"No!"
Chapter Twenty-Three
“You've shot her,
you've fucking shot her
.” Not caring what the hell his father did to him now, Craig scrambled the short distance to where Andrea lay sprawled across the yard. Blood trickled from the wound in her forehead. Her eyes were wide open and staring upward, but seeing nothing.
“Andrea?” He felt for a pulse, knowing even then it was stupid. His father was a farmer; he knew how to aim and how to kill.
"Andrea."
A movement behind him and he whipped around. The gun was pointing straight at him. For the first time he found he didn't much care.
“You've killed her,” he snarled, torn halfway between rage and tears. “Why?
She's done nothing wrong.
”
“She would have interfered,” his father whispered, his gaze fixed on Craig alone as if, in dying, Andrea was no longer important. “Nobody interferes with the work of the Lord. Nobody.”
“You didn't have to kill her.”
“Get up.”
“What about Andrea? What about...?”
"Get up."
This time his father shrieked the words and the rifle jabbed him in the mouth. He could taste its dull metallic tang. He got up. Slowly. Not just because his body would allow him to do nothing else, but because somehow the fear as to what might happen to him was gone. He was left only with puzzlement, grief, and overwhelming weariness.
“So,” he whispered, more to himself than his captor. “What happens now?”
“Repentance,” his father said.
They left Andrea in the yard and completed the journey to his father's house. Craig felt as if somehow he'd known he and his father would together end up here. One day. He hadn't expected it to be now.
Inside the house, the gun still at his back, he hesitated. “Can I have some water?”
“No. You don't deserve it. Get upstairs.”
With no option but to obey, Craig turned right and headed to the landing. It felt as if it were not just himself now, doing this, but all his previous selves as well. He could sense the echoes of his own childhood in his head. Something else too. Flashes of memory he couldn't grasp. Water, silence, the winter sun. His breath felt too thick in his mouth.
His father pushed him into his old room. Only a few weeks since he'd been here himself, but everything had changed. The wallpaper had been ripped off, the bedspread torn, and the pillows slashed. Mud had been stamped into the carpet, and the books and papers thrown from the shelves. Beyond all that though, the bare walls had been painted in red with the sign of the cross, on every conceivable inch of space.
“What have you done?” Craig whispered.
“You have asked to be cleansed and that is what will happen,” his father replied.
* * * *
In sleep, Craig's world was blank and visionless. He had no dreams. A fact for which he was thankful. The light streaming in the window finally woke him.
It must be the afternoon,
he thought. He'd been asleep that long, a realization which made him shiver. Something was digging into his back and he shifted to try to ease it. This didn't work. He opened his eyes, twisted around. He was in a chair. Tied to it securely. In his bedroom. Where his father had put him. And he was naked.
It was this fact that caused him to retch, though nothing came up but a thin stream of liquid. He spat it out. His mouth tasted acrid, raw. It was then that he saw his father. The older man was standing at the other side of the room, watching him. His face was expressionless. He still held the rifle. At the sight of it, the memory of Andrea—the pointlessness of her death—came back to Craig and he blinked away tears. Whatever happened, he mustn't think he wouldn't come through this. It was more important now than ever to be calm. That he understood. The image of Paul came into his head. He ignored the pang of regret, focused instead on his ex-boyfriend's strength. Whatever bad stuff had happened to Paul, he'd gotten through it. Craig could too.
He stared at his father. In his other hand, he held a book of some kind. Craig couldn't see what it was, but it seemed familiar somehow.
“So you're awake then?” This time, his father's voice was soft, at odds with the scenario they found themselves in. He could have been asking for bread at the local store, tending to the neighbor's lambs in spring, instead of staring at his captive son. “Are you ready?”
“F-for what?” Craig managed, though the words seemed hard to say. His tongue was thick with thirst.
“For what we must do.”
Taking a couple of steps closer, the rifle lodged under his arm, his father put down the book on the floor and offered him a drink from a bottle of water. He placed the cool spout against Craig's lips but before Craig could take more than a few precious mouthfuls, he'd snatched the bottle away again.
“Enough,” his father muttered. “That is enough.”
Then he hunkered down and opened the book. At once, Craig recognized it. The bible his father kept in his office, its pages worn with reading. What was he going to do?
He didn't have to wait long for an answer.
“Do you remember this?”
All Craig could do in response was nod.
“Good.” The older man smiled. “I'm glad that there is something holy still left inside you. I tried so hard to instill the commands of the Lord in you, but I thought you had forgotten your lessons. It's good to see you haven't.”
They hadn't been lessons though. Not really. Just a small boy standing for hours at a time in an office and made to learn vast passages of the bible Craig's father had staked his life on. They had meant nothing then and even less now. He remembered some of the words, especially from the Psalms, but his mind had always skittered away from their meaning. Couldn't square it with the life he knew.
His father stood in front of Craig now. He opened the bible. “Tell me what you remember.”
For a moment, all his thoughts were blank but then, from nowhere, words filtered through.
“All scripture...” he began before trailing off as his voice faded. He coughed and tried again, forcing himself to sound stronger. “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for ... for....”
“For teaching, rebuking, correcting...” his father whispered, eyes narrowing, and Craig took up the chant again.
“Correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
He stopped. The memory of what came after that had gone. It didn't seem to matter, as his captor smiled. “Yes. Paul's second letter to Timothy, chapter three and verses sixteen and seventeen. A good saying. You have chosen well, or rather the Lord has led you to choose well. Come then, let us finish the task.”
Before Craig could wonder exactly what that meant, his father had turned to what he assumed was 2 Timothy in his bible, torn the page out, and was offering it to him.
