Only the Devil Is Here

by Stephen Michell

  Evan’s mouth fell open, as he realized the truth of the stonework structure. It was the mouth of a deep pit.

  There had been a faint whoosh and the tumble of the body falling, and then nothing. No thud or splash when it hit the bottom. No echo. Nothing at all.

  The girl turned and Evan saw her face in the light. It was wet. The jagged scar across her nose was livid and her small eyes sparkling with tears.

  As she crossed in front of his cage, Evan asked, “Why are you doing this?”

  The girl stopped short and turned her head, searching at first, as if ignorant of Evan and his cage. Then she saw him and their eyes met and locked.

  The girl said nothing. She had a shocked, almost petrified look on her face. Evan wanted her to speak. He wanted her to tell him why this was happening. He remembered her name and said it in his head: Maeve, Maeve, Maeve . . . why are you doing this?

  . . . I was his first, she said.

  As if against his will, Evan slid up to the gate of his cage. He had heard Maeve’s voice, but not in his ears. She had spoken right inside his head. He could feel Maeve’s voice moving through him like a small snake slithering up his spine. It was a discomforting sensation. Maeve’s voice—small, terrified, alone—was being drawn to Evan in his special-thinking way.

  I hear you, he said in his head.

  Maeve’s lips were still, but her voice came clearly.

  . . . I was the first he ever took. He said I was unique. He said I was blessed. He said I was destined to help save the human being. He never meant to hurt me. I was the first he saved.

  The girl’s eyes narrowed as she felt a faint tingling go up her spine. A warm sensation popped and spread across the left side of her brain.

  As a little girl she had gone to play by the river. . . .

  I remember the willow trees looked like old witches washing their long hair in the water. They had just cut the grass and it was damp and the loose bits of grass clung to my ankles and in between my toes. There was a hill that went down to the river. All across the water, these little bugs skated making ripples. . . .

  Her voice went away and Evan felt a quiet weeping. Then her voice returned.

  . . . Obey him. Be helpful. Give him everything. . . .

  He told me I had to go with him. My mom was worried and she’d asked him to come get me. He’d take me home. He told me to get in the car.

  He can show mercy. One day we are going to die.

  Maeve stood still in front of Evan’s cage and stared down into his rust-tinted eyes and then she blinked and shook her head. She looked at the ground as if she had lost something and then she straightened and turned away, crossing the room through the light. She went up the wooden steps and pulled the door closed with a slam.

  Evan squatted in the dark. His body was humming and he had a strange, sour taste in his mouth. The girl’s voice lingered in his head, in his whole body, as if flowing in his blood, gathering and revolving in his chest. He wriggled with the discomfort of it but there was no getting away. It felt like someone was digging a hole in him.

  He buried his face in his hands. But where a feeling—a compulsion—to cry had once lived in him, there now existed a stark solemnity. He was reminded of the song he had heard in the cave and he cringed and wriggled to get away from the hollowing pain. He saw Rook’s face in the dark and he wanted to scream.

  At that moment Evan heard another voice speak.

  “Hello?” it called.

  Evan lifted his head. He sniffled and listened, doubtful, suspicious.

  “Are you there?” the voice asked.

  Evan felt his own voice come up like a tremor. He said, “I’m here.”

  There was silence. Evan waited. He had heard the voice in the air, in his ears, a real speaking voice. One of the other kids. It had to be real.

  A cage rattled. “You can’t talk to them,” the voice said. “It’s not allowed. They’re going to come for you now.”

  Evan said nothing. His heart started to race. Rather than fear, the warning had filled him with excitement. An impatient rush. Thoughts of escape.

  “Did you hear me?” the child asked.

  “I think I can get us out of here,” Evan said.

  Silence. Then, “You shouldn’t have talked to her. She’ll tell about it. She always tells. They’re going to hurt you for it. To train you. Just do whatever they say.”

  Evan heard footsteps thump across the floor above. He was breathing fast, the cold air like a strange ignition, and he was wondering how long it would be before they came for him. Every moment felt so long in the dark. He wished he could see the other child who spoke to him.

