by Dekker, Ted
Dead to the flesh, Kathryn. This is the path, walk ye in it.
She opened the drawer next to the refrigerator, removed a pad of paper and a small tray filled with incidentals, found the string in the back, and withdrew it. How many times had she pressed forward toward the goal through seemingly impossible situations, keeping all tempting thoughts in the grave where they belonged? This was no different.
So why did it feel different?
No Kathryn. Stay dead. Keep the flesh in the ground. Lean not on your own understanding. Take up your cross. Follow. Just follow Zeke.
Back across the living room, into the hall, to the bathroom. She reached for a white towel, then stopped, thinking that there might be blood. Red would stain the towel.
She closed her trembling hand, turned to her right and reached for a dark blue towel instead.
Back out of the bathroom and down the hall, one step at a time, just one step at a time, that was all. Walk, walk, walk. Placing one hand on Eden’s doorknob, she took a deep, shuddering breath, let it out through her nostrils, and twisted the handle. Slowly pushed it open.
Eden lay on her side, still dressed in the same pajamas she’d worn to bed, watching her with empty eyes. Defeated.
Terror sliced through Kathryn’s mind. She was awake.
For a few seconds, she looked at her daughter and knew she couldn’t follow Zeke in this. How could she? He was asking too much!
But only for a few seconds, because she was mature enough to realize that this objection was only the flesh, trying to climb out of its grave. If the serpent tricked her into turning away from obedience, there would be hell to pay. In this life and the next. Zeke might even kill Eden. She had to do this for Eden’s sake, not just Zeke’s. That would be the most loving thing. And she loved Eden more than she loved her own life.
The seconds ticked by and the terror eased, but Kathryn found that she still couldn’t move. It was Eden’s eyes. They watched her without so much as blinking. A hardness seemed to have set into them. She felt no ill will toward her daughter for this—she might feel the same way if their places were exchanged.
A knot filled her throat. The room blurred as tears seeped into her eyes. The only way was to obey quickly, without further thought, before she lost her nerve.
Taking one last deep inhale, she ignored the voices of protest in her head, walked up to the bed, lay the towel and the string on the nightstand, and reached for Eden’s shoulder.
“Roll onto your back, sweetheart,” she said.
Eden hesitated a moment, then did so, turning her head away to face the window.
It was almost as if Eden knew what was coming and had accepted it. An obedient lamb who knew not to resist anything her loving mother would do to her. She’d never been physically harmed, had she? She had no reason to suspect what was coming.
I’m sorry, Eden. I’m so sorry.
Kathryn opened the package, withdrew the syringe, slipped off the protective sleeve, and jabbed the needle into her daughter’s shoulder.
Eden jerked her head around, startled by the pain.
“I’m sorry,” Kathryn whispered, shoving the plunger to its hilt.
She didn’t know what was in the syringe, only that Zeke had promised it would put Eden to sleep immediately and keep her that way for a long time.
Kathryn jerked the needle out and stepped back.
Eyes wide with fear, Eden tried to push herself up, got halfway, and faltered.
“What’s . . .” She tried to sit up again but failed. “Mommy? Mom . . .” Her voice trailed off and her eyelids drooped and her head settled on her pillow. She was out and limp within five seconds.
Kathryn swallowed hard, blinking away tears. Now, Kathryn. Finish what you’ve started now, without thinking.
She stepped up to the bed, gently took Eden’s right wrist and tied it to the metal bedframe above her head, unable to stem the flow of terrible emotions battering her. Then walked around the bed and tied her left wrist in the same fashion, then her left leg to the bottom of the bed, leaving only her right leg free.
Without daring to hesitate even a moment, Kathryn lay the towel over Eden’s leg, climbed onto the bed so that she was standing over her daughter’s feet, and lifted her right leg by the heel.
With one last look at Eden’s peaceful face, she threw one leg over her towel-draped shin, took a deep breath, and pulled hard, teeth clenched and eyes squeezed shut.
