Escape from Eden (33 page)

“Pride.” The word boomed through the speakers in the pavilion.

The Reverend, dressed fully in blue, ambled onstage, stroking his beard thoughtfully. “Pride brings destruction in our kind of life. It casts a shadow over the land in which it walks, a pall over the selfless, tainting the mutual sacrifice and respect we have for each other.”

He approached Doc Gladstone, who, despite his determined stance, recoiled. With the tip of a chubby finger, the Reverend stroked one of Doc Gladstone’s dreadlocks. Suddenly, he flipped it up into the air, and with a quickness I’d never witnessed from him before, whipped something shiny from the pocket of his shirt. With two quick hacks, he sliced off one of Doc Gladstone’s dreadlocks. It danced up through the air like the tail of a kite, then sank to the ground with a thump.

Doc Gladstone remained stoic, expression blank. I hoped that was blank indifference, and not fear. Although I knew he must have been as terrified as I was. More so. Much more.

A wave of panic washed over me, making me light-headed. Not to him. Not Doc Gladstone. To be made a fool of in front of the people he cared for, the people he’d sworn to protect; it sickened me. But something—years of caution, of nervousness, of fear—kept me in my seat.

“What is pride?” the Reverend asked. He skated his gaze over the Flock, all of whom reflected Doc Gladstone’s blank expression. “Pride means to act arrogantly, to have a high opinion of one’s worth.” He picked another dreadlock between his index finger and thumb, examined it with a tilt of his head, and severed it from Doc Gladstone’s scalp. “Self conceit.” He flicked the dreadlock before Doc Gladstone with disgust, as if it were a poisonous snake.

“How sharp is that knife?” Dina whispered in disbelief.

Maybe it was the only rational thought in her head, because none of this could certainly make sense to her. Doc Gladstone was a pillar of Edenton, not a spy for the network. I squinted at the knife in the Reverend’s hand. It wasn’t a knife at all.

“It’s a scalpel,” I whispered back.

With a shot of terror, I recognized it was a much larger version of the one I’d seen in Doc Gladstone’s office.

The Reverend picked another dreadlock from Doc Gladstone’s head. “Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge so that they might elevate themselves, to be like God.” He whacked the dreadlock off. “Pride.” The Reverend lifted another. “Lucifer’s desire to compete with God led to his fall from heaven.” And the dreadlock was sliced away. “Pride.” Beneath that grizzly red beard, the Reverend’s lips twitched into a sadistic smirk. “The Tower of Babel was constructed to reach up to the heavens, to bring people closer to God’s level.” Slash. Another lock hit the stage floor with a dull thud. “Pride.”

My breath caught in my throat.

In a darkening voice, the Reverend continued, “David thought himself so above others that he felt he could sleep with another man’s wife and murder him.” With a calculated swing, another ropy lock fell away. “Pride.”

The Reverend snatched the rest of Doc Gladstone’s dreadlocks with a swipe of his hand–the few that were left–and jerked Doc’s head up and back. Doc Gladstone winced, obvious pain wracking his body, but he kept his expression stony.

“As we all must learn,” the Reverend said as he held the scalpel aloft, “Pride cometh before the fall.” With a whip of his thick arm, the Reverend slashed the sharp blade across Doc Gladstone’s throat.

Silence.

Everything came into focus with agonizing slowness.

A spray of blood shot through the shafts of golden morning sunlight.

The Reverend released the remaining dreadlocks.

They curtained Doc Gladstone’s face for a moment before parting, revealing a look of stunned surprise.

The body fell forward, head tipping back and eyes gazing heavenward.

The Reverend splayed his arms, presenting Doc Gladstone as if he were prized slaughtered cattle.

Doc Gladstone’s dark, shocked eyes met mine as he toppled over. And in that moment, I saw it. That flicker of tenacity that never seemed to leave him. Even as his life was stolen away.

He hit the stage with a violent thud. Blood pooled around his head.

The Reverend stepped back to avoid getting a stain on his shiny white shoes.

Then, nothing. Only the creeping blood on the stage moved, widening into a horrifying halo around Doc Gladstone’s head. The image would be seared into my memory forever. An image that would visit my nightmares, and be with me every day. An image I’d never forget, no matter what I did or where I went.

But that was exactly the Reverend’s cruel intent.

