The Demon Stone

by Christopher Datta

  “She needs understanding; she needs me.”

  “A dog needs you and would be a lot nicer.”

  “I’ve got a dog.”

  “Then send Morgan to the pound. When no one claims her they’ll put her to sleep and do us all a favor.”

  “What a nasty thing to say,” said Kevin, shocked. “Fuck you. Who are you with? When have you ever been in love? What do you know about it?”

  They were silent again, Kevin burning with resentment until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Look,” said Bill, “I’m glad you came. It means a lot to me. I know I can be an asshole but it really does mean a lot to have you here.”

  Kevin’s anger relented. This was Bill. He was a jerk, but he had a heart and a mind that he used to greater depths than anyone else Kevin had ever known. “I’m glad to see you, too, and I mean it. As difficult as you sometimes are, I always feel alive with you.”

  “Picking on you is good for me, too,” chuckled Bill.

  “You’re such a bully, no wonder no woman will stay with you. Speaking of, is there anyone lately? You haven’t said.”

  Bill sighed and stretched. “Oh, there was one for a while.”

  “A local?”

  Bill shook his head. “Well, she is an African, but a white from South Africa. She works for Mercy Corps, another international Non-Governmental Organization. We call them NGOs. Her name is Ellie Kirkland.”

  “Does she work here?” said Kevin.

  “No, she’s in another camp. We met when we were both in the capital for a time. There are a lot of NGOs here, and you’d probably be surprised at how many very attractive women work in them. It’s quite the community of missionaries, misfits and mercenaries, as some journalist once described us. I include myself in that categorization. Another person I know once pointed out that we’re all either running away from or to something. And you wouldn’t believe the hothouse sex. We call it Emergency Sex. There’s a lot of it and it seldom lasts.” He shrugged. “It’s a pressure cooker environment that leads to intense but short-lived relationships. And that’s the way most of us in this line of work like it.”

  “So did you like Ellie?”

  Bill paused for a moment. “No, not very much. She wasn’t really very likable. But strangely, I did love her.”

  “Why wasn’t she likable?”

  “It’s an odd thing, but you know how I was just talking about the people I help and how I, on one level, have come to despise them? That’s true of most of the people here doing humanitarian work. Ellie didn’t really like the people she was feeding. In fact, I think she likes them considerably less than I do. Love humanity but hate the people. It’s very common.”

  “Why does she do the work? There must be things to do that pay better.”

  “There are many reasons people do this, Kevin. In a way, these aid workers are a kind of a god in places like this. Like I said, missionaries, misfits and mercenaries. We have a kind of power that we have nowhere else on Earth. It feeds us. Sure we’re helping people, but damn few of us are saints. It’s a complicated mix of motivations.

  “Ellie is really a misfit. She hates her father, a successful and wealthy white farmer in South Africa who made his money in part by exploiting black workers. He treated her and her mother badly, and she loves her mom and at the same time despises her for staying with him, just like she loves her dad and hates him for not loving her back. It’s complicated and I’m simplifying, but at its heart I think doing humanitarian work is her way saying I’m different from him, and thereby sticking her thumb in her father’s eye on some level, and of finding some kind of meaning to a life that she really doesn’t think very deeply about most of the time. But her work is all abstract in a peculiar way, and there is a cold, cold center to her.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, when we were evacuated from the capital the last time the rebels captured it, her staff assistant was a local. She wanted to leave with Ellie, but Ellie wouldn’t let her on the UN chopper. Only Mercy Corps expatriate staff was to be evacuated, she said, which conveniently included her, of course, but not her local hires. The trouble was if her assistant stayed behind there was a good chance the rebels were going to kill or mutilate her. That Ellie could leave her behind was telling about how much she actually cares about the people she works with.”

  “What happened?”

  “I hired her on the spot and took her with me.” Bill chuckled. “It pissed Ellie off something fierce. But she got over it. She certainly liked the Emergency Sex we had together. I thought we were more than that, of course. Silly me.”

  “What happened?”

  Bill shrugged. “I was sent here and she was assigned to a camp a couple hundred miles away. The sex wasn’t frequent enough for her anymore, so after a couple of months she dumped me and took up with some French kid several years younger than her. I wasn’t surprised, but it hurt anyway if that gives you any satisfaction.”

  “Of course not,” said Kevin. “Why would it?”

  “Oh, just to see that Bill Marsh can be played the fool. Of course, I did have the satisfaction of hearing that the kid out of the blue dumped her not long after, just like I told her he would. Not that I think that it bothered her all that much. She’ll just carry on helping the despised helpless and wandering from one vacuous romance to the next, all in the name of shitting on her dad. She’ll do it, that is, until she gets old enough and fat enough that no one wants her anymore, and then she’ll wonder what the hell happened to her and why her life is so empty. But I did love her, strange to say. I guess I thought there was a very hurt little girl in there somewhere, who if she ever got out from behind all the defenses, was a lost human being looking for the same things I am.”

  “Love is strange,” said Kevin. “I wish you’d remember that the next time you decide to take off on Morgan and me.”

