Dark Circles: A Novel

Hello listeners! I’m your host, Olivia Reed. Some of you may know me from binge-watching classic TV on Netflix, but what you maybe don’t know about me is that I am a Total. True crime. Addict. Like all of you! I’d like to welcome you to the series premiere of my new podcast. It’s going to be a wild ride, I promise.

But. What I can’t promise is an ending. That’s because we’ll be getting to the bottom of this mystery in real time, as the case unfolds. I’ve been living in the small Finger Lakes community where these strange events have been happening, and as I record this first episode, out here in the middle of nowhere, I honestly have no idea where the story is going to take us.

But here are a couple of things I can tell you. I can tell you that young women living here on Seneca Lake have been dying, and they’ve been dying in pretty bizarre and untimely ways. I can tell you that these deaths take place on specific dates that link them together. I can tell you that the deaths seem to be connected to a small community of spiritual practitioners who work here on the shores of the lake, in the heart of New York wine country.

And I can tell you that I, through a series of strange coincidences, have found myself in the middle of this odd community. I’ll be telling you what happens as it happens, or as close to that as I can, given my circumstances. Which I will also explain.

I want to be clear: I’m not a journalist (even though I did play one, briefly—true fans will remember). Occasionally, I’ll be speculating about what’s going on, and sometimes I’m just straight up spitballing. But I think there’s value in releasing episodes of this podcast even before we know the full details of what’s going on. And here’s why:

Because I think that without outsiders looking in on this secretive organization, people are going to keep dying.

Because I think that people who hear this podcast may come forward with more information, as has happened with other true crime podcasts.

And because I think that you, all you listeners, can solve a crime that up until now, no one even thought was a crime.

Here’s what we know so far:

Four young women are dead. The first died in March of 2015, and the most recent died just last week. All of these deaths have taken place within twenty miles of each other, and three have occurred near the same short stretch of highway that runs along the east coast of Seneca Lake. Two of these deaths have been labeled as suicides, and two as accidental deaths. All four have taken place on the date of a seasonal solstice or equinox. And all of them seem to have been connected through the same small constellation of people.

I’ll be walking you through the details of these cases, and trying to get to the bottom of what happened with each of these young women. And, ultimately, I’ll be trying to make sure that we find justice for all of them. Hopefully, along the way we’ll also talk a little about why this story is important, and its place in the larger context of stories about violence, particularly violence against women. I’ll need your help, but I know you’re ready to give it.

Once again, I’m Liv Reed, and this is Vultures.

CHAPTER 1

The thing my goddamn manager doesn’t understand is that I don’t need to go on a retreat. Exhaustion, she keeps saying to me, whining on the phone like I’m a three-year-old who needs to go down for a nap. I’m not a stubborn toddler, I’m a grown-ass human who knows what she needs.

The problem, as everyone keeps informing me, is my IMAGE. Apparently, it’s acceptable to be a fragile starveling with dark circles under her eyes—but it’s not okay to lie down in the middle of Mercer Street after a friend’s vernissage and later have a well-documented meltdown in front of your ex’s apartment. A thin line, apparently, between glamorous self-destruction and mental illness. The latter, I am told, is what currently plagues me. Not that I’m necessarily sick, Jessica is quick to say, but my image, how people see me, is of someone who’s not entirely well. I’ve gone from being cutely disastrous to acutely unhinged. Not a good look, everyone says. I find it hard to care. But then, that’s what the Team is for.

It takes them forty-eight hours to convince me to go on the retreat. I spend the entirety of these two days and nights in my SoHo loft, trying (unsuccessfully) to wean myself off the medications that have been part of the daily fabric of my psyche for nearly five years. The drugs are a symptom, not the problem, Jessica keeps saying, in measured tones, when she calls me every six to eight hours. We just have to focus on getting you well—then everything will fall into place. Everything. The Movie isn’t totally off the table. It’s still a possibility—IF you get well.

