Page 34 of Taken

8

Mason

My headlights caughtseveral weeping willows leaning on the edge of the road, overpowered by sudden gusts of cool evening wind. A small branch snapped right off one of them, and I had to swerve around to miss it.

I was in my car driving on the outskirts of Amiens, not far from New Eden. The night was dark, oily. All traces of the heatwave I’d perspired through in November were gone, and the state was smack-dab in the midst of winter. Nothing like a New York winter, but still, at least it wasn’t a hundred degrees every day right now.

“I’m glad you’re finally taking some time off,” my mother was saying on my phone’s loudspeaker. Then she laughed. “I never thought I’d say that about you, but here we are. You’ve been working nonstop these last few years, even more than your sister and brothers. You deserve a nice long break.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“And to think you’ve picked my home state of all places to vacation in!”

“All those times you dragged me here and harassed me to see everything must’ve rubbed off on me.”

She laughed again. “Are you gonna come visit me and your dad?”

I hesitated, drawing a mental map between where I was and where my parents had retired, slightly west of New Orleans. “I can try to get up there sometime soon, but I won’t actually be all that close. You guys are all the way over on the edge of St. Charles, so it’s about a three hour drive from where I’ll be.”

“Where exactly are you headed?”

“Just a friend’s place in Vermilion,” I lied. I didn’t want to worry her or my father by telling them about New Eden and making them think I was seriously joining a cult. I knew it was temporary, a few weeks at the maximum, but my parents would fret endlessly if they found out what I was up to. They’d worry that I’d actually been brainwashed.

“Well, have fun, and drive up here for a visit if you can,” she said. “Hope it doesn’t rain too much down there! Usually does this time of year.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyway, tell Dad I said hi.”

I cut the call and drove up to the gate of New Eden. This time the guy on duty there opened the gate as soon as he saw my face and waved me right through.

Jacob had contacted me last week to tell me that he and the Elders had decided to let me live with the commune for two months as part of a trial run. If I demonstrated a genuine conversion experience, they’d let me stay forever. Not that I wanted to.

Thad and I had been right about them spying on me in the two months I’d spent going through a ‘period of reflection’ back in the city. The guys they sent to watch me were nowhere near as smart and sneaky as they thought they were, so as soon as I spotted them, I hired a private investigator to follow them around, just so I’d always know when to expect them.

Thad and my secretary Vlada had helped me fake a staid, pious existence here in the city. Thad grudgingly accompanied me to church every week and Vlada hung around outside my apartment building every so often, pretending to be handing out pamphlets for prayer meetings run by yours truly. Really, the only men she invited were the ones sitting in the car across from my building, waiting to catch a glimpse of me.

Everything I’d done must’ve worked, because here I was, about to step into a new life at the commune.

Last week, Jacob mailed me a non-disclosure agreement that I was supposed to sign and send back to him before my arrival. Yet another way of making sure I didn’t talk about the commune. I’d signed it as per his request, but I had no intention of honoring it.

He’d also mailed me a copy of His Word, and I was supposed to have read it before I arrived. It was a very strange book. It was like someone had gone and taken the most violent, archaic parts of other religious texts and rewritten them in their own words along with the addition of chapters upon chapters of raving sexist shit. The general themes of the book seemed to be ‘keep women down’ and ‘men are the natural rulers of the world’.

Not surprising.

Jacob greeted me out the front like usual. “New car?” he asked, admiring my black Lexus.

I shook my head as I pulled out my suitcases. “The last one I had out here was a rental. This is mine. I drove all the way down here from New York.”

His brows lifted. “Now that’s dedication. Nearly a whole day of driving, not counting stopover times. You must be exhausted.”

I smiled. “Not really. I’m just so eager to be here.”

He grinned back at me. “I’m glad to hear that. Now, let me show you your room in the mansion, and then we’ll head down to the underground quarters so we can discuss all the rules and regulations there.”

“Wait, I’ll have a room up here in the mansion?”

He nodded as he led me into the house and up the sweeping staircase on the left. “The Elders and anyone else who can afford to make large donations to our church don’t have to work out here on the commune, and they also get a suite up here in the house. You’ll be assigned quarters of your own in the shelter as well. It’s just nicer to be up here sometimes, because even with air-conditioning, it can get pretty darn hot in the shelter during summer. Of course, we won’t have to worry about that for a while.”

I nodded slowly. “I didn’t realize I wouldn’t have to work.”

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