Creed (15 page)

Joseph stopped speaking and refocused his gaze on the window, then back at me. “That and the fact that the worst of it was always reserved for me.”

“What happened to your aunt?” I asked. He hadn’t answered my question or given me the details I needed.

“We’ve got our own police, you know. Our own school. Own doctor. Own coroner. We pay our taxes like everybody else and have virtually no crime. There’s nothing in the records that my father doesn’t want to be there.”

I swallowed hard as a familiar pang of hopelessness burrowed its way into me like a disease. He was ignoring my question again, talking about things that wouldn’t help me escape. “Answer me, Joseph. What happened to your Aunt Mary?”

“The authorities found nothing to back up her claims. All they saw were happy, well-adjusted children and loving families. However, they did find an entire file on my Aunt Mary showing years of delusional behavior complete with medication logs and a brief stint at a privately run, extremely exclusive psychiatric hospital.”

I clenched my hands, desperately trying to make sense of what he was saying. “What? Are you telling me she was crazy?”

Joseph crouched down in front of me, bringing himself to eye-level. “No, Dee. She was one of the sanest people I knew. But she did everything wrong. You can’t spout off to my father and threaten to leave. Because, like he did for you, he created a whole new identity for her. One that served
his
needs.”

“But she got out!” I yelled, clinging to the hope that we could too.

“Maybe, but nobody on the outside will ever believe a word she says about him or this town. He made sure of that.”

“He can label me crazy all he wants, but I won’t stay here.”

“
We
won’t stay,” he corrected me. “But I need you to play along and let him think he has the upper hand, at least until I can convince Eden to run.”

“So I need to be Rebekah,” I whispered, locking my gaze with his. My stomach reeled when I thought about pretending to belong to Elijah. But, there it was. The only way out. The only way to get back to Luke and Mike.

“And what then? What if Eden won’t leave? Do you plan to stay here and let him control you for the rest of your life because she won’t go?”

Joseph’s face fell at the prospect. “No. If she won’t go with us, then I’ll leave her here and get you home.”

I picked up the papers and began reading over the details of my birth, my education, even my food preferences. The lies stretched on for pages, and I had to force myself to continue reading.

I prayed Joseph was telling the truth. If he wasn’t … well, I had no problem leaving him behind.

TWENTY-ONE

The springs of the bed creaked loudly, probably the third time in the last few minutes Joseph had adjusted his position. I could practically feel his body tensing every time I turned a page. He was getting anxious, nervous about how long it was taking me to memorize my new life.

“Dee, it’s been thirty minutes now. I know my father told you to memorize it, but as long as he knows you’re trying, everything will be fine.”

“I’m not taking any chances,” I said, only half-believing myself. I needed to be as convincing as possible, and memorizing as much as I could would only make it easier.

I was approximately twenty pages deep into my made-up life when I stopped cold, the detailed timeline on the page startling me. “What is this?”

Joseph leaned over and gave the sheet a quick glance. “The history of Purity Springs.”

“Not that,” I said, brushing my hand over the two de-tailed paragraphs at the top of the page. “This.”

I was staring at a timeline, a carefully maintained, handwritten timeline. Except this one didn’t keep track of births or political events. This one cataloged every single illness ever to strike the US, right down to geographical location and death toll.

“Didn’t you read the last two pages? The ones that explain why the original ten families of Purity Springs banded together in the first place?” Joseph asked.

“Ah … no.” I hadn’t read the entire thing. I’d mostly looked for information on Rebekah and other key facts I’d have to know to pull this off. I didn’t much care about the history of this insane town or the delusional reverend who’d founded it.

I circled back two pages and tried to read it again. It was worse than my AP History book. Not wanting to waste what little time I had left digesting this crap, I turned toward Joseph and said, “Give me the condensed version.”

He took the papers from my hand and turned so that he was facing me. “Fine, but pay attention,” he said, and I nodded. “August of 1854, Reverend Eli Smith Hawkins—”

“Relative of yours?” I asked, interrupting him.

“Yes, great-great-great-grandfather,” he said, his hand waving in the air as he ticked off each generation. “He lived in the SoHo district of London. Broad Street to be exact. There was a cholera outbreak that summer, and he watched over one hundred and twenty of his neighbors die within three days. Like most kids back then, he grew up on the stories of the Black Death and smallpox, believed the outbreak was God’s hand separating the evil from the good.”

I chuckled at the “back then” comment. From where I was sitting, the people in this town were as ass-backward as their long-dead relatives. They still subscribed to all of that insane hand-of-evil crap.

Joseph leveled a glare at me, one that said
stop laughing and pay attention
. I did, and found myself running through my European history class in my head, trying to place the words “Black Death.” I finally got it, and the haunting tune to “Ring Around the Rosie” invaded my brain as I recalled my limited knowledge of the plague.

“Eli did what most people had been told to do. He locked himself inside his home and kept the windows shut, refusing visitors. But when one of his wife’s maids became violently ill, he decided to leave. He took twelve families from his congregation with him—only the strongest and healthiest, those who had shown no sign of illness—and came here.”

“Fascinating,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“They settled in New York City. Six months later, one entire family had been wiped out from yellow fever. Within a year, another one had been lost to scarlet fever. That’s when Eli Hawkins moved the ten remaining families into the country, away from the sicknesses of the city and the evil surrounding his congregation.”

Joseph flipped through the pages until he found the timeline I had questioned him about earlier. “Since then, the Hawkins family has kept track of each illness that has attacked the outside world. We viewed their downfall as proof that we are the chosen ones, the pure ones.”