  “What’s your name?” Evan said.

  The child refused to answer. Doubt flooded Evan’s senses, and he wondered if there had even been a child speaking at all.

  The door swung open and the tawny light cut across the dirt floor of the chamber.

  Evan looked out to see who was coming down the stairs. The steps were slow and soft on the boards. He huddled against the gate of his cage and took a deep breath.

  After a moment, he saw the frail, feeble legs of the one called Kinny emerge at the bottom of the stairs. His small, pigeon-toed feet staggered into the chamber. Evan closed his eyes.

  Okay, you can do this.

  He said the man’s name in his head, Kinny, and he said it again, thinking Kinny, Kinny, Kinny . . .

  He heard Kinny’s slow steps drag across the dirt floor, heard him wheezing and sniffling. It went around in a circle and then crossed to Evan’s side of the chamber. Then Evan’s cage rattled. He heard Kinny groan as he bent down. His knees cracked. The cage rattled again.

  This is it.

  When Evan opened his eyes, Kinny was kneeling in front of his cage. The man’s patchy-bearded face was eye-level with Evan. He was grinning, his top lip peeling back above his gums.

  Evan looked right back. He stared straight into Kinny’s green, murky eyes, thinking Kinny, Kinny, Kinny . . .

  And then it seemed as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and cut some invisible stitching from Kinny’s vocal chords, threads that had bound him to silence for a long time, and Evan heard the man’s inner voice pour out. Broken and tormented, Kinny’s words erupted in Evan’s head with heavy sobs.

  I’m so sorry, Kinny blubbered.

  Evan listened. He felt Kinny’s voice slide along his spine and he followed it, figuring it out, trying to speak back.

  I’m so, so sorry. Kinny’s voice poured out. He made me do it. He always makes me do it. I can’t stop him. . . . I don’t know how. . . .

  The sense of Kinny’s voice, his fear and pain, swirled in Evan like a rotten stench and it made him gag. He nearly vomited what little he had in his stomach onto the floor of his cage. But he kept his eyes locked on Kinny’s and listened and followed the man’s voice as it slithered through him and then he caught it and he answered.

  He spoke slowly at first: Kinny. Kinny, listen to me. It’s okay.

  . . . I wish I could stop him. . . . I wish I could make it stop. . . . I want to go back with Miss Tolson. . . . I want to go back. . . .

  It’s okay, Kinny. . . .

  But the man’s horrid, pained voice flooded out. She was so nice to me. She didn’t make me do the bad things. She was nice. She let me peel the apples in the fall time. I could do them really good in one long peel, round and round. And she’d let me peel one extra and I got to eat it when I was done. It was fuzzy without the skin and it went all brown, but I liked the brown parts the most. Miss Tolson was nice to me. . . .

  When she died I didn’t know what I . . . Then Al said I could come with him. I could help him. I didn’t know how to stop it. . . .

  Kinny, listen to me. It’s okay now. You can help make it stop. Now’s your chance to make it all better. I want you to open my cage and let me out.

  I’m so, so sorry. . . .

  Open my cage, Kinny. Now.

  Kinny’s hands rose to the double-pinned lo
ck and pulled the topmost pin and then his hands lowered mechanically and he pulled up the second. The door of the cage gave way with a pop.

  Good, Kinny. You’re helping. Now go stand in the corner.

  I’m so sorry.

  Go. Don’t come out until I tell you.

  Kinny stood and turned and walked with his arms flat at his sides straight to the corner of the chamber between two empty cages and faced the pinewood boarding. Evan waited and then pushed open the cage door and crawled out. The dirt floor was cold but it felt alive and fresh and he was glad to touch it. He looked up the stairs in the light. The door was open. He couldn’t see much of the room above, didn’t know where it would lead him, but he wasn’t going to give up.

  You can get out of here.

  He squatted at the edge of his cage for a moment longer and waited. The creak of a chair and other vague noises carried from the floor above, but it was mostly quiet. He crawled farther into the chamber.