—

The retreat they want to send me to sounds ridiculous. I mean, every spiritual retreat does. Center yourself, rid yourself of toxins (what even are toxins?), find your secret self buried under all that ego dirt, center your intentions, center your body, heal your spindly, malnourished spirit. FIND PEACE. Who the fuck wants peace???

I am told that exhaustion is a common affliction for people like me, people with a Team, and there are great programs to help Us through these dark days. Lena Dunham’s manager sent me a DM on Instagram to say just that. I’m sure Jessica called in a favor there.

But here I am, packing a small suitcase, Jessica standing nearby, not quite supervising but not not supervising, either. She’s explained about what I can bring to the retreat and what I can’t—her vigilance is an extension of her desire to control me, control my whole life, to feel my entire soggy, tender self at her mercy. It’s why she takes good care of me, and why I am utterly under her thumb. We are each other’s lives. I’ve gone beyond resenting her here, in my apartment (the apartment she found for me, secured for me, rents for me), and I float about, thinking of her almost as a piece of the furniture. This is not something I like about myself. She clicks her well-groomed peach-colored claws on my mahogany coffee table, no doubt remembering all the times she has had to Do What’s Best for me. And done it well. Done it the way I never seem to manage. My own sweet little succubus.

The retreat is not one of the famous ones. It’s not in Malibu, or Hawaii, or even in Thailand, which is where I frankly hoped I was going to end up. (Southeast Asia bucket list, amirite?) The price tag for treatment at this one is cheaper, and it’s lower-profile, which suits my needs perfectly, I’m told. But I guess there are other reasons for choosing the House of Light. For starters, it is NOT, technically, rehab. It is a well-respected Spiritual Center, a site for those seeking realignment and personal growth. It is a place of yoga and morning meditation and soft bamboo-blend fabrics where we all will hold hands and snuggle our crystals and…I guess wake up with the sun?

Because it is not rehab, the focus is not on substance abuse. I think this is why Jessica likes it best, since I will be spending time there for rest and relaxation, not to dry out. I’m there for sun salutations and quinoa! She has even called the director who passed on a project I pitched, who will say, if the press asks, that I’m working on a film with him, a story about a clean-living hippie out in the sticks working on her daily asanas as she finds her way toward harmony after the tragic death of her daughter.

—

I’m not entirely sure what to pack for a spiritual retreat, but it’s while looking at my closet that I decide I might actually go through with this. Who could I be, in loose palazzo pants as I wake at dawn? Some glowing healthy goddess in a robe, hair tousled and skin flushed? No longer the girl in tight sequined gowns or carefully androgynous pantsuits that cost eight thousand dollars, sloshing out of limos and beckoning for bottle service. Healthy, aware, wholesome, the poster girl for Goop. And what would Ryan think of her, that glowing creature? Maybe he would want her?

Jessica is there the whole time, my observant shadow self. She fingers the kimono I pack and restlessly refolds it, undoing my clumsy work. I balk when she removes an elegant, fluttery dress from the bag and clucks at me, pointing out my frivolity.

This is stupid, I counter petulantly. Why can’t I just get centered here, in my own house?

Go, she says. Don’t you think you need to break the cycle? That there’s more for you out there?

But what if I’m totally isolated? I whine.

"Then you’re totally isolated. And cut off, and alone, in a brand-new place where you have no choice but to find another piece of yourself. Do you want to just keep doing this, forever?"

No, of course not, I say, meaning it. But also, meaning the opposite. Meaning that maybe I do, that maybe this exact thing that I have done for more than a decade is the thing that I do best, the thing I’m meant to do. Maybe I don’t have a higher plane, or a better self, or a more sophisticated artist inside me. Maybe I am just the ingénue, the young star of a successful but ultimately unimportant TV show, the pretty, damaged creature whose face you might recognize in a magazine, but maybe not in a restaurant. Maybe that’s it for me.

Maybe I am exhausted, I admit to Jessica.

Maybe you are. And maybe you just need some time away from yourself.

I’ve made a career out of this pursuit, getting away from myself. But when she says it, luggage waiting itchily at her side, I think, God. Yes. What a thought. And maybe time away from you.

