Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  “So it might just kill us all. You don’t know. You could have been hoodwinked by Hunter, hoodwinked by this god.”

  “No, Hunter has shown me that which it showed him. I know of what I speak!”

  “And what did you see?”

  “I saw the earth, consumed in fire and water—a metaphor for what Long Island has become. I saw it change, into something new and magnificent—a paradise, where men might live in peace, uncorrupted by the city, undiluted by outsiders.”

  “I’ve seen this vision,” said Fin. “I didn’t see a paradise. I saw death and destruction and madness.”

  “Perhaps undesirables see their fate, while the worthy see theirs,” said Robert coolly. Even now, laid up in his bed with a wound from a quarrel in his shoulder, three women staring at him in mingled disbelief and horror, he was still so amazingly certain. Ellie wondered: If they prevented this final death and thus the chaos promised by the demon—if they were able to destroy it—would her father let go of this madness? How much of this was Hunter’s hold on him, and how much was his own choice to embrace hatred and fear?

  “What did you see?” said Fin. “Tell me what you saw exactly. Did you see people living in harmony?”

  “Not exactly,” said Robert, uncertainty creeping into his voice for the first time. “Hunter interpreted it for me. For all of us. He says he is privy to a greater amount of information, due to his connection with the god.”

  “Hunter’s connection . . .” Fin looked thoughtful. “It’s the liquor?”

  “He distills it himself. Those of us he selected to be his generals also have partaken of it, to see and to understand.”

  “Hunter is a teetotaler,” said Ellie. “You were so embarrassed for him to hear I was bootlegging.”

  “What is good for the few may not be good for the masses. Hunter does not drink to excess; he is no sot. He is a man of measured appetites—a man of vision, of strength. I cannot imagine doing what he has done . . . sacrificing what he has sacrificed . . .”

  “What has he sacrificed?” asked Ellie.

  “That’s his business,” said Robert.

  “Tell her,” commanded Fin.

  Ellie’s father looked as furious as an injured man unable to sit up in bed could look. “Hunter’s wife was sick, dying. He began to research cures that doctors rejected, and discovered that men have the ability to contact gods. Not the God you hear of in church. Real gods, with real powers. The one he reached . . . it had no ability to cure his wife, but it did offer answers to other questions. It showed Hunter that like the cancer that was eating his wife from within, our home had become polluted, weakening us, sickening us, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Ellie. “That’s great, except this isn’t a god. It’s a demon—at least as I understand it. You’ve been duped. You won’t have this island for yourself if you succeed—you’ll destroy it, and yourselves in the process. So cut the pretend piousness and tell us what happened.”

  “Yes, tell us,” intoned Fin.

  “It asked him for a sacrifice. Seeing that the doctors could do nothing for his wife, it was decided that she would give her life for the island.”

  It was decided. The words chilled Ellie. She tried to keep from imagining the scene. It was too horrifying to be believed.

  “The power it gave him in return was a boon to him and to the island. He could change the world with just a touch of his hand or a word from his mouth. He set to work, tirelessly, recruiting neighbors and strangers alike. Tonight he will be rewarded—we all will. Tonight, our future will be secured.”

  “Let’s talk about tonight,” said Ellie. “What exactly will happen? What do everyone’s prayers have to do with it?”

  “The prayers are to give those who survive a sense of investment in their future homeland,” said Robert. “Right now, men feel no sense of connection in this place. They do not feel as if anything they do affects anything for the better. The act of praying and seeing those prayers answered will give them satisfaction, and they will work harder to rebuild and make things the way they ought to be.”

  “So their prayers don’t actually matter?” asked Fin.

  “Not for what will happen tonight, when I and the rest of Hunter’s generals convene where the original vessel lies sleeping. There, he will give the vessel its final feast, and all we have longed for will come true. The nodes are connected; the sacrifice will flow through its tendrils beneath the earth. Its strength will spread to every corner; its power will be more any man can imagine.”

