Far Cry: Absolution

by Urban Waite

  He came down the hallway with the same fast and silent steps. He reached the door that held the sins within, and he turned the knob now and pulled it open. Mary May was there before him, kneeling on the floor five feet in. Her eyes were glassy and almost nonresponsive as he moved to her and tried to bring her to her feet. The collar of her shirt had been ripped and pulled aside and he could see the beginning of her bra and the naked upper skin of her breastbone. He tried now to gather the material up, to somehow help her.

  “Mary May,” he said, whispering to her then turning to look behind him. He had left the door open and he felt the cool air of the hall flowing in like a ghost unseen. He turned back to her, he tried to bring her up and to get her on her feet but she was unmoving. He snapped his fingers in front of her. “Mary May, you need to help me. We need to go. We need to get you out of here. We need to get away from here. You don’t know the things they do.”

  She turned her head slightly, and then she met his eyes. “Are you up there?” she asked.

  He was watching her. Mary May’s eyes swam beneath her lids like something come loose from all that anchored them, but her voice had stunned him for a moment with how clear and deliberate she had made it sound. He turned again and looked behind him and when he came back to her, he said, “I can lift you. I can lift you out of here and carry you over my shoulder. But if you can walk and help me it would be better. We may need to fight to get out of here. We may need to run and I don’t know if we will get away if it comes down to that.”

  Her eyes washed past him now. He tried to meet them as they went. He watched her head roll to the side then turn upward on the wall. “Are you up there, Will? Are you there on that wall with all the rest?”

  “Jesus,” Will said. “What did they give you?”

  “Are you up there?” she asked again.

  “Yes,” he said. He looked around wildly, desperate to escape and knowing if he was found here that it could get no worse. “Can you help me? Can you help me get you out of here?” He did not wait for a response, he bent and lifted, getting her over his shoulder like some backwoods kill. He turned around and began to move for the door but she stopped him.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t take me.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t take me. Put me down.”

  He paused at the doorway, cautious, not wanting to be seen. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “John is only going to tattoo me,” she said. “I came to get my brother. I came for Drew.”

  He didn’t want to listen. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but he knew even with whatever drug they’d given her, he knew what she was asking him to do.

  “Put me back,” she said again. “Put me back exactly as you found me.” Her voice was so deliberate. Each syllable defined and clear. “If my family ever meant anything to you, put me down.”

  He turned and set her down.

  She looked up at him. She watched his face as he stood watching hers. “Drew is at the house where they put me last night. He is waiting there. Do you know it?”

  She was drugged and he could see it in every movement she made. But there was clarity there, too, like someone surfacing from a coma for a single moment before they were lost again. “Yes,” Will said. “I can find it.”

  “I think they killed my father,” she said. She said it almost as if it was an afterthought, but he knew it was not. He knew she had been thinking about it all along. “You need to be careful,” she said. “I came to get my brother and I came to get him out of here. It’s what my daddy wanted. Can you do that for me, Will? You were always one of Daddy’s favorites. You were always missed even though we knew you were not gone. Not really.”

  Will turned and looked to the open door. He was losing time. He might lose his life if he stayed here. He knew now what the members of Eden’s Gate were capable of. He knew it was not Lonny alone who had wanted Mary May to die out there. “What about you?”

  “John wants to tattoo me. He wants me to be marked so that he can in some way feel he controls me.”

  Her words were clear, but he could still see the drug working away at her. She had felt lifeless as a sack of grain when he had lifted her. Will turned again. He had to go. He kept his eyes on the doorway a half second longer, and then he brought the hunting knife up from where he’d put it on his belt. He turned back and lowered the knife down and hid it between the floor and her calf.

  “You can’t trust John,” Will said. “You can’t trust anything he says. You might need to get out of here on your own. You might need to use the knife. I’ll get your brother, and then I’ll figure something out. I’ll try and come back for you if I can. The pastor from town, Jerome, is waiting with his car on a road to the northwest, up above the Eden’s Gate property. I’m telling this to you because you might need to get out of here on your own. You understand me?”

  She nodded.

  He gave her one last look, then he turned and ran. Halfway down the hallway he heard the doorway behind open, and he dashed forward and hid again in the place he had before. When he peered back out, down the hallway, John was moving upward with his eyes on the doorway and the room within where Mary May waited. He held in one hand a medical kit and in the other he carried the metal surgical tray Will knew held the tattoo gun and ink.

  * * *

  SHE HAD MOVED NOT A MUSCLE FROM THE TIME THAT WILL left to the time John came through the door. The only thing, she realized now, was that when John had left he had closed the door, and now as he came back in, it stood open.

  She watched him move into the room then set his medical bag on the floor and put the tray down next to it. On the tray, she saw the tattoo gun and needle. Not far off, rolling slightly back and forth on the metal tray was the bottle of black ink. John turned now and looked toward the open door. He seemed to consider it for a time. And then he looked back at her. “You wouldn’t move, would you? You’d stay still? It will make it easier if you just accept it. If you just accept the sin and let it happen.”

