Chapter Three

Father Mike’s black Taurus roared down the empty highway. Air-conditioning kept the car’s interior as hospitable to human life as a space capsule, but the heat shimmer that undulated over the black asphalt wouldn’t let you forget what it was really like this far into the desert. A pink line shortened on the windshield-mounted GPS unit as the car approached its destination.

The line shrank to a dot and then disappeared. A woman’s voice chirped from the GPS to let Father Mike know that she was “re-calculating.” He scanned the landscape through the windshield, then made an extended sweep from the driver’s side window to the passenger’s. There was nothing. Rocks. Sand. Some tumbleweeds. No buildings or intersecting roads. The pink line now led half a mile back in the direction he had come. “Make a U-turn,” offered the voice. 

He pulled the car to the shoulder and got out. Sweat moistened the interior of his high black collar before he had even slammed the door. A wide-open silence stretched from horizon to horizon. Father Mike could have heard a coyote howl ten miles away, but he didn’t. Those noises probably wouldn’t start until nightfall.

Hands on hips, he paced the length of the car and back. No other vehicles passed. Indignation rose in him as the first drops of sweat fell from his face to sizzle on the ground below. He shielded his eyes with his hand and scanned more intently, defying this “ranch” he was looking for to exist. 

There. A few miles from the highway, at the base of a rocky plateau, stood several white rectangles. They were invisible if you weren’t looking for them—a splash of a lighter color against the endless beige. 

His ire instantly dissipated. Father Mike jumped back in the car, cranked the AC even higher, and threw it in gear. One wide turn across the highway and the Taurus was off-road, bouncing through the desert toward the plateau.

A tall column of dust rose behind the car. It dissolved slowly, sparkling in the sun as its particles flittered back to earth. When it finally dissipated, there was no evidence that the landscape or the merciless blue sky had ever been disturbed.

*

Gravel crunched on the crude driveway as Father Mike’s car ground to a stop. A high chain-link fence topped with razor wire guarded a confusion of sandblasted trailers. In the middle of everything, rising more than twice the height of the trailers, was an enormous geodesic dome. It was unfinished. Blue tarps held down with bungie cord covered several cells. Even so, it was impressive, a ramshackle Epcot Center.

Father Mike was puzzling over the dome behind the wheel of his car when a loud clank brought him back to reality. The gate had been unlatched, and a squealing motor-driven chain was retracting it. Must be automated somehow, he thought. He had not seen a single person on the other side of the fence.

Regardless of who or what had opened the gate, it was no mystery why Father Mike had been allowed to pass. The people inside, wherever they were hiding, knew he was coming. He had made an appointment.

*

Maria Cielo’s relief when Father Mike told her he was committed to bringing her son home was as immediate as it was brief. She just didn’t have answers to any of his subsequent questions. Maria didn’t know where “Ali” went when he was with the cult, other than it was in the wilderness somewhere. He had stopped going to school entirely since Maria had visited Father Mike and couldn’t be intercepted there. He wasn’t answering her calls and texts. She didn’t know his friends. Her anxiety returned as it dawned on her with every negative response that Father Mike had no way of finding her son to bring him home. Ali could be anywhere.

Father Mike gave Mrs. Cielo a smile and told her he would figure it out. Baffled as he was, it was clear to him that the questioning was only upsetting her and wasn’t yielding useful information. He wanted to scream! To ask her if she thought driving around town saying the Saint Anthony prayer would help. He was a priest, not a detective!

He was queasy the whole ride over to the big public high school that Alex Cielo attended. He sat in his parked car, waiting for class to let out, and wondered one more time whether he should have worn clerical garb rather than street clothing. Too late now. The school’s double doors banged open, and kids began to spill into the street. Father Mike pushed a breath through his nose and got out of the car.

Christ, the way teenagers dressed nowadays was bewildering. They moved around him, laughing and unaware of his presence, like tropical fish around a sunken log. He picked out a group of three conservative-looking athletic types at the foot of the school’s steps and approached. 

