The Follower E-Book

Nicholas Bowling

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 408

Beschreibung

Twin Peaks meets Welcome to Night Vale in this surreal, supernatural thriller by a Costa-shortlisted author"Gripping, compelling and otherworldly"- DAVID QUANTICKWhen her twin brother goes missing in Northern California, Vivian Owens follows his trail to the town of Mount Hookey, home to the followers of Telos: a mountain-worshipping cult that offers spiritual fulfilment to those who seek it.While trying to navigate the town's bizarre inhabitants and the seductive preaching of the initiates of Telos, Vivian will have to confront questions about herself, her family, and everything she thinks she knows about the world. She quickly realises that her search is about far more than her missing brother – it is a quest for the secret of happiness itself.To that end, there is only one question she needs to answer: what is really at the top of Mount Hookey?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also available from Nicholas Bowling and Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Also available from Nicholas Bowling and Titan Books

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The Follower

Print edition ISBN: 9781789094220

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096798

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: July 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2021 Nicholas Bowling.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For the JAB and the CPB

1

VIVIAN OWENS stepped from the bus at Mount Hookey with two black eyes and five hundred pictures of her twin brother bundled under her arm. The journey had been almost eleven hours, including the hour-long interchange at Lewiston, which she’d spent in the post office getting her brother’s poster photocopied. The pictures hadn’t even come out right. The toner was faded and smudged and made him look more like an escaped convict than a missing person, but she hadn’t had the time or the energy to ask the little man behind the counter to do them all over again. She’d just thanked him and gone back to the bus station, where she’d picked up the black eyes.

The bus pulled away and left Vivian squinting in its exhaust. It was nearly midday and the street was baking. Apart from the backdrop of the mountain, the town of Mount Hookey was like all the others she’d passed through on that interminable bus ride, not much more than a stretch of highway huddled with tall billboards and squat, nondescript buildings: two bars, a thrift store, a supermarket, a gas station, a Chinese restaurant called Wing’s, closed and shuttered. There was a single traffic light dangling above the interchange at the far end of town, and beyond it the motel where she was staying, Cedar Lodge, whose sign was held aloft by a carved wooden bear. After that the town stopped. Five hundred posters was too many, she thought. That was twenty-five dollars she’d never get back.

Vivian had an address for her brother in town but decided to check into the motel first. Jesse had already been missing for a month and a half, and she figured another couple of hours wouldn’t make much difference. She needed a shower and a nap. Her head was throbbing and she hadn’t eaten a thing since Lewiston. She wasn’t holding out much hope for the address, anyway. It might not even have existed. In six weeks they hadn’t once picked up the phone or answered an email. Hence her coming all this way. Hence the posters.

The town unfurled as she made her way down to the motel. A few quiet streets led off the main highway to residential neighbourhoods, a barbershop, a school, and then petered out into pines and cedars and yellow Californian scrub. There were hints as to Jesse’s purpose here, too, in the back alleys. Palmists, shamans, a gallery displaying “transdimensional artistic interventions”. An improbable number of shops selling crystal skulls. She was in the right place, then.

Vivian reached Cedar Lodge and crossed the parking lot. The motel looked dusty and worn-out. No cars out front. The wooden bear held its sign like it was enduring some sort of divine punishment, its face grim and stoic. Behind the L-shape of the motel building was dark pine forest, and beyond that the foothills of Mount Hookey itself, rising to a white cone against the huge blue sky.

It was dark inside the lobby and smelled of perfume and old cigarettes. She’d been hoping for a roaring wood fire, but it was too warm for that, even in October. It wasn’t that kind of place, anyway – everything inside looked synthetic and flammable. There was a man of indeterminate age sitting on the couch who Vivian suspected wasn’t a guest. He was surrounded by shopping bags and was wearing his woolly hat so high on his head it had an almost ceremonial look, like a bishop’s mitre. He saw her and nodded and the hat wobbled.

Vivian put the five hundred copies of her brother’s face on the reception desk and rang the bell. A woman appeared from a little office out back who seemed far too glamorous to be working in a place like Cedar Lodge. She wore a fuchsia jacket and a lot of gold jewellery and her hair was permed into an almost perfect sphere.

“Good morning, miss, how you doing there?”

“I have a room booked. The name’s Owens.”

“Excuse me?”

“Owens.”

“Would you mind removing your hood, miss?”

Vivian had pulled up her hood to conceal the bruising. She loosened the drawstring and pulled the hood back.

“Oh my stars!” said the receptionist. She put four heavily lacquered fingernails over her mouth.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Oh my goodness gracious.”

“It was just an accident.”

The receptionist kept staring. There was a long pause.

“So. Can I check in?” Vivian asked, finally.

The woman twitched.

“Of course. Yes. Owens. I saw your name on the booking earlier, but, you know what, I just never made the connection.”

“Connection?”

Up went the receptionist’s hand again, as though she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Then she looked down at her computer and pressed a lot of keys, arbitrarily, it seemed.

