Chapter 20 Ophelia
Ophelia
“By the grace of God, awaken sinner.”
More cold water splashes on my face, and I jolt awake.
Perhaps it would be better for me to remain unconscious.
I don’t know, but would the Prophet be able to make me swallow if I was still out of it?
The thought of the wine, and the poison I’m certain it contains, immediately turns my attention to Daisy.
She’s still bound next to me, her head lolling onto her chest. Is she still breathing?
I think so, but it’s hard to tell. How long will the poison take to work?
Every moment that passes, she’s closer to death, and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.
My heart breaks, and I want to howl my grief, but it won’t help.
The church is full of people from the commune, people I’d once loved and called family, though they’re strangers to me now.
I spot Daisy’s family sitting on a pew, side by side.
Susan, her mother, and her father, David.
They’re dressed in those maroon items of clothing I hate so much.
Her mother’s face is pinched with emotion, her father’s brow furrowed.
Sitting beside them are Daisy’s brother and sister, both pale and worried.
The children seem filled with dread, especially when faced with their sister, unconscious and tied to the pulpit.
But I know as well as anyone that being a child in this place is a special kind of powerlessness.
They are expected to be seen and not heard, and neither of them will speak up because they’ve been conditioned their entire lives not to.
I manage to catch her mother’s eye. We used to be so close, but now I barely recognize her.
“Do something!” I shout. “Your daughter is dying. Don’t just sit there. Help her!”
But Susan gives a strange little smile. “She’s ascending,” she calls back. “She’ll be with God, in a better place.”
Where we end up after we die doesn’t even matter. The point is that Daisy’s never had the chance to live her life.
“She’s still a child. She deserves to get to live. How can you just sit there? She’s your daughter.” I look to her siblings, though I know it’s out of their hands. I’m desperate. “She’s your sister. You need to help her.”
The Prophet isn’t going to allow me to keep going in this vein. That he’s letting me talk at all, and hasn’t gagged me already, is testament to how confident he is that nothing I say or do is going to change the mind of anyone in this church. He has total power over them.
Daisy is going to die right next to me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Daisy, please, stay with me. It’s going to be okay. Just wake up. Open your eyes. Please, Daisy.”
Tears stream down my face. I can’t stop them now. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me crying. It’s not weak to show my emotions.
The Prophet stands at the front of the church, facing away from us and the pulpit we’re tied to, a glass jug of the poisoned wine in his hands.
“My children, today is the day we tear ourselves free from the sin of this earthly world. We are the chosen ones, the people God wishes to have by His side for the rest of eternity. Only your strength allows you to be here today, and I need each of you to hold on to that strength. Do not allow doubts to cross your heart, because it is the devil himself who places those doubts there. It is the devil who wants you to burn in the fires of hell for all of eternity, but we will not let him win!”
“We will not let him win,” the congregation chants back at him.
The Prophet lifts the jug higher. “This is our reckoning, our ascension. We destroy so that we may become something pure, something eternal.”
A strange kind of atmosphere settles into the space, a vibration of joyous anticipation.
In the audience, people shake and their hands flutter at their chests, their eyes rolling.
They clutch their family members, but it’s not out of fear and they haven’t even drunk the poison yet.
They are in a state of religious ecstasy.
I want to grab them and scream at them, but that’s impossible.
I can’t even grab the dying girl beside me.
Where are my men? All I want is to see their faces, even if only for one last time.
It’s something I haven’t wanted to give thought to, but now, as the end approaches, I can’t stop my mind conjuring their images. Their scents and their voices. I want them with me more than anything, but wanting won’t make it a reality.
They wouldn’t abandon me; I know that much.
It was something I’d doubted when I’d been in the asylum, but they came for me then.
They risked their own lives. I know they won’t just pack up and leave when they discover me missing, but what if something terrible happened to them?
If the Prophet and his men were able to overcome Cain’s highly trained team, then what would stop them from killing my men, too?
I don’t want to think about it, but how can I not?
Maybe they’re not coming because they’re already dead?
I can’t let that thought take hold. With Daisy dying beside me, it’s too much. The grief will drag me under, and I’ll never be able to pull myself out of it. I might as well just take the poison from the Prophet’s hands and drink it myself.
