Page 16 of Torn

To this day, no one knew who carried out the attack, or why. The cops never found anything solid to go on. Jacob Chastain had received a few threats from people in nearby communities who didn’t like his teachings, but none of the people who sent those threats were ever considered to be credible suspects.

I thought about the whole thing from time to time, wondering what would’ve happened if my parents and I stayed longer that day. We might’ve been caught up in the carnage ourselves. The thought made my stomach curdle.

I scrolled down on the search results page. Another article quickly caught my attention. Welcome to New Eden… Or Perhaps Not-So-Welcome: Survivors of shocking Louisiana church massacre form uber-private settlement to cope with tragedy.

This was fucking weird.

After the attack, the church members had obviously been traumatized, but their response had been a little over the top, in my opinion. They’d decided to cut themselves off from the rest of society and live together in some sort of commune out on the Chastain ranch. The kids were all home-schooled out there, the men worked the ranch to produce food or goods to sell or trade, and they generally shunned the rest of the world. Apparently, the church Elders still had semi-regular dealings with outside society, but the other members mostly kept to themselves.

That wasn’t the weird part, though.

The truly weird thing was the way they treated the girls and women of the church. From what I’d heard, the female members weren’t allowed to have any contact with the outside world whatsoever, and visitors to the ranch very rarely saw them. I guess they had to stay inside to cook, clean and raise babies or whatever, but still, it was strange that no one ever really saw them. On top of that, those who were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the girls and women had been warned by the men that they weren’t allowed to speak to them.

Ever.

Aside from that, a lot of the stuff I knew about the Path of the Covenant cult stemmed from rumors, because the group didn’t accept visitors very often. A few anthropologists had been allowed to visit and study the place for short periods, however, and the government had also sent the odd investigator in to make sure the cult wasn’t doing anything illegal. The reports always came back saying the same thing: the people were happy and healthy, and their taxes were always paid. But we all knew what the fucking government was like. As long as they got money, they didn’t really give a flying fuck.

A couple of men had left the commune over the years, and they didn’t have a bad word to say about the place. Most people took this to mean everything out there was fine, but to be honest, it had always struck me as a bit odd how silent these ex-members were. People wanted to know what went on out there at the compound, so the men who left had been offered a shit-ton of cash to give interviews about it, but instead of taking it, they’d simply stated that there was nothing to tell and faded into obscurity. Every single one of them.

I closed the web browser with a sigh and returned to my boring emails. Then I paused, my fingers hovering over the keyboard. Oh, shit. I just had the best fucking idea.

If such a place as hell existed, I was definitely going straight there when I died.

A slow grin spread over my face as I picked up my phone and called my best friend from college, Thad.

“What’s up?” he said. He sounded a little drunk, even though it was barely nine in the morning.

“It’s me. I wanna run something by you.”

“This better not be another job offer. You know I’m happy doing sweet fuck-all.”

I rolled my eyes. As much as I loved the guy, Thad was one of those aforementioned lazy-ass rich kids with a trust fund big enough to make the Sultan of Brunei cry. He only got into college because his parents were alumni members who donated a million bucks to build them a new library. Now he spent his days drinking and screwing aspiring actresses and models. I wasn’t much better, but at least I had a job.

“Hey, if you ever decide to start acting like a regular twenty-seven-year-old, you know you can give me a call. There’s always a shitty mailroom position here with your name on it,” I said. “But that’s not why I called. I might have a new lead.”

“Yeah?” I could practically hear his ears pricking up. He knew exactly what I was talking about despite my vague wording.

We’d had a sort of friendly rivalry going on since our college days. It began when I bet Thad a thousand bucks he couldn’t score with some annoying chick in one of our classes who always went on and on about how she planned on staying a virgin until marriage. I wasn’t entirely serious about the bet; I was just being an idiotic nineteen-year-old. But Thad took it seriously and actually managed to sleep with her. Multiple times.

After that, it slowly evolved into a twisted game. We’d try and score with supposedly-unavailable women, and if and when we succeeded, we’d win that round. The more unattainable the woman was, the better. The bets kept going up in value, too.

We both knew it was fucking juvenile, and the women would probably kill us if they found out, but we were hooked. It was the thrill of the hunt. We always wanted to one-up each other, too, so as long as we were single and there were unattainable women out there, we’d keep the game going.

I lost the last round. Terribly. Thad had told me about some prissy actress he wanted, and I had it on good authority she was secretly married, hated Thad, and wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole even if she was single. I was so sure she would never go for him that I bet him two hundred and fifty grand along with the upstate lake house I’d been painstakingly renovating whenever I had time off.

He fucked her within a week.

I didn’t care about the money, but I wanted that fucking lake house back.

“You remember how I told you about that weird cult place I went to when I was a kid?”

“Refresh my memory.” Thad yawned.

“Louisiana. Doomsday preacher and his church. My parents and I were there the day it got attacked, only an hour or so before all the shit went down.”

“Oh, yeah. Crazy shit. So what about it?”

“You know how they live now, right?”

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