The Demon Stone

by Christopher Datta

  Kevin winced from the pain of the knife slowly biting its way into his gut. He tried to back away but the soldiers held him steady.

  “Well?” he said. “Can you say, No, Mosquito, I am not superior? General Mosquito, I admire you. You are a great leader of your people.” His voice bled rage.

  The knife edged deeper into Kevin. He could feel blood running down his waist. He nodded.

  “Say it!”

  Kevin said it. He said all of it. He knew he would have said anything Mosquito demanded. He did not want to die, not then and not there in that Godforsaken corner of hell.

  Mosquito smiled at his words and the rage drained from him. With Bill he had lost, but with Kevin he’d won, and Kevin could see that made him feel better, made him feel powerful again.

  He dropped the knife and staggered back to the table for the bottle of scotch. Kevin could hear Diallo laughing as the soldiers dragged him away.

  Kevin lay in the darkness on the floor of the room where they threw him. He was equally torn between rage and despair. He’d lost Bill and become Mosquito’s plaything. The humiliation had not ended, of that he was sure. There would be more.

  Kevin felt he had let himself down. He had let Bill down. There were things Bill would not do because of who he was, but there seemed to be nothing Kevin wouldn’t do to stay alive. He would even have cut off the arm of that child. He knew it, and he raged at Mosquito for the madman he was and he raged at Bill for bringing him here from his safe home. But most of all he raged at himself for being the coward he had discovered he was. There seemed no way out, and ironically for the man who’d do anything to stay alive, if he’d had a gun he might have shot himself.

  He wanted to be able to tell Bill how ashamed he was and to apologize for wishing that Bill had been the coward he was. Kevin knew he had to live with that for the rest of his life, and the one person he could have gone to for help was dead. How do you make your peace with a dead man, he asked himself?

  Chapter 2

  Minnesota

  The next morning, in the bright light of day, Liz mulled over Kevin’s kiss and what she wanted or felt about it. The weather was like her mood, blustery and uncertain. A breeze shook the tall pines, sun and shade interweaving though the air and across the dark green mossy ground. Waves tumbled across the surface of the lake, bright blue under a nearly cloudless sky. Despite the clear sky, it felt like a change of weather was coming.

  Hampton walked up and pushed his nose against her hand to be petted. She stooped down and roughly massaged his cheeks. He gazed at her, his deep brown eyes enraptured. Last night Hampton had slept with Beth, and sheepishly Liz admitted she missed waking up next to him.

  She was not sure Kevin had come into the tent or slept at all.

  “Well, what are we doing today, Captain Ahab?” said Beth to Kevin. She stood slouched and sullen.

  Kevin looked up at her from where he sat next to the fire. “How about we pretend to be having a good time?”

  “Whatever.”

  Liz gave Hampton a final pat on the head and stood. “Come on, guys, it’s a glorious day. Let’s be friends.” She smiled.

  Kevin nodded. “After breakfast I thought we might push on for one more day. There’s a lake ahead that’s large, but I know an inlet off the main body of water that’s quite narrow. The place is beautiful and remote. A lot of the shoreline is high, rocky cliffs that are good for hiking. From the top of any one of them you can see sunsets you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”

  “Whatever,” said Beth again.

  “Well, that sounds good,” said Liz, feeling like a cheerleader at a funeral home. She wished Beth would make an effort.

  They were soon in the canoe paddling against the wind. A half hour later it picked up, and Liz’s arms soon ached and blisters formed on her hands from the effort to keep moving ahead. Beth was struggling, as well, and her paddle often nicked the waves as she brought it forward, splashing water on Liz

  “Beth, keep your paddle up on your forward swing!” shouted Kevin. “You’re soaking Liz.”

  “I’m trying, Dad,” she snapped back, “but my arms are tired. We’re getting nowhere in this damn wind.”

  In fact, the waves rocked the boat so hard Liz feared they might capsize. “Is it safe for us to be out now?” she shouted. “We’re heavily loaded and some of the waves are splashing in.” She looked at the shoreline a few hundred feet away, wondering if she could swim that far if she had to.

