Nothing to Devour

by Glen Hirshberg

  “Hi, Sophie!” the girl chirped, bobbing up and down once, starting to wave before remembering she was holding something. “Come down!” More than anything, she sounded like a middle-school girl welcoming guests to her first slumber party. As though Sophie were something brand-new in her life. As new as Ju was in Sophie’s.

  “Hmm,” Sophie said, checking Rebecca, who had recovered a little. Not enough to try murdering again yet, but Sophie could definitely see thinking happening. She also took note of her own leg, which was yawning open, dangling from itself on wispy red threads. It throbbed plenty, but not in a productive, sew-stuff-together sort of way. Not yet.

  “Might be better if you came up, kiddo,” she called.

  Rebecca stirred, looking again as though she might say or do something. But all she actually accomplished was lowering the ax. An expression composed of half a dozen expressions misted over her face: total exhaustion, bewilderment, horror, grief. Murderous rage.

  And relief? Maybe? Just a little? That the decision had been taken out of her hands, at least temporarily …

  Yep, Sophie thought, without time or desire to analyze the thought. We could have been friends, you and me.

  Ju was coming. She had the boy in front, her hands on his shoulders so she could steer him. Princess Sock Puppet trailed listlessly behind. Again, it occurred to Sophie to wonder who was causing that, but she had too many other, more pressing concerns to pay that much mind. The procession clambered up the rocks all in a line as though doing a bunny hop. Badly, in slow motion.

  Rebecca spoke, sounding submerged. “What are you thinking to do, here, Sophie?”

  Sophie’s smile was instantaneous, instinctive. But her shrug was for fun. “This was your plan. And apparently hers.” She nodded toward Ju. “You guys tell me.”

  “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Me? Once again, you seem unclear about who’s hurt—”

  “Don’t let her hurt him. Or Trudi. Please, Sophie.” As though hearing herself beg was too much, Rebecca raised the ax again. Not to strike, just to hold in front of her chest.

  Sophie watched her do that. Watched those thousand feelings tumble across and then off her face, leaving her as blank as Sophie suspected she always looked, now, and almost always felt.

  She didn’t feel blank right this second, though. That was something.

  Ju was barely twenty feet below, now, still leading Princess Sock Puppet and steering Eddie by the shoulders. Natalie’s Eddie, whom Sophie had held in her arms almost as often as she’d held her own son.

  Had held more than her own son, if the past few weeks counted.

  “What does that girl want?” Rebecca murmured.

  “Hmm,” Sophie said, wincing at another whiplash of pain from her leg. “I think maybe she wants to trade.”

  “What? For you?”

  “Amazing, some people’s tastes, huh?”

  “I think you’re wrong. I think she wants to kill us all. With your help.”

  Sophie considered that, held her leg. Eventually, she nodded. “One of the two.”

  Ju climbed nearer, and Rebecca stepped back. The step brought her closer. One good lunge, now …

  Just in time—or not really in time, but Sophie hadn’t seized the opportunity—Rebecca seemed to realize where she was. Hopping sideways, she swung the ax out wide without quite raising it. Then she stood still, gnashing her jaws together. “Jesus Christ. It’s like the fucking Pig War.”

  This time, laughter positively exploded from Sophie’s mouth. It wasn’t planned or weighted with meaning. She just laughed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The … Trudi learned about it in school. There were English soldiers and American farmers here. Someone on one side killed one of the other side’s pigs. Then they had a war about it. Or no, they didn’t. I don’t…” She trailed off, fixated on the little group approaching.

  First the boy, then Ju’s grinning face appeared over the lip of the rocks. Sophie smiled once at Ju, then turned her smile on Rebecca. This time, her laugh was her new, post-Whistler one. Real enough, and with her old laugh in it, and yet …

  “In that case,” she said, “who’s the pig?”

  * * *

  The whole time, watching the redhead and Eddie and Trudi climb, Rebecca cast around inside her own head for an idea. One more trick or ploy, a last something to keep at least some of them alive. Eddie and Trudi, especially. She’d have been happy enough to sacrifice herself, if she had to. She had almost come around to the idea that she might, and that doing so might indeed do some good.