—

I’ve texted Ryan a few times since the disaster of last week, but he never responds. I’ve deleted our conversation thread, so I have no record of what I might have said before, and this worries me immensely, like a hot, throbbing zit waiting to erupt that I stroke compulsively every time I think things will be okay. But if I get help, we can mend our fences. Hadn’t he said that, at some point? That I need help?

—

Jess takes away my phone but lets me take Richard in the car, though I know that he can’t come with me to the House of Light. Already I am abbreviating it, HOL, the hole where I will go to disappear. She knows better than to try to separate me from my dog now, when I still have a foot in my own house, in my life. She has spent years managing me, in all senses of the word. She knows when to push and when to let me collapse, willingly, into leather seats while someone else drives me, taking me somewhere I’m not sure I want to go. She thinks she knows me. So does everyone, I guess; they’ve seen my dappled thighs and the puff of a vacation paunch and my unmade face after a long night as I trudge into daylight for my coconut water. Celebrity.

My anti-anxiety meds wear off somewhere on Route 17, and I become, frankly, unmanageable. Maybe Jess does know me better than I know myself. She knows, even, that I have kept my iPad, and that I have been secretly texting Ryan, everyone I can think of, from a diner off the highway, panicked and already regretting my complacence.

No one will respond.

I try to muster rage at this silence, and it is my inability to do so that makes me suspect that I have been out of control, that maybe all of them are right to treat me to this radio silence. Have I done something unforgivable? I don’t remember exactly what I’ve done and said in the last week, and what I do recall is worrying. I vaguely remember the press circling, waiting for me to go down like a wounded wildebeest. Jessica had spoken in hushed whispers about a photo in Us Weekly that she thinks I haven’t seen. I’ve seen it, though.

I think a little time away from everyone will clear everything up, Jess says. He’ll forgive you. Everyone will. Maybe you should even call your dad, when you’re done? He did call from London, and I know he’s worried.

I can’t believe she’s bringing him up right now. She knows she’s got me, vicious little spider. She reaches over and squeezes my hand, and I lie down on the leather seat, snuggling my face into her thigh. Her fingers work through my hair and rub arcane circles across my scalp, stroke the tense muscles of my neck. Her thumb finds that spot at the back of my skull, and she breathes with me. I am soothed.

I settle into Jess’s lap, and into the next few weeks at this godforsaken retreat in the middle of nowhere. I mean, who doesn’t need to be more centered?

…

It’s dark when the driver pulls onto the gravel that leads us down toward the retreat. Jessica has told me that there is a lake, somewhere in the swampy darkness below, but there isn’t a single light, there are scarcely any stars, and the lake is just an empty maw of black beyond the outline of some trees. I’m not sure I have ever been anywhere so without light—it is the opposite of New York, and it honestly gives me the heebie-jeebies. (This phrase is something my character on the show, Mina, said often, and the thought of her temporarily bolsters my courage. I miss her. I miss feeling like I could saunter into any situation—meth dealers, sinister grandfathers, cemeteries where the dead are raised—without a second thought.)

Even the building we park in front of is completely dark.

Liv, this is it, Jessica says softly, touching my shoulder. I napped for an emotionally wiped-out thirty minutes after my meltdown, and I have been feigning sleep ever since, unable to face conversation.

I’m awake, I say. Mmph. Richard stirs in my arms, and I clutch him closer. The thought of walking into that building without him makes my pulse spike, and I press my mouth close to the top of his little French bulldog head, with his own Richardy smells. I kiss him there, clasping him fiercely. Oh, my baby, I say, my throat thick.

I know this is hard, but it’s just for a few weeks. I’ll take such good care of him, you know I will.

You won’t foist him off on the fucking dog walker? Like you did that time I had to film in Spain? I have never forgiven Jessica for this betrayal, and it comes up whenever I need the higher ground, in any argument. The long list of personal grudges we share—mine spoken, Jessica’s silent but ever-cataloged. He had gotten kennel cough, and it was one of the few times I’ve seen Jess genuinely remorseful.

