I picked up the paper and looked at it again. Maybe there was a message after all. I put on a coat and went outside, taking the map with me. So far I hadn’t explored the cluster of buildings to the east of the hall. This area had a slightly raffish, run-down, shantytown air. The cabins had all been made from scratch, using a mixture of roughly trimmed tree trunks and a few planks and boards which looked like they’d been recycled from earlier constructions. The roofs were mostly corrugated metal, but a few consisted of a simple sheet of canvas thrown over a timber frame. One even had a turf roof, where wild plants had seeded themselves, put down roots and sprouted happily.
The house marked in red on the chart stood slightly apart from the others beside a huge first-growth cedar which had been left standing at the fringes of the clearing, where the zone of stubbly scrub began. The house was in fact partly supported by the tree, to which it was lashed by two rusty metal cables. It was a ramshackle structure made of boards and beams, some of which, judging by their smoothness, had been scavenged from the beach. The roof was hard to make out in the fading light, but seemed to consist of mottled camouflage canvas which might have started life as a piece of army equipment. A dim light was visible inside. Then something touched my back, and I whirled around.
It was Andrea. Without a word, she led the way along the side of the shack and opened a badly hung door made out of what looked like a cut-down Ping-Pong table. We went inside, stooping under the low door frame. The furniture consisted of the bed, an old outdoor table and a green metal chest which might well originally have served as packing for the canvas which sagged from its rudimentary supports overhead. An oil lamp was burning on the table. Andrea blew out the flame. She sat on the bed. I remained standing.
“I’ve been waiting behind that tree for over an hour,” she said. “I didn’t know who might come. I didn’t dare leave a message in case one of the others read it. I just hoped you’d understand.”
“How do I know this isn’t another setup?” I demanded.
She sighed.
“You’ll just have to believe me.”
“Why should I? You lured me down to the pool so that Sam could stage that little dramatic tableau. There’s no use denying it! Sam has admitted the whole thing.”
She stood up, facing me. I couldn’t make out the expression on her face in the gloom, but she sounded angry.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I might not be a free agent? Has it ever entered your head for a second that you might not be the only person in Sam’s power? Do you have any idea of the risk I took in leaving that map in your room?”
I shook my head.
“Well, let me tell you what happened to one of the other women,” she said in a hard tone. “She went along on a shopping trip with Lenny and Rick, and tried to sneak off. Said she had to go to the bathroom, then climbed out the window. They found her trying to hitchhike out of town and brought her back here. Sam had her stripped and tied to the wall-bars in his room. They left her hanging there by her arms for three days, taking turns raping her. When they finally cut her down she couldn’t move her arms for a month. She’s still in pain, even now, but they won’t let her see a doctor.”
I sat down on the metal chest and buried my head in my hands.
“But this is crazy!” I exclaimed. “He can’t keep all these people locked up here against their will!”
“Yes, he can. Anyway, most of them want to be here. They believe everything Sam tells them.”
“What, this shit about Blake? Studying his poems like they were the Bible or something?”
“That’s what they believe they are. They believe that William Blake was divinely inspired, and that his work is the word of God. They believe that Sam is the prophet Los, the second coming of Jesus. They believe that the world will come to an end soon and that they will be the only ones to survive. I thought you knew all this! I thought you believed in it too. Why else would anyone come here? That’s why I was so afraid this morning. I thought Sam was testing me, using you as a spy to find out if I could be trusted.”
She shivered. There was no heating in the cabin, but I didn’t think it was just a matter of the temperature. I went over and sat beside her, taking her hands in mine. Her thin, bony fingers were as cold as a corpse’s.
“What about you, Andrea?” I asked. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you leave after Lisa drowned?”
“Because I saw it happen.”
“So?”
She was silent a moment.
“What did Sam tell you about it?”
“That Lisa tried to swim across to that other island and didn’t make it.”
“Did he say why?”
I shrugged.
“He said she was a good swimmer, only this time she overreached herself.”
Andrea stood up and moved away into the shadows.
“Lisa was a good swimmer. A champion. We were at UW together, and she was on the Huskies team. But she was also far too smart to try and swim across to Orcas. The water around here is icy and the currents are fierce.”
“So why did she do it?”
She emerged from the darkness and stood in front of me.
“She didn’t. Sam did.”
“Did what?”
“Drowned her.”
I stared up at her.
“She and I were swimming down at that pool,” Andrea went on. “After a while the boat appeared. Sam was at the wheel. He called to Lisa. She swam out and climbed aboard. Sam took the boat out into the middle of the strait and threw her overboard.”
I was silent.
“That’s why he’ll never let me leave,” Andrea went on. “He made me write a letter home saying that I was going to Nicaragua. One of the guys who was going to Texas mailed it from there. When they didn’t hear any more, my parents eventually came looking for me here. Mark took me up into the woods while Sam talked to them. I don’t know what he said, but he can be very persuasive when he wants. They haven’t been back.”
I stood up.
“But what about the others?” I said agitatedly. “You can’t just make all these people disappear without someone getting suspicious!”
“Sure you can, if you pick them right. There are a million homeless kids in this country. It’s no problem to find someone with no roots, no hope, no paper trail. A couple of the guys go out recruiting every so often. They befriend these kids, give them some money and a big line about Sam having all the answers. If they decide the guy’s no good, they let him go. All he knows is that some religious nut tried to get him to sign up. If they decide to take him, then he has to write a letter the same way I did. Sam always quotes that line from the Bible about leaving your parents and brethren and wife and children for the kingdom of God’s sake. Most of these people weren’t getting much return from those things anyway, so giving them up in exchange for board, lodging and the secret of eternal life is not a big deal for them.”
“Did he try and convert you too?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“I have to pretend to go along with it, but they don’t really care what the women think. It’s basically a guy thing. The women aren’t initiated into the Secret. They just have to turn up for the lectures, take care of the scutwork, and spread their legs whenever Sam asks them to.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and I didn’t particularly want to. If what Andrea had told me was true, then the situation was far more dangerous than I had ever imagined.
“OK, you’ve told me your story. Now hear mine. My child was kidnapped and apparently murdered. As a result, my wife killed herself. Sam now tells me that he masterminded the whole thing because, quote, I needed to be broken before I could heal, unquote. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. I only saw that boy for a moment, and from a distance. It might have been some other child, dressed up to look like David. Sam could have got all the other details from the newspaper stories at the time. I don’t know what to believe. I feel like I’m going crazy.”