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Chapter 1: The Wrong Kind of Gifted
I used to think God made a mistake when He made me.
The other kids in Sunday school had new shoes, perfect smiles, and answers that made the grownups clap. Me? I had dreams I couldn’t explain and questions no one wanted to answer.
Like why I saw fire behind the pastor’s words but smoke in his eyes.
Why angels stood beside the pulpit but looked so tired.
Why I could hear my mother crying in tongues behind closed doors—and why it made my chest hurt instead of feel holy.
They told me I was “just being dramatic.” That I should stop dreaming so much and pray like a normal boy.
But I wasn’t normal.
Not when the dreams kept coming—vivid, loud, alive.
Not when I woke up speaking things I didn’t remember learning.
Not when I laid hands on a bird with a broken wing and it flew again the next day.
By the time I was seven, I already knew I wasn’t like the others.
That should’ve been beautiful. But it wasn’t.
It scared them.
Even the church folk.
Especially the church folk.
---
They whispered.
Told my mother I was troubled.
Warned her that “dramatic nature” could open doors to the wrong spirits if she wasn’t careful.
And she—God bless her—tried to shut every door.
She prayed harder. Anointed my head with oil until my scalp stung. Made me fast when I didn’t understand what we were fasting for. Told me over and over:
> “You belong to God, Elias. You belong to Him.”
But the more she clung to that truth, the more I started to doubt it.
Because if I belonged to God, why did His people keep pushing me away?
---
I was nine the first time I saw something that looked like a person who had died.
It was at Sister Janine’s funeral — she’d passed unexpectedly, and the whole church came out in lace gloves and sorrow. Mama made me wear a clip-on tie and promise not to fidget.
I tried.
But about halfway through the service, the room shifted.
It always started with my ears ringing—like I was underwater—then the air would turn heavy, thick with something invisible. That’s how I knew it was about to happen. That something was about to… show up.
And that’s when I saw her.
Up near the rafters, floating just above the choir stand.
She had Sister Janine’s face. Same dimpled cheeks. Same purple church hat. But her eyes… her eyes were all wrong. Too wide. Too dark. Like they were hungry for something.
Still, I didn’t know any better.
I stood up, pointed, and said with childlike wonder:
> “She’s not gone! She’s right there—can’t you see her?”
---
The room fell quiet.
Then chaotic.
People shouted, rebuked, prayed in tongues. One woman fell out. Another started wailing. The pastor rushed down from the pulpit, eyes locked on me like I was the devil himself.
Mama dragged me out before they could ask too many questions. Slammed the car door so hard it shook. But she didn’t scream. She didn’t spank me. She just stared at me and whispered:
> “Don’t you ever speak on the dead again.”
“But Mama—she looked just like Sister Janine. I felt her—”
> “That wasn’t her.”
Her voice was steel. Her eyes, wet.
“That wasn’t from God.”
---
That night I asked God to close my eyes forever if I was seeing the wrong things.
He didn’t.
But from that day forward, I stopped trusting what I saw.
Because no one told me there were familiar spirits.
No one taught me discernment.
No one said that the devil could wear a church hat, too.
They just told me to be quiet.
So I stayed quiet.
But my eyes kept seeing.
---
After that day, everything changed.
The church still smiled at Mama, but they looked at me differently. The choir director stopped letting me sit up front. The youth pastor kept “forgetting” to invite me to events. Sister Claudine once laid hands on my shoulder and prayed under her breath the whole time.
By the time I was ten, the whispers followed me everywhere.
Even the other kids stared.
One called me “Death Boy.”
I laughed it off. Pretended I didn’t care.
But I did.
I started sitting in the back row. Kept my head down during altar call. I learned which parts of me to hide and which parts to perform. They liked when I said “Amen” loud and read my Bible in public. So I did.
But I didn’t trust them anymore.
I didn’t trust what they said about God, either.
Because if I was really made in His image—
If I was really “called” or “anointed” like Mama kept saying—
Then why did the people who claimed to know Him treat me like I was cursed?
And if what I saw wasn’t from God… then where did it come from?
---
That question stayed with me.
It lingered in the dark when the dreams came.
It pulsed in my chest when I’d see shadows flicker past my bedroom door.
It echoed in the silence after another Sunday service where no one spoke to me.
Eventually, I stopped asking God to take the sight away.
By eleven, I had stopped talking to Him altogether.
Because no one ever said it like this, but I could feel it in the way they looked at me:
If I saw demons, I must be one.
So I started to believe them.
---
End of Chapter 1.
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