Of course not. He’s going to stay with me, I’m going to walk him every day, he’ll sleep in my bed—

And Ryan? You’ll get Ryan to come and take him to the park? He hates going to the groomer without him, and I know how much Richard misses him—don’t you, baby? I nuzzle the top of his head again, and Richard sleepily licks my cheek.

Yep, I will be in touch with Ryan, and I’ll let him know how you’re doing. I know he’ll want to know.

This seems optimistic to me, given his deafening silence, but whatever.

Bye, buddy, I say, and deposit Richard in his snuggly travel bag on the seat beside me. I scoot out of the car before I can change my mind.

The driver has brought my bag to the front door, and I pick my way very carefully up a stony path that is sort of illuminated by the vague glitter of solar-powered lights. The wattage is probably about ten percent of my iPhone and really isn’t getting the job done. But hooray for alternative fuel sources.

Jessica taps at her phone, a frown between her eyebrows. I don’t understand—they were expecting us. Why is it so dark?

And why is the door locked? I ask, jiggling the handle. I peer through the glass, trying to get a sense of what lies beyond it. Seeing a flash of movement, I squint closer. I jump back when a pale face looms in front of my own.

Jesus, I say involuntarily. A hand unlocks the door and pulls it open.

Namaste, a voice half-whispers. Oh boy. Jessica? Yes, of course. We expected you earlier. Please come in.

I give Jess some unsubtle side-eye and follow her through the door. Our greeter has got on some kind of flaxen robe of indeterminate shape and color.

Pretty dark, I say flatly.

Yes, we have an electricity curfew here at the House of Light. The lights go off about an hour after sunset, and come back on at dawn. It encourages everyone to live with their natural rhythms.

Hmm, I say. Neat.

Your room is ready, and I think we’ve already completed all the intake forms. The payment was, I believe, verified this afternoon? the woman says. Jessica coughs delicately. We have not discussed how much this little mental health vacation will be costing me.

Yes, everything was confirmed earlier. Is there anything else you need from me?

What, you don’t want to stick around for morning yoga, Jess? A nice cup of matcha? I ask.

We don’t allow outside visitors for the first fourteen days of the retreat, the woman intones. Not familiar with sarcasm, I guess.

I’ve got to get Richard back home, Jessica says swiftly. Liv, you’re sure you’re okay? You’re ready for this?

Little late for that. But I’m good. Take care of Richard. I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow?

Um, Jessica says. She’s still holding my phone. The robed woman holds her hand out for it, and Jessica gives it over, not looking at me.

You will have phone privileges after a few days of practice, the woman explains. We’ll go over all of this during your first morning intention session.

I raise my eyebrows.

That didn’t come up during the hard sell, did it, Jess? I ask. She shrugs, meeting my eyes with a smidge of sauciness. Right.

If you’re ready, I will show you to your private space, Humorless Acolyte prompts.

I shrug. Okay, no time like the present.

We really like that sort of positivity. Presence is our goal, after all, the woman says. I imagine she is now smiling. This is not something I’m excited to witness in broad daylight.

Good luck, Olivia. I’m rooting for you. And I’ve got everything covered, Jess says.

You’ll try to line up the movie? I needle one last time.

Of course. Love you, babe. I’ll be thinking of you. With a squeeze of the hand, she leans in toward me. I snap my teeth near her ear as though I’m about to bite her, and she swats me playfully away. You’ll be fine.

Hrmph, I mumble as I’m led off.

The woman in the flowing garments heads off down a narrow hallway. I start to follow her without my bag, and she pauses pointedly to look at it before I realize she wants me to fetch it. I haven’t carried my own suitcase in a while, and I’m startled into feeling a vague sense of embarrassment at her unspoken calling out of my privilege. I do so love a silent holier-than-thou. I shoulder my bag and follow her, clumsily, through the dark.

Flashlights are forbidden, too? I attempt feebly the second time I trip over a slight step.

