Only the Devil Is Here

by Stephen Michell

  Evan looked back. “Why not?”

  “I lied to you,” Rook said. “I said you’d be safe at the church but that’s not true.”

  “You lied?” Evan said.

  Rook said nothing. He watched the road. After a moment, he glanced down and saw Evan crying. It robbed him of breath. The pain in his abdomen spiked for a moment. He checked the rear-view mirror and then pulled the truck off onto the shoulder of the road and parked. He shut off the ignition and faced Evan.

  “Now listen to me,” he said. “Stop crying. I did a lot of thinking this morning and I’ve decided that I can’t take you to the church. There are mean people there. Do you understand?”

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  Rook shook his head. “Because there was something that I wanted before. I swore an oath to find you and bring you to the church, and in return I would get to see my wife and son again. But I can’t do that anymore.”

  Evan remembered the video of Rook talking about his family. The bullet had gone straight through her breast. Gone through them both. My wife and son were dead.

  He blinked and wiped his cheeks, sniffing back his tears. Then he bowed his head. When he spoke his voice was small but firm.

  “You can take me to the church, Rook. It’s okay. Then you can be with your family again.”

  Rook grabbed Evan and pulled him close and held him. Evan hugged him back and felt his whole body tucked against the warmth and weight of Rook’s chest.

  Right here is where I want to be, Evan thought.

  Rook let Evan go and sat back.

  “Rook?” Evan said.

  “Yes?”

  “What are we? I mean, how did you become . . .” Evan paused to recall the words, then said, “. . . one with the darkness?”

  “I asked for it,” Rook said. “A long time ago, the night my family was taken from me, I prayed for it.”

  “You prayed? You mean to God?”

  “At first I called to God, and then I pleaded to anything that would hear me. Finally, something answered.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was just a voice. A calm, plainly spoken voice. Cold at first, then warm like a fire. It said, ‘It’s okay. I have you. Let me help.’ And I welcomed it.”

  “What did you do?” Evan said.

  “I went out into the night and I found the men who had killed Allison and my boy. I tracked them through the snow down along the river to where they’d camped. It was dark but they’d built a fire and I could see its light from where I was. That was when the night came. It gave me strength like nothing in this world, and I tore those men apart with my bare hands. I welcomed something evil into my heart that night, and ever since I’ve been a man and a monster.”

  “Am I evil?” Evan said.

  “No, Evan. You are strong. You are good and kind and brave, and that’s all you need to be.”

  Evan’s eyes welled as he said, “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? That’s why you’re saying all of this. Because you have to go away.”

  “Yes,” Rook said. “I’m breaking my oath. I don’t know when, but eventually they will come for me.”

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” Evan stated.

  A smile touched Rook’s eyes as he looked at Evan. “We’ll go as far as we can,” he said.

  “What do I do when you’re gone?”

  “I don’t know, Evan, but I think you do. Or you will.”

  Evan’s brow creased, uncertain whether he should agree or disagree. Before he could say anything, Rook went on.

  “I was told that this would happen,” Rook said.

  “You were?”

  “The voice that answered my prayers that night told me that one day it would call on me for help. Over the years, it came to speak with me often. At first it was a torment. I felt cursed. I could see a face sometimes when it spoke to me. Eyes like fire. And I hated it. I hated what it had done to me, and I blamed it for everything. But over the years, the voice became a comfort, a friend even. It asked endless questions, curious to know about us, about people, about life. And it told me stories, too. Everything you think I know about God and the Devil I learned from this voice.”

  Evan remembered their conversation in the cave around the fire. The things Rook had claimed were just ideas now felt real in Evan’s recollection. He remembered them now almost as if they had been his own ideas instead of Rook’s.

  Rook went on. “The last time I heard that voice was almost seven years ago. Until the other night in the cornfield when I heard that same voice coming from you. I believe this has been its call for help.”

  “This?”

