Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

“Life has tested you, Will. You must believe that now. You must believe that you’re here for a reason. Chosen for the good of our kind. There are dark times ahead. Dark times to come and we shall be like a light in those dark times.”

“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 WHENMary 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.”