The Devourer

by C H Chelser

  She did, but there was little for it now. “Not at all. I hope you will forgive me. I was out on a visit of my own.”

  “So Eric told me! But it has left you somewhat... dishevelled, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Mercedes smoothed the wayward strands away as best she could. “A small event, nothing significant. I shall go and tidy myself, and I will be right with you. Or were you on your way out?” She should be so lucky.

  “Well, I had half a mind to go home, but I can’t leave now without hearing about this ‘small event’, can I?” said Carmen. “It’s dreadfully boring being home alone, and even small events spice up the day.”

  “Indeed they do,” said Eric from the doorway. His worry, laced now with strings of anger, beat against Mercedes’ back. She tensed at the clicking of his shoes on the floorboards as he joined them.

  “I’m quite curious myself about how this happened, given our arrangement,” he continued, cupping her arm. The sharp flint in his eyes mellowed. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”

  Caught between a small lie and a bigger one, Mercedes conceded to a shadow of the truth.

  “No, mon cher. Upset, perhaps, but not hurt. My hat was the only casualty.”

  Eric’s piercing eyes demanded her to elaborate. Mercedes glanced at Carmen, but her sister-in-law was too keen on a new piece of gossip to be of any help. She sighed. Sometimes it was wiser to throw the wolves a bone than to fight them off.

  “When I left my friend’s house, I was knocked over by a man apparently in very much of a hurry. He behaved quite rudely, but I wasn’t injured, so I got up and boarded the fiacre. I never noticed I had lost my hat in the fall until after the cab drove off.”

  “Oh, darling,” Carmen said with an over-dramatic gasp.

  Mercedes ignored it and held Eric’s gaze. “So you see there was nothing strange, nothing untoward. Just a man in dire need of manners.”

  Carmen fussed and prattled, but Eric only averted his eyes a fraction, by all intents looking for a literal chip on his wife’s shoulder. His face seemed calm, but for those who knew him, the wild currents raging beneath the surface were plain as daylight. Mercedes waited with a clenched jaw for the imminent eruption. Even Carmen went quiet.

  At length Eric forced a smile. It looked as if it pained him tremendously.

  “Quite the adventure,” he said. “Now, why don’t you go and freshen up and join us in the parlour when you are ready?”

  “That might take a while, mon cher.”

  “Oh, not to worry, darling,” said Carmen. “Take all the time you need!”

  Eric nodded, but his expression warned Mercedes that his interpretation of ‘all’ was quite limited. She decided that this was his problem, although it would be a mere matter of time before he would make it her problem, too.

  “As quickly as I can,” she said, more in sarcasm than in promise. She gestured Amélie to come out of the corner where she had hidden and to follow her.

  As she walked away, Mercedes overheard Carmen’s incessant nattering about ‘society these days’, while Eric repeatedly told his sister to change the subject. Slamming the door on their overbearing presence was a tremendous relief.

  Her body felt like lead when she sat down at her dresser in the dark bedroom. Amélie lit a candle. By its almost unwelcome light, Mercedes gazed in the mirror. The face that stared back at her was her own, but more haggard than usual; a difference that couldn’t be contributed to her dishevelled hair alone.

  The story she had told Eric had come so naturally that she almost believed it herself. It was now the official version of events, but that did nothing to make her forget the hand on her throat. Nor her fear that the shadows in the corner behind her harboured a tall, dark figure with long claws and a club.

  She cramped up at the thought, until common sense prevailed and she rubbed her hands over her face to chase the memories away. Whatever that figure had been, it hadn’t come after her. The realm of ghosts had its own black sheep, outcasts and monsters, but they seldom took interest in the living. That this one attacked those two men must have been a fluke. A rare oddity that had nothing to do with her.

  Still she started when her reflection showed someone stepping up behind her.

  “Pardon, madame,” whispered Amélie. The girl raised the brush she held, but stopped. “May I?”