We find the dark heightens some of the sense work we do. The first time you have a session in the Chamber, you’ll understand. I can hear another smile in her voice.

Um, Chamber?

Don’t worry. It’s very relaxing.

Yeah, sounds like it. Mhmm.

Finally, she pauses in front of a door and unlocks it with a key she has produced, silently, from one of the pockets of her rough-hewn garb.

This is you. We’ve put you here, in Chiron. Your assistant insisted on lake views, even though I told her all but two rooms look out on the water.

My manager.

What’s that?

She’s my manager. Not my assistant.

Oh. Well. I think you’ll really appreciate our non-hierarchical structure here. It will feel like a relief. Oh God. I’ll leave you to settle yourself in. I just need to collect your other devices.

I thought…this wasn’t, like, rehab.

She chuckles. It isn’t. But we still require something like a ‘detox’ at the beginning. Your mind needs time to get quiet, expand on its own. We stick to traditional media for the first week. No technology.

I sigh. Fuck you, Jessica.

It’s not connected to the internet, I lie. I just use it to read. You know, in the dark? When I can’t sleep? I assume that my eloquent glance around the pitch-black room is lost on her.

We feel the nighttime hours are for reflection, for going inside yourself rather than looking for answers outside. You’ll have plenty of time in the day to read whatever you like. I’ll just grab your iPad and leave you to settle in.

I grit my teeth and fish it from my bag, not very graciously.

It’s late now—you should get to bed. We start very early. She backs out of the room and closes the door. I hear a lock being flicked. When I reach out for the handle, I confirm that I am, indeed, locked in.

This place better not fucking burn down in the night, I mumble bitterly to myself. I strip naked, flinging my clothes across this room whose dimensions I can only guess at. It’s too much work to go hunting for my La Perla slip, so I fumble through the dark until I smack my shin into what feels like a bed. I crawl in, tugging the blankets over my torso, tucking them under my armpits so that I feel cocooned. The thread count seems to be surprisingly high. Lying in the dark, my mind racing, I think:

Who the fuck are these people?

CHAPTER 2

An otherworldly procession of chimes jolts me out of the sleep I have just settled into. Having spent the night thrashing, I’d managed to doze off just before dawn. Which, upon cracking my crusty eyelids, I perceive that it now is. The sun is barely up, and in the pauses between the clatter of the chimes (and was that a gong?) I hear birdsong.

And the sight from my bed is spectacular. I sit up, too startled and impressed by what I see to feel bitter about the early wake-up. The western wall of my room is floor-to-ceiling glass, and it looks out on a glistening stretch of lake. A small balcony offers a perch on which to gaze out at this scene, and a cliff drops off just beyond its lip, plunging all the way to the shoreline. My first thought is about how I can get down to the beach.

Shit. Maybe this won’t be so bad.

I’m tired, and yearn vaguely for an Adderall, but a cup of coffee will probably be enough to get me upright and functional. I slide out of bed, naked, and crouch down to where I tossed my suitcase last night. If I were in the city, I would be worried about someone seeing my stripped self—a stalker across the street from my loft, paparazzi angling for a shot of my nipples to sell to the glossies, breasts pixelated to suggest but not display the color of my areolae. But it’s pretty evident that none of that is a risk here.

Digging through my things, I reflect on how unlike my mornings in the city any of this is. I hear birds instead of sirens, see water instead of brick, mist off the lake instead of fumes from the subway manhole. Nothing honks. And best of all: not one human in sight.

I select a silk tunic that I sometimes wear when I have a messy house party at my apartment—it’s the sort of item in which you can greet other people but also comfortably pass out after too many martinis and not enough canapés. Perfect for that rehab life. Or retreat life. Or whatever.

My door is still locked. I quickly put on my face. Rehab casual is what I’m shooting for, dewy-faced and clean, just a swipe of mascara, some highlighter on my cheeks, spot cover-up for hyperpigmentation on my chin, a lip that is somewhere between nude and berry. I look around, but there are no mirrors anywhere, so I complete the whole operation in the slender rectangle of my Guerlain compact. Bastards can’t take that away from me! I slide open the screen door onto my balcony.