“Do you have a credit card?”

She didn’t. She didn’t have any cash, either.

“I’ve already paid, haven’t I? Online?”

“We just need it to verify your identity. Although, I guess, I can see you’re… you know.”

“I’m what?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.” She went back to hammering the keys on her computer. “You’re in room 30,” she said finally.

At this point the old man on the couch leaned forward.

“You keep her out of my room!” he yelled.

“She’s not in your room, Mr Blucas.”

“Is it ready yet?”

“Don’t you worry, Mr Blucas, your room will be ready very soon.”

“That’s right! I want it good and clean.”

“Cleaner’s in there right now, Mr Blucas.”

“You tell her to clean it inside and out.”

“I have done, Mr Blucas.”

The receptionist turned back to Vivian, gazed at her a moment longer, then smiled quickly.

“Here’s your key,” she said, handing it over. “Room 30 is up the stairs, turn right, all the way along. You have a beautiful view of the mountain up there. Do you need any help with your bags?”

The woman peered over the edge of the desk.

“No, thank you,” said Vivian. She didn’t have any bags.

“Okay. Well. Breakfast starts at seven-thirty and goes till ten. Unfortunately, the pool is closed because…” She laughed nervously. “Well, the pool is closed.”

Vivian looked at her and didn’t say anything.

“Here’s a map of the town,” the receptionist continued. “And would you like to make an offering to the mountain?” She gestured to a carved wooden box at the other end of the counter.

Vivian scowled. Her head was throbbing horribly now, and not just from the bruising; from the smell and the darkness and the oddness of everything.

“An offering?”

“Most visitors give an offering of thanks to the mountain.”

“What kind of offering?”

“Just a few dollars.”

“Do I have to?”

The receptionist chewed her lip. She turned around as though looking for support, but she was alone at the desk.

“It’s just a tradition.”

“I don’t have any cash.”

One of the receptionist’s eyelids twitched.

“No problem!” she said. “Then you’re all good. Is there anything else I can help you with, Vivian?”

“Can I get some ice? For my head?”

“Ice machine is right behind you there.”

Vivian had to pick her way between the old man’s shopping bags to get to it. He winked at her and she ignored him. She filled a paper cup with ice and held it to her forehead, but it seemed to make the pain substantially worse.

“Thanks,” she said on her way across the lobby.

“You’re welcome,” said the receptionist, and gave another taut smile.

She was halfway to her room when she realised she’d left all her brother’s posters lying on the reception desk. She sighed at the top of the stairs, turned, tramped back the way she’d come. It was incredibly hot under her coat now, and her feet were hurting, too.

When she got back to the lobby, the glamorous woman had the posters in her ringed fingers. She was looking at Jesse’s face and shaking her head. Her lips were moving but Vivian couldn’t hear what she was saying.

“Sorry,” said Vivian, approaching from the periphery of the receptionist’s vision. “Those are mine.”

The receptionist whirled around.

“These here? Sure thing.”

She kept them clutched to her chest.

“Can I have them?” said Vivian.

“Of course.”

The receptionist handed them back very slowly.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

“You haven’t seen him, have you?”

The woman looked frightened.

“Seen who?”

“My brother. That’s why I’m here. He came here about a month ago and we’ve not heard from him.”

“No, I haven’t seen him.” She paused. “I’m so sorry!”

“Well. If you do, let me know.”

“I’ll do just that.” She peered over the top of the desk at the picture of Jesse. “Say – would you let me keep one of those? So I can show it to the other staff.”

Vivian gave her a poster. The receptionist traced Jesse’s jawline with a fingernail and went back to muttering something.

“Are you sure you haven’t seen him?” said Vivian.

“No, I have not,” said the woman. Her eyes were suddenly wet. “And if I had, there’s no way in hell—” She brought herself up short and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry for cursing. I will let you know if I hear anything.”

She sniffed and smiled through her tears. Vivian watched one of them crawl down her cheek, viscous with mascara.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, though in her current state she hardly felt able to offer the woman any compassion.

“I’m good,” the receptionist said. She scrubbed at her face with the heel of her hand. “Long shift. Good gracious! No one catches a break round here!”

Vivian nodded.

“Alright. Well. Thanks,” she said, and she turned and went back up to her room.

The receptionist had been right about the view. The great white mountain filled the window completely, in a way that looked almost vulgar; the symmetry too perfect, the colours too bright, like a bad oil painting. Vivian closed the curtains and investigated the rest of the room. Nothing much to talk of. A bedside table with a lamp and a Bible and a magazine called Lotus Guide Northern California. A TV that hadn’t been tuned. The bathroom smelled slightly sulphurous, and there was no difference in temperature between the hot and cold taps, so she decided not to pour herself a glass of water, despite how thirsty she was. There was nothing to eat, either, but she did open and drink four tiny pots of coffee creamer. Then she undressed, showered, dressed again, and climbed into bed fully clothed.