“Excuse me, do you know Alejando Cielo?”

“What?”

“Alejandro Cielo. He might go by a different name. Maybe Alex?”

“Heh ... HAW HAW. HAW HAW HAW!” The young man turned to one of his friends. “Yo, dawg. This old fuck just asked me if I knew Cielo!”

All three teenagers were wracked with guffaws, like he had told the funniest joke in the world. Father Mike’s face turned beet red. He hadn’t thought it possible that he could have felt more out of place. Through the school’s glass door, he caught sight of an older administrative type staring at him with narrowed eyes. Father Mike turned on his heels and stomped back to his car, defeated.

Out of desperation, he buttonholed one of the street-corner crazies with the handwritten Star Touched signs. 

“Alex … Alejandro ... Ali ... No such person. Leastways I’ve never met him ... met him, met him.”

The man was spacy, his speech only borderline rational, but there was something behind it. Father Mike had a nagging suspicion while talking to him that it was all an act. Or maybe the man really was nuts but knew something that his mental state prevented him from communicating. Or hell, maybe Father Mike was just so hard up for leads he was reading into things that weren’t there in the man’s lilting chatter.

“Questions, questions ... and you got the answers right here.” He grabbed several copies of a paperback from the box next to him. “Ten dollars. Help a brother out ... Brother ... ha!” 

Such a strange mix of begging and proselytizing. Father Mike took a book for ten bucks as an excuse to end the interaction. 

Later, in his office, at a loss for what to do next, he flipped through the cheap little book. The body of the text was common sense self-help sprinkled with new age garbage like aura reading and astral projection. There were surprisingly long chapters on the history of astronomy and the space program. Then he got to the back page. It was blank except for big block letters reading Problems? We can help. and a phone number. 

“Office of the Prophet. How may I help you?”

“Ummm.” After the day he had just been through, Father Mike hadn’t been expecting anyone to pick up, especially someone sounding so lucid. “I was calling to talk to you about Alejandro Cielo,” he fumbled out. “This is Mike Heany. I’m the priest at his mother’s church.”

“Certainly. Please hold.”

Father Mike cursed his lack of judgment. That was way too direct. He was already planning on having his secretary call from a different number with a pre-planned cock-and-bull story that would extract a useful address when he was taken off hold.

The woman on the phone had consulted with “The Prophet.” He was delighted to invite Father Mike to their ranch so they could “discuss the future of a troubled young person.”

He was so surprised, he had to ask them for the address twice.

*

He parked in front of the nearest trailer, the “welcome trailer,” as he had been instructed over the phone. It was surrounded by a veranda made of thirsty wood with a green, corrugated plastic awning. He avoided using the handrail to climb the steps for fear of splinters.

The door flew open before he could knock. Out pounced a moving blur of blonde hair, white silk, and cleavage that nearly knocked the old priest from the top of the stairs. 

“Welcome home, Brother!”

Father Mike was crushed in a deep hug. He squirmed to get away. 

“Good Lord! Whoever you think I am, I’m not him!”

The girl pecked his recoiling cheek, gave a final squeeze, and released. “Mike Heany, right? You called to say you were coming.”

She was gorgeous, but the way she was dressed ... She was wearing a scandalously short white sleeveless kimono. The belt was so loose, it left her neckline open to the navel. Her feet were bare. It looked ridiculous, especially considering the surroundings. Then again, maybe an over-the-hill, closeted priest wasn’t the right audience to appreciate what was on display. 

Father Mike nodded, collecting himself.

“See? I didn’t mistake you for anyone. This modest ranch is one day to become the new home of all humanity, so we always greet newcomers with ‘Welcome home.’”

He coughed. Shook himself. Harumphed. “Journey of a thousand miles ... Where’s the boy?”

“But don’t you want a tour of your new home?”

“If this is going to be my new home, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to get revoltingly familiar with it. Where’s Alex?”

She crossed her arms and pouted. “Oh, poo! You’re no fun.” Before Father Mike could respond, she turned and held open the trailer’s door for him. “The Prophet Samyaza has given permission for you to take Alice back to her Earth family, but he wants to talk to you first about the situation with Alice’s father.”