The leg didn’t break, so she pulled harder.
“Use a sledge hammer,” Zeke had said. “Bones are hard to break.”
Lying on her bed in the early morning hours Kathryn had decided that she wouldn’t be so cowardly. This was her correction as much as Eden’s—she would do it with her hands, flesh on flesh, feeling the pain of inflicting pain as much as her daughter.
But the bone wasn’t breaking.
She groaned and tugged, tears now streaming down her face. Her mouth parted and she moaned as if it was her own leg under such pressure.
Still, the leg didn’t break.
And then Kathryn was wailing, because it was in that moment, while her head was tilted toward the ceiling and her veins bulging on her neck, that she came into the sudden realization that she couldn’t bring herself to use the force needed to break Eden’s leg.
Which meant that they would both end up dead. And surely in hell.
But she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. She couldn’t!
Kathryn slowly sank to her knees, straddling Eden’s leg, lifted her hands to her face and wept into them, feeling utterly worthless in her failure.
“Forgive me . . . Forgive me, Father. Please . . .” Her mind swam in a dark sea of fear and desperation from which she could see no escape. At another time she might have suggested that Eden be baptized or at the very least ritualistically cleansed to appease her mother’s failure, but Eden was unconscious now, put to sleep by her wicked mother who was failing Eden, Zeke, and God through one profound act of disobedience.
She could only hold her face in both hands, and sob, begging God for mercy in this dark hour of weakness.
“Give me the strength,” she whispered. “Please give me the strength you once gave Abraham. Let me rise in righteousness and wield your sword of judgment as commanded by your servant.”
“Mommy?”
Kathryn spun her head to the door to see Bobby standing there, staring dumbly.
“Shut the door and get back to your room,” she cried, shoving her finger at him. “Now!”
He spun away, pulling the door shut.
The interruption snapped her out of her mindless slobbering. Eden rested with her eyes closed, pale face tilted to the right, oblivious to any harm. Or so it seemed at first glance.
Kathryn blinked to clear her vision and looked at the corner of her daughter’s eye. There, a single tear slid slowly toward her temple. She was unconscious, but crying? In her sleep?
Or was Eden somehow aware of her surroundings?
The sickening voices of objection that Kathryn had silenced earlier were back and this time she made no attempt to stop them. She had to listen now because she knew that she had a new problem.
She could not break her daughter’s leg. She was too weak. God wasn’t going to give her the strength he’d given Abraham and he wasn’t going to send a ram from the thicket to take Eden’s place because Eden was the ram as much as she was the lamb.
Kathryn slumped back to her haunches and turned toward the window, swallowing against the ache that tightened her throat. She simply couldn’t follow through.
But Eden still had to learn her lesson in a way that she hadn’t. She’d been too easy on her daughter—nothing else explained Eden’s seditious rebellion and betrayal. Just as importantly, Zeke had to be appeased. He had to be assured that they wouldn’t fail him again.
Even so, Kathryn could no longer bring herself to break her daughter’s leg, not while Eden lay crying in her sleep. In fact, not ever. It was too much to ask o
f this mother.
Which left her with only one option, a small idea that had been whispered by the darkness during the night. One that now reasserted itself as a solution, never mind if it might also be a clever temptation.
How was a horse broken? Couldn’t ‘breaking’ mean bringing under full submission? If she was unwilling to actually snap Eden’s leg, couldn’t she ‘break’ it by disabling it?
The point was to keep Eden from walking and escaping. That and teaching her just how evil her sin really was while offering correction. But both could be accomplished as easily with a bad sprain as with a break. Eden’s mobility and her rebellious spirit would both be broken.
It was the only option Kathryn could think of other than going to the toolshed for a sledgehammer. She would sprain Eden’s ankle badly enough to keep her from walking, then wrap it up to look like a break.
