by Urban Waite
“Yes,” Will said.
“When your wife and child were taken, you were tested. You were tested once more today.” The Father dropped down in front of Will, elbows on knees and his face so close that Will could feel the spit on his skin and smell the man’s breath when he spoke. “The time is coming—the end of days. The air itself will be afire. And I will call my people closer. I will call them all to me and I will ask them to make ready. For we, like the pioneers who came to this country before us, will have a journey. And now I ask you, will you be ready for this journey?”
“Yes,” Will said.
He rose and looked down at Will. “You have helped us, but we will need you even more. We will need the eye that looks down upon the people through the scope. We will need the hand that holds and swings the knife. We will need the finger that pulls the trigger. Do you understand, Will? Do you understand all that I am asking you to do?”
Will hesitated. He looked up at The Father.
“Many times in humankind’s long history have we not trusted in our faith. And many times that faith has been tested. And so it was for all who have made the choice to undertake this journey. A journey of salvation, but a journey also of necessity—for if you are unwilling to take this journey you will perish. And now, Will, that time has come and I am asking you again, as I asked you in that long-ago time when you first came to us, are you ready to do what it takes to find salvation?”
The Father stopped. He walked a few paces away from Will before turning back. He waited for some response. But Will would not look to The Father.
“After your wife and child left this earth we feared for your life,” The Father said. “We feared that you had let the weakness overtake you. But you did not. You became the hunter not the hunted. You gave up sin. You gave up vice and all the evil that had overrun your life. We put our hands upon you and together we took away your sin. We cut it from your chest, just as every member here has also given up their sin.”
Will nodded. He thought about it now. The tattoo. The razor. The giving of the sin. When he looked toward The Father again, he said, “I remember.”
* * *
HE WAS RISING FROM HIS PLACE JUST BELOW THE ALTAR WHEN Mary May entered. She stood at the back of the empty pews. A feeling of doubt began to slowly work inside her like a sickness spreading through every vein. She watched him rise and she watched The Father gather him up like the man was part and parcel of his family.
She recognized him almost in the same instant. She knew him as the man who had stood upon the rise. The tracker. The man who had shot at her and nearly hit her. The feeling that had begun to spread its roots within her body now suddenly bloomed upward through her head. She had made a mistake in coming here. She had made a mistake in letting down her guard. And maybe she had even made a mistake in trusting her brother.
When the man turned and walked their way, Mary May was standing next to her brother, Drew, and she watched the tracker come toward her. He was bearded and his face was worn and weathered from years of sun. Crow’s-feet like cracked clay sat to either side of his eyes and the hair atop his head was patchy and going gray. She stared at him as he moved and his eyes flashed on her and for a second he stopped and nodded to her and said, “I’m glad to see you, Mary May.” He said the same thing to Drew, then he took his hat that he’d been holding in one hand and squared it atop his head.
He was gone, out through the front door a second later and she took a step to take him in again, but Drew stopped her, holding a hand to her elbow where she stood. “Will Boyd,” Drew said, speaking to her in a whisper.
She remembered the man. She had gone with her own family to the funeral of his daughter and his wife. A car accident if she remembered right. Will standing there alone as people filed past. Her own father and mother leaning in, reaching to hold him, and Mary May thinking now about how even then he had smelled of booze and of something sweet like salt and sweat and the turning of a body into something other than what it once had been.
She’d thought him dead, but it was obvious to her now that he was not.
When she turned now to the front of the church, The Father was waiting on them. He raised his hands toward them, and he called to them, saying, “Come, my children. Come forward.”
Drew moved and then waited for her in the aisle. She walked with hesitation as she came to the aisle, taking her time to turn and then go on toward The Father. She could remember him, too. He had changed little but to grow older, and she remembered how he’d come up from Georgia years before, attending church in town with them and speaking to the congregation as a friend. He had offered the word of God when asked to, and he had sat in silence and quiet study as the pastor had spoken and it was not until months later that there had been the split between them. The Father, or at that time Joseph, had gone his own way, telling all that wished to follow that he alone could be their savior.
Now he stepped forward to look upon her. “Come,” he said again, his hands outstretched, his eyes unwavering as they, too, reached toward her.
She came forward and soon his hands held her by her shoulders. He brought her close and she could smell his sweat, feel the strength of his arms and the way he gripped and held her to him like they had both endured these past few days only to finally find salvation together.
“I welcome you,” he said. “I welcome you here to us, even as I have only begun to understand what has happened to your father, and to your mother.”
She nodded. Her eyes now on the floor.
“Drew has said much to me about them. He has spoken to me and to us all and in his stories, and in his remembrance of them they will live eternal.”
She nodded again. She did not know what to think of this. The way he spoke now seeming so different than that of his younger brother, John.
“Kneel now,” he said. “Kneel and I will give you the blessing of my hands and together we will prepare to wash the sin from inside you, scour it from every bone, from every piece of gristle. You will see that all will soon be right in this world. All shall be good, and your place here shall be in a place of wakefulness, and my eyes shall look after you as one of the blessed children of Eden’s Gate.” He released her and stepped back.
