Evan hugged his knees again, his expression grave. “I think we can hear it because we’re different,” he said.
“You think you’re different?”
“Yep.” Evan shimmied closer to the fire. He picked up a small stick and tossed it into the circle and watched the flames lick and curl around it like they were hungry. Then he said, “I’m different from everybody. I can just tell. I can smell it. It’s like how you can smell when a dog or cat’s been in a place. Their skin and their hair and stuff. Their sweat. Their poo and pee. It was like that with all the homes and all the people. I knew they weren’t like me and they never could be.”
“Perhaps you haven’t met the right people,” Rook said, surprising himself with the comment.
Evan was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Sometimes when Adam would come after me, I’d lie there really still and think, You can hurt me, you can hurt me all you want, but you can’t kill me. You can beat me with your stinky hands, but that’s all you can do because I’m bigger than you, I’m higher, and you can’t ever get me at all.”
“Did you hate them?” Rook asked.
Evan shrugged. “I felt bad for them. They were both really sad a lot. That’s why sometimes I tried to use my special-thinking to make them feel better.”
Rook straightened. “Your special-thinking?” he asked.
Evan nodded. “It’s something I can do sometimes. I don’t know how, but sometimes it happens. That’s why I really know I’m different.”
“What is it?”
Evan looked at the ceiling of the cave, titled his head. “It’s like I think really hard about someone, sometimes I can make them do what I want.”
“You’ve done this before?”
Evan nodded in big deep swoops and he seemed excited, proud, and embarrassed all in equal measure.
“Have you done it to me?”
Evan stilled. Then he shook his head. “I tried, back when you first . . .” He stopped and then said, “I don’t like doing it, really.”
“Why not?”
“Because of what I hear. When I think really hard about someone, then I hear their voice in my head. I hear them crying. Sometimes they scream.”
For a moment Rook’s expression was forlorn and revealing, as if he were catching splinters of a memory recently forgotten, a memory he would never, ever, fully recall. “I think I know what you mean,” he said.
“You can do it, too, can’t you?” Evan asked. “That’s what you did to the bus driver. You made him do what you wanted.”
“It’s different,” Rook said. “I didn’t convince him to do what I wanted. I became him, then I acted through him.”
“It’s magic,” Evan said. “We can both do it, and that’s how I know we’re different.”
“I’m sorry, Evan, but I think you’re wrong. This magic, if you want to call it magic, sends out signals when it occurs. It reverberates. It causes a ripple like when you throw a stone into water and others can feel it. I’ve felt no such ripple from you.”
Evan frowned. “You don’t think I can do it?”
“I didn’t say that. But like everything else, magic is a way of getting through this world, only it’s more like cheating your way through. You’re cutting little holes in the fabric of it all to get through faster, easier. But those holes—each tear—makes a sound, sometimes it’s big and sometimes it’s small. When I cheat fire into my hand, that’s nothing, barely makes a sound. But when I possessed the bus driver, I might as well have been ringing a bell.”
Evan’s face lost its colour all of a sudden.
“Are you all right?” Rook asked.
Evan tried to speak but trembled, wiped his nose, and spoke again. “Rook . . . what happened to all those people on that bus?”
Rook shut his eyes. “They were possessed,” he said. “But hell if I know by what. It must have been something very old and powerful to take control of so many souls at once. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Evan asked, “Was it after me?”
“Yes.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Somewhere none of us want to be.”
“Is it going to come back and get us?”
“No,” Rook said. “That was my fault. I should have known I was drawing attention. But I won’t do that again. We’ll be fine.”
“What about my special-thinking?”
“I don’t think you have that magic, Evan.”
The child looked hurt, so Rook added, “Or if you do, some greater magic must be keeping you hidden. Either way, best to forget about it. Now hush up. Get ready to go. Put your socks and boots back on.”
Evan picked up his socks one at a time and slipped them on his feet and then put on his boots. When they were strapped he stretched them out to the fire again. Rook was silent all the while, looking over his shoulder to the cave mouth.
Evan picked up a dry wood chip and tossed it at the fire. His eye hunted the floor for another and he tossed it in as well. Then he looked at Rook.
He asked, “Hey, rocks or fires?”
Rook turned. “What?”
“It’s a game. You have to pick one. Rocks or fires?”
“I don’t care.”
“Just pick one, the one you like more. Right away. Go. Rocks or fires?”
“Rocks.”
“Apples or bananas?”
“I’ve never had a banana,” Rook said.
“Then you have to say apples. Okay, try again. Lunch or dinner?”
“Neither.”
Evan frowned. “Play right,” he said, then, “Dancing or singing?”
“Dancing.”
Evan laughed. “Really? Okay, hunting or hiding?”
“Hunting.”
“Night or day?”
“Night.”
“Good guys or bad guys?”
“Good.”
“Monsters or angels?”
“Monsters—”
Evan stopped. He looked at Rook straight across the fire. His mouth opened as if preparing to speak, but then it closed. He pulled in his feet and sat crossed legged and looked in the fire. Then he looked at Rook again. He asked, “Rook, do you believe in God?”
