Only the Devil Is Here

by Stephen Michell

  Ducking his head, he went down the stairs. He froze when he saw the cages, the full reality of this place dawning on him at once. In the cage nearest the stairs he saw Evan, and the sight made his chest heave.

  Evan lay curled and naked with his wrists and ankles bound together behind his back. A leather muzzle was buckled onto his face. His rust-coloured eyes were bright and when he saw Rook, they ran with tears.

  Rook opened the cage and pulled Evan out gently. He carried him up the stairs and placed him on the bed and removed the muzzle from his face. Evan gasped. Rook untied his wrists and ankles and Evan curled into himself.

  Rook covered Evan with a blanket. He looked around the room for clothes. A pair of dirty socks hung over one of the bunk posts. Rook grabbed the socks and fished for Evan’s little feet under the blanket and fitted the socks over his toes and pulled them up his ankles.

  “Rook . . .” Evan said.

  Underneath one of the beds Rook found a garbage bag filled with clothes. The articles varied in size and condition but they were all children’s clothes. There must have been a dozen or more pairs of pants. Rook dug out underwear and a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and sweater and he dressed Evan, kneeling in front of him. He found Evan’s boots and his oversized peacoat, strapped the boots and buttoned the coat.

  “Rook,” Evan said. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Well, I’m not. We have to go.”

  “Wait,” Evan said. “Down there. We have to let him out.”

  Rook glanced over his shoulder to the small open doorway and the dark staircase. He turned back to Evan.

  “There’s someone else down there?” he asked.

  Evan nodded. “Another little boy.”

  Evan got off the bed and walked to the doorway. He waited for Rook to follow him and they went down.

  In the cellar, Evan crossed to boy’s cage and pulled up the second pin and the door popped open. Evan looked in and saw the boy sitting cramped at the back.

  “Hey,” Evan said. “You can come out now, it’s okay.”

  The boy shook his head.

  Evan beckoned to him. “We’re safe,” Evan said. “Trust me.”

  The child shuffled forward. Evan glanced back at Rook and saw him looking down into the stonework pit.

  “They put the bodies down there,” Evan said.

  Rook glanced at Evan, then looked down into the pit again. He grabbed hold of its stonework edge which cracked under his grip. His whole body shook with suppressed violence, as though the truth of what lay in those depths had been revealed to him alone. Then all at once he wrenched himself away and stormed up the stairs.

  Evan called after him, but Rook didn’t answer. The sounds of his heavy feet on the floor above made the newly freed child recoil back into his cage.

  Evan turned to him. “It’s okay,” he said. “He’s on our side. Come on out.”

  Then they heard Rook’s stomping again. He sounded much heavier. Across the two rooms and coming down the stairs. When Rook emerged in the chamber with the light at his back, his silhouette looked like some huge, hulking monster. He had the man, Al, slung over his shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” Evan said in alarm.

  Rook said nothing. He stepped to the edge of the pit and swung Al off his shoulder and laid him out across the mouth of the stonework. Al gasped and tried to sit up but Rook placed a hand on Al’s chest and then punched him in the face.

  Al’s head reeled back. He coughed and choked with blood. Then he started to laugh.

  “Go ahead,” Al muttered. “Send me down. Send me to be with those I saved. Let me go to them. Let me be saved, too. Go on. Do it.”

  Rook glared at him. “You’re going to Hell,” he said.

  Again, Al let out a choked laugh. Rook punched him again. Then he grabbed Al’s legs and folded them up towards his chest and started to cram the man down into the pit.

  “Yes,” Al said. “Send me to them. Send me down!”

  “No,” Evan shouted, running over to Rook and grabbing his arm. “Stop it!”

  Rook shook Evan off. “This has nothing to do with you!”

  “You can’t kill him. You have to leave him for the cops.”

  Rook let up and held Al still.

  “He wants you to kill him,” Evan said.

  “Good. He deserves to die.”