  “Strange is one thing, Kevin,” said Bill. “Bizarre is another. But,” he added before Kevin could get angry again, “point taken.”

  Chapter 8

  Minnesota

  Liz gazed at the dark silhouette of the trees against the orange radiance of the setting sun. An upside down reflection of the horizon shimmered off the far edge of the lake, and Liz found the mirror image disorienting, as though she hung in a space between opposite parallel worlds into which she was certain to suddenly freefall one way or the other. She forced herself to look upward to end the queasy spinning sensation it caused in her stomach.

  Above her the sky fell away into progressively deeper bands of blue, finally shading into dark purple on the opposite horizon. As the sun dropped, the chill in the air grew more penetrating and, shivering, Liz flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head.

  After they’d made camp for the day, Beth elected to stay on shore with Hampton while Liz and Kevin went fishing. Or more accurately, thought Liz, while Kevin went fishing. If it was not on a plate sautéed in white wine sauce with fresh lemon and sprinkled with toasted slivered almonds, she didn’t want anything to do with fish.

  She sat in the canoe facing Kevin, watching him pull a lure from a small tackle box on his lap to attach to his line. It had, she noted with a shudder, two ugly sets of triple barbed hooks dangling from its underbelly.

  “That looks nasty,” she said.

  Kevin shrugged. “Fish don’t swim up to the boat asking to be caught.”

  “I always thought F. Scott Fitzgerald was more your hero in college, not big white hunter Ernest Hemingway. So what do we have here, Hemingway’s ‘Big Two-Hearted River’ or Old Man and the Sea?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Moby-Dick.”

  Liz smiled. “That’s not a great joke, but it’s the first one I’ve heard you crack since I joined this chicken outfit.”

  Kevin raised an eyebrow. “What joke?”

  “I don’t think we can eat a whole great white whale,” said Liz.

  Kevin swung the tip of his rod behind his head and snapped it forw
ard. The lure sailed away trailing a thin translucent streak like spider’s silk, plopping into the lake close to a green moss-covered log on the shore. He pulled the rod back, reeling in line.

  “So,” said Liz, “how’s this work? Fish are supposed to think that’s something to eat?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Um, they aren’t frightened off by those sadistic-looking hooks trailing along under it? I mean, fish see, right? I’d sure think twice before I’d risk ripping my mouth apart biting into something like that, no matter how famished I was.”

  Kevin smiled, giving the line an occasional sharp tug. “If it’s hungry, a fish will strike at anything that flashes in the water. They don’t study the issue. If you’re a fish and you want a meal, there isn’t time to think. You act or you starve.”

  He resumed reeling until the lure popped up from beside the boat. With another cast, Kevin arced it out to a new spot near the shore.

  “I’m hoping you’ll pull out a trout who’s died of natural causes and in his will specifically asked for his remains to be sautéed in garlic butter. And the plate you catch him on should be toasty warm.”

  “In your dreams.”

  Liz leaned back and looked up into the now nearly night sky. “Mmm, yes, in my dreams. By the way, in case I forgot to mention this, I don’t do windows and I don’t clean fish. So I hope you haven’t got any fantasies about me playing Jane to your North Woods Tarzan.”

  Kevin shook his head. “I know you better than that, Liz. I catch, I clean, I cook.”

  Liz nodded and lit a cigarette. “Ah, Caesar’s ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’ adapted to the North Woods. Which kind of brings me to the crux of another matter. I’ve come, I’ve seen, and I’m wondering just what I’m doing here, sweetie.”

  “Well, I was hoping you might do the dishes.”

  “Is there a dishwasher in one of those god-awful enormous packs of yours?”

  “Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something.”

  “Then forget it.”

  “You’re tough,” said Kevin.

  Liz stretched and lay back again against the bow of the canoe. Directly above her was one bright star. “I’m not tough,” she said. “I’m a pussy cat, but one who likes her creature comforts.”

  Kevin made another cast, the splash of it echoing faintly across the still air.

  Liz glanced back at their camp. Beth, standing high up on a large rock outcropping, threw a tennis ball into the lake. Hampton leapt after it, his high-pitched yips echoing off the surrounding hills. The dog hit the water with a booming splash and then Liz could only see his head gliding across the lake. He snatched up the ball in his mouth and circled back to shore.

  “That dog will catch his death of cold,” said Liz.

  Kevin shook his head. “Dogs are tougher than us. He’ll be fine.”

  Hampton climbed from the water, shook and then forced Beth to chase him for possession of his prize. He kept the ball just out of reach, twisting his head as she grabbed for it. Beth both laughed at and cursed him.

  “She’s a good kid,” said Liz.

  “I worry about her.”

  “That’s what parents do.”

  “Her mother fought for custody. It got rough.”

  “What did Beth want?” said Liz.

  Kevin half laughed and half sighed. “I think she wants to be free of us both. But given the choice between living with me or Morgan, she chose me. She’s pretty bitter, though, and it’s not easy. Every day in every way I fall short of her expectations.”

  “She’s a teenager. It’s her mission in life to put a magnifying glass on where you fall short. Don’t sweat it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  The rod in Kevin’s hand snapped forward and he yanked back.