Rook was taken aback. Lost for words. Not for the first time, he felt that Evan spoke with thoughts far beyond his years.
Evan repeated, “I said, do you believe in God?”
“How old are you?” Rook asked.
“Six. Almost seven.”
“You’re too young to be thinking about God.”
“I can’t help it sometimes,” Evan said. “Sometimes it’s all I think about. I wonder where He is, what He thinks of me. Sometimes I pray, too. I ask Him for help, but I never hear anything.” Evan quieted and flicked a piece of bark in the fire. Then he said, “I believe in God. But I don’t understand why God lets people do bad things. Why doesn’t God make everyone good? Why does God let the Devil hurt people?”
“You think it’s the Devil that hurts people?”
“Isn’t the Devil the bad guy?”
Rook looked caught by some impossible reckoning. He was reminded of a prayer, a plea, spoken long ago—and the voice that answered.
He said, “I heard someone say once that God gave the Devil the burden of evil. In the new world God had created, this world, people would have the will do as they thought was right, and in order for them to know goodness they had also to know evil. They had to hate and fear it. They had to know its name. So God looked to his angels and asked one of them to fall, to be cast out and hunted, to become the symbol of all evil for all time. It was the Devil that came forward and accepted the burden. Not because he wanted to hurt the world, but because he loved God.”
“But why doesn’t God just let the Devil be good again?”
Rook shifted and looked at the boy in the face. “Have you ever seen someone build a house?”
Evan thought about it. “There was a big building built across our street once.”
“Did you see the construction workers? Men using hammers and tools? A man with a plan of blueprints?”
“There were dump trucks, and a big crane.”
“Right. Well, when that building was finished, did the dump trucks stay across the street, or did they move on to the next job?”
Evan shrugged. “I guess they left.”
“I think God did, too. I think he took off the day the work was done and left this house to the mercy of its myriad tenants.”
Evan shook his head. “The mercy of its what?”
“Nothing. Like I said, you’re too young to be thinking about these kinds of things.”
Evan sat with a deep pensive look on his face. “Who told you all that stuff?” he asked.
Rook stiffened and although he sat in the glow of the fire he appeared withdrawn in shadow. “That’s enough talking,” he said. “It’s time to leave.”
Evan was surprised and he sat back. “Okay,” he said, a little hurt and wondering if he’d done something wrong.
The fire had burned down to embers. Rook stomped the coals with his boots and kicked the ashes to the back of the cave and tossed the stones and the remaining logs outside. He waited until Evan was ready and then he turned and started out into the cold dark. Evan followed at his heels.
They had started back only a little way along the lower ledge of the escarpment when Rook saw the lights. At once he lowered and grabbed Evan’s arm and pulled him to a squat. Below the ridge, the lights of the highway snaked and the town was a sprawling sparkled cloud. The red and blue flashing was sinister and serene.
Keeping low, Rook led Evan along to the gully and told him to hop on his back, and then Rook climbed back up the gorge and emerged on the trailhead. He set Evan on the ground and they cut from the path into the pines.
As if stepping behind a wall, the wind fell and the woods were silent. They could see their breath and the snow was dark blue.
“Wait here,” Rook said.
Evan nodded. Rook walked back out to the trail and stood behind a tree at the top of the cliff and looked down. He could not see all the way but he gathered a fair impression of at least five police cruisers parked along the shoulder of the highway far below. He looked along the length of the trail to the hill where they had come up earlier. In every direction the woods were a deep bluish dark, and the trees had been shaken free of snow in the winds, standing black and skeletal, and for this at least Rook was pleased. It would make escape easier if they were spotted. Although he suspected the police would have dogs. He hurried back to Evan.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They started walking and the snow was deep but light and powdery. Rook sniffed at the air for any kind of scent beyond the cold dormancy of the earth. For the feral, bodily odours of man or animal. There were only faint traces. He paused, then, realizing how much his own keen sense mirrored Evan’s claim to difference. I can smell it, Evan had said.
Perhaps the child had true gifts after all.
Whenever Rook caught even the slightest whiff of anything other than the clear open smell of dead winter, he led Evan in the opposite direction. Together they walked with haste and silence.
They came upon a clearing and below the dusting of snow odd bulbous shapes were arranged in varied rows. Evan stooped and lifted one and shook the snow from it. A thin covering of ice remained. It was all but black. They were small and stunted, half rotten.
“Leave it,” Rook said.
“It’s a pumpkin,” Evan said.
“I said leave it.”
Evan dropped the pumpkin into the snow and they started again. After a moment, Rook paused and put up his hand and turned to sniff the air. From the northwest came a strong smell of fur. But unlike the feral trace Rook had been expecting, this was a sterile aroma like soap. The scent of an animal that was groomed well and kept to live in a cage.
Evan watched Rook’s hand, still held up in the air. The trees creaked in the silence. Evan was about to ask if everything was all right, when the first bark cut through the woods like a gunshot.
Then another bark answered, sounding like an echo. Rook and Evan turned around. The dogs were back somewhere along the trail, but they were coming up fast.
