Page 65 of Bound By Redemption
He laughed full out, making his body shake and my head since he still had a grasp on me.
Daniel yanked my head to the left, holding my chin roughly with his other hand. It took me a moment to comprehend what I was seeing.
Along the wall there was a row of nine chairs. In those chairs were men, their hands and feet tied to the wooden frame of the chair. Then it hit me who they were. All nine of the elders. The elders who ran the community here. The elders who decided what happened and when. The elders who decided what girls would be married to whom.
And one of those men … was my father, Jeremiah.
His face was bloodied and bruised. I could swear he was looking right at me, but I didn’t care. IVs were plugged into all of their arms, and instead of giving them blood, it looked as though they were being drained of their blood.
“What are you doing to them?” I asked, seeing every elder in different states of distress. One looked as though he would take his last breath at any moment, while another appeared to just have a few cuts and scrapes.
“Draining them, of course. We may need their blood for something.” He responded so nonchalantly that my insides quivered. Daniel had no soul. He had nothing good inside of him. What scared me the most about that was Katie and I were at his will.
He said that he wanted us to bear his children, so that didn’t mean death. As long as we were alive we could fight. How, I had no idea.
“Why are you killing the elders? Your father is over there too?” It was true. Even though he looked like he was the better of the nine, he still had a busted lip and swollen eye. While I didn’t like the man, still, who could drain their own father of blood and watch them die?
“He’s the worst of the lot. Once I get rid of them, then I become the next prophet.”
He really was insane.
Keep asking questions.That little voice nagged at me.
“The prophet is still alive.” I took another look at the nine men, not seeing the head man around here, Johnathan
Daniel jerked my head in another direction, and there the prophet lay on his back, hands crossed over his chest. Still. Unmoving.
“Is he dead?” We’d been raised that the prophet would only die when it was his time. It would not be at the hands of another. A higher being would come and take him. This right here did not feel like natural causes.
When I lived here, we followed the prophet’s every word. If he didn’t want families to eat green beans, we didn’t. If he called for us to give all of our shoes to the nine families, we did. There was nothing that he was denied.
Looking back on it, I didn’t see it for what it was. A cult. A religious cult that was based around control and not any type of religion. No, that was used to cover up what was really going on.
I hated knowing that, but at the same time I was glad that I had got my sister and Remy away from this. Whatever this religion was, I wanted no part of it ever again.
“Yes. Been that way for about an hour. You woke up just in time to see him burn.”
It was so cold my toes were starting to go numb along with my fingers. I kept moving them, trying to get the blood moving.
“Burn?” I asked, trying to hold my shit together.
Daniel took a step back from me and snapped his fingers like he was a king or something. Men, most of whom I knew from my time here, grabbed the handles of a white fabric and picked up Johnathan's body.
I watched each step they took, and with each one it filled me with fear. As if I wasn’t already scared enough. Not for Johnathan, not for Katie or myself.
One of the men, Tim I thought, opened a large circle that was carved into the wall, and flames came pouring out of it. It was a crematory. We were in the crematory.
Not realizing that, my body started shaking. We’d been raised that being burned sends you to the Devil instantly. Whether it was in a fire by accident or being cremated. It was not something we ever did. Therefore, why we had a crematory on the property was a mystery.
If these men were throwing their prophet into the flames, they’d have no reservations about doing the same with us. While I still didn’t believe a lot of our teachings, just the thought of getting burned and never making it to Heaven where I’d see Remy had fear racing over my skin.
But it was there, and right now, it was illuminating. Johnathan’s body was put onto a roller and slowly put into the fire. The flames flashed out, appearing to grab the body and pull it in.
It was like a horror movie with the ghost grabbing onto your body, pulling you under, and there was nothing one could do about it. Fire was like that.
All the men stepped away, and the one who opened the circle closed the lid.
“And that is what will happen to all of these men.” He pointed to the men along the wall. “And you. You will rot in Hell for your indiscretions.”