  Straight ahead of him was the stonework pit. Evan skirted it and crawled across the ground to the other side of the chamber. He passed an empty cage, then came to another and stopped. Inside was the child that had spoken to him. A red-haired boy about Evan’s age.

  Evan glanced once at Kinny, who stood still in the corner as commanded, then back to the boy. He put his finger over his lips. The red-haired boy sat on his haunches with his knees up. Evan could smell him but he tried to ignore it as he felt along the frame of the cage for the pins. He drew up the first. It made a dull ping sound.

  Evan stopped and looked over his shoulder and waited. Footsteps creaked from above. Nothing crossed in the light of the doorway. He turned back to the cage and reached to the second pin and started pulling it up—

  Sss . . .

  Evan turned around fast. He looked to the corner, but Kinny stood as before. Evan looked around the rest of the shadowy chamber. There was nothing else there.

  The boy in the cage shifted and the cage rattled and Evan turned back. He looked in at the boy and they nodded to each other. Evan reached back to the second pin and started again. Then he stopped once more and glanced over his shoulder. A low, whispering hiss rolled towards him.

  Sss . . .

  Evan turned his back to the cage, leaving the final pin still locked. The boy inside rattled the gate, but Evan ignored him. He moved in search of the sound, drawn by a will not his own, drawn by a knowledge that what he heard was a voice.

  “Where are you going?” the other boy whispered.

  Evan knew he should turn back. He should pull up the final pin and let the boy out. He knew it. Go back, he told himself. Stop!

  But he moved as if by a power beyond him. Like curiosity coupled with an innate sense of return, blind and mindless as the last few steps taken when arriving home. The voice called to him.

  Sss . . . Sss . . . Sss . . .

  It led him to the stonework at the centre of the chamber. When he reached it he placed his palms flat on the cold stone rim and leaned over the mouth and looked down into the dark hollow pit.

  The sound rose up from below, and Evan heard many tongues speaking at once. He could feel them reaching along his spine, like the voices of Maeve and Kinny. They pleaded.

  Such suffering . . . he butchered us and left us to rot . . . avenge us . . .

  Entranced by the voices, Evan did not notice the shadow that cut through the light on the stairs. He didn’t hear the heavy tread on the wood boards, and he didn’t hear Al’s rasping breath until it was too late.

  “What the fucking hell do you thinking you’re doing?”

  Evan turned around as Al’s fist cracked against the side of his head and he landed flat on his stomach in the dirt. Bleary-eyed, he saw Al’s bare feet stomp before his face. A sweaty hand gripped the back of his neck and he was yanked to his feet, trying hard not to scream.

  Rook wasted no time after freeing his foot from the trap and cauterizing the wound with the flame he had conjured, but still he walked with a limp. He picked up a set of tracks in the snow through the woods and followed them to the edge of the trees where they vanished below the sweep of a broad clearing. There had been three sets of tracks, two large enough to be the footprints of men and one set much smaller and closer-spaced that Rook believed to be Evan’s.

  Standing at the border of the clearing, he estimated their path. A fresh snow had started to fall over the clearing. Large white flakes whirled in the wind and the field looked like a sandy white beach smoothed by the roll of waves. Behind him the trees swayed and creaked in the grey dark. It must have been about midnight. He had not heard or smelled any sign of the police or the dogs. He had time.

  He squatted near the last trace of the tracks and aligned his eye with even the slightest marks or indentations in the snow. He squinted against the slanting wind and scratched through his beard to his chin. His right calf was still numb and it felt like he was squatting on one leg. But at least he was no longer bleeding. He closed his eyes and tried to listen.

  “Where are you?” he muttered.

  He breathed calmly. The wind whipped past his ears and rolled away and came back. The woods rustled. The highway hummed far in the distance. And then he heard the first beat. It was distant, but he heard another. He focused, cutting away the wind and the sway of the trees, and then he heard the child’s heartbeat clearly.

  It was racing.

  Rook stood stiffly and started across the clearing.

