Rook leaned out into the aisle and glanced down the length of the bus. At the same time, three other passengers also leaned out in unison and stared right back at him. Rook sat back abruptly.
Evan pulled at Rook’s sleeve. “What is it, Rook?”
“We have to get off this bus.”
He took Evan’s hand and started to get up, but froze. The elderly woman in the blue shawl had twisted around completely in her seat to face them. Rook swallowed hard.
The old woman’s eyes were gone. In their place were two burned-out, blackened holes. It made her seem hollow and lifeless and yet she was still moving. Everyone was moving. Rook watched as more passengers turned, eyes the same burned-out holes, all of them twisting together in a horrid and unnatural unison.
“Come on, Evan,” Rook said, pulling his hand.
Evan started. At the same moment, the passenger behind him rose from her seat. It was a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, with whitish-blonde hair in pigtails. When she reached her arm over the headrest, Evan turned and looked into her charred eye sockets. Her hand gripped his sleeve.
Evan screamed.
Rook had been watching the others, but he turned fast. He saw the little girl’s grip on Evan’s sleeve and right away smashed his fist across her arm and heard it break. Then he grabbed Evan and lifted him into his arms.
Braced against Rook’s shoulder, Evan caught a glimpse down the length of the entire bus and witnessed a savage moment as every passenger, eyeless and horrible, came climbing and clawing over the seats, moving as one great roiling mass to get at them.
“Go, Rook!” Evan cried. “Go!” And he buried his face into the crook of Rook’s neck.
He heard and felt Rook moving, hustling past the last few seats to the very back of the bus. Rook’s strong arm tightened around his waist.
“Hold onto me,” Rook said.
Evan wrapped his arms around Rook’s neck and kept his eyes closed. He tried to think hard about what was happening, to make this all stop. He thought about the driver and the girl with the pigtails, tried to hear them in his special way, but what came to him was not a voice as he had ever heard before. It was a monstrous howling scream, and Evan physically recoiled from it, almost falling from Rook’s arms. He couldn’t bear to try again.
The bus swerved again and there was a violent tumbling of bodies, and Rook jammed his foot against the side of a seat to keep from going over. Evan’s eyes opened instinctively. In that moment, he saw every passenger toppled together, surging and clawing like some wormy mass, and at the front of them he saw the driver. The man’s eyes were charred like the rest, and his face was gouged and bleeding. Evan buried his face in Rook’s neck, unable to witness anymore.
But the driver continued, pressing ahead of the rest, his arms outstretched and reaching like some grotesque supplicant caught between fealty and defiance.
The bus was lurching into the highway shoulder, the guardrail rising up before them rapidly.
As the driver clambered within reach, Rook grabbed the man’s head and slammed it twice against a headrest and flung him back down the aisle. The others recoiled and then surged towards him and Evan again.
Rook hitched Evan firmly against his shoulder and reached up to the ceiling of the bus with his free arm. Evan looked up and watched Rook’s hand grip the red lever on the emergency exit hatch, and then pull down.
There was a sharp pop above them and a rush of sucking wind, the force of which made Evan turn away. He felt himself raised up through the opening, and the sunlight was bright on his face. He could barely keep his eyes open against the wind, and he thought the force of it would blow him away, but Rook held him from below. Evan pressed his hands flat on the top of the bus, wishing he had something better to hold onto. Then he felt Rook climb up behind him. Rook’s hands hooked under his armpits and he was lifted and gathered against Rook’s chest. He could feel Rook’s coarse beard on the back of his neck. The grip was almost suffocating.
“Hang on!” Rook shouted over the wind.
And then they were moving—flying—falling—and Evan saw the bus go upside down and far away. Rook’s arms surrounded him, holding him so tight. They hit the hard gravel shoulder of the highway and rolled.
The bus crashed through the guardrail, tearing a four-foot gash across the outside baggage compartments. It turned over on its side in a cloud of snow and dust and slid to a halt in the ditch and the exposed tires spun in the air.