Kathryn turned back and studied her daughter. Saw another tear follow the trail of the first.
She had to do it now, before her nerve for even that was gone.
So she did. She quickly scooted to the end of the bed, ripped off the towel to expose Eden’s leg, grabbed her foot, and twisted hard, grunting as much with anger at God’s cruel nature as with exertion.
There. Surely that was enough.
Eden lay in peace, save those tears.
Her ankle began to swell within the first minute.
24
THE FIRST sensation I felt was a sharp pain in my knee and I think it was the acuteness of that discomfort that jerked me out of a dark, peaceful oblivion.
Immediately memories flooded me. My escape attempt with Bobby had failed miserably. Back in my room, I’d lost all hope and fallen into a deep despair, recalling all of the torment I’d suffered since I’d been kidnapped by my own mother five years earlier.
Every hour of forced prayer. All of the guilt heaped on me for not being perfect. Every day in the closet, every meal withheld from me, every turn of my mother’s psychological screws, all of the abuse.
I was a slave. I had no rights. I was being used like an animal, a lamb, an offering . . . By whatever name, it was all the same to me.
And for that I realized that I really did hate Kathryn.
The moment this realization came to me, my hatred grew into something more. I loathed her. She disgusted me. Rage boiled in my veins as I lay staring at the wall, unable to sleep.
Then Kathryn had come in and injected something into my arm and my world had quickly vanished. Only to be jerked back into my awareness when the sharp pain hit my knee.
It was strange. I was unconscious, I knew that much. But I could hear and feel my mother standing over me, breathing hard and applying terrible pressure to my leg, as if she was trying to hurt me.
At first I dismissed the thought—Kathryn had said and done many cruel things to me, but she’d never struck me or injured me. But as her straining persisted, I realized that she was.
And then it hit me: she was trying to break my leg. My own mother was carrying out the very threat that monster, Zeke, had alluded to in the field. She was trying to break the leg of her wayward lamb so that I couldn’t run away!
I was in a deep sleep, so I couldn’t react at all, much less try to stop her. I could only lie there and let her do whatever she liked as great waves of anguish and revulsion rolled through me.
What exactly happened after that is a little dim. Outrage blinded me. All I knew was that the pain shifted from my knee to my ankle, then shot up my leg before she finally let go and left me alone in my room.
She might have broken my ankle, I wasn’t sure. But it hardly mattered any more. In fact, a part of me was glad that she’d finally shown her truest offensive nature—it only validated and further justified my hatred of her.
Whereas before I might have had a sliver of doubt about my rights, and a tinge of guilt over my rebellion, I was now unequivocally certain that I would run and I wouldn’t stop running until I got away from Kathryn and Zeke forever. I would go straight to the police and send them right to prison where they both belonged.
This was what I was thinking as I drifted in a sea of darkness for what felt like many hours, because a part of me was aware the whole time. I distantly wondered if it was the drugs that made it all so strange. Or maybe my own fear was keeping me half aware—she might come back.
But she didn’t. I lay on my back for a very long time without dreaming or forming coherent thoughts. Swimming in bitterness.
No . . . not swimming. Floating. Yes, I was floating on a black sea.
Gradually, much later, I thought to myself: This isn’t a black sea. It’s the lake. And I’m not on my bed, I’m lying at the bottom of a small boat.
I jerked up, heart lodged in my throat. Spun my head. The calm, dark lake water stretched out to the distant shore in all directions. I was dreaming that dream again. The water walker dream.
But it felt so real, you see?
The lake was still and deathly silent, and waves of panic washed over me, as threatening as any storm. I was stranded in a boat without oars. There was no one to help me! The water was pitch black. A storm could come up and drown me!
The moment I had the thought, the wind began to blow and immediately the boat started to roll with the rising waves.
I scrambled to my knees and grabbed onto the side of the boat to steady myself. I still knew that I was in a dream, but the wood under my palm and the wind on my face felt so real that I was tempted to think I really was stranded in a storm. And as soon as I had that thought, I was.