  He followed the beat in his head until he spotted the dark shape of a cabin in the distance. Glancing down, he discovered shallow dips in the snow. He stepped back. The tracks were half-buried but he found three sets as before, one set much smaller than the others. Aligning his eye to their course, he saw that they curved and vanished and reappeared, all three leading straight to the cabin. He took off at a limping run.

  When Rook reached the cabin, he approached around its western wall looking for the door. The racing beat in his head had grown louder. He knew Evan was inside.

  The cabin’s windows were crudely shuttered, nails sticking out through the slats, but slivers of the inner light escaped along the frame. A chimney pipe smoked from the roof, and Rook followed the billowing trail around the other side of the cabin. He spotted a white passenger van parked under a tree, and another car buried in snow.

  The door to the cabin was sheltered under a blue tarpaulin billowing in the wind. As he reached it, he heard a scream. Whether it was real above the wind or connected to the heartbeat he followed in his head, he couldn’t tell.

  The door was locked and so Rook kicked it in. The force of it shuddered up his leg, and he almost dropped to a knee, but a rush of adrenalin kept him going. With a crash, the door had hit the adjoining wall.

  Rook stepped over the threshold. The stifled air of the cabin reeked with festering rot and the metallic saline of blood.

  In the centre of the room there was a table, and a young girl stood at its edge holding a tin pail. She stared at Rook with a shocked, guilty expression. Behind the table, a large man whose bare chest was matted with brown hair and spotted with blood stood panting. A brief look of surprise swept over his concave face like light glimmering through a bowl. A third person stood off to Rook’s right side in the corner of the cabin. He was a small and feeble-looking man, wide-eyed and hesitant.

  Rook saw these three people and saw them only. He knew in his heart that Evan was here. Standing in the doorway, Rook drew the night in around him. His eyes turned black as the space between stars, and the cabin darkened. Like animals, everyone in the cabin could sense the predator in Rook. The girl froze. The big man squared his shoulders. A dark patch spilled down the feeble man’s left leg. Then Rook started for them.

  The girl turned and fled through a curtain into another room. Her tin pail clanged to the floor.

  Rook went for the larger man first. As he passed the stovetop, in one smooth motion he picked up a cast-iron skillet that was steaming and swung it sideways at the feeble man behind him. The
man screamed and fell to his knees, clutching his face. Rook continued forward without pause.

  The bare-chested man had picked up an iron poker. When he swung, the poker smacked flat against Rook’s open palm and his fingers closed around it. Rook stepped once and picked up a clear glass jug from the table and smashed it over the man’s head. He pulled the poker free and whipped the man across his knees, dropping him. Rook struck him across the face with the poker and then tossed it across the room.

  Right then, the girl ran back out of the other room. Rook caught her by the shoulders, but not before she drove a knife into Rook’s abdomen. He growled and pushed her back and then punched her in the face. She fell into the doorway, tearing down the curtain, and lay on the floor between the two rooms.

  Rook groaned and placed his hand on the knife handle sticking from him. He started to pull it out, but decided against it. From the corner of the room, the scalded man lay curled and whimpering. The big bare-chested man lay on the floor, his face a bloodied, pulped mess. Rook stepped over the girl and went into the next room.

  There were two beds and Rook pulled back the blankets and turned over the mattresses. He knelt and looked under the wood bunks. He stood. He called out Evan’s name.

  Nothing.

  Rook went back to the main room, stepping over the girl, and knelt beside the table. The bare-chested man had turned over on his stomach and Rook rolled him back.

  “Where is the boy?” Rook asked.

  The man wheezed, his bloodied face beginning to swell.

  Rook grabbed a piece of shattered glass and pressed it into the man’s right ear. A sharp cry pierced the silence of the cabin.

  “Tell me where he is!”

  The man raised his arm and pointed into the second room.

  “Where?” Rook asked again.

  “In the cellar. There’s a door in the wall.”

  Rook stood and went again into the second room. There was a sheet pinned to the wall across from the beds. He tore it down and there was indeed a small door hidden under it. He snapped back the latch and pulled it open. The smell hit him and Rook put his arm over his nose and mouth. In the meagre light he saw a short staircase leading down into near total darkness.