  “I accept it,” she said. She had not moved at all and he looked her over then looked back at the open door.

  “That’s good,” John said. “I don’t want to ask anyone to hold you down, or to tie you up. It always goes easier if the sinner is willing. It helps me. It helps the ink and the writing of the sin.”

  He walked now to the door and stood there with his back to her. When he turned again and looked to where she knelt, he said, “Still. I don’t trust you.” He walked out through the door and returned in a few seconds. He held in his hand a metal stool with a swivel at its base that raised or lowered the stool up and down. He brought this toward her and set it on the floor.

  Next, he brought the tray over and began to bring up swabs and alcohol from within the medical kit. When he had laid it all out he simply sat there on the stool. “I know you said you wouldn’t move, but the needle always makes them move. It makes them move and I wouldn’t want you to ruin the work I do.” He stood and took from his pocket a vial of the same powder he had blown across her face. He uncorked it and blew it over her again.

  The feeling washed over her as a wave might break upon an ocean shore. She was immersed in this feeling once again, dragged outward and away as the wave receded.

  * * *

  WILL WENT THROUGH THE DOOR AND INTO THE BRIGHT SUNLIT afternoon. He could not shake the feeling he should have stayed. He should not have listened to Mary May. They should be out here in the daylight, moving toward the bluff where Jerome waited for them both.

  There was a real dread that Mary May would never leave this place. There was fear that John might be killing her even now, suffocating her, or otherwise hurting her in some way and Will almost turned and went back inside, hoping again that he was not too late. But he did not do it. She had been drugged, but she had seemed in control. She had seemed certain that what she was doing—getting a tattoo—was only a small sacrifice to make in order to free her brother from
this place.

  Will knew the tattoo was only the first thing though. He had looked at her and looked up at the wall on which all the skins had been placed and he, for a moment, had been terrified of just how many he had seen there. Hundreds more than he had thought existed. Hundreds more Eden’s Gate members than he had previously known about. And though this meant he did not know them, it also meant they did not know him, and if anyone suspected anything of him, it would be his end.

  He set off along the passageways that moved in and out of the buildings that made up Eden’s Gate. He came down then circled out and around the backs of the houses that lined the gravel drive. He kept low, one hand on his hat as he moved and the other hand carrying the rifle right there beside him.

  He moved house to house, hiding at the back of each before sprinting across the open space that divided one from the next to come. When Will found the house he thought Drew was within he still could not be sure. Many of the houses were much the same and he walked cautiously along the side and came to the front. Down the gravel drive he could see the guards and up by the church he saw more men and women of Eden’s Gate. On the road were several more and he stood with his back flattened to the siding then reached a hand out and felt the paint. It was drying in the place that SINNER had once been written, and his fingers came back white at each tip. The whorls of his fingerprints now cloudy with the paint.

  He moved back along the siding of the house and as he went he wiped his hand down along his clothes. The paint was almost dry, but it came away in places and marked his clothes where he had put each finger.

  When he got to the rear of the house again, he moved toward the back door. He stood in front of it for a time, and then he reached a hand and turned the knob. The door opened and fell inward with his hand still on the knob. He was careful now not to let it fall against the wall. He took a step inside and saw that the door led into a hallway. The bathroom sat on one side and a bedroom sat on the other. Out ahead of him he could see the kitchen and a part of the living room, and he was cautious as he went, for the light of day went before him into the darkness of the place and as he went himself, he cast his own shadow out before him and he could see there was nothing he could do for it but to continue.

  Drew was standing with his back to Will, looking out through the blinds toward the larger building in which the tattooed skins were collected, and where he’d left his sister.

  “Hello, Drew,” Will said. He stood at the end of the hallway where it came into the living room.

  Drew turned and his face was startled but not overly suspicious that Will was there.

  “When you first joined Eden’s Gate I should have talked to you. I should have tried to be around a bit more,” Will said to him. “Even though I left town your parents always meant something to me, and so did you and Mary May.” He walked a little farther into the room. He still held the rifle, but Will was no different than any other member of Eden’s Gate who carried a rifle one place or another on this land. “I’m learning I should have been around. I might have been able to stop what happened to your father. I guess a lot has changed.”

  Drew’s eyes darted to the small coffee table in the corner of the room and Will saw there a chrome-plated .38. When Will brought his eyes back he could see Drew was watching him again. “You come to kill me, Will?”

  “No,” Will said. “What would make you even say that?”

  “For what I’ve done.”

  “You haven’t done anything yet,” Will said. “I can help you.”

  “You were friends with Mamma and with Daddy.”

  “I know that,” Will said. “But that makes me only want to help you all the more. I loved them, you know. Your daddy and mamma were like family to me. I wouldn’t want to hurt you or Mary May.” He took a few more steps, and he watched Drew’s eyes move again toward the .38.

  “You don’t know what I’ve done,” Drew said. He moved now, going for the weapon there on the table in between them.

  Will met him with a crash, lowering his shoulder and using the whole weight of his body to throw Drew against the wall. And though Drew was a half foot shorter than Will and probably fifty pounds lighter, the shock of hitting the younger man was felt all through Will’s shoulder and down along his side. He watched Drew hit the wall then slide almost to the floor, but Drew was up again in the same instant and he dove and fell into Will, driving both to the floor.