It felt to her as if he had been holding her for years. She looked now to her brother where he stood not far off. The Father beckoned Drew to come closer. Then he told them both to kneel. Drew knelt first, and though her nerves were jumping within her skin she knelt as well.
“Good shall be the salvation of your body. Good shall be the giving up of sin.” The Father gave his attention to her once again, putting his hands on either side of her temple. The warmth of his skin pressed to hers. “You are a sinner,” he said. “You are a sinner and in your eyes, I see wrath and envy, I see guilt and shame. I see every deadly sin there is and I offer you salvation. I offer to help you put the trouble of your soul to rest.” He fell now to his knees and without releasing her from his grip, he put his forehead to her own. “I ask that you hear me now,” he said. “Hear me. Hear the call of Eden’s Gate. I call upon you to listen. You are not alone, Mary May. You have sinned, but you are not alone. You have not yet been forgotten.”
He began to pray, his voice lower, a shift of octaves that seemed to resonate now from down below. His voice rising as he rose, bringing his hands up, bringing her up within his grip. He called for her forgiveness. He spoke of alcohol. He spoke of sin. He said that she did not know the things she did, and that she, like many in this county and in this world, only asked for pardon. But that it was their souls that cried up from the darkness, not their waking voices. He said that she was like many more, that she had come to him and come to this church as only the first sign of a greater need. “Thank you, Mary May,” he said. “Thank you for coming forward. I thank you, and your brother thanks you, and in this we offer you salvation.”
She looked up at him. He waited now, looking on her with the same eyes that never seemed to blink. Sweat stood out on h
is forehead. The feel of his hands still pressed on either side of her.
“Do you accept us, Mary May? Do you give up sin as your brother has before you? Do you recognize the weeping of your soul and the call of its release from the body that has thus far punished it?” He released her and pushed her backwards.
She almost tipped over, but he was faster and he held her again, righting her and asking, “Do you give up sin? Say it, Mary May. Say it and all will be forgiven. Do you ask for the washing of your body, for the purifying of your soul?” He pushed her away again and she faltered but did not fall.
Now he walked away from her. He turned his back to her and looked upon the flag that hung there. She had for some reason not fully taken it in until he brought her attention to it. It was an American flag, but altered now, amid the blue and amid the stars she could see the woven thread of the Eden’s Gate symbol. Almost a star itself, a cross fitted with many rays.
He had begun to talk, but this time softer, his voice slower than it had been, more deliberate, as if maybe he were channeling some other person, someone long deceased who had come now to take possession of the living. “Fire will be the ending,” The Father said. “Fire and the destruction of all who have not yet washed themselves of sin. Fire and the hand of wickedness.” He turned and waited. He let the silence linger there between them, and then as if coming awake from out of some dream, he asked, “Do you give up sin? Do you ask salvation of the redeemer? Do you ask to be washed? To be purified? To be forgiven and reborn?”
Do you . . .
Do you . . .
Do you . . .
She watched him. She watched those unblinking eyes. And she understood there could only be one answer.
* * *
OF COURSE WILL HAD BEEN DRUNK WHEN IT HAPPENED TWELVE years before. He had been drunk most of his adult life and losing them had made it no better. He tried not to think about them anymore. He tried to think of them like they were ancestors from another time, family long forgotten, kin in some way that had given him influence in some unknowing but completely necessary way.
It was The Father’s words that had released this from inside of him. And as he lay there in bed, he tried to summon the spirits of those long dead that he had loved, he knew that without a doubt they were the reason he was apart from church and town, alone still even after he had given up his sin.
He rose and put his feet to the floor and looked in the dark to the sliver of light beneath the door. They had given him a room in one of the houses with two single beds and he could smell the lake through the windows that were open. The night air at Eden’s Gate always seeming to move and drift like ocean currents in the liquid depths.
By the time he had pulled up his pants and laced his boots, he had thought too much about his wife and daughter. He could feel the tears welling in the dark and how they brimmed and then fell across his cheeks and stung his skin.
He was the messenger of his own demise. Twelve years had passed since he’d lost his wife and daughter. And he’d never been more certain of the part he’d played and the pain he’d caused himself and the ones he loved. He had bought that drink. He had sent that bullet flying, just as deadly and accurate as any shot Will had ever taken. But he knew it now for what it was, and he recognized it as a self-inflicted wound.
He pushed out through the door and stood in the empty hallway beyond and looked one way then the other. He did not know what time it was and he did not care. He needed air. He needed to see the stars and moon and to stand in the grass and see the night as he had grown accustomed to it in all his time out there hunting for the church.
And though he always wished he could go back in time and do it better, he knew that change would never be. He had bought that drink for the man who killed his family. He had sent that man out into the world as accurate and straight as Will could have made it, at that time, on that road; on that exact night when his wife, Sarah, had finally said enough, not trusting Will to come home on his own, she had put their ten-year-old daughter, Cali, in the passenger seat and drove to get Will from the bar.