No more than a quarter kilometre back, Rook had landed in the snow-filled ditch at the highway shoulder with Evan in his arms. He got Evan to his feet and they hustled through the break of frozen wild grass and across the field into the woods. Once more they heard the sound of sirens behind them, but neither looked back.
Within the cover of the snow-tipped pines, Evan stopped running and stood. He put his weight on his left leg. A few feet ahead of him, Rook had stopped as well. His coat sleeve was torn at the shoulder, and his arm hurt from the fall. He rolled his shoulder in a slow circle to ease out the pain. At the same time, he surveyed the woods, sniffing the air. There was the cold dry smell of the winter below the pines and a deeper chill like death and nothingness that came with the wind when it blew, and also a tangy fecal musk of something feral. Rook rubbed his face with both hands and squinted out against the immense insecurity of the woods. He looked for where the snow seemed thinnest.
Behind him, Evan stood in the same place. He was shivering and he turned his face away from the cold at his cheeks. With both hands he gripped his right leg just above the knee, where his pants were torn and bloodied.
Rook looked back and saw him. “Come on, Evan,” he said.
“It hurts really bad,” Evan said, the start of tears in his voice.
Rook walked to Evan and knelt. “Move your hands,” he said.
He pulled back the torn, bloodied denim and brushed some gravel from the wound. Evan winced. Rook picked up a handful of snow and cupped it over Evan’s knee and held it there for a moment and when he took it away there was blood but it looked cleaner. Rook stood.
“You’ll be all right,” he said.
“But it really hurts.”
“We’ll go slowly. We’ll find a dry place and once night falls, I can make it better.”
Evan was trembling and his eyes watered. “Why can’t you make it better now?”
“It’s not easy in the daylight. But I promise I’ll make it better as soon as I can.”
Evan was trying to nod, his face and lips bunched tight in the cold. He seemed furious about something, and then he started to cry.
“You’ll be all right,” Rook said.
Evan said, “They were going to get us.”
Rook knelt again and took Evan by the shoulders. “Nothing is going to get you. Not while I’m around. Okay?”
Evan sniffled and wiped his face.
From beyond the trees, sirens rang out and Rook looked back through the tall pines and saw the flashing lights and the red shape of a fire truck on the highway. He turned to Evan, who was calmer now.
“Are you okay?” Rook asked.
Evan nodded.
“Let’s go.”
They started and Rook walked slowly. Evan followed, stepping when he could into the big prints Rook made in the snow. The pine trees they walked under were tall and the boughs were covered in heavy clots of snowfall and, with a hard wind, they would crack and shower down upon the ground and cause craters.
As they walked Evan’s knee stung in the cold, and he was reminded of being at school. He saw his grade one teacher, Ms. Bechtel, her big red face like a strawberry, telling them all to come sit on the carpet. Evan hadn’t wanted to sit on the carpet. He’d wanted to stay in the corner where he felt safe, away from the other kids, on his own. You have to come to the carpet, Ms. Bechtel would say. Her sharp, dry grip on his wrist. Her hard yank of his arm. Evan’s knee stung, and he came back in the present. Thinking about it, he was happy he would never see mean Ms. Bec
htel or any of those people ever again.
By midday they had traversed only a small portion of the countryside, crossing glades and low hills and skirting a narrow, frozen lake. They took a break at the top of a hill where the snow cover was less.
In the distance, Rook could see the high grey ridge of the eastern Niagara bluffs and the cover of tall, bare pines and that’s where he wished they could be. He knew there were caves among the escarpment where they could rest.
He looked at Evan. The boy was toughing it out, and Rook was impressed. Young as he was, Evan was strong. In Rook’s head, he heard himself say, “Coddle a boy not and you’ll have a man in a month.” Then he saw Allison shaking her head, and he heard her voice. “Coddle a husband not and you’ll have a boy in an hour,” she’d said with a smile, rocking their son in her arms. Rook closed his eyes.
Evan squeezed his leg, his knee still bleeding, and he shivered. Soon it would be dark and much colder. Evan was hungry.
