The Devouring

by Simon Holt

  Aaron flailed as visions of water rose above his head.

  He was drowning.

  “Hmm. Guess you do.”

  Down, down into the murky depths. The smell of seaweed and the sting of salt. Aaron sank into a dark lagoon. He forgot about Reggie, about Henry, about his family. His flailing stopped, his eyes closed, and his heartbeat slowed.

  Aaron started to die.

  “I could crush your windpipe with my bare hands,” Quinn said, “but isn’t this more fun?”

  Catching the monster wasn’t hard. It was freezing. It was in agony. And it could only muster enough strength to propel Henry’s body a hundred feet before finally dropping into a pathetic heap in the snow. Catching it was easy.

  Listening to it was torture.

  “Reggie,” it said as she scooped the nearly naked child into her arms. “You’re killing me. Can’t you see you’re killing me? I won’t survive the water.”

  Reggie closed herself to the mimicked despair. She averted her eyes from the body — the vein-riddled arms and neck, the grotesque black stains across the chest and belly, the white gums. But she couldn’t ignore the lethal cold of the skin.

  The thing was made of lies. But she worried that it was telling one truth: the water would kill Henry.

  The Vour was in the mind, but the body was still mostly human. If Henry’s body died, if its temperature dropped too low, if its heart stopped pumping, Henry — the real Henry — would have nothing to return to. But what other choice did she have?

  Reggie carried him down to the bank and stood at the edge of the ice. The headlights above eerily illuminated the lake’s frozen surface.

  “You’re going to murder me, Reggie. Just like in those movies you made me watch. You’re a murderer, Reggie. A murderer…”

  She stepped onto the thick shore ice with her brother’s limp body in her arms. A glaze of fresh snow coated the ice and Reggie shuffled forward. The ice center at the lake would be thinner.

  “Murderer. Mom knew you were sick. That’s why she left us.”

  “I’m coming for you.” Reggie looked down at her brother’s face. “Whatever the hell you are, I’m coming. And I’m not afraid anymore.”

  When she reached the middle of the lake, Reggie placed Henry’s frail body down. Then she took the tire iron out of her coat and slammed it into the ice.

  “If you break the ice,” the boy said in a detached, inhuman voice, “we all go down. You and Henry will both die.”

  She brought the iron down a second time.

  “So be it. We die together.”

  “You really are a stupid one, aren’t you, Regina? You and Henry will die.” The thing chortled. “I’ll be here forever.”

  A third strike knocked a manhole-size hunk of ice loose. Reggie used the tire iron to pry the chunk out. She grabbed Henry’s forearms and dragged him to the hole. By now the boy was so cold he could barely move. Reggie lowered her brother’s body, feet first, into the glacial water beneath the ice.

  “Bitch,” the thing hissed. “I’m ready for you.”

  The boy’s mouth split open into a hideous grin. Black stains now marred bleached gums, and a plume of smoke poured out of its throat. It towered over Reggie, gathering itself into an enor-mous shadow that eclipsed the distant radiance of the headlights.

  The blackness of the monster was all-consuming, deeper than the night that surrounded it. It hung in the sky over the lake for a long moment and then collapsed back into Henry’s mouth with a ferocious jolt that almost made Reggie lose her hold on the child.

  She yanked her brother’s body from the water. His skin now looked charred, ravaged completely, but she did not let herself pity or fear for him. Henry, the real Henry, was locked in some horrible world. She laid the boy’s body back on the ice, put her hands to his face, and stared into the wild blue eyes.

  “Come on then, little girl,” the thing said. “What are you afraid of?”

  And then Reggie fell for the second time into the black.

  18

  The carnival expected her.

  Reggie awoke in a fetal position. Above her stood a girl holding a pink cotton candy stem in one hand and the freckled boy’s severed head in the other. She pressed her foot against Reggie’s neck.

  “Look who’s back,” the girl said as she took a bite of her cotton candy. “We knew you’d come see us again because —”

  “Because you’re a moron,” said the skinny kid beside her. He chomped on a long cord of cherry licorice as he pushed his glasses up his long nose. Thick lenses magnified the dark, bestial eyes behind them. Dozens of children crowded around.

