The Devourer

by C H Chelser

  “But then what was it? I did think of an esprit frappeur, but they don’t feed off people’s energy, do they?”

  “No, and neither do they follow people home. They attach themselves to a place, or on occasion to a child or youngster. They can hurt people, but for the most part they only make a ruckus. Any falling objects or slamming doors while you sensed him?”

  “No. Just the cold and moisture.”

  Anne nodded. “Cold is common with most ghosts, according to the books I have read. The moisture puzzles me, though. But whatever he is, I’m sure he didn’t kill those men. He may have drained them into exhaustion, but no dead bodies have turned up here in the past days.”

  Mercedes’ shoulders sagged. “That is something of a relief, but what about the soulless body in the stairwell this morning?”

  “That is why you want to consult the cards, I take it.”

  “Through you,” she said. “At the moment I’m too frightened to hear answers, no matter how they are presented.”

  “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.” Anne opened her little wooden box on the table and took out two stacks of well-used cards. “Which one?”

  “Mademoiselle Lenormand’s deck.”

  Anne put the larger of the two decks back into the box and began to shuffle the cards of the other. She put the shuffled deck face down on the table, in front of Mercedes. “Ask your question and choose your cards. You know how it works.”

  Mercedes regarded the deck with trepidation. A proper reading required the cards to be chosen on intuition, but at the moment hers was as addled as the rest of her senses.

  “Can you not lay a pattern for me?”

  The wrinkles around Anne’s eyes deepened as she smiled. “Those who need help will receive help. With your talents, you will get a clearer answer if you do it yourself.”

  Reluctantly, Mercedes took the stack. The deck was slim, the cards smaller and easier to handle than the Tarot. Easier to read, too. The cards slid from the fingers of one hand into her other palm. The last time she had handled a deck herself, years ago, Anne had taught her the art of divination. To comprehend the answers she heard in her head. Since then she hadn’t needed the cards, or any other means of scrying. Until now.

  In her mind, the question she wanted answered took shape. What was responsible for their tenant’s fate? In her hand, the cards replied.

  She fanned the deck out on the table, face down, and pulled out only those cards that lit up with an invisible light. The brightness of their glow differed. She chose the strongest glow first and then the next strongest and the next, to establish the order of the cards’ appearance in the reading. Selecting the cards was not a conscious choice on her part, nor could she say what caused some cards to flare up and others to remain indifferent. All she knew was that the cards had never failed to show her what she needed to learn – or what she already knew but hadn’t yet acknowledged. Despite their name, divination cards didn’t foretell the future. They merely showed what was truly there.

  Once she was satisfied with the feeling of the selection in her hand, she gave them to Anne, who counted them.

  “Seven cards. Did you choose them for a specific pattern?”

  “No. I only want to find out what happened to this student and whether the cause of his death poses a danger to others.” She bit her lip. “To my family, mostly.”

  Without ado Anne turned over the first card. Mercedes instantly recognised the picture staring up at them.

  “This is not good.”

  Anne, too, pursed her lips in apprehension. “The Snake. Not one of the most positive cards by anyone’s standard. In my readings it warns about betrayal and mistrust. What does your intuition tell you?”

  “Traitor,” Mercedes said at once. She didn’t like delving deeper into the feeling, but it happened with incredible ease. Questions and too-brief answers flitted across her mind. “Perceived treachery or a real threat? Traitor of his own kind, or of others?”

  “You tell me,” Anne said with a smirk. “It’s your reading.”

  She tried. “...I cannot. Too many options.”

  “Let’s take a look at what the rest tell us, then.” Anne proceeded to lay the next three cards below the first one. “The Man, the Coffin and... the Child.”

  Mercedes gasped at the images these cards triggered: church; dark cemetery; cold; grave; pain; loss; pain; blame; questions; pain... “God, I cannot do this! Anne, I’m sorry, I should not have come.”