  The nodes were connected . . . If that was the case, a “sacrifice” might not be the only thing that could flow beneath the earth. Something deadly, like poison, might too . . .

  “Where is the vessel, and what’s the easiest way to get there?” asked Fin. Ellie caught her friend’s eye; they seemed to be on the same page.

  Ellie listened carefully while her father rattled off how to find the original fungal growth. Apparently it had been growing in the small wooded area behind Hunter’s house. The easiest way to get to it was via an old smuggling tunnel. Ellie was familiar with these; they were all over Amityville. This one, however, led from the shed on Hunter’s property right to that which he had summoned.

  When her father finished his recitation, Ellie was ready to leave, but her mother surprised her by asking another question.

  “Who is supposed to die tonight?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Robert.

  “You don’t?” prompted Fin.

  “I don’t; I really don’t,” he answered. “I just know it will be tonight, after the moon is down and the night is dark. We—”

  “We nothing,” said Ellie. “You’re not going anywhere. You know we’re onto you and your plans; you know we want to stop you; you even know we know how to get there quickly and easily.”

  “He won’t be going.”

  Ellie’s mother wasn’t looking at her, or at Fin—she was looking at her husband.

  “Harriet!”

  “I’ve listened to you, Robert—now you listen to me.” She was pale, but there was steel behind her words. “Given the state of our family, and the world, I’ve done what you asked and given Hunter a chance . . . But you never told me what else I’d have to give him. You killed our child, Robert. And you never told me that you were involved with gods or demons, never told me that Hunter had any strange abilities. Has he changed my mind, Robert?” She might have said more, but she began to cry.

  Fin merely looked at Robert. “Yes,” he admitted.

  Ellie didn’t like to see her mother cry, but remembering what Fin had said about how that mind-changing stuff worked a lot better on people who were eager to accept what Hunter had to say, she had no words of comfort for her mother.

  “If you’re with us,” said Ellie, “go get some rope.”

  They tied him to the bed by his good arm—loosely, but securely. He could turn over and sit up, but with his bad shoulder bandaged tightly to his side, he could not untie it. It would hold him . . . and Harriet would, too. She promised, and Fin assured Ellie that she was telling the truth.

  Ellie wasn’t sure what to say to her mother before they left, so she didn’t say anything. She wasn’t ready to forgive her, and she wasn’t sure she ever would be.

  What they needed now wasn’t forgiveness, anyway. What they needed was a plan.

  4

  Ellie’s feelings were hopelessly mixed as they tied up at the little dock behind Gabriel’s house. Their house, she reminded herself for what felt like the thousandth time . . . and yet, after their interaction the night before—had it really been just the night before?—she was uncertain about their future.

  She was certain about what she wanted, though. She wanted to live here, with Gabriel, in Amityville . . . but she had no idea if that would be possible, in part because of what she’d done to their relationship, in part because she doubted they could save the island.

  She and Fin agreed that they didn’t just need to t
ake out Hunter—they needed to destroy the “vessel.” And they needed to do so tonight. As to how to do either of those things, well, for that they needed to consult with everyone else.

  “What’s going on, do you think?” asked Fin, pointing to everyone bustling about Gabriel’s front yard. Intrigued, Ellie trotted up to find they were not the only ones who had recently arrived. SJ and Gabriel had just pulled up in the pickup, and Jones and Aaron were helping unload some sacks from the back. SJ, though upright, was moving gingerly; that she was letting other people work while she stood by told Ellie the state of the wound in her side.

  “You’re all very busy,” said Ellie. “What’s going on?”

  SJ nearly jumped out of her skin. “What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “You could give a girl a heart attack!”

  “I think you’ll be happier to see me when I tell you where I’ve been,” said Ellie, “and who I’ve brought.”

  “Another little doe-eyed white girl?” SJ, who was shorter and slighter than either of them, looked Fin up and down in such a derisive way that Ellie wished she’d taken the opportunity to tell Fin not to take anything SJ said personally. But that proved unnecessary—SJ noticed Fin’s archery bag and relaxed.