I scanned the timeline. Listed next to each disease was a date and the geographical location. Beside that was the death toll.
1918, Spanish flu, death toll: 500,000. 1952, polio, 57,628 cases reported.
I jumped several entries to the end.
2009, H1N1, death toll: 3,900.
From scarlet fever to chickenpox to swine flu, they had every single disease cataloged. This was paranoia at its finest.

“What’s this number mean?” I asked, pointing to the column of zeroes that ran down the length of the page.

“That’s the number of residents in Purity Springs who were infected by each particular illness.”

“What!? You mean to tell me that not a single one of you has ever had the flu or strep throat, for God’s sake?” It was ridiculous. There was no way this group of people, divine or not, had
never
been sick.

“No, we get sick. I mean, we’ve all gotten a fever or something at some point in our lives, but we’ve all been spared from this,” he said, tapping the paper.

“But I saw the graveyard. People
do
die here. Surely your father must acknowledge that?”

He nodded, a hint of frustration buried in his features. “He does, but most of them are old and ready to die anyway.”

“You mother wasn’t,” I protested.

“No she wasn’t,” he said, a tinge of anger lacing his words. “And others have died young, but they’re mostly women and children, followers of weak will.”

People like me
, I thought to myself. “And let me guess: your father uses this as proof to keep them all here, safe and free of the disease that lies beyond this town.”

Joseph nodded. If I was reading him right, his look of confusion indicated that he didn’t understand why I was having such a hard time swallowing any of this. I mean, why would I? The proof was right there in black and white. The pure had been spared while the weak of will perished.

“I had chickenpox when I was five,” I said, pulling up the hem of my skirt to show my lone chickenpox scar on my left calf. “And I’ve had strep throat three times in the last five years. Does that make me impure enough to leave?”

Joseph smiled. It was sad and conciliatory, and I knew the answer before he spoke. “No. In his mind, that makes you stronger. It shows that you have the spirit and strength to survive. God spared your life when he could easily have taken it. My father won’t see that as a curse. He’ll see it as a blessing.”

“Great,” I said. “Lucky me.”

TWENTY-TWO

I’d been alternating between disbelief and horror. Everyone here had been manipulated over time, their lives constructed by generations of lunatics.

And I was next in line to become one of them.

Joseph stood up and held out a hand for me to take. “You done reading?”

I could read these files all day and I still wouldn’t be ready.

“Come on,” he said, curling his fingers for me to take. “I promise that if you stick to the plan, it will all be fine.”

Stacking the sheets together, I began mindlessly stuffing them back into the envelope. I’d been on overdrive since his father had left, racing frantically to come up with a better solution than the one I’d been handed. But nothing made any sense.

“I’m not stupid,” Joseph said. “I know you think I’m weird and nuts like my father, but I’m not. I’m also not the only one here who wants out.”

I stopped wrestling with the papers and turned my attention to him. No, I didn’t think he was stupid or even weird. I thought he was downright delusional. “You said yourself that everybody out there accepts what your father is preaching. Even if we can convince Elijah to let his guard down, there’s no way these followers of his will simply let us walk out of here.” I motioned toward the window. “You think they’re just gonna let us take Eden and flip off everything your father stands for? Everything he’s taught them to believe?”

Joseph sighed, the familiar look of exhaustion blanketing his features. “No. In fact, I’m sure my father will do everything in his power to make sure we stay.”

“Exactly.” My voice came out louder than I’d expected, not a hint of negotiation present in my tone. “I’m not stupid either, and I’m not naïve enough to think I can take him on alone.”

“You’re not alone.” Joseph’s expression was fierce, determined, but I didn’t believe him for one second. I
was
alone. Without Luke and Mike to back me up, then I was completely, utterly alone.

“Even together, we can’t win against him. This town follows his every command, practically worships him. Two against a town of one hundred forty-eight? Those odds suck,” I said.

“Maybe, but it’s not impossible. My Aunt Mary did it. My mother nearly made it. I did it myself, the day he killed her. We can do it too, Dee. We have to.”

“In order for this to work, in order for use to even have a chance of getting Eden out of here, I need Luke and Mike.”

“That’s not—”

I flicked my hand in the air, stopping him. I didn’t need to trust Joseph or memorize the contents of Elijah Hawkins’s demented folder in order to survive. The only truth I’d come to realize during all this was that I needed Luke and his impulsive brother.

“I want them here. I don’t believe you when you say they’re safe. I want to see for myself.” I paused briefly, then laid down an ultimatum of my own. “Besides, you said you were banking on them coming in here to get me out, right? I won’t help you, Joseph, not unless you bring them here.”

Joseph paced the edges of the room, his jaw set rigidly as he considered my demand. “They’ll be in danger, you know. My father … he already knows about them. If he finds them, he’ll kill them.”

“He won’t,” I said, hoping I was right. “I won’t let him.”

The terror I’d been working so hard to reign in was back. I could see the main street through the window. The escape route we needed was so close, so damn close, but virtually impossible to reach.

Joseph stopped pacing and gave a quick nod. “Fine, but I can’t go and get them. That would be way too obvious,” he reasoned. “If I disappear again, my father will … well, let’s say getting Eden out will be a non-issue.”

“I’ll go. You distract your father, and I’ll go,” I said.

“You’re underestimating my father,” Joseph said. “There’s no way for you to slip out undetected.”

My guess was he knew damn well I wouldn’t come back for him. Any idiot would.