by Derek Landy
“And what part strikes that one bum note?”
“The fact that he never had to hurt anyone. I find that hard to accept.”
“That’s because it’s not true,” said Jacob. “When I was sick, my grandmother would pray by my bed almost every evening. She wasn’t there to talk, wasn’t there to chat, she wouldn’t bring me any comic books or grapes, or Get Well Soon cards … It was like she wasn’t even there for me. She was there to speak to God. She prayed so long and so hard, with the muttering and the clasped hands and the tears in the eyes, that she actually scared me. She was just so … fervent. Every night after she’d left, I’d lie there, hooked up to all those machines, terrified that right there, in that silence, when I was alone … God would answer. And I’d be the only one to hear it.
“Althea may have come to terms with one part of what my father did, but not the whole thing – not the parts that threaten her idea of who her son is. See, she was prepared to accept that what he did was necessary, but it only worked for her if he remained a saint. Anything other than that would have ruined everything.”
“So your dad isn’t a saint,” Amber said. She had some experience of that.
“His intentions were good,” Jacob replied. “I was dying. He was willing to do anything to save me. Anything. And he did. If he hadn’t made that deal, I’d have been dead by the age of eleven.”
“Where was the deal struck?” Milo asked.
“In my hospital room,” Jacob answered. “My father and the Shining Demon, standing over my bed. The light was everywhere. There were no shadows. None. At first, I thought it was God, you know? I thought maybe He’d heard my grandmother and here He was to cure me. But then they started talking about the deal, and about what my father would have to do. Pretty soon the Demon didn’t sound like God anymore. But my dad didn’t sound like who I thought he was, either. He was talking to this Demon and he was negotiating the terms like he knew all the ins and outs. One thing I can say about my father, he is a smart man, and he likes to read. If a subject interests him, he’ll read enough to make himself an expert, or as close to one as it’s possible to get. And that’s how he was talking to the Shining Demon – like an expert. I didn’t know it at the time – how could I? – but he was negotiating a loophole in the agreement that not even the Shining Demon noticed.”
Amber looked round as Glen walked in. “I think I broke your toilet,” he said.
Amber closed her eyes.
“It has a difficult flush,” said Jacob. “Wait until the water stops gurgling, and try again.”
Glen responded to Amber’s glare with a helpless shrug, then nodded and left.
Jacob moved into the kitchen – a lacklustre affair with a stove and a table. He boiled some water as he talked. “If you’re going to ask me what that loophole was, don’t bother. I don’t know. But, after my dad had shaken the Shining Demon’s hand, the Shining Demon reached down to me and his fingers – I remember them being long, long fingers – passed into my stomach. They didn’t break the skin or anything, they just passed right through, and they hurt. I mean, they hurt like hell. My dad had his hand clamped over my mouth to stop me from screaming – we didn’t want to alert the nurses – but I was thrashing and kicking and then I opened my eyes again and the Shining Demon was holding this grey lump of sludge and tissue. That was my cancer. The pain was gone; the sickness was gone. He just took it all away from me. I looked to my dad and for a moment, just the briefest of moments, I saw what the Demon had done to him. His skin was grey – the same grey as my cancer – but it was hard, and his eyes glowed, and he had fangs, and he had these two amazing, massive wings, like giant bat wings, growing from his shoulder blades. Just a glimpse is all I got of this, this winged beast, and then he was back to normal, but I’ll never forget it. Never.”
“Wings?” Amber pressed. “No horns?”
“Protrusions,” said Jacob. “My dad had a headful of hair, but in that moment he was bald, and he had these short protrusions all the way around his head, like a crown. I suppose you could call them horns. small horns. But big wings.”
“What was the harvest schedule?” Milo asked.