  “A fish?” said Liz, propping herself up on an elbow. Kevin nodded.

  Liz watched the translucent line cut through the water in a semicircle around the boat. She simultaneously felt thrilled and apprehensive that they’d actually caught something.

  Kevin pulled back again, reeling in line. He repeated that several times until she could make out in the water close to the boat the dark shape of the struggling animal.

  “Do you feel like trying to net him?” said Kevin.

  No, Liz realized, she did not. Although the fish was hard to see, she could tell it was large, much larger than she’d imagined it would be.

  It reminded her of the old maps she’d seen, maps from a time when much of the planet was unexplored and where, at the edge of the known world, monstrous sea serpents were portrayed. These lakes, Liz realized, were the same to her, inhabited by banshee-voiced red-eyed birds and large dark predators she’d never even suspected prowled below the calm veneer of the lake’s surface. Beneath her was a world even more remote and wild than the forest. She could live among the trees if she had to, at least for a while, but underwater was entirely beyond her element or experience, where she couldn’t survive for longer than she could hold her breath. To step into it was to journey to an alien dimension, and just as was written on the old maps, “here there be monsters.” Yet it wasn’t the moon or Mars, it was an unknown domain existing only inches away from her.

  Liz lifted the net from the floor of the canoe. The three-foot-long aluminum handle ended in a two-foot-wide hoop fastened with a large green nylon net. “I’ll try,” she said reluctantly.

  “Dip it in the water and as I bring him in try to lift it up around him.”

  She slid the net into the water as Kevin dragged the tip of the rod past her shoulder. In the murky depths she could only make out an occasional flash of white, but she could sense the ferocity of the animal’s life-and-death struggle against the terrifying force that held it by the hooks tearing at its throat. She brought the net up, but in brushing its body with the frame it instinctively sensed the danger and frantically surged away, forcing line from Kevin’s squealing reel.

  “That’s okay,” said Kevin. “You nicked him and he bolted. But he’ll tire in a bit and we can try again.”

  After a minute, Kevin again dragged the rod back and reeled in line. Liz observed that Kevin was completely absorbed in the struggle, his lips pursed and his left hand carefully sensing the stress on the line. As the fish was dragged closer again, it apparently saw the boat and in a swirl of water disappeared back into the invisible depths.

  “He’s big,” said Liz, “bigger than I expected, and very strong. Will this take long?”

  Kevin shook his head. “He’s a fighter, but I think he’s about through unless he can throw the hooks or they tear free.”

  Liz winced at the thought of how it would feel to struggle that ferociously against hooks caught in her mouth.

  In another minute, Kevin again had the animal back by the boat and it didn’t look to be fighting as hard. This time Liz slipped the net neatly around him, then lifted the handle with both arms and brought the fish up into the boat. Again, she felt an unexpected momentary thrill.

  It was big, almost three feet long, and it thrashed about in the canoe tangling itself in the net. Narrow and sleek, and not at all like the wide flat fish she’d expected, it looked for all the world like a submarine with jaws. Its back was dark but its sides were striped and speckled with color, trailing down into a bright yellowish-white underbelly. Its large round yellow-and-black eyes were lidless and menacing in their unblinking stare.

  The thrill of capturing it drained from her at the sight of the hooks anchored in its jaw.

  While she watched, Kevin gripped it firmly just behind the head and carefully freed it from the net. Then he forced its mouth open and pried loose one cluster of triple hooks. The other set gave him more trouble, and Liz cringed on hearing them rip through flesh and cartilage. The hold Kevin had on the base of its head seemed to immobilize it, and only its tail flapped weakly as he finally tore the lure free.

  Kevin held the fish up for inspection. “About ten pounds,” he said. “It’ll feed the three of us ea
sily with plenty left over.”

  He laid the fish on the bottom of the canoe where, freed, it briefly flailed around and then lay motionless, except for its gill slits which continued to open and close as though gasping for breath.

  “Is it suffering?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. My father always said they don’t feel pain. But the truth is, nobody’s ever asked them.”

  “I don’t think I like this. It’s dying.”

  Kevin picked up his paddle and started the canoe back to their camp.

  “It’s not that I like killing,” he said. “I don’t like it at all, but doing this is part of what draws me here. Life here is not hidden with all the dirty parts done somewhere else by someone else so you don’t have to see. It’s honest, like these woods. You pull away all the civilized pretenses and evasions and you know exactly who and what you are.”

  “I like the civilized pretenses, Kevin.”

  “Don’t forget that even this guy here,” he nudged the fish with his shoe, “thought he was eating a meal, not becoming one. If you were bite-sized and swimming in this lake, he’d have swallowed you whole without a second thought about your feelings. It’s his nature.”

  “But we do think about it. Isn’t that what makes us different?”

  Kevin stopped paddling and stared off into the distance a moment, looking grim. “Some people think about it, but most are no different from him. We kill for sport, honor, pleasure, patriotism, religion, greed and a thousand other reasons, but it really all comes down to the same thing. As Bill once told me, killing is our nature. He was more right than he knew.”