  “But it’s better if we leave him for the cops. That’s what he’s scared of.”

  Rook fumed but relented. He lifted Al back up and dumped him on the floor.

  “It’s better this way,” Evan said. “Let the cops get him.”

  Rook said nothing. He turned away and rubbed his face with both hands as once again a kind of rigid violence went through him.

  Seated on the dirt floor with his back against the stonework pit, Al let out a slight sigh of relief. He pushed the blood around in his mouth with his tongue and then spat and wiped some blood from his face. Then he laughed again.

  He said, “Oh, I’m not scared of going to Hell. You think you’ve been there? Well let me tell you, I’m there all the time.”

  Evan glared at him. “Shut up,” he said. “Just stop talking.”

  Al rolled his gaze to Evan. “Oh, how the little beast barks. Bark, bark, bark! This is the real hell, among these animals, pretending.”

  Evan saw Rook’s fists clench several times, his whole body rigid.

  “And that’s why I had to do it,” Al said. “And I’ll do it again.”

  Slowly, Rook turned around. He stared down at the man on the floor. Then he lowered to a knee beside him. He looked at the dirt around his feet, as if considering its chemistry. Evan watched him and wished Rook would stand up and walk away, but he said nothing this time. He waited.

  Al started to say something, but all at once Rook grabbed his head with his whole hand and smashed it against the side of the stonework until it came apart like a big red egg. He hooked his hands under Al’s armpits and hoisted him up to a seated position on the edge of the stone, then shoved him backwards into the pit. He slid a ways and finally dropped.

  There was a slight whoosh sound. Rook glanced at Evan and then turned and walked to the staircase.

  “Don’t take long,” he said over his shoulder.

  Rook went upstairs and found that the girl was no longer lying on the floor between the two rooms. The feeble man whom he had scalded was also gone. He stepped outside and saw their tracks leading away to the trees beyond the vehicles. With a swift yank, he pulled the girl’s knife from his side and tossed it into the snow. Warm blood ran down his thigh. He placed his hand over the wound and once more looked up into the night sky, but drew nothing to him. He couldn’t muster the call. His eyes closed and his shoulder slumped. He wanted to sit down. He went back inside to find something to keep pressure on his wound.

  – •

  Evan came up the stairs with the red-haired boy following him. Rook stood in the doorway between the two upper rooms. He had a blanket in his hands. When the red-haired boy saw Rook, he almost screamed.

  “It’s okay,” Evan said. “He won’t hurt you.”

  Rook handed the blanket to Evan, who gave it to the other boy and helped him wrap himself. Then they found him some clothes and helped him dress. The boy sat down on the bed.

  Rook looked at Evan and said, “Tell him to stay right there. The police should find this place by the time the sun comes up.”

  “I want to stay with him,” Evan said.

  “We’re not staying.”

  Evan said nothing. He looked only at the red-haired boy. Then he said, “Okay, just stay here. The police are coming. They’ll find you.”

  The boy stared at Evan. He pulled the blanket closer to his chin.

  “Let’s go,” Rook said.

  Evan refused to answer.

  “Now.”

  When they left, Evan turned and gave the boy a last look before he and Rook walked out the front door. Outside, they heard the sound of sirens rising over the w
oods.

  Rook had found the keys to the white passenger van hanging on a nail, and he lifted Evan into his seat and then got in on the driver’s side. Evan sat with his hands in his lap. The van was cold and the darkness seemed to press against the glass.

  “Why can’t we take that boy with us?” Evan said.

  “Because we can’t. He’ll be better off if he waits here for the police.”

  “But I wouldn’t be, would I?”

  Rook slid the key in the ignition. “No,” he said. “We have to keep going.”

  “You mean keep running,” Evan said.

  Rook said nothing. The engine started and the dashboard lit up. The digital clock read: 1:42 a.m. The gas light came on, the tank sitting on empty.

