The Purification Ceremony by Mark T. Sullivan

Author:Mark T. Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0380974282

NOVEMBER TWENTIETH

That thought almost destroyed our little community. If James Metcalfe was alive, why was he hunting us? Could his purpose be so twisted that he’d kill his beloved illegitimate son, Grover? And who was hunting with him? I jerked in and out of sleep under these burdens and the conflicting emotions Kurant had provoked in me.

Cantrell had ordered us not to travel anywhere alone. At least one person in each group had to be armed. He gave guns to Sheila and Theresa, to Butch and to Kurant. The writer had blanched when accepting the .12-gauge shotgun.

“Carrying this goes against everything I believe in,” he said as we trudged through the snow back toward our cabins. Griff had remained behind with Nelson to plot our tactics for the morning.

“The gun’s just for self-defense,” I said. “Anyway, we’re trying to capture them.”

“C’mon — it’s self-defense if we stay here in the compound. Otherwise it’s murder. And you know as well as I do that the way this is going, we’re not capturing anybody.”

I said softly, “I can’t think like that.”

“I’m paid to think like that.”

“So you’re not going in the morning?”

“I have to go,” Kurant said. “It’s my job. But I never saw it coming to this. I guess I have a vision of man as more sophisticated and civilized than the tribesman or…”

“Or the hunter?”

He stuck his chin out. “Yes.”

“Well, what are you going to do out there tomorrow if you come face-to-face with Metcalfe or whoever it is? Say, ‘I think the human being is above this sort of thing, so don’t kill me’?”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were,” he insisted.

I took in his dim form in the darkness. I wanted things, for once, to be cut-and-dried. “I didn’t mean to be.”

We reached my cabin. He stood on the porch while I got the door open and one of the lamps lit. I could tell he wanted to come in. Despite my exhaustion, I wanted him to come in. In the soft, flickering glow, he reminded me of Kevin, or at least what Kevin used to be. I was frightened of everything that had happened. And I needed to retreat into something that was familiar. I needed to hang onto a warm body in the night, to take hope. That’s what making love is, isn’t it — primal hope?

Finally I said, “Come in.”

“I’d like that,” he said.

He took off his coat and hung it on a peg over the woodstove. He rested the shotgun in the corner. He took a seat in the chair underneath the buck. “You surprise me.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a woman. And still you don’t reject all this.”

“Reject what?”

“This way of life. The killings just go hand in hand with it.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I said, “this is the work of two people who are mentally ill.”

“Is it? Or is it just the natural progression of the throwback, barbaric culture in which they were raised?”

“Already developing the themes of your article, I see.”

“I have to think ahead.”

“So

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