J. Gonzalez - They

“I remember her so well now,” Vince said.

When they got through the last photo album, they turned to the clippings. At first the clippings held no significance for Vince, but Mike seemed to recognize something. He began nodding. “Yes, just as I thought,” Mike said. Vince tried to draw some kind of correlation to what he was seeing—clippings about dead dogs, missing people. He didn’t remember anybody he or his mother knew going missing.

When Mike came to the clippings on the Manson family, Vince felt no particular kinship there, either. “I don’t get it,” he said, looking at Mike.

“This all corresponds to what John and I dug up,” Mike said, flipping through the clippings quicker now, nodding along. “Everything she saved here is stuff I’ve already connected.”

“Then it’s true then?” Reverend Powell said in a fearful, trembling voice. Vince felt his stomach plunge down an elevator shaft as he looked at the man. He’d never felt the aura of fear so much as he did that minute when he looked at Reverend Powell. Hank fidgeted on the chair, his hands moving nervously, licking his lips. “I have been praying to the Lord ever since I found this box that it wasn’t true.”

“Does all this stuff mean that the cult my mother was involved with had something to do with Charles Manson?” Vince asked.

“No,” Mike said. He got to the end of the clippings and put them back in order carefully. “They didn’t have anything to do with the Manson family, although there has always been speculation that they might have crossed paths.”

“I don’t understand.”

Mike closed the lid to the box and snapped the lock shut. “There have been a lot of theories about the reasons Manson ordered the Tate-LaBianca murders. One of the most vague and outlandish is that Manson had volunteered to have the murders carried out for somebody else. Somebody who was a powerful member of a satanic cult. Of course, Manson himself denied this, as did those convicted of the murders. They’re right, of course.”

“So you are saying that Maggie was involved with Satanists!” Reverend Powell asked, his eyes wide with fright, almost pleading for this to be a cruel hoax. His voice rose in a shrilling crescendo. “Is that it? Were Maggie and Vince exposed to Satan and—”

“Calm down, Reverend,” Mike said. He set the box down on the sofa beside him. “I’ll explain everything.”

“I think I’m going to need a drink,” Reverend Powell said. He rose to his feet and headed to the bar. He didn’t offer Mike or Vince anything; he merely opened a bottle of Jack Daniels, poured himself a shot and drank it down. Then he poured himself another and slammed it down. His face reddened. He sighed. “Okay. Lord forgive me for this weakness, but I can’t bear to hear another word without taking some of this to calm my nerves.”

Mike headed toward the rear of the basement, carrying the box. He placed it on the pool table and approached the bar. “I think we could all use a drink.”

Vince joined Mike at the bar as Reverend Powell stood behind it, leaning against the polished wood surface. Hank handed them each a shot glass and asked if they wanted something to chase it with. When both men nodded, Hank opened a small refrigerator under the bar and pulled out two bottles of Budweiser. He opened them and set both bottles on the bar and went for a third. Mike set them up for a shot and the three men pounded them back. Vince felt the bourbon scorch his throat, warming him up. He took a sip of beer, which felt good as it went down his throat.

Then Mike told Reverend Hank Powell what he, Vince, and Frank had discussed the past three nights.

Reverend Powell listened, his eyes riveted on Mike as he drank silently. Listening to the narrative again was just as frightening as it had been the first time around. For some reason it brought him closer to the series of events that had fallen into place. For Vince, listening to Mike retell his side of the story, how his best friend had been waylaid and destroyed by the cult, hearing it again from his own lips, brought the horror to shuddering realization. This was a man who had lived it, who knew the parties involved. He had met Gladys and her husband; he’d possibly known Gladys when she was living her secret life as a bloodthirsty devil-worshipper. This wasn’t just another sensational story cooked up by rabid Christian fundamentalists. This was the real thing, spun with plain truth by a man firmly grounded in the secular world.

When Mike was finished Vince saw that Reverend Powell had already finished his first beer and was reaching for his second. Despite the shots he’d pounded down—four by Vince’s count, he didn’t appear drunk. “I knew it,” Reverend Powell said. “It was just as I thought. Maggie was involved with Satan and broke away. Praise the Lord that she saw the light and was saved.”

“That still doesn’t explain the Manson clippings,” Vince asked.

“The group Maggie and Gladys were involved in, The Children of the Night, was an offshoot of an apocalyptic cult called The End Times,” Mike explained. He nursed his beer as he spun the narrative. “They were formed in the mid 1800s in England by a fanatical Church of England minister named Graham Peters and his common-law wife Sally. Their belief system was based on the theory that it was God’s will for Satan to fall from grace and that following Satan was part of God’s will since it was all part of his plan for us humans.”

“In other words, both are working for the same goal—the coming of Armageddon.” Reverend Powell understood loud and clear.

Mike nodded. “That’s the short end of it. The End Times preached that Armageddon wasn’t far off. And that the quicker it came, the quicker it would be for God to take his chosen people up in the great tribulations. But in order for that to happen, there had to be an Anti-Christ born as prophesized in the Bible. So what happened was that the group split—one part remained devoted to the Christian side of the sect, the God part, if you will. The other half formed an alliance with the dark side and became The Children of the Night. Over the next hundred years they rubbed shoulders with many infamous occultists and killers, finally evolving into the current group headed by Sam Garrison.”

“The group my mother was involved with,” Vince said.

“Exactly.”

“How did Maggie get involved in such… in such wickedness?” Reverend Powell looked like he couldn’t believe that somebody he had known, somebody from his own church, could have been a blasphemous devil-worshipper.

“By all accounts, it appears that Maggie got involved through the original cult,” Mike continued. “When The End Times Church came out to California in late ’64, the counter-culture scene was already in full swing in the Bay Area. They were the first to capitalize on recruiting the flower children. At first their recruitment efforts weren’t successful. After all, this was the beginning of the hippie-movement, and people were experimenting with mind-altering drugs and alternative eastern religions. They were frustrated by the hypocrisy and failures of religious and political institutions that preached a Christian tolerance while supporting the ecology-destroying practice of big business, racial intolerance and the war in Vietnam. The End Times was rooted strictly in the prophesies of the New Testament. That was a little too close for comfort for those that had run away from home to explore religious beliefs anathema to their parents. But the End Times weaved their dogma in with a kind of mysticism that appealed to some of the dropouts. They encouraged sex, love, free will, and a communal type of living. And they also encouraged a dual acknowledgement to two gods—Yahweh and Satan. Yin and Yang. Graham Peters prophesized that in order for the biblical prophesizes to come true, the Lamb and the Goat must come together—pure love from Heaven united with hate from the depths of hell. Armageddon would begin. Those committing to either path would achieve salvation when the battle was over because those involved would be fulfilling God’s word. Everybody else—primarily every other religion—would be swallowed up in the great battle and destroyed.”