Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “Will, stop!” I heard Boyd cry, but then he, too, was holding me down atop the coffin and my music and I were powerless to stop them.

  I struggled, but my legs were weak and of little use. They slid me from the coffin to the floor, where the boy sat on my legs as he worked with one hand on the hasps. The other arm dangled uselessly at his side. I had damaged him; I could see his pain, red and purple all about him, and still he was in a heat to avenge his sister. Such resilience. Such motivation. I was impressed.

  Boyd held my wrists to my shoulders and looked down into my face. Again, in the midst of my fury, fear, and agony, I had that feeling about Boyd. I began to softly play the music for him while the boy cried and pounded, cursing, on the box. Boyd responded. He relaxed just the slightest bit, just enough.

  The hasps came free and the boy threw open the lid.

  “Don’t look in, Will,” Boyd said. But, of course, he did, and he began to moan. I lay quietly, panting from the exertion, just playing the music lightly for Boyd, keeping the touch feather-­light, letting the boy immobilize himself with his own stupid emotions.

  “Help me lift her in, Will.”

  Will looked back at Boyd with a flushed, perspiring, tear-stained face. “Amy,” he said.

  “Help me put Angelina in the box, Will,” Boyd said, and I had to increase the music just a touch to counteract his emotional response to the boy.

  Will reached his good arm into the box to pick up his sister, and I cast uncertainty into Boyd at just that time. He was torn between restraining Will and restraining me, and his balance shifted slightly.

  I twisted violently and caught his forearm in my teeth. I clung to it with all my energy, feeling my teeth rip into the tendons and cords, sucking deeply, desperately, all his juices, blood flowing across my face, into my eyes, as I sucked his spirit, nursing his soul from the flesh.

  I saw the blow coming, but heeded it not. I had tasted in Boyd something new, something so extraordinary that I needed every moment to ponder it. It brought me a new sound, a new music; it opened up new vistas, new arenas; I broke through to the next level in self-discovery. I clung with my life to his arm, drinking more, more; there could never be enough of this, it’s all so new, and the mysteries of the universe began to unfold.

  And then the boy hit me and I retreated into the void, to rest, to heal, to wonder.

  “I recognized her by her eyes. I knew by the eyes. She had changed so much over these years; she’d grown to be a monster, but the monster was definitely Angelina.

  “It was strange to finally confront her in that basement. I’d lived for that moment, and it was finally upon me, and soon it would be over and that made me kind of sad. It had been quite an adventure. She had given me a lot, Angelina had.

  “I can’t exactly say what happened down there, it all happened so fast. Parts seemed to be in slow motion, and parts seemed to be distorted, weird, as if I were drugged or something.

  “Will was really upset over his sister, but his grief nearly got him killed. Angelina could have killed him with that cane, but she only got his shoulder.

  “Anyway, we finally got her into that box; we just threw her in on top of poor Amy. I guess we didn’t have to do that; Angelina was unconscious. Will knocked her out when she bit me, but God, even after she was unconscious, she wouldn’t let go. She kept, like gnawing, and sucking, even though her eyes were rolled up into her head; she was, oh, Christ, I just wanted her off of me. We had to pry her jaws open with the brass end of her cane. Once the suction was broken, she went limp.

  “When we got her in that box, cape and all, and that lid down and locked, and my arm wrapped in my shirt, I started to shake. I couldn’t believe we really had her. I sat there, and Will and I hugged each other and we both cried. We cried because it was over, but it wasn’t quite over yet. Will still had to deal with his sister’s death and throwing Angelina on top of her poor little body, and I still had to deal with my torn-up arm, and . . . and . . . and the fact that when she was sucking on me, I thought for a moment my heart would explode, it hurt so bad and felt so good all at the same time. All I could think about was how I’d screwed up my life, how much I’d hated—my dad, my brother, myself—how life was the shits and it hurt all the time, life hurt, and how ashamed I was that it had turned out that way, but I really didn’t care enough to change. And now, Angelina . . . God, it hurt, but it was good. I didn’t want her to stop. She was punishing me because she loved me.

  “And I deserved both—both the pain and her love.”

  41

  A year has passed since I began this journal. My doctors will read it and we will discuss it, and the lawyers will try to corroborate the details, and everyone will wonder in horrified titillation just exactly how much of it is true.

  It is all true.

  But that concerns me not at all, for I have discovered the advantages of a cage; it may keep the imprisoned one away from society, but it also keeps society away from the prisoner.

  I am most fortunate.

  Society knows its strengths and its weaknesses, and this hospital has a civic duty to keep its reputation untarnished. This hospital will do everything in its power to keep the public from knowing that towels occasionally disappear from the linen rooms and show up around the necks of the dead. Society would rather lie and cheat and cover up its ineptitude than believe my story, rather than believe that I live safely, happily, here, as long as there is a solitary night guard who can be beguiled with a simple melody.