  “Yes, Evan. About a year ago I started hearing this sound in my head, a steady throbbing. Sometimes it was calm, other times it pounded like a drum. It was a heartbeat. It was your heartbeat, Evan, calling out to me. It’s the reason I started looking for you, and it’s how I’ve been able to find you. Do you understand? You are different, Evan. You can hear people’s thoughts. You can make them do what you want. You can call the night. Don’t you know who you are?”

  Evan was silent, a receptive yet pensive look on his face. He seemed on the verge of speaking, when Rook turned away all of a sudden. A harsh voice had cut across the stillness of the afternoon, and Rook’s stomached dropped.

  Oath breaker . . .

  “What is it?” Evan asked, having heard nothing.

  Rook ignored Evan. He looked out across the frozen marsh. The snow was glaringly bright in the sun and he squinted as he tried to scan the horizon. He glanced in the rear-view mirror, then turned around and looked out the back of the truck’s cab.

  There was someone walking up the road behind them. A slim figure, going along in a lazy way.

  It wasn’t Gabriel. Rook knew that and was relieved. More than anything else, it looked like a drifter, Rook thought. Just a hitchhiker, walking alone.

  Evan pulled on Rook’s sleeve. “Rook,” he said. “Rook, there’s someone out in front of the truck.”

  Gabriel stood out in front of the truck, his feet on either side of the yellow median. He was staring straight at Rook and Evan. His silver hair looked like liquid metal in the sun, and he was dressed neatly in a beige overcoat with three black buttons fastened down the front. His collar was folded down, but the angle of the sun made a shadow of his face.

  Rook’s right hand clicked the lock mechanism of Evan’s seatbelt and the belt went limp over Evan’s lap, then zipped up into the corner.

  “Run, Evan,” Rook said. “Get out of the truck and run to the woods.”

  “But what about—”

  “I’ll be right behind you. Now, go!”

  Evan opened the truck’s door and hopped down. He looked back at Rook and their eyes met. In that moment, Evan felt Rook’s voice flow through him like a cool wind.

  I wish I could stay with you. . . .

  “Rook?” Evan said aloud, his eyes welling up.

  “I said run, Evan!”

  Evan turned and took off like a shot towards the woods. There was a ditch of deep snow off the shoulder of the road and he slipped and slid down into it, gathered himself quick, and scrambled up the other side.

  Evan ran and didn’t look back, arms pumping, and knees kicking up. Then he was in the woods, the tall, barren pine trees encircling him.

  Rook stepped out of the truck. The sun was bright on his face. A crow cawed from somewhere in the marshes and from far away the rushing of the river carried. Rook closed the door and turned, but not before catching sight of the hitchhiker still walking slowly up the road from behind them. He paused.

  Closer now, yet still indistinct against the glare of the sun, Rook could see that the stranger walked with an uneven gait. A lame leg, he imagined. But then a deeper realization came to him, and he knew it was no hitchhiker at all. His first thought was that it was one of Gabriel’s partners. Gabriel often spoke of others, the many, we. Though Rook’s gut told him he was wrong. He squinted to see better, and pictur
ed the red-haired boy dragged beneath the van, presumably killed. It couldn’t be the boy, Rook thought. But the thing within him could have possessed someone else.

  Whoever or whatever it was, Rook didn’t have the time to stand and wonder. He could hear Gabriel’s fine footsteps clicking along the road, and he walked out around the front of the truck to meet him.

  They both stopped a few feet from each other, Gabriel’s hands clasped behind his back, Rook’s at his sides.

  “I won’t bring Evan to his death,” Rook said. “I’ve told—”

  Gabriel wagged his forefinger in the air and tsked. “Save your breath, Rook. What’s done is done. You made your choice.”

  “The boy is innocent, Gabriel.”

  “No one is innocent. Innocence is a mortal’s idea, like one of their stories. It’s the dream of life before it comes into being. After that, every creature on this earth is guilty of taking its first breath.”

  “So you’re just going to kill him.”

