Evan had finished the bowl of stew.
“Was that good?” Al said.
Evan nodded. He blinked and the feeling of his eyes closing was comfortable.
Al poured another drink and said, “I’m sorry you were kidnapped, kid. You got any idea why the guy picked you? I mean of all the kids out there, why you?”
Evan looked at Al in the face. And then, boldly, he said. “Because I’m different.”
“Oh, you’re different, eh? How’s that?”
Evan pursed his lips, making a face as if he had an idea, but a yawn overcame him and he shrugged.
Al said, “I didn’t think you would know. But I’ll tell you the answer. The truth is there isn’t any reason. You got kidnapped just ’cause. You’re not special or different at all.”
Evan shook his head. “But Rook was protecting me.”
“Protecting you, eh? Well, now he’s gone. So who’s going to protect you now?”
Evan said, “I have to protect myself.”
Al grinned and nodded. “An increase in intelligence is his reward,” he said, and then, “Anyway, you must be getting sleepy. It’s late. You can sleep here tonight and in the morning we can take you wherever you want to go. How’s that sound?”
Evan looked into the empty bowl and then he glanced at Kinny beside him and back at Al. The two men seemed to be watching him with a combined focus, as if they were either side of the same pair of eyes.
“Can I have some more stew?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know, can you?” Al shot back.
Kinny squeaked and the boy looked at him and the small, doggish man had his hand cupped over his giggling mouth. His eyes were waxy.
Evan looked back at Al. He said, “May I have some more?”
Al’s clear blue eyes smiled. “Of course,” he said. “Kinny, go tell Mother Maeve she can come out for dinner now. Then we should all get to bed. It’s almost midnight. This was a very special day.”
At the renewed sound of the dogs’ baying, Rook turned around in the snow. As he watched, he saw the lead dog appear at the top of the hill above the glade and stop silhouetted in the low glare of the police flashlights, its breath expelling in billows. Two other dogs joined the first. Together they gathered on the hill and howled. Rook grimaced. He generally liked dogs.
He turned from the sight of his pursuers and leaned over his trapped leg and felt for the grounding chain. It was buried deep below the snow in a frozen covering of leaves. When his fingers caught the chain he pulled it up and yanked hard and the chain fed straight way to the grounding spike. He sat forward and pulled his free leg up so he was crouched over the trap.
Behind him, the dogs howled and yipped and whined, holding at the top of the hill. The yellow beams of light bounced side to side through the canopy and Rook heard the officers calling out, heard the clamour of their running on the hill. Then the yellow lights swung down and the snow all around Rook turned crystalline.
Rook reached forward and gripped the grounding spike with both hands and leaned back, pulling with all his weight. The spike tore out of the ground, taking with it a large chunk of frozen earth. Quickly, Rook wedged his free foot down and stood with the grounding chain and spike in hand.
From the top of the hill, an officer yelled, “Hey, you down there! Don’t move!”
With the lights at his back, Rook heard the officers’ shuffling, sliding footsteps as they descended the hill, trying not to slip. For a moment, the lights fell away from him. The cops were no doubt illuminating the paths of their own feet. Rook felt the embrace of shadow over his shoulders like a warm blanket, a cloak falling over his head. He took off at a run down the length of the frozen creek, as fast as he could manage on his hobbled foot.
Shouts echoed behind him. A gun fired and a bullet whizzed past Rook’s head, the sound of the shot tearing up through the woods. The dogs bayed loudly.
Rook ducked towards the ground and then turned out of the creek bed. He lumbered up the hill, hands first in the snow, clambering like an animal. His trapped foot lagged lamely behind him. A second shot went off.
Halfway up, he paused on the slope and squatted to look back. There were six officers down in the glade and they looked small from his vantage. Their lights swung side to side in an almost comical manner, covering the course of Rook’s escape along the creek.
Ahead of the officers, the dogs pulled hard against their leashes and collars. The lead dog was strained forward, dragging its handler behind, and driving its face through the snow in a zigzag pattern. Then it caught wind of something and started up onto the slope. Its handler and another officer followed.
Rook watched them. They were ascending the hill at least ten metres back from where he sat. The other four cops remained in the glade scouting the creek.
Rook took a deep breath. His right leg was going numb below the knee, and there was blood in the snow around his foot. The trap was a good twenty pounds dragging on him. He couldn’t run anymore. He was still holding the grounding chain and the long iron spike, clumped with dirt and snow, but what he was going to do with them he had little idea. He shifted his weight. Some of the dirt from the spike broke loose and fell into the snow around his foot, into his blood. An idea came to him.
The lead dog was halfway up the hill, almost parallel to Rook along the slope. Rook pulled up his right leg and started to the top of the hill at a low crouch.
At the crest of the hill, the ground flattened upon a snow-swept clearing before the copse of spruce trees. There was a strong wind blowing from the east and it would carry Rook’s scent straight to the dogs.
He broke loose the rest of the clumped dirt from the spike and packed it into a ball, then rolled it in the bloodstained snow around his foot. For good measure, he squeezed the trap hard on his ankle, repressing a cry of pain, so that his blood would run fresh again. He mixed the dirt, snow, and fresh blood together in his hands, and then looked up past the trees and called to the night.