“Come,” the Prophet says to his followers, “each of you rise and take a cup. Line up in front of me, and I will fill your cup with the sacrament. Soon, you will each be freed of this sinful life and sitting at the feet of our heavenly father.”
One by one, the churchgoers get to their feet and make their way out of the pews and into the aisle. Mothers usher children, and husbands place their hands on their wives’ shoulders.
“No, don’t do this,” I cry. “Please, listen to me. Someone listen!”
I can’t believe they’re going ahead with this.
Daisy’s mother approaches the front of the church. “Your daughter is dying,” I beg her. “How can you stand by and watch this?”
But she smiles benignly, though it’s touched with a little sadness. “We’ll see each other again, soon, if that’s what our Lord wishes.”
Suddenly, I watch Noah lift his chin. His nostrils flare, as though he’s scenting the air. A frown marks his brow. He takes a couple of steps closer to the Prophet and leans in. They’re both so close, I hear what he says, even though he’s doing his best to keep his voice down.
“My Prophet, I can smell smoke.”
The Prophet freezes, every muscle in his body turning rigid. His head snaps in my direction, and the look in his ice-blue eyes shoots terror into me. He’s really mad. He’s really fucking mad.
Now Noah has mentioned it, I realize I can smell smoke, too, and it’s getting stronger with each passing second.
Someone in the congregation leans in and whispers something to his neighbor.
He has the same reaction as Noah, lifting his chin and sniffing.
The whispers of smoke are like a wildfire in itself, catching flames to spread to the next person and then the next.
The whispers become murmurs and the volume in the church increases.
Even though, technically, the residents of this place should no longer care about earthly belongings, it seems the threat of their homes, and food stores, and even their church, being burned to the ground is enough to get them worried.
A handful of people leave their places and hurry to the main doors of the church.
“It’s the western barn!” one of the men shouts. “It’s up in flames.”
Several people cross themselves. Someone murmurs about the animals, but what did they think would happen to them after they’d all supposedly ascended?
Others run out of the church, their instinct to stop the fire overriding all else.
“Stop!” the Prophet yells at them. “I command you to stop!”
But, for once, people aren’t listening. The fire seems to have lit a panic in them, as if it’s forced them back to some sense of reality. It has broken the strange, dreamlike fog they were inhabiting.
One woman screams. “It’s going to reach the church, and we’ll all burn.”
I can’t help the stab of awareness that people are more likely to be spurred into action to save physical property, or stop themselves from feeling pain, than they are by the death of a young girl.
The anger and hatred that’s been building up inside me all this time spills over, and I lift my face and scream until my throat burns.
I scream and yank at my bonds and kick out my feet.
I’ve gone through too much to die like this.
I want to see my men again, and my parents.
I want to tell my mom I love her, and I want to find some place inside me to forgive my dad.
Then I remember how someone set me up with the Prophet when I was just a child, and that person might have been my own father, and I want to cry all over again.
The church is emptying out. It’s instinct to put out a fire.
I’ve been here before when we’ve had fires start because of a lightning strike, or even because someone has done something stupid like knock over a kerosene lamp, and it’s times like this that the whole community comes together to put it out.
Because if they don’t, they know what will happen.
The whole town will burn to the ground. There’s no fire department here, no one else they can call.
They will haul water from the wells and set up a line to pass it between them in buckets until the fire is out.
None of them want to burn, and there’s nothing the Prophet can likely do to override that instinctive fear of the force of the flames.
I yank on my bonds again, and I’d swear the rope around my wrist has loosened. It’s a tiny fragment of hope, but I cling to it. The Prophet is distracted now, trying to stop his followers from fleeing the church.
“You will miss your moment of ascension,” he practically screams at them. “You stupid people.”
If his plan has always been to flee this place after the so-called ascension, he won’t care that the buildings burn.
In fact, that was probably his plan all along—to have everyone here kill themselves and then for him to burn the evidence.
Then he’d flee and start over somewhere else, using that strange magnetic power he has over other people to build a new following from scratch.
I keep working the rope and feel a surge of triumph as my wrist slips free.