The Reverend didn’t pay much mind to Nate or his father; they were late joiners, low on the totem pole. It didn’t seem to bother his dad, but it bugged Nate a whole bunch. And things had been going downhill for a while. Everyone looked different. Skinnier and wasted away. Even Nate. He hated looking at himself in the mirror now. It was hard to put a finger on it. There was no cause for it, which was why nobody talked about that stuff. This was where the Lord had led them. Why would He lead them into sorrow?
But Nate could feel it. Something working all around him. As if the air were filled with a trillion invisible mouths, each mouth studded with microscopic teeth, all those mouths gnawing at you all day long. Or—an even worse imagining—those same tiny mouths all over the ground, every inch, but instead of teeth, each mouth had a needle tongue that jabbed into everybody’s feet, sucking the way a mosquito sucks, funneling everyone’s energy into a pale bloated sack like a stomach deep under the earth. A single tube led from that stomach even deeper underground, where it nourished something much larger and more terrible—
Nate was now walking toward the bunkhouse window. He didn’t want to. He was exquisitely aware of this. More than anything he wanted to slip back into bed and pull the covers over his head and… pray. He hardly ever prayed for real. Yes, he could recite the words and cross himself and all that paint-by-numbers stuff, but he wasn’t asking for anything or talking to God man to man. In his life, he had really prayed only a few times. When his mother got put in jail, he prayed that God would keep her safe because he used to watch Dragnet and some of the people Joe Friday put in the clink were tough tickets and he wanted his mom to be safe if she got a cell mate named Big Bertha or Hellcat Hettie. He had prayed for his dad a few times, too, because even though he was a wimp—and it was horrible that a boy would already understand this about his father—Nate thought his dad was essentially a good man.
But Nate wanted to pray now. Oh yes. He wanted to hear God’s voice and be reassured. But he couldn’t because his feet kept guiding him toward the window. Toward Eli’s voice—which didn’t sound much like Eli’s normal voice. It sounded clogged. As if Eli’s throat were packed with potting soil or rotted sewage, so that what came out of his mouth was a choked gargle.
Nate… don’t be a pussy like your daddy the mailman. Come see me. No Rooster Pecks, honest Injun…
His father snorted in his sleep. Nate tried to call out—Dad, wake up!—but his throat was so dry that nothing came out, like trying to whistle with a mouthful of soda crackers.
It wasn’t just how everyone at Little Heaven had started to look lately, either. It was how they acted. In the beginning, the kids had all been normal. More religious than Nate was used to, sure, but pretty much like everyone else he knew from his old school. He would join them after breakfast and Missus Hughes would have them read their Bible and do Christian crossword puzzles and stuff like that. After the midday sermon, they had supervised playtime. The kids welcomed Nate outwardly, it being the right thing to do.
But after Missus Hughes left, the playtime sessions turned strange. The older kids, led by Eli and the Redhill brothers, started playing nasty games. One was called Doctor Psycho. They would chase someone around until they caught him; then they pinned that poor kid down. Eli would pretend to put on rubber gloves and say, “This operation is in session.” He would slice his captive’s belly open with an imaginary scalpel and start pulling out the insides. Each would be examined for a second before he said, “Nope, not good enough,” and threw it over his shoulder and reached in for more. If the captive knew what was good for him, he would scream and gasp, “No! No, please!” Eli took it easier on you if you played along instead of sitting there like a dead fish.
Nate… you are starting to piss me off. You don’t want to piss me off…
Nate was only a few feet from the window now. The wind fluttered the plastic in the frame. There was nothing at the window. Maybe there was nothing at all. Was he dreaming? Nate’s fists clenched, nails digging into his palms. Maybe he would wake up and this would all be—
He saw it then. At the outer limits of his sight, past the edge of the window on the right-hand side. Standing there silently, tucked tight to the bunkhouse wall.
Eli’s playtime games had become more and more nasty. Little Heaven used to have an ant problem. There were five or six big hills scattered around the compound. The ants were of the stinging variety. One afternoon, not too long ago, Nate had come upon Eli, one of the Redhill boys, Jane Weagel, and Betsy Whitt crouched around one of the hills. Eli had a bottle of lemon juice. He was squeezing juice down the ant hole. Drip, drip, drip. The ants scurried around crazily. The other kids held the busted bottoms of Coke bottles. They focused the sun through them, sizzling the ants as they rushed about. Zzzzssssstap!
“The acid in the juice screws with their brains,” Eli told Nate with a vacant smile. “They don’t know up from down.”
The other kids barely noticed Nate. Betsy Whitt’s eyes were glazed and moony. She was the sort of person the phrase wouldn’t hurt a fly was coined to describe. Nate had actually seen her open a door and shoo a fly outside so it wouldn’t get swatted.
“Move,” she said, shoving Nate. “You’re blocking the sunlight.”
Later that same day Nate had found Betsy behind the warehouse. She was crying. Tears streaked her cheeks.
“I didn’t want to hurt those ants,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to hurt anything. If you hurt another living thing, God sees it. He judges. But I couldn’t help myself.” Her face scrunched up. “Do you ever feel that way, Nate?”
Nate hadn’t known what to say. But yes, he felt it. The feeling was getting stronger each day. Sometimes he wanted to hurt things, too. Anything would do. Whatever was weakest, and easiest, and nearest at hand… He’d never felt that way back home.
It wasn’t just the kids, either. One night Nate awoke to find his father standing in the corner. He was naked and sweaty and muttering, “Kill you kill you fucking kill you.” Nate had never heard his father swear. His hands were clenched as though he was choking someone. He was sound asleep. But he rose happily the next morning, claiming to be hungry as a horse.
Nate… ole buddy ole pal-o-mine…
Nate was only a foot from the window now. He could make out the shape in profile. Thin and grisly white, hunching next to the bunkhouse. He caught a mad buzz, a sound like flies bouncing around inside an empty jar of Gerber baby food.
“Eli?” he said tremblingly.
The figure swung round to the window like a door blown closed by a stiff wind.
Thwap! A face hit the plastic.