"_" "_" "_" "Come with me." "_" "_" "Hey." "This is Susan." "I told her it was safe here." "Hi, Susan." "I'm Laurie." "Would you like to join us?" "So there's a bathroom down the hall." "It's not locked, but as long as you're in there after 9:00, you probably won't see anyone." "I need to go across the street to get some of my things, but if it's okay, I'd like to come back and sleep here for the next few nights so you're not alone." "Is that okay?" "These are for you." "Oh, and... my number is the only one programmed in there, so if you need anything ever, you just call me." "The phone can't text, so you'll have to talk." "You married?" "Kids?" "Me, too." "Tommy, the one that brought you out, he's my son." "If you let me, I will help you come back." "_" "You can." "I did." "But I am grateful for it." "And I don't need to know how it works." "I just need to know that the world... is in decay." "And I can feel your pain coming off you in hot, throbbing waves." "And I can take it." "I can take it from you." "_" "Who wants a hug?" "What time is it?" "It's almost midnight." "Go sleep in my bed." "I'm gonna go back over there, be with her." "You want me to make you a sandwich?" "No." "You find the next hive yet?" "Don't call them that." "Why?" "Because they're people, Tommy, not insects." "I know they're people." "I did hear of a house in Hackensack." "It's got almost 30 members." "You know, you just got to give yourself a few days, get yourself back." "Myself back?" "I'm worried about you." "They know your face now." "Maybe you should try something else." "They don't know shit." "Chapters are spread all over." "They don't talk to each other." "Jesus, they don't talk at all." "It only works from the inside." "It's the only way for me to get them to trust me." "The only way for me to get them to trust you." "Fuck Hackensack." "You go get 'em, kiddo." "You ever miss it?" " What?" " The quiet." "No." "What is that?" "Sorry?" "What are you writing?" "Oh, it's a book." "What's it about?" "It's about us." "There she is." "Dr. Ruth." "Hey, good morning, Viktor." " You got a light?" " I quit." "Really?" "Me, too." "Here, let me get this for you." "So how's the counseling business?" " So far so good." " Really?" "If you need anything else in the space," "I got a guy who can rent you out some furniture." "No, we're okay." "We're okay." "And, hey, I know..." "I know it's a little late, but I'll have the check for you on Friday, okay?" "Yeah, all right." "No problems." "That's great." "Yeah, uh, Laurie?" "It's gonna be an extra 200 here on out, okay?" "Why?" "Because this is a commercial building and you got people living there." "No, no, sometimes I work late." "Yeah, well, you know, these toilets, they can handle day poops, not night poops." "Okay, look..." "I'm writing a book." "It's going really well, but, you know, money's just a little tight right now." "Yeah, well, see if you can shake some loose." "Okay." "Are those bagels?" "Oh." "Everybody walks around like nothing happened." "They don't even think about it." "Like they just had it erased or something." "The stuff they care about just feels so stupid sometimes." "What do you care about?" "My family." "Was that a question?" "'Cause your voice kind of went up at the end." "Oh." "We were eating dinner, it was nice." "And then my husband said something, I said something back." "And while I'm talking I'm thinking," ""This is so fake." "You're in someone else's movie and you're just saying lines."" "I felt... outside." "Beats the fuck out of inside." "You are not welcome here." " How'd they find us?" " Doesn't matter." "They can't hurt you now." "They're cowards." "You leave." "_" "_" "_" "_" "And then after a while, he asked me if I wanted to come in." "What did you talk about?" "How Kyle was doing." "Glenn got him a tutor over the summer." "And then he asked me if I was coming home." "Sounds like you're surprised." "I didn't think he'd want me to." "But he does." "Maybe." "You don't believe him?" "He was just so nice." "I mean, I was just gone for almost two months and it was just like water under the bridge." "Because I know he's angry." "You don't know that." "Maybe he just wants you home." "Yeah, but he's angry, too." "Like you." "I'm not angry." "Okay." "Susan... your family