She lay in the sweltering darkness for some time, considering her situation. No suitcase, no wallet, no phone. “Peeled” was the term, as she’d learned from a slightly dubious young man she’d had to sit next to on the bus. His name was Lucky, and he hadn’t stopped talking to her the whole way. He had open sores on his hands. He’d been “peeled” too, it turned out.

She probed at her forehead and the bridge of her nose under the covers. It was still very tender. Broken, perhaps. She remembered very little of the assault apart from the shape and the sound of the weapon her assailant had used. A bell of some kind, that made a cartoonish clanging noise when it connected with the front of her skull. The police in Lewiston had found this particular detail very funny. She could still picture them now, grinning through mouthfuls of gum. Could still hear the note of the bell, too, as she drifted into jet-lagged sleep, and the words, receding into the darkness:

“It’s not him. It’s not him.”

2

WHAT WAS meant to be a thirty-minute nap turned into four hours sunk in blackest oblivion. When Vivian woke up a slice of late-afternoon sunshine had found its way through the gap in the curtains and was burning her cheek. She sat up, not knowing where she was, sweating heavily into her coat and hiking boots.

She got up and opened the curtains. The mountain was red and glowering, furious with her for not giving an offering, no doubt. Below her the unused pool was shivering in the shadow of the motel building. It was roped off but hadn’t been covered, and its water was very dark and accruing a kind of pink scum at its edges. She closed the curtains again. She made herself a coffee, black, since she’d already drunk the free cream, and had another shower. Then she left the motel with her armful of posters to follow up her one and only lead.

Vivian’s destination was the House of Telos, a school of spiritual education that promised to purge the Western capitalist mind of its ills and bring it within touching distance of the One Cosmic Spirit, through a series of online seminars that cost seventy-five dollars an hour. Jesse had never been a particularly happy child when they were growing up, but adulthood had brought with it a whole new raft of emotional and existential crises, and Vivian had watched him flounder from one to the next with a mixture of pity and frustration. When he was twenty-two he’d signed up to the House of Telos’s enrichment programme, and after three years had given them so much of their parents’ fortune that they’d offered him the opportunity to study at the House itself, in Mount Hookey, CA.

He’d wavered at first, thanks to a talking-to from Vivian. Then, in March, their father had died. Everyone spoke about what a shock it had been, but Vivian felt like she’d seen it coming for years, and it certainly wasn’t an accident. Jesse became difficult to communicate with. Six months after the funeral, Jesse – a man who had difficulty even getting the bus by himself – had taken the flight to LA, telling Vivian he had gone to seek guidance first-hand from the Ascended Masters of Telos. That was the last they had heard of him. He’d just gone, taking his grief with him, and leaving Vivian and her mother to theirs.

The House of Telos’s headquarters were at 125 Vista Street. Vivian had committed that to memory. She followed the black-and-white map that the receptionist had given her and put up half a dozen pictures of her brother on telegraph poles as she went. The reception desk at Cedar Lodge had been unattended and she’d helped herself to a roll of Sellotape. Mr Blucas had still been there with his shopping bags, though he’d moved to a different couch.

Vista Street ran parallel to the main highway. Vivian went back to the centre of town, took a left at the Earth Foods store and a right at the tea house and began counting down the numbers on the mailboxes. It was a residential street, though many of the homes doubled as businesses of a spiritual bent: psychics, yogis, healers of various kinds. In among them a video rental store and a nursery, both looking a little embattled. Outside “Mount Hookey Crystal Visions” a man in a robe and sandals was packing postcards and dreamcatchers and glass orbs into a plastic crate. He saw her and there was the same look of recognition she’d seen in the receptionist’s face. He dropped the crate and the orbs went rolling all over the pavement. He stared at her as she sellotaped another poster to the mailbox outside the shop, and she turned and glared at him.

“What?” she said.

He got down on his knees and started picking up his wares. Then he dragged his crate through the door of the shop and locked it from the inside. He watched her for another few moments from behind the glass.

“Hey. Hello? I can still see you.”

Vivian took a step towards the door and the man melted into the shop’s darkened interior. She stuck another poster up where his face had been.

By the time Vivian reached number 125 she was at the end of the street, almost out of the town. The road and the pavement were in bad shape, broken and split by the roots of the cedars. The address was a small, ranch-style bungalow with primrose yellow walls and a broken picket fence. The front yard was overgrown, bright plastic toys scattered in the long grass like the ruins of some lost civilisation. The garage was open and there was a child’s bike lying on its side in the driveway.

Vivian went to the front door. There were two stickers in the living room window. One said: “Telos welcomes YOU!” The other said, “We heal pets.”

She pulled back her hood and knocked. Somewhere inside, a toddler was screaming. Vivian heard the sound of cutlery dashed against a table, the scrape of a chair on the floor, and hurried footsteps in the hall.

The woman who opened the door was in her forties, Vivian guessed, wearing a hoodie and track pants. Her face was deeply seamed, her hair somewhere between blond and grey. She had the bluest eyes Vivian had ever seen.