“Sure. Take me to The Prophet.”

She beamed at the small concession and led him into the trailer. A reception room hung with marker-drawn posters and yarn God’s eyes led into narrow, wood-paneled hallways at either side. They took the one on the left, passed several closely spaced doors (the rooms on the other side must have been the size of closets), turned a corner, and exited behind the trailer.

On this side, the external disarray of the ranch resolved into a clean, circular yard surrounding the geodesic dome. Green plants with trailing leaves hung from the awnings in plastic flowerpots. It didn’t quite make the collection of trailers look like a secret garden, but the effect was much more pleasant than you would expect from the exterior. 

For the first time, Father Mike noticed people. Some meditated, some worked on small construction projects, some just hurried on their way. The girl had a smile and greeting for everyone they passed. Some wore robes like hers, although longer and less revealing, but most were in ordinary clothing.

They clomped over the porches of several trailers, counterclockwise around the dome.

“Alice, Samyaza ... I’m afraid to ask what you go by.”

“They call me Sister Love!”

“How’d I guess?”

She stopped and turned, pouting again. “Don’t make fun! I chose it myself.” Father Mike was starting to get annoyed by the girl’s bubbly flirting, but if “Sister Love” noticed, she didn’t care. She flipped her hair and continued on. “Love is what I’ve always wanted, and love is what I’ve found in this family.”

He sighed. “What’s your real name though?”

“My Christian name?”

“Good God! Just what it says on your driver’s license.”

“I used to be called Crystal.”

They stopped on the porch of the trailer directly opposite the first they had entered. The way the girl knocked on the trailer’s door was bizarre. She placed herself stiffly three feet away with feet slightly parted and bent at the waist to knock. It looked like she was imitating a butler in an old movie. From inside, a velvety voice responded, “Enter please.”

The girl, Sister Love or Crystal or whatever, threw the door open with an exaggerated magnanimity. She held it wide with one arm and raised the other as if presenting a masterpiece. These people. The hokeyness of it all made Maria Cielo’s terror seem grossly overblown. If she could only see how ridiculous they were.

Still. He was here, and even if the “Star Touched” were only goofy hippies, Alex’s dropping out of life to become one of them would be as ultimately harmful as running away to join the circus. Or the seminary. Father Mike stepped through the door.

The entire trailer was one big office. Behind an enormous desk, dwarfed by it, sat a small, overweight man swaddled in white cloth. He was pale—so pale you could see the pink of his skin beneath his blonde beard. He smiled behind black sunglasses. 

Sister Love closed the door behind Father Mike. She drifted around the huge desk and crouched to give the man an open-mouthed kiss. Father Mike grimaced, but they didn’t notice.

“Thank you, Sister,” spoke The Prophet. 

“Do you need anything else?”

“I’ll call you if your services are required.”

Sister Love sauntered out of the trailer. The prophet watched her without addressing Father Mike until she had closed the door. Only then did he motion for the priest to take a seat in front of the desk.

“So Mike,” he leaned forward. “Can I call you Mike?” 

“If you have to,” Father Mike said as he lowered himself into the chair. 

“There’s no need for this to be antagonistic, Father. You can’t have found us that scary.”

A snort escaped Father Mike’s nose before he could suppress it. “I wouldn’t say I found you scary.”

“Ridiculous then? Surely you’ve been on the other side of anti-religious mockery yourself?”

Father Mike got serious, leaned forward himself. “I’m not here to find ecumenical common ground with you. I came here to bring a kid back to his family.”

The Prophet stretched back in his rolling office chair, put his fingers together, bounced on the seat back a few times before answering. “Yes. Alice. You know the problems she’s been having at home?”

“Problems? Why dance around it? His father’s been beating him because he likes to dress like a woman.”

“Hm. Clearly misconceptions and prejudice remain widespread in this fallen world. You want to take her back to that?”