“Three souls a year,” said Jacob as he set about making four mugs of coffee. “For the first three years, he delivered. That’s the part that Althea likes to forget. But then the excuses started. The Shining Demon sent out his representative, and Dad assured him he’d get back on track. But, while he was telling the representative that he found it difficult to go out three times a year, I was watching him go out every other week. There were people disappearing from all over our neighbourhood. The cops even came to speak to him. It got so bad, we had to move. He didn’t have to tell me what was happening. I knew. He was harvesting a lot more souls than agreed upon, but he wasn’t giving any of them to the Shining Demon. He had found a way, in all his research, to feed off those souls himself. He was making himself stronger.”
“He’d planned to disappear all along,” said Milo.
Glen joined them in the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said, smiling, “would you happen to have a plunger available?”
Jacob frowned at him, then took one out from under the sink and handed it over.
“Any chance you’d have something bigger?” Glen asked.
“No,” said Jacob.
“This’ll do fine, then,” Glen said, and left.
Jacob took a moment to look concerned, then handed Milo and Amber a coffee. Amber didn’t like coffee.
“When I was seventeen,” Jacob said, “my dad called me into the living room and sat me down and told me he was leaving. He said the representative had made it quite clear that unless he started making up for lost harvests, his own soul would be forfeit. He said if he told me where he was going, the Shining Demon would know, and he’d torture it out of me. He told me I was out of it. Obviously, he lied about that part.” He sipped his coffee, leaning against the stove.
“So my dad left, and Althea took me in for a few years until I found a job and could manage on my own. I’d get the occasional postcard, but that was it. The representative started coming to see me, but, for all his threats, the cancer never came back.”
“The Shining Demon must have been furious,” said Amber.
Jacob shrugged. “He wasn’t happy about it, no. But he knew that I didn’t know where my dad was. Funny thing about Demons – and I mean proper Demons – they don’t let anything cloud the subject at hand. He could have had me killed a thousand times over, just to appease his own irritation, but he kept his eyes on the prize. I think my dad knew that. I hope he did.
“Anyway, about fifteen years ago, the representative knocked on my door to tell me that this would be his last visit. He said he had better things to do with his time than trying to track down a cheat. Silly me, I took this for good news.
“Few weeks after that, I got the feeling I was being watched. Couldn’t shake it. I was convinced someone – something – was following me. I started glimpsing it out of the corner of my eye. The witch. It started with some destruction of property. No big deal. Then it killed my neighbour’s dog. Then it killed my neighbour. I moved. Had to move three times. The cops were getting interested, just like they’d been interested in my dad. It always found me. There’s no way to stop it. I bought this place, where I didn’t have any neighbours, and set up the perimeter to keep it out. I did learn some tricks from my old man. I used to drive into town every week, stock up on groceries and whatnot, but that got too dangerous, so now I get it all delivered.”
“This has been going on for fifteen years?” Amber asked. “And the Shining Demon is hoping you’ll wake up one day and, what, decide you’ve had enough? Tell him where your dad is?”
“I don’t know where he is,” Jacob said. “I keep telling you. The Shining Demon understands this. He didn’t send the witch to get me to talk, but to torment – to try to get my dad to come to my rescue. Which, obviously, has not happened.”
“Is there anyone who would
know?” Milo asked.
“No one I’m familiar with. Why do you need to find him, anyway?”
“My parents made a deal with the Shining Demon that involves me,” said Amber. “I’m trying to get out of it. I was hoping your dad might be able to help.”
Jacob sighed. “For what it’s worth, I believe you. And I’m sorry that I’m not able to tell you what you want to know.”
“If you did know where he was,” said Milo, “would you have told the Shining Demon?”
Jacob hesitated, then gave a grim smile. “Probably not.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Glen walked in. They looked at him.
“The toilet is fine,” he announced.
Milo sighed, and held out his hand to Jacob. “Thanks for talking to us.”
Jacob shook Milo’s hand, then Amber’s. “Sorry I haven’t been of any use to you.”
“Thanks, anyway,” she said.
Glen held out his hand to shake. Jacob gave him a nod instead. “Nice to meet you.”
