June 24
Mid-morning
The door opens and it's Menstrual Meg Rachel, my new name for this bitch. She scowls like a scowly monster. I really do think she's insane. She stares at me, I stare at her. She breathes like she's going to talk, then says nothing. I start to ask what she wants, she starts to talk then stops because I started to talk. Finally I point to Max:
"My dog hasn't been outside since we arrived last night. He needs food, he needs water and he needs to shit," I say, hoping to sound like Galadriel when offered the ring.
She just stares at me, scowls harder, turns around and leaves.
I do NOT like these creepy Mean Greeny bitches. Who locks a dog in a room all night and then won't let him shit? I need a weapon. I need to find Tad, get our car and get the hell off this mountain. That phrase is something Tad would say. Something he told me he said, actually, when he was on Mt. Whitney in 2009, at the end of the John Muir Trail. Wow, he's not here to tell me stories of the JMT, so I'm telling them myself. Comforting and annoying all at once. Just like Tad.
There's another knock, brief, and in comes Nice Rachel.
"I'm so sorry," she says. "Nobody has let you or your dog out to use the restroom. I had thought that someone would think of this, as I was ... occupied. Please. Come with me," and holding the door open, she ushers me past her.
The room beyond is massive. It's a gigantic family room with arena-style, amphitheatre seating built around a giant bank of TV's in the wall on the other side of the room I was in. There are Rachels and Ezekiels everywhere. The Rachels are all dressed sort of Puritan, but it looks more like a community theatre production of The Crucible where everyone brought most of their costume from home. The Ezekiels are all wearing thick, tough work pants held up with wide, strong suspenders over plaid work shirts. Their hair is conservative, and many are clean-shaven. I did not hear any sound from the TV's because everyone who is watching is listening via headphones. They all seem to be watching a different program, totally focused on one small screen, but then one large picture will form and the bank becomes a giant screen and it's the Prophet, speaking earnestly into the camera. He does not look crazy here, but I only see a few moments as Rachel leads me briskly past the viewers -- mostly Rachels -- and we are immediately flanked by two Ezekiels. These two are not clean-shaven. They have full beards, except that they are shaved clean the exact width of their noses, from their upper lips to their chins, all the way down their throats. Weird.
When I arrived last night, they put a black hood over my head at the gates and didn't take it off until I was in my room. My cell? Whatever. Now that I see what this place is like, I figure someone here has money. Lots and lots of money. The kitchen is a professional-grade super chef paradise with granite countertops and almost no appliances cluttering them up. Which means there's ample storage. If this is the only house, this is where the cooking happens. It's spotless. And there are women on their knees, earnestly scrubbing the kitchen floor, and chanting. Of course they're chanting. It's time for the morning dose of Creepy.
We go through the kitchen to a back door where Nice Rachel waits while one of the Ezekiels opens the door for her. Before she goes through, she kneels in front of him and I think, 'Oh my God, is she going to blow this guy?!' but she says, "This is my place," and he says, "The proper place of a Woman." Then she's standing and pulling me through the door and her and the two Ezekiels' eyes are darting around rapidly before the door is shut behind us. I was about to say some shit if they wanted to make me kneel, but I have the feeling somehow that I was just spared something and I don't know what to think about that, yet.
Out the back door, we are on a kind of wraparound deck, slightly narrow, very well-built and recently constructed. I can smell the timber. It goes to our right and left around the house but we are at the top of a landing that heads down to the left, which is where she leads me. That landing splits two ways and we go right, down to another landing which splits, and we go left. Max is happy to be outside, pulling a little at the lead. I know he has to go, so I will him to hold it until we're on the ground. These stairways are like switchbacks, and there I go thinking about backpacking and Tad again. Man, I have got to keep it together. If I keep thinking about him, I may not be able to remain calm when they decide to cut me.
I feel like that's going to happen. But if they wanted to kill me, why bring Max? Can I get him to run away instead of stay? I want him alive if they are going to kill me, but I'm not going down without a fight.
We reach the ground and in a shady spot right in front of an arbor covered in Jasmine, Max immediately squats and unleashes a thick, soupy batch of what Tad likes to call Conservative Rhetoric. Aauugh, I have to stop thinking about him. It feels like Max is there forever, like he's done, but then more comes out. This only really happens if Max eats onions or some other thing bad for woofies, or if he is supremely stressed. If it's stress, I had no idea. He has been calm and loving this whole time. Hasn't even whined, really.
But we are moving on and one of the Ezekiels grabs a shovel and scoops up the Max pudding (a Tad phrase), and I watch him pour it out at the base of an apple tree and I see where we are --
We are in the most beautiful and well-planned garden I have ever seen. Tad would love this even more than the freakish seismic events happening all around us. The walls of the garden are trellises covered with beans and peas and other food-bearing vines; maybe not trellises, maybe just sticks with the vines growing between them. Hard to tell, because we are through the garden so fast, then heading up actual switchbacks cut between terraces of further crops and flowers cut into the hillside, then there's a lovely little shed and a very young Rachel (maybe 12?) and her eyes get so wide when she sees us but she immediately focuses on sharpening the shovel in her hands at a shake of the head from Nice Rachel. Then we are beyond another arbor, this one covered in grapevines, and we are following a trail up the hill (mountain?) into dense trees.
No one is speaking and I am looking around thinking of how I can escape and what they are going to do to me. Is this some kind of group sex thing? I start planning my escape: as soon as I see an opening, Max and I will run off into the trees until we are heading downhill, then we will keep running until we get to a house. Then we will get help and return in force, freeing Tad and making sure that Mad Menstrual isn't lurking about with some cutlery.
I am gauging the length of a broken branch on the ground, wondering if I can use it as a club, when we step into sunlight and I gasp.
We are in a clearing on the top of this very tall hill. The grass here is green and lush. There is some kind of sundial in the center of the clearing, and there are at least a dozen trees placed around the circle of the clearing, old-growth trees, each with some kind of vine growing on or near it. It looks for all the world like the Entmoot from Lord of the Rings, only not a copy of the movie.
Nice Rachel has turned to me, and she is holding my purse out to me in her right hand. Her next words are not what I expect.
"Edward is in critical condition. I need to know how much Morphine you gave him and how long ago that was. Tell me now, tell me quickly, our time is short and you are in far greater danger than you imagine."
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