Will had tortured himself thinking about the part he’d played. Even now he could feel this emotion he had come to know as guilt as it welled within him and rose into his throat. He swallowed it down like he’d swallowed it down so many times before, then he stumbled down the hallway, like the old drunk he’d been, and now knew he might well be still. He stumbled on, trying to overcome his own guilt and sadness. He went out past a small living area and into the open night air, and he tried to somehow gather the pieces of his life together.
He walked away from the compound and passed several guards who looked his direction but gave no greeting but a nod. When he had seen the stars and looked across the lake toward where the hills began on the opposite shore and the mountains stood darkly sitting, he turned and came back again.
A small campfire had been made close by the lakeshore and he came to stand just beyond the light, looking at the woman who had no doubt lit it. When he stepped out of the darkness and into the pool of light created by the flame, Holly only glanced at him before looking back down within the fire.
“You have trouble sleeping, too?” Holly asked.
“Something like that.”
“There is truth in what The Father says. Though it is easy in the dark waking hours of night to question.” She nodded toward a section of log that sat a few feet off. “You should sit. I’ll be the one to bring you back tomorrow, now that Lonny’s gone.”
He thanked her. He watched the flame dance, then he said to her, “How does The Father know the things he knows?”
Holly laughed. “You mean, is he clairvoyant? Psychic? God’s own prophet?”
Will just stared at her. “I mean how does he know? How does he know beyond a doubt?”
“No one knows beyond a doubt,” she said. “God gave Adam and Eve paradise and even God could not keep them from using their own free will.”
“You sound like him,” Will said.
“Like who?”
“The Father. John. Every one of us. Man or woman.”
“Adam and Eve?”
“I guess so,” he said. “Is this paradise?”
“It is whatever you make it to be,” she said. She looked at him now and laughed. He was starting to get the feeling she was in on some joke that he had no idea about. “Be careful, Will. They might not see what’s going on with you, but I do.”
“Is that what’s keeping you up?” Will asked, offering her a weak smile, trying to defuse anything he had set in motion inside her head.
“I’m waiting up for John.”
“How serious is this thing you have with him?”
“Serious enough to have me out here waiting,” she said.
He looked at her. He looked out into the night. He wondered about the woman he saw before him, and he wondered about the woman he’d known before. He thought that they had been the same, but he did not know now if they were. “You get lonely up here sometimes?”
“It helps to have someone,” she said. “It helps to keep the mind from wandering too far afield.”
He looked at her. Holly pushed at a log with a stick and they both watched as sparks kicked up in a flurry then rose in the thermals. He wondered who she had been talking about, her or him.
* * *
MARY MAY WOKE IN THE DARK. HER BROTHER HAD NOT TAKEN her back down to Fall’s End like he’d said. She had been given the little room in the little house and she had stood there and watched him, this man that was her brother but now somehow was not. She did not know him. She had thought she did. But she knew she did not know him anymore.
“You’ll drive me back to town, won’t you?”
“Yes,” he’d said.
“You’ll come with me.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t leave me,” she said. “Stay here. Stay right here in this house till morning. You can stay on the couch and you can drive us into town in the morning.”
; “Yes,” he’d said.
She stood looking at him. In that moment, he reminded her of the little brother she had once had. She thought of their mother nagging on him. She thought of the answers he would give. Yes. Yes. It was always yes.
When she woke in the dark she knew she was not alone.
“Drew?”
Across the room she heard a rustling. A shift of fabric then the creak of a wooden chair beneath human weight.
“Drew?” she called again.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I’m here.”
She put an elbow down then turned and tried to see him in the darkness. He was a shape only, a shadow among the darker shadows of the room. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he said.
She could hear him shift. She heard him stand from the little wooden chair she remembered had sat beside the door. “Is something wrong?” she asked again, listening still and watching the dark shadow where he stood.
“You need to wash,” he said.
“Wash?”
“Yes. You need to wash yourself in the water. You need to cleanse yourself. You said you would.”
“Drew,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”
“There’s no reason to be scared,” he said. He took a step now, and he came toward the bed then moved up and along the side of it.
Out of instinct she pulled back. She sat up and put her hands out in front of her like she might fend off whatever this might be.
“Don’t be scared,” he said again. “You need to wash. You need to cleanse and prepare to face your sin.”
He had come closer now and she looked wildly around. She looked for anything she might use to stop him but there was nothing there and before she could move another inch, or throw up a hand, he had grabbed one of her ankles and turned sharply, pulling her from the bed with a savage tug.
She came off the bed with her arms flailing, reaching for anything that might stop her fall. Nothing could be found except for the bare sheets, and she fell two feet from the bed and landed on one elbow then hit her head.
The pain was instant and reverberated down through her skin all the way through her body. She had hit hard and fast, and she could barely think except to know she was being dragged across the carpet. She turned and bent away from him, reaching out with her hands. Her fingernails dug for purchase but came away with only dirt and sand and lint and whatever other thing that could be taken underneath her nails.
