Page 93 of The Chain

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Amuddy hippie commune in Crete, New York, sometime in the late 1980s. It’s a morning in early fall, gray and drizzling. The community is built around a series of decrepit farm buildings. It’s been a going concern since the summer of 1974, but no one recruited since then has evidently had much competence in animal husbandry, agriculture, or even basic maintenance.

The name of the commune has changed several times over the previous decade and a half. It’s been called the Children of Asterion, the Children of Europa, the Children of Love, and so on. But the name isn’t important. When what takes place that particular fall morning makes it into theNew York Daily Newsthe attention-grabbing headline will simply read “Upstate Drug-Sex-Cult Massacre.”

But for the moment all is peaceful.

A toddler maybe around two, a little boy named Moonbeam, is outside with his twin sister, Mushroom, and an assorted bunch of other toddlers, older kids, chickens, and dogs. They are playing in a muddy field behind the barnyard without adult supervision. The kids seem happy enough although they are all damp and dirty.

Inside the barn, a dozen or so young adults are sitting in a circle tripping on Orange Barrel and Clear Light LSD. At the end of the seventies, there would have been thirty or forty people in here, but that was the heyday for this kind of experiment in alternative living, and it was a long time ago. The eighties have a very different vibe and the commune is slowly dying.

The events of today will be its grisly final chapter.

A station wagon pulls up at the edge of the farmyard. An old man and a young man get out. The two men look at each other and put on ski masks. Both men are armed with ugly snub-nosed .38 Saturday-night-special revolvers.

The men walk into the barn and start asking the tripping young adults where Alicia is.

Nobody seems to know where Alicia is or even, indeed,whoAlicia is.

“Let’s try the house,” the old man says.

They leave the barn, walk by a rusting tractor, and enter the massive old farmhouse.

The place is a maze, an obstacle course. Mattresses, furniture, clothes, toys, and games are strewn everywhere. The men draw their weapons and clear the rooms on the first and second floors.

The men look up the stairs to the third floor. Somewhere up there, music is playing.

The young man recognizes the album asSticky Fingersby the Rolling Stones, which was one of Alicia’s favorites.

As they climb the stairs, the music gets louder. They enter a large master bedroom at the bit where “Sister Morphine” transitions into “Dead Flowers.”

They find Alicia, a young blond woman, naked with another young woman and a red-haired man with a ginger beard. They are in a large, old-fashioned four-poster bed. Alicia and the bearded man are tripping. The other woman appears to be deeply asleep.

The old man kneels down next to Alicia, slaps her on the cheek, and tries to get her to respond. “Where are the kids, Alicia?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer.

The young man shakes her and asks her the same thing, but she doesn’t respond to him either.

Eventually he gives up asking.

The old man grabs a pillow and gives it to the young man.

The young man looks at the pillow and shakes his head.

“Only way to be safe,” the old man says. “Lawyers will give them back to her.”

The young man thinks about it for a while, nods, and then, reluctantly at first, but then with growing anger, starts smothering Alicia with the pillow. Alicia struggles, scratching at the young man’s hands, thrashing her legs.

The bearded man comes to and sees what’s happening.

“Hey, man!” he says.

The old man takes out the revolver and shoots the bearded man in the head, killing him instantly.

The young man drops the pillow and takes out his .38.

“Tom?” Alicia gasps.

The old man shoots her in the head too.

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