Born of the Wrong Oil

No one in the congregation could say exactly when the Holy Spirit stopped moving at New Galilee Pentecostal, but everybody remembered when Monique gave birth.

She had been trying for nearly eight years. Not loudly, not in the way church mothers wail at the altar or lay themselves across the front pew, but quietly. In silence. In shadows. Miscarriages tucked into folded towels. Doctor visits she made alone. Her husband, DeShawn, never stopped believing. Every night he laid hands on her belly and declared the Word. He fasted until his voice thinned out and his suit hung off his shoulders. "God’s gonna do it," he said, over and over, like a chant, like a dare. "You just gotta trust Him."

But sometimes silence is the answer.

Monique never told him about the woman she visited just outside Jackson, behind a beauty supply store, down a dirt path most folks didn’t walk after sundown. The woman called herself Miss Eloise. She claimed she worked with herbs and roots, but her eyes carried a weight that didn’t belong to this world. Miss Eloise told her plainly, "Your womb is not cursed. It’s guarded. What you’re asking for… it ain’t yours to hold."

She said there were things older than prayers. That sometimes your people, your blood, stand between you and the thing knocking at your door because they know what’s on the other side.

"If you force that door open," she said, "you won’t be a mother. You’ll be a portal."

But Monique was tired of waiting. She came back days later and took something off Miss Eloise’s shelf, left twenty folded dollars and a lie behind.

Three weeks later, the test was positive. The whole church shouted. Saints gathered around her stomach, anointed her feet, laid cloths over her head. They called the baby a miracle. A reward. A prophecy fulfilled.

They named him Jeremiah. Said he would be a preacher, just like his daddy.

At first, it all looked like answered prayer.

By the time he was five, Jeremiah could quote entire passages of Scripture, King James, word for word. He could lay hands on grown men and have them fall out in tongues. He called things out in people during altar call that only they and God could have known. The church had never seen anything like it. They gave him a little microphone during youth services. Let him lead prayer before Sunday school. His videos started going viral. Folks drove from across the county just to see the boy with the gift.

But something felt off.

Not wrong, exactly. Just... off.

Sometimes, during praise and worship, he would not sing. He would stand perfectly still, eyes open, like he was listening to something no one else could hear. Other times, he would scan the sanctuary during the sermon and frown, like someone was missing, or someone had arrived who shouldn't have.

And then there were the things he would say. Small things. Things that sounded like Scripture, but sat heavy on the chest.

Like when Sister Janine shouted, "The Holy Ghost is here," and Jeremiah said, under his breath, "No, that’s something else." Or when Pastor Fields declared, "This is holy ground," and Jeremiah smiled and whispered, "Not anymore."

He was not disruptive. He was not rebellious. He just never seemed like a child.

He didn’t run with the other kids. He didn’t play after service. He sat in the front row with his feet dangling, back straight, hands folded like a minister-in-training. But his eyes were always scanning. Watching. Weighing.

Some said he was anointed.

Some said he was a vessel.

But others, quietly and behind closed doors, started to wonder if something had slipped through along with the gift.