Ashes of the Sun by A. Meredith Walters
“You stay here. I’ll tell Pastor you’re in prayer.”
“But I haven’t eaten. And I’m supposed to serve dinner—”
“You need to read the scriptures. You need to pray. That is your priority.” She pulled the key from her pocket. She was going to lock me inside.
It wasn’t The Refuge, but in some ways, it was worse.
My home would be my prison.
“Fast and ask for forgiveness. Your transgressions can’t be hidden from God,” she said darkly.
Then she closed the door. The lock sliding into place. I didn’t know when she would return. Most likely not until morning. I was left alone. With no way out.
I felt like screaming.
But I wouldn’t.
I sat back down on the bed, pangs of hunger making me feel ill. I would have to ignore them as I had done many times before. I pulled the Bible from the bedside table and opened it. Yet, I didn’t read the familiar words. It felt heavy in my lap. It’s weight pulling me down.
In a fit of anger, I threw the Bible across the room. It hit the opposite wall and fell, open and face down, onto the floor.
The guilt was instantaneous. I scrambled across the floor on my knees to pick it up. But I wouldn’t open it again. I couldn’t.
Not tonight.
Not here, in my home, made prison.
I carefully put it away and then pulled out the hidden book beneath my pillow. I unfolded the piece of paper and flattened it with my hand, tracing the pencil lines with my finger.
My hands shook as I turned to the first page. My eyes burned but I would not cry.
Instead I read the story Bastian had given me.
And I found solace in it.
“Come on, D, get up.” I pulled the covers off David like I used to do when we were kids. When I’d run into his room and jump on the bed trying to wake him up.
Back then he’d sweep my legs out from underneath me and hit me in the face with a pillow.
Now…he just laid there. Curled into a ball, his eyes closed, refusing to open them.
He’d been like that most of the day.
Part of me wanted to join him. Hide under the covers and hope that when I decided to come out again I was tucked into my bed at school. Far away from this insane reality I found myself in.
I hated The Retreat. I felt confined. Restrained. Even though it was situated on a goddamned mountain, I had never felt so claustrophobic in my life.
Every moment of the day was monitored. It was obvious that going to the waterfall was a one-time thing. I felt watched now. More than before.
I knew that Pastor Carter didn’t trust me. Eyes were on me every second of every day. Reporting back to their venerable leader.
Stafford and Bobbie kept me busy. Asking me to help them fix the fencing that circled the one-hundred-acre property. It had taken up all my time. Bobbie was quiet. He spoke even less than Dave but I liked him. He was one of the few who didn’t look at me like I was a bomb about to go off. And Stafford spent most of the time criticizing my hammering skills. Which, admittedly were quite poor.
David hadn’t joined us. He had been sequestered away with Pastor Carter since a few days after going to the waterfall. Two of the elders, the ones I recognized from the day in the woods, would come and get him after breakfast and then bring him back just before curfew.
We were adults and we had a fucking curfew. It was nuts.
I had barely seen my brother. Let alone talk to him.
Yet, in the small increments of time we were together I could tell that his mood had altered completely.
I had felt slightly hopeful at the waterfall. David had seemed almost how he used to be. He smiled. He made jokes. He had thrown me, headfirst, into the river. I attributed a lot of that to Anne. Her presence was obviously helping him. They clearly liked each other.
But then we came back from our brief trip into the woods and it was like a hammer dropped. Sara had asked if Pastor Carter had spoken to us. He hadn’t said so much as a word to me since that day. It was as though he was avoiding me completely.
Yet his time with David increased dramatically.
It was more than obvious that our time at the waterfall hadn’t gone unnoticed. And that it wasn’t viewed favorably.
So, while David prayed—brainwashed is more like it—I was put to work. Carefully planned, monitored work. At least it kept me busy. Otherwise I’d lose my mind worrying about David.
Worrying about Sara.
I had felt the scar on her wrist. Deep down, I knew what that meant. I hadn’t asked her about it, because I knew she’d never tell me the truth. She was a woman who had become fluent in the art of denial.
If I was honest with myself, I could see how easy it was to get sucked into the monotony of their life here. Routine was dangerous in a place like this. It made you complacent. Overly accepting. The remoteness erased any thought of what life was like elsewhere. And I watched as David lost more and more of himself to these people. To this new life.
Every time he left to meet the leader of The Gathering, I felt a sick dread in my stomach. Instinct warned me that there was something malicious lurking beneath the façade of placid calm the people at The Retreat sought to create.
I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.
And I sure as hell didn’t trust Pastor Carter.
There was something dishonest about him. Like a used car salesman, he was smooth with a hint of sleaze. I had no doubt he was a man that wore two faces. His words were clearly weapons of manipulation. No one dared say anything against him. If they questioned his teachings, they never said so out loud. He was their leader. Their fucking God.
He held immeasurable power over the people he had chosen to surround himself with. And my brother was now one of them.
It ripped my heart out.
The longer we stayed, the more entrenched David became. He swallowed their delusions and accepted them as truth. Just like everyone else.
