by Urban Waite
“They asked for help but no one listened.”
Will turned now and saw the pastor standing there. He was dressed the same as Will had always remembered him, in his black suit and white collar. And though there was white in the black curl of his hair, he was younger than Will by at least twenty years. And, as far as Will remembered, he’d been a gunnery sergeant in the first Gulf War before he’d found God and then brought his faith here.
“I did not listen,” the pastor said, as if he wanted to offer clarification for his sin.
Will ran his eyes across the man. The cemetery sat before the church and behind, seen across the graves, a single door was open and Will could faintly see the pews and window glass beyond.
“I thought maybe you had come to burn me down, to harass me, and to hurt the church. But I think now that you are here to see for yourself what your church has done. And I wonder now, seeing you here again, whether the things you see before you have left the same mark on you that they have left on me.”
“Jerome,” Will said. “How are you?”
“Tired. Mostly tired all the time now. Mostly sick and tired of the shit that goes on.”
Will had taken his backpack up as he’d come out of the saloon and he’d walked the length of the town with the rifle held in his hands. He held it still and he looked Jerome over and said, “I didn’t come to shoot you, or harass you, or to burn you down. I came for answers.”
Jerome laughed. He was not prone to it and he looked at Will and said, “Eden’s Gate has many answers. The Father has many answers for those who seek his shelter. But I do not have the answers. I am not the prophet The Father wants us to believe he is. I am a follower of God. I am a reader of the Bible. I do not change the words to suit my own delusion.”
“Christ,” Will said. “Can you cut the shit, Jerome. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war on someone else.”
“People love to quote Shakespeare right before they go to war,” Jerome said. “It probably makes them feel pretty smart just before they get their ass blown off and start to feel real stupid. What the fuck can I do for you, Will? You want to confess a sin?”
“Maybe several,” Will said. “For now, I just want you to tell me what happened here.”
“Irene died a few weeks back. It’s going to sound sappy as hell, but I truly think she died of a broken heart.”
“How’s that?”
“About a year ago your buddies started to come down pretty hard on Irene and Gary. They made it clear they didn’t want them selling alcohol. They even stopped a few trucks that had come out this way on delivery. No booze meant no money. And no money meant they had to make a choice between giving up their house or giving up the bar.”
“They chose to keep the bar?”
“You know it,” Jerome said. “But guess who swoops in and buys the house for pennies?”
“Eden’s Gate.”
“You’re quick,” Jerome said. “It was like there was no one else who was even willing to buy the place. They could offer whatever they wanted for it and they knew Gary and Irene would have to take it.”
“And Irene?”
“She’s dead a month later. It was an aneurysm or something. A pressure in her head.”
“And Gary?”
“We tried a few times to get the word to Drew, but you know how Eden’s Gate can be. You know they don’t listen to a thing we say. Gary just decides he’s going to go up there. He’s going to get Drew and bring him down here so we can do the funeral for Irene.”
“That’s not how it worked out though, is it?”
Jerome stared back at him. He looked down at the two graves then back up at Will. “What are you playing at here, Will? You still with them? You said you came here looking for answers but it seems like maybe you already know each and every one. Let’s cut the shit. One vet to another, you want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”
“I’m starting to realize I had half the story,” Will said. “It seems like you had the other side.”
“You and I both know that’s how it’s always been with war.”
Will looked at him. “Irene and Gary used to mean something to me,” Will said. “Their family meant something to me. I was a mess but I knew that.”
“Things change, Will,” Jerome said. He raised a hand and gestured to the graves that sat everywhere about them. “This place is testament to that.”
“Yes, but they had family—all of them. You forget that sometimes in war. You forget about home. You forget about the people there. You and I both know what that’s like,” Will said. “You’re out there. You’re so far away from all you know that it starts feeling like your life out there is your real life, and the life you knew back home, the normal one, the place you were born, the place you grew up, that’s the fake life, the false life, and mostly all you want is to be back at war.”
“Is that what you want?” Jerome asked. “Because I’m older now. I’m smarter. I can tell the difference. I’m not blind the way I used to be. I’m not fool enough to think it’s one reality or the other. They are the same. This life and that life, they’re all just one big fucking mess. Most everyone here knew that in the end.” He stepped past Will now and looked out on the cemetery.
Will thought about what to say. He thought about Mary May and he thought about how she’d gone up there and found her brother. “You’re a man of God,” Will said. “You ever seen the word ‘sinner’ painted on a house?”
Jerome’s eyes came around fast. “Where did you see that?” he asked.
“It was painted on a house up at Eden’s Gate. I’m trying to remember if it was painted there the day before.”
“I’ve seen it,” Jerome said. “I’ve seen it written on a couple houses close by Eden’s Gate. The owners came to church right here in town and they both were trying to sell their houses, but they could never get anyone to buy. No one wants to live next to a place like Eden’s Gate. No one wants to be neighbor to a cult. Both families just went and left one day. They just left and they never said a thing. They didn’t even sell their places. I guess they figured they were worthless. I heard later that Eden’s Gate bought them from the bank.”
