“It’s a reunion for special festivities that we have once a year in Noah’s Reach. It’s called The Children’s Gathering.”
Salvation, loyalty and religion can tie together a deadly concoction when the wrong person gets a hold of people's beliefs. Prophet Martin, worshipped by men, women and children alike, has built himself a following over a thousand strong. Noah's Reach, a self sustaining town built deep in the Oregon Woods is safe from the contamination of outside life and sinners. No Internet and with most members choosing to never leave, holds its own rules, laws and orders. Torture and beatings are common ways they transform sinners and members who find their loyalty slipping. If you step out of line, you can face death and for the entire town to witness. Nobody escapes once the gates close, and even if you never intended on membership it just might fall into your lap. Ethan, Tyler, Alice, Mandy, and Henry find this opportunity through his girlfriend Catherine, as she brings them along to the festival for Disciples of God. As everyone around them is so sickenly friendly it's easy to keep your guard down as everything dark is kept easily from their prying eyes. Seeing first hand the devotion Catherine has for her religion, it's getting harder and harder for Henry to make her leave it behind. Knowing she lives outside the town, gives him slight hope she'll eventually leave, but as the days blend together everything is becoming much more clear.
“The Gathering is the most wholesome, peaceful experience you will ever have.”
With escape hanging dangerously close, Martin is seemingly one step ahead of them as he captured them and subjects each person to torture. Maddy managed to escape the nightly church sermon with Tyler's keys as she needed medication from her headache. Arriving at the gate and unable to pass through to the car, she begins to have serious doubts about the sadness of this group. When Ethan, Tyler and Alice are captured, the young couple is linked up to an electrocution box where they have to pres the buttons to either be shocked or shock the other person. Trying to be the hero, Tyler originally was taking the shocks before he decided he couldn't die here. Instead, he shocked Alice to bear death before an amused Martin strolls in, laughing as e separated the two love birds. Ethan is still struggling with the death of his fiance Zoe two years prior, as she was the love of his life. Killed by a drunk driver, he's get to move on or find any happiness since she was extinguished from his life. Beaten, starved and with little left, the appeal preached by Martin is sweeter than anything else in his life and he finds himself quick to watch to join. During the Baptism, he sacrifices his life for a bullet meant for Martin and quickly finds himself a loved and accepted brother into the family.
“You have no idea what hell it is like to go through every single day, knowing what you had and what you could have had, only to have it taken from you. Ever since that day… since Zoe’s accident, I was already dead.”
When Catherine pulled the trigger on Martin before ending her own life, everyone is shocked to see him standing, wounded, but not dying. When the Sherrif came for a routine inspection, he brought a long the few people who wanted to leave. This includes Tyler and Alice, but he was never going to let them truly leave. A member himself, they were executed just out of town with the others who threw away their loyalty. Maddy went along with Miguel, the town person willing to dacrife anything for his freedom. When they hit the trip wire, her leg was amputated and they left her behind to slowly bleed out and die, still calling out for her mother who passed when she was thirteen. With only Henry and Ethan left alive, the prophet ordered to let him go where he would spend the next four years trying to get the world to believe him. Grieving the loss of his friends, he never got over the pull and found himself returning to Disciples of God, where he's welcomed in with open arms.
“They’re torturing us there! They said that Purgatory was to help us find our faith, but they lied!”