  “I’ve been in a lot worse,” said Kevin. “We’ll be fine.”

  “I don’t feel fine,” said Beth.

  Liz looked back at her. There was no seat where she was placed. Normally, she sat on a pack, but she was kneeling low in the boat to avoid being tossed into the water. Sitting so low made it hard for her to paddle at all and she struggled to keep her balance.

  In the distance behind them, Liz caught a glimpse of another canoe also struggling against the wind. It popped in and out of sight as it rose and sank on the swell of each wave.

  “There’s another canoe behind us,” said Liz, pointing.

  Kevin glanced over his shoulder and nodded, preoccupied with keeping their boat oriented into the wind. “Just keep paddling,” he shouted. “It’s not that much farther to the portage and we can take a long break.”

  A sudden pitch of the canoe nearly tossed Liz sideways. She grabbed a pack to steady herself, almost dropping her paddle in the process. She grimaced and set herself to paddling as hard as she could, her head down and her jaw clenched.

  They did soon come to a narrowing of the lake where the high trees and hills sheltered them from the headwind. Liz placed her paddle across the front of the canoe and rested, as did Beth, and they let Kevin take them in the rest of the way.

  Serves him right, thought Liz, for not bringing along a motor for the stupid boat. If God had wanted her to paddle a canoe, She wouldn’t have created gasoline.

  Clouds drifted in and the landscape shifted from bright green and blue to shaded grays. She wondered if any spiders were taking their chances on flying today. They certainly stood better odds of making it in this wind. She quickly checked herself over but found nothing crawling on her.

  The boat touched the shore and Liz awkwardly jumped from the bow onto the sandy beach, getting one foot wet. She held the bow steady as Beth crawled out over the packs, followed by Kevin. Hampton simply jumped from the boat and trotted through the shallow water, not minding the cold and wet. She envied him.

  It was heaven to be sheltered from the wind. Liz’s ears hurt from the constant blowing and the cold of being damp. She shivered and the end of her nose was red.

  Kevin grabbed the canoe and dragged it several feet up the shore, then stood up and stretched. “See,” he said, “I told you we’d make it all right.”

  Beth snorted.

  Liz looked back across the lake, and to change the subject said, “Funny, I don’t see the other canoe anymore.”

  Kevin looked and nodded. “They might have taken shelter at a campsite to wait for the wind to die down.”

  “Or capsized and drowned like we almost did,” said Beth.

  “There really aren’t many people up here this time of year,” said Liz.

  Kevin shook his head. “Not now, not this far north.”

  Liz sat on the edge of the canoe and lit a cigarette. “My arms are killing me.” She rubbed her right shoulder. “Paddling a canoe is more work than it looks.”

  Beth slumped down next to her. “And now we’ve got to haul all this stuff a quarter mile across this trail to the next lake. Real fun, huh?”

  Kevin sat on a gray boulder and rubbed the stubble on his cheeks, ignoring Beth.

  “I am a little concerned,” said Liz, “about tackling the next lake in this wind. I’m not the world’s best swimmer and the water is cold today.”

  Kevin picked up a small flat rock and slung it over the lake. It skipped a few times before plunging down with a final splash. Looking up
at the sky, he said, “It’s clouding over and it might rain later. We ought to get to a campsite soon so we can pitch the tent.”

  Liz slumped. “I’m too tired, let’s give it a rest.”

  “And I’m hungry,” complained Beth.

  Kevin frowned and walked to the canoe, pulling out a pack. He opened a side pocket and tossed them each a granola bar wrapped in green foil.

  Liz ripped hers open and gobbled it down. The pit of her stomach still felt cold and empty, however.

  “Please, sir, can I have some more?” she said, holding out her hands.

  A moment later another bar flew her way and she neatly snatched it out of the air. “The waiter here isn’t going to be getting a big tip from me,” she said to Beth.

  “And the food tastes like cardboard,” said Beth, “but I’ll have another, too.”

  Kevin pulled three cook pots from the pack and handed one to each of them. “Come on,” he said.