  But not enough good.

  She could drive her ax through Sophie’s skull right now. Possibly. Or if she timed the move just right, she could fling herself at this Ju right as the girl reached the top of the cliff, driving her backward. If she were unspeakably lucky, Ju’s hands would come off Eddie’s shoulders before she fell.

  Rebecca half believed she could accomplish one of those things, but not both. That left her with one last impossible decision to make: attack the monster she knew? Or go for the girl she didn’t know at all, who might not even be a monster but was clearly coming into her formidable own, step by inexorable step.

  Eddie had clambered up onto the grass now on his hands and knees. He clearly saw Rebecca, but nothing in his sweet, silvery eyes stirred. He might as well have been sleepwalking. The girl’s hands had slipped from his shoulders to his waist as she tried to step up from the path using only her legs. Her eyes kept dancing back and forth between the boy, Sophie, and Rebecca, though Rebecca glanced away whenever that gaze flicked toward her, just in case.

  Behind the girl, Trudi’s face appeared. Unlike Eddie’s, her eyes went straight to Rebecca’s. The instant that happened, Rebecca understood: not only was Trudi still present in her own head, but she was much closer to control of herself than either Sophie or the new girl imagined.

  That was enough. It had to be.

  Faster than she’d imagined possible—faster than the conscious command to do it—Rebecca whirled on Sophie and flung up the ax. Even as she swung, she saw (or felt) Trudi lunge, driving the red-haired girl face-first into the rocks at the edge of the path, knocking Eddie free. He tumbled away into the grass as Rebecca’s blade whistled down and caught grass, earth, the back of Sophie’s left hand. The blade stuck, the force of the swing almost pitching Rebecca onto it again. She staggered toward Sophie, who’d squirmed sideways with her mouth open and snarling and her free hand snaking out, snatching Rebecca’s ankle and yanking. Rebecca felt her feet go, the ground flying from her. She landed on her butt and kicked with all her might, catching Sophie flush in her wide-open mouth. Teeth exploded, and spit and blood flew. Sophie snarl-shrieked, and Rebecca threw herself sidelong, yanking the ax with her. It came out of Sophie’s skin with a sucking smack as Rebecca rolled away into the grass and pushed upright.

  What she saw made her shout, sob-laugh, and burst into tears.

  Trudi and Eddie were sprinting free over the grass into the woods, with the wind at their backs and the night closing around them.

  Gone. Free.

  Shoving to her feet, bracing for the attack she knew was coming, Rebecca turned.

  The girl lay where Trudi had slammed her, facedown with her hair fanning across the rocks. Like Kaylene’s across the stair, Rebecca thought, and swung the ax uselessly at nothing before getting herself still again.

  The girl was breathing but otherwise motionless.

  The girl was breathing.

  Rebecca had time to process that because, incredibly, Sophie wasn’t coming for her. She wasn’t even looking at Rebecca, or at Ju either. Instead, she’d curled around her wounded hand. As Rebecca watched, Sophie whimpered, drew the hand to her face. Red frothed at the edges of her lips, poured down the sides of the hand while Sophie pressed it to her lips. It was as though she were drinking herself. Occasional shards of white—which could have been splintered teeth or bits of shattered knuckle—rode the red rivulets, glinting
as they disappeared into the grass.

  Don’t wait! Rebecca heard herself scream once more inside her head. But she didn’t lift the ax again until Sophie finally looked up. The hatred in those eyes positively glinted in the mistless moonlight. Blood foamed along the ridge of her mouth. That should have made killing her easier, was like a giant blinking neon sign in the middle of Sophie’s face screaming, Monster. Monster.

  Except it made her look more like a clown.

  “You know I can’t leave you be,” Rebecca said. She hadn’t meant to speak at all, was already edging forward.

  Sophie watched her come. For a moment, Rebecca thought that really was all the monster was going to do: burn her eyes and those red clown lips into Rebecca’s memory and brand her with them. So be it.

  Then Sophie shrugged. “You’re going to kill her, too, then? That girl?”

  Rebecca made herself keep moving. If she turned, looked at Ju, even let herself think … and yet here was her own mouth betraying her again. “Who is she?”

