant solution,” Dean says.

  “Not particularly. They were all wearing the same outfit, including some very nice Nikes that were henceforth vilified, which adds a nice uniformity to it all, but that’s not really the point,” I say.

  “Emma?” Xavier calls from the kitchen. When exactly he made his way in there, I’m not sure.

  “Top shelf of the pantry. There’s a little silver metal container. I think there’s chocolate and butterscotch. Maybe vanilla, but I’m not positive,” I call back.

  “Thank you.”

  “I think you’ve lost me,” Dean says. “Were there survivors of this thing that had something to do with Salvador Marini? And Sam’s cousin, too?”

  I shake my head. “No. I mean, yes, there were survivors. Not of the suicide, but of the group. But that’s not the point I was going for. It’s how the whole thing went down that got me thinking about them. I was reading an article about Dr. Villareal and how she spoke about her role in everything that happened at Baxter College, and when I heard about how Heaven’s Gate handled the suicides, it started to click.”

  “Losing me more,” Dean says.

  “I can help find you,” Xavier chimes in brightly, coming into the room with three glass bowls of pudding precariously balanced together in his fingers in front of him. “It shouldn’t be all that hard.”

  He walks carefully over to me and holds the bowls out to me.

  “Thank you, Xavier,” I say, taking the closest bowl and hoping moving it doesn’t disturb the structural integrity of the entire thing. He hands another of the bowls to Dean and sits back down with his. I eat a spoonful of the pudding and look down at the bowl. “What flavor is this?”

  “Chocolate-butterscotch-vanilla.”

  “Ah.”

  “Heaven’s Gate,” Dean says, encouraging me to move along with the conversation. “Suicide in matching shoes.”

  “Right,” I nod, putting the bowl down so I can pull up an image of one of the victims of the cult’s ritualistic suicide. “Again, the suicide itself wasn’t my point. It’s how the rest of the group handled the deaths after they happened. They did it in waves rather than all at once. It took three days. For each wave, the people would get in their uniforms, eat the poison, then put the bag over their heads. And then they would lay down in their bed and wait to die.”

  “Jesus,” Dean mutters.

  “Once they were dead, people came in to take the bag off and clean them up, arrange the body, and cover each of their faces with a purple cloth. Then that group went, and it continued on until the very last group ate their pudding. They were the only ones found without the cloth. The group had gone to a tremendous amount of trouble not just planning the deaths, but also dealing with the aftermath. They wanted to show dignity and respect, and make sure that the scene was crafted to give a very specific message to the people who found them.”

  “That message being?” Dean asks.

  “That it was intentional. That this wasn’t something to be mourned over or seen as a tragedy. It was a ritual, a religious expression they wanted to be celebrated. In fact, there were videos of the cult members saying goodbye to the people they loved and several of them point out they don’t want to die. They aren’t suicidal. That’s not the point.

  “In those moments they weren’t thinking about what they were about to do as killing themselves. They were just releasing themselves into the next level, something they deeply wanted. The way the waves of people handled the deaths was an extension of that very methodical thinking. They were creating a narrative through death.”

  “Like the Cleaners,” Dean says, the realization settling in.

  “Exactly. Different reasons, but same concept. Death is a construct. It’s not just the death itself that matters. It’s the entire experience surrounding the death.”

  A glance at Xavier just shows he’s fully invested in his pudding concoction. I wait. This feels like a moment he would usually have something to say about. But he remains silent.

  “Xavier?”

  He glances up at me, slightly wide-eyed in the way he does when he’s not sure if he missed something and is somewhat unsure of how much time has passed since he was connected to what is happening around him. Still nothing.