The night rushed into him instantly, as if it had been waiting. His heart jackhammered in his chest. His eyes sharpened into obsidian voids.
He dug a shallow pocket in the snow and placed his mixture in and covered it. Then he crept across the clearing towards the spruce trees. When he reached the edge of the trees he stopped and pulled in his leg and placed his hand flat on the ground. The snow melted at his touch. What he was about to do would likely draw wider, unwanted attention, but he could think of no other option.
Two beams of light swung over the top of the hill and then the lead dog appeared. Its leash was a straight black line shooting back from its neck, and its handler came up at the other end of the leash. The second officer followed. Their lights searched the clearing.
“Rise and take form, shadow,” Rook whispered.
The wind rushed over his shoulder, but he felt nothing of it. His senses were tuned to the heat and current running fast through him, down his arm, into his hand where it steamed in the snow, and into the ground.
From the spot where he had buried his blood and the dirt of the earth, a dark shape emerged. At first little more than a cloud, its constitution quickly thickened until it resembled a man much the size and stature of Rook, standing plainly in the clearing. The wind blew.
The lead dog raised its head and barked and leapt forward. The two officers turned and spotted the figure in the clearing.
“Now run,” Rook said.
Rook’s shadowed duplicate took off across the clearing. It reached the crest of the hill and continued running, vanishing from Rook’s vantage point. The lead dog and the two cops rushed down the hill after it. Rook let out his breath.
He didn’t know how long his conjuring would carry his scent, but it would give the dogs a good hunt through the night. He hoped it would tie them up until morning. Of course, there was now the possibility that something other than the police would come looking for him, but he tried not to think about that. He still had more immediate problems.
&
nbsp; Easing up on his foot, Rook tried to stand but thought better of it. He crawled under the low branches of the spruce trees instead and gathered himself on the other side. With a groan, he stretched his right leg out flat in the snow and leaned over his knee and reached for the two springs of the trap. As he leaned forward he winced. He drew a breath. He steadied himself. He gripped the metal springs one in each hand. Then he closed his hands hard and squeezed. He gritted his teeth against it and his hands shook, cold and white-knuckled, and the cutting pain shot up his leg into his lower back. Slowly, the bowed metal bands began to close. He squeezed them together harder. As the trap opened, Rook felt the teeth coming out from the flesh of his ankle. He wiggled his foot side to side and moved the trap away, still gripping the springs. Then he pulled his foot out fast and dropped the springs and the trap snapped closed in the snow.
Rook fell back. He lay with his leg outstretched and free, staring up into the spruce canopy. His foot was numb. He could feel the night moving through the rest of his body. He sat up and cupped his hands over his mouth and began to breathe in and out against his palms. It took longer than usual, but then smoke escaped between his fingers. A small flame.
Evan woke in a fetal position on a frozen, jagged floor, and at first the distance between dream and waking was hard to cross. He came from a faraway feeling of flowing ice and drifting snow into a sudden, shocking sense of his cold, naked, shivering body. He opened and closed his eyes. A deep impenetrable dark surrounded him, the dark of nowhere and nothing.
In a panic, he sat up and tucked in his legs. The jagged floor scraped his skin, and it felt like he was lying on a metal grate. From beyond, the dark rattled and clanged.
He stuck out his hand and his palm hit a lattice of cold steel. His fingers went through the spaces and grasped it like chain link. The tang of rusted metal came under his nose but even more overwhelming in the air was a rotten stink of death and sodden earth.
He swivelled and in doing so felt his toes scrape against cold lattice behind him. He stuck his hand to his right and felt the steel links and reached to his left where his fingers grasped the same. He put his hands up above his head and they extended in a cramped arc over him before encountering the steel roof of the confinement. He was trapped in a cage.
His heartbeat stopped, or so it felt. Then it started again at a feverish pace. He scrambled. Having swivelled around he had forgotten which way was forward, which way he had been facing when he woke. He felt, trembling, for the nearest wall of the cage and shimmied against it and gripped the links with both hands. He pressed his face against his knuckles like a prisoner peering from behind the bars of his cell into the pitch dark.
For some time, Evan sat still against the edge of the cage. Slowly he began to shiver in the cold. Then he shook harder—his entire body gave way to a violent convulsion and he screamed and slammed his body into the wall of the cage. He rocked back and slammed again, screaming, scraping his shoulder against the jagged steel. Blood ran down his arm.
His energy wore out fast. Weary and hurting, he hung limp against the cage with his fingers gripping the links. His breathing came as a long, crippling whine. He closed his eyes.
The cold sodden stink of the dark clouded around him and he felt numb. It was as if the darkness was inside his head, blotting out all else and leaving him empty. And yet, with a small sense of surprise and pride, he noticed that he was not crying.
It was then Evan heard a voice. His eyes flew open and he lifted his head. The dark rose before him like a blank wall. He saw nothing.
Then he heard the sound again and for a moment he thought it was the hiss of a snake. He drew up his legs and sat with his arms wrapped around his knees. He waited.
The strange sound came again.
Sss . . .
It was faint, but Evan was sure now that it was a voice.