  “Right. What he said.” The girl ground her foot into the scabbed slash on the side of Reggie’s neck. “Berzerko was so mad you got away he took it out on this poor kid.” She swung the little boy’s head like a toy prize.

  The face-painted girl skipped over to them, white larvae dripping from her rotten chin. “Now that you’re back, we’re taking you to the Big Top.”

  “We have so much more to show you,” said the boy with the glasses. “You won’t believe your eyes!”

  “She won’t have any eyes left when Berzerko finishes with her!” shouted another boy.

  The entire crowd laughed, and Reggie’s neck throbbed under the crushing pressure of the blond girl’s heel. The face-painted girl grabbed Reggie’s ankles, and the boy with the glasses tied his licorice around them. The cord burned into her skin like dry ice. She clenched her teeth and stifled a scream. The stench of her own blistering skin wafted into her nostrils.

  The other kids lifted her off the ground. Each ghastly finger that touched her body leaked a bitter and venomous cold that sought to paralyze her.

  “To the Big Top! To the Big Top!”

  The crowd held her aloft and carried her toward a gigantic, foul-smelling pavilion. Screams and wails poured forth from the evil tent. If she went in, she would never come out again. Inside was pure madness.

  She closed her eyes and struggled to calm herself. Reggie’s pulse slowed and her mind cleared. The cold burn in her ankles dissipated, and the smell of rotten cherries filled the air.

  “Hey!” screamed the boy in glasses. “What’d you do to my licorice?”

  Reggie’s legs broke free. She slammed her right foot forward, caving in the face-painted girl’s jaw as if it were papier-mâché. Smoke gushed from the ruin of it, and the girl toppled back-ward.

  The children gasped and dropped Reggie. She leaped up, shoved past them, and ran back to the midway; through the game booths, the snack huts, the kiddie rides, past the Ferris wheel and the roller-coaster, the log flume and the bumper cars…

  Reggie cut across the carousel platform to get to the fun house, and she could feel the eyes of the beasts behind her. Beneath the calliope’s melody, she heard the low growls of hungry things.

  The fun house tunnel spun faster now. Reggie tried to run through it, but she lost her balance in the whipping vortex.

  Elbows, knees, ankles, head, chin — the tunnel banged her about as she tried to crawl across the slick surface. When she had almost reached the other side, the clown’s horn cut the air.

  Behind her, at the entrance of the tunnel, she saw the pasty white face, the curly green hair, and the blood-spattered suit. Berzerko smiled wide and stepped in, swinging the hatchet in front of him. The swirling tube did not affect him, and he steadily advanced.

  Reggie lurched for the edge of the tunnel. Her upper body vaulted over the lip of the cylinder, but her legs twisted up behind her, the force nearly pulling her back inside. With one final lunge, she toppled out onto the checkered floor of the fun house. She rose painfully to her feet and ran into the Hall of Mirrors.

  Distorted reflections gave way again to horrific images and fears all around her: glistening spiders, dead loved ones, and a newer fear — fire. Her pulse quickened at the sight of flames leaping behind the silvered glass, but Reggie thought only of finding her brother.

  “Henry! Can
you hear me?” she called out. “Where are you?”

  The scraping noise of a hatchet blade across glass sent her racing deeper into the maze. This time no sawdust signaled the way out. She reached one dead end after another, surrounded by ever more freakish reflections: her father’s head served on a platter with an apple in his mouth, her mother rocking a demon infant…

  Reggie stepped forward, gaping at the images, and felt something squishy beneath her foot. She glanced down to see that she’d trod upon a giant red shoe.

  The killer clown stood in front of her, his blade at his side. There was no way around him this time, nowhere to run. Mirrors imprisoned her. Desperate, Reggie punched the clown, and her fist sank deep into Berzerko’s midsection. The sting of bitter cold raced up her arm, and when she pulled her hand out, her fist was laced with ice. Berzerko raised his hatchet with a gleeful smile. He was invincible in here, here among the mirrors.

  The mirrors.

  Reggie raised her aching fist and punched again, but this time not at the clown. Instead, she struck the mirror next to him. The glass cracked and the clown stumbled. Reggie’s hand bled freely, but she hit the glass again, shattering the mirror. As the glass broke into shards, the clown’s makeup cracked, revealing bone beneath the caked greasepaint. Berzerko touched the bone with his gloved fingers like he was trying to plug a breaking dam.