They were zombies, following the apocalyptic ramblings of a crazy man.
Every single one of them was poison.
Well, maybe not all of them.
Anne seemed nice enough.
And Sara…
She was different.
I knew that deep down.
I was beginning to see that she too saw what was happening around her, but, for whatever reason, couldn’t escape.
I wanted to help her. I knew now, particularly after our day at the waterfall, that leaving her behind wasn’t an option.
Mom used to joke about my savior complex. My idealism that had me selling lemonade when I was five to raise money for the local animal shelter. My dad would tell me I shouldn’t be so unrealistic. That not everything, not everyone was worth saving.
Sara was.
I was sure of it in a way I was sure of very few things.
There was true kindness in her that seemed out of place amongst The Gathering of the Sun. I gravitated towards it in this insidious place. Like a beacon she helped me stay focused.
I had come to care about her. More than I thought possible. I hadn’t planned to kiss her. But damned if I wasn’t glad that I did. Now I thought about kissing her all the time. Of the way her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted. Of the taste of her mouth and the way she sighed when I touched her.
She was beautiful that burned from the inside out. It was more than her face or her unusual eyes. It was the deep down kind of beauty that had nothing to do with appearance.
She opened herself up to me, even if it was with great reluctance. I wanted to do anything to see her smile. To see her, if only for a few minutes, free of the chains The Gathering wrapped around her.
I was falling for her. It was kind of hard not to. She made it incredibly easy. Maybe it was the intensity of this life, or the feeling that we were living on borrowed time, but my emotions for Sara Bishop were magnified beyond anything I had ever felt for anyone before.
If I was the
I shook David’s arm, trying to rouse him, but he wouldn’t move. “Come on, man, it’s time for daily whatever. You’re supposed to be praying.”
I sat down on the bed beside him, feeling his mood seep into me. His depression leeched away any good feeling I had.
David was getting worse. Not better.
Part of me had hoped, in some unrealistic way that perhaps his brand new fanaticism would pull him out of this horrible place he had been living in since being discharged from the army. That maybe the cult, at least, would take the place of the noise inside his head.
At first, David appeared to fit into this life. He built stuff. He ate their bland food. He spent time with other Gathering members. Yeah, he prayed a lot, but I was willing to overlook that if it meant he was feeling better.
But over time, any progress eroded away until he was left worse than he ever was before.
In fact, The Retreat seemed to feed the darkness inside him.
Almost as if the people here, particularly the so-called Pastor, wanted him as close to the edge as possible.
“What can I do, David? Tell me, what can I do?” I felt hopeless. I covered my face with my hands and tried not to sob like a child. I had been taking care of him for months. But this was harder than that. This was watching someone you love die from the inside out. I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t know how to help him.
All I knew was I had to get him out of there.
But it was becoming harder and harder to find a way.
A soft knock at the door startled me. It had been so quiet, too quiet, all day. I couldn’t get used to it. The endless silence. I missed the noise of the city. The chaos of living.
I didn’t understand how these people could think this was being alive.
David didn’t move, so I got up and opened the door, not entirely surprised to find Anne Landes on the other side.
“Hey, Anne,” I said tiredly, opening the door and letting her in.
Anne and my brother had been spending time together. At first it had bothered me. I had thought the last thing David needed was to get his emotions tangled up with some cultish nut job. I watched them closely, prepared to jump in when needed. Then I started to notice something that gave me hope. When they were together, he actually smiled. Seemed like his old self. She somehow brought that side out of him again.
And for that alone I liked her.
I looked behind the small girl for the other one that went everywhere with her. But Anne was alone.
I tried not to be disheartened. But I was. Immensely so. I looked forward to seeing Sara. It was the highlight of my days. My nights too.
Anne raised her eyebrows and gave me a smile. “She’s at Daily Devotional already.”
I had always broadcast my emotions for all to see—never bothering to hide them. David used to joke that I should never attempt to play poker because I’d lose everything.
I smiled sheepishly at once again being entirely too obvious. But I didn’t want to hide what I felt for Sara. It felt wrong to try. Even if the people around me spent their every waking moment suppressing any and all feeling.
Anne glanced at David in the bed. He had opened his eyes when she walked in, but still hadn’t moved. Tears dripped off his nose, leaving a wet spot on his pillow.
“Has he been like this all day?” she asked sadly.
“Yeah. He’s not doing so well.”
“What can I do?” She started to chew on her bottom lip. An anxious gesture that made her seem much younger than eighteen. I looked down at Anne. She was tiny, only coming up to my chin. David, who was much taller than me, towered over her, making them an odd couple. But she had a sweetness about her that was endearing. It was a strength others would overlook. See it more as a weakness. That’s because they didn’t understand that holding onto kindness when you were denied true affection was harder than almost anything.
Anne had gravitated towards David instantly. Seemed to take it upon herself to look after him.
And David opened up to her. He shared pieces of himself that I think he even forgot about. Yesterday he had laughed about his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pajamas. I had learned to appreciate small miracles where my brother was concerned.
