Journal entry from Wednesday, August 10, 2011

8:00 a.m., Shadow Oaks Hospital

"Good morning!"

A woman's voice jolts me awake. Opening my eyes, I find a young Filipino nurse hovering over a sleeping Rob.

Her greeting interrupts his snoring. With a snort, he opens his eyes, blinks at the harsh fluorescent lights, and tries to raise his head. But the movement causes him to contort his face in pain, and he sinks onto the pillow.

My heart hurts over my beloved's agony. As I rise from the chair next to his bed, I'm pricked by the reminder that Rob's hospitalization is my fault.

I reach to take his hand. The nurse flashes me a smile, then presses a button on the bed. With a creaking sound, the upper part of the bed rises until Rob's sitting upright.

As the nurse takes his vitals, I retreat to the bathroom behind the hospital chair. When I flick on the light switch and lock the door, the mechanized beeps fade. In silence, I look in the mirror. Deep creases run horizontally across my forehead, and the marionette lines by my mouth stretch from nose to chin. Overnight, I've aged decades.

After taking care of business, I exit the bathroom to find Rob sleeping. During the intervening minutes, the nurse lowered his bed and exited the room. Instead of returning to the chair, I sit on the bed, and then lay down to snuggle next to my darling. Between the fall off Stoner's Jump and spending the night by his bedside, my muscles scream with stiffness and my bones ache.

A heavy weariness settles over my body, and my eyelids drift shut. The hazy dreaminess brings last night's memories into focus.

Susan Atkins floats atop the Jump, her cancer-riddled body forever frozen in death. Gale-force winds fail to flutter her hospital gown. Moonlight illuminates the few remaining gray strands of hair, laying limp against her skull.

Suddenly, the scene shifts and it's sunny atop Stoner's Jump. The crone disappears, and in her place, is teenage Susan. Her lithe body is dressed in cut-off jeans and a crop top. A light breeze blows her long, dark hair in wisps around her pretty face. Dark eyebrows hover above intense eyes. Her nose is aquiline, her skin flawless.

Susan's return to youthfulness makes me glance at my hands, but they're unchanged, veiny and aged.

A queasy uneasiness grips my gut as Susan's delicate mouth spreads into a smile. She throws her arms around me and pulls me in for a hug. The musky scent of Patchouli tickles my nose. "Now that you're part of the Family, no one's ever gonna hurt you again."

The breath catches in my throat, and I push against her chest. Although we're the only two people at Stoner's Jump, I hear my Guru's words as clear as if she's standing by my side. "Creator resides in all living things. Everyone deserves grace."

My Guru's instructions cause me to scan Susan's face. I search her delicate features, hoping to catch a glimpse of the divine spark lurking within. Although her smile and manner are friendly and loving, her eyes are dead. Her divine nature is buried deep within, hidden under the weight of her slavish devotion to Charles Manson.

Fear surges up my spine, but I grab her hands. "It's not too late. Run away with me! We'll go someplace safe where Charlie can't find us."

As the words tumble out of my mouth, Susan's face shrivels into a death mask. She locks eyes with me and her jaws open. Her lower lip stretches beyond her chin, and her upper lip opens to her forehead. A cacophony of screams flow from her unnaturally wide mouth. With the wailing, hopelessness seizes my heart.

Susan's raspy voice cuts through the screams. "You're too late."

Too late to save Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent. Too late to save Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.

As a man's rough hand reaches through the memory to squeeze my shoulder, a dark realization surfaces. Too late to save Robert.

My eyes fly open and are stung by bright fluorescent lights. I gulp air and inhale the sharp antiseptic smell of the hospital room. Rob is awake and propped up on his elbows. As he turns his face to me, I notice a stranger standing in the doorway.

Pushing myself to a seated position, I slide off the bed to greet a man whom I assume is a physician. He's short, heavy-set, and forty-something, wearing a white-collared shirt, striped tie, and tan slacks. He's balding and his features are unremarkable. As he thrusts out his right hand to shake mine, I catch the stench of cigarettes.

The man engulfs my hand in his. "I'm Detective Parker." He releases my hand and turns to shake Rob's. "The nurse says it's okay to talk to you two about last night."

My eyes find Rob's as Detective Parker turns away from me and walks toward the chair I'd been sitting in. When Parker's back is to us, Rob raises a finger to his lips. Then he pushes a button to raise the bed to a seventy-five-degree angle. Instinctively, I walk to sit on the bed so I'm between the detective and Rob.

As Rob rises to a seated position, Detective Parker plops into the chair next to the bed. With a sigh, he rests his forearms on his thighs and retrieves his cell phone from his shirt pocket. Then he taps on the phone. As he hands it to me, he leans back in the hospital chair and watches for my reaction.

I lean against Rob, and we stare at the on-screen photo. It's an aerial of portal hill at sunrise in the Chatsworth Reservoir. A humanoid shape lays in the center of the stone circle.

Keeping my face an expressionless mask, I reach to hand the phone back to the detective, but Parker raises his hand. "Swipe left. There's two more photos you need to see."

With a sigh, I do as he asks and study the second photo. It's a closeup of what I assume is a dead body, but it's shriveled to the point where dry parchment skin wraps around bone.

Rob shows no outward reaction, but I suck in air through my teeth.