  Reggie smashed another mirror and a crevasse split the clown’s forehead, pouring smoke. Reggie shoved Berzerko aside, and sprinted down the glass hall toward the arch of light at its end. She heard the shoes flop behind her as she dove out of the house of mirrors.

  A soft wind blew her hair, and a light rain fell on neatly manicured grass. Flower beds lined the road that led uphill into the graveyard. Tears streaked down her cheeks.

  Her hands throbbed, and she rubbed them in the cool grass. Any second Berzerko would come charging out of the fun house. Reggie was exhausted; she had to rest for just a minute…

  But when the clown did not follow, a realization hit her. He couldn’t follow. Each environment was contained, a layer with its own boundaries. Henry could cross through.

  And so could she.

  Reggie now stood at the gates of Cutter’s Wedge Cemetery.

  At the top of the hill Reggie saw two mourners, dressed in black and huddled together under a black umbrella. She recognized them immediately.

  “Mom!” Reggie shouted. “Dad!”

  She sprinted toward them, but they bowed their heads and walked into the thick fog on the edge of the cemetery. By the time she reached the top of the hill, they were gone. Reggie dropped to her knees and read the epitaph carved into the marble headstone.

  Henry Thomas Halloway

  Beloved Son

  Buried on Sorry Night

  The last line was scrawled beneath the other two in blood. It was still wet.

  “It’s not real … ,” Reggie reminded herself, but even so, she never knew she could feel so sad. She knelt in front of her brother’s headstone and began to dig.

  She clawed at the ground with her bleeding fingers, trying to ignore the pain. Worms and maggots swarmed up through the dirt and onto her hands, wriggling up her wrists and arms. Reggie fought the urge to retch. She swiped madly at the bugs, and each one she touched turned to a puff of black smoke, but there was always more crawling up through the earth and onto her skin.

  Reggie continued to dig, tossing the rocky grave away in chunks. Finally her hands hit something hard, and she smoothed the dirt away to reveal a casket.

  Despite the time-ravaged headstone that marked it, the coffin looked new. She pried the lid open and found Kappy the koala bear tucked inside, frayed and grubby.

  Henry had been here. This was all his mind, his fear. The Vour gave those fears form, but there were some things Henry had shaped, too. The coffin belonged to the monster, but the bear belonged to Henry. This gave Reggie some hope, though she realized that if Henry had been carrying Kappy, he had dropped it along the way. How much more would he lose before being lost forever?

  “I’m coming,” she whispered to the bear. Reggie climbed inside the coffin and lay on her back.

  She shut the lid and clutched Kappy to her chest.

  Suddenly, the coffin lurched upward ninety degrees so that Reggie was in a standing position. A red button with a downward arrow appeared waist high in front of her, and tinny jazz music played softly. A fluorescent light flicked on above her head.

  The coffin had transformed into an elevator. It startled her for a moment. But while the environments felt disjointed, she knew now that they tied together around a common theme: Henry’s fears.

  She pressed the down button and heard the scraping of gears. The car descended, and then the doors opened with a polite ding.

  Reggie walked out into the sterile hall of a vacant hospital.

  “Henry!” she called out. Her voice echoed down the corridor.

  The place was eerily silent. No voices, no movement — not even the regulated beeps of heart monitors or the squeaky shuffle of medical carts. She walked to an abandoned, dimly lit nurses’ station, where several charts littered the desk. Reggie entered through the swinging door and grabbed one. The letterhead at the top read St. Joseph’s Memorial, a hospital in Boston.

  Below that was the patient’s name: Henry Halloway.

  When he was five, Henry had stayed in the hospital for two weeks to recover from an operation. Reggie had accidentally struck him with a tree branch, and a splinter had lodged in his eye, spread an infection, and almost blinded him.

  Nothing below the treatment plan on the chart was legible. Reggie picked up a second chart and saw that it was identical to the first. So was the next one. And the next.