“What do you want me to do? I—”
“Eat it.”
"What?"
“I said eat it. You have learnt the words—I have taught you as many of the Lord's holy words as I could—but you have not taken it to heart. This is the only way. Then your repentance will be sure and you will be saved from the hell you stand so close to.”
Craig gasped. He couldn't take in what he was hearing, especially in light of how calm his father sounded. He had no time to object; the next moment the page of the bible was pushed into his mouth and his jaw closed tight around it by force.
“
Eat it
,” his father said.
Heart beating out of control, Craig shut his eyes and chewed. The paper was thin, easily broken down. Still, it took a while, and he almost gagged. Whatever happened, he mustn't be sick, not with the rifle primed and ready for use. Eventually he swallowed and felt the small wads of paper moving slowly down his throat. His father let him go and he gasped for breath.
“What are you doing?” he panted. “You'll kill me.”
Maybe, Craig thought, that was what his father wanted, but he shook his head. “The Word of the Lord brings no harm. Only good. The words you eat will heal you, my son. What do you remember next?”
“
Nothing.
I don't remember anything, I swear it.”
“You lie.” His father took a step back and raised the gun so it was pointing once more directly at his head. “You can remember something of what you have learnt.
Tell me what it is or I will send you straight to hell, as the Lord commands.
”
“Okay,
okay
. In ... in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God. He ... he was with God in the beginning.”
Craig stumbled to a halt, hoping that would be enough, but his father frowned.
“He was with God in the beginning. Then what?
Tell me more.
”
“He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life....”
“That life was the light of men. Go on.”
“The light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but ... but....”
“The darkness....”
“Has not understood it.” With those last words, Craig was all but out of breath. He felt as if he'd been running for miles and could run no more. He couldn't have said anything else if his father had pressed the gun against his head and pulled the trigger, but thank goodness he didn't need to. Because his father was smiling and nodding to himself.
“Yes, yes, very good. Again, a wise choice. Now, eat.”
This time, Craig opened his mouth and took the paper from the old man's hands, feeling the roughness and warmth of his father's fingers on his tongue. He chewed without objection, finally swallowing when he was ready. When he'd finished, everything around him seemed very still. As if waiting, but for what he couldn't tell. He was surprised by how calm he felt.
“Yes, yes,” his father said, the frown on his forehead easing a little. “You are fulfilling your repentance well. The Lord loves a humble penitent, one who accepts his command.”
Twice more, Craig spoke aloud bible passages from his memory, and twice more ate the words that he'd spoken from his father's hands. One segment from the twenty-third psalm and the last from the letter of James:
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.
After that he knew he'd had enough. His stomach felt swollen and his head ached. More than that, the weariness in his bones was making him slump, half-asleep, on the chair.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please, forgive me. I can't eat any more.”
A silence, during which he expected more shouting, the feel of the gun, or—worse—the sound of it firing. None of that happened. What did happen made his skin grow hot and he began to shake again.
His father stood beside him. The shadow of his body blocked out the sun from the window. He brushed his hands through Craig's hair and down his face to his chin. The caress was gentle, a deadly contrast to the scenario they found themselves in. He lifted Craig's head until he was staring upward into his father's eyes.
“You've done well, Daniel,” his father whispered, smiling. “Very well. So far. I will leave you for a while to meditate upon your sins and consider the path to salvation that the Lord has offered you. Then I will return and we will finish what we have started.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
His father took a strip of cloth from the bed and walked behind him. Craig heard what sounded like liquid being wrung out and then the cloth was jammed into his mouth. It tasted sour and he struggled against it.
“No,” his father whispered. “No.”
Craig continued to pant but forced himself to remain still. His father patted his shoulder. Then he left the room. At once, in spite of the situation, Craig felt his shoulders relax. His body felt even more tired than it had before. His father must have drugged him. Whatever it was on the cloth, it wasn't anything he recognized. Still, whatever happened, he must keep calm. Everything depended on that.
Before he could wonder what the hell he ought to do next, apart from the bloody obvious, he'd drifted into an uneasy, vivid sleep.
He kept waking, flashes of light from the window piercing the edges of his eye, bringing him to a doze where he had no idea how quickly time was passing. Or if it was passing at all. From there he would fall again into a deeper unconsciousness, where he found comfort in forgetting.
It was dark when he fully awoke again and his head was full of questions. Turning, he gazed outside the window, toward a world that felt a long, long way distant now. Were people really living their lives out there? Maddy? Julie? Paul? Where did they think he was anyway? Were they worried? And, if so, what were they doing about it? His heart thumped and he tried to focus on something else. Not people he knew. Instead he thought of all the hundreds of people he'd brushed up against during his past few months in London. What were they doing now? It was nighttime. People, wherever they were, would be going out, seeing friends, watching TV, maybe even sleeping. Most of them could probably never even imagine this. He wondered why he himself hadn't; with his personal knowledge of his father, he should have been more prepared. He hadn't been.
It was then that he realized he wasn't alone in the room. Even as this fact made itself known, he heard the sound of footsteps toward him, a dark shadow looming, and then his gag was wrenched from his mouth. His father remained in front of him. He could make out the shape of him more easily as his eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light. As he watched, his father lifted something—the bottle—to his lips and drank before replacing the cap and dropping it onto the floor. Water.
Craig took in a deep breath. Let it out again. Once more he longed for water, but thought there'd be little point in asking again. Besides, he didn't want to encourage anything more of his father's idea of repentance. Instead he licked his lips to try to create moisture where there was none.