“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.
He swung open the door and the light flooded inward. She could see that he would drag her past the frame and out the door. She called his name, but he did not stop and she reached and grabbed the leg of the chair then the doorjamb as she went. For a second she held on, but he kicked her then brought her up again, lifting her by the ankle so that she spun and twisted with her head dragged backwards across the floor and out of the little room.
“Drew!” she said. “Drew!”
But it was as if he didn’t hear her. He kept moving and soon they had crossed the living room. The door came open in his hand and she was yanked out after him and then let go.
She laid in the dirt and gravel of the drive. Small bits of sand against her face and in her hair. She coughed. The taste of blood from some cut she must have had inside her mouth and she coughed again then tried to look around.
John sat there waiting for her. He was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck and as she looked around, she could see the faces of many more. Men and women she had seen that day, church members.
“Hello,” John said.
She turned and got a hand behind her and tried to sit. “What is this?”
“This is the end,” John said. “This is what I’ve always wanted for you. You have been alone. You have lived without the word of The Father and now you will be alone no more.”
She tried to push herself up. She tried to fight them when they came for her. She tried to rip her arms away from their grip. But there were too many to defend from. Soon she was in the air, carried up out of the dirt and thrown down across the truck bed.
She called her brother’s name. She repeated it again and again, but she never heard any response.
III
Every one of us should be reminded how very alone we are when we indulge in sin and live without the faith that keeps the devil from our door.
WHEN WILL WOKE HOLLY WAS SITTING THERE ON THE single bed opposite his own. “You ready?” Holly asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “What time is it?”
“Morning time.” She had no watch to check and no phone, for there was no service even if she had one.
He pushed back the blankets then brought his feet over the edge and placed them bare upon the floor.
“Jesus, Will. You make your own underwear or something?”
He looked down to the briefs he wore. They were old and had once been black but years of washing them in the river then hanging them in the sun had turned them a sun-bleached brown. He looked up at her and smiled. “They’re just a reflection of my life.”
“Underwear are the windows to the soul.” She sat up and told him to shower and then meet her in the barn cafeteria.
He showered then dressed in his old clothes. They still smelled of the mountains, of pine and dirt and cracked rock, and of his own sweat and salt. He carried with him his rifle and backpack as he came into the cafeteria and found her waiting for him.
She gathered up a basket and put it out on the table before him and told him to go through the clothes within. “I tried to find things that I thought would fit.”
He looked in the basket and removed the first layer of clothes and set it to the side. “Where did this stuff come from?”
“Donations,” she said. “You know how it works, Will. You come to us and you donate what you have and we give to you as well. We are a communion, though I never would have called it by some hippy shit name like that.”
He picked through the clothes and found the ones he thought would work, and then he rolled them and put them down within his bag. “There’s more of this?”
“Sure,” she said.
She brought him into the long room that took up half of one of the houses and flipped on the lights. He saw the piles of clothes that stretched from one end of the room all the way to the other. There were piles of shoes as high as he was. There were gloves and hats in another pile. There were coats, pants, shirts, underwear. He walked along down the middle of them all. There was little order to it other than by article—children’s clothes thrown in among the adults. He stopped and picked up a children’s size eight set of shoes by the shoelaces that connected them. The laces white and stained with dirt, while the shoes were pink and purple.
He looked back at Holly where she stood. “The Kershaws? Lonny said they had brought them somewhere. They had a daughter and a son. But I’ve seen no children. In fact, I haven’t seen the Kershaws, either.” He stood with the shoes dangling in his hand and he ran his eyes out across the piles of clothes then back again. He was beginning to see items he recognized. Shirts that advertised the local little league team, or one that showed the emblem of the lumberyard. “What is happening here? Where is everyone?”
“I see where your mind is going, Will. But you don’t need to worry. They are with us. But they are not with us here.”
He held the shoes still. They were like something he’d once had in his own long forgotten life. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“There are other places being set up,” Holly said. “There’s a woman out east who runs our farms. She grows our food, she gives us the produce we need. The eggs. The meat from different livestock. Surely you didn’t think it was just you. The church is everywhere and there are many to feed,” she said.
“And that is where the children are?”
“Yes,” Holly said. “Everyone is safe. Everyone has their purpose. You’ll see one day.”
He dropped the shoes now and he looked around at the piles once again. “There’s so much,” he said.
“Jacob, their oldest brother, has also begun to train women and men in the mountains.”