  Anne grasped her hand across the table. “Nonsense. This is your fear speaking, not your mind. Come on, I’ll help you along.” She held up the first card. “I realise you link this to your husband—”

  “You taught me to go with my intuition.”

  “Intuition, yes, but this is panic. Let it go.”

  “But—”

  “Let it go, Mercedes. Remember that the Man is more than a representation of a male person. The card stands for masculinity or male energy in any form. Since this card clarifies the Snake, that means...?”

  Her breath and her senses came back to her. “...the traitor is a masculine figure?”

  “Likely. And knowing men, how could he not be,” Anne quipped with a bemused smile. “Now, the Coffin.”

  “Stands for death.”

  “That, too. However, more often it is an end of something. Death is an end, but not the only one.”

  Mercedes shook her head. That explanation was wrong. The card was telling her something else. She had called it ‘death’ because that word had first come to mind, but it, too, was inaccurate.

  “Afterlife,” she said after a thoughtful silence. “For this reading, the card refers to the afterlife.” The puzzle began to click together. “The traitor that the Snake warns about is a ghost,” she thought out loud. “Since ghosts have no gender as such, the Man cannot signify masculinity beyond perhaps certain traits in its appearance. Or rather the card refers to the aggression of the entity.” That certainly fitted her suspicions.

  Anne tilted her head, her brow furrowing as she held up the last card. “Then how does this fit in?”

  Mercedes gazed at the card’s depiction of a little child playing with toys and a dog. The child was drawn as a boy child, but to her the card had always been synonymous to Danielle. She rubbed her fingers over her eyes and reminded herself to listen to what it said, not to what she thought it said. But it was hard to tell the difference.

  “The Child represents innocence or naivety,” Anne prompted. “What do you make of that?”

  “I think... it refers to the victims.”

  “Are you sure? The card goes with the Snake. Could it be that the traitor is an innocent? That he doesn’t understand what he’s doing?”

  “Oh, he understands,” said Mercedes. The memory of the alley flooded back and her hair stood on end at the remembered cold. “He is very conscious of what he does, and very determined to do it.” She recalled the black eyes and shuddered. “There is no innocence in him. None whatsoever.”

  Anne regarded the cards intently. “That would be worrisome indeed. Let’s see if there is some hope on the horizon.”

  She straightened the cards into their original position and then flipped the remaining cards over, one under each of the previous three in the same order; each of the new cards a clarification of the corresponding one.

  “The Cross to the Man... A burden, misfortune. You’re right, he’s a nasty piece of work.”

  Mercedes leaned in. “The Scythe to the Coffin,” she whispered and suppressed the urge to say a quick prayer. The Scythe was a sign of immediate danger, of shock and terrible events. It meant that the end the Coffin predicted was to be interpreted as the most final of all ends. Death for a mortal, but for an immortal soul...

  “Death beyond death,” she muttered. “So the soldier was right after all.”

  “Or not,” said Anne, tapping her finger on the final card. “The Bear. Strength and power. Seems like the victims are not so helpless
after all.”

  Mercedes’ skin tingled all over. During the reading the atmosphere in the cellar had become charged, like the air when a thunderstorm was brewing. She had sensed it before during good readings, as if releasing the answers from the confines of the unknown also released a vast amount of energy. She gently traced the card.

  “The Bear to the Child. A mother bear that protects her young at all costs.” The tension in her abdomen eased. “Some force stands up against this killer.”

  She thought of the brilliant angels shining high up in Notre Dame’s vaulted ceiling. Their light was life, hope and safety. Surely they knew of this damnable creature and would stop it slaying innocents? Perhaps they already did. After all, the cards reflected the present, not the future.

  A draft blew through the cellar, making the curtains and her skirts billow softly in the breeze. It stirred the tense atmosphere like a bucket of water poured into a stagnant pool. Something touched the edge of her awareness, too distant to be important. She shut it out while her attention returned to the cards on the table.

  “Does this answer your question?” Anne asked.

