Evil Returns

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I was born plain, she thought, and Luke is right. I deserve whatever I get. I had daydreams too big. I wanted to be happy, and pretty, and popular. Instead I was a nuisance and made Trey want to puke.

  So after biology lab, Devnee said to Aryssa, “You’ve been a great buddy, Aryssa. But I’m pretty well oriented now. I’ll be okay.”

  Aryssa gave the incredibly sweet smile that had so impressed Devnee the first day. This was the gift Aryssa wanted, not friendship, not company, not a slumber party in a tower—but freedom from the burden of Devnee. “You’re so darling, Dev,” Aryssa said.

  Devnee could not speak another syllable. Her voice would break. She nodded. Aryssa smiled again, like an archangel, like a star in the heavens, and danced over to her real friends.

  How final the passage was.

  How complete the end of Devnee’s plans for a new life in a new school.

  Devnee knew that her heart had still been hoping. Her heart had beaten on, telling itself, that Aryssa would answer, “Nonsense, Devnee, we’re real buddies, you and I; I’m so glad you moved here!”

  Her heart was a fool.

  Devnee stood alone, without a buddy, in the door of biology lab, and saw that Aryssa was not the only beautiful girl. She was part of a crowd of beautiful girls; a page full of magazine models, haughty and perfect.

  Now she knew they had been laughing at her all along.

  “Hey, buddy,” said Trey cheerfully.

  Her heart dissolved this time; she had an acid bath in her chest. She said bravely, “Thanks for being my buddy, Trey. I’ll be fine on my own now.”

  “Hey, great,” said Trey. He knotted his big hand into a friendly fist and gave her a friendly tap on the shoulder.

  I want a kiss and a hug, she thought, and I’m getting a clenched-fist good-bye.

  “You’re a very well-adjusted person, you know that?” said Trey. “I mean, you settled in really well, Devnee.” He, too, left to be with his real friends, with handsome William and the others. “You take care of yourself now, Devnee,” he called back, as if he would never see her again.

  And he did not.

  In the days that followed, Trey, who was in two classes with her, plus lunch, never saw her again. He moved in his crowd, the beautiful crowd, and Devnee blended into the ordinary group, the ones on whom Trey’s eyes would never focus and with whom Aryssa would never laugh.

  The only person who continued to be a friend was Victoria. Victoria, who told her potential boyfriends they had to be nice to losers, or Victoria wouldn’t be nice to them.

  I’m a loser! thought Devnee. She perfected the art of tilting her head back to keep the tears from rolling down her cheeks.

  If only I were beautiful! Oh, how I wish I could be beautiful!

  Chapter 5

  THE SCHOOL BUS DROVE down the long slow hill. Even the road seemed reluctant to get to the bottom where Devnee’s mansion lay among the dark and angry evergreens. The road was filled with little rises, as if trying to escape arriving in the valley.

  From the school bus window, she could see the many-angled roof, the tall chimneys and the tower.

  There was no sun, of course; it was not a day for sun. And yet the windows of the tower gleamed, and spoke to her, and called her name.

  The bus stopped.

  Only Devnee got off.

  Nobody said good-bye.

  Nobody watched her go.

  Nobody saw that her shadow went first.

  The shadow waited for Devnee to catch up, and Devnee knew that they were going to the tower together. She knew that the tower was waiting for them both. The tower knew things she did not. Could not. Should not.

  She was oddly excited.

  Her scalp prickled but she did not shrink from it.

  She felt that perhaps her personality had split, just as her shadow and body had split. She was going to be two people in this town: a tower person and a school person.

  “How was school?” her mother asked gaily. Her mother was so involved in kitchen remodeling, so happy choosing faucet styles and cabinet knobs that she thought everybody was just as happy.

  “Pretty good.” Devnee could not even remember the happiness of last week.

  “Oh, darling, I know we made the right decision moving to this town and buying this house!”

  Devnee had difficulty getting warm. The winter dampness had entered her bones, her lungs, even her heart. She put a kettle on the stove, heating water over the gas burner instead of sticking a mug in the microwave, just to get heat from the tiny blue flames. The flames curled away from her, as if even they found her too dull and plain to even heat water for.