  “Search me. She just showed up. I figured she was one of yours, at first.”

  “Yeah, well, she isn’t.”

  “No,” Sophie said, through bubbles of her own blood. “She isn’t. But I’ll tell you this. She’s going to need—”

  “She’s not going to need anything,” Rebecca whispered. Made herself say it aloud. And stopped moving. One half-step and a quick, hard swing from ending this once and for all, she stopped for the last time.

  “Hey. Rebecca. Isn’t there some kind of three-strikes rule? Even with the death penalty? You’ve tried to kill me three fucking times. Don’t I get to go free now?”

  “Twice,” said Rebecca.

  “Three times. With the shovel in New Hampshire, at Jess’s house a little while ago, and just now with the ax.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill you in New Hampshire. And I wasn’t the one killing you at Jess’s house, either. Not … on purpose. So, actually, one time. This time.”

  “Objection, Your Honor. Technicalities.”

  Rebecca was no longer listening. She couldn’t allow herself one instant more. Any second, that girl would stir and open those green eyes, or Sophie would strike, and then it would be too late and not just for Rebecca. There really wasn’t any choice. She raised the ax.

  As if sensing the moment, Sophie opened her mouth. Then she closed it again, glancing over the cliff at the light on the Strait. When she did speak, her voice had a new note in it. To Rebecca’s horror, it sounded awfully close to respect. “You really are going to kill the girl, too.”

  “Jess would.”

  “Oh, yeah. Jess would.”

  Right as Rebecca swung, Sophie smiled. It was a smile Rebecca had seen only on this woman’s face. Neither Kaylene nor Joel, certainly not Trudi or Amanda or Jess had ever unleashed a smile that bright. It was the grin of the girl in that picture Jess still kept in her bedside drawer, the one of Sophie and Natalie high-stepping out of waves off the South Carolina coast, fully dressed, with the world streaming off them.

  So alive.

  “Stop it,” Rebecca hissed, as the last five years seemed to burst in her mouth and fill it with ashes. She could taste every unimaginable thing she’d done. Everyone she’d lost.

  “Stop what?” Sophie said, all innocence and flashing teeth and wattage.

  She knows, Rebecca thought. She’s doing it on purpose.

  “Living,” Rebecca said.

  She wouldn’t have dreamed it possible that that smile could go wider, flash brighter. But it did.

  “Make me,” Sophie said.

  28

  Outside, the sun rose watery and cold, and Rebecca watched it through her bedroom window as she packed. Her hands, she noted, had long since stopped shaking. They’d stilled even before she’d gotten back to the Stockade, and they’d stayed still all the way through the tears, the seemingly endless hugs and multi-adult engulfings of Eddie and the kisses for Trudi, who’d tried to shrug off or escape every one of them but hadn’t once made a break for the backyard and her windmill shed.

  They’d even stayed still after Jess realized what Rebecca had done—hadn’t done—and the argument had erupted. Not that there had really been an argument. Mostly, Jess had just screamed at her. Only at the end, when Jess abruptly crumpled against the countertop, banging her dislocated arm and crying out in pain, had Rebecca’s hands betrayed her.

  “Jess,” she’d tried, just once, “you have to understand.”

  But Jess had simply leaned there, staring up at Rebecca from the bottom of a well of grief she could never climb out of. And then she’d said, “Get out.”

  “In the morning,” Rebecca had responded, dead flat. Not because she was fighting or arguing. She just had no emotions left on which to draw. “I’m taking Trudi when I go.” Then she’d gone straight up the stairs, knelt for a moment on the landing in the spot where Kaylene had died, touched the blood there—one last swoosh of color her friend had bequeathed them—stumbled to her bed and slept.

  Since she’d woken, her hands had lain entirely inert except when she commanded them. That was hardly surprising, she decided. Once you’d drummed on the world enough, killed a few people with shovels or axes, what was being kicked out of one more home that wasn’t ever yours?

