Page 100 of Villains Series

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

THE FIRST HOME

ONCE upon a time, when the marks on his back were still fresh, Eli told himself that he was growing wings.

After all, his mother thought Eli was an angel, even if his father said he had the devil in him. Eli had never done anything to make the pastor think that, but the man claimed he could see the shadow in the boy’s eyes. And whenever he caught a glimpse of it, he’d take Eli by the arm and lead him out to the private chapel that sat beside their clapboard house.

Eli used to love the little chapel—it had the prettiest picture window, all red and blue and green stained glass, facing east so it caught the morning light. The floor was made of stone—it was cold beneath Eli’s bare feet, even in summer—and there in the center of the room was a metal cross, driven straight down into the foundation. Eli remembered thinking it seemed violent, the way the cross broke and split the floor, as if thrown from a horrible height.

The first time his father saw the shadow, he kept one hand on Eli’s shoulder as they walked, the other clutching a coiled leather strap. Eli’s mother watched them go, twisting a towel in her hands.

“John,”

she said, just once, but Eli’s father didn’t look back, didn’t stop until they’d crossed the narrow lawn and the chapel door had fallen shut behind them.

Pastor Cardale told Eli to go to the cross and hold on to the horizontal bar, and at first Eli refused, sobbing, pleading, trying to apologize for whatever he’d done. But it didn’t help. His father tied Eli’s hands in place, and beat him worse for his defiance.

Eli had been nine years old.

Later that night, his mother treated the angry lash-marks on his back, and told him that he had to be strong. That God tested them, and so did Eli’s father. Her sleeves inched up as she draped cool strips of cloth over her son’s wounded shoulders, and Eli could just see the edges of old scars on the backs of her arms as she told him it would be okay, told him it would get better.

And for a little while, it always did.

Eli would do everything he could to be good, to be worthy. To avoid his angry father’s gaze.

But the calm never lasted. Sooner or later, the pastor would glimpse the devil in his son again, and lead Eli back to the chapel. Sometimes the beatings were months apart. Sometimes days. Sometimes Eli thought he deserved it. Needed it, even. He would step up to the cross, and curl his fingers around the cold metal cross, and pray—not to God, not at first, but to his father. He prayed that the pastor would stop seeing whatever he saw, while he carved new feathers into the torn wings of Eli’s back.

Eli learned not to scream, but his eyes would still blur with tears, the colors in the stained glass running together until all he saw was light. He held on to that, as much as to the steel cross beneath his fingers.

Eli didn’t know how he was broken, but he wanted to be healed.

He wanted to be saved.