Evil Returns

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Her wish.

  It was there. She could have it. She could take it.

  It required only Aryssa.

  In biology lab they were still partners. Aryssa still did not want to touch anything, and especially not today, when they had progressed to an eyeball. It came from a cow, said the teacher, and today they would—

  Aryssa covered her ears and squinted her eyes shut. “You do it, Devnee,” ordered Aryssa.

  Devnee did not look at Aryssa. She looked at the rest of the biology lab class. Nobody wanted to look down at the metal dissection tray, and several people had chosen to look at Aryssa instead. Girls looked at Aryssa with a sort of distant longing. Boys looked at Aryssa in admiration mixed with a much closer longing, a longing called desire.

  The girls wanted to look like Aryssa, but the boys wanted to have her.

  If I looked like Aryssa … thought Devnee.

  And last night he said, “But you can! So easily!”

  Devnee, too, shut her eyes and winced, but it was not because of the eyeball. It was because of a certain darkness out in the school yard, a long straight glimmering path of … him.

  Aryssa was too curious and eventually had to look down. She literally gagged, put her hand over her mouth, and swallowed hard. Then she went white, panting and acting faint.

  “Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the boys solicitously. “Devnee, do it for her.”

  “Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the teacher gently. “Take a deep breath and that will help you pull together.”

  “Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the girls. “Devnee, she can’t do that kind of thing. You’re her buddy. You do it.”

  Aryssa managed not to throw up or pass out. She patted Devnee’s knee. “I’m glad I have you, Devnee. It’s so nice to have a buddy.”

  The eyeball before them was immense, as if it were several eyes rolled together. Its texture was both jellylike and rocklike. The rest of the class gripped and dug in. The room was noisy with the squeals of horrified girls and the grunts of sickened boys. The room was definitely on an equal opportunity basis when it came to being squeamish.

  Devnee looked at Aryssa’s lovely fragile face, her gentle mouth, her sweet eyes, her hair flowing like a dark and shining river.

  “If I dissect it for you,” said Devnee, her voice and her resolve faltering, “what will you do for me?” She was horrified to hear her voice break, hear, herself begging. She might as well be on her knees. She might as well be weeping. Be my buddy. Like me. Sit with me because you enjoy my company. Say something nice to me! Please!

  Aryssa was amazed. Me, do something for you? her eyebrows said.

  Surely Devnee was joking. The equation did not go both ways.

  I want friendship even more than beauty, Devnee realized suddenly, and she almost decided against beauty; she almost waited for the next night, to explain to him that—

  But then she thought: None of these people really like Aryssa anyway. It’s her beauty they like. They don’t want her to faint or throw up because she wouldn’t be beautiful anymore. She wouldn’t be something for them to adore.

  She tried to sort out what was beauty and what was friendship but they were running out of time.

  “Girls,” said the teacher sharply.

  Devnee looked up guiltily.

  Aryssa opened her eyes to see that Devnee was not dissecting, either. “Come on, Devnee,” she said impatiently. “Do it.”

  A queer sick thrill ran through Devnee.

  Aryssa had just chosen her future. Aryssa had just given permission.

  Aryssa had just made a very serious mistake.

  “All right,” said Devnee. The thrill ripped through her, like some weird electrical charge that did not kill, but energized. Devnee’s eyes were very wide, they felt as large as the cows’ eyes; they felt as if they would burst. How clearly she could see the dark path now.

  She got up off her high lab stool.

  She did not even blink. She felt less human, as if no bodily functions were going on, no blinking, no digesting, no breathing, no pumping.

  She was all desire.

  She was all choice.

  She knew where she was going, and she did not care.

  She was going to be beautiful.

  For a moment she stumbled, as something was wrenched away, and she looked around in surprise, and almost in anger, but nobody had touched her and nobody had seen anything.

  Only her shadow. It had pulled loose again.

  Her shadow would attach itself only to a human, and what Devnee was going to do was not human.