  “What about my granola bar?” said Beth.

  Kevin started down the path carrying his pot loosely by its wire handle with Hampton trotting along behind him. “Get it yourself,” he snapped.

  Liz jumped up and pulled another bar from the pack, handing it to Beth. “Where we going?” she called after Kevin.

  “It’s a surprise,” Kevin called back.

  “I don’t like surprises,” called Liz, “especially in the woods. So far, surprises have not been good.”

  “You two will like it. It’s food,” he answered back.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Liz shouted after him. She grabbed Beth’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, sweetie. At least we’re out of the wind on dry land. What’s he got in mind? The only things I’ve seen to eat around here are mushrooms, and I’m not ready to take a chance on any of those, magic or otherwise.”

  Beth shrugged, chewing her second granola bar glumly.

  A few hundred feet down the trail Kevin waited for them. The sun was out again and the poplar and pine trees shook heavily in the wind, the air whistling through the leaves and branches.

  “This is an old logging road,” he said, pointing to a semi-clear, grassy corridor through the forest about fifteen feet wide. It extended for some distance before disappearing around a curve. “The forest service still uses it once in a while, which is why it’s still here. They keep the trees from encroaching on it.”

  “So?” said Beth.

  Kevin walked several feet down the grassy lane and stooped down. “These are raspberry bushes,” he said, pointing to a cluster of shrubs by the side of the road. He reached into them and plucked berries off the branches, then stood and extended the palm of his hand out for them to see. Liz walked up to find four plump red raspberries clustered there.

  “They grow here because the trees are cleared off the road and they get sun. Try one,” he urged.

  Liz eyed them suspiciously. “You’re sure about this?” she said. “I mean, there’s lots of berry-looking things in this forest and I’m sure most are poisonous as hell. These look smaller than the raspberries I see in the grocery store.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Yeah, and they’re not in little green cartons covered in plastic, either.” Hampton, sensing that Kevin had something to eat, whined. Kevin gave him a berry which he snapped up and then just as quickly spit out.

  “Not a good sign,” said Liz. “I trust his instincts.”

  “Dogs don’t eat fruit,” said Kevin. He popped a berry into his mouth and made a show of eating it.

  “And what’s that supposed to prove?” said Beth.

  Kevin shrugged. “If it’s poison it’s not fast acting. Eat them or don’t eat them, it’s all the same to me, but I’m picking enough to have raspberry pancakes in the morning. If you two want to sit on your butts instead, go ahead.” He turned on his heel and began gathering berries into his pail.

  “Asshole,” Beth mumbled under her breath.

  Feeling pissed off at Kevin as well, Liz hesitated, glancing at Beth.

  Beth wrinkled her nose. “I don’t even like raspberries,” she said.

  Liz took a deep breath, trying to let her annoyance drain away. It wasn’t that big a deal, she told herself. She was overreacting. He could always be a little cold when he felt he was under siege, and Beth and she were being less than enthusiastic about this trip. Although, she added to herself, he could have been more upfront about what conditions would be like.

  “Oh, what the hell, sweetie,” she said. “What better way to spend a day in the woods?”

  Beth shook her head. “Not me. Mr. Natural can just take a flying leap at the moon for all I care.”

  “Well, then come and walk with me. Let’s explore this road.”

  Beth shrugged, falling into stride with Liz. They passed Kevin, who ignored them. Hampton, losing interest in what Kevin was picking, followed them.

  The grass on the old roadbed was thick but not tall, the tips turning gold and brittle with the late August weather. They stirred up dust walking through it, causing the air to smell sharp and dry.

  “It’s odd,” said Liz.

  “What’s that?”

  “That smell. The smell of the dust rising off the grass as we walk through it, the smell of the grass itself as our shoes crush it. It’s hardly a smell at all to me, but more like a memory. I remember being very young, maybe four or five, and playing hide and seek in a large grassy field near our home. It was in the fall, and the sun was going down. I remember lying in the grass and hiding. I can still hear the voice of the seeker counting off numbers and then calling, ‘Ready or not, here I come.’