  Better than nothing, Rook thought. He switched on the headlights.

  The red-haired boy was standing out in front of the van. His eyes were gone, burned-out to blackened holes. It made his face looked shadowed even in the glare of the headlights, but Rook and Evan recognized the dreadful sight right away. It was the same thing they had seen on the bus.

  Evan screamed. “Rook, out there!”

  “I see it. Hold on.”

  Rook pulled the transmission arm into drive and put his foot on the gas and the van drove forward. The thing that had been the red-haired boy lunged into the front of the van, then disappeared underneath. They felt the body bump below their seats. Rook didn’t stop. He swung the van around and drove northeast away from the cabin towards a gap he had spotted in the trees.

  They sped through a narrow lane of tall grey pines and then the trees fell away and there were only barren bushes of dogwood and sumac covered in snow at either side. Eventually they came to a road and Rook turned left.

  It was a two-lane county road without lampposts. The darkness swept over the windows like the wisps of a passing phantom. Rook held the wheel steady and watched beyond the beam of the headlights for any obstacle. His glances to the rear-view mirror were quick and wary.

  The image of the red-haired boy falling under the front of the van was stuck in his mind, and he kicked himself for having conjured a shadow to escape the police. He’d known something would sense it. That thing had been out there looking for them ever since the highway, and now it had found them again. He doubted that it had died with the boy. It would find another body. He tried not to think of it.

  The drive was smooth.

  The road met a T-intersection and Rook scanned both directions. He turned the wheel to the right and pulled forward and drove on.

  Looking out the passenger window, Evan saw his face reflected in the dark glass and he hardly recognized it. Beside his own reflection, he saw Rook’s shape over the steering wheel, a blurry image both foreign and familiar. The blurred reflection turned once and looked at him and then looked away. Seeing it, Evan felt the pleasure and comfort of safety. A smell of damp stone and wood smoke came to him. And yet his feelings betrayed him. A fire burned in him, raging at Rook for having come back. In some way, Rook’s return made Evan feel small and weak again, even as it seemed to be a kind of blessing.

  After some time, Evan turned in his seat and stared straight at Rook, wanting the man to notice him. He felt bottled up with a bunch of things he wanted to shout and scream, both angry and glad, but he wanted Rook to see it on his face. He watched Rook shift in the driver’s seat to lean against the door, keeping his eyes on the road. Evan felt the silence between them grow heavy. The engine hummed and there was a faint yet persistent ticking from somewhere behind the dashboard.

  Rook shifted again into the door, and he glanced once at Evan and saw his earnest stare. “What?” he asked.

  “I thought I would never see you again,” Evan said.

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Evan shook his head. “When I heard the gunshot, I thought . . . I thought they got you.”

  “I thought that for a moment, myself.”

  Evan smiled. It just came out. Inside he was angry, or he wanted to be. Rook shifted again and winced.

  “What’s wrong?” Evan said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  Rook pulled himself up. “I’m fine.”

  Evan leaned across the middle of the van. He peered around at Rook’s body as if he had a magnifying glass in his hand. At first he thought Rook was telling the truth because he could see nothing. But then he spotted the dark stain on Rook’s coat and all down his thigh.

  “You’re bleeding,” Evan said.

  “Sit straight,” Rook told him, edging Evan back to his seat.

  Evan took hold of Rook’s arm. “Who hurt you?” he asked, his small voice full of vengeance.

  Rook was silent. Then he said, “The girl rushed me when I wasn’t looking. She stabbed me with a damn kitchen knife.”

  Evan cringed. “Does it hurt bad? What are you going to do? Can you heal it, like you did with my knee?”

  “I’ve tried. I’ll try again when we stop.”

  After a moment, Evan said, “Did you kill her, too?”

  “No. She ran off. Her and the little guy. They ought to keep running forever.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  Evan nodded. “Maeve and Kinny didn’t deserve to die.” He said their names as if they were old friends of his. “They weren’t bad people.”

