Chapter 18 Ophelia #2
He leans down and pinches my nipple hard through my soaking top, and I gasp in shock and pain. What is happening? He is an awful man, but he’s never behaved this way before.
“Prophet!” Noah shouts, his tone reprehensive.
As if a spell has been broken, the Prophet blinks and shakes his head.
“I’m sorry, I sinned. The stress… the planning. She’s meant to be my angel, but she’s nothing but a whore.”
I hear the slap before I feel it. It cracks in my ear like a whip and is swiftly followed by burning pain. He smacked me across the face. That, the violence, isn’t new.
“Wicked, dreadful creature,” he shouts.
Spittle lands on my cheek, near to my scar, and I shudder in revulsion, unable to wipe it off.
“My Prophet, the townsfolk will be here soon to begin the ceremony. We told them to be here for the first light of dawn, which won’t be long now. What do you need me to do?” Noah looks around the church.
Noah casts a worried glance at me, and I do believe he’s helping by distracting the Prophet from his rage, but in doing so, he’s also reminding him of the tasks ahead, and hastening the deaths of all the people who live here.
I might have run, and I might have wished never to see this cursed place again, but I don’t wish harm on people I used to live with and be close to.
“No!” I wriggle in my bonds but can’t get free, not even a little. “You can’t do this.” Even though it kills me to say it, I know I can’t let them all die, so I force the words out. “I’ll repent and I’ll stay, as your wife. If you stop this madness, I’ll be yours.”
The Prophet laughs, and it’s a dark, slithering sound that wraps itself around me, choking me.
“Oh, you’re going to be mine anyway, Ophelia. You won’t escape me again. You and your friend will be the ones to begin the ascension. From when I first saw you, I knew you’d lead the community to heaven.”
He’s contradicting himself to fit his agenda. Are whores even allowed to go to heaven?
I stare at him, hatred filling me with white hot energy. “Why don’t you go first? You should lead the way.”
His eyes narrow. “I must go last.” He glances quickly at Noah. “I have to ensure that you all ascend safely, and then I can follow you at the very end.”
“How convenient.” I sneer. My fear of him is being slowly replaced by the dark, churning anger I’ve pushed deep down. “I mean, imagine if you decide not to ascend at all, and just start over in a new place.”
Why is he doing this now? There must be a reason, and I truly don’t think he’s going to go with them. He’s doing this to unburden himself of these people and this place, but why?
“What did you do?” I ask. “Have you done something with a local girl?”
He scoffs.
“Ripped off someone in power in a nearby town?”
No response is forthcoming, but his eye ticks, such a small muscle movement, but it tells me all I need to know.
“Noah, he’s going to kill you all and leave.
Something has happened. He’s in trouble.
Financial, I’d bet, and he can’t stay here, which means he either has to attempt to leave with all of you in tow, and admit he’s failed, or he can get rid of you all and slip away.
To start all over again. Isn’t that right, Isiah Abram?
If that’s even your real name.” I stare at him, challenging him for the first time in my life.
I’m terrified, my heart is hammering, but I am realizing something, too. It’s as if there are two wolves inside me—the one who fears him, and the one who hates him. The one who hates him is powerful and snarling, and I much prefer her to the cowering beast who fears him.
“You’ve become so obnoxious during your time away, my little one,” the Prophet says, “but you are wrong. I will, of course, ascend with my flock.”
“Your flock?” I let out the bitter laugh that’s welling inside me. “You are no shepherd.”
“Be quiet.”
He hits me again, and this time it really hurts. The metallic taste of blood coats my tongue. I must have bitten down on it or my cheek.
“Stop it,” Daisy whimpers from beside me. “Don’t do this, please.”
The Prophet swivels his head slowly to look down at her. “As for you, child. You’ve been so very bad. And you know what happens to bad girls?”
“No.” Her answer is a terrified whisper.
“They get to ascend first, or perhaps your path now is to descend into the fire. Either way, your judgement day is here.”
He walks away from us and toward a table to the side, which is filled with glass jugs of deep red liquid, and next to them rows of small cups.
I have no doubt that the contents of those jugs is more than simple wine.
It’s what he plans to use to put an end to his community.
They will willingly drink his poison down.
Picking up a jug, he pours the red liquid into a cup with care. Then he carries the cup in both hands over to Daisy.
As he speaks, his voice grows louder, booming around the interior of the small church.