  “The boy will play his part, as you did. Your change of heart came too late, I’m afraid. It will be easy to lure the boy to the church from here. I’ve come now only to deliver your penance. You did not think you could break your oath and simply walk away, did you? You must pay for your transgression.”

  “And how do suppose you’re going to make me do that?”

  “I’m not going to do anything,” Gabriel said. “Your penance is placed in your own hands.”

  Rook’s expression shifted with a glimmer of hope. Maybe there’s a way out of this, he thought.

  Gabriel went on: “You and the boy stayed well hidden from your pursuers, but there has been one searching for you most of all. You escaped it twice, but it has not stopped. It has, however, struggled to follow your signs. I didn’t think that was fair, so I gave the ancient one a small amount of guidance.”

  Rook’s heart sank. Somehow he knew what Gabriel would say next. And then it came.

  “I sent the ancient one to your home,” Gabriel said. “It met your dear August. She truly is a kind-hearted young woman. She tried to be nice. She even asked the demon its name.”

  “What the hell have you done?” Rook said.

  “I have done very little at all.”

  Rook advanced on him and yelled, “I broke the oath! August had nothing to do with this!”

  Gabriel raised his hands. “Before you tear my head off—much good it will do you—why don’t you turn around and see for yourself what has happened?”

  Rook paused and shuddered. Again, he knew what he would find if he turned around.

  Not August, please.

  In quick, painful flashes, Rook saw August standing in her kitchen washing dishes, the sink half-full with warm soapy water. She looked over her shoulder when the creature appeared. Nothing any ordinary person would have seen. A distortion in the air, perhaps. A transparent shroud hanging six feet above the floor. He saw August reach, as she had all her life, with an open hand towards the unknown. Then he saw her turn and run. He saw her screaming. And her face. Her eyes burned into shallow, blackened cavities like all those on the bus. Then she was walking down the middle of the road, driven forward, even on a broken leg, alone but for the thing that drove her.

  For a moment Rook thought if he only stood still, looking straight ahead, he could make this go away. If he refused to turn around, he could refuse to let it be real.

  But he could feel her—no, it—standing behind him. Like flaring static on the back of his neck. He forced himself to turn around.

  He noticed August’s left leg first—twisted at the hip, her jeans torn, her kneecap hooked inward—and then he looked up and saw her wholly. He looked her in the face. It was real. The pain tore through him like a knife in the chest and his fists clenched.

  “What have they done to you?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  August said nothing. Her arm rose from her side, and Rook knew that it was reaching for his throat. He lifted his chin willingly. Why not let her? Better to let this nightmare end by her hand than any other.

  But it was not her hand that reached for him. It was this thing. Like the darkness that lived in Rook, only wilder. It must have possessed someone long ago and lost itself, warped by time into a roaming, suffering madness. Its presence felt like a nest of enraged hornets. And this creature had hold of August. It crouched on the seat of her soul. Rook couldn’t bear it.

  Rook looked again into August’s face, searching for a sign of her real self. There had to be some remnant of her left. And then he saw it—somewhere underneath, deep within, buried behind the burned and blackened flesh of her eyes—he saw August’s will still fighting. Some emotion moved over the ravaged face, as if a part of August was still trying to scream.

  In that moment, whatever measure of hope Rook had found for himself over the last few days washed away and his body hummed in the stilled instance of its departure. He pictured Evan running and knew that the boy’s life was out of his hands now. He was surprised to feel light and free.

  All the days of his life seemed to disintegrate into mere moments of choice and action and nothing more. Taken as a whole his life was formless. He saw no sum creation, no man named Rook. For the first time in his life the concept of fate appealed to him. Its simplicity sparkled like sunlight in the snow. He had lacked the power to save his wife and son, but maybe he wasn’t meant to save them. Maybe he had been given the strength of the night so that he might one day save August. And here it was, another moment in which to act, but no longer a choice at all.

  Rook caught August’s outstretched arm and pushed it to the side. His strength in conjuring the night was weakened in the daylight, but there was darkness within him and for this he would rally every ounce of it. He braced his free hand flat against her chest.