  The house creaked and groaned. During supper, her father got up twice to see where the draft was coming from, to shut a door here and check a window there.

  Devnee’s dreams from the first night crept up her back and lodged against her neck. Something dark and cold, something of ink and something of fungus crawled over her skin.

  “I’m rotting,” she said out loud. “I have nothing to offer, and my body knows it, and it’s rotting.”

  Her father gave her his most irritated look.

  Luke gave her his “why is this my sister?” look.

  Her mother of course ignored the statement. Her mother hated being reminded of how dull, how ordinary her daughter was. Instead her mother said, “Now don’t let this old house worry you, sweet pea. The house does make eerie noises, but it’s just an old-fashioned heating system warming up and cooling off. Why, soon it’ll feel as if you always lived here.”

  Perhaps I always have, thought Devnee. My shadow already knows every room; my shadow has been here before. My shadow will stay here after I am gone.

  She went to bed early.

  The tower was even colder than the rest of the house.

  She was not surprised when her shadow peeled away, when it crossed the tower room. Cautiously, as if testing the waters.

  When Devnee turned out the light, her shadow did not evaporate. It became a darker dark than the rest of the room.

  Her soul darkened with it, and all her hatreds and jealousies filled the spaces of the tower, crowding against the walls, against the windows. Through the crowded anger, the packed despair, came a voice, as liquid as oozing mud.

  The voice sounded trapped, condensed, underwater. It sounded heavy and drowning.

  Devnee could not understand the words. Perhaps they were not words, but rumblings from ancient history.

  Devnee Fountain got out of bed, holding her hands in front of her to feel her way through the dark, trying to find the voice.

  Her shadow wrapped itself around her legs, hanging on to her. Pushing her back toward the bed. She kicked the air to free herself from the clinging shadow. This is how Aryssa felt toward me, she thought. I was nothing but dark air to her, to be kicked off at the end of the week.

  Devnee was wearing a long flannel nightgown, because it was cold in the old house. Icy drafts crept between every crack. The nightgown caught between her feet, and tripped her. As she tumbled to the floor, the cracks in the wood widened as if the tower were having an earthquake. She cried out and clutched the wall to keep herself from falling into a crack. It opened as wide as a crevasse in Antarctica, to swallow a dog team or a downed plane, and she found a handle on the wall and held it.

  She was suffocating.

  She was hot and her head was throbbing from tower thoughts. Her shadow—her shadow was coming off—but not by choice—it—

  —was being torn off.

  There was no pain, but a severing. She had been amputated.

  The shadow had not chosen to go.

  The shadow had been taken.

  I have to have air, thought Devnee, and flung open the window.

  Wind screamed into the tower as if it had been bottled for years. The pressure of its arrival knocked her back into the center of the room, and the room felt huge, as if she could run backward for days and not hit the other wall.

  She might ha
ve opened her heart as well as the window. Body and soul were exposed, more painfully than even in Mr. O’Sullivan’s room. With every breath, her lungs ached in the bitter wind.

  A piece of darkness became solid, and she caught it, thinking it was her shadow. It wrapped around her.

  Velvet, lined with slime.

  Not her shadow.

  It was the answer to her wish.

  Devnee could not quite see the answer.

  It—he—floated in and out of focus like a distant mirage far down a highway.

  He came from the cracks in the shutters, and he remained attached to them, legless. His cloak drifted toward her and shifted back, the way sea anemones did in the aquarium, tentacles rising and falling with the tide. His cloak rose and fell with her breathing, as if she had become his lungs.

  Together they breathed in the tower air.

  Together they studied each other.

  She could not see his body, although she was aware of it, glowing and phosphorescent behind the desk. His face was visible only when the cloak was not weaving in front of it.

  His eyes glittered like ice cubes. His teeth were like frozen, sharpened milk. His lips were stretched like pale rubber bands.

  She wanted to run, but she wanted to be part of him and know him.