“Do you think you will ascend, Daisy? Even after your betrayal, do you believe you’ll still have a place beside God? Or will you go to hell, to await your final judgement in the lake of fire?”
Her head is still lolling forward so the Prophet turns to Noah. “Hold her head up.”
Noah looks extremely uncomfortable, and I can see the war raging within him. The cognitive dissonance simmers in his eyes as years of brainwashing slam up against the reality of taking this final step and helping murder people.
“Damn it, man, do as I say.” The Prophet shoots Noah a fiery look of rage.
Noah jerks back at the Prophet’s profanity within a house of God. It’s a sign of the Prophet’s unravelling—how he’s losing control—but still it doesn’t stop his henchman from doing what he’s told.
Noah raises a trembling hand and cups Daisy’s chin to lift her head. She mumbles something I can’t make out and tries to pull away. Noah’s hand is shaking so badly, he can barely hold Daisy’s face up.
He must be wondering what happened to the man he’s worshipped for all these years. The Prophet is shouting profanities, he’s sexually assaulted me in front of Noah, and he’s clearly losing it.
I need for the good in Noah to win out, but I want to scream in despair when I see the moment he capitulates. That minute when all the years of doing what this one, evil man dictates overrides his indecision.
Noah swallows hard and lifts his other hand, prying open Daisy’s mouth. Daisy whimpers and tries to twist her face away, but the man is too strong.
“No,” I shout. “Don’t do this. No. Help. No. Noah, don’t do this. Help!”
Another slap, this one hard enough to make the room spin and my ears ring. It shuts me up long enough for the Prophet to force the liquid into Daisy’s mouth.
“Swallow it all down like a good girl,” he murmurs as he pours it down her throat. “And soon, you will see the face of our savior... or perhaps the fires of hell.”
The door to the church bursts open, and the weak light of early dawn illuminates the aisles and pews.
“What on earth is going on in… oh, my word.” Lizzy Chantrail, an old busybody, stands at the entrance of the church gaping in horror at the scene in front of her.
“W-w-w-hat’s the meaning of this?” she demands. “Why are those girls tied up. Noah? Prophet? I… I don’t understand.”
“They tried to kill us all.” The Prophet lies with such ease, and I see what he really is. A conman. The wizard hiding behind the curtain and pulling the strings of this community. “They must ascend first.”
“Oh, they’re… um… ascending?” She looks at me, wet, my nipples and most private parts on clear display since the Prophet soaked me with holy water.
“Yes.” The Prophet is getting angrier by the second. “They will ascend, and Ophelia will open the gateway for you, us, all to follow.”
“Shall I fetch a cloak?” Lizzy asks.
He frowns. “What for, woman?”
She points at me. “To cover her. She’s indecent. She cannot ascend like this.” There are other voices now, coming from the village. “If the others see her like this, Prophet, some will be upset. This is not… it’s…”
She can’t tell him that this is wrong, but she knows it is. As does Noah. Two more people enter the building behind her, and the Prophet curses under his breath, but I heard it. A vulgar, disgusting word and one he’d never normally use in front of others.
“Oh, my goodness, Daisy!” A woman who has just entered the church rushes forward, and I recognize one of the teachers from the small school that was housed in a barn.
The woman reaches Daisy and lifts her face. “What is wrong with her?” she asks the Prophet.
“She is ascending,” he says simply. “This is the plan. We talked about this.”
“No one said anything about tying women up.” The deep voice comes from a man called Jeremiah, and he’s staring at the Prophet as if he doesn’t know him.
“They tried to turn us in,” he says. “They brought people here with them, to destroy our way of life. To ruin our ascension. They are traitors, and this one,” he grabs my chin and yanks my face up, “she fornicates. She is not married, and she commits great sins. I am saving their immortal souls.”
My heart shatters at the way they look at me, eating up his words.
“We must make haste and begin the ceremony. These two will guide you. They will go first and lead the way for all of you, my precious children, and then I will follow last. We will all be together in the glory that is heaven. Reunited in a place with no pain, only love.”
He points to Jeremiah. “Please prepare the faithful for the ascension.”
There’s no hope now. I’m going to be given that wine, like Daisy, and that will be it.
My mind is foggy, and I’m feeling myself start to drift as if leaving my body. My head hurts, and I wonder if he’s killed me with the last blow to my face. Maybe my brain is slowly bleeding out into my skull and that’s why I feel so strange.
I smile as I think how sweet it will be if the Prophet can’t make me ascend because I’ve already gone. And as I smile wider, the world fades.