In the Image of Grace (8 page)

“Of course, but I would prefer to be treasurer,” I
responded thinking how much I enjoyed his company.

He looked up through his hair and smiled. “Tell me
more about this cult thingy.”

“Well, they’re gathering tonight because supposedly
the time has come, for what exactly I’m not sure. What if she is
there? I have to go and see. It all seems so preposterous to
me.”

“That’s because it is. These people got to be
loonies.”

“I’m so glad you’re coming because I don’t want to go
alone and Isabelle and Clarissa aren’t coming with, so we won’t
attract attention. I’m hoping just I alone won’t get
recognized.”

“We so have to get you a disguise,” he said with a
big grin spreading across his face.

“You smile a lot.”

“Yeah, it’s some weird condition I got.”

“No, I like it.”

Jeremy smiled at me again.

……………………………………

My disguise wasn’t really much of a disguise. I had
on a baseball hat, ear muffs over that so my ears would stay warm
and sunglasses we bought at the drug store. Jeremy said it was a
good look on me. The gathering was in an old warehouse on the south
side near the university. On the inside there was a wooden stage up
front with a projection screen behind it and a podium. The ceilings
were tall and all the duct work was showing. The walls were painted
a dark gray and little windows lined the top. It had a very cave
like feeling. There were rows upon rows of folding chairs lined up,
hundreds. The place was packed. Every seat was sat in and there was
a huge swarm of people in the back. That was where we tried to
blend in.

Jeremy leaned in towards me. “I was expecting
everybody to be wearing like long white robes or something,” he
whispered.

I scanned the warehouse and everybody looked
surprisingly normal. There were teenagers and elderly women, middle
aged balding men, guys with mow hawks, girls with boyfriends,
husbands, wives, you name it and it seemed like they were there.
Then there was Jeremy and I, trying our best to fit in. Jeremy
stood next to me wearing what looked like grey workpants and a
plaid jacket. His hair stuck out the bottom of a green beanie.

Somebody then walked onto stage and everybody started
clapping. I immediately recognized him. He was maybe in his early
thirties, with a widow’s peak and black plastic framed glasses. He
was wearing a guitar across him and had on one of those microphone
head set things. Everybody stood up. They all seemed to know what
to do. We seemed to be the only newbies.

“Hello children,” he spoke giving a little wave.

“Hello, Pastor Dave,” everybody responded in unison.
It was the same pastor that was at Elizabeth’s funeral. Goosebumps
crept over my whole body.

“Thanks for coming to this special gathering. You
will hear some exciting news this evening, but first let’s start
with the
Song of Grace
.” He started strumming his guitar and
singing. Everybody sang along. Jeremy and I tried to mouth the
words.

“It was intelligent design in the Xtials eyes,”
Pastor Dave sang. His voice wasn’t half bad. “And in their image we
were made. And they gave us Grace to carry on the human race and in
her image they were made.”

“They gave us Grace, they gave us Grace,” everybody
sang. “And in her image the new children were made.”

Jeremy looked at me like he couldn’t believe what he
was hearing. He put his hand over his face and shook his head.
Everybody else was swaying and singing. Some had their hands raised
in the air; others held hands and some embraced in hugs. One woman
with a very think long braid had one hand over her heart and the
other in the air with her eyes closed. Then on the projection
screen a picture of my mother slowly fizzled together. It looked
like it could have been a picture from college or possibly high
school. It looked exactly like me. A wave of emotion swept over me,
it seemed to of contorted my whole body. My back stiffened, my eyes
opened as wide as humanly possible and my hand shot up and grabbed
the sleeve to Jeremy’s jacket. I could feel the material of it
balled up in my fist. I felt sorrow, anguish, anger, bubbling up
inside of me. There was my mother on display for everybody to see,
for people who were so familiar with the image and yet there I was
her daughter, seeing it for the first time. Her hair was parted in
the middle and worn long and smooth just like mine, just like in
her missing person photo. The light shined off of it, giving her
hair a brilliance of its own. Her dark almond eyes had a glitter in
them; a glitter I’m sure that was never present in mine. Her skin
was flawless and porcelain white. It was so unfair I should have
been familiar with that picture, not the hundreds of strangers in
that warehouse. I wanted her so badly. I wanted to hug her, ask her
how her day had been. I pulled at Jeremy’s coat. It was keeping me
grounded.

