The Prophet Motive by Eric Christopherson Read Free Book Online

endless supply of charts and graphs.
    “Mother Nature’s getting hot flashes, folks! And that’s why she’s been in such a bitchy mood lately!”
    Laughter followed every joke, funny or not, thanks to the programmed cult members and to the love-bombed guest-recruits, by now eager to please.
    Between jokes, Bob’s global warming-related numbers never failed to induce alarmed cries and oohs and loud grumbling. The forced, creepy feel of a bad TV infomercial pervaded.
    The canned atmosphere gave John déjà vu. Scenes much like this one had been common inside the People’s Temple, which was something he hadn’t remembered since childhood. He’d blocked it out, spent decades avoiding—suppressing—what he’d come here to confront.
     
    The People’s Temple, Geary Street, San Francisco, 1978
     
    “ Why is Mommy sucking on that man’s pee-pee, Daddy?” They were seated in a second row pew, not far from the strange sight on stage. His mother, wearing her Sunday dress, because it was Sunday, had dropped to her knees in front of a tall black man, a stranger to John, who wore a dark suit and tie with his pants unbuckled and unzipped and his pee-pee growing hard, like John’s would too sometimes, only he never knew when or why.
    “ You know better than to call us ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daddy,’ John. She’s ‘Susan’ now, and I’m ‘Tony.’ ”
    “ Sorry.” Mommy was Susan, and Tony wasn’t Daddy anymore, just plain Tony. Reverend Jim was Father. “But why? Why is she doing that? Tony?”
    “ To show that she loves the People’s Temple as much as she loves her biological family. Father thinks she’s been spending too much time with you and me.”
    “ Oh.” John didn’t understand completely, but enough to feel guilty. It was his fault they spent so much time together. He didn’t like it here, and he hated to be left alone very long by his Susan, by his Tony. He thought about confessing—Father liked it when you confessed something—but he was too afraid.
    Father stood behind his pulpit, above and a little behind Susan’s bobbing head. He was leaning forward, watching Susan suck the pee-pee. Indoors, it was always hard to see Father’s eyes behind those dark sunglasses. You could only barely see them. But somehow eyes were scarier that way, like with the hard-to-see ghosts that flew through the dark of his bedroom at night, now that his Bozo the Clown night light had been taken away on Father’s orders.
    “ Deeper,” Father told Susan. “ ‘How deep is your love?’ ”
    The congregation laughed, not so much with their faces, though, mostly their voices. Some of the others worried they’d be next, John could tell.
    “ Faster now!” Father said. “Deeper! Deeper!”
    The man’s pee-pee had grown so big—so much bigger than John’s—and Susan began choking on it and John’s tummy ached and Tony’s grip on John’s knee got tighter—got to hurting—and Tony was breathing funny too, and the black man started making all kinds of strange faces. John missed their old church.
    “ Make it stop, Tony! Please! Susan don’t gotta spend time with me no more! She don’t even gotta talk to me no more! We can just wave at each other now and then!”
    Tony let go of John’s knee and put his arm around John’s shoulder. “Patience, boy. It’ll all be over soon. Very soon. ”
     
     
     
     

Chapter 6
     
     
     
     
    “It’s training for aspiring environmental activists,” Ben said to John. “A special three-day event. We call it: ‘The Eco-Warrior Boot Camp.’ You’d really love it. You free this weekend?”
    There it is , John thought, the follow-up invitation the psychologist had told him to expect during his training session.
    The two men had just stripped to their briefs in a crowded tent and slipped inside bedrolls, John having agreed to utilize the extra one that Ben had conveniently brought along.
    “Sorry,” he said. “Gotta be heading home tomorrow. But thanks, anyways.