The scalpel. The scar. The words pinged around Gabi’s head, trying to find the right blanks to settle into, but Ruth was grabbing her uncut hand and carving a slash into its palm. Tears stung Gabi’s eyes, but she didn’t cry out. She sensed an unspoken pact with Marnie that neither of them would give Ruth the satisfaction.
Her wound leaked blood onto the tiled floor where it bloomed into tiny roses, which Ruth was careful to avoid as she knelt and made similar cuts on the tops of Gabi’s feet. These were followed by a cut made at the concavity below Gabi’s sternum, where her ribs spread apart. The pain was an entity, growing larger with each slash, but she would not let it take over. The cuts were longer and deeper than the ones made during the purification ceremony. They bled more and hurt exponentially worse, even without the salt, though Ruth was careful not to make any incisions that might require stitches. She knew exactly what she was doing.
Pain streaked up Gabi’s arms and legs, radiating from her center as blood flowed down her belly, rolling off her feet and fingertips onto the alabaster tile. Ruth applied one final cut, about three finger widths below the edge of Gabi’s left collarbone. It was smaller and shallower than the rest, perhaps a concession to the delicacy of the skin there, but it felt like a stab wound many times its depth. Gabi swayed on her feet as the room spun. Ruth stepped back with a pleased expression.
“In refusing to purify yourself through truth, you have chosen to purify through suffering. God’s ultimate gift to us was that of his only son, who suffered and died for our sins. By clinging to your sins, you reject that gift and take the suffering upon yourself. These marks represent the places where nails were driven through Christ’s body on the cross. This one,” Ruth said, gesturing to the bloody dash above the slight rise of Gabi’s left breast, “represents the wound to God’s heart, which you have inflicted with your sinful actions.”
Gabi stared in wonder at the runnels of blood trailing over her body like capillaries. The floor around her feet was spattered with liquid rubies, and she felt herself being lured toward them in slow motion. Christina scooped salt crystals from the large sack and dumped them into the steaming water, looking up at Ruth between scoops. With every nod from Ruth, she added another heaping scoop to the tub.
“Fuck,” Marnie whispered as Ruth urged Gabi toward the step stool and guided her into the water. Gabi’s right foot and then her left exploded with agony as the salt water saturated her wounds. She flinched and cried out, backing reflexively into Ruth, who formed an implacable barrier behind her. Gabi sank into the tub under the pressure of Ruth’s hand on her shoulder. After the first few seconds, when licks of fire erupted on her torso, hands, and feet, the locus of the inferno became impossible to find. It blinded and deafened her, so that whatever passage of doctrine Ruth was reciting in her ear became no more than static. This wasn’t purification. This was torture, plain and simple, and through it all she could smell Ruth’s feverish delight.
Gabi could have gone away through the escape hatch in the corner of her mind, but Marnie’s presence stopped her. Marnie didn’t have a hatch and would suffer every second of the excruciating trial in full consciousness, so Gabi stayed, in mind and body, until her cuts were leached of blood and she felt Ginny and Christina lift her under her arms to pull her free of the tub. Once Gabi was swaddled in a robe and braced to Ginny’s side, Ginny grabbed some ointment and bandages from the tray and hustled her from the room toward the showers. But not before Gabi saw Ruth set to work on Marnie with the scalpel. An instant was all she needed to see that there were many more cuts than Gabi had received, and more blood.
As the door leading to the showers swung shut behind Gabi, the unanchored words returned to haunt her. The scar. The scalpel. In a flash of insight, Gabi remembered where she had seen Marnie’s scar before. Tableau after gruesome tableau rushed in, featuring Gearhart and Yancy toiling over their victims, both of whom bore the same raised scar as Marnie. Every horrid image Gabi had shut out of her mind in order to focus on becoming a Witness roared back. Each rich morsel of food she had consumed since arriving at the lodge turned to a tide of vomit rising in her throat. Before Ginny could thrust her into one of the shower stalls, Gabi doubled over, arms wrapped over her blood-streaked belly, and emptied her stomach all over the bathroom floor.
Chapter ELEVEN
THE BANDAGES on Gabi’s ointment-smeared wounds kept catching on her T-shirt and threatened to peel off her hands and feet as she moved, but the attendant who helped clean and dress the wounds had instructed her to keep them covered for the rest of the weekend. The bandages themselves were bright red, and Gabi had no doubt that the choice of color was intentional. A quick survey of her peers’ expressions when she entered the main hall confirmed they all knew about her and Marnie’s “extra purification.”
From the looks of it, a handful of the boys had suffered the same fate. They were meant to be examples for the rest, conspicuous with their
