One morning Toby Freedman received a phone call that would change the course of someone’s life. The ID was unfamiliar. He almost didn’t answer.

“Hello.”

“Toby? It’s Allison.”

She sounded distressed. Did she know about mom? “Allison, I needed to talk to you two years ago!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have my own phone, and they don’t like me to use this landline. It’s for their business.”

He could hear her sniffing as if she was crying. Thinking that if she hung up he wouldn’t be able to reach her again, he gentled his voice and hid his anger.

“Mom needed you…”

“How is she?”

“Dead.”

“Oh, God.” It was a long time since Allison had thought of her mom. Her mom had pushed her to get out on her own. She remembered her as never needing anyone. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t ask for details, because she was distracted by an urgent need to flee.

He wanted to say _you should be,_ but he remained silent and waited for her next words.

“They”—she took a deep breath and lowered her voice to a whisper—“want us to eat **poison.**” Tears ran down her cheeks, and her lips quivered. She loved these people, and they loved her.

“Huh?” Toby didn’t believe what he heard.

Allison had second thoughts about telling him. She had never wanted to make them look bad to Toby. She had been hoping he would join, too, one day, along with their parents. Now, because she felt afraid, she was ruining it. This wasn’t how higher level beings behaved. Why couldn’t she just act like one of them? Why didn’t she have peace about going to meet the TELAH beings, like everyone else did. Why did the simple **joy** she felt in their presence evaporate? Now her heart was pounding, and her old low-level self was trying to escape its evolution.

“Are you still there?”

“It’s time for graduation from the human evolutionary level,” she quoted their website to him, hoping that if it sounded good to Toby, then she would be able to go through with it. There was only a few days left before takeoff.

“Do you even care?” Toby asked, still thinking about their mother. He’d tried years ago to talk his sister out of quitting her job, selling her stuff, and moving away with that cult. It was such a **waste** of her life. He sighed and gave up. “What’s wrong?”

When Toby said the word “wrong” it was like a drumbeat in her heart got loud and hard, thumping in resonance. She felt like her brain and her body were betraying her. She looked around to make sure she was still alone. “I need help.” It was difficult to say that. She couldn’t imagine how he could help. He didn’t understand.

“I’ll send you a plane ticket.” Toby thought he could probably get Dad to chip in with that.

She was supposed to go up in her ascended body and through Heaven’s gate, not backwards on a plane to a life without a purpose. Without her team. “I don’t…”

“You do!” Toby interrupted with passionate certainty. “You need to come back. You get yourself on that bird, honey, and you fly into the **sky **to your freedom, and you never look back!”

—

Toby didn’t understand until it was too late that the group meant to kill themselves. He would have called the cops. Allison didn’t understand for years that they had needed intervention. Instead of being instantly relieved, she went through months of dealing with a feeling of guilt that fear had driven her away from them, and that was lower-level thinking. She couldn’t have intervened herself. She was too indoctrinated. She doubted her own perceptions.

Gradually, Allison regained most of her footing thanks, in part, to Toby and her dad.There was still the occasional night when she’d look up at the starry skies and think wistfully of alien beings, but she kept that to herself. What she admitted to Toby was that she was wrong.

End

Note: Although this is a work of fiction, with entirely fictional characters, it is inspired by real life events. Heavens Gate was a real cult. Thirty-nine people were convinced to eat poison pudding or applesauce and die.