She opened her mouth and made a tiny, soundless gasp. A moment of silence passed between them before she said, “Can I help you?”

Vivian looked over the woman’s shoulder at the hallway strewn with toys. Back in the kitchen a toddler was smashing his tiny fists into his dinner.

“I think I’m in the wrong place,” she said. She made to leave.

“Do I know you?” the woman called after her.

Vivian stopped and turned back. Someone else who seemed to recognise her.

“Why do you say that?”

“You look like someone I used to teach.”

Vivian came back to the doorstep and showed her a poster. “Him?”

“Oh, Jesse!” said the woman, as though Vivian had shown her a picture of her own son.

“He’s my brother,” said Vivian.

“Yes. Of course he is.”

“This is the House of Telos?”

The website had promised a pristine temple of the One Cosmic Spirit, with photos of jade gardens and crystal-clear pools and scores of initiates sitting cross-legged on bamboo mats, but Vivian couldn’t see any of that.

The baby in the highchair threw his cup to the floor and began wailing. The woman gave a tired smile.

“He was a wonderful student,” she said.

“Was?”

“He’s not here anymore.” She looked dejected all of a sudden.

“He left town?”

“Oh no,” said the woman, “I’m sure he’s still in town. With his energy, there’s no way the mountain’s letting him go.”

Vivian didn’t know what she meant by that.

“Then where is he?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

The toddler had amped up his screaming again and was rocking backwards and forwards in the chair so violently it looked like it might fall over.

“I think he’s going to hurt himself,” said Vivian, pointing to the kitchen.

The woman blinked her huge blue eyes, sighed, and said, “You’d better come in.”

She led Vivian through the hall, whose walls were hung with a mixture of Christian and Buddhist and Native American bric-a-brac – crucifixes, yin and yang tapestries, strings of eagle feathers. Vivian found the combination puzzling. The House of Telos seemed to be hedging its bets, spiritually speaking. They passed the doors to the living room and another room that boomed with the bass of a stereo turned up too loud. The whole house had a strange odour of incense and cooking oil. In the kitchen the woman pulled out a chair for Vivian and then went around the other side of the table to try and coax her child into eating his bowl of pasta shapes.

“This is Chason,” she said, gently probing the boy’s mouth with the spoon.

“Chason?”

“Troy is in his bedroom. You probably won’t see him.”

“Okay.”

“I’m Shelley, by the way.”

“Right. Look, I don’t want to take up your time—”

Chason swatted the food from his mother’s hand again, and she said, “Sorry,” and got down on her hands and knees to retrieve it. She was gone for some time.

“Thing is, Jesse’s not been in touch.”

There was no reply from under the table.

“Hello?”

“Hold on.”

Vivian looked around the kitchen. More mystical bits and pieces. Crystals and tripods and strange totemic carvings, in among the microwave and the cereal boxes and Chason’s fire engine. Next to the door that led out to the back yard hung a framed picture, luridly airbrushed, of a man who looked part Jesus Christ and part extraterrestrial. His face reminded her of her father in a way she couldn’t grasp; but then, since March, everything seemed to remind her of her father.

“Seems someone’s caught your eye.” Shelley had popped up while Vivian was staring.

“Who’s it meant to be?”

“That’s John of Telos,” she said. “The first of the Earthly Masters.”

“Oh,” said Vivian. “I thought maybe it was your husband.”

Shelley smiled.

“No, no. He’s long gone. No pictures of him anywhere. Would you like something to drink?”

“I’ll take a coffee if you’ve got one,” she said. “Black. Really black.”

The last thing she needed was another coffee, but she thought she deserved it: a kind of penance for the nap she’d had earlier.

“Coming up,” said Shelley. She put on the kettle and looked in the cupboards for a pot, speaking over her shoulder. “So do you know much about Telos?”

“Not really,” said Vivian.

“Would you like to learn?”

“I don’t think it’s really my sort of thing. We’re quite different, me and Jesse.”

“But you’re twins, right?”

Vivian nodded.

“Then you’re the same. You’re the same spirit.”

“We’re really not.”

Vivian hated this sort of stuff. Everyone asking her if she and Jesse thought the same thoughts. If she felt pain when he did. The answer was always no, she did not, and she was glad of it.

Shelley fidgeted.

“Wait there,” she said, “let me get you something.”

She abandoned the kettle and went out of the room, leaving Vivian with the baby. While they were staring at each other over the bowl of cold pasta, a door opened in the hallway and the throbbing bass and electronic bleeps and bloops became suddenly louder. A teenager who must have been seven feet tall lumbered into the kitchen and began rummaging in the fridge. He pulled out a can of something fizzy, turned, clocked Vivian. He kept his eyes fixed on her as he tugged on the ring-pull, drank at least half of the can, and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Vivian.

He was very pale and looked like he hadn’t slept. His hair was almost down to his waist, which was a long way for a boy of his size. His eyes were all pupil.