It was actually happening! I really was going to drown.
Oh no! No, no, no!
“Eden . . .”
The familiar voice reached me from far away over the pitching waves and I twisted toward the distant shore. I could just see him when the boat rose up on a wave, then lost sight when it dropped back down.
It was him. It was the Outlaw!
“Walk to me, Eden . . .”
Then he vanished behind a wave as the boat dropped. The wooden hull smacked the water and shuddered.
It was getting worse!
“Eden . . .” Outlaw’s distant call was whipped by the wind. “Step out of the boat and walk to me . . .”
“I can’t!” I screamed.
“Walk to me, Eden . . .”
“I can’t!”
The boat was bucking in waves so high now that I knew one was going to crash into the boat and crush me under its weight. And I now was certain that I was no longer dreaming. It was real! I really was going to die.
“Eden . . .”
Panic overrode my thoughts as a massive wave lifted the boat high into the air.
“Step out of the boat and . . .”
But his ‘walk to me’ was lost as the boat crashed back down into the water with enough force to rip my grip free and send me sprawling.
I began to scream. Then was pitched forward and smashed my head on the boat’s side.
“Help me!” I was out of breath and sucked at the night air, but spray slapped my face and stopped my breathing short.
“Help!”
The wind suddenly stilled and the lake calmed. I was breathing hard, steadying myself with both hands outstretched, sure that another wave would come.
Instead, the boat’s rolling slowed to a gentle rocking.
I got my knees under me and pushed myself up so that I could see the water. The lake was flat again, and I immediately saw why.
Outlaw was walking toward me. On top of the water. Moving with even strides in boots that kept him afloat.
But no . . . No, he wasn’t wearing boots. His feet were bare, splashing with each step.
Slap . . . Slap . . . Slap . . .
I was too astonished to move. All the while, he kept his gentle eyes on me.
Slap . . . Slap . . . Slap . . .
He’d stilled the water. Only then did I think, Oh yeah . . . this is a dream. You can do things like that in dreams. So I stood up and watched him al
l the way, amazed by just how real my dream looked. Only the fact that he was walking on water reminded me that it wasn’t real.
Or was it?
He stopped ten feet from the boat and stared at me. Flashed a smile.
“Hello, Eden.”
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I see you’re stuck again.”
I looked at his feet and saw that the water only came up half way to the top of them.
“Is this real?”
“Of course it’s real. It’s happening, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but in a dream. I’m dreaming.”
“Are you?”
“I think so. Yes, of course I am. How else could you walk on water? I’m just seeing this in my mind.”
He walked a little closer, eying the boat now. “You’re right, it’s in your mind. But aren’t all thoughts? Just in your mind, that is. And your memories, aren’t they just in your mind? And your fears? And your hopes? Aren’t they all just thoughts in your mind?”
“I guess so.”
“And you guess right. Change your mind, and change what’s real for that moment.” He lifted an eyebrow, as if slightly amused. “How did you get out here?”
“I . . . My mother drugged me. She tried to break my leg.”
He cocked his right brow. “And you found that quite disturbing, I’m sure.”
“Of course.”
“Just like the waves and the water in this dream. Quite a threat, wouldn’t you say?”
I immediately knew where he was going, but it didn’t stop me from saying how I felt.
“I suppose. Yes.”
“You’re threatened. Offended.”
“Wouldn’t you be if someone tried to break your leg?”
“No. But this is about you right now. It’s up to you whether or not you want to be offended or threatened. And yet you feel threatened by your mother. By the water and the waves.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. He might be right, but it sounded crazy to me.
He ran one hand along the hull’s wooden bow. “You’re afraid of the thought that the water will drown you, so you stay in this boat which you are certain will keep you safe. But when the storm comes, you still tremble with fear, don’t you? Because you’re afraid of the water.”