Father Mike shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but I’ve seen abused kids run away from home and end up mixed up in things much worse than what they ran from.” Despite his best efforts, he was being drawn into a serious conversation with this nut. Exactly what he didn’t want. There’s no way to win when you argue logic against insanity and, in Mike’s experience, people like “The Prophet” could swap one for the other so subtly you’d never notice until after you’d been duped.

“You’ve got a really cynical point of view,” the odd little man mused. “About a lot of things, actually. You’d be surprised, but Alice’s father is actually a great man. He worked as a senior engineer for NASA before he started teaching at the university. Surely a man like that could be convinced of the validity of his daughter’s choices if given enough time.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. In the meantime, is he supposed to live here? In the middle of the desert with no family and no school? Eating dried lentils, getting his head crammed with nonsense, and believing it because you’ve got new age playboy bunnies running around with their robes half open?”

The Prophet surged out of his chair, quicker than Father Mike would have imagined him capable of. He stood silently, face darkened and pointed down at the desk. Father Mike had pushed the tough talk too far and made him angry ... or that’s what The Prophet wanted him to think. All the man’s actions were so cartoonish, it was impossible to tell whether he was bluffing.

“You have no idea what’s going on here,” he spat out.

“Please. Just let me take Alex—Alice—home.”

“She’ll be done with her class in an hour.” The prophet relaxed his posture and fitted his smile back onto his face. “You can take her then. In the meantime, I’ll give you a tour of our facility and see if I can’t clear up some of your misconceptions.”

There was nothing for it; Father Mike was trapped. If he wanted to bring Alex home today, and he desperately wanted this to be his last encounter with these people, he would have to play along.

“Yes, okay. Please give me the tour.”

  The Prophet grinned and waddled to the door, holding it open with the same exaggerated gesture that Sister Love had used. Must be a thing around here, thought Father Mike. 

They shuffled back out into the harsh desert sunlight. Father Mike stood squinting as his eyes adjusted. By the time they had, The Prophet was almost at the next trailer. The old priest had to jog to catch up.

They turned a corner away from the orderly plaza surrounding the geodesic dome into a maze of trailers beyond it. The Prophet maintained his pace. Father Mike was losing his breath but didn’t dare slacken. There was no way he would find his way back to the welcome trailer if he lost the funny little man.

They stopped at the edge of the trailer complex. Beyond was a field of green-brown plants and a few people fussing over them. At the far end of the field stood a greenhouse made of plastic sheeting and a doublewide trailer. The Prophet spread his arms.

“Over there you’ll see our community garden and cafeteria. We grow most of our own food. Lentils yes, but also beans, squash, and tomatoes. Free meals for any who come in need.”

Father Mike wondered how many hungry people made it out here to beg for a vegetarian dinner, but he kept it to himself. Instead, he gulped to catch his breath and nodded his head in approval.

The Prophet looked disappointed. Folded his arms. “Well, I think you’ll find this unit a little more interesting.” He ascended the stairs of another trailer. Again, Father Mike had to hustle to keep up.

The walls were covered by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with paperbacks. Other than a whole wall of freshly printed “Star Touch” tracts, the books were used and tattered. The titles were what you’d expect from a room full of second-hand paperbacks: John Grishman, cheap romance, science fiction. Father Mike guessed that The Prophet had purchased his library by the pound. That is, if he hadn’t just cleaned out a Goodwill’s dumpster.

The shelves closed in on a few fold-out tables and chairs. At one of these, a middle-aged biker scowled over a serious-looking hardback. Behind him, a teenage girl with frizzy red hair and freckles rubbed his shoulder encouragingly. They were the only people in the trailer when Father Mike and The Prophet entered.

“A new com-com-comment ...” struggled the biker.

“Commandment,” the girl corrected.

“Commandment!” He continued slowly: “A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you.”

The successfully completed sentence was The Prophet’s cue to interrupt. “Hey, Steve! Hey, Ruby! How’s the lesson going?”

“It’s going great! Steve can read almost as well as you or me these days.”

