T. Wright - The Devouring

Ryerson said, "You're not kidding, are you, Joan?"

She smiled uncomfortably. "Not about that, Rye."

Creosote latched onto the sock. Ryerson reached quickly down, pried the dog's jaws apart, put him on his lap, stroked him-which caused a kind of ragged purring sound to start in the dog's throat-and said to Joan, "Where do you think these demons come from?"

She answered slowly, thoughtfully, "Not hell. I don't believe in hell. I believe in suffering and loneliness and pain. I believe that they exist and that they torment us. I believe that demons can bring them to us." She paused. Ryerson could read confusion and frustration from her, as if she wanted very much to say precisely what she meant but realized that it was impossible. He left the silence alone. After a few moments she went on. "I don't know where they come from. I guess they come from the same place that all suffering and loneliness and pain come from. From us. From all of us."

"You sound awfully cynical about the human race, Joan," Ryerson said, regretting at once his vaguely preachy tone.

She shook her head. "No. I'm not. Along with the pain I know there's joy. I've experienced it. Everyone has; some of us more than others, of course." An image of someone Ryerson guessed was Lila Curtis leaped from Joan's mind to his. "Sometimes it's a sort of balancing act, isn't it, Rye? The joy and the pain. I think if you've got just a little bit of pain it can smother a lot of joy." She smiled quickly, as if embarrassed. "Like a toothache."

Ryerson said gently, "Tell me about Lila's pain, Joan."

Joan sighed. "Yes," she nodded firmly. "I want to. I need to."

~ * ~

Power! the woman whispered. Enough power to break away from this damp, stinking, dark place someday soon and walk among the living.

Because she'd have life in her, too. Because the young ones, the strong ones, the ones with life coursing through them, would feed her. And as their numbers grew from the few that were with her here, now, the awful stuff she had been built up from would change; and she would change. She would become what they were.

Life would push through her.

And the others, the weak ones, the ones with life only at the edges of their eyes, and within their groins, would sustain her for a time. And they were plentiful enough.

The man saw to that.

He loved her, he wanted her, he needed her. Most of all, he wanted to live, so he saw to it that the weak ones, the ones no one watched after and no one cared for, were abundantly supplied.

And because he gave her what she needed, she gave him what he needed.

She gave him herself.

Joan Mott Evans said, "I loved her. I loved Lila." She paused, on the verge of tears. "I've told you that, haven't I, Rye?"

Ryerson reached out and put his hand comfortingly on hers. "Don't worry about repeating yourself, Joan. Just tell me what you want to tell me."

She closed her eyes briefly, sighed. "It's like putting a puzzle together, Rye. But the puzzle's got too many pieces, and they're all the same color."

He patted her hand. "Yes. I understand."

She glanced at him, then down at the table. "Maybe you do. I hope so." A short pause. "I didn't kill her." She looked up at him entreatingly. "Did you think I killed her?"

"No. I never thought that."

She looked down at the table again andsaid softly, "Lila killed herself. And her boyfriend. She knew that something was wrong inside her; she knew they'd gotten her."

"They?

"The demons."

"Yes. Of course."

"You think I'm nuts, don't you?"

"No. I think you have good reasons for your beliefs. Many people believe in demons. I have a friend, a cop actually, who claims that there are demons who sit on his chest at night."

Joan looked offended. "Don't make fun of me, Rye."

He frowned. "I'm only trying to let you know that if you thought you were alone-"

"I never thought I was alone." It was a simple statement of fact. "Never alone. Only by myself from time to time. Like Lila."

"Are you saying there are similarities between you and Lila, Joan?"

She looked surprised by the question. "Of course there are. We're both vulnerable-we were both vulnerable; I was the lucky one; they got her, not me. Trouble was, they wouldn't let her go. They stayed with her."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning just that. They stayed with her; they stayed inside her somewhere. I don't know where. In her belly, in her intestines, in her heart. And they wouldn't let go of her. They made her get up and move around."

An image came to Ryerson then. It was an image from his childhood, when the same awful dream had tormented him for months. In the dream he entered a stone crypt. At the center of the crypt lay an open stone sarcophagus with a man inside dressed in a loose-fitting dirty white gown. When Ryerson drew closer, he could see that the man's face was yellow, his eyes large and round and pale, his lips a dull green. The man sat up. A kind of stiff, halting laugh came from him as if he were trying the laugh out to see if it still worked. He turned his head very mechanically, as if his neck were on dirt-encrusted ball bearings, and he said, "Boys! Bimbos! Beads!" in a high, hollow whisper that made his yellowish cheeks puff out briefly, then deflate. It should have been comical. It wasn't. Not from him. It was an image which had, then, pushed Ryerson screaming into wakefulness. Now it merely made him cringe.

"When?" he asked.

"When she was buried," Joan answered. "Of course."

"So I had to stop her. For her own good, I had to stop her."

"Yes?"

"I got a shovel. I went to where she was buried. In the Edgewater Cemetery, near Erie. You've been there, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"I went there at night. When the moon was new, so it was very dark. Lila walked when the moon was full." She paused. "I took my shovel to her grave and I began to dig." She stopped, looked questioningly at Creosote, then at Ryerson. "I'm sorry; it just occurred to me that I probably insulted your dog when I said he looked like the demons that I see."

"He'll survive," Ryerson said.

"Yes," Joan said. "And I dug Lila up." She looked momentarily astonished. "I dug her up; I dug my friend's body up! Rye, I dug and I dug and I dug! And then I shot her!"

~ * ~

The woman who called herself Loni was aware of a vague sensation of pressure where Laurie Drake had popped out from inside her, and if she had bothered to look, she would have seen that not only was the white blouse ripped from under her arm to where it tucked beneath the black skirt, but that a gaping creamy-pink gash rimmed by jagged protruding ribs and what passed for internal organs were visible beneath. But she didn't bother to look because she was involved in other things. Most important, she was involved in being alive, in being aware of herself and of the people on Baldridge Street, five blocks from Lawrence, only a couple of blocks from the area called "The District." The people were, predictably, looking slack-mouthed at her because they had never before seen such an incredible wound as hers.

"Hello," she cooed to a young man walking toward her; he was dressed in a neat but casual way, as if to take someone to a movie. "My name's Loni. What's yours?"

He hadn't seen her wound, yet; it was on her left side; he was approaching obliquely from her right. And though he had seen the half-dozen or so other people on Baldridge Street staring at her, he thought it was merely because she was so wonderfully attractive.

"My name's Benny," he said, a huge smile crinkling his pink, scrubbed face. How marvelous and how unbelievable, he thought, that this woman should be talking to him, that she should even be looking at 'him the way she was. Damn, it was like a dream. "Benny Bloom," he added; he had stopped walking and was letting her move closer to him. He still had not seen the wound at her left side, and because his attention was now solely on her, he did not see either that some of the slack-mouthed stares of the other people on the street had changed to stares of fear and revulsion, as if something unspeakably obscene had just been dropped into their midsts. One of these onlookers, a young woman wearing white jeans, said to Loni, "Miss, you're hurt; can I help you?" and though Benny heard the woman, her words did not register. He said again, "My name's Benny."