  For a moment she let herself think. For a moment the thoughts—terrible, shameful, evil thoughts—circulated in her brain.

  But nobody was paying any attention to her. Even the teacher did not care that Devnee was walking to the back of the room instead of working. Even Aryssa had lost interest. Devnee Fountain was not worth the effort of tracking.

  In the rear of the classroom, Devnee opened a window.

  A shaft came through. Not light. Not as if the sun had suddenly come out. But as if the dark had suddenly come in.

  It lay vibrating, that path.

  Devnee went back to her stool. She picked up her scalpel. “If you want, Aryssa, you can stand over there at the back of the room till I’ve finished up.”

  The eyeball looked right through Devnee, into her heart. It saw what she was doing, and how.

  She carefully did not think. If she thought, she would know. If she knew, she would stop. So it was best neither to think nor to know.

  Aryssa slipped off her high stool and drifted to the back of the room.

  The teacher said with a frown, “Aryssa?”

  “I have to get a sip of water,” explained Aryssa, giving the teacher her meltingly beautiful smile, and getting the usual melting response.

  The eyeball stared on.

  Devnee put a scalpel through it.

  The tower was dark, and she did not bother to turn on the light. He was more likely to come in the dark anyhow. It was a matter of waiting. She waited a long time.

  She wondered what he was doing all that time.

  All night long.

  When he came, it was almost dawn. At first he was quite hard to see: He was all oozing cape and wrinkled foil fingernails.

  And then he smiled.

  She had never seen him smile before.

  His teeth were immense as posters on walls, dripping blades.

  Dripping blood.

  Devnee gasped. “What—” she whispered.

  “What did you think?” the vampire said.

  “I thought—”

  “You knew,” said the vampire calmly.

  “I—” Devnee staggered backward. “I thought you were—like—a visitor—or—a—night creature—or—like—a dark ghost.”

  The vampire laughed. He sounded rich and contented, like cream soup.

  She cried, “I thought you would—like—haunt her!”

  “Now, Devnee. You knew what I would do. You saw the tools of my trade. You counted the hours of night in which I was busy.”

  This night—this night in which she had done her homework, and written up her lab experiment, and argued with her brother, and had an extra snack—this night he had … the vampire had … Aryssa had …

  She could not think about it.

  It was not decent to think about things like that.

  “It was a good trade,” he told her. “You got Aryssa’s beauty, and I got—” He smiled again. He dried his teeth on his cape, and once more they gleamed white, shimmering like sharpened pearls.

  Now she knew why the cape was dark and crusted, and why it stank of swamps and rot.

  Devnee licked her lips and wished she hadn’t. She clung to the shutters for strength and wished she hadn’t. At last she said, “But what happened?”

  “What do you think, my dear?”

  “I’m trying not to think,” said Devnee.

  “Ah yes. You humans are very
good at that. It’s probably for the best, Devnee, my dear. And of course, a beautiful girl does not need to think. And now you are beautiful.” His eyebrows arched like cathedral doorways, thin and pointing, vanishing beneath his straight black hair. With his eyebrows up, his eyes seemed much wider. Too wide. As if they were from biology lab. As if they were half dissected.

  “Is Aryssa—is she—I mean—will she—that is—”

  “She’ll be fine,” said the vampire. “She’s just rather tired right now. She won’t be in school much for the next few weeks. And of course when she does come back, she’ll be plain. Nobody will notice her. The way it was for you. But that’s all right, isn’t it, Devnee Fountain? You thought it quite a reasonable exchange, didn’t you, Devnee Fountain?”

  “Don’t call me by both my names,” she said to him.

  “Why? Does it make everything too real?” He laughed drowsily. He rocked back and forth contentedly.

  Devnee tried not to think about that.

  Actually, he did look healthier. His skin, usually the color of mushrooms, had a pinkish tinge. As if for the first time blood circulated in his body.

  “What about my shadow?” said Devnee.