  “It does the one I asked. The poor student didn’t fall to his death, that much is clear. And the police will find nothing, not if the culprit is a ghost...”

  The panic she expected didn’t come. Instead, she descended into the unreal peace of resignation. The cards couldn’t lie, because they said nothing. They only jogged the mind, giving intangible thoughts a tangible hold so they could come together into clear notions that could be understood. Cards didn’t change the world or the future. They only helped to see both with more clarity.

  One thing Mercedes saw very clearly now:

  “Whatever happens, my only hope is to have faith in the protection that the Mother Bear signifies and pray that it will be sufficient to keep my family safe.”

  Anne folded her hands under her chin. “A little faith in yourself wouldn’t go amiss either. When the fat hits the fire and the bastard does come back tonight, praying should be your last resort, not your first.”

  “What else can I do? Stab it with my scissors?”

  “If you want the scissors to hurt it, they will.”

  Mercedes blinked, stupefied. “You are mad.”

  “No!” Anne scoffed. “It is the same principle that allows ghosts to hurt people and move objects. Willpower!”

  Through the excess energy coursing in and about her, Mercedes saw the concept unfolding in her recollections. Some force had driven an intangible stick to clobber a tangible man, and some force had driven the ghosts from her flat when she had told them to leave. Different angles, same effect. It wasn’t perfect – the many ghosts that went unnoticed testified to that – but the chance of hope rekindled her courage.

  “I need to verify one more thing.” She put her hands on either side of the fan of face-down cards that lay in front of her. “May I?”

  When Anne nodded, Mercedes gathered the cards, worked them back to a deck and shuffled them. Divination was a fickle thing when it came to questions. If you didn’t ask, it didn’t answer. As the cards ran between her fingers, she asked under her breath whether the ghost that had killed the student was indeed the same as the black apparition she had seen on the two previous nights. One card escaped the deck mid-shuffle.

  “There is your answer,” said Anne. “Quite specific, too.”

  Mercedes picked up the card. Knots of fear tightened around her chest. “I would rather it was an accidental slip.”

  “Cards that fall when you shuffle are important. I’ve had entire readings fall out at times. Which one is it?”

  Mercedes put the card face-up on the table. At the sight of the Birch Rod depicted on its face, Anne hissed between her teeth.

  “Illness and bad omens. My dear, what on Earth did you ask?”

  “In all honesty, something I already knew...” She shivered when the draught blew past her. “Anne, did you open a window by any chance?”

  But Anne no longer listened. She sat up straight, frowning in alarm and her gaze fixed on the far side of the cellar. Mercedes glanced over her shoulder to see what upset her so. The moment she did, a stack of wobbling books fell over and tumbled from their shelf.

  “Mercedes, who else is here?”

  The pages of the fallen books rustled in the gushes of the draught.

  “Mercedes!”

  The same presence she had noticed earlier touched her again, more strongly this time. “Something— No, someone, but I cannot seem to...”

  The draught increased and a cold wind whipped around the cellar. Anne inched back towards the wall behind her while the candle on the table flickered and died. In the sudden duskiness everything had become shade. Mercedes’ eyes detected nothing, but her other senses warned her that the shadow in the corner beneath the dirty window was too deep and too large to be cast by an object. Nor did shadows make the air too thick to breathe. She felt sick.

  “Mercedes, where?”

  “Windows. No, wait! It is... everywhere?”

  “That’s no use,” Anne growled, and swung her arm forward. “Get lost!”

  A spray of sand scattered on the floor, trailing a jagged line between them and the shadow. Mercedes buckled under a sudden confusion that wasn’t hers.

  “Be gone from here!” Anne yelled and threw another handful of sand after the first.

  The air grew even more oppressive in response. Mercedes staggered back and bumped into the table. Her senses searched frantically, but what they found was jumbled, inconsistent and contradicting. She still couldn’t see the presence, but she did sense what it felt. Confusion became annoyance, and finally anger.