  Mercedes exhaled slowly. “Of course. Something fast and simple, please.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  She closed her eyes as small fingers untangled her hairpins and unravelled what was left of her bun. Outside, Carmen’s shrill laughter cut through every wall in the house. Mercedes winced.

  “Or rather, something not too fast will do.”

  ***

  The second man slumped at his feet next to the other one. No longer of interest, their shapes faded from his perception and disappeared in the shreds of mist that obscured his world from theirs.

  He felt satisfied for now. Not sated, because being sated dulled the senses and he never allowed himself that luxury. Still, these two had been a good catch. Robbers, brigands, thus fair game. Feeding off the likes of them satisfied him on another level as well, but his contentment would have to wait. He had more pressing concerns.

  The woman had seen him.

  That shouldn’t have happened. His kind saw him, as did other ghosts. Sometimes living animals detected his presence, too, but never humans. Humans did not observe, and when they did, by pure chance, they didn’t believe what they saw. It was a great shortcoming in the species, one that made him loathe to think he had once belonged to it.

  Yet she had seen him…

  He walked in a straight line towards the river. Around him, the fog thinned and grey silhouettes of buildings shimmered through, along with the moving figures that populated them. He paid them no more heed than they him. The human constraints of walls, floors and pavements didn’t exist to him unless he chose to allow them to. A river should be of no more consequence, and yet…

  However much this weakness galled him, he sought the nearest bridge to cross the Seine.

  Shadows of all kinds passed him as he progressed through the surreal slums. The fog-shrouded living failed to notice him; the dead did, but they kept their distance. A distorted echo of a past long gone resonated within, only to be discarded at once. He had no use for memories.

  He became aware of one individual who did take notice of him without shying away. A boy, or rather a ghost who appeared as a teenage boy, touched the edge of his awareness. They had met before. Fleetingly, but long enough to know that despite its preferred appearance, the boy was not a boy. Souls didn’t measure age in years, but if they did, this one went back millennia.

  They shared no hostility, although it went too far to call their brief interactions friendly. However, the other’s aura of misplaced confidence on this occasion was new. And puzzling. He focused on it. Rather than recoil, the boy returned the attention with equal intensity.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked pointedly when he received no answer to his implicit questions.

  The boy regarded him, but its initial intention to reply reversed and the boy scampered off, their contact broken again.

  ‘Well then.’

  Unperturbed by the incident, he resumed his path and crossed the bridge with long strides that were reminiscent of hurrying. On the far bank, he checked himself. Time and distance were relative in this world, but the same weakness that required a bridge to cross the river also stipulated that travel required movement through space and that movement, in turn, required time. His legs didn’t need to carry him, but nevertheless he referred to the sensation of motion as ‘walking’, just as he still thought of communication with others as ‘speech’. Woefully incorrect terms, of course, but for one such as he, they covered the essence well enough.

  He let his mind search for further traces of the woman. To find one subject in the mass of souls inhabiting a city this size was hard, but in his time he had become quit
e accomplished at isolating and targeting a single soul’s unique frequency.

  After that, the rest came down to the hunt.

  ***

  Carmen was a difficult guest even at the best of times. Eric had just persuaded her to go home when Mercedes’ arrival had changed the woman’s mind. Now she nursed her fourth glass of undiluted Merlot, double her normal tolerance level, and as a result her speech matched her boisterous laughter and it became increasingly difficult to keep the conversation polite.

  “...and so she pulled his trousers down for all to see!” Carmen snorted into her wine. “Hilarious! You should have been there, really!”

  Mercedes had no regrets about having missed whatever party this story came from. She would, however, like to have something to eat besides the crackers and assorted cheeses that Gagnon had served them, before turning in and forgetting about today as quickly as possible. Eric, it seemed, was of the same mind.

  “It is late, Carmen,” he said through his teeth. “Sunday mass won’t be delayed because we made it a late night, so I do not intend to do so.”