But she also knew how bad things were for him. I hadn’t told her much about his past, or why he had sought out The Gathering. But she knew—as they all did—that he was a broken man.
I refused to believe he was beyond repair.
And so did Anne.
I wanted to hug her.
“I honestly don’t know.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes. I normally kept it cut short, but there didn’t seem to be a hair trimmer anywhere at The Retreat. The men all wore their hair as long as the women, as if they were allergic to a haircut. Because of that my dark hair had grown down past my ears. It was the longest it had been since I was fifteen and had been going through my emo douche phase. I wanted to hack it off. I had also grown a weird goatee that was trying to be a beard. My facial hair grew in splotches and was incredibly uneven. It was slow growing and thus I didn’t look full on mountain man yet. It was scratchy. I craved a razor about as much as I craved a decent cell phone connection.
It enraged me that free will was battered away little by little. We couldn’t shave. We couldn’t cut our hair. We weren’t allowed to eat sugar and you could forget drinking a drop of alcohol. I had the feeling Pastor Carter got sick pleasure out of the disciples’ willingness to follow any and every mandate he set. No questions. Like a herd of lemmings scurrying off a cliff. Biting my tongue was proving harder and harder.
I thought about my parents. How worried for both of us they must be. I was able to send a quick text to my mom when we got here, but that was it. There wasn’t a cell tower so there was no reception. And given The Gathering’s aversion to modern technology like computers and Wi-Fi, I couldn’t exactly charge my phone once it died. The only place with electricity was the gathering room and dining hall. And of course Pastor Carter’s house had power. Couldn’t have the wacko tyrant go without lights and hot water.
Anne and I regarded my brother. He stared back at us. His brown eyes were deadened. I couldn’t stand it.
“He should be in counseling. Or taking drugs to stabilize him. I don’t think there’s anything you can do here. Praying doesn’t do shit,” I answered nastily, then felt bad for it when I saw her flinch. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“Praying does help, Bastian. We wouldn’t be here if it didn’t,” she said forcefully. There was steel in that small frame that I had to remember not to underestimate. “You should go to Daily Devotional. It sounds like you need it.”
“I’m not leaving him when he’s like this. You don’t understand how he can get—”
“First of all, don’t talk about him like he’s not here. He’s not deaf. Treat him with some respect,” she scolded me and I felt sufficiently chastised.
“I’m not—I didn’t mean…Jesus.” I felt like shit. She was right.
Anne frowned. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.” She made me feel like a naughty school boy.
“Okay, yeah, sorry.” My brother started to sit up and I rushed over to help him. “Put your arm around me so I can help you.”
He smacked my hand away. “I’m not a kid, Baz. And I’m not an invalid. Back off,” he barked and I grinned. I’d rather him be pissed at me than lying there like he was in a coma. He grunted as he pulled himself upright, as though it took considerable effort. But I didn’t help him. I gave the man his dignity.
His face was pale and gaunt. He wasn’t eating enough. His eyes were sunken and the scruffy beard he had grown made him look like Grizzly Adams. He appeared rough and intimidating, but he smiled at the girl beside me.
“Hi, Anne.” His voice was gruff.
She crossed the room to his bed and sat down beside him.
“How are you feeling?” She took his hand.
“I’ll be fine,” he answered, though not convincingly.
“You need to eat, David. You need to pray. You need to let God heal you.” They sat close, their hands clasped together. Their heads bent towards one another. “Let me get you something to eat,” she offered and he nodded. He took her help. Just not mine. I tried not to be hurt by that.
They whispered together. I made an effort not to eavesdrop. It was becoming obvious my presence wasn’t required. “I guess I’ll go pray now,” I announced. Even though the idea of Daily Devotional had me wanting to throw something.
David didn’t acknowledge me, his eyes glued to Anne, but she nodded. “I’ll stay with David. You go on.”
I didn’t want to leave my brother. But I also could see that whatever Anne was doing worked. David needed what she gave him. I wouldn’t ruin that. Not for anything.
“Okay then. Dave, if you need anything, I’ll be at that clearing, or whatever it’s called.”
“Thanks, Baz,” he replied.
Then he rested his forehead on Anne’s shoulder and that was my cue to leave.
I walked outside and headed towards the clearing where the other members were. Despite how I felt about the group that lived at The Retreat, I could appreciate the place they had claimed as their home.
The Blue Ridge Mountains were beautiful. I wished I had brought the sketchpad and pencils with me. Art was one of my few emotional outlets and for the first month, it had been cut off from me. If it weren’t for Sara’s gift, I’d be totally adrift.
That’s what Pastor Carter did. He separated a person from their family. From their friends. From everything that made them who they were.
And he had the nerve to preach about sin and damnation.
He was confining his “family” to a living purgatory.
A part of me recognized why his words would be appealing to someone who felt isolated from society. A person who had been abused. Who had been ruined. There was hope in believing you were special. That God had a plan. It allowed you to accept the awful things that had happened to you, because better things were waiting.
This small, pocketed group of individuals were all the same. They were looking for something greater than themselves.