Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  It was Lewis who had made the incision. Amos had been the sole witness to it. He had banished everyone from the bunkhouse—he didn’t want anyone else seeing the boy. It would cause alarm. Two of the outsiders had found Eli behind the chapel. The black fairy and the bald-headed lezbo. Amos had actually watched them cross the square in the dead of night; he had been up at the time, listening to the Voice. It had bothered him—nobody should be out at such an hour—but they would all be gone as soon as the black one’s ankle healed. Minutes later, Amos witnessed them stumble around the chapel, their eyes wide with horror.

  What the Reverend had then found behind the chapel nearly unhinged him. Pewter-eyed Eli Rathbone immersed in a sea of squirming insects, cradling a dead bird. Glimpsing the boy’s young-old face as his ears had filled with the quarrelsome hiss of the bugs—it conjured within Amos a fear that infested him like a sickness: the sight infected his soul, shriveling it like a slug doused with salt.

  “Hello, Reverend,” Eli had said. “Did you miss me?”

  Amos had been dismayed to discover how much Eli’s voice mimicked the one that came to him every night.

  For Amos, only one fact was certain: if the residents of Little Heaven saw Eli right then, everything he had been building would crumble. Fear would lead to disharmony, which would encourage desertion. The devil has come to Little Heaven, they would say. They would flee with the clothes on their backs, every last cowardly one of them, rats leaping from a flaming barge.

  This is a test, he thought. The sternest one I have ever faced.

  Swallowing his disgust, Amos had reached for the boy. Bugs crunched under his boots. Amos’s revulsion swelled when Eli reached for him, with a mangled hook of skin that had replaced one of his hands. Amos dodged it and grabbed Eli by the elbow; the boy’s flesh was clammy, that of a corpse in a vault. Amos pulled him up, his strength buoyed by a cresting wave of fear. His scalp was hot and itchy, melting the Dapper Dan pomade in his hair, which trickled down his face in gooey strings. Eli laughed at him. Amos might have been laughing, too, though he couldn’t properly remember—if so, it was the manic laugher of a man whose sanity was under threat.

  “Cyril!” he had screamed. “CYRIL!”

  Amos managed to drag Eli to the bunkhouse with no windows; the Reverend had had it built specially, thinking there might be a need for a place nobody could see inside. He flung the boy through the door and wiped his hand on his trousers. The boy staggered forward—his legs were wretched sticks—and collapsed. The roaches clinging to his legs let go and scuttled through cracks in the floor. The boy was still laughing.

  “Shut up,” Amos hissed. “Shut your rotten mouth.”

  Cyril came in. His mouth fell open and a thin moan came out.

  “Hello, Cyril,” the boy said, waving his hook.

  “Get the doctor,” Amos said. “And not a word of the boy’s state to anyone. If anyone asks you, say that he is back and he is perfectly fine.”

  Brother Lewis soon arrived with his black bag. The boy was in the cot by then, covered in a sheet. Lewis took one look at Eli and blanched.

  “Is this Eli?” he whispered, stunned. “Little Eli with the red hair . . . ?”

  Eli stared at Lewis with those calculating gray eyes. He licked his lips. His tongue was brown and pebbled with waxy lesions.

  “Do something,” Amos said. “Fix him.”

  “This child is broken,” Lewis said remotely. “Unfixable.”

  “Fix me, fix me, then you have to kiss me,” the boy warbled.

  The sheet slipped down Eli’s chest. The men saw a bulge under the boy’s armpit. A swollen ball like a fleshy balloon set to burst.

  It . . . pulsed. The entirety of it. Throbbing like a misplaced heart.

  Amos watched it, revolted—but also entranced.

  “Cut it,” he said mildly.

  “I’m sorry?” said Lewis.

  “Cut it open. See what’s inside.”

  Lewis gave the Reverend a look of open horror. “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “You will,” Amos said deathly soft. “If a poison is festering in this child, we must release it.”

  Lewis unzipped his bag and produced a scalpel. The man did not question the Reverend any further. Flesher was adept at spotting the most spineless specimens of humanity, and Lewis had always been one of the most obedient lambs in his flock.

  Lewis held the tip to the boy’s flesh. The swollen ball shuddered. Eli’s skin opened up under the blade as if it had been begging to do just that. The blood, what there was of it, was black and clotted. The boy tittered. A terrible reek bloomed up. Things squirmed in the spongy red meat inside the scalpel-slit—the red of a blood orange.

  “Never seen anything the likes of . . .” Lewis trailed off.

  The slit widened under the pressure of whatever pushed back from inside the bloated ball; the cut opened up like a smile until—

  Maggots. A wriggling fall of them. They pushed through the boy’s sundered flesh, writhing animatedly, their fat ribbed bodies making greasy sounds. Amos struggled to conceive of the flies these enormous flabby things would turn into when they assumed their final, revolting shape—a crude image formed: flies as big as cockroaches, inconceivable bloatflies laying their bean-shaped eggs in old cratered meat. The maggots pattered to the ground, where they began to squirm and shudder toward the darkened corners of the room.