  “Anne, it is not working!”

  “Out, I said! Be gone!” A whole bucket of sand followed the words.

  Rage! Despite the haze, a vague image of the creature impressed itself on Mercedes’ mind, shaped by snippets of knowledge that warped together like quicksilver: strong; black; as tall as a horse; a muzzle with teeth. So many teeth... Before her mind’s eye, those teeth turned away from her and snarled at Anne instead.

  “No! Leave her alone!”

  Her own voice shocked herself more than it did the creature. Air as cold as winter crept up her skirt, and fine drops of water soaked into her dress. Exactly as they had done several nights ago.

  Furious indignation rose like a phoenix from the ashes left by her fears.

  “I know it is you! Go! Leave us alone and never come back!”

  She straightened her shoulders and focused her concentration, prepared to fight any way she could.

  ***

  He had been restless since the boy left; restless and in pain. For so long the grating agony inside him had lain dormant, bearable. Always present, but rarely hindering him. Now it stung worse than the hunger. The dark didn’t dampen it; the cold no longer soothed it. Animalistic instinct wanted to claw it out, but he resisted the urge to try. A physical being could cut off an offending hand, but here in the astral world, where matter was an illusion, things were not that simple.

  Beyond his seclusion, beyond the fog, dusk approached. Night was still too far off for comfort, but in his current state of agitation, comfort was an unattainable delusion nonetheless. He would prefer to remain here, in his haven’s sanctuary, but today that sanctuary proved insufficient. With grim determination, he cast his mind if not his presence into the retreating day, hoping to find something of greater interest than the gnawing pain within.

  The light of day teemed with all things he least resembled. He was most wary of the guides, but other entities thrived under these circumstances, too. Sprites danced by day and became still by night. Likewise some elementals, beings usually unperturbed by light or shadows, preferred the energetic frequency of daytime. He sensed other parasites as well, but they were inert, feeding passively off their hosts until falling darkness made them active. Those of them who had no host knew better than to venture out while the light was strongest.
/>   Or normally they did.

  His attention piqued with something close to trepidation: several parasites of the crawling types were gathering. No, not merely several. Dozens. Hundreds! They squirmed about in the light, yearning for—?

  ‘Ah. Well, well.’

  A slender pillar of energy rose in the space-defying distance. He stared in a rare moment of wonder. Wafts and strands of light, each a different colour, swirled around a pulsing beam of white; not the white left by the receding black of darkness, but the white made up of every other colour in existence. He could see those colours, too. Surprised, he called out. His call was meant for one specific soul marker, the only one ever to have shown him colour.

  He would not admit to the delight he felt when the pillar’s pulsation responded.

  Despite the vulnerabilities that daylight posed, he departed from his haven. The darkness ran in rivulets down his face, arms and back, reluctant to let him go as he emerged from its embrace. The energy of daytime was too warm after the cold, but he bore the malaise as he bore all his existence. His hunger roared, craving the promise of fulfilment emanated by the beam of energy. He wanted to believe, even if he didn’t. Light too easily promised to end all suffering, and usually in vain. Yet his pace quickened. The energy – her energy – compelled him to.

  Parasites littered his path, scurrying out of his way as he proceeded. They, too, heeded the promise of the feast advertised so blatantly. He had foreseen the woman would have that effect on his kind, but while he prided himself in being accurate, this time he found no contentment in being right. The crowd of critters thickened with every step. They gave him a wide berth, but at one point, only emptiness stretched ahead.

  He stopped. The pillar was still a way ahead, but the parasites crawled about like ants along the edge of an invisible wall. Or rather two. Two circular walls repelled them. One marked the clearing they instinctively made around him. The second circle, however, was considerably larger.

  He approached the outer limit of the second circle and crossed the divide. No discernible difference apart from the whimpers of the writhing mass behind him. He scoffed. Pitiful creatures! Their insatiable want never ceased to sicken him, but their cowardice repulsed him even more.