doesn't want to hit you." "They want to forgive you." "This is Howard." "I told him it was safe here." "Hello, Howard." "I'm Laurie." "Would you like to join us?" "Resurrection?" "That's the claim from Australia as witnesses describe a man previously believed dead emerging from a cave in Wanneroo outside the city of Perth." "Walked out covered in mozzie bites, saying he'd just been in a hotel." "The man, identified as David Burton..." "I made you a grilled cheese." "Jill texted you." "You went through my phone?" "It was lying right there and it buzzed, and I couldn't help it." "You two are meeting tomorrow?" "Can I drive you?" "She's not ready yet, Mom." "If I wrote her a note, would you give it to her?" "Okay." "Can I drive you?" "I promise, she won't even see me." "It'll be like I'm not even there." "Okay." "What are you doing?" "Nothing." "There was a..." "It's nothing." "Jill's happy." " Did she take my letter?" " Yeah." "Yeah, she did." " What's going on?" " The door's padlocked." "They threw us out." "They put all the stuff in the hallway." " No." " Where am I gonna stay?" "It's okay." "We can meet at our apartment." "We'll figure this out, okay?" " Has anybody seen my laptop?" " Are you sure it was in there, Mom?" "Yes, Tom." "I was writing here this morning." "And this is everything?" "This was everything in the hallway?" "Mom, Mom, calm down." "My book was on it and I don't have a backup." "You didn't email it to yourself?" "That motherfucker took it." "I know I'm behind, but I can get you that money." "I just need to move some things around." "Okay, so as soon as you do, you can get your space back." " I need my laptop." " Your what?" "My laptop." "It was in the office." "It was on one of those cots." "The cots no one's sleeping on?" "Mm-hmm." "Viktor, look, I'm sorry." "My work, the people that I'm helping, they need..." "I..." "I shouldn't have lied to you." "And I will get you that money." "You can even have the laptop." "I just need one file off of it: my book." "I just..." "I can't write it again." "I just cannot start over." "If I give you your file back, that would be proof that I have your computer." " Is that your son?" " Mm-hmm." "Don't you want to go home tonight and tell him that you're a good man?" "That somebody asked for help and you gave it to them?" "My kid's an asshole." "And I don't have your laptop." "Mom!" "Mom!" "Mom!" "What the fuck?" "Hey!" "Hey!" "Who the fuck are you?" "What did you do in my house?" "Hey!" "What the fuck?" "_" "_" "Is your mattress soft?" "Sorry?" "Susan is used to sleeping on the floor and then a cot, so comfort takes some getting used to." "Oh." "Oh." "It's one of those foam memory ones, you know, that adapts to your contours." "Wow." "That's fancy." "Well, you might find Susan sleeping on the floor or on the couch, and if that happens," "I would just gently encourage her to come back to bed." "Yeah, I..." "I can do that." "What are you thinking?" "She gonna talk about it?" "Look, I don't want to say something that makes her leave again." "My husband, or my ex-husband Kevin, he thought that I left because of him, too." "Of course he did." "I couldn't tell him otherwise." "You didn't make her leave." "They did." "She's not gonna leave you again." "And she's not gonna go back to them." "Tell him." "I'm not." "Thank you." "Welcome home." "You want to follow me around, huh?" "!" "You want to stand outside my fucking house?" "!" "You want to say something to me, you little pussy?" "Talk!" "Fucking talk!" "_" "_" "_" "Shh, shh." "You don't have to do that." "You don't have to..." "Get the fuck off me!" "Hey, I didn't do..." "Get the fuck..." "Get off me!" "Motherfucker!" "Fuck you!" "Fuck you!" "Get..." "Listen, you don't have to..." "I didn't do anything." "Wait, what are you..." "what are you doing?" "You don't..." "Hey." "Wait." "Wait." "Get the fuck off me!" "Get off me!" "Fuck you!" "Get off me!" "Get off me!" "Hey..." "Fuck!" "Fuck!" "Please." "Please don't." "Tell your mom Meg says hello." "It's a great piece." "A special occasion?" "Oh, it's for a meeting." "With a publisher." "I wrote a book." "I mean, I just sent it to some places." "I wasn't holding my breath, you know?" "But then one called and wanted me to come in." "So that's got to be good, right?" "It's got