“Oh, hi Troy!” Shelley had appeared back in the doorway holding a book. She practically had to shout over the music. “This is… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Vivian,” said Vivian.

“She’s Jesse’s sister. Remember Jesse?”

The giant teenager took another swig from his can and shrugged, then pushed past his mother and went back to his room. The door shut and the music went back to sounding as if it was coming from underwater.

“Apparently he’s forgotten how to speak,” said Shelley, and laughed a weak laugh. Vivian suddenly found her, and the teenager, and the house, unbearably sad. It was Jesse-type sadness; a kind of disappointment with the world that made a horrible counterpoint with Shelley’s hippyish positivity.

Shelley gave Vivian her coffee and sat next to the baby again, who was now squirming to be released from his chair. She handed Vivian the book she’d been holding. Vivian examined it. The cover displayed the same hyperreal figure from the portrait on the wall, thumbs and forefingers joined in a triangle just above his navel, out of which shot a beam of violet light. She flicked through the pages without reading it. It had the high gloss of a sales brochure.

“What is this?”

“Just an introduction to the Violet Path.”

“What’s the Violet Path?”

“The path of Telos. It’s what your brother’s started on.”

“Oh right.” Nonsense, then. She put it face-down on the table and slid it to one side. “I want to talk about my brother.”

Shelley looked put out by Vivian’s disinterest in the book.

“Sure. We can talk about Jesse if you like.”

“When was he last here?”

“Maybe a month ago.”

“A month?”

That was longer than she’d expected. He could have gone a long way in a month.

“He didn’t stay very long,” said Shelley. “He was with us for maybe two weeks. He outgrew this place pretty quickly.”

“What do you mean, ‘outgrew’?”

“Maybe that’s the wrong word.” Shelley frowned slightly. “He just thought it wasn’t the right fit.”

Vivian glanced around the kitchen.

“Maybe he was expecting something else,” she said. “It doesn’t look much like your website.”

Shelley lifted Chason from his chair and put him on the floor. He went grubbing around on all fours, eating most of the pasta he’d thrown between their feet.

“We’ve had to scale things back in the last couple years,” Shelley said. “There’s a lot of competition around here these days.” She picked at the edge of the table. Vivian saw her fingernails were ravaged. “People out to make a quick buck.”

“I mean,” she said, “no offence, but you’ve made a few thousand quick bucks out of my brother in the last three years.” She took a sip of coffee. It was bitter and disgusting and exactly what she wanted.

“I’ve got to make money somehow, haven’t I?” said Shelley. She nodded to the child under the table. Her voice had changed. “I’m not going to bag groceries when I’ve been given this gift. I want to help people, Vivian. I want to help people like your brother. We’re trying to change the world here.”

Vivian looked around the mess of the kitchen again. She drank from her coffee cup again, to stop herself from saying anything.

“We’re waking people up, Vivian. To a new reality. A new peace. A new harmony. Of course, I say ‘new’ – it’s really the old harmony. The only harmony. The oneness of Telos.”

Shelley spread her fingers as if the whole thing was self-evident. She fixed Vivian with her weird opalescent eyes and for a moment Vivian thought she could, indeed, see some other reality, some deeper understanding in them; then she realised that things were probably the other way around, and that having mesmerising, otherworldly eyes recommended you for a career in spiritual charlatanism in the first place.

The baby banged his head against the table leg and started crying, and Shelley abandoned her hypnotism to pick him up again and dandle him on her knee.

“And Jesse was into all this stuff, was he?” Vivian asked.

“Jesse had committed himself fully to the Path, yes. He was always looking beyond. What I like to call a searcher. You know?”

That was Jesse alright. Vivian had visions of them playing together when they’d been not much older than Chason. Jesse had made a point of dismantling every one of his toys (and after that every one of Vivian’s) to discover how they worked, and then always sat forlorn and inconsolable among the pieces, as if he’d expected and then failed to find the very soul of the thing. At school, his grades had been uniformly poor because he always insisted on investigating some esoteric detail way beyond the syllabus, while misunderstanding or choosing not to understand the basics. He couldn’t follow instructions. He would start his maths homework when he got home at five p.m. and by midnight have filled his whole exercise book with a critique of Quantum Entanglement. He was the cleverest person Vivian knew, and the most useless. When he left school no university would have him, and he’d stayed under his parents’ roof ever since, totally absorbed in his complex and futile research projects.

That was the problem with their dad’s death, Vivian thought. Jesse had tried to approach it using his own unique brand of logic, as a puzzle to be solved, and had found his brain wanting. He’d taken his grief to pieces like one of his toys, and, as usual, had found nothing at the centre.

“He does think a lot,” said Vivian.

Shelley nodded sympathetically.

“That was a habit we were trying to get him out of. He was making real progress, with the meditation, and the breathwork. But, you know.” She shrugged. “The Path took him somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. One of the other schools, I imagine.”

“What are the other schools?”

