For a few seconds, Jess just perched on the edge of Rebecca’s bed, neck elongated, head up. Mama bird in her nest, smelling the wind and watching.
Eventually, she shrugged. Shudder-shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t have mattered. It can’t matter.”
Even as she did it, Rebecca’s smile felt more like a remembered thing. An echo. “We knew you’d say that.”
“We. You and that horror.”
“Me and your daughter’s best friend. Yeah.”
Jess started to stand, gasping involuntarily as her arm shifted, and sank back to the bed. “I can’t believe it. Rebecca, you, of all people … you know what’s going to happen.”
“I do?”
“To dozens of people you’ll never even meet.”
“I wasn’t going to kill that girl, Jess. Sorry. But I also didn’t want her with Trudi or Eddie. Or you. Or me. And I guess I thought … in a way, I wasn’t even thinking, really…”
“You’ve got that right.”
“… but what I thought was that if that girl is theirs … and … I can’t explain this, Jess, but to the extent that you trust me, or that I’ve ever trusted myself … even if she isn’t. In that second, which is the only second I had … my thought was that that kid’s best and only chance is with Sophie.”
Even as Rebecca uttered the words, she heard how weak they sounded. Limp and lame. Wrong, too, not quite accurate. Still, there was a sour satisfaction in watching Jess’s jaw actually drop.
“Chance,” Jess said, after a long, long pause. “For what?”
This time, Rebecca’s smile was immediate, helpless, at least half apology. Holding up her empty, open hands, she shook her head. “It’s actually worse than you think.”
She wouldn’t have thought it possible. But there went Jess’s jaw even lower. “What do you mean?”
“I did think all those things. Sort of. To the extent that I was thinking at all. But…” Again, Rebecca shook her head but harder. This time—and forever more—it wasn’t just Jess’s doubts raking her. “It wasn’t only about the girl. In fact, if I’m being honest with either one of us, it wasn’t mostly about the girl.”
The silence lasted only a few seconds. But it had teeth.
Then, abruptly, Jess rapped her open palm on the bed. Not a pat. But the invitation was clear, even if she couldn’t quite bring herself to utter it. Instantly, Rebecca accepted, squeezing in between Jess and the suitcase. What she wanted to do was take Jess’s unslung hand. She sensed it was too soon for that.
And might be for a long time.
Jess sat beside her, staring. So Rebecca stared back, trying to communicate at least some of the love she felt, and kept going.
“She’s … Sophie, I mean. She’s … thinking.”
“Thinking?”
“Learning. Processing. She’s not like the guy in the hat. Or that horror who was here the night before last.”
“The ones who killed your best friends. And your lover. And your best foster mother. And that other orphan—your foster sister, really—at Joel and Amanda’s house. What was her name?”
“Danni,” Rebecca whispered, tearing up but not looking down.
“Good. Just wanted to make sure you remembered.”
“Jess, stop it,” said Rebecca, not hard but strong. No trembling in her hands or voice. “It’s enough.”
“I’m just making sure it’s clear to you what you’re saying. I want to make sure we’re both hearing it right.”
“It’s clear. And we are. Jess. She is not like them.”
To Rebecca’s surprise, Jess did take her hand, then. Not only that, she let Rebecca see her tears. Let the tears come. “I just … I don’t want anyone else to go through this, Rebecca. Not you. Not anyone. Are you imagining that Sophie won’t kill any more? Or that those deaths won’t matter because you won’t know about them? Because I know you, Rebecca. You’re going to know. You’re never going to be able to let yourself forget.”
“I know. You’re right.” She met Jess’s gaze head-on. Not in defiance. Not even in apology. But in gratitude. In love, though Jess probably wouldn’t be able to see that, now. “I know that Sophie has killed. I know she will kill again. She’ll do it to eat. She’ll do it when she has to, which is not never and may never be. But it’s close to never. That’s what Sophie says, and I believe her.”
“Almost never,” Jess whispered.
Rebecca didn’t bother nodding. Doubts stormed through her again. They would come—Jess was right—for the rest of her life. But.
“I couldn’t kill the girl. I wasn’t going to kill the girl, Jess. And in the end … I just didn’t want to.”
“Well,” said Jess, letting go of Rebecca’s hand. “That is a luxury life gives to some.” Even as she stood, she burst into tears. “Oh God, Rebecca, I miss her so much.”
Grabbing Jess around her good wrist, Rebecca pulled her gently back down on the bed. She hadn’t meant for their faces to wind up so close together. But she didn’t pull back, and neither did Jess. They weren’t so much staring into one another’s eyes now as pooling. Swimming in each other. Almost becoming each other. Later, and forever afterward, in her most terrible moments, in the middle of her most haunted nights, Rebecca would cling to this memory without ever knowing exactly why.
“I’m sorry, Jess. I’m sorry I couldn’t avenge her.”
“Oh, fuck avenging. I don’t care about avenging.”
“But please try to understand. The only real reason I had to kill Sophie in that instant was that I was afraid.”
“That’s a good reason. A much better one than avenging my daughter.”
“Not good enough.” They stared some more. Pooled in one another some more. “Jess. What if … I mean, now we know there’s more than just the ones we know out there.”
“We do? So what?”