  Her shadow embroidered the dark, stitching itself in the corners and darting past the shutters.

  The dark drapery of his garments shifted and swirled and the hem blew toward Devnee’s fingers. In a voice as sticky as spiderwebs, he said, “Touch it.”

  She shook her head.

  How could it be so dark, so black and midnight, and yet she continued to see? Dark had become light, and the darkness of him made a path.

  “Yes,” he said. His voice purred. “A path. It will take us both where we want to go. I think I heard you make a wish, my dear. A wish. I came for your wish.”

  A wish? She could not remember wishing for anything. Except the impossible. Beauty. Friends. Fun.

  The cloak stroked her hand.

  She whimpered and yanked the hand back, but the cloak arranged itself into fingers and tightened its grip. Chill surrounded her ankles like a damp moldy blanket. She could not move or think.

  “Wish on it,” he breathed.

  She wanted to put her other hand down and peel away the cloak. But what if it caught both her hands? Where would she go then? How would she get free?

  “You wished, I think,” came the voice, as rich and comforting as melted chocolate, “for Beauty.”

  Aryssa entered her mind, as clear and devastatingly beautiful as a portrait in a gallery.

  If you possessed Beauty, the rest came of its own accord. Beautiful girls stayed gracefully in one place, while along came Fame, and Riches, and Friends. If you had Beauty, people loved to look at you; and the longer they looked at you, the more they fell in love with you. If you had Beauty, there was nothing you could not do: no problem you could not conquer, no pain you could not assuage.

  For a dark moment she tasted Beauty, and all that it could mean. Then her shadow swept down around her and touched her feet. For a moment she felt normal.

  The shadow pressed closer, and she knew this was what her shadow wanted. She took a step back, and the cloak fell from her hand, the wind lessened, and the chill evaporated. Devnee took another step back and felt for the wall switch. The shadow clung to her arm, coaxing her back to bed.

  “If, my dear,” he said, “if you were beautiful …” He covered his mouth and smiled behind his hands. His fingers were all bone and no flesh.

  She was shocked. “You must be starving,” she said.

  “Yes.” The ssss of the word lasted a long time, singing in her ears, deafening her. “I am starving,” he agreed. “That is my wish, Devnee Fountain. Something to feed upon. Perhaps, my dear, we could trade wishes. I will give you mine, and you will give me yours.”

  She tried to think about this, but the ssss of his yessssss curled around her and seeped into her ears and her eyes and her thoughts, and confused her.

  “What is your wissssshhhh?” he whispered.

  The ssssshhhh floated through her brain, and she said firmly, “I want it all.”

  Now he laughed. It was the sound of breaking glass. “Nobody has it all, my dear.”

  “But they do. On TV all the time you see somebody who has it all. And in school, lots of girls have it all.”

  “Name one.”

  “Aryssa.”

  “She has only beauty.”

  “It’s enough,” said Devnee. “She has everything because she has beauty. If I had beauty …” I would have buddies who really loved me, she thought. I would link arms and make phone calls and have fun. All it takes is to be beautiful, but I was born plain and I will never have a chance to be anything else. “Still,” she said, “I want it all.”

  “That is a thousand wishes. You must start with one. Gradually you will collect it all, my dear. I promise you that in exchange. But you must choose the place to start.”

  Wishes were important to Devnee. Whether she wished on a birthday candle, or a wishbone, or the first star of the evening, she really pondered her wish, to be sure she wished right, that there were no hitches, that it really was her first choice.

  “Aryssa,” he repeated. “Such a lovely name. Such a lovely girl.”

  Yes, thought Devnee. Such a lovely girl. That dark hair, such a perfect cut. That fair face, such a lovely form. Those sweet soft eyes so deep beneath her brow. Her walk, like a dancer lingering with her partner.

  His cape flew back and tightened around him, celebrating something. “What a wonderful description!” he breathed. “Yes, definitely the right choice.”

  Devnee looked at him uneasily. “I didn’t say anything out loud.”

  “You don’t need to,” he said. “I am in your mind.”