“Hur-hur-hur. I don’t know about that, but before I came to you guys, I couldn’t spell S-H-I-T!”

The Prophet shot the biker a severe look. “Steve! Can’t you see there’s a man of God here?”

“Oops! Sorry, Prophet! Sorry, Father.”

The Prophet nodded and motioned to Father Mike to leave the pair to their lesson. When they were outside, he leaned in.

“And what do you think about that little miracle?”

“I think the King James Bible might not be the best teaching tool for an adult illiterate.” He couldn’t help himself; he had seen children’s Christmas plays that were less poorly acted. Surely this couldn’t all have been put on for his benefit. Did they roll out this dog and pony show for everyone who came to visit?

Father Mike braced himself for The Prophet to blow up again, but he instead responded placidly. “And why not? I’m a great admirer of Jesus! Our little group might even be considered esoterically Christian. Really, we’re not anything like a religion, though. We don’t compel our members to drop any faith they held before discovering us. We’re more like a-a … charity organization! Based around revolutionary life philosophy.”

Relieved, confused, and honestly a little curious, Father Mike took the bait. “And that philosophy is?”

“I’ll explain, but first, our family’s crown jewel! The Galaxy Health Restoration Center!”

They turned a corner as The Prophet expounded with arms thrown wide. The far end of the compound was dominated by a large white building. A real building with cinder block walls and a foundation. Probably even a basement. It was only one story, much longer than it was tall, but after all the trailers, it seemed enormous. The building backed up against the chain-link fence that surrounded the ranch. The rocky plateau that was the site’s true boundary loomed over it.

The Prophet was like a kid showing off his new bicycle. He leapt up the stairs to the glass double doors with Father Mike in tow.

“There’s someone I want you to meet!” he announced over his shoulder as he trundled down the wide white hallway.

At the far end of a plush waiting room, The Prophet threw open a door. “Agnes! I’ve got a visitor for you!”

Father Mike stepped inside behind him. The room’s full wall of windows faced west, allowing the afternoon sun to pour in. Everything inside—rows of hospital beds, some medical equipment, and a frail old woman sitting up in bed—glowed with a golden light.

She brightened as she turned from the window. “Sam, how nice of you to visit me while I’m here for my treatment. And oh! Father Mike! What a surprise.”

*

The news hadn’t been good. Anges Ross’s middle-aged daughter had stopped calling doctors after the last few had agreed on the point. It could be days or it could be months. There was nothing left to do but bring in Father Mike. 

Weariness had been etched into the daughter’s face when she’d opened the door to her home. She’d cut off his hello with a grunt and motioned to follow her up the split-level stairs. Could the house really have been that dimly lit, or was it just how Father Mike remembered it? He knew that, on the way up, he’d clutched a small golden box until his hands hurt. He recalled the pain clearly. 

They’d stopped in front of the bedroom without going in. Blue light from a TV set flickered over bedsheets and an oxygen cylinder. Father Mike spoke in hushed tones.

“Is she conscious?”

“Even when she is, she doesn’t talk much.”

“Thank you. I’ll do what I can.”

He’d pushed into the room. Agnes Ross was on the bed, lying on her back. Immobile. Her eyes were open, but she stared at the ceiling in preference to the television. 

“Agnes? Agnes, it’s Father Mike. Can I talk to you for a little while?”

Her eyes had flickered to him and then back to the ceiling. Conscious. Maybe not able to talk. The sound of her strained breathing drowned out the canned laughter from the TV. Father Mike closed his eyes. Exhaled. Opened his box.

Dipping his thumb into the oil inside, he began the sacrament. 

“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

He approached the bed, thumb held before him.

“May the Lord who frees you from sin save y—!”

The old woman jerked her head away with unexpected violence. “Jesus!”

Father Mike had been so startled, he’d leapt backward. The golden box fell out of his hands and onto the bed, its oil spreading into a greasy patch on Agnes’s blankets. 

He’d collected himself and gone to retrieve the box. Agnes Ross had turned her back to him and was curled up facing the wall. She’d closed her eyes in mock slumber.