  The vampire blinked. Frowned. The eyebrows landed and sat heavily over his eyes, as if keeping them from falling out as he rocked. “Your shadow?”

  “It keeps on separating from me.”

  The vampire’s smile was slow and pleased; his lips spread like drapery over a dark window. Teeth hung over the narrow lips like foam on a sea wave. “It does, doesn’t it?” he said dreamily. “Shadows,” said the vampire, separating the words in a cruel, bored way, “shadows … prefer not … to be present … when the …” He smiled again. “… when the event … occurs.”

  “Event?” said Devnee. She was very cold. Her skin felt slick, as if she were growing mold. Or as if the vampire’s mold was migrating and attaching itself to her flesh. She wrapped the quilt more tightly around herself, pulling its hem up around her neck, until she was hooded in a comforter. It did not comfort her.

  Especially when the vampire touched her cheek. She flinched and jumped backward.

  “Shadows love the dark. I am the dark. Your shadow needed, as you say in this century, to make contact.”

  She heard a noise outside the tower. The wind increased and came through the closed windows as it had before, and the chill was greater and the mold colder.

  “Morning,” said the vampire.

  He sifted back through the slits of the shutters, into the vanishing night.

  “What are you made of?” said Devnee.

  “Shadows,” he said. “Victims of many centuries. Collected in one cape. Under one set of teeth, as it were. I am thick with the shadows of the dead.”

  “Aryssa?” cried Devnee. “I thought—she isn’t dead, is she? I thought you—I thought I—”

  “She’s not beautiful anymore,” said the vampire. “She might as well be dead. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  He was all gone except his fingernails, wrapped around the final slat.

  But his voice continued on. A separate funnel of sound and horror.

  “Sweet dreams, Devnee,” his voice said.

  And his laughter curled into the dawn, his dark path retreated and, after a long time, Devnee Fountain turned around and went to find a mirror.

  Chapter 7

  SHE PAUSED WITHOUT LOOKING in front of her own mirror in the tower. Anything in the tower was suspect, could be corrupted. She kept her eyes lowered. She needed a real mirror, one that would not lie.

  How strange, thought Devnee. My lashes feel longer. I can feel them against my cheeks.

  She went down the tower stairs to the second floor. There was no need to turn on the light. The dark path lit a way for her. It caressed her ankles and spread a velvet carpet to escort her down.

  But the bathroom she shared with Luke was also uncertain. It knew her. She needed a pure, untouched mirror.

  Down the final flight of stairs she went. Into the wide hallway with its wallpaper half stripped off. Back toward the kitchen, past the debris of remodeling, the tiles torn off, the lights dangling by wires. She could see as clearly as if it were noon. Through the pantry she went, to the powder room door.

  The heavy dark wood of the bathroom door was not flat, like her tower door or the bedroom doors. It had panels of wood, making a raised T. Or a cross. She smiled at the cross. The vampire had not entered this bathroom. This mirror was of the world.

  Devnee took a deep breath. She turned the handle. There was no need to step in. The mirror faced the door.

  She lifted her lashes and looked at her reflection.

  A beautiful girl looked back.

  A girl whose dark hair was not lank and dull, but clouds of curling wisps.

  A girl whose complexion was not pale and worn, but as fair as springtime, tinged with bright pink energy.

  A girl whose eyes were not tired as dishwater, but whose eyes laughed and sparkled, and whose lashes swept mysteries before them.

  Devnee laughed, and the new face laughed with her, teasing and coaxing and adorable.

  Devnee raised her eyebrows and the new eyebrows were both comic and inviting.

  Devnee thought deeply, and the face turned sober and gentle and full of compassion.

  I am beautiful.

  I have it. I have beauty.

  I am not Aryssa. I do not look like her. And yet I have what she has: I have beauty. I have what makes people stop and stare. I have what makes people yearn and love.

  I am Devnee Fountain.

  I am beautiful.

