Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

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 WILLleft 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 SUNLITafternoon. 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.”