It is exquisite. The birds are louder, and I smell pine and dirt. And maybe woodsmoke? I realize that I haven’t been out in the country for years. Iroquois Falls was supposedly set in the country, but almost all of it was filmed on set, except for the occasional shoot in some godforsaken corner of Northern California where they could get some shots of us against real trees. The waterfall scene at the end of the first season (after Mina has sleuthed and scrapped and figured out the show’s first big reveal) was done against a green screen.

Holy shit, are we going to, like, make s’mores and learn to light a fire? Maybe that’s more wilderness camp than retreat, but fuck, how many group circles can you cram into a day? I should have brought hiking boots. I can get Jessica to send me some, maybe those adorable Italian ones I bought but never wore. I’ve never needed them before. We picked them up during the summer trip after season three wrapped; she had made me leave L.A., get away from my dad and my work. Ryan and I had decided to take a break, and I was sulking, bored. It’ll be fun, she said. She wasn’t wrong—she almost never is. We had cavorted up and down the Italian coast, just the two of us, eating more pasta than I could justify, Jess getting a wicked sunburn she blamed me for. I’d come home nut-brown, four pounds heavier—and in a better mood than I’d been in for a while. Years of Jess getting things right, of knowing me just so: that’s the reason I’m here, of course.

I breathe in the air for a couple minutes, taking in the nature. I find, though, that this provides limited entertainment. I’m tempted to try to hop off my balcony to walk along the edge of the drop-off, but this seems a bit reckless. At least for the first day. I’ll save my rebellions for when I really need them. One of the first things an actor learns.

At a loss for how I’m meant to spend my time, I do a halfhearted sun salutation, then another. I feel very wholesome. Basically cured. Starting to notice the preliminary flutterings of anxiety, I check my door again.

This time, it opens.

—

Padding in my socked feet down the pine hallway, I almost give in to the temptation to tiptoe. I feel like I’ve snuck out, like I’m creeping through the building. I don’t hear any other voices or see any other people—just a stretch of other doors, all on my right. I pause in front of one and consider trying to open it, but what if someone is on the other side? I listen for human stirrings within, but I hear nothing.

When I run out of hallway, I’m forced to choose between two doors. I think I can hear voices on my right, so I try that door first. It doesn’t open. I go left.

The office I find myself in is painted white, like everything else I’ve seen here at the retreat. A rough wood table serves as a desk, and it is almost criminally clean. Plants are tastefully scattered throughout the room. Overall, the impression is one of order, extreme tidiness. Jess would love it.

I want to snoop, but there are no crannies in which to poke about, no drawers to rifle through. Everything is on display, subject to scrutiny; if anything’s hidden, it’s hidden in plain sight. I walk over to the window and look out.

I can see the southern tip of the lake from the office, but the real view is centered on the grapevines stretching out across the field. It’s quite lovely, really, even without the sprawl of water visible from my room. Not bad real estate they’ve got here.

Olivia, you’re late, someone says behind me, and I turn around, startled.

Um… I say. Is there some kind of plan I’m not aware of?

Of course there is. I assume that’s why you’re here, after all. The woman speaking to me isn’t the same as the one who let me in last night. This new woman is tall, rail-thin, of indeterminate age. Also, she has no hair, or practically none—her head is monastically close-cropped. A bold look, to be sure—not everyone has the bone structure for the Soviet prison ’do. God knows I wouldn’t let anyone write it into a contract for me. She smiles at me, as though amused by my confusion.

And you are? I ask as haughtily as I can manage, given that I’m wearing pajamas and don’t have any real idea where the fuck I am or what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m Rain. I’m your link with the Light while you’re here, making sure you get all the support you need to help you with your Process. She sidles over to her desk, and I notice that she isn’t wearing any shoes. With each step, I can see the soles of her feet, so dirty they’re almost black. Pedicure, babe. Her gait is springy, younger than her face.