He led the way to the door, opened it, and they walked out. The light rain had stopped, though the sky was still overcast.
“Good luck,” said Jacob. “Genuinely.”
He closed the door, and they walked back towards the car.
“I broke his toilet,” Glen said the moment they were back on the trail.
Amber ignored him, and looked at Milo. “Do you believe him when he says he doesn’t know where his dad is?”
Milo sighed. “Yes, actually, I do. I wish I didn’t.”
“So what do we do now?”
“I … I don’t know.”
“We can’t just stop. After all this, we can’t just stop. There has to be some way of finding out where Jacob’s dad is. What about the whole winged beast thing?”
Glen frowned. “Winged beast? There’s a winged beast?”
“Surely someone has seen him flying around and posted it on some weird forum somewhere,” Amber continued. “The internet would eat up something like this.”
“You were talking about winged beasts? Seriously?”
“You’re assuming Buxton is still harvesting souls,” said Milo.
“Well, yeah,” Amber responded. “I mean, why wouldn’t he be?”
“Maybe he decided that killing innocent people is not something he wanted to continue doing.”
“Guys, come on, stop walking so fast,” Glen said. “I’m still weak.”
“Or maybe he likes it,” said Amber. “He killed who knows how many people in order to get strong enough to leave. I can’t see how he’d be willing to lose that strength, can you? I’d say he’d want to get even stronger.”
“I guess,” Milo said slowly. “Especially if he thought the Shining Demon could turn up at any moment …”
“See, that’s what I think,” said Amber, snapping her fingers. “I think he hasn’t stopped killing. Maybe it’s not every other week, like Jacob said, but I bet it’s still significant.”
“Can you please slow down?” Glen said from behind them. “When Jacob finds out what I did to his toilet, he’ll be coming after me and I’m too weak to defend myself. Also I don’t know how.”
“There’s probably nothing about it online,” said Amber, ignoring him. “Or, if there is, it’s hidden away in some remote part of the web that we’d never find.”
“Maybe not us,” said Milo, “but someone who does this kind of thing for a living … Maybe.”
Milo took out his phone and dialled a number. He waited till the call was answered.
“Edgar, old buddy,” he said, smiling. “Looks like we’re in need of your services yet again.” His smile dropped slightly. “I’m not sure what you … oh, you mean the powder flask. Yeah, I think we may have accidentally taken that with us …”
Amber grinned, left Milo to explain himself, and carried on back down the trail to the car. Within moments, Milo and Glen were lost from sight. Another few seconds, and she could see the Charger.
Then a sound from somewhere to her left. The snapping of a twig.
Amber stopped walking, her eyes flickering from tree to tree. Nothing there. Nothing hiding, lurking, creeping … Nothing waiting.
And yet …
She walked off the trail a few steps, her feet crunching on dry twigs. Awareness prickled at the base of her skull.
She was being watched.
There were eyes on her, she was sure of that, and there was ill intent behind those eyes. Something out here wished her harm, and every step she was taking was one step closer to it, whatever it was.
But there was nothing there. Even in this failing light, she could still see clearly enough to know that. She took another step. The primal side of her, the unthinking lizard brain, would have commanded her body to spin and sprint at that moment, such was the spike of fear that shot through her. But she overrode it. Of course she did. There was nothing there. Nothing but trees.
Snap.
The sound, another twig breaking directly in front of her, turned her hands to talons, but she fought the change. The demon part of her was too confident, too assured. To start relying on it would be a mistake. She got herself back under control, and her reddening skin returned to normal. A twig had broken. That’s all. No big deal. She glared at a tree as she approached, daring it to try and scare her again. It was just a stupid tree with stupid branches, with knots in its trunk that looked like a screaming face, eye sockets that gaped in hollow darkness.
The eyes opened.