“He might have gone to the Temple of Telos. Or the Telurian Mission. Telos Centre for Spiritual Living has closed down but Glenn – he’s the guy who ran it – he started the Telos Sanctuary last month, so Jesse could have gone there. Angels of Telos is cheap, that’s an option. The Way of Telos has just opened, above Wing’s. You know, the Chinese place? I don’t know much about them but they seem a big draw.”

“There’s a lot of you.”

“We used to get along. Some of us still do. But there’s a lot of bad blood. It’s hard to achieve oneness when everyone’s fighting against each other, you know?”

Vivian looked down at the book again. The man on the cover stared back at her with a vague and knowing smile. The violet triangle above his groin was mirrored and expanded in a picture of the mountain itself, Mount Hookey, which served as a background to the figure of John of Telos. Incredible, she thought, that Jesse could have been taken in by such a wild fiction. Or perhaps not. He’d tried absolutely everything else. Abandoning reason altogether was perhaps the last route open to him.

“I need their names and addresses,” she said.

“Sure thing,” said Shelley. “Best not hang about, though. A spirit like Jesse?” She whistled. “He’ll be ascended in no time. Then there’s no way you’ll see him again. Not unless you fancy ascending with him.”

Vivian scowled so hard her forehead hurt.

“Ascended.”

“Gone up the mountain. Once he’s up the mountain, no point losing sleep waiting for him to come back!”

“What? Why not?”

“Well… why would he want to come back?”

“Why would he not want to? What’s up the mountain?”

“I feel like you should maybe read the book, Vivian. It’s difficult to explain from scratch.”

“Can’t you just tell me?”

“Bless you, there’s no reason to look so worried! He won’t have gone anywhere yet. I’m sure you’ll find him somewhere around town. Then maybe he can explain. Better coming from him than from me.”

Vivian looked into the dregs of her coffee. The hand that held the cup was shuddering slightly, and not just from the caffeine.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“Don’t get what?”

“This.” She gestured around the kitchen, at the portrait, at the crystals. “All of this. I’m not trying to offend you. But, you know. I just don’t.”

“That’s okay,” said Shelley. “That’s normal.”

There was a condescending note in her voice that made the back of Vivian’s head itch.

“I should go,” she said. “I’ll take the names of those schools if you’ve got them.”

“You really should read the book, too. It’ll help you to understand.”

Vivian capitulated. She picked it up from where it lay on the table.

“They’re twenty dollars,” said Shelley.

Vivian stared at her. “You serious?”

“I’m not making profit from that. Just breaking even.”

“I don’t have any cash.”

“Oh, you don’t?” said Shelley. She sounded disappointed.

“Someone stole my wallet. That’s how I got all this.” She pointed to her bruises.

Shelley gasped. “Here? In Mount Hookey? This is such a safe town. People don’t get hurt here.”

“Lewiston.”

“That’s awful! Bless you.”

“I’m okay. I’ll just have to get some money, somehow. I’ll work it out.”

“Well. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

“You could let me have the book.”

Shelley smiled again, but this time it seemed forced.

“Of course,” she said. “Just pay me back when you can.”

Vivian looked out of the window, saw a lilac dimness had come over the sky. She pushed back her chair and collected up her pile of posters with the book on top. Both were now smeared with Chason’s pasta sauce. Shelley gave her the names and addresses of the various schools of Telos she had mentioned, drew her a rudimentary map, then led her back through the booming hallway to the front door.

“Vivian’s leaving, Troy,” she hollered through her son’s bedroom door. “You want to say goodbye?”

There was no answer. She shrugged, and smiled once more, and Vivian felt that sadness creep over her again like the coldness of the evening.

“Thanks,” she said. “I might be back.”

“The House of Telos is always open.”

“I’m going to stick some of these posters up around the street.”

“It’s a free country.”

Vivian pulled up her hood again and tramped into the wildness of their front yard. She’d reached the picket fence when Shelley called out to her.

“Blessings, Vivian. I hope you find your brother. We all do.”

Behind her, Chason had started crying again. Vivian was back on Vista Street, and had passed another three houses, before she realised how strange those last three words had been.

3

CEDAR LODGE was deserted when Vivian got back. The lobby was dark apart from a single lamp on the reception desk. The receptionist had abandoned her post and Mr Blucas had left and taken his many bags of scavenged treasure with him. Vivian checked the clock on the wall. It was only just gone eight p.m. and she apparently had the whole place to herself.

She was delirious with hunger by now and knew if she didn’t eat something she’d be listening to her stomach complaining all night, thanks to a combination of jet lag and the insomnia she’d had on and off for as long as she could remember. She found the dining area at the back of the reception, chairs upended on top of the tables, and from there discovered the kitchen through a pair of flimsy double doors. It was as clean and well-kept as the rest of the motel and smelled of drains and days-old bacon fat. In the cupboards she found some tiny packets of breakfast cereal she thought she could trust, took two, and returned to her room in almost total darkness.