Yellow beams of light shone up through the dark canopy, swaying side to side. The dogs bayed now with the rushing excitement of the chase, and Rook knew they had been found. Unwashed, blood-covered, sweating—it had always only been a matter of time before the dogs had caught their scent. Rook heard the echoing voices of men below the swaying lights.
He looked to Evan. “Can you run?” he asked.
Evan nodded.
“Then do it.”
They both started, running fast and kicking up a trail of powdered snow. The baying of the dogs spread out behind them. Evan kept running. The air was icy in his throat and each breath was a sting. He tried just breathing through his nose.
He stopped after a while and Rook came back to him.
“We need to hurry up,” Rook said.
Evan nodded and wiped his nose. Behind them, the yellow lights shone out wide and the officers’ voices called out to the dogs.
Rook considered their tracks back through the trees and shook his head. The police didn’t even need dogs at this rate. He grabbed Evan under the arms and slung him over his shoulder.
Once more they took off through the snow. Ahead of them, a hill went down to a shallow glade through which a stream flowed east to the cliff side. A second hill rose up out of the glade and was capped with a deeper wood. They came upon the first hill and the snow on the slope was fine and powdery. Rook slid down on the flats of his feet.
At the bottom, Rook crunched through the sheet ice of the frozen stream and paused on the other side and looked back up the hill. The baying of the dogs was quieter. The sound dipped into the glade but it seemed far away. He could no longer hear the calls of the officers, and the canopy was dark above the hill. It was as if the dogs had caught different prey and gone off.
Rook set Evan down and they turned and faced the second hill before them. It was larger and steeper than the slope they had come down.
“Well?” Rook said, looking down at Evan.
“I can do it,” Evan said.
“We’ll keep on through the trees at the top.”
Evan started upon the mount. After two steps he slipped on the ice and staggered, planting his hands into the snow. Then he stood and started again. The snow was deep and heavy in the glade. Rook waited a moment longer, surveying the hill, then followed behind him. He stepped wide to clear the ice of the stream into the snow. Then he stepped again and roared with pain as something tore into his ankle, twisting on his right leg and falling to a knee. Evan spun and slipped.
“What happened?” he cried out.
Rook sat on the ground, leaning forward with his hands wrapped around his right calf. His foot was trapped in a set of sharp teeth below the snow. Evan started down the hill towards him.
Rook saw him and said, “Get! Turn around and get up that hill. Keep going to the trees. I’ll catch up. If I don’t come, just keep running. You know what happens if they catch you.”
“But—”
“Don’t argue,” Rook said.
Evan turned, reluctantly, and continued up the hill. His pace was slow but even and he reached the top. He looked down once and saw Rook watching him, and then he hurried on to the trees as told.
Rook waited until Evan was out of view and then he set his attention to his snared foot. He tried to pull in his leg but a sharp, striking pain stopped him.
Right then, he heard the renewed baying of the dogs. They were back on his scent. He looked up and saw the yellow beams of light casting through the tops of the trees.
He brushed the snow away from his ankle and revealed the full capacity of the trap. It was a rusty leg-hold trap with a six-inch steel mouth, fit for catching coyotes or wolves. The sight caused Rook’s teeth to grind in anger at the thought of the person who had s
et it out here.
He gripped the two metal springs of the trap and squeezed them to release the jaws. His breath held—he squeezed with all his strength. The springs compressed and the teeth of the trap loosened from his bone, but the metal was sleek and wet from the snow and his hands slipped and the trap closed. The razor teeth bore into his ankle and he groaned and leaned back, the pain running up his leg to his hip. He tried again. This time he shook his foot as the springs loosened the teeth, but again his hands slipped and the trap bit into his bone. He let out a roar of unbearable pain that for a brief moment hushed the dogs.
• – •
Evan heard the roar but he stayed true to what Rook had told him and he kept running. A strong wind blew from the east edge of the escarpment and Evan tottered on tired legs and almost fell, but he gathered himself and pushed through it, his arm in front of his face. He entered a dense copse of spruce trees grown broad and full together and Evan had to crawl on all fours to escape the cold scratches of the needles on his face and neck.
Within the cover of the trees the wind was settled and it was almost warm. Evan sat and breathed through his mouth. He could hear very little from beyond them. Then, distantly, he heard the dogs. It sounded like a memory of a noise stuck in his head. He waited. His heart raced. He sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He wanted Rook to come.
Come on, he thought, hearing Rook’s own voice in his head. Come on.
He listened to the dogs baying and they were louder and more excited and then he heard the voices of men calling. A faint yellow light was cast up into the trees around him and the spruce needles became stark and sharp looking. Evan shimmied back from the reach of the light. After a moment it dipped away to darkness. Evan’s heart was pounding. He held his breath. Then for a moment all went quiet. He listened and hoped.
A gunshot fired.
Evan straightened. He was still in the silence that followed.
Then another shot fired, sweeping up through the trees and back.
All at once, Evan leapt up and started running away through the trees. The dense spruce opened into a broader forest of poplars and tall, thin pines that seemed to stretch out ahead of him forever. His calves burned, his right side cramped and his eyes became bleary with tears. But he ran.
Only the Devil Is Here Page 7