You’re my camp counselor.

She grins at me and shrugs. I like to think I’m more of a…guide. Someone who can help you find the resources to begin your journey.

Oh, I’m definitely ready to manifest some positive intentions. Really lean into my intuition, I say. I lived in L.A. for more than five years, so this is not exactly my first New Age rodeo.

Rain looks at me, cocks her head. There’s a long pause before she speaks.

I’m glad you see it that way. Still, I expect there will be…aspects of your practice that are more challenging than others, and my task is to make sure you have everything you need to succeed. How are you finding the space so far? Rain asks. Are you comfortable?

Slept like the dead. I noticed, though, that there aren’t any mirrors in my room?

Did that make you uncomfortable?

It’s just a bit odd, really. I’m sure my hair is a complete wreck.

Do you want me to disagree with you? Tell you that you look beautiful?

Ah, I see what we’re doing.

Sort of an obvious place to start, don’t you think? Suggesting to an actor that they’re maybe hung up on looks? I ask pointedly.

"I didn’t start there. You did."

I sigh. Right. My bad. Yes, the rooms are lovely, the view is great, I can’t wait to spend all my free time doing yoga on the deck.

Another long pause.

You’re already familiar with yoga, I take it? Rain asks.

Is there anyone left in the Western world who isn’t?

Or Eastern, for that matter, she points out, with a coy smile. She has dark, intense brown eyes, and her skin has the ageless quality of someone in their fifties or sixties who has worn a lot of sunscreen. Her cheekbones are pretty stellar, in fact. She continues: In any case, I’m happy to hear that. We’ve found that people who are already grounded in bodywork have an easier time developing a holistic strategy for their own individual practice. Given your unique…background, I thought we might want to start our work with the physical self in order to reach the spiritual.

Work? Practice? I thought this was a retreat.

Rain laughs. "Many people come here with the wrong impression, that this place is merely a holiday, a time to escape the demands of a modern life that has grown toxic and soulless and full of pain. They want to retreat. But the House of Light isn’t that. It isn’t that at all."

You might want to change the name of the program then, I suggest. Given the connotation of ‘retreat.’

Let’s do just that, Rain suggests heartily. Why don’t we call it instead a…return.

Return? To what?

To the knowledge that you already possess. To a sustainable way of life that you have either forgotten or moved away from. A return to the self you have lost.

I have a lot of selves. Professional hazard, I point out.

No. You don’t, Rain corrects me. Gone is the humor, the warm grin she had on her face. She is serious now. You have just one, and you’ve forgotten it. Here, we’ll help you move closer to it, understand it, and rebuild your life so that you never risk losing it again. There are more than enough selves in the world without you feeling entitled to multiply your own.

Right, it’s good to know the party line. This is one of those groups that’s about finding self rather than locating compassion or emptying the ego. Though those things will probably come up, too. I find that the terminology of these kinds of places gets a bit repetitive—they’re all using the same self-help thesaurus.

Well, that all sounds just great, I say. And I’m not even lying. Fuck it—who doesn’t want to go find some glimmer, some version of themselves they don’t actively loathe and want to escape? I’ve made a career of trying to lose (or conceal) my authentic self. And if I put on a convincing enough performance here, I’ll get a nice certificate in Spiritual Achievement. And I may just get that role in the movie about the Manson family I’ve been trying to land for the past three months, the carrot Jess has dangled before me. Also, I find that I do frequently lose weight on these things—a diet of brown rice and hot lemon water plus five hours of yoga and nature hikes turns out to be great for the figure, especially after a lot of late, gin-soaked evenings. I’m beyond ready to get started. Really. This is overdue, I say enthusiastically. Rain’s smile is back. I will take my Oscar now.

That’s really great to hear. A lot of seekers come in quite unwilling to do the work, and we can squander weeks just breaking down their resistances. I hope we don’t have that problem with you, Liv.

I nod sincerely, with just a touch of pious acknowledgment: I understand how difficult that must be, Rain. Though I am unworthy, I