  “You shoot?” she said.

  “A little,” said Fin. “Do you?”

  “Crossbow,” said SJ. “Slower to reload, but it packs a hell of a punch.”

  Ellie was grateful for Fin’s private-school decorum in that moment; she didn’t in any way reveal that she knew too well what that crossbow could do.

  “I bet” was all Fin said. Ellie was grateful that Fin was leaving it to her to tell the group just how much a part of this her father was. “Can I try it sometime?”

  “Might snap that little wrist of yours,” said SJ. “I’m not interested in trying yours; I’ve shot enough recurves to know they’re not for me.”

  “Fair enough,” said Fin.

  “Ladies, if you don’t mind . . .” Jones stood off to the side, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, the sight of which made Ellie’s hand track to her own pocket. “We’re trying to get this truck unloaded and sure could use the help.”

  “What is all this?” asked Ellie as she walked over.

  “Sulfur and a few other things,” said SJ. “We were talking over . . .” She trailed off momentarily, presumably out of respect for Ellie’s feelings. “. . . what happened, and, well . . . if these, you know . . . mushroom-things”—she looked askance again at Ellie, but Ellie really just wished she’d get on with it—“if they’re important to these creeps’ plans, then we all figured we’d need to knock them out.”

  “Early this morning we went out and poked around the ruins of SJ’s shack,” said Aaron. “There wasn’t anyone there, but the, you know. It’s already grown much larger.”

  “And there were more of the smaller ones, too,” said SJ. “They’re getting to be everywhere. We figured if we could kill off the big one, maybe the little ones would have a harder time of it . . . and if it works, we can try to find out where others are.”

  “We’re basically mixing up a big batch of my mama’s fungicide.”

  The sound of Gabriel’s voice was like slipping into a warm bath, but Ellie slowly raised her eyes to his, afraid of what she’d see there. His expression, to her dismay, was unreadable—she could not even divine if he was happy to see her.

  “Fungicide,” she said, marveling at their good fortune. She and Fin had discussed something similar as they cruised over. “That’s just what we need!”

  Fin coughed into her hand. “What Ellie’s trying to say is that we know the location of the central, ah . . . well, let’s just go with ‘mushroom-thing’; it’s as good a name for it as anything else, really. We’ve learned that there are other ones, like the one you saw last night, but there’s a central one, too. It’s here, in Amityville, and we have good reason to think if we destroy the original one, the rest, large and small, will die. They all connect back to the one in Hunter’s back yard.”

  “Hunter, huh?” said Jones.

  “Yeah, Hunter,” said Ellie. “Someone close to him squealed. I don’t know if that’s still circumstantial, but tonight they’re going to feed this mushroom-thing another human sacrifice,” she said, her face going red. “And then . . . then it’s over for us. It’ll set off some sort of reaction that will consume the island.”

  “That’s not circumstantial, that’s hearsay . . . but it’s my day off,” said Jones. “I believe you. It’s time to do what needs to be done.”

  “If we put our heads together, I bet we can figure something out.” Aaron eyed the truck. “Let’s get all this into the shade and then we can talk about it.”

  “Into the shade . . . ?” asked Ellie.

  “Sulfur shouldn’t get too hot,” said SJ. “Once it’s unloaded, all that’s left is to figure out what best to do with it all, and when.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Aaron as they set to it.

  “I mean . . . do we go for it now? Or later?”

  “I’d like to know more about this sacrifice,” said Jones.

  “I can answer a little about that,” said Fin.

  Ellie made to follow after everyone as they trooped into the house, but Gabriel held her back a moment.

  She didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t seem to either. So much had happened since they’d last seen one another.

  “Ellie,” he said, and for whatever reason the sound of him saying her name opened her mouth, and she found she couldn’t close it until she’d said her piece.