  “Ugh, spoilsport! You were always too stuck up for your own good, brother. Go home, you say? What have I to go home to? Henri is away and my good-for-nothing son prefers books to proper company.” She puckered her lips and waggled her eyebrows. “Of course, you could lend me some of those delicious tenants you keep upstairs. Now that is company!”

  “What you do when you get home is your business, sister, but I will have no part in your taste for debauchery. I will call you a cab.”

  “All right, all right. I can tell I’m no longer welcome in my own brother’s house.” She downed the rest of her glass in one go. “Just make sure the cab can accommodate four people, will you? If I bring a few of those students with me, I’m sure Georges will crawl out from under his books, too.”

  Eric’s face flared red. “You will do no such thing.”

  “Oh? Why not? I’m quite sure my son and I have the same taste in men.”

  “Enough!” He turned to his manservant. “François, Madame Talbert would like her coat!”

  “Tut-tut. No sense of humour at all,” Carmen mocked. She got up and stumbled over to Mercedes. “Darling, honestly, why on Earth did you marry this half-wit?”

  Mercedes rose, too, but didn’t answer. There was enough oil on that fire already.

  “Hmm. Well, well,” said Carmen, squinting her eyes as she ambled closer. “Is that new make-up on your neck, or did my brother-dear leave those? Oh la la, I didn’t know he had it in him!” She cast a failed glare at Eric. “What is this? Telling me off for my fun while you mark yours? Bad form, brother. Bad form indeed!” She winked at Mercedes. “Until next time, darling.”

  Eric readily escorted his sister out. While Carmen staggered and cursed her way to the front door, Mercedes hurried to the bedroom with a candle and examined her neck in her mirror.

  Two purple bruises had bloomed on either side of her neck. One was no bigger than her thumb, but the other covered the whole length of her neck. A closer look revealed that the large bruise consisted of four small ones blending together. It didn’t require any imagination to recognise the marks as the finger imprints they were. Unless one wanted to believe them to be suction marks; the imagination would accommodate that, too.

  She searched for her tin of rouge, but gave up almost at once, defeated. The one thing worse than indiscrete evidence was badly-concealed evidence. If she owned up to sustaining the bruises, perhaps she could get away with the truth. Or some semblance of the truth, in any case.

  And if Eric didn’t believe her...

  Daddy loves you.

  Mercedes glanced aside. Danielle’s big, unseen eyes beamed at her. She mouthed a ‘thank you’ to the little girl, and held out her hand. A warm sensation prickled her fingertips by way of comfort.

  Too soon Eric’s footsteps came back up. Mercedes stepped out of the bedroom to meet him. She was not surprised to find his face drawn into a frown and his cheeks splotched with anger.

  “I didn’t mark you,” he said. “I never do.”

  “Carmen drank too much, mon cher. Surely you set no score by her babbling?”

  “Drunk she may be, but she wasn’t babbling!”

  Mercedes tensed when he grabbed her arm with one hand and forcibly titled her head aside, exposing the sore skin of her neck.

  “No trick of the light, this!” He let go of her with a toss. “This friend of yours you went to wasn’t a lady friend, was it?”

  “Of course she was! A thief’s fingers made those bruises, not another man’s lips.” She had spoken without thinking, but told no lie. Yet. “That man... that man who knocked me over also tried to steal my handbag. When I had none, he got angry and grabbed my throat.” A plausible explanation. “Not long, but hard enough to bruise, it seems,” she added for good measure.

  Eric gave her an incredulous look, his gaze flitting between her face and her neck. “And you say all this happened in the two paces from your friend’s door to the fiacre?”

  “Two paces is all it takes, apparently.”

  “Putain!”

  One fell swoop of his arm sent a nearby ornament crashing to the floor. The bronze figurine knocked a dent in the floorboard with an anticlimactic ‘thud’. Eric stared at it as if the fury of his will alone could make it shatter after all. It didn’t. He snarled.

  “Two steps, indeed,” he snapped at her. “And then?”