I glanced at Mama. She sat, hands clasped in front of her, mouth tight. The children surrounding her stared with petrified fascination at the stage. Mama blinked multiple times as if she were coming awake and, through the crowd of people between us, found my gaze.

Get them out
, I wanted to yell across the pavilion.
Get the children out of here
.

But she didn’t. Couldn’t. The Reverend would never allow her to take them away.

She looked sad, defeated. Accepting her—our—situation.

“Our fine doctor,” the Reverend said, now pacing behind Doc Gladstone like a winning prizefighter, “the person we trusted with our health, with the well-being of our physical forms, had decided a different fate for us. A fate that included destroying Edenton. Destroying everything we’ve created. Allowing the outside world—a world full of cruelty and depravity—to invade our peaceful lives.”

My throat constricted. I blinked back tears. How long? I wondered selfishly. How long before the person up onstage, killed at the hands of the Reverend, was me?

A commotion started at the left side of the stage. The two security guards, the two that had dragged Doc Gladstone onto the stage, now shoved another person before the crowd. That person was Gabriel.

I watched Gabriel’s every movement, tears of shock blurring my vision. He stared wide-eyed down at Doc Gladstone’s prone body, taking notice of the blood-soaked dreadlocks strewn about the stage. The security guards edged him forward, toward the Reverend, but Gabriel lunged back, only to be shoved again.

Warmth enclosed my hand. I tore my gaze from Gabriel and looked down to find Dina’s fingers wrapped around my hand. When I met her eyes, I saw sympathy. Sadness. An urge for acceptance. Gabriel was going to be killed on that stage, like Doc Gladstone, and as a member of the Flock, I should—no must—concede to the Reverend’s plan.

Thoughts tangled in my head, but before I could unravel them I heard the Reverend call my name. I jerked my head up to find people staring at me.

“Mia,” he repeated, folding his hands in front of him, around the bulk of his belly. “Please come to the stage.”

The breath left my lungs. My palm went to my chest. Beneath it, my heart pounded furiously.

“Me?” I asked.

The Reverend laughed, a curdled sound. He opened his arms wide at his sides. “Yes, child. Up on the stage, please.”

I rose to my feet as if tugged up by strings and walked to the stage steps, avoiding all the eyes fixed on me. I felt the magnetic pull of Mama’s worried stare, heard Max’s whispered mumbles, but remained focused straight ahead. My legs jittered. Nerves clawed at my gut. I mounted the stairs, and stepped around Doc Gladstone’s sprawled, lifeless legs. The toes of his boots were slick and dark with blood.

I didn’t look at Gabriel. I didn’t look at the Reverend. I kept my eyes focused on the trees in the distance, sunlight piercing between the leaves. From behind, I felt a presence, looming with an airless heat, and twisted around to see Thaddeus standing very close. Terrifyingly close. Behind him, in the brightening morning sun, Agatha clutched one of the pavilion’s columns with anger scored deep in her features.

Thaddeus snagged my arm, holding me utterly immobile. His fingers dug into my skin with bruising pain. I winced.

One of the security guards released Gabriel, leaving him struggling in the other guard’s hold. The guard picked up Doc Gladstone’s ankles and dragged him off the stage. Blood left a long slick smear trailing from his body. His limp arms trailed the wooden floor, his own shorn dreadlocks catching in his fingers.

I swallowed down bile, and turned my face away.

“No,” Thaddeus said in my ear. He breath smelled of peppermint and alcohol. “Watch, Mia. Watch what we do to the traitorous.”

“Are you calling me a traitor?” I asked.

“Now, Mia,” he said from behind my shoulder. “Why would I say that?”

Doc Gladstone’s head banged down the stage steps. The sound echoed through the pavilion, bouncing off the trees, disappearing into the muck of the jungle. Onstage, the blood was already viscid and a blackish crimson, coagulating at the edges of the long smear. The colors were almost beautiful in the sun, like a swatch of watercolor.

“Now, this boy,” the Reverend said, swinging his open palm in Gabriel’s direction, “is the very definition of prideful.”

Gabriel’s attention snapped to the Reverend. He blinked around in confusion.

“First there is vanity,” the Reverend shouted.

I watched Gabriel steel himself, fists clenching. His eyes shot from one security guard to the next and I could tell he was trying to plan some kind of escape. But how could he get away? What could I do? I couldn’t wrench away from Thaddeus’s grip.

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain—”

“I’m not vain, you bastard,” Gabriel said in a steady, calm voice.