to be." "Right, it's 849." "What's your return policy?" "Who's Meg?" " What?" " Who's Meg?" "What?" "Why aren't you at the New Rochelle house?" "Who is she, Mom?" "!" "S-she's a woman in... in Mapleton." "I..." "When I was on the inside, they had me recruit her." "I haven't really seen her since I got out." " You recruited her?" " Yeah." "Like you recruited me?" " Tommy, that's not..." " It's fucking useless, you know?" " What?" " The program!" "The meetings!" "What we're doing!" " It's not working, Mom." " Honey, tell me what happened." "What happened is I'm in there." "I'm in there with them." "But you forgot what it's like." "They make sense." " They know something." " No, that's it." "You're done." "You're done." "You are not going back in there." "And you don't need to." "They are going to publish my book, Tommy." "And when people read about what's going on in those houses, we will win." "We are going to beat them." "This is working." "Sweetie... this is working." " Good morning." " Morning." "Come on, what did he think I meant?" "The guy's got ignorance down to an art form." "Shit, I mean science." "Down to a science." "I mean, you can't be responsible for anything if you say you don't understand it." "You know?" "But you try and pin him down about it, then he just looks at you." "And he's like, "Well, why do you care so much anyway?"" "Then you're on the defensive just like that." "I don't know." "Just praying for the day that he gets transferred." "_" "Whole place would be better off." "Honey, you're in the wrong lane." "Whoa, hey!" "No, you can't." "" " Susan, it's the wrong lane!" "Susan, stop!" "It's the wrong lane." "Stop!" "Jesus Christ!" "Stop!" "_" "Hi, may I help you?" "Yes, I have an 11:00 appointment with Peter Benedetto." "It's Laurie Garvey." "Great." "Laurie's here." "Okay." "They'll be ready for you in just a few minutes." "You can have a seat right there." "Can I get you something to drink?" "Uh, no." "I'm great." "They love your book." " They do?" " Oh, yeah." "Big time." "Hi, it's Laurie." "I'm sorry, what?" "Uh, no." "I..." "I just..." "Can you..." "I need you to slow down and say that again." "Do you know if they're..." "Okay." "Okay, I'll try..." "Okay." "No, I..." "I'll call you back." "I'm..." "I'm so sorry." "I'm gonna have to..." "I just found out a friend of mine was in an accident." "Laurie." "Peter." "I'm not kidding, I've been waiting for this all week." "Ready to come on back?" " Sure." " Come on." "Come on." "Well, Laurie, I should tell you we almost never accept unsolicited material, but Kerry here is the queen of the slush pile and she came to me and she said," ""I think I may have just read the next 'What's Next.'"" "You know "What's Next," right?" "Patrick Johansen." "Oh, yes." "Of course." "Yeah, it was a huge book." "Inspirational." "People wanted to know how he was able to move on." "And you, you're coming at this from a completely different angle." "The whole cult thing from an insider's perspective." " I love it." " I'm so sorry." "Let me just put this on silent." "Hey, there's a great alt title." ""Let Me Just Put This On Silent."" "So listen, Laurie, as soon as we have a deal locked in," "I want you and Martin to sit down together." "He did "What's Next," "Departure 3.0."" "He's a great editor." "And he's got some terrific ideas." "Help you sharpen the edges." "Get some clarity to it." "Clarity?" "Um, yeah." "Like the smoking." "You never really explain why they make you smoke all the time." "Because it was never really explained to me." "Yeah, but they have a story, right?" "I don't understand." "A story." "A myth." "A rule book that says do this this way or else." "Like for instance, the Catholics believe that Christ died on the cross for our sins." "The Branch Davidians believe that God told David Koresh to fuck his own daughters." "This wing nut in Australia says that he went to the other side and he can't die." "We know what the Guilty Remnant does, but what do they believe?" "They believe the world ended." "Okay, all right." "All right, great." "So that's..." "You and Martin will work on that." "But the bigger issue is we've got to put some feeling into this thing." " Sorry?" " Feeling." "Emotion." "I mean, there's some heartbreaking stuff in here." "Um..." "The