“Come here,” he whispered to me pulling me into his
body. I dug my head into his shoulder. He ran his hand over my hair
from the top of my head all the way to the bottom where it fell
down my back.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered trying
to hold back my tears.

“You’re strong,” he whispered back. “Find answers for
Elizabeth.”

I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. I
looked up at Jeremy. He was looking into my eyes and ran his thumb
across my cheek. “You can do this,” he reassured me.

When they were done signing everyone clapped and then
Pastor Dave introduced Dr. Carl Williams. People cheered, a few
whistled. He walked out wearing jeans with a thin black belt and a
blue and white striped collared shirt tucked in. He was carrying a
cordless microphone. He gave a wave. “Hello children,” he said.

“Hello Dr. Williams,” everyone responded.

“Tonight is a special evening, but before we get to
anything too exciting I wanted to talk a little about why we’re all
here,” he paused and bobbed his head a little. “We are here because
the Xtials put us here.”

“Yes, yes,” people cried out.

“They cloned themselves and placed us on this Earth
for a reason and that is to carry on their life, their likeness,”
he walked to the left across the stage and stood at the edge.
“People talk of intelligent design, but many skip out that it
wasn’t God. They forget to say that an alien race put us on this
planet. People talk of evolution, but that is not true. We did not
evolve from anything. We were born from the Xtials.” He pointed up
towards the sky.

Many raised their hands in the air, they clapped, and
said “Yes, yes” again.

“But we started getting messy. We’ve gotten away from
their image of perfection. We’ve let disease run wild. We’ve
accepted people to look undesirable. We’ve gotten away from what
the image of the Xtials is supposed to be. That’s why they sent us
Grace. She is exactly what we are supposed to be.” He turned and
looked at the picture of my mother up on the screen. “This is what
the Xtials look like. They are a beautiful healthy people with no
suffering from disease. They are Grace and we are her
children.”

An explosion of sound rang through the warehouse.
People stomped their feet and clapped, hooted, hollered and cheered
and screamed, “Yes, yes.”

“Now,” Mr. Carl said walking back to the middle of
the stage. “I will like to present our leader, The Giver of Grace.”
He twirled his arm to his side and walked off the stage.

Onto the stage walked a tall sturdy man. His hair was
a dark brown with sprinkles of gray. A clean cut beard covered his
face. Deep set wrinkles were at the corners of his eyes, lines of
distinction as he called them. His lips were thin and tight and his
teeth seemed fake, being way to white. He wore brown corduroys with
a sweater vest. The uproar began again. My face was frozen in
place. My eyes couldn’t even blink.

I grabbed Jeremy’s arm again.

“You okay?”

I shook my head no.

“Should we go?” He whispered.

I shook my head no again, stood up on my tip toes and
whispered the quietest I could into his ear. “That’s my
father.”

“Oh shit,” he responded.

This can’t be true, this can’t be true, kept running
through my head. My father was a cult leader, this so called Giver
of Grace. How could he not have told us about any of it? How could
he not allow us to talk about our mother and yet he had a whole
cult dedicated to her? He was crazy. He had to be certifiably
insane. It was the only explanation I could have thought of.

“All right, all right,” he said slowly shaking his
head back and forth. “Yes, yes.” He looked upwards, perhaps looking
up to Pluto, with a big grin on his face showing all his fake white
teeth. “Tonight is a big night, a big night.” He slowly sauntered
up to the front of the stage and rested a foot up on a speaker box.
“We are all here for one reason and that’s the Xtails.” He pressed
his lips together and closed his eyes and moved his head around
like he was listening to some soft sweet music.