“Hello?” he called.
Sss . . .
“Who’s there?”
At that moment, the darkness split open and Evan ducked his head and covered his eyes from an almost blinding light. He heard the stomp of feet coming down a short set of steps. When he peered from under his arm he saw there had been a door opened from above and a tawny light spread within the room, defining the walls and floor. A man had come down and was lumbering back and forth, his path sloppy. The stinging smell of liquor moved with him, mixing with the chamber’s foul rot. It was Al. Evan could see the man’s green gown hanging past his knees as he staggered around the space.
It was a dirt-dug chamber with rough pinewood boards framed against the walls to keep the earth at bay. Evan saw now the fine steel links of the cage in which he was trapped. The links were rusted and stained. The cage had double-pinned locks on the front gate.
Around the perimeter of the room there were other cages. He counted six of them, each also rusted and jagged-looking. In the centre of the chamber, there was a cylindrical construction of stones, but Evan was at a loss as to what it was.
Most of the cages appeared to be empty, but not all. When Evan saw the first pair of eyes he shrank away in fear, but he crept forward again after a moment and looked.
There were two other kids, each in a separate cage. Evan was unsure whether they were girls or boys but they seemed about his age. Their hair looked long and dark and matted, and their faces were small and dirt-smeared. Only their eyes were bright. A glossy luminance as if the tawny light was bouncing from them before it could enter. An expression of sheer hopelessness was echoed on both of their faces. Evan wondered how long they had been down here.
All of a sudden, a shadow shifted past Evan’s cage and Al crouched in front of him and stuck his bowl-shaped face up against the links. Evan drew back.
Al peered into the cage, as might a spectator at a zoo. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t be scared.” His breath was rancid, his face haggard, plastered with drunken sweat. He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, making a soft clicking sound with his tongue against his teeth. “Hey, little guy,” he said. “Come on, don’t be scared. How do you like your new home?”
“Let me out,” Evan said.
Al laughed. Then he steadied his gaze and looked straight at Evan. “I don’t like when you bark,” he said. “It won’t do you any good.”
Evan screamed. “Let me out!”
Al lunged at the cage and grabbed both sides with his hands. His thick fingers wrapped through the links.
“No!” he yelled. “I caught you. By my blood, it’s what I was destined to do. You’re not going anywhere.”
Evan stared out at the man and his eyes burned with a rusty colour as a wave of fury overtook his terror for a moment. Al registered Evan’s eyes with a slight tilt of his head. Then he drunkenly wiped his mouth.
“We have the power to be gods,” Al said. “But we live like animals.” He levelled his thick finger at Evan and said, “You are an animal and animals need to be controlled. When an animal species gets out of control, you know what happens? It gets culled. Intelligent forces come into play. But you don’t kill the adults. No. Killing adults isn’t going to solve the problem. Instead, you have to kill the young.”
Al stood and crossed the room. His walk was crooked, bent forward and turned back to keep his eyes trained on Evan’s. He stopped in front of one of the other cages. The child inside squirmed to the back and the cage rattled.
Al knelt and looked back at Evan again. “This is a great work,” he said. “One to save the human being. Pure almighty human intelligence will become again, and we will reclaim this place. You, I think, will come to understand. Maybe you will even help. Like you said, you’re special. But not all of these little beasts are special like you. No. Most of them are just animals. Most of them are dead already.”
Al turned and pulled up the pins of the gate and opened the cage and reached in. Right away, the child started screaming. Evan shrank away from the sound, but still he heard the cage rattling and the child screaming and crying and kicking and then he glanced up a
nd saw Al dragging the naked, squirming child out by the ankles.
Evan shut his eyes. He cupped his hands over his ears to shut out the awful noises. Al stomped up the wooden staircase. The door closed with a thud and hushed the chamber back into darkness, but still Evan could hear the screaming.
He sat cupping his ears. The cries shot out in bursts, burning horrible images into Evan’s vision in the dark.
When the screams finally stopped, there was another sound that was somehow equally as horrible. Silence. A raw, unbearable silence, in the cold, in the dark.
Whatever length of time passed, Evan had no real way of knowing but for the slowly calming measure of his breath. The cold dark enveloped him and he shivered. His earlier sleep had been short and given him no rest. He felt the pull of his fatigue, and yet he had never in his life been more awake and alert. He sat with his eyes open, his arms wrapped around his knees, watching every tiny shift and ripple in the blackness.
When the door opened again and the tawny light cut through the dark, it was not Al who entered but the young girl, Maeve. Her footsteps sounded on the wooden stair. Evan saw her shadow first, long and thin. Then the girl appeared in the light. In her arms she carried the child, lengthwise as she might have carried a bundle of firewood. The child’s pale limbs hung limp.
She crossed to the centre of the chamber and stood before the stonework construction. Evan still could not figure out what the stone formation was, but the way the girl stood in front of it made him think of churches and candles. A crude altar.
The girl leaned over the stonework, holding out the child’s body. Evan watched her. She lowered her arms, her head bowed, and then in a swift and graceful motion, she dropped the child’s body and it disappeared from sight.
Only the Devil Is Here Page 9