The Cabin at the End of the World(46)
“Huh? Wait. How—?” Andrew sputters and looks at Wen. She doesn’t look back, as immobile and blank faced as a mannequin. He doesn’t know what to say to her other than he’s sorry, he’s sorry for everything in the world.
Leonard says, “Wen told me. So which one of you is telling the truth?”
“Both of us. I’m telling you what happened and what she told you is what I told her.” Andrew says to Wen, “I didn’t want you to know that a terrible, awful person did this to me. I didn’t want you to know there were those kinds of people out there.” Andrew makes sure to dramatically glare at each of the three others before continuing. “Not yet, anyway.” He’d planned on telling her the truth about his scar when she was older, when she could understand. He’d irrationally hoped he could somehow put off indefinitely the future day on which she would recognize cruelty, ignorance, and injustice were the struts and pillars of the social order, as unavoidable and inevitable as the weather.
Leonard says, “I get it and I don’t blame you at all. And listen, I believe you’re not making it up. But isn’t it possible that Redmond only resembles—”
“No. It’s him. I guarantee it.” Andrew can see that ratty, skinny weasel he watched squirm in the courtroom, grow older and bulk up before his eyes, transforming into the troll-like Redmond. There is no doubt. He will not allow for it.
Andrew closes his hands into fists, clenching some of the rope, hopefully giving the appearance his restraints are still tight and secure should one of them walk behind him.
Adriane says in a lowered voice, like she’s trying it out, “I guess Redmond got his then.”
Sabrina groans and goes chest to chest with Leonard. “Fuck. Fuck! Jesus, Leonard, did you know this, any of this about Redmond?”
“What? No. No, of course not. And I’m not calling Andrew a liar but maybe it’s not—”
“What do you know about him?”
“I know as much as you do. I know him as well as I know you two. And I thought—we really don’t have time for this.” He pauses and Sabrina doesn’t move, doesn’t release him. “I thought like you thought: he was rough around the edges and stuff but was basically a good guy.”
“Seriously? It was pretty obvious he wasn’t. At best he was an obnoxious dick,” Adriane says.
Sabrina says, “You and him were there on the message board before I found it, before Adriane got there—”
“A message board?” Andrew shouts and he means it to sound like an aha accusation or vindication. A fucking online message board. Maybe the others aren’t religious lunatics and maybe they are, but they are certainly regular, nondenominational lunatics with—as Eric had phrased earlier—a shared delusion. Andrew recalls reading about a uniquely twenty-first-century mental-health crisis with a growing population of people suffering from clinically paranoid, psychotic delusions deciding to ignore professional help and cut themselves off from friends and family. These people are instead seeking emotional support online where they have found hundreds, even thousands, of like-minded people (many of whom refer to themselves as “targeted individuals” or “TIs”) on social media and yes, on message boards. Online, the delusion sufferer is not told what she is experiencing is a chemical lie or the result of misfiring synapses and she is not accused of being crazy. The online groups reinforce and validate the delusions because the same thing is happening to them. There was a man who recently shot and killed three people on an army base in Louisiana; he had been part of a large online group of TIs who blogged and posted YouTube videos explaining how a shadow government was stalking them and using mind-control weapons in an attempt to destroy their lives.
Andrew wonders if proving to the three intruders that Redmond isn’t who they thought he might be, that he isn’t like them, isn’t one of them—them being some quasi-pious, noble group of would-be humanity savers—would allow doubt to create cracks and fissures spidering through the group delusion? All three of them are clearly unnerved by the bar-attack accusation, and Sabrina and Adriane appear to be openly struggling with what they’ve done and whatever it is they are supposed to do next. Doubt is good, right? Or will it make them more desperate and dangerous, more likely to become violent and lash out in defense of their beliefs? Andrew loosens his fists and lets the rope out of his clenched fingers for a moment, double-checking that he will indeed be able to free his hands.
Sabrina says, “Yes, a message board.” Then to Leonard, “How long were you—?”
Leonard says, “I set it up, like one of my visions told me to, and Redmond was the first to get there but he was there only, like, a few hours before you. We didn’t talk about anything you couldn’t read yourselves after you joined. And he never said anything outright hateful.”
“Did you and him talk on the phone or anything?”
“No, never.”
Adriane says, “Redmond was the one who first said he had the vision of the name of the lake and the town.”
Leonard asks, “Maybe, okay, I guess so, but what are you saying? What are you implying?”
Eric, who has been conspicuously silent, raises his voice to interrupt, and winces as he does so. “She’s implying that your Redmond picked out this place purposefully.”