  She shuddered. Her shadow trembled. “Give me back that thought,” she said. “It’s mine.”

  “No. You are in my tower. And I am in your head and heart.” How brittle the laugh was. How desperate. What was it that he wanted? And how could she, Devnee Fountain, give it to him?

  “Aryssa is not a very nice person, is she?” he went on. “Should a mean, small-minded person like her be allowed to have such beauty?”

  Devnee stood very still.

  “While a gentle, kind, hardworking person like you, is … well … perhaps … a little less beautiful?”

  “I’m plain,” she said. She found herself holding Aryssa responsible for this. How dare Aryssa be born so perfect?

  “Plain. A dreadful word,” he sympathized. “Nobody wants to be plain. I know how you wish you were beautiful.”

  She nodded.

  “I love wishes,” he said. “I have one myself.”

  She was bending toward him. Her shadow was bending away.

  “Make a wish,” he breathed.

  Devnee caught the edge of the cape. For one sick, dizzy moment she felt as if she were holding the edge of a swamp, a pond full of poison. A queer stench rose up and she tried to turn away, tried to catch a breath of fresh air. The tower seemed close and fetid, as if something there were rotting in those terrible cracks that opened by night.

  “Make a wish!” He drooled over the words. His trunk pulsed back and forth, as if he were on a spring. He isn’t a ghost, she thought. He has too much form. And he is too dark.

  She wanted to run downstairs to the kitchen full of sawdust and paper plates and family laughter.

  He said, “Here’s my offer.”

  I have to get out of here, thought Devnee. She managed to focus her eyes, managed to find her shadow, managed with her eyes to draw it back to herself. Its thin presence snuggled weakly against her.

  “You want to be beautiful?” he said. “I will give you Aryssa’s beauty.”

  Have Aryssa’s beauty! Imagine that. Imagine waking up in the morning, looking in your mirror, and seeing Aryssa there! Imagine how the boys would admire; how the girls would envy!

&n
bsp; Aryssa’s beauty.

  “But what about Aryssa?”

  “What about her?”

  “What will she have?”

  He smiled. The teeth were immense and sharp and dripping with slime. “What she deserves,” he said.

  Oh, what a wonderful thought—that people got what they deserved! Yes! Aryssa should get what she deserved. Aryssa and Trey, saying that being buddies with Devnee made them puke! She would show them! They wouldn’t say that again in a hurry!

  “I wish I were beautiful,” cried Devnee Fountain. “I wish I looked like Aryssa.”

  The cape jerked free, rasping over her skin, as painful as a handful of paper cuts. The cape wrapped itself around him like a container. Just before he vanished, she saw how his teeth overhung his lower lip, sharp as a row of garden stakes.

  He was a vampire.

  In that dark and terrible moment, Devnee Fountain knew what would happen to Aryssa.

  But she did nothing. She did not take back her wish. Hot revenge filled her mind, ugly as a hundred vampires.

  Aryssa would get what she deserved.

  Devnee smiled, and the smile was sharp, and cruel.

  Her shadow did not come back.

  Chapter 6

  IN SCHOOL THEY LIKED you to think. Thinking carefully and logically was a reason for school. You got graded on your thinking and Devnee tended to think more inside the building than out of it.

  Today, however, Devnee Fountain sat, carefully not thinking.

  Not thinking took a lot of energy. It required concentration far beyond mere thinking. Not thinking meant taking complete control of her mind and eyes and daydreams.

  Not thinking required Devnee to split her personality and allot some to the teacher, some to the paper, some to the human beings around her, and none whatsoever, not a whisper, not a glimmer, to last night.

  Last night.

  It crept into her mind even as she fought its memory.

  She saw it, smelled it, tasted it, felt it, and most of all … heard it.

  “You see,” he had whispered, “I cannot get anything for myself. It must be given to me. And so I offer you, my dear, a fair exchange.”

  His voice echoed. It did not stay where it belonged, twelve hours before. It spread like spilled oil on a pond, its dark sticky slime rimming the edges of her soul.