lighter." "The lighter." "From your daughter with the engraving "Please come home, Mom."" "It said "Don't forget me."" "Even better." "See, Laurie, that's what this book wants to be." "If you want people to connect with it, you have to tell them how it felt." "How what felt?" "The realization." "When you figured out that these people that you left your family for are fucking whack jobs." "Okay." "Oh, your daughter, um..." " Jill." " Jill, yes." "The fire." "My God, when I read that, I couldn't believe it." "But the fact-checkers said you were there." "And Jill, she was there because these people had you brainwashed, right?" "Then they got you to let your own daughter into the house so that you would burn together." "But then you break free." "And when you finally speak for the first time in, what was it, a year, you shout Jill's name to your husband, the same guy these people made you divorce." "And he goes running in." "I mean, she's in there because of you." "But you can't save her." "He's the one to save her because all you can do is stand there and watch." "And I know all of this, Laurie, because you put it in your book." "But what I don't know, Laurie, and what I need to know... is how you feel about it." "Garvey." "They like my book." "What she did, it wasn't our fault." "She was fucked up, Mom." "We tried." "They won't jump out of the way." " What?" " I don't want to hurt them, but they won't jump out of the way." "Mom, I know you're fucked up, but everyone's back at our place right now and they're all losing their shit." "So can you keep yours together?" "Why are we losing?" "Because they're giving them something." "We can strip it away, but once it's gone, we have nothing to put back in its place." "Well, let's give them something." "Therapists have a lot of rules." "Only one really matters:" "don't talk about yourself." "I spent the first weeks after the Departure just waiting." "I'm still waiting." "We all are." "I had a patient who said she could feel that something terrible was gonna happen." "And it did." "So the next time I saw her a few months later, she was wearing white, smoking a cigarette." "She knew I was afraid and confused and alone." "And the next thing I knew, I was screaming my daughter's name thinking that I had killed her." "Her name is Jill." "And I don't think she'll ever speak to me again." "But there is another story." "It's one that I've kept to myself because I had to to protect my son." "Tell them." "Tell them, Tommy." "They need you to." "Have you heard of Holy Wayne?" "Yeah." "He said he could take people's pain away." "I didn't believe him at first, but then I saw him do it." "He would just hug them and they'd be okay." "I don't know why," "I don't know why him, but I know it worked." "So I followed him wherever he went and I did whatever he asked of me." "And then they came to kill him." "We got away, but we had to split up." "He asked me to protect this girl, a pregnant girl." "She gave birth... and then she just left the baby." "Just abandoned it in a fucking rest stop bathroom." "The baby, she was crying and I didn't know what to do." "I was alone." "So I looked up at the ceiling and said, "Help."" "Not to God." "Not to anyone." "I just said it." "10 seconds later, there's a knock on the door." "It was Wayne." "I don't know how he found me." "Nobody knew where I was." "The baby stopped crying and... he told me where to take her." "She'd be safe." "And then he said he was gonna die." "Yeah." "I asked him when and he said tomorrow." "I asked him why he wasn't afraid." "And he said," ""I haven't been afraid in a real long time."" "Then he told me one more thing." "He said if I accepted it, that I could do what he did." "I could take people's pain away." "But there'd be a price." "There's always a price, though." "But I wanted it anyway." "I wanted to do what he could do." "I wanted to be... something." "So I said yes." "And he wrapped his arms around me and I felt everything I was, everything I ever would be." "And I felt it get born and die over and over again." "And then he let go." "I'm sorry." "I'm so sorry." "I've been afraid to use it." "Been afraid of what it was." "Of what it would become." "But I can't let you hurt anymore." "I can't be afraid anymore." "So... who wants a hug?"