  “Gabriel, I’m sorry,” said Ellie. “I never meant to exclude you. I’ve been trying and failing to establish some control while everything’s been so chaotic, and doing everything myself and keeping it all to myself seemed like the best way to do that. But I realize now I should have let you help. I was just afraid you would see me differently, after what happened with Greene, and all I wanted was for you to look at me the same way you always have, because . . . because I love you, and I want you, and I want to live here with you and I worried you wouldn’t want that if you knew who I was, or at least what I was capable of.”

  “Oh, Ellie,” said Gabriel. “Thank you, but please don’t apologize for any of that, not right now! I wasn’t asking for an apology, I just—I loved him, you know. Lester was like a brother to me. And I’d said that awful thing about him . . .”

  Gabriel was crying now, and more than ever Ellie wanted to comfort him, wrap her arms around him, but she held herself back. “He didn’t hear what you said,” she assured him, “and there’s no reason to think about things we said to one another in anger.” She felt they ought to wait to mourn Lester until after they’d saved Long Island, because if they failed to do what needed to be done, they’d be beyond mourning him. But she didn’t say that—Gabriel’s feelings mattered too.

  “But it’s not just that,” he said. “I didn’t believe you about all the . . . about all this being real. It just seemed so absurd; I mean, it still does, but it looks like you were right and I was wrong. I should have listened to you. I should have thought about how you must have really seen something weird if you were saying all you did about masks and strange fires . . . I mean, it’s not like we fight over who gets to read the most recent issue of Amazing Stories when it comes in.”

  “I’ve really missed you,” said Ellie. “It was so hard, not running to you last night . . . or when I saw you this morning.”

  “You could have.”

  This was news to Ellie. “I didn’t know.”

  “Want to give it a whirl, just to stay in practice? It’s easy to forget how.”

  Ellie flung herself into Gabriel’s embrace, holding him as tight as she ever had. His chest was warm and solid and familiar.

  “I love you, Elizabeth West,” he murmured, and then pushing her to arm’s length, said sternly, “but don’t you ever again dare send people to my door in the wee hours of the morning to tell me all kinds of horrible things. I c
ouldn’t believe you didn’t come yourself. I needed you with me when I heard about Lester, and the rest of it too.”

  Ellie pulled back, the old sense of annoyance she’d felt with Gabriel’s seeming inability to understand returning too soon on the heels of their reunion. “I couldn’t,” she said. “I had to move quickly, and I think my choices have been borne out.”

  “You’re right; I know you are . . . You just don’t know what I went through—”

  “And you don’t know what I’ve been through! Rocky and I . . . I doubt I’ll ever see him again. He knows all about this stuff—what we’re dealing with, I mean—and he still refused to come and help us, just walked away because it ‘wasn’t his fight’ or something. And not only that, but I just helped Fin summon a demon of her own, and it’s given her the power to make people tell the truth.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to start believing me, start here. It’s all true; I saw it. We used it on my father, to find out what we found out about the central mushroom-thing and all that, because he—he’s the one who killed Lester.”

  “What?” he said again, even more incredulous.

  “Shh, I don’t want to talk about it with everyone. Not yet, at least. But it’s true . . . I recognized him. He moved in a familiar way last night, and when I confronted him he literally couldn’t lie, so . . . he couldn’t deny it.” Gabriel’s mouth was hanging open; Ellie looked away. “I’m not telling you this for sympathy,” she said. “I’m telling you because obviously things have been . . . unusual of late, but I also can’t guarantee you that I won’t ever again need to be free to do what I think is right without talking it over first. I didn’t think I could afford the time to come back and tell you myself. Would you really have wanted me to show up, tell you what had happened all in a rush, and leave again?” Gabriel shook his head, conceding her point. “I didn’t think so. I left that to Aaron and the rest because I had to, not because I wanted to.”

  “All right, Ellie. I hear you. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that I can’t bear to only be a part of the good parts of your life. I need to be your partner . . . or nothing.”