“Yes.”
“The devil is not in Little Heaven,” Amos said firmly. “I won’t allow him in. If there is a sickness, then we must stand together under Christ’s good guidance and expunge it. Do you understand, Brother Lewis?”
“Yes.”
“We must not lose our heads.”
“I can’t,” Lewis said. “Reverend, I can’t go back in there.”
Amos petted Lewis’s scalp. “Very well. But if anyone should ask, you will tell them that Eli is recovering nicely.”
“Yes.”
“His parents have yet to return. Nobody else needs to see him. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
“That is your official medical opinion?”
“Yes.”
Such were the ways in which a flock must be kept in line, Amos mused. An observant shepherd must not spare the rod.
But now, a day after that hellish experience, the Reverend faced yet another challenge. A fork in the road, you could say. What to do about the boy? This was the question the Reverend had been debating. The question was simple—was Little Heaven better off with the boy alive or dead?
There was a very good chance the boy would die anyway. The Reverend was no doctor, but Eli’s health could not be good when insects were actively birthing inside of him. But then, children were known to have amazing recuperative powers.
Or… the Reverend could take matters into his own hands.
He had never killed anyone. Much less a child. But Brother Lewis had been correct in one way: Eli did not seem so childlike anymore. A corruption of spirit had occurred. And Amos had never been one to advocate exorcisms.
It could be no easy thing, killing a person. Amos harbored no illusions about that. Humans were tough. They didn’t want to die—even the devout, who would be ushered directly to the gilded gates of heaven. But couldn’t it be seen as a public service in this case? The boy was sick. He was suffering. Was murder a sin? Absolutely. But what of mercy killings? Shouldn’t God turn a blind eye to those, so long as it went toward the greater good?
So then, let’s suppose Eli expired. The Reverend could simply announce that the boy had slipped away painlessly. God retrieved one of His little angels. They could hold a funeral. A closed coffin. Bury the body in the woods. All the proper observances. His parents could grieve if and when they returned. Then things could go back to normal. The flock would calm. Amos would implement a tighter policy of supervision for the children. Yes. He saw the shape of his plan. But it required something of him as well.
He sat on the cot. The boy breathed thinly. Amos’s heart fluttered. A chill washed through his veins. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, exactly—this was strange for Amos, as he was highly aware of his motivations. But now he was struck with a question of an existential nature.
Did he need to kill the boy as a matter of expedience in order to maintain order at Little Heaven…
…or did he want to kill him, just to see how it felt?
The first was bad enough. The second was positively monstrous.
Why don’t you just do it, you filthy little monster?
It was Sister Muriel’s voice in his head. Muriel with her viperish mean streak.
Amos slid the pillow out from under Eli’s head. He bounced it in his hands as if testing it for his purposes. It had an agreeable density. The boy’s eyes were shut, his lips pursed in a queer Mona Lisa smile.
“You horrid abomination,” the Reverend whispered.
He realized that the cold wash through his veins was anticipation. It was the same way he’d felt back at the orphanage, before sticking one of God’s children with a pin. He wanted to do this. Not just because the boy disgusted him. Not simply because it would make his life a whole lot easier. Amos wanted to kill the boy because, in some recessed chamber of his heart, he had always wanted to kill a member of his species. The instinct had been there a long time; Amos had simply never turned his mind to reflect upon this facet of his nature, but now that he had, it was clear and bright, like the sun slanting off a mirror that had been angled to catch its rays. This was the first time when Amos was in a position to profit from murder, too. Before this, the act might have satisfied that predatory side of him, yes, but that wasn’t reason enough to abandon his general prudence and take such a drastic step—but now it was essential. It would salvage everything he’d worked so hard to build.
Kill the boy. Save himself.
A sick child was the perfect start, wasn’t it? He would not have to worry about being overmastered by Eli’s strength. It would be as simple as drowning a rat.
“Amen,” he said, and stuffed the pillow over Eli’s face.
The boy’s arms and legs remained motionless for a few heartbeats. Then he came alive. His hips bucked. He thrashed. A feeble buzz emanated from his armpit. Amos bore down on the pillow. Greasy balls of sweat popped on his forehead.
Eli’s hands rose to touch the Reverend’s face—gently, the caress of a lover. The melted hook tugged at the skin just below his eye, snagging on the socket bone. You little bastard! The fingers of Eli’s other hand hooked into claws that tore shallow cuts into the Reverend’s cheeks.
“Hell spawn!” Amos hissed.
The Reverend pushed down so hard that he could see the distorted features of the boy’s face through the pillow. A nest of snakes thrashed somewhere behind his abdominal cavity, just above his groin—a fluttery squirming sensation. He was doing it, by thunder! He was actually doing it!
More flies buzzed out of Eli’s armpit, sluggishly as if drunk, bumping into Amos’s face. Amos was much bigger than the boy, who was nothing but a wasted shell; Eli soon began to flag. His arms waved about weakly. His heels drummed on the cot. Then the electricity went out of his body. Amos felt it, no different from pulling the plug on a blender.
Amos exhaled. His arms relaxed. The boy sank down into the mattress; with the life sucked out of it, his body seemed to deflate like a leaky balloon. Amos took in a shuddering inhale and let it go. His breath came out as a series of whimpery giggles.
“Hee-aah-heeeeee-hee-heee…”
He wiped the blood off his face. He would have to come up with an excuse for the cuts on his cheeks. He could say he’d been scratched by a critter from the woods, but he couldn’t recall seeing an animal for some time now. No matter. He was adroit with lies. Already that feeling of elation was ebbing; the seltzer effervescence that had percolated through him during the act of killing Eli was going flat. In its place was a leaden heaviness, as if his veins were full of molasses.
He removed the pillow from Eli’s face. The boy’s eyes were closed, his features reposed in death.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to du—”
Eli’s eyes popped open. They were black—the irises blown out, a thin band of bloodshot gray at the edges. His mouth split in a grin, an expression that sat horribly upon the face of someone so young: the come-hither leer of an ancient fairground carnie.
“Was that fun?” Eli asked teasingly. “Did you enjoy that, Reverend?”
The boy shivered in obvious delight. His breath was indescribably foul, bathing the Reverend’s face with its noxious vapors. His grin stretched wider and wider. He began to titter. The sound hacksawed across Amos’s nerve endings. His initial sense of shock and soul-deep revulsion gave way to a terror that coated his brain in a tar-like layer of blackness, choking out every rational thought.
I sent you to hell, the Reverend thought helplessly.
“I came back,” the boy said.
Eli reached for him with the witchy, gnarled fingers of one hand. The nails were as black as if blood had burst beneath them. The Reverend reared and fell off the cot; his ass struck the floor as a shock wave juddered up his tailbone.