I heard some yes, yes’s from the crowd. A couple next
to us closed their eyes too. I felt so sad looking at that young
couple. They were college aged. The girl had her hair cut short,
almost like a little boys, and was wearing red lipstick and the guy
was short and stocky with large thick sideburns. They looked like
they were a nice couple. Probably in the midst of their studies
deciding what to do with the rest of their lives and yet they were
there getting their minds corrupted by my father, Mr. Carl and
Pastor Dave. It was all so insane. They were filling all those
people’s minds and hearts with a bunch of nonsense and it was
making me very upset because it was all at my mother’s expense.

My father scanned the audience. “Now we all know that
new children were to come to carry on the image of Grace. The
perfect image of what the Xtials are.” He looked up at the screen
and shook his head up and down as if he approved. “Grace is exactly
what we should be like, she has no disease. She has no genetic
disorders. She is perfection in itself. This is what we strive for.
We need to do away with so much human suffering we brought on
ourselves. With the new children we can get back on track.”

“Four new children were made in the image of
Grace.”

I felt like I was going to vomit. He was talking
about my sisters and me. We were the ones that were supposed to
carry on the ideal for the human race, or the Xtial race, or
whatever hogwash he was spitting out. I leaned up against Jeremy
for support. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on
my head. If he wasn’t holding me up I was pretty sure I would have
passed out and fell to the ground.

“This is fucking bizarre,” he whispered.

On the screen the picture of my mother fizzled away
and one of my sisters and I fizzled in. My heart dropped. I felt
immediate sadness. It was the same picture from the newspaper that
Elizabeth left in the bathroom the day she killed herself. I
reached up and grabbed Jeremy’s hand and squeezed it. He kissed the
top of my head. Elizabeth looked perfect, but you could see the
sadness in her eyes. Her eyes were trying to tell us to save
her.

“The four new children in the image of Grace,” my dad
said pointing up at the screen. He did not even say my children or
acknowledge that he was our father. Everybody started clapping. I
looked at the ground. I did not need anybody recognizing me. “At
The Clonation Foundation these four beautiful children were made in
the image of Grace using our cloning technology.”

At first I did not believe what I heard. I heard
Jeremy say “What,” to himself. My father had to be pulling a fast
one on these people. It couldn’t be possibly true.

“Thanks to all our donations and investors we get to
keep this project moving forward. I would also like to take a
moment to acknowledge our surrogates for three of the new Grace
children. Grace herself carried the first child, but unfortunately
she was called back home. She is there now spreading the word of
how things are going here.”

If she went back to Pluto or wherever it was that my
father claimed these alien beings were from, why was she considered
a missing person? Obviously somebody didn’t believe that she was
magically teleported away to a demoted planet.

My father continued on. “We were given a sign to set
these children onto the world. The sign was a sad one, yes it was.
The first child was taken from us. She was taken so we could see
that we were successful. They bleed and die like we do. We no
longer have to protect them from the world. They are humans, but
they are what humans are really supposed to be. They are ready for
the world to see.”

My father paused and paced back and forth on stage
while people screamed out and cheered. “I would like to call up the
three women who had the privilege of carrying the three new
children whom the world will get to know. Come up here.” He waved
his hand towards him signaling three women to come to the stage.
Seats started squeaking and people started parting, so these women
could get up. The three women walked single file down the aisle in
between the seats and up to the stage. They were all roughly around
the same age, late thirties. The first one to walk on to stage had
shoulder length, brown, curly hair and a small cat like face. A
huge a smile was spread across her face, feeling so proud for what
she had done. The second woman was short and stocky and looked very
indifferent and the third woman was tall, thin and waving at
everybody like she was a beauty pageant contestant. She perhaps was
attractive enough to be one.

“Laura Hall everybody,” my father said. Everybody
clapped and cheered. “Sherrie Johnson.” The short stocky woman
stepped forward and gave a little bow. “And last, but not least,
Pamela Greensborough.” She continued to wave her hand pageant
style. “Pamela here carried the youngest child. The one we call
Clarissa.” My father squeezed her shoulder. “Sherrie carried the
second youngest, the one we call Isabelle and Laura here
carried…..”