Page 33 of Deliver us from Evil

Like I haven’t tried that before.

“What do you want?” I try to keep my voice calm in case he lunges at me to keep me quiet. Or maybe it doesn’t matter down here with all this soundproofing.

I’ve certainly never heard sounds coming from the basement. Or had I dismissed them as my imagination?

Gabriel lifts his hands, showing me his palms. As if he wants me to trust him.

What a joke.

“You said you want to find the light.” His voice is tight and unsteady, like he’s barely keeping it under control. “Many boys have found the light down here.”

I shake my head before I can stop.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Dad would never—”

Gabriel’s bitter laugh cuts me off. He walks up to me, dodging effortlessly when I kick. Then he grabs me by the hair and hoists me to my feet, shaking me mercilessly.

His other hand grabs my chin, turning my face and forcing me to look around the small room.

“Who do you think built this place?” he hisses in my ear. “It wasn’t me, child.”

If I could shake my head, I would. The things he’d said after I hobbled up to his room at Saint Amos and told him I had to show him something in the bell tower…

But my mind rejects what he’s telling me.

“No,” I murmur. “Dad was a good man. A holy man. He would never—”

“Yourdad?” Gabriel croons, mocking me. He’s becoming unhinged again, like he did back in the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn’t mean—”

He shakes me into silence. “Always blameless,” he whispers as he drags me close against him. “No one ever suspected. Not even you.”

Of course not. Why would they? My dad kept to himself and both my parents were quiet people. But they loved the church. They loved people. I never heard them say a bad thing about anyone. Oh, they’d fight behind their closed bedroom door, but I wasn’t idiotic enough to believe they had a perfect marriage. Dad was gone a lot and Mom didn’t like staying home to look after me. She never said it, but I could see she missed him when he wasn’t around.

When I was younger they’d sometimes go away for a week or two, but that stopped as soon as I hit puberty. It was Dad who told Mom to stay at home. He probably thought I would lure a boy back home or something. He seemed to think I was a whore as much as Gabriel did.

I always thought he was strict because of his faith, but maybe he was actually trying to protect me from people like him? Deviants and pedophiles who would see me in a short skirt and obsess about what they could do to me if they had me to themselves?

Somewhere hidden. Somewhere secret.

A dark, soundproofed room like this.

“Please,” I whisper. “Please stop.”

I can’t let him destroy my past. It’s all I have.

“Forgiveness requires confession, child,” Gabriel says, his lips brushing my ear. He shakes me again, kisses my temple. “Only through confession can we be cleansed of sin.”

“P-please.”

“I told your mother that so many times. But she wouldn’t listen, just like you.”

My heart stutters in my chest.

Mom knew?

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