Inside, she lay on the bed and started reading The Violet Path. She ate the cereal dry, straight from the box. It was sweetened beyond recognition, and in the circumstances was the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten.

The book opened with a story. Telos, it turned out, was not a person but a place. A city, like Atlantis, that had been swallowed up by the sea and now existed alternately beneath the two icecaps. The city of Telos was populated by an ancient, super-intelligent race of beings, or Beings, who may or may not have been from outer space (Vivian never resolved this). Some of these Beings happened to have got stranded in California before Telos had returned to the sea, and had revealed their wisdom to one man only, John of Telos, waiting, for some reason, until the late 1970s to do so. The stranded Telurians had then retreated to the inside of Mount Hookey, where they’d set up a new civilisation, a Crystal City, that could only be perceived by an Ascended Master of Telos. John of Telos was the first Ascended Master. There were others, men and women who he taught, up until his mysterious disappearance in the late eighties. It was generally agreed that he had returned to the mountain. Apparently, lots of people had met him since, while they were hiking or meditating in the woods around Mount Hookey. He appeared, it was said, in a great flash of violet light.

Vivian thought the story was idiotic, and it troubled her to think that Jesse might have swallowed the whole thing in earnest. It wasn’t like him. As the foundation for a religion, or whatever the Violet Path was, it hardly stood up to interrogation, and Jesse interrogated absolutely everything.

The rest of the book was less compelling than the introduction. It was a kind of manual, written in that same highly abstract, metaphorical language that Shelley had slipped in and out of. Vivian supposed it had to be written like that. Anything too concrete and the mystery would disappear, and along with it the whole appeal of the Telos mythology. It seemed like pretty straightforward New Age flimflam. There were lots of diagrams – mostly circles and pyramids – and references to “being”, and “presence”, and “spirit”, and “vibrations”, occasionally capitalised. A chapter on “Manifesting”. A chapter on “Telos and the Endless Now”. A shaded box that dealt with the question of whether John of Telos and Jesus were the same person. The whole thing was seasoned with encouraging quotations from initiates, all of whom seemed to have PhDs, assuring the reader that the Violet Path was the only true way to happiness. The actual word “happiness” was almost never used, but Vivian knew that was what they meant. All these other words – oneness, wellness, peace, harmony – were just stand-ins for the big “H”.

Was she happy? She banished the thought as soon as it arose. She was better; that was all that mattered. Better than she had been. Jesse’s disappearance had, in a perverse way, been a shot in the arm. After the bleak and colourless months that followed the business with their father, it had brought Vivian back into focus, or at the very least it had given her a reason to get out of bed.

Vivian was brought out of deep rumination by the sound of feet beneath her window. She threw the book onto the bed and got up, jittering from all the sugar she’d eaten. When she opened the curtains she saw someone with a torch making their way around the swimming pool. The globe of the receptionist’s hair was unmistakable.

It was later than Vivian had thought and the moon was full and high. The whole mountain glowed. There was a perfect ring of cloud over its summit, pale and rainbowed by the moonlight. The receptionist was wearing a robe like the man who had stared at Vivian outside the Crystal Visions shop. There was something tied to her back, too. Some kind of musical instrument. She was still wearing her pink jacket – Vivian could see the outlines of her shoulder pads beneath the robe’s loose fabric. Vivian watched her navigate the edge of the swimming pool and then awkwardly scale the wire fence at the back of the motel. She fell over the other side and it sounded like the instrument broke. She got up and brushed leaves and pine needles from her robes, looking embarrassed. She glanced back at the motel. Vivian ducked behind the curtain. When she peered out again, the receptionist had disappeared into the dense forest at the rear of the motel, though Vivian could still see the beam of her torch flitting among the trunks and the branches.

Vivian was still fully dressed and nowhere near falling asleep. Whether it was the sugar or the caffeine or the anxiety talking, following the receptionist seemed a good idea.

She got up, left her room without locking it, and came down the fire escape to the pool’s edge. It stank. Up close she saw almost all of the surface of the water was covered with detritus, like an icefloe, with a few gaps that reflected the moon clearly. Insects hopped and skated crazily across it. She made her way around the edge to the section of fence that the receptionist had vaulted, and found it bowed and easily climbable. It wasn’t the first time someone had been this way.

Vivian clasped the cold mesh with her fingers and looked up the mountain. The receptionist’s torch beam had disappeared. The weirdly geometric clouds were settling on the peak, and the interior of the forest was pure black, and she could well believe, after her talk with Shelley, that there was no coming back once you ventured up those slopes.

A wailing came from somewhere among the trees. More screaming than wailing. Several voices, male and female, screaming over and over again. It was wild at first, then found some kind of rhythm. The sound, Vivian thought, of a dozen people being brutally murdered, or perhaps just singing very, very badly, to the primitive beat of a drum.

She let go of the fence and ran back into the motel. Even after she’d got inside, the screaming seemed no quieter.