“We have to assume there are more of them. What if there are? And what if … Sophie finds them? Sooner or later, doesn’t that seem likely? And what if by then, while she’s raising that girl, she’s become a Sophie who’s had time to sort out what being like her means, or could mean. What if she’s developed a way of living? The way we’re all trying to? And what if she can teach that way to others?”
“That’s a whole lot of what-ifs. That’s a lot of maybe piled up against one absolute certainty: she’s going to kill people.”
This was the end, Rebecca knew. In a minute, maybe less, there’d be nothing more to say. She was still leaving, even though Jess wasn’t throwing her out anymore. Jess was still staying. This is all life is, she thought, not analyzing the thought, trying to accept it. This is what matters, if anything does: not vanquishing enemies, but leaving loved ones in a way that allows the possibility of returning someday. At night or after work. In the morning after a fight. Years later, after living.
“Here’s one more certainty,” she finally said. “Sophie’s way, when she finds it, isn’t going to be our way. It isn’t even going to be like our way. It can’t be. We probably won’t understand it. But what if it really is possible for us to live alongside it?”
“Us meaning the ones she and her kind don’t kill, you mean?”
Rebecca hugged Jess then, gently, and kept on doing it until Jess hugged back.
Then, abruptly, they were both on their feet.
“You don’t have to,” Jess said.
Rebecca nodded. “I know. But it’s time. Not just for me. For you, too.”
“For Benny and Eddie and me to figure out how to be an actual family, you mean? A more traditional one, whatever that is.”
“Yep,” Rebecca said. “And it’s time for me to go find or create my own. Maybe bring it back someday.”
“Like daughters do,” Jess whispered.
If she’d had tears left, Rebecca would have cried them. Instead, she found herself somewhere in the vicinity of smiling. “Like daughters do.”
After that, she went and sat on the couch with Kaylene for a while, then
returned to her room to finish packing. Benny was sleeping in the armchair, his breathing shallow and steady. Jess didn’t reappear, and no one else even seemed to be moving in the house. When Rebecca finally went up and got her suitcase and came back, she found Trudi and her own single suitcase waiting by the door. In her brief and wandering life, the girl had accumulated even less stuff than Rebecca. Most of that was socks. To Rebecca’s surprise, Joel was standing beside her, throat bandaged, leaning on a broom handle he’d whittled and adapted into a makeshift cane.
“Mind if I tag along?” he said. “Just to the boat?”
“You can always come, Joel.”
He shook his head, then closed his eyes and held tight to the cane as if the room were spinning on him. It probably was. “’Fraid I was listening to you two from the stairs. I want to be another place you bring that family you find, someday.”
“Oh, God, of course you will be.”
“Yeah. But in the meantime, I should probably go back to my actual life, too. Wherever that is, and whatever it’s going to be now.”
Trudi had the front door open and her suitcase in her hand. She stamped a foot impatiently. “Come on, already,” the girl said. “Let’s not drag this out. I want to go.”
Benny stirred, lifted his head from the armchair, and waved them over for hugs. With Rebecca, he lingered, but only for a few seconds. Eddie, apparently, was still asleep in his room. Emilia was in Kaylene’s room. She had a flight back home to Mississippi tomorrow morning. Rebecca found herself hoping she’d just sleep until then, and that Eddie would sleep through her going. Sleep for years. Long enough to forget all of this. Even Rebecca.
Jess had retreated to the back of the house and was staring between the nailed boards at the backyard. She barely turned around as Trudi and Joel moved for the front door. Whatever there had been to say, they’d said it, or come as close as they were able.
“Take care of her,” Rebecca murmured, easing free of Benny’s arms, careful not to jostle whichever bones he’d broken this time.
“Like that’s a thing she lets people do,” said Benny, wincing in pain.
“Do it anyway.”
He smiled, a little. “I’ll cook for her.”
Rebecca nodded, touched his forehead right where the white hair sprang from it like spray from a broken fountain. “That’s a start.”
An hour later, she and Joel and Trudi were on the ferry, watching from the rail as it backed out into the Strait and turned toward the mainland. When the continent came into view, Trudi surprised Rebecca by dropping her suitcase to the deck and leaning over the water.
“Just hold tight,” Rebecca murmured to her. “We’re getting there.”
And so they rode together, watching, never speaking, through that surprising, clear day, through clouds of seabirds skimming their wake, into the bright November morning, the world with all its monsters and wonders still in it.
BOOKS BY GLEN HIRSHBERG
The Book of Bunk
The Snowman’s Children
American Morons
The Two Sams
Motherless Child*
The Janus Tree
Good Girls*
Nothing to Devour*
The Ones Who Are Waving
*A Tor Book
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GLEN HIRSHBERG has won the Shirley Jackson Award and several International Horror Guild Awards; he is a multiple finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Hirshberg lives in the Los Angeles area with his family, where he teaches high school English and creative writing. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Books by Glen Hirshberg
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NOTHING TO DEVOUR
Copyright © 2018 by Glen Hirshberg
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs: landscape © by Edmund Lowe Photography / Shutterstock.com; house © Twindesigner / Depositphotos
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Hirshberg, Glen, 1966– author.
Title: Nothing to devour / Glen Hirshberg.
Description: First edition. | New York: Tor, 2018. | “A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038931 | ISBN 9780765337474 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781466834439 (ebook)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Occult fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.I77 N68 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038931
eISBN 9781466834439
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: November 2018
Nothing to Devour Page 25