  With her duckboots—her only other pair of shoes—tucked into her single suitcase, and her jeans, work shirts, performing clothes, and toiletries laid neatly around and over them, Rebecca glanced toward the bottom drawer of the dresser. There, she’d stored all the personal items she had in this world. Drumsticks, a few photographs, some notebooks. Instead of gathering those, she moved to the window to gaze a few seconds at the evergreens glistening in the morning wet, on this clear day with neither mist nor rain. That, she thought, was a color to believe in, a gray-green salted and rain-blasted down to its gray-green essence. That was a green you could keep.

  Across the grass, she spotted movement in the windmill shed. Shading her eyes, she saw Trudi silhouetted at her window, gazing back. Rebecca held up an arm, made a motion as though checking the wristwatch she’d never owned. Trudi nodded and waved.

  No sock puppet, today. Just Trudi’s bare hand, waving.

  We can do this, Rebecca thought. It’s time.

  Then her door opened, and Jess came in. Half turning, Rebecca watched her pause at the edge of the bed, glancing down into the open suitcase as though into a grave. In so many ways, Rebecca had turned out to be like Jess.

  Incredibly—or maybe not, given everything—Rebecca only then realized what was missing from this house. What had already been gone when she’d gotten home from the cliffs the preceding night.

  “Where’s Kaylene?” she asked.

  “On the couch,” Jess murmured, still looking down at Rebecca’s things. Reaching out a hand to touch the topmost T-shirt. “Wrapped in blankets. Waiting for … I called her mom…”

  Yes, Rebecca thought, crying quietly. Just like Jess had said. I’ve killed. But she’s buried.

  “The monster’s ashes are still in the garage. Joel actually did a pretty fair job burning her. Her skin just…” Jess snapped her fingers. “We’re going to—”

  “I don’t want to know about that. I don’t need to know about that.” She closed her eyes and held on to the window ledge for a few seconds. “Aren’t the police going to be pissed? Doesn’t someone need to call the fucking police?”

  “They’ve already been here. They were here last night while you were…” Jess stopped, seeming to consider how to frame the end of that sentence. In the end, she just dropped acid on it. “Out.”

  “They’re already done?”

  “They’ve just started. They’ll be back soon. With paramedics. We told them we’d come down to the hospital when we were good and ready, but that, of all things, they decided was just one step too far out of procedure. Believe it or not, though, they don’t seem that interested in us at all this time. Or even that surprised. Apparently, this monster’s been leaving a
bit of a trail. Emilia, I think, left a trail for the cops. They’ve been hunting this monster for months. Maybe years. They’re all excited.”

  “I think I’ll finish being kicked out of your life before they get back, if you don’t mind.”

  “Rebecca,” Jess snapped, collapsing to a sitting position on the bed with her wounded arm pinched tight to her chest in its improvised sling. Rebecca found she could imagine the whole scene that must have unfolded while she and Trudi had been sleeping. She could just see Jess—with a dislocated arm, a sobbing stranger on the couch, a terrorized six-year-old upstairs, and two broken men for help—shepherding police, swaddling Kaylene’s body, splinting and bandaging Benny and Joel, putting Eddie to bed, dragging the monster out of sight, and finally changing clothes before tending to her own injuries.

  Now, here she sat, her still-dark hair loose and matted with God-knew-what on her shoulders, her gray hoodie weirdly spotless and her blue eyes washed their usual clear by the tears they always had in them but almost never unleashed. She really was a glacier with limbs. Except when she was a geyser. A force of nature. No one’s mom, except for everyone’s she’d ever met.

  “I want you to explain it to me,” Jess said, lifting that gaze right to Rebecca.

  As mesmerizing as the monsters’, Rebecca thought. And almost as ferocious.

  “I…” Rebecca started. Should leave, she ordered herself. There’s no way to explain, not to this woman. To whom Rebecca owed an attempt, at the very least, along with so many thousand other things. “There was a girl.”

  Exhaustion, injuries, and all, Jess startled. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before. But—”

  “Where is she? Rebecca, you’ve got to go—”

  “She was … theirs.”

  “Theirs? Wh … oh. God. Like Sophie, you mean? Like…” Jess so clearly didn’t want to, but her eyes slipped to the open doorway. The stairs leading down to the garage.

  “I don’t know,” Rebecca whispered. “Yes. Maybe. Maybe not.”