Amber cursed, stepped back, her ankle buckling. Twigs cracked like bones as the tree untwisted, every sharp movement revealing another part of its body – a head, an arm, a hand, a leg. Not a tree but a thing, a thing of rough skin and knots, of bark and running sap and hair like twigs and leaves. A thing that stood and waited, straight and tall, but bent as it moved, its crippled spine curling gratefully, its long limbs reaching for Amber even as she scrambled backwards. Its mouth remained open, locked in a frozen scream, and a sound escaped like chattering teeth.
The witch.
It darted towards her and Amber fell back, hit the ground, and rolled desperately. When she looked up, she was alone.
She got up and went home, said goodnight to her parents and went to sleep. In her dreams, she was still in the woods, walking behind the witch, her senses dull. When she woke up, she went to school and sat in class. Her thoughts wandered back to the woods, where she was still walking. It seemed so real, in a way. After school, she worked her shift in the Firebird, then went home and went straight to bed. She dreamed of the gutted remains of an old house in the middle of the woods, and being led down into the basement.
In her dream, she went to sleep. In her sleep, she dreamed.
And in the morning she woke.
THE BASEMENT WAS STONE and cold. The ground was hard-packed dirt. Morning light sneaked in through the gaps in the wooden ceiling and the narrow window, set high on the eastern wall. The window didn’t have any glass, but it did have metal bars, just like the cast-iron gate that was used as a door to the corridor beyond. Just like a prison cell. Amber sat up.
Five women looked back at her.
They were filthy. Their clothes had become dull rags. Their hair was long, unkempt. They looked like wild women, feral and dangerous, but they sat round her like they were waiting for a bus.
“Don’t be afraid,” one of them said.
Another one snorted a laugh.
“Fine,” the first one said. “Do be afraid. But don’t be afraid of us. We’re not going to hurt you.” She was in her forties, but her long hair was already grey. Down here, access to good hair dye was obviously limited. “I’m Deborah. You can call me Deb. This is Juliana, Honor, Faith and Iseul. What’s your name?”
Amber put her back to the wall, and drew her legs in. “Amber,” she said. “Where are we?”
“Somewhere we won’t be found,” said Juliana, the one who’d laughed. She was a little younger than Deb, with blonde hair that
was once curly and was now merely knotted. Her face was hard but not unkind. “Do you have anything on you? A phone, something like that?”
Amber shook her head.
Honor, a girl in her early twenties with flawless ebony skin and a mouth full of metal braces, sat forward. “Does anyone know where you are? When it took you, were you close by?”
“I don’t know how long I was walking, but I have friends who’ll be looking for me,” Amber replied.
“They won’t find us,” said Juliana. She got up, went to the barred gate, stood leaning against it. “You don’t think people searched for us? Iseul over there is the niece of one of the richest men in the state – you don’t think he had tracker dogs and helicopters looking for her?”
“My friends are different,” said Amber. “This is the kind of thing they specialise in. One of them, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up,” said Deb, her voice suddenly lifeless. “I don’t think anyone specialises in this stuff.”
Amber held her gaze. “What,” she said, “witches?”
The other women frowned.
“Witches?” said Honor.
The Korean woman, Iseul, tossed a twig into the centre of the room. “The thing that brought me here was no witch,” she said. “It was a tree-monster.”
“And what’s a tree-monster?” Amber asked.
“It’s what took us,” said Juliana. “It took you too, right? Looks like a tree until it opens its eyes? We don’t know the technical term for it, but what it is, is a tree-monster.”
“She’s a witch,” said Amber. “That’s just how she looks.”
“How would you know?” asked Deb.
“Because that’s what she is. She was sent after a guy who lives in these woods, Jacob Buxton.”
“Gretchen was right!” the fifth woman, Faith, suddenly exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. “She told us! The one person we all had contact with in the week before we woke up here! Gretchen knew he was in on it!”
“Who’s Gretchen?” Amber asked.
Deb hesitated. “She was down here with us. Then she was taken away, and we haven’t seen her since. There have been others, too. We were all that was left until you turned up.”