  They rolled and knocked into the table. Will heard the gun go over and the heavy thud of it as it hit the floor. Will’s own rifle had been lost when Drew had hit him and Will now turned and tried to locate it and to find the .38, but he saw neither as he called out suddenly in pain.

  Drew had struck him hard in the ribs with the knuckles of his fist. He hit him twice more in quick succession as Will rolled and tried to get away. Drew moved after him, both men scrambling and trying to get the better of the other. Will put a hand out on the couch and tried to lift himself, but Drew lunged and belted him across the back again and Will fell away, losing his grip on the couch and any chance he’d had for standing.

  The effort had brought Drew to the floor again and while Will rolled and tried to keep outside Drew’s reach, Drew came up onto his knees. As he was getting one foot under to stand again, Will got hold of the coffee table and flipped it over his body to where Drew knelt. The table hit Drew just as he raised an arm to fend it off and though Will knew it had not hurt Drew much, Will saw in the same moment that Drew had been thrown off balance.

  Will got to his feet and charged. He came down on Drew with the same force he’d leveled on him the first time, throwing all his weight toward the man. They went to the floor in a thrash of fists and legs, rolling and hitting out at each other. But it was Drew again who managed to land a sudden hit to Will’s head.

  Will lay stunned, flat on his back. Drew got up and went for the gun. Will sent a foot up and across Drew’s shin, tripping him and bringing him back to the floor. Now Will came to his hands and knees and grabbed out after Drew and gripped a piece of his clothing then tugged back.

  The .38 lay just ahead of Drew and he reached for it with his hand. His fingers gripping into the carpet as Will grabbed and pulled again. Drew kicked back but Will managed to avoid the brunt, and now he got his forearm beneath Drew’s chin. Will pulled up hard, bending Drew’s spine upwards and cutting off his air supply. Drew’s hands and fingers remained outstretched, searching for the gun while Will kept pulling back ever harder.

  Drew, most likely seeing he was trapped, began to aim elbows backwards into Will’s sides and lower chest, the majority landed poorly. Now, as Drew fought and Will maintained his hold, the smaller man started to dig and rip at Will with his fingers, scraping the flesh of Will’s forearm and raking his fingers across Will’s face.

  Will just kept holding him and after a minute he could feel Drew begin to slacken. He held Drew for ten seconds more before he let him drop to the floor again. Will stepped over him then reached and pulled up the .38. He stepped back over Drew and stuck the gun down the front of his pants. Next Will dropped down on all fours and lowered his head to look beneath the couch, and then he put a hand out. His hand came back from underneath the couch gripping the rifle.

  For ten seconds he stood there with the rifle strap over his shoulder trying to get his breath. Drew hadn’t been able to hurt Will in the stomach, but the movements had brought the sourness of bile to his lips and when Will ran his tongue out he could taste the tang of blood. Something was coming apart inside him that he did not have the time for, and he looked around the room and knew this was not the time to dwell on it.

  When he felt his nerves begin to still and his breath to even, he went to the window Drew had been standing at. He looked in the same direction he had seen Drew look. There were still a few church members up toward the church, but no one seemed to have noticed the sound of the struggle there inside the house.

  Will crossed the room again and looked down on Drew. The man’s
chest was moving almost imperceptibly beneath his shirt, and his head lay to the side. Will bent now and lifted his hat from where it had fallen on the floor and squared it atop his head. He wished there had been time to reason with the man. He wished there had been more to say. He watched the movements of the chest. Drew had given him no other option and though Will had hoped they might just walk out of here, Will knew now that the only way he was going to get Drew up the hill and off the Eden’s Gate property was to carry the smaller man across his shoulder.

  Taking a knife from the kitchen, Will went from room to room cutting the cords from any electrical appliance or lamp he could find. He came back into the living room and trussed Drew’s ankles together then his wrists behind his back. When he was done he rolled Drew on his side and, using the same kitchen knife, cut material from the couch then folded it and stuffed it down into the man’s mouth.

  Drew was beginning to come awake so he brought up the last bit of electrical cord and wrapped it tight around the back of Drew’s head and mouth, and then tied the gag in place. When he stood again, he could see Drew’s eyes had begun to flutter and as Will watched, he came awake and tried to free himself from the wrappings of the cords.

  Will stepped away again. He could hear the man fighting it and he could hear his voice as he tried to speak and the muted call of his scream as he tried to free himself. Will didn’t pay him any mind. Will could feel the fresh marks Drew had left on him, the nails that had gouged his skin, both across his forearm and across his face. Will also knew that one side of his face had begun to swell, most likely beginning to discolor from the punches that had landed on his cheek and neck.

  When he looked out the window he saw the same things he’d seen before, but this time he looked toward the building in which Mary May was being kept. He watched the far trees and he thought about the mile or so between Eden’s Gate and where Jerome was waiting. Will wondered now about Mary May and if he had done the right thing listening to her.