Rook looked out from the hill and could see the highway snaking in the distance and figured they could backtrack and try to hitch a ride southwest. There had to be someone who ignored the news, some simple, unawares fool, or otherwise someone who wouldn’t give a damn if he picked up the devil himself. It was possible. Rook turned to Evan.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
The boy only stared, too cold to show the surprise he felt at being asked.
Rook walked to him. “There’s a chance we could catch a ride if we go back to the highway. What do you think?”
Evan shivered. His lips were blue.
They started back towards the highway, cutting northeast out of the pinewoods and across a field where the snow was deep to Rook’s knees and he trailed his steps together to carve a trench for Evan to follow behind him. Still, Evan lagged. Rook went back for him.
“I thought I told you to pick up your feet,” he said.
Evan shivered. His teeth clattered as he said, “What happens if they catch us?”
“Who?”
“Will the police will shoot you?”
“They might try.”
Evan stopped.
“Let’s go,” Rook said. “We’re wasting time.”
“If we go back, they’ll catch us. You’ll get shot dead and I’ll end up back”—he looked vaguely in the direction of the city—“back there. Then the mean people will find me!” His face was bright red and tight and trembling.
“Then what do you want to do?”
The boy began to cry again. “You’re supposed to be in charge,” he said.
Rook glared at him. He stood hunched and massive. His beard was frozen white with ice and spittle and his dark hair hung stiff before his face. He huffed once. Then he lifted Evan over his shoulder and took off at a run back towards the trees.
Thinking he had been about to get smacked, Evan hung over Rook’s back with a feeling of surprise and relief, staring down at the clots of snow kicking up off Rook’s big boots.
• • •
The sun was going down when they reached the top of the ridge. A frosty gloom enveloped the brush of the forest trail, paths once forged by hunters and nomads now relegated to dog-walkers and reckless youth. Below the canopy, the wind was less and the snow was sparse and speckled with pine needles and decayed leaves. The cold, dormant sense of the wintered earth was made all the more potent by the rich smell of the damp granite rock beneath. Rook walked slowly. Evan had fallen asleep over his shoulder.
Rook came to a break in the brush and there was a snow-swept gully that led down to a lower ledge on the cliffside. He secured Evan over his shoulder with his right arm wrapped around the boy’s waist, and then scaled down the gully. The rocks were slick with ice, but after some careful shuffling he came out eastward on the lower ledge. The cliff looked down to the highway and the township of Halton Hills. Far out in the distance, Rook could see the piercing towers of Toronto’s skyline and below that man-made ridge, the lake looked handsome with a wreath of clouds upon the horizon and the water catching a crimson sparkle in the falling sun.
Rook walked for a while along the outcropping before he found a slim recess in the rock. He lowered the boy into his arms like a bundle of wood and crouched and looked inside. The recess was low and it went back only about six feet before closing off in a jagged, frozen point. It looked dry.
Rook laid Evan on the ground and then unbuttoned and removed his heavy coat and flattened it on the floor, lifting Evan onto it and pulling it closed around him. He tied the sleeves so it was snug like a bag. Then he stood and walked out to the cave mouth and studied the night.
The crimson was gone. A deep violet threaded a sky that turned dark blue as he watched. He felt the sure hand of the night begin to reach for him, but he didn’t need it. Not right now. He glanced over his shoulder at the boy. Fast asleep. Then he went out.
When he came back, his arms were full and he laid all he had gathered on the floor of the cave. He set the stones in a circle and laid one larger log lengthwise across them, then positioned the smaller sticks as a tipi in the centre and laid two more logs aslant the first. Crouched beside the stones, he looked out of the mouth of the cave at the darkening and waited.
The sky turned from dark blue to indigo and then to all black, or as close as was possible this near the glow of city lights. He cupped his hands over his mouth and felt his body start to hum. He breathed in and out. His palms warmed.