“And you went there?”
“I went there after they didn’t show up to church a couple Sun-days in a row. The places were empty, not a piece of furniture, or a strip of clothing. Just empty. Someone had tagged up the houses and written ‘sinner’ on the side for anyone to see.”
Will turned and looked upward on the sun. He wondered when it was that he’d last seen Mary May. He wondered how much time had passed and he hoped he was not too late. When he looked back over at Jerome, he asked, “You got a car or something I can use? I need to get back up to Eden’s Gate.”
“Then you are still with them?” Jerome asked.
“Never farther from them, actually. You can call me stupid for saying this but it’s probably time we cued the Shakespeare.”
* * *
MARY MAY CAME AWAKE GASPING, AS IF SHE HAD GONE TO BED beneath the waves. They had done something to her. They had given her some drug.
She was in a dark room and though she was awake, her vision swam and then refocused, colors seen at the periphery of her vision like that of some negative universe. Black was white and red was green. They had left her in a corner and from where she sat with her back to one wall and her head leaning against the other, she could see the sliver of light that came in from under the door and reached across the floor toward her. She tried to move, but her hands had been bound behind her and as she tried to wriggle free, she realized her fingers had gone numb.
They had bound her legs at her ankles and as soon as she tried to stand she fell and hit her forehead against the floor. She could smell dust, and something metallic, something that seemed now to remind her of the metallic taste of blood.
With her feet she pushed away at the wall then inched across the floor, her eyes moving out ahead of her, searching out the light. Her hands and fin
gers had started to come to life again and there was the prick of needles across her skin and the warm fuzz of blood now coursing in the veins. She pushed again, inching closer.
They had taken her in the truck and left the compound. All the while sitting around her where she lay. She had tried to get up many times and been knocked down over and over again. The feel of the road beneath the tires, the bounce of springs, and the smell always of the pine that had surrounded them and moved above, branches blotting out the stars and moon. When they stopped she knew they had come to a river rolling down out of the mountains. The air had changed and had become cooler. The smell was of water and silt and rock. And farther out the sound of the rapids running and the water flowing, ever faster.
She did not know yet why they’d come for her. She did not know yet where her brother was. She had looked around as they brought her up and dragged her by an arm from the truck. They threw her down in the sand right there at the edge of the water.
“Do you confess?”
She tried to find the voice that now addressed her. John stood knee deep in the water, and he walked forward now and held a hand out and cupped her chin within his palm.
“Do you confess?” he asked again.
“Confess what?”
“Do you confess your sin?”
She looked up at him in wonder. There was a sense, though fleeting, that none of this could be possible. There was a feeling inside of her that this could not be real.
“Confess and all will be forgiven,” he said.
She looked wildly around her for her brother but she could not see him and she felt John’s hand tighten against her chin. He held her there like that, his hand to her face and his fingers gripped upward across her cheek. “Where’s Drew?” she managed now to ask.
“Drew?” John said, as if he had never heard the name. “Drew is all of us and all of us are Drew. You know little of your brother. And you always have, but you will see now what he is and what we are and in this you will find your own salvation.”
He released her. He stepped back and raised his arms, as if he might be raising them to some rain now falling from above. “Those who walk in heaven are those who have unburdened their heart of sin,” he said, his arms still upraised and his voice now thrown forth among them all, Mary May and everyone who had taken her and held her down in the truck bed. “Those who are unburdened may walk and hold the hand of the prophet. Those that have been unburdened can enter into heaven. But those who choose to go against his mercy, those who do not reveal to us their sin, those that would turn their back on Eden’s Gate and all its providence, those few who have not the foresight to understand, they will be cast into the hell of their own making. The fire that will come and scour the world to ash and flame.”
Slowly, he brought his arms down then moved his eyes again to where she knelt. “Now, brothers and sisters we must help her—help her to find the way.”
She could feel around her the movements of the people. She could feel them tightening around her. She was having a hard time breathing, as if in their movements they had also sucked up the air. She started now to hyperventilate and to fight with every breath for oxygen. They closed in on her and two lifted her beneath the arms and carried her toward the water. She was fighting now, moving arms and legs and she could feel her toes dragging in the sand, cold and wet and heavy.
They went into the water with her and to her side she saw a man begin to pour some dark liquid in among the current. The liquid riding on the surface like an oil and the smell of flowers coming to her but no flowers seen anywhere in the dark flow of the river.
“Now, brothers and sisters, you all know the process and the reasons why. We come here to complete this process and I hold you all responsible to witness and to support the wishes of salvation given to us here tonight. Mary May is a sinner and we will be the hand that cleans her of her sin.”