  At the touch of his hand, the darkness that lived in Rook connected with the thing inside August. There was a moment of recognition, like two old comrades meeting in the street. They knew each other’s names, both as ancient as any that had first stood upon the shores of Hell.

  Rook shut his eyes, his palm beginning to heat, and he drew a deep breath. “Let her go,” he whispered.

  August wriggled and thrashed at Rook with her free hand, spitting and making low, guttural sounds, but Rook held her still. From under his hand on her chest, a bright light began to glow. And then Rook screamed out in pain, as he called the night from himself and commanded it one last time to drag the darkness from August.

  He yelled, “Let her go!”

  Rook’s heart stopped—beat once—and blood spurted from his mouth. August’s body recoiled from the touch of Rook’s open palm, contorting grotesquely, her head whipping backwards as jets of black vapour shot out of her mouth and eyes. Like a great cloud of flies, the jets swarmed in the air above August, swirling and buzzing in an attempt to coalesce into a true form. What might have been wings beat the air as a long, hooked neck reeled back and a tormented howl cut across the country road. The seared and blackened flesh fell away from of August’s eyes. Her body collapsed at the side of the road. The cloud of vapour dissipated.

  Staggering, Rook dropped to his knees in front of the truck. He slumped back against the grill. But for the remnant heat of the engine warming his neck, Rook was growing cold all over. His head hung. He could feel the hard road under him and he thought either it was rising up or he was sinking into it. He lifted his head with great effort and looked across the road at August and waited for a sign. He mouthed her name, his voice wheezing. She lay still on her side, her face turned from him.

  A shadow fell across Rook’s shoulders. Gabriel stood over him. Rook coughed and his mouth filled with blood. He spat it out and looked up.

  Gabriel was silhouetted against the sun. His darkened face seemed adorned with a ring of light and Rook found a crude hypocrisy in that. It made him want to laugh despite his mouthful of blood.

  “You keep thinking you can save them,” Gabriel said.

  Rook was watching A
ugust again for signs of recovery.

  Please . . .

  “Did you really think it was possible for us to return Allison to life?”

  Rook wasn’t listening. August’s right arm was draped behind her back, but he thought he saw her wrist twitch.

  Please . . .

  “Death knows no reunion,” Gabriel said.

  The words pierced Rook with an icy veracity. Fate was a fool’s notion. August was not going to get up. She would never get up. It was all too late. He felt himself sinking, the cold earth drawing him down, and he thought of Evan out there alone. Running. What hope did the boy have? Rook’s last thought was that he had failed all the people he loved.

  Gabriel waited until Rook’s eyes lost the ability to hold light and became flat and empty-looking. Then he started across the road to the woods.

  Evan ran blindly. Wheezing and bleary-eyed and praying, if only to the trees that he ran past or to the cold wind that burned in his throat: He’ll be right behind me! He’ll be right behind me!

  When at last he stopped, he collapsed panting to the ground and he lay on his back in the snow and the layered pine needles below. His chest quaked. He started to cry again.

  “No,” he snapped. “Stop that. He’s coming. He’s coming.”

  He lay still and waited, his chest heaving. Then he rolled over and looked up, scanning the woods. When he saw nothing and no one, he fell back into the snow. He closed his eyes and saw Rook telling him to run.

  I wish I could stay with you. . . .

  The tears came violently even as he tried to hold them back and he convulsed in the snow. He cried aloud.

  “Stop it,” he said to himself. “Stop crying.”

  Evan sat up again and looked back across the path of his flight through the woods. His feet were cold and he shivered.

  “Come on, Rook. Come on.”

  He watched the low ridge where he had come up from the ditch and he waited. The forest was quiet.

  Then he yelled, “Come on, Rook!”

  Two chickadees flew out from the thicket and Evan jumped. He got down on his hands and knees and watched the tree line. A wind came up and swayed in the tops of the pines. Evan kept watching.