*

“Do you two know each other?” The Prophet chirped.

Father Mike was flabbergasted. “Agnes, you look ...”

“A lot better, right, Father? I feel a lot better since Debbie started taking me here for these Holy-Sick treatments they’ve got.”

The Prophet cut in: “I keep telling you, Agnes, it’s ‘holistic’ treatment.”

“And I keep telling you I like it better my way! Anyway, Father, I’m sorry for how I acted last time I saw you! The cancer just had me down so much I didn’t want to be nice to anyone.”

“D-Don’t worry about it. What are they doing to you?”

“Oh, lots of stuff. Music therapy. That thing with the needles—I don’t like that one much. I’m still in chemo, too, but Sam and the others are all so nice. They make me feel like I could actually beat this thing!”

“Now, now. We don’t promise anything. Miracles have been known to happen though. Wouldn’t you say, Father?” The prophet winked conspicuously. 

Father Mike had just about concluded that this whole place was one big con job. Since he saw the “Galaxy Health Restoration Center” sign, he’d been waiting for “The Prophet” to try to get him to broker a deal with the Cielos. Money for their son, maybe with some kind of cockamine “cure” thrown in for a few extra bucks. But Agnes. But Agnes ...

The Prophet had turned his attention back to the old woman. “I don’t want to excite you too much, Agnes. I’ll come back and see you again before you leave though.”

“Thank you, Prophet. I’ll see you later, too, Father!”

The Prophet led Mike out of the room by the shoulder. If he hadn’t, the priest would have probably continued to stand there dumbstruck. 

Back in the waiting room, he’d collapsed into a poofy white couch and sat shaking his head. 

“I just don’t understand. She was ...”

The Prophet was ready with an answer and a grin. “Surely you understand the power of hope?” 

Father Mike stared at him without saying anything. The Prophet took a seat on the couch. Took off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of gentle brown eyes.

“Can I level with you, Mike? A lot of this stuff is bullshit. Jesus, music therapy? I’ve even been known to catch a cheeseburger when I’m off the compound on business. But if it gives people like that woman hope, then all of it’s for good, right? We don’t fleece people like other new age groups. The small amount we take in donations barely covers our expenses!”

“I just ...”

Footsteps echoed down the corridor behind them. The Prophet broke from his pitch to glance over his shoulder. His eyes narrowed slightly. “Hold on, Mike.”

An emaciated teenager dressed carelessly in a black T-shirt and well-worn jean shorts plodded down the hallway with downcast eyes. Defying every other aspect of appearance, a luminous tangle of Marilyn Monroe curls crowned their sullen head. The Prophet left Father Mike to his bewilderment and rose to confront the newcomer. 

Jogging to check the teen before they exited the hall into the waiting room, The Prophet pointed to the wig and motioned to take it off. His ward answered with a contemptuous head shake. The Prophet bit his lip before appealing in a hurried whisper. Relenting, the youth dragged the wig from their head, disclosing closed cropped brown hair. The Prophet sighed in relief.

All of this failed to register with Father Mike. He didn’t stir from his reverie until The Prophet was in front of him. “Well, here’s Alex, as promised.”

Father Mike looked up, slowly remembering the purpose of his visit. He nodded. Whether because his spiel had been interrupted or for some other reason, The Prophet didn’t waste time with a drawn-out goodbye.

“Have a nice drive home. I’ve got business to attend to,” and he was off down the hallway.

Like a man under water, Father Mike slowly lifted himself off the couch. As he did, his hand slipped between the cushions and touched something. Something rubbery. Something slimy. He absentmindedly drew the thing up until it was visible. A used condom.

Embarrassment hit Father Mike like a bucket of cold water. He shoved the condom back between the cushion and turned to face Alex. Had he seen? The entire episode had elapsed in a fraction of a second. Involuntarily he brushed his hand on his slacks. 

It was only then that Father Mike noticed Alex’s ugly black eye, fading to yellow. 

“You’re supposed to be taking me home?” the boy sneered.