  She stood for a long time facing the mirror; stood, in fact, until dawn had come, and alarm clocks had gone off, and the rest of her family was stumbling into wakefulness.

  Devnee, too, awoke.

  But there was no stumbling now. No early morning heaviness. No dull resignation about yet another difficult school day ahead.

  Tingling with excitement, she danced to the bathroom she shared with Luke, and wonder of wonders, he was still asleep. The floor was not covered with wet towels, and the soap was not lying in a disgusting soppy puddle at the bottom of the tub.

  She felt thinner and more graceful.

  The water showered down on her as if it were a privilege.

  When she stepped out and wrapped herself in a towel, she tugged the pale blue plastic shower cap off and let her hair fall around her shoulders. In the foggy mirror of the hot bathroom, she looked at her reflection.

  Clouds of hair, curly with humidity, wafted around her face like a bridal veil.

  That’s what I am, she thought. A bride. Today I go to school for the first time with the veil lifted. I used to be covered by a plain dull boring face and body, but now I am what I deserve to be.

  Beautiful.

  Even my brother wished this for me, she thought, laughing with wild delight. I hope you get what you deserve, he had said, and I have! Her exuberance rose up in her like a storm of fireworks, celebrating from the inside out. She wanted to scream and shout and drive through town honking a horn. Look at me! I am beautiful!

  She corralled her exuberance. It would not do. She must look as if she had always looked this way.

  The girl in the mirror was still Devnee, but both sharpened and softened. Nature had not quite come through for Devnee at birth, but the essential elements of Devnee’s features had been good, and now because of last night she had been brought into perfection.

  Devnee stroked the reflection in the mirror, and even with the fog wiped off the glass, she remained beautiful. She was not a cloud. Not a mirage. She was real, and she was beautiful.

  Luke began pounding on the door. “Get outta there, Dev!” her brother bellowed. “You think you’re the only one living here?”

  For a moment the insides of her—the person who had not changed—the person who was still the old Devnee—was thrown.

  Who was living here?

  She stared at the mirror and instead of be
ing thrilled, she was terrified and confused. Who is that? Pieces of Aryssa, pasted together? Leftover victims of the vampire, summoned from the grave to be reflected in a mirror?

  Where did the old Devnee go? Who is Aryssa now? Where is Aryssa now? Is Aryssa all right? What did happen last night?

  Is this beauty only in my mind? What if the vampire just convinced me there was a trade?

  Devnee opened the door before Luke smashed his way in.

  Her yucky worthless brother paused in the doorway. A glare remained suspended on his face. The face itself became confused. Her brother was staring at her with awe.

  “Gosh, Sis,” he said. “You look great. I like your hair like that.”

  Luke, saying something nice?

  Devnee walked out of the bathroom and her brother moved out of her way. Didn’t block the door, tweak her hair, call her names or anything. In fact, when she turned to look back, he was still staring at her. “Yes?” said Devnee, curving her lips in a teasing sisterly smile.

  Luke shook, his head. “Dunno,” was all he could manage. Then a grin, then a shrug, then once again, “You look great.”

  She flew up the stairs.

  Lying on the little armchair was the outfit she had laid out early last night: jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers. She could hardly believe it. Had she actually meant to show up in public in that?

  I’m feminine now, thought Devnee, and graceful, and beautiful. I will never dress like that again.

  She settled on a black skirt with a filmy black and gold overskirt and, on top, a thin black sweater. A gold necklace picked up the glints in the skirt. She debated for some time between gold curlicue earrings and long gold bangles with crystals. When she flicked her hair back so her ears would show, tendrils of dark hair curled against her cheek the way she had always wished her straight plain hair would curl.

  Devnee gathered her makeup. She arranged it in a row in front of the lighted mirror and prepared to get to work.

  But this Devnee needed no help. She had lashes so dark and lovely that mascara would have been comic. She had cheeks so high and bright that rouge would have been clownish. She had hair so full that a curling iron would be overkill.