  “They were horrible people,” Rook said.

  “No, they weren’t. They were just scared.” Evan crossed his arms over his chest and looked out the window. He said, “I used my special-thinking on them.”

  Rook glanced at him. “You did?”

  “Yep. I heard their thoughts, and they said they were sorry. They didn’t want to be doing those things. They were just scared and trapped.”

  “Trapped or not, they were bad people.”

  “I don’t think there’s bad people anymore,” Evan said. “There’s no good people, either. There’s just . . . people.”

  “I assure you, there are bad people. Those were bad people, and they got what they deserved.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do.”

  Evan sat quietly. After a moment, he said, nearly whispering, “Something bad happened to you, didn’t it?”

  Rook’s expression hardened. “Don’t go trying to get into my head.”

  “Don’t worry,” Evan said, spitefully. “It doesn’t work on you. You’re not scared of anything.” He turned from Rook and faced the dark window, then looked back. “Rook,” he said. “Do you think my special-thinking made a ripple? Is that why it came and got the boy?”

  “Did you really listen to their thoughts?” Rook asked.

  Evan nodded. “I really did. Will the monsters find us now?”

  “No,” Rook said. “What happened to that boy was my fault. I’ve felt no ripple come from you, Evan. If you really did listen to their thoughts, then your magic must be hidden.”

  A small smile of relief touched Evan’s face. He yawned and nestled into his seat. He closed his eyes. After a moment, he said, “Rook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rook sighed, thinking of all that had happened to get them to this place. He remembered Evan’s words: There’s just people.

  He wished Evan were right, and he hated that Evan was wrong. There was still the church ahead of them, and Rook’s oath. There was still the deal to be done, and the return of Rook’s wife, Allison.

  Rook glanced at Evan and saw that he was asleep. His chest warmed at the sight. In another life, Rook could have watched Evan sleep forever.

  They drove for a while longer before the van started making a dry glugging noise. The gas light had been on since they’d started driving; now the engine light came on as well. Rook eased his foot on the gas pedal and kept the van going. He had been following to the back roads, away from the highway, but they were still a half-hour drive from where he wanted to be. As he was hoping they would make it, giving the steering wheel a sof
t pat of encouragement, the glugging noise turned into a loud, hollow grinding. Rook took his foot off the gas. The van kicked as the engine failed. Rook steered it to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  Rook sat up and placed his hand on his knife wound. He pulled aside his jacket and lifted his shirt and the torn towel he had used to wrap himself and examined the thin, vertical opening. It was bleeding but the blood was thick and slow. He cupped his palm flat over the wound and eased back into the headrest and then drew a deep, slow, exhausted breath. He still lacked the energy to call the night.

  Rook’s eyes fell shut but he opened them right away. Evan still slept. Slowly, Rook opened his door. The cold reached him, slowing him further. He pivoted from the seated and stepped down. When he stood straight, he winced at the ripping pain in his abdomen and coughed a gush of blood up over his lips and beard.

  Rook steadied himself against the open door and he coughed and hacked and spit to clear the blood from his throat. He wiped his mouth. He reached down and fed a handful of snow into his mouth and chewed it and spat it out and did it again. He rubbed his beard with more snow and wiped his mouth one final time. Then he came around the front of the van to the passenger side.

  When Rook opened the door, Evan woke from the sheer shock of the cold.

  “Come on,” Rook said. “Get out.”

  Evan hopped down from his seat and rubbed his eyes. His lips started to chatter. Rook buttoned the peacoat to the top and flipped the collar to cover Evan’s face.

  “Is the car dead?” Evan said.

  “Ran out of gas.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “We walk. How are your feet?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Come on.”

  They started down the road. The moon was a haze of yellow behind the clouds, and the landscape held that predawn stillness in which it seemed anything could happen.

  Rook paused and took Evan’s hand, considering their course. Evan waited.