  She continued down the corridor. Room after room was empty. On one hospital bed she found a small pool of blood spreading across a white sheet. Another room had a set of jagged surgical tools laid out on an operating tray. In this place of Henry’s mind, he couldn’t conjure the flowers and cards that had decorated his room, the kind nurse that had read to him, the warmth of a loving family that had surrounded him. The Vour forbade her brother’s mind to rebuild any memory not steeped in pain and loss.

  “So you want pain and loss?” Reggie asked aloud. She armed herself with a long scalpel from the palette. “You’ll get it.”

  At a T-juncture at the end of the hall, she heard a sucking sound from a small dark room to her right.

  “Hello? Is anyone there?” Reggie ran to its door, creaked it open, and peered inside.

  The light from the hallway spilled across a woman sitting motionless in a rocking chair. She cradled a small, squirming bundle in her arms.

  It was feeding.

  “Hello?” Reggie’s voice sounded thin, like old parchment.

  The woman did not answer, but at the sound of Reggie’s voice, the infant at her breast stopped sucking. Her heart pounded as she fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on.

  The mother had been dead for hours, her eyes still open, her tongue hanging out, purple and swollen. But her child had continued to feed, tiny hands scratching at gray, sagging flesh. The baby did not feast on its mother’s milk, but on her blood and flesh. With tiny, needlelike fangs, it had bored an apple-sized hole through her chest, and a stream of deep red dripped down the soft rolls of the little creature’s chin. The mother’s abdomen was ripped open, as if the ravenous offspring had eaten its way out of her. What remained of her entrails spilled over her lap and down onto the floor.

  As Reggie backed away, the thing continued to turn its neck, following her with its yellow eyes and catlike pupils — twisting, twisting, until the awkward movement put too much pressure on the dead mother’s arms; the limbs, stiff from rigor mortis, cracked sickeningly as they unfolded and dropped the naked infant to the floor.

  The thing resembled a human baby in both shape and proportion, but its skin was a sickly ash, taut and scaly, and spiky black nubs protruded from the cuticles where nails should be.
The child expelled shallow breaths on the floor near its mother’s blackening feet, its hours-old arms and legs jerking spastically.

  As she watched with morbid fascination, the thing rolled over onto its full belly and slithered across the floor, head craned unnaturally upward. Reggie heard the thing’s tongue suck at the roof of its own mouth, desperate for nourishment. She retreated into the hallway and screamed as pain seared through her foot — another demon baby had plunged its fangs into her ankle, and a dozen more crawled toward her.

  Then they were upon her, clawing and biting. Her shrieks echoed off the white walls, but the monsters only delighted in her terror. She swung her scalpel wildly, but the imps were too small and close to the ground to slash without crouching down — which would expose her face and throat to their attacks. Reggie kicked at one, and it skidded across the slick floor. The demon bared its needle teeth and scuttled back toward her.

  Reggie felt another spawn sink its fangs into her calf, and she ripped it from her skin, flesh and muscle tearing in hot chunks. Without thinking, she squeezed the back of the creature’s neck until the top of its tiny spine popped in her grip. She released the infant monster, but the broken thing rose up unnaturally on its tiny legs, neck askew, and walked toward her.

  Others bit into her ankles, thighs, back — piercing, biting, feeding. The smaller monsters, the runts unable to compete with the stronger ones, lapped frantically at the drops of warm blood that pooled on the floor. Reggie kicked and writhed, knocking the creatures to the floor as she raced down the hall.

  The corridor seemed to stretch on forever as she ran, her breath gasping, the scalpel clutched in her white-knuckled fist. At last, she hazarded a look behind.

  The little demons were gone.

  Reggie heard raspy breathing coming from behind a nearby door. She entered a room filled with hundreds of white curtained enclosures. The edges of it were steeped in mist. As Reggie approached the first curtain, she heard a child’s scream. A tall silhouette holding a needle moved behind the drape.

  Reggie yanked back the curtain to find an empty hospital bed with a clean white sheet. Another child shrieked to her left, and the same ominous silhouette loomed behind that curtain. Reggie ripped it aside, but again, no one was there. The piercing wails of boys, girls, and infants flooded the room. Reggie ripped curtain after curtain from their metal rungs, always finding an empty bed. The cries grew louder and more pained.