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.