Eventually a thin line of smoke escaped between his fingers. He opened his hands and the walls of the cave were lit with the dancing shadows of his fingers. A small flame was camped in the centre of his palm.
•
Evan woke to the smell of wood smoke and stone, and the warmth of a crackling fire. The light of the flames flickered across the walls around him. He was bundled tight in Rook’s jacket and it smelled musky and strange and familiar all at once. He yawned and rolled over. There was a pile of logs and branches piled beside the fire. He sat up. Rook was sitting at the mouth of the cave, looking out.
Evan wormed his way out of the coat and drew up his knees and hugged them. It took him a moment to notice that the pain was gone from his leg. He looked at his right knee. The cut was all gone. At first he thought he must have hurt his other knee, but then he saw the scar. Flat and white as if he’d been burned. It was healed. Evan looked up at Rook.
Almost as if the boy had willed it, Rook turned around. Then he stood and walked to the fire and knelt and placed another log in the flames. Evan slid the heavy coat out from under him and pushed it across to Rook, but Rook ignored it.
“Are you hungry?” Rook said.
“Kind of.”
“We should get moving soon.”
“My leg’s all better,” Evan said.
Rook nodded. “I mended it best I could. It will scar. How are your feet?”
“They feel wet.”
“Take off your boots.”
Evan peeled back the Velcro straps and pulled them off.
“And your socks,” Rook said.
Evan removed his socks and wiggled his toes. They were stiff. He stuck his legs out straight to the fire. Soon the bottoms of his feet were hot. Rook laid the wet socks on the stones and after a moment the socks began to steam, giving off a sweet, distasteful smell that Evan secretly enjoyed. He reached his hands towards the fire and rubbed his palms together. Rook watched him.
“Once you’re warmed, we’ll get going. We’ll get you something to eat.” Rook started to get up.
“Wait,” Evan said.
Rook paused.
Evan asked, “Can’t we just stay for a little bit and warm up?”
Rook waited a moment. Then he sat down across the fire.
“Thanks for fixing my knee,” Evan said.
Rook nodded.
“How did you do it?” Evan asked. “It’s like it never got cut at all. Was it like what you did before? I mean . . . did you use magic?”
“Hush up,” Rook said.
/> They sat in silence for a while. The fire burned between them, the damp logs hissing, and they listened to the wind whistle beyond the mouth of the cave, streaking with snow. Evan sat with his hands in his lap and he stole glances at Rook without turning his head. Rook stared far off into the flames.
They had been quiet for some time when Evan heard the song. It was faint, like an earthly rumbling in the stone of the cave. But it was rhythmic. He heard it behind him at first, and then all at once it was everywhere, above and below him.
He drew in his feet. “What is that?” he asked.
Rook pulled his gaze from the fire. “What do you hear?”
“It’s sounds like a drum. There’s drumming from somewhere.” Evan’s shoulders went up, eyes darting around the cave.
“Ignore it,” Rook said.
“But what is it?” Evan asked. He could hear it clear as if it were rain. It remained faint and faraway, a deep travelling echo, but he was certain that he heard it. Then there was more.
“There’s voices,” he said. “There’s voices singing, Rook. You hear them?”
“It’s the song of these cliffs,” Rook said. “Sung by the spirits that belong to them.”
“Are they coming to hurt us?”
“No. We should be fine.”
“What do they want?”
“To be heard, I suppose. Not many people listen for such things.”
Evan sat with wide eyes and listened to the song of the cliffs. He turned his head, following the sweep of the drum and chorus across the stone. The song rolled away after a while. Then silence again. The wind whistled.
“It’s gone,” Evan said.
Rook said nothing.
“Did you hear it?”
“Yes.”
“You did? Why didn’t you say so? Why can we hear it when most people can’t?”
Rook looked at Evan across the fire. “I don’t know,” he said. He was thinking of when he’d first seen Evan’s eyes, how they had flashed almost like fire. The feeling that he knew the boy from somewhere, somehow. “Consider yourself lucky,” he said.
Only the Devil Is Here Page 6