Last Days Read Free Page B

leaned back in the leather chair that dwarfed him. ‘On 10 July 1975, the Phoenix Police Department removed fifteen people from an abandoned mine in the Sonora desert of Arizona. A few hours after Sister 18
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    Katherine’s Night of Ascent had taken place. The mine had been occupied by The Temple of the Last Days since 1972.
    ‘Nine of these people were dead, including Sister Katherine. Six were found alive. Of the living, five were children. The infamous Manuel Gomez, aka Brother Belial, was the sixth. Katherine’s favourite and her executioner. And Brother Belial was the only adult survivor of that night. I’m sure you’ve heard of him? He was killed in the recreation room of the Florence penitentiary before he could stand trial.
    By inmates unknown.
    ‘Another five members of the cult, all present at the mine during the weeks preceding the Night of Ascent, were never traced. It is believed they were also murdered, but buried in the desert.
    ‘It is this aspect of the cult that has fascinated its biographers, its fans, its exploiters. The criminal case. The police believe the murders occurred as a result of infighting, and drug psychosis, or some manner of suicide pact. The newspapers at the time called it a satanic ritual involving human sacrifice, including the sacrifice of its leader. Who, by the way, was actually beheaded. And that version of events is the one that has endured, as you might say, in the “mainstream”
    public imagination. So what else does one need to explore as a film-maker or biographer? It’s a perfectly lurid story that has enough of everything.
    ‘But . . .’ Max pushed a pile of DVD cases across the desk to Kyle, an envelope file, and an old paperback book so used the writing on the spine was invisible. ‘The four documentaries about the cult, and the three feature films, are terrible.
    What you’d expect. Appalling. Truly awful. Of the many books, only one is worth reading. Last Days by Irvine Levine.
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    Dismissed as fictitious, and now long out of print. But the police officers from the Yuma and Phoenix police depart-ments suggested that, at the very least, Levine’s reportage was fastidious with the details concerning the Night of Ascent when the murders took place.’
    Kyle cleared his throat. ‘It all happened a long time ago.
    Unless any new evidence has come to light, why make another film? Are you saying it just needs to be done right?
    Is there some anniversary, or a nostalgia thing—’
    Max held a small hand up and cut him off. ‘No. There is a story here that has never been told. Forget the murders.
    Forget the police investigation. The media exploitation. It is an oft-trampled path. But something else about The Temple of the Last Days has also endured, in folklore and in alternative histories of a Fortean nature. Which is where we come in. You see, there is a very real belief that the group’s mystical and occult interests bore dividends. A belief that Sister Katherine achieved something extraordinary. And that her willing death – because, make no mistake, she was slaughtered on her own orders as were her most loyal followers that night – is part of this mystery, the unexplained phenomenon that haunts their story from its very origins in London. Keeps it alive, you could say, for those of us with more open minds. A story no mainstream film-maker would do anything but attempt to disprove. That is, if they gave it any credence at all.
    ‘You see, there are other survivors, Kyle. Not of that night, but of the organization. People who fled many years before its end. And others who escaped mere months before its dis-solution. People who, one could say, have never, not ever, been able to escape what they experienced in the service of 20
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    Sister Katherine. And what is unique now, is that a handful of these survivors are breaking silence for the first time since the police investigation in 1975. And when that happens, as you probably