  “Then nothing, I promise. When the driver noticed what was going on, he called the man off and scared him away. It was over before I realised.”

  She let out a nervous laugh at her own expense and waited for Eric’s response. None came. He stood still, fists clenched, eyes on the fallen figurine, for all purposes a bomb with a hidden fuse.

  Mercedes knew she needed to appease him to avoid retaliation. For her deception she deserved his outrage, but while his callous words always broke her heart, they had never broken her spirit. If his punishment ended there, she would accept it. However, his power as her husband was absolute. If he chose to, it was his right to hurt her in ways she could not bear.

  “I apologise for letting this happen despite your precautions,” she said, her voice trembling with genuine contrition. “I would have told you all this when I arrived, but I did not wish to embarrass you in front of your sister. Please forgive me.”

  Eric remained silent. Beyond his grim mask, Mercedes detected his fear, confusion and frustration as he tried to decide whether or not to take his anger out on her. The tension mounted fast, but she reminded herself that in their ten years of marriage his hand had never left scars on her. She prayed he wouldn’t start now.

  There was a sigh, and a decision.

  “I don’t want to talk about this now,” he said, turning away. “Gagnon saved your dinner. Eat. Sleep. Don’t bother to wait up.”

  He stormed out of the room before she could reply. Moments later, the flat door slammed shut and she heard him rushing down the stairs to the workshop. She felt numb. A reprieve? If so, then for both of them: Eric’s torment was tangible even now.

  But a reprieve was not a pardon. Repercussions certainly would follow.

  Mercedes ran her fingers over her throat. She hissed when she touched the tender spots. Offensive as they were, the bruises would heal in the course of a fortnight, but she would feel their pain for much longer. The memory of the alley already haunted her, and in all likelihood Eric’s reprisal would include confining her to the house and the shop for the foreseeable future. At the very least.

  Perhaps if being locked up would keep her safe, she wouldn’t mind so much if that was what Eric decided to do. But walls and locks didn’t keep away what she feared most right now. They would find her anyway. They always did.

  Every night.

  Chapter V

  He cut through the eternal fog and grey silhouettes of the city like a knife through flesh. He had located his target at last, but his headlong gait belied his cautiou
s state of mind.

  Based on the flare of her unique soul marker, the woman had stopped moving some time ago. This would have facilitated his efforts, if not for the countless wayward souls milling about her. The presence of so many others threatened to choke and obscure her particular signal.

  He paused, peeved by this complication. Were she anyone else, he would track her like any other prey: send out calls from his thoughts to hers at regular intervals and follow the trail of her marker’s subliminal responses. Like the stone pillars or a bridge remained unaware of the river beating against their masonry, so the living remained unperturbed by such calls. Yet the water gauged every crag in every stone and unbeknown to his targets, their soul markers’ pulse would tell him their exact location.

  A proven strategy, but one he hesitated to employ in this case.

  The alternative he had engaged so far relied on selective probing rather than sending out calls; much as he would to identify and locate another ghost. The resulting pulse had functioned well enough as a beacon until this swill of others had contaminated it. A focused call would trigger a stronger flare, but if she was as sensitive as he suspected, she might detect his approach before he was close enough to observe her. Then this whole exercise would be for naught.

  His mood tensed. ‘Unacceptable,’ he muttered.

  Perhaps the solution lay within the problem itself. If the crowd of souls distracted him so, then possibly her senses were affected in equal measure. An unwelcome uncertainty, but not an uneducated assumption. Indeed, a risk worth taking to increase the chances of a successful hunt.

  ‘There’s easier prey,’ a weak voice drawled from the fog.

  His attention shifted without his conscious consent. Despite his aptitude for noticing all yet seeing only what he chose to, there were certain things he could not ignore. These immature darklings, for one. He always registered their sophomoric presence even when the darkness grew too dense to behold oneself. They appeared as black shapes, rarely consistent and never taller than his knee. He couldn’t close his mind to them even if he tried. And he had.