  “I lay there, giggling, with my face buried in the tall grass smelling dust and earth and grass. I heard the shouts of the seeker finding kids and the sound of running. Children jumping up and dashing for home base, being chased, screaming and laughing. And then it was almost dark and someone’s mother called one of us home for dinner from a back porch. The running and the chasing grew more frantic, and then other parents’ voices began calling us. Finally someone yelled, ‘Ally ally in come free,’ and I heard them all running home.

  “I rolled over and looked up at the almost dark sky, the stars beginning to twinkle, smelling this very smell that you only get in tall half dead grass in the late fall when it’s been awhile since it rained. I felt, well, perfect. I wasn’t hot, I wasn’t cold, I could hear the comforting sounds of the kids in the distance slowly fading away but still close enough to be reassuring, and I just stared up at the sky for a few moments more feeling a part of the ground, of the voices and of the smell.

  “It was a perfect moment. And whenever I smell this smell, which isn’t often, it’s as if I’m back there living it all over again, everything, and it’s not a smell at all but a whole experience of sight, sound and touch. It’s very odd.”

  Liz took Beth’s hand. “Do you have an aroma like that? Something that goes way beyond being a smell but is more like a key that unlocks a door to a whole set of feelings? Feelings that are always a part of you but which you don’t even remember are there until that door is opened inside you by something outside of you, like a smell.”

  Beth thought for a moment and shook her head. “No,” she said, “I guess not.”

  She looked so sad that Liz put an arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just something that happens to me.”

  “I don’t have any perfect moments, Liz. Not one.”

  Liz shook her head. “Oh, not even a moment with Hampton, the perfect dog, waking up at night with his nose tucked up under your chin snoring that dog snore of his?” She chuckled. Hearing his name, the dog trotted up and stuck his nose into her hand.

  “Well,” said Beth, “maybe one like that, I suppose.” She patted Hampton on the head. “Only, Mom wouldn’t let him sleep in my bedroom. He started doing that after the divorce.”

  “She didn’t like Hampton?” said Liz.

  Beth shook her head. “No, she threw a fit w
hen Dad got him for me.” She shrugged. “I probably stayed with Dad so I could stay with Hampton more than anything else. He’s my best friend. Pathetic, isn’t it?”

  Liz smiled and released Beth’s shoulder. She stooped and rubbed the dog’s ears. “No, not at all. He’s loyal, friendly, affectionate and thinks the world rises and sets with you. What’s not to like? I wish I could find a guy like that.”

  Liz sighed. “Look, sweetie, let’s pick some of these damn raspberries, what do you say? Your old man will probably have a heart attack and die of the shock. Who knows, they might even be good in pancakes.”

  “Well,” said Beth, “if you really think it’ll give him a heart attack.”

  Liz smiled. “It’s worth a try.”

  Liz crouched among the raspberries, examining the fruit. The plants were about four feet tall and covered with wide green leaves and small thorns across the stems. She pulled a berry free, rolling the fruit delicately between her fingers, and then impulsively popped it into her mouth. It was intensely sweet with a hint of sour and had a slightly gritty texture, but whether from seeds or dust, Liz wasn’t sure.

  Trying not to damage the plant, she gingerly plucked more berries. They were soft and made a satisfying plunk when dropped into her pot.

  Liz slowly worked her way through the clump of bushes, delighted to find them loaded with fruit. With every pull a few of the berries split and the juice stained her fingers red.

  The air was cool and it was pleasant listening to the wind blowing through the trees above her now that she was sheltered by the forest. She quickly established a rhythm of stripping one plant and shuffling along to the next. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been there when she backed into Beth or Hampton and fell forward. She laughed and rolled over on her back to complain.

  A massive black bear swung around to face her and she screamed.

  For a moment it seemed as startled as she felt. Sprawled on the ground as she was, the animal loomed before her, a shining metallic black. It resembled a dog, but ten times the size of Hampton and rounder, fat from a long summer of good eating. Its large black eyes, circled by a thin line of brown skin, stared into hers.