The Reverend’s smug smile melted from his face. Behind his wiry, red beard, his mouth tightened. No one spoke back to him during a Bright Night. Let alone call him a name other than the Reverend or Sir.

But Gabriel, eyes ablaze, appeared fearless. “But charming, sure,” he said, mouth half-curled in a smile. “I’ll go ahead and take that as a compliment.”

The Reverend inhaled a deep, calming breath and turned to me. “But where would he be without that pretty face, eh Mia?” The Reverend snarled and twisted back to Gabriel. “A pretty face, a cultivated charisma that lures in victims–hopeless girls who, despite wanting more from him, end up defiled.”

My stomach turned over.

“Hopeless?” Gabriel squinted at the Reverend, then at me, and his eyes widened as if he realized what the Reverend had said. “Mia isn’t hopeless,” Gabriel said through his teeth. “And we never … ” he paused and flicked a glance at me “ … defiled.”

No one dared to snicker. No one dared to move.

The Reverend gave a thick, hearty laugh. “We know of your wicked ways,” he said. “What you did before you came to Edenton. What you’ve done since you’ve been here.” The Reverend smirked down at Gabriel’s mother and father, sitting next to each other, hands clasped together. “The two of you have suffered enough. His past has destroyed the soul within and we are left with nothing but a shell. It may be impossible for me to resurrect what is already spoiled.”

A tear trailed down Gabriel’s mother’s face.

“Other than my sin of vanity,” Gabriel asked, “what exactly did I do?” He jerked against the security guard’s grip. “Shouldn’t you read me my full list of accusations before judgment?”

“Of course, Gabriel,” the Reverend said as if he were talking to a young child. He twirled the scalpel between his fingers, grinning. “This boy exhibits the ultimate kind of pride. The pride of a boy who … ” he pointed the blade at Gabriel “ … got away with murder.”

Gabriel’s face went bloodless with mingled horror and confusion. “What did you say?” he asked in a strangled whisper.

The Reverend turned to the Flock. “Those of you who have gotten to know this boy in the short time he’s been here may not find this difficult to believe, but Gabriel here killed his own brother.” He stamped his foot on the stage. “Killed! Without remorse, without punishment. This murderer walks among us!”

I wanted to reach out, take Gabriel’s hand, try to comfort him. Tell him these were only words. Words used by the Reverend to intimidate. But Thaddeus held me back and all I could do was watch as Gabriel’s eyes grew vacant. His arms hung stiffly at his sides, even as the guard clung to his bicep.

“He shot his brother at close range!” the Reverend yelled. “Directly in the face.”

He shook his head and dropped the bloody scalpel in his hand on the stage. The clank reverberated through the rafters of the pavilion. He held out a hand and the security guard who had dragged Doc Gladstone off the stage placed a handgun in his palm. The Reverend held the gun up.“The murderer among us shot his brother with a gun like this one.”

“But you just killed Doc Gladstone!” I yelled, thrashing in Thaddeus’s grip.

He tugged me back.

The Reverend pivoted and faced me. “Doc Gladstone was a sinner. What did Gabriel’s brother do to deserve to be killed so coldly?” He turned to Gabriel. “Eh, son? What did your brother do?”

As if snapping out of a dream, Gabriel blinked and glanced down at his parents. “What is going on?” he asked them. “Did you plan this?”

Neither of his parents would look up, keeping their focus on their joined hands. Together, as a couple, they silently and willingly abandoned him to the whims of the Reverend.

“Answer me, boy,” the Reverend said.

“He did nothing,” Gabriel whispered.

“Louder,” the Reverend said.

“My brother did nothing to deserve what I did to him.”

Gabriel’s voice carried through the pavilion, but had lost all its strength. He was surrendering to the intimidation of the Reverend. And, brilliantly, the Reverend knew what chink to wedge open in Gabriel’s armor.

“Nothing?” I cried, outraged. “He manipulated you when you were a little kid!” I turned to the Reverend. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, my child?” the Reverend said, speaking to the crowd sitting in awe before him. “Exposing a murderer? A sinner? A prideful creature who duped us all into believing he was one of us?”

“He didn’t dupe anyone,” I said. “His parents brought him here because they thought it would help. That you could help.” I waved a hand at the Flock. “That we all could help him.”

The Reverend grew angry, his face reddening. Thaddeus’s grip on my arm tightened. I shouldn’t have been answering back.