She felt John’s grip wrap around her neck and she was pushed forward and her head went down within the oily water and then was left there. She struggled, fighting in the inky black. She kicked and fought, but they held her on both sides and she could feel John’s nails digging and holding to her skin.
She came up sputtering. She spit away the water, and she had almost no time to scream. She felt his hands still there behind her and then his voice again. “This one fights against salvation. This one fights to keep her sin. And you see, brothers and sisters, that there is a demon in her. An evil that tries now to evade the good will we give to her, bestowed upon us by The Father. Well, she will learn there is no fighting. She will learn to accept her sin and then in that way lose it. She will learn that my hand and your hands are the tools of the prophet and the prophet’s own extended power.”
He dunked her again, and then held her. She could feel the liquid drift beneath her, she could feel the cold. She did not fight this time, fearing he would not let her back up again. But now, as the seconds ticked by, her body began to convulse and she could not control her own urge to breathe and to free her mouth and nostrils from beneath the liquid. She fought and he held her down below.
She woke in a dark room, gasping for air as if they had drowned her. Which she knew now they had almost done. Her clothes were still damp and she inched forward now, moving across the floor with hands and feet bound, inching toward the light.
* * *
JEROME TURNED HIS ANCIENT OLDSMOBILE OFF THE COUNTY road and down the double track that ran atop the bluff. Will had told the pastor all he could think to say, but he knew there were details and minutiae that he simply did not know, and he was realizing even after he’d told his story to Jerome that he had let both Eden’s Gate and The Father blind him. And as they came out along the bluff and saw the lake and the buildings of Eden’s Gate below across scattered stands of forest, Will knew that though he’d found the light to see Eden’s Gate for who they truly were, he was still blind to so much more.
“You tell me where,” Jerome said. “I still think this is craziness and I still think you might be crazy.”
Through the trees, with the Oldsmobile moving, Will saw fleeting glimpses of the buildings. He scanned ahead to plan some course for himself that would bring him down off the bluff and hide him as he went on foot to find Mary May and bring her back. “Go up here a ways and when you find cover stop the car.”
Jerome turned and raised himself up to better see the land below. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“I have the rifle,” Will said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll keep them at a distance.”
Jerome pulled over then brought the car around. There was a grouping of short pine that sprouted from atop a nurse log. Jerome sat there for a little bit, then he cut the engine and looked across at Will. Jerome’s face was completely serious. “You know they have guns, too?”
Will just looked at him and smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I heard it’s kind of their thing.”
“That worry you at all?”
“It only worries me if they start using them.”
“I can go with you,” Jerome said. “I certainly could help.”
“You are helping,” Will said. “If she’s down there, if they have her, if we can make it back here, we’re both going to need you ready to get us out of here.”
“Okay,” Jerome said. “Try not to get shot at.”
Will cracked the door then moved to get up and out of the seat. “It’s not like I haven’t been shot at before,” Will said.
“Getting shot at is fine and dandy,” Jerome said. “Getting shot is not. You remember that one and try to make it back here.”
Will closed the door. He carried his rifle and settled his hat down across his head. He had taken his hunting knife from within his bag, and he had loaded up his pockets with the .308 cartridges he’d purchased that same morning. He went down through the trees now and when he came to an opening that looked out toward the lake and Eden’s Gate beyond, he settled in and put the lens on them and watched to see who might be watchin
g back.
* * *
SHE THOUGHT THE LIGHT AHEAD WAS DAYLIGHT, BUT THE CLOSER Mary May came to the sliver beneath the door the more she started to doubt that. She lay on the floor and with her hands behind her and her ankles bound she could only see the slightest movement of air there before the door. Bits of dust floated like protozoa in some languid current within the sea.
There was the sound now of echoed footsteps. They kept coming closer as if they were moving down a long and very empty hall. The steps came closer and her eyes bore down on the splinter of light that sat before her and soon she saw the shadow move across the opening then come to a stop in front of her door.
When the door came open the light was blinding and she clenched her eyelids together and tried to turn away. There was little escape to find and she rolled as far as her hands would let her and she lay there and watched the room come into focus. It was a room of standard size and on every wall she saw the writing of the sins. The seven of them repeated hundreds of times, each on a different set of faded, almost wax-looking paper pieces that had been pinned to the wall somehow.
Gluttony.
Lust.
Greed.
Pride.
Envy.
Wrath.
Sloth.
Mary May rolled and stared at them from where she lay, looking every scrawled word over. The papers jagged and misshapen where they were not pinned. She kept looking at them and then, startled and in a rush, she realized what the smell of this room had been. The metallic, almost vinegary tang of skins stretched one end to the other and pinned by the hundreds across the wall. Dark to light like every color of the human body.
“You shouldn’t worry,” Drew said. He stood at the door looking in. He waited as her eyes adjusted and her vision cleared.
She rolled now and looked to where he stood and she saw his eyes running over the walls then dropping to where she lay.