Parker notices and nods. "It's like someone sucked that DB dry. The muscles," he pauses to make a thwup sound with his tongue, like he's slurping soup.

His disgusting noises turn my stomach, but I refuse to react. Instead, I swipe the photo of the desiccated body to study the third and final photo. It's a closeup of the dead body's right fist. Although the rest of the body is shriveled and shrunk, the right fist is unscathed, but for a red mark slashed across the back of the hand.

The red sigil snatches the breath from my throat. Without thinking, I toss the phone to the detective, then shrink backward next to Rob. A distinctive memory surfaces from the night the Manson followers attacked Amber and her friends at the Grotto.

One of the women tries to punch Amber, but she grabs her fist and forces her attacker to her knees. The woman screams, "It burns!"

From the chair next to me, Detective Parker clears his throat. "Our helicopter unit found the body just after dawn this morning. Someone called 9-1-1 at sunrise to report smoke out in the reservoir."

He pauses to rise from the chair and turns toward the window. He jabs a meaty finger in the direction of the Simi Hills. "Because you two live in Chatsworth, I'm assuming you know about the Manson cult."

My back stiffens at Parker's reference to my former "family," and I break out in a clammy sweat. I've been so worried about "Mr. Baccharis" being outed as Robert Franklin; I never considered the possibility that my sordid past would become known. But Susan swore she'd make me suffer for abandoning the "family." Did one of them out me to the LAPD?

A deep sigh escapes my lips as I remember Amber's horrified reaction when she learned about my secret. Heaviness settles over my shoulders with the realization that my escape from the Manson cult won't matter. If the community finds out about my secret, they'll run me out of town.

Rob's voice lifts me out of my mental spiral. I blink hard and force myself to be present as he speaks to Parker.

"You think Manson had something to do with this?" Rob gives me a little nudge with his shoulder.

Detective Parker grunts, turns away from the window, and retrieves a small notepad from his pants pocket. As he sits, he opens the notepad and reads. "Rose O'Donnell told us she called you last night." He raises his eyes, and they flick between me and Rob. "Not for nothing, but you two aren't spring chickens. Instead of waiting for LAPD, you went to Stoner's Jump. Either you're out of your minds, or you know something."

My heart's pounding, but I press my lips together and deliberately slow my breathing. To my surprise, Rob erupts in a deep chuckle.

"I may have one foot in the grave, but I'm not dead! We're quite fond of Seth and Luis. When we learned they'd been kidnapped, we had to help."

Parker's eyes narrow as he listens to Rob's explanation. As his nose scrunches, I know he's skeptical.

I should keep my mouth shut, but I chime in, "You know as well as we do that the Simi Hills are a jurisdictional nightmare because they straddle two counties. No offense, but we couldn't wait for law enforcement to sort out whether Ventura County or LA County would respond." My hands are clenched into fists, so I release them, take a deep breath, and lean toward Detective Parker. "In hindsight, you're right. We acted impulsively. But at the time, we only thought about rescuing the boys."

As the detective considers what I've said, the machinery attached to Rob beeps with the inflation of the blood pressure cuff attached to his right arm. Then Parker lowers his head to read from the paper again. "Seth Lobata and Luis Garcia told us they'd been kidnapped by Manson followers. Apparently, they planned to sacrifice Luis Garcia."

As the detective looks up, Rob adopts a surprised look. "What a bunch of sickos. When Betty and I reached Stoner's Jump, we saw two men about to throw Luis off the cliff. We were going to stop them, but the helicopter crash took care of that."

Parker's mouth scrunches into a frown. He rises from the chair to tap the notepad on the bed frame. "I thought we were finished with those fuckers after Charlie and his cult were locked up."

Then the detective reaches into his suit pocket to retrieve a business card. As I stand to accept his contact information, Parker says, "If you remember anything else from last night, please call me. We need to nip this witchy shit in the bud before anyone else gets killed."

I nod and close my hands around Parker's fist to give him what I hope is a reassuring squeeze, then release him to take his card.

With a nod to us, Parker exits the room. I follow him to the doorway and watch as he walks the hallway and away from us.

When the detective rounds the corner towards the elevators, I turn toward the hospital bed. Rob presses a button to raise himself to a ninety-degree angle. As he releases the controls, I sit on the bed and grasp his hands.

Rob's brow furrows with worry. Then he gives voice to the unease gripping my stomach. "I'd hoped all of Manson's followers were killed last night in the explosion, and that would be the end of it."

A sick feeling bubbles in my chest and I squeeze his hands. "The woman in the photos is the one Amber burned during the confrontation at the Grotto."

His stark blue eyes meet mine. "Anyone who survived last night is in the hospital, so who murdered her?"

My spine erupts in a painful tingling. "If Luis was supposed to be a sacrifice, and they botched it, then the murder at portal hill became the sacrifice. But Charlie's very protective of his girls. He wouldn't want his followers to sacrifice one of them."

As I try to make sense of the murder at the portal, my cell phone erupts in ringing. Rising from the bed, I walk to the closet and retrieve my backpack.

The caller is Rose O'Donnell. Her weary voice drifts into my ear.

"We need to talk."

I turn to Rob and respond. "I'm at the hospital. You'll have to come here."

As I end the call, my phone pings with a text message. It's from Amber.

The Salvia brothers are in danger. I'm grounded, so you have to help them.