Little Pieces pt 4

(This bit is rated MA as it does include descriptions attacks on minors. Consider yourself warned.)

Over the past 40 years of Eli’s tenure as the spiritual leader of this community, over a dozen children had gone missing. Eli preferred to take the children of troubled families. That way, the absence of the missing child could be explained as a runaway. But with a community of not quite 1500 people it wasn’t always that easy. Nevertheless, Eli had been able to cover his tracks quite nicely.

There was, for instance, young Billy Chalmers. Billy had been nine when Eli released him from this world. Billy’s father had been an insane drunkard who was prone to fits of violence when he drank. The father had disappeared as well (Eli had nothing to do with, but saw this happy coincidence as evidence of the Almighty’s favor) and Billy was left with his ailing mother and his aunt to care for him. His mother had died a year later from fever and the rather severe aunt was not much of a mother figure.

The reverend knew that she beat the boy, he later saw the bruises himself when he stripped the corpse,  and knew it was up to him to free the child from this world of sin and cruelty. Eli was quick but gentle with Billy, the boy had suffered enough in this world, and Eli always took his pleasure after the souls of the children had been returned to God. After all, they were just meat at that point, so what was the harm?

There were also children who, Eli believed, were born with the devil in them. Eliza Powers had been one of these. She was fourteen years old at the time of her passing. The girl had been a biter from the day she had teeth. As she grew so did her sullen strangeness and tendency to fight and no authority seemed able to reign her in.

Fourteen was usually older than Eli preferred them, but with Eliza he saw there was also duty that needed tending to. He had offered to her parents to counsel the girl and they happily brought her to the church. Eliza came into the church willingly enough. After her parents departed she was quick to tell the reverend that she “didn’t believe in no church stuff,” and only agreed to meet with him to get away from her parents, who she hated. Reverend Eli suggested they go for a walk. They had walked near the western woods where not even a bird's call could be heard. Only a whispering breeze that hissed through bare branches of the trees, the limbs reaching to that February sky like grasping skeletal hands. Eliza Powers had proved her worth as a biter and a fighter and had nearly gotten away. 

Nearly.

Eli hadn’t enjoyed that one. She had made him angry and forced him to act hastily before the situation could get out of hand; he had not been satisfied that the Lord’s work had been done. Then there was what happened after, though what he experienced was likely due to stress.

He had taken Margaret Rose a month later to make up for it. He didn’t like releasing them so close together, it was obviously suspicious, but no one grieved the disappearance of Eliza. Not even her parents. She belonged to the woods, now.