  At last I have learned that it is not death that makes such a difference; it is life. My life. I kill to live. And it is a fair trade. I suckle the life from small animals, leaving their juiceless remains for the scavengers—three or four a night is plenty—and only twice have I been unable to resist the craving for a human.

  I kill to live. I have grown through the passions of the larvae, through the dangerous excitement, the extravaganzas of killing. I have grown through the pupa withdrawal and emerged into adulthood. Now, as my view of eternity is gradually brought into focus, other priorities draw my attention.

  For now I have a Student of my own. I have passed through solitude, and have entered into a partnership—an internal realm filled with peace and happiness. I teach, and my teachings are reminiscent of my teacher.

  How well I remember Her, and how much She meant to me during those early times.

  Will my Student turn out to be a different refraction of my own soul? Or is this Student actually a separate, breathing, warm human being? I have no answers, but I am patient. The answers will come. I know only that my sharing with this One is the very essence of fulfillment.

  I am no longer alone.

  Tonight when I awoke, I found a little cake the other patients had placed by my bedside. The nurses will take notice in the morning whether I have eaten it or not. They have never seen me eat. But they will find it intact, its chocolate frosting unnibbled, the yellow 21 written in warped hand will be undisturbed.

  I am fortunate to have found such peace at this young age.

  The cane they gave me is metal tubing and distasteful, but it serves me. I pretend with it, as I pad along the halls, that I hear the grit of the roadway beneath my boots, and the stomp of a solid cherrywood cane with a brass lizard as a knob. I feel the cold wind biting through my cloak, and I talk and laugh with my Student, watching the growth, the progress, growing myself through our association, knowing that I am, that we are, immortal and eternal.

  “They put her in an asylum somewhere out in the country. I went to visit her several times when she was in the hospital in Philadelphia, but she was always sleeping.

  “I went back to Westwater, got my old construction job back, but after only a week, I quit. Being consumed—obsessed, I guess—by something for years and then having it be over, resolved, left quite a void. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do now. Go back to school
, maybe, or do a little traveling. Chasing Angelina all over the country wasn’t exactly traveling, but I’ve kind of got the bug to go explore some.

  “I don’t know.

  “My arm healed. It’s all scarred, and I’ve lost some of the movement in my wrist, but it’s not bad. I can still pull a trigger.

  “Pull a trigger. God, what a dream I had last night. I’m not sure I can even talk about it.

  “I dreamed I was hunting, all alone, up in the mountains. I was sitting on a rock, just waiting, my rifle cradled in the crook of my arm, and a big buck strolled right into the clearing. It was the same buck I’d tracked for weeks. Weeks. And there it was, right in front of me, bigger than life. Very slowly, I lifted the rifle, sighted, and pulled the trigger.

  “The rifle kicked me in the shoulder, and the sound knocked snow off some of the trees. I remember bouncing on the bed, it kind of woke me up, but not really. The buck started, and took off for a dozen yards, then went down, and I ran over to him. I guess maybe I’ve never watched a deer die. At least I never saw it like this.

  “I hit him right where I’d aimed, right through the throat. Hot blood pumped from the wound in his neck, and steamed into the snow. I watched it spurt. I just watched it, the deer kicked a little, then stopped, and soon the blood slowed, then the spurting stopped and it just ran out for a while, through his hair, melting the snow. It was so beautiful, that dark red against the white.

  “I just watched it and I was so glad that this deer I’d hunted, this buck I’d come to know, come to love, could die such a beautiful death.

  “When I woke up, my pillow was soaked with saliva, and a hunger rumbled deep within my soul.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elizabeth Engstrom grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois (a Chicago suburb where she lived with her father) and Kaysville, Utah (north of Salt Lake City, where she lived with her mother). After graduating from high school in Illinois, she ventured west in a serious search for acceptable weather, eventually settling in Honolulu. She attended college and worked as an advertising copywriter.

  After eight years on Oahu, she moved to Maui, found a business partner, and opened an advertising agency. One husband, two children, and five years later, she sold the agency to her partner and had enough seed money to try her hand at full-time fiction writing, her lifelong dream. With the help of her mentor, science fiction great Theo­dore Sturgeon, When Darkness Loves Us was published. Since then, she has written fifteen additional books and taught the art of fiction in Oregon colleges and at writers’ conferences and conventions around the world.

  Engstrom moved to Oregon in 1986, where she lives with her husband Al Cratty, the legendary muskie fisherman. An introvert at heart, she still emerges into public occasionally to teach a class in novel or short story writing, or to speak at a writers’ convention or conference. Learn more at www.elizabethengstrom.com

  ABOUT THE COVER

  Cover: The cover painting by Bob Eggleton originally appeared on the cover of the 1988 Tor paperback edition. Bob Eggleton is a multi-­award-winning artist in the fields of science fiction, fantasy and horror. He has done book covers since 1984 and was recently honored with the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award for the Arts.