  Amos stood stunned, trapped in a bubble of disgust. That bubble popped—a wet thop! inside his head—and he set about stomping the foul things to paste under his boots. He relished the soft give of their bodies as they burst moistly, like skinned grapes.

  “Hah!” Amos screamed. “Hah! Hah! Hah!”

  Something else crawled out of the boy’s wound. A fly. A massive one. It picked its way out of Eli’s ruined flesh and fanned its wings. It took flight, zinging straight at Amos. It hit his chin—it almost flew into his mouth, oh God!—and bounced away, producing a whine like a bullet.

  More followed. The room was suddenly teeming with flies. Their buzz was monolithic. The boy’s laughter climbed through several octaves to marry itself to that buzz. The sound drilled into Amos’s ears and beat against his brain.

  Dr. Lewis bolted for the door and was out before Amos could lay hands on him.

  Amos rushed outside in pursuit. “Stay here,” he told Cyril, who stood watch at the door. “Don’t let anyone in.”

  Amos chased Lewis across the square. Nobody had seen a thing except for the outsiders, who would stay out of this if they knew what was good for them. He caught up with the doctor behind the storehouse, where he had collapsed in a sobbing heap.

  “No no no no no . . . ,” he said, hiccuping each no between sobs.

  Amos knelt and ran his hand through Lewis’s sweaty hair.

  “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh,” he said. “You will wake the children. We can’t have that.”

  Lewis stared up at him. His face was pink as a boiled ham. “We have to leave, Reverend. That boy . . . this place is cancerous. It’s making us all sick.”

  “Nonsense. You have had a shock.”

  “The devil is here,” Lewis said. “I can feel him. The devil took that poor boy and sent him back to us as something vile.”

  Amos’s hand clenched in Lewis’s hair. Gently but firmly, he cranked Lewis’s head upward until the simpering imbecile was forced to gaze directly into the Reverend’s eyes.

  “The devil was with you in that movie theater in the Tenderloin all those years ago, wasn’t he?” Amos said softly. “There in the dark, wasn’t he? Watching you. And he must have slipped inside of you for a spell, too. Isn’t that right, Brother Lewis? How else could you explain what you did with that boy in that dark theater with the sticky floors? And he was a boy, wasn’t he? No more than sixteen, wasn’t that what you said? A runaway, no doubt. Blond and fair with ruby lips.”

  Lewis began to shake. His eyes welled with fresh tears.

  “It was the devil who made you ache for that boy. It was the
devil who brought you there. It was the devil who unzipped your pants and guided that boy’s mouth onto your—”

  “Stop,” Lewis sobbed. “Please, Reverend, please stop.”

  “It was the devil who did that, but it was the Lord who brought you to my doorstep. And haven’t I always done right by you? Haven’t I always kept your confessions and occasional indiscretions a matter between myself and the Lord?”

  “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 f
ingers 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.

  Flies escaped from the hole in Eli’s armpit. They massed in the high corners of the bunkhouse. A thick, pendulous blanket of flies—a thousand starving spiders wouldn’t be able to eat them all. The air teemed with the maddening purr of their wings.

  Eli sat up. His chest quivered with industry—the Reverend couldn’t help but think that his entire body was full of flies, his insides cored out and replaced by a dark colony of insects.

  Eli began to issue full-throated, booming laughs that shook his entire body.

  The Reverend finally found his feet. He began to back toward the door on benumbed feet.

  “Come back,” Eli pleaded, mock-coy. “I have so much to share with you.”

  The Reverend reached for the doorknob. He opened the door, staggered outside, and slammed it. Cyril was eying him warily.

  “I heard something,” Cyril said.

  “It was nothing,” the Reverend said. “Lock the door. Nobody goes in there.” He swallowed with difficulty. “Not one goddamn person.”

  Cyril padlocked the door. Then he moved his chair a few feet away from it.

  “Just so you’re not totally in the dark, two of your flock lit out with the one-eyed prick and the scarecrow chick,” Cyril said. “They left sometime yesterday.”

  “Who? Which two?”

  “Charlie Fairweather and Otis Whats-his-face. The nigger and the other woman are still here. So’s Charlie’s wife and kid.”

  “Then they’ll be coming back,” Amos said, regaining a measure of composure.

  He staggered back to his dwelling. The boy’s mocking laughter continued to echo in his ears. He was on the verge of hysteria. The dread boiled up from the soles of his feet, spanning through his veins and nerve endings like a poisonous flower coming into bloom.

  He collapsed on his bed, burrowed his face into his lilac-scented pillow, and screamed. In the darkness behind his shut eyelids, he kept seeing the boy opening his eyes, the cancerous black of them peering into his lacerated, penitent inner self.