In the lobby there was a shadow over the desk. A night porter, perhaps? She came around the corner and saw a figure silhouetted against the lamp, feet up, reading a paperback. Vivian couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. Their limbs were long and seemed to have too many joints.

They turned when they saw Vivian coming. It was a young man. His legs uncurled like a spider’s and he took his feet off the desk. He looked at her and then at his phone, and didn’t bother taking out his earphones.

“What?” he said, scrolling through something. “You didn’t want to join in?”

It was Shelley’s son. His face was cadaverous in his phone’s blue light, a look that wasn’t helped by the length and straightness and blackness of his hair. He was grinning.

“What are you doing here?”

“This is my job.”

“Can you hear that?” said Vivian. The screams sounded like they were in the next room. He finally plucked out a single earphone.

“And they wonder why no one stays here anymore,” he said.

“Sounds like someone’s getting hurt.”

He laughed.

“Hurt?” he said. “Man, they’re having the time of their lives up there!”

“Who is? What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. Communing with the earth spirit. Summoning the angels of Telos. That kind of thing.”

“I saw the receptionist—”

“Judy. She’ll be gone for a few days. That’s why I’m on shift.”

“A few days?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it? It sounds like a… ritual or something.”

“Sure, you can call it that. She took her drum, right?”

“I think so.”

“Makes sense.”

It didn’t.

Vivian listened again. The screaming had stopped abruptly. She waited a while in silence while Troy continued to fiddle with his phone.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be working here?”

“I’m nineteen. And this is basically the only job I can get up here. Assuming I don’t want to get into Mom’s line of work.”

She looked at him, and thought of Shelley and Chason, and frowned involuntarily.

“Nineteen? But your brother…”

“You trying to do the math?” he said. He took a roll-up cigarette from a little tin he had behind the desk and lit it. “I know, it doesn’t add up.” He laughed as he exhaled. “I’m a good old cult baby.”

“Cult baby?”

“Mom had me in one of the Telos communes. She was about my age. Dad was, like, in his fifties at the time. Assuming Dad was actually my dad. Apparently one of the ways to achieve eternal peace is just to go around fucking absolutely everybody.” He let that hang in the air along with his damp cigarette smoke. “You’re not into all this hippy shit though, are you?”

“I don’t know,” said Vivian.

He took another drag.

“Come on,” he said.

“I mean, no. I’m not into it. I don’t think it’s bad. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Of course it’s bad. It’s fucking poison. Look what it did to your brother.”

She gripped the edge of the reception desk until her fingernails hurt.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? He’s disappeared, right? You wouldn’t even be here if there was nothing wrong with it. All the Telos stuff – it gets in here.” He tapped his head with a very long finger. “Even if you don’t believe any of it now, it’s hard to stick to your guns when everyone else is telling you otherwise. In this town, you and me, we’re the anomalies. You need to find your brother and get out, because the longer you stay here, the more this place will do things to you. Before you know it, you’ll be meeting aliens in the forest and drinking mushroom tea and learning the tabla.” He blew another cloud of smoke into his lap and shook his head. “There’s a reason I stay in my bedroom the whole time. Just trying to limit my exposure to the contagion.”

“You met him, though?” she asked. “You met Jesse?”

Troy had gone back to looking for a new song to play on his phone.

“Sure,” he said, without looking up. “We talked a bit. I say we. He did most of the talking. Bleak stuff, too, none of the happy-clappy stuff my mom’s into. Seemed like the guy needed therapy – I mean, proper therapy, not vibrational healing or whatever.”

They had tried that. Jesse had been to two therapists, both of whom had told his parents that he “wasn’t a good fit for them”. Vivian didn’t know therapists could discontinue treatment on those grounds. As often happened, her frustration had been mixed in with a glimmer of pride in the fact that her brother had somehow managed to out-think a certified psychoanalyst.

“When did you last see him?” she asked.

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“Right here. He had a room. Mom wanted him to move in with us and pay rent but—”

“He stayed here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What the hell!”

“What?”

“The woman said she hadn’t seen him. She took a poster and everything. Said she didn’t recognise his picture.”

“What woman?”

“Your colleague. The other receptionist.”

Troy laughed. “My colleague? You mean Judy?”

“Why would she say she hadn’t seen Jesse if he was staying here?”

“I mean, in theory they could have missed each other. Pretty unlikely, though.”

Vivian chewed her lower lip.

“When’s she coming back?” she said.

“Judy? Search me. Not for a few days, hopefully.”

“Why hopefully?”

“I need the hours, or I’ll never save up enough to get out of here.” Troy took a final drag on his cigarette. “See, Judy’s a case in point. She came here about six months ago. Normal, straightforward. She went feet-first into Telos and then… Well, you heard how she likes to spend her evening off.”

Vivian found herself looking upon the low-lit drabness of the motel with fresh eyes. As if some clue of Jesse’s whereabouts might be hanging from the wall or have fallen behind one of the sofas.

“When did you say he checked out?”