“It’s okay, Mama. I know what I have to do. I’ve always known.”
That soft hand came up to stroke Mary Alice’s cheek.
“You taught me well. And now that I have Ellis helping me, it’s going to be so much easier.” The angel’s blue eyes shimmered with excitement as she leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper.
“Mama… he’s one of us!”
No, Mary Alice thought in despair. That man is not one of us.
Ellis Cooper was one of them.
Ellis leaned a shoulder against the wall as he peered through the reinforced glass panel in the door, watching in fascination as the little drama unfolded inside.
Every so often, he would glance up the hallway in front of him and then over his shoulder behind him to make sure one of the patients or someone on the staff didn’t sneak up and catch him unawares.
He was probably being a little paranoid, Ellis realized, but he knew only too well of the trickery and deception that went on in a place like this. You couldn’t trust anyone.
Ellis had spent a couple of hitches in state mental wards, the first when he was only fifteen years old. Given his experience, he couldn’t say he was exactly happy to be back in one. But at least today, he had the freedom to walk out whenever he chose. That was something.
Normally, he steered clear of any type of institution, be it a government office or even a regular hospital. He had a fundamental distrust of anything that smacked of authority, of any place in which he was not in complete control, but he’d found the prospect of a meeting with the infamous Mary Alice Lemay too irresistible to pass up.
So he’d temporarily disabled his aversion, if not his paranoia. Ellis knew from past experience that he could stand anything for a little while, even the worst kind of torture.
Now that he was here, though, all those old feelings were creeping up on him again. And dear God, the memories!
The slack jaws and vacant stares.
The unholy smells that drifted from the open doorways.
He glanced up at the surveillance camera at the end of the hallway. There was another one at the opposite end and probably a few hidden in places that were not readily discernable.
Oh, yes, Ellis knew all about those cameras.
The incessant winking of the red eyes had reminded him night and day that he was never alone. Not in his room, not in the cafeteria, not in the showers or on the toilet. As long as those red eyes were blinking, someone was watching. Always.
Even when he prayed.
Maybe especially when he prayed, seeing as how it had been his religion that had netted him his first trip to the psych ward in the first place.
Well, not his religion exactly. Not back then. That was before his awakening.
It was his father’s interpretation of the gospel that had caught the attention of Child Protective Services in the backwoods Georgia town where he grew up.
His father, Nevil, had been a preacher and an avid follower of the teachings of George Went Hensley, one of the founders of the charismatic movement. Ellis’s father, like Hensley, had believed in a strict interpretation of the Bible, including the “signs” passage from Mark:
And these signs will accompany those who believe; in my name they will cast out demons;
they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.
As a boy, Ellis had been enthralled by the serpent-handling spectacle that accompanied some of his father’s sermons. Ellis hadn’t been a true believer back then, but he’d loved watching the snakes. To him, they were among God’s most glorious creatures. Even the thick, leathery water moccasins, with their white mouths and razorlike fangs, held a certain fascination.
Along with the rattlers and copperheads, the moccasins had been kept in cages behind the chicken coop at Ellis’s home. Once his after-school chores were done, he would head out there and sit in the grass for hours, mesmerized by the sinewy movement of the reptiles as they climbed up the mesh wire of the cages and wrapped themselves around one another.
By this time, Ellis was quite adept at catching the creatures in their natural habitats—underneath rocks and rotting logs and in muddy sloughs—but once they were placed in the cages, he wasn’t allowed to handle them. That privilege was reserved for his father and some of the elders of the church.
It was a common misconception that serpent-handlers believed the Holy Spirit would keep them safe. Every last one of them knew the dangers of what they did. Many had lost fingers and limbs as a result of the infection brought on by a bite. One or two had even lost their lives.
It wasn’t a matter of faith, Ellis’s father had once explained. It was about obeying the word of God.
Ellis’s first snakebite had come just after his fifteenth birthday.
He’d found a copperhead sunning on the bank of the creek that ran behind their house. Holding the head so that the snake couldn’t strike, he’d lifted the reptile close to his face, admiring the flicker of the serpent’s tongue, the dark gleam in the slitted, catlike eyes.
Ellis had become so engrossed in watching the play of sunlight on the glistening scales that he hadn’t realized the snake’s head had slipped free of his grasp.
The fangs caught him in the side of his neck, and the copperhead hung there for a moment as Ellis’s skin started to burn like wildfire.
Afterward, he hurried home, washed the bite with soap and water and kept his mouth shut. He didn’t tell anyone about his carelessness or that he’d flown into a rage and killed the poor snake before it could slither away.
A few hours later, he began to feel achy and weak, like he was coming down with the flu. The bite area was swollen and tender, but he told himself he’d be fine. Copperhead venom wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the poison from the other pit vipers. Sometimes the bites had no effect at all.
But within days, gangrene set in. His skin around the afflicted area turned black and felt cold to the touch.
Still, he tried to keep the wound hidden by wearing his collars buttoned, but his science teacher noticed the swelling and discoloration one day and sent him to the school nurse. She took one look and rushed him to the hospital.
What followed was a nightmare scenario of painful surgeries and skin grafts where the dead flesh had to be cut away from the bone.
Convinced he had been bitten as the result of his father’s dangerous religious practices, CPS removed Ellis from his home, but rather than placing him in foster care, they sent him to the state hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
It was there, in that place of misery and confusion, that he had finally experienced his religious awakening.
It was there, in a dark and reeking room, that Ellis Cooper had accepted his true calling.
A nurse passing him in the corridor gave him a curious glance. Ellis turned slightly so that she could see the “bad” side of his face. When she caught a glimpse of the scar tissue, she quickly looked away. Then her gaze came back to him, and she smiled in the tentative, flustered way that Ellis was used to.
He turned and watched as she hurried down the hallway, and when she glanced over her shoulder, the smile he flashed seemed to momentarily stun her.
Ellis gave a low chuckle. That was the cool thing about his appearance. His scarred, pale countenance seemed to attract even as it repelled.
Today he had on a black suit that was perfectly tailored to his thin frame. He cut a striking figure and he knew it. He was only thirty-seven, but he’d started to go gray during his incarceration in the mental hospital. By the time he was released, his hair had been as white as snow, which he took as an outward sign of his spiritual metamorphosis.