Evil Returns

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I deserve better than this.

  “Hello, darling,” said her mother, kissing her swiftly. “Tell me what you think of this wallpaper for the breakfast room.”

  “It’s perfect,” said Devnee, not looking.

  “Here are two possibilities, Devnee. Help me choose.”

  “Mom, you have a great eye for color. Whatever you choose is perfect.”

  “Come on, Devvy,” said her mother, pulling out the old baby name.

  “Ma.”

  “Dance with me,” said her mother, pulling out the old baby after-school activity.

  “Ma!”

  Her mother deflated. She stepped away and looked sadly at the wallpaper samples, as if she had expected great things to come from them; as if she had expected to transform both the wall and her life and perhaps also her relationship with her daughter.

  Her mother stared out the kitchen window. The backyard was grim and wintry, and the hemlocks were like a dark green prison wall. No sky, no town, no neighbor was visible.

  “I don’t know, Devvy,” said her mother sadly. “You are a different person since we moved here.”

  Devnee had decided several days ago to stop thinking about the differences. It just gave her an upset stomach. The point of life was to be beautiful and have fun. She was not going to think of the techniques used to arrive there.

  “I can feel you full of wishes,” said her mother. “Wishing to be somebody else. To be somewhere else. Wishing you had a different family.”

  The truth stung. Devnee must not let her mother see any more of it. She rallied. “I like the wallpaper with the ribbon effect, Mom. I think your watercolors would look terrific against it.”

  Her mother continued to study the hemlocks. She frowned slightly, tilted her head, and looked more intently.

  “I don’t even feel as if I recognize you these days,” said her mother with infinite sadness.

  “I’m just wearing my hair differently,” said Devnee casually.

  Her mother nodded. “I love it like that. You’re beautiful, sweetheart. I love looking at you. But—Devvy, you don’t even talk the way you used to! What’s going on? Tell me. Please.”

  “I’m just learning to manage my study time better, Mother. Aren’t you proud of me?”

  A shadow crossed her mother’s face. She fiddled with the wallpaper samples. She tilted her body, looking out the window again, toward the hemlocks. Devnee followed her gaze.

  Caught in the hemlocks like an immense moth was the vampire’s cloak.

  “There’s something …” Her mother’s voice trailed off. “I can’t quite focus on it. My perspective is off. There’s—I don’t know—it looks like—I think it’s dirty laundry stuck on the tree.”

  Only her mother would look at a vampire’s cloak and see laundry. Her mother was probably even now thinking of bleach and detergent; probably even now making the kind of pitiful plans that filled her day: I’ll just go out there and get that; run a load of laundry and have it all nice and starkly clean and freshly white.

  Pathetic, thought Devnee. I wish I had a different mother.

  The wish went right out the window, fluttering toward the hemlocks.

  A different mother, thought Devnee.

  Her heart stopped. Her tongue thickened.

  She looked with horror at the woman standing in her kitchen: a happy woman, who liked her life and her family. Who loved her daughter.

  “No,” said Devnee. “No!” And then much louder, “No! I didn’t mean it!”

  Her mother did not seem to have heard. She moved toward the back door. Put her hand on the knob.

  “No,” said Devnee, “don’t go out there, Mom. You stay inside. You—listen, I love this wallpaper. I’ll go out there and get that thing off the hemlocks and you—um—well, let’s go to the wallpaper store together! Huh? Won’t that be fun?”

  “Really? Would you like to?” said her mother. “Maybe while we’re there we can look at paper for the tower. I know you love it the way it is, Devvy, but somehow when I’m up there alone, it feels dark to me.”

  Devnee’s laugh was hysterical. “Don’t go there alone, Mom, okay? I keep my room clean. You don’t need to go there.”

  Her mother was still frowning, still confused. “I don’t know, Devvy, there’s so much about this house. … Sometimes in the day I feel as if I’m not alone. … Sometimes I even seem to hear someone laughing.”

  It was Devnee who was laughing now. Horrible little bursts of insane hysterical laughter spurted out of her.

  Her mother shuddered. “Just like that, Devvy. Don’t laugh like that. It makes me so nervous.”

  Devnee stopped laughing, as if she’d sliced off her laugh with a machete. “I’ll be right back, Mom,” she said. “You stay here where it’s warm. Promise?”

  Her mother was getting her jacket. Getting her gloves.

  “Mom,” said Devnee, “let’s have a cup of tea. You put the water on to boil. I’ll have apple mint, okay? We haven’t had a cup of tea together in weeks.” She put her mother’s jacket back. Stuck the teakettle in her mother’s hand.

  Wild distant laughter pealed. Mother and daughter swung toward the kitchen window and saw hemlocks shaking, as if the heavy green branches were crackling with fire.

  How dare that sick, twisted, perverted vampire try to get near her mother! Devnee would kill him!

  “Wait here,” she said sternly to her mother, and she stormed out the back door, strode over the dead grass of winter, marched to the hemlocks, and grabbed hold of the cloak.

  “Don’t you dare go near my mother,” said Devnee Fountain.

  The vampire’s teeth appeared, loose in the trees, a fang here, a fang there. “I believe you made a wish.”

  “I take it back. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Pity,” said the vampire. “I’m afraid it’s still a wish.”

  “You scum!” spat Devnee. “How dare you!”

  “I’m afraid,” said the vampire, “I cannot quite follow your distinctions. Why was it fine to wish for Aryssa’s beauty and Victoria’s brains, but not fine to wish for a different mother? I think you deserve a better mother, too.”

  “This is the one I have!” said Devnee.

  “That was the body you had,” pointed out the vampire, “and the mind. You wouldn’t settle for them. Why settle for a pathetic excuse of a mother? Other girls have mothers who are successful attorneys, or brilliant novelists, or creative designers.”

  “I’m keeping my own mother.”

  “Mmmmm. The wish, however, my dear. The wish is here, you know. I possess it. It was a very complete wish. I was in your mind at the time, and I saw quite clearly the kind of mother you would prefer.”

  “You did not! I prefer my mother!” Devnee yanked at the cape and sure enough, a piece of it came off in her hands. But it was not cloth. It was some sort of moss, and in the heat of her hands it melted into algae, into scum, and stained her hand green. She wiped her hands on her jeans and stained the jeans. “Get off me!” she shouted.

  “I’m in you,” he said.

  “I don’t want this! You can’t have her! I take it back! Go away! Take your cloak and go!”

  He shook his head. His trunk, his cape, and his trees shook with him, swaying back and forth like some encapsulated inland gale. “You opened my shutters. You let me in. You sent me wishes. You presented me with your shadow.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean—no? You can’t change your mind in the middle of your transformation, Devnee. You wanted it all, and you’re getting it all. You will be perfect. You will have beauty and brains and money and talent … and an interesting mother worthy of such a daughter.”

  “I will blot you off the landscape if you touch my mother.”

  He vanished.

  Ha! thought Devnee, triumphant.

  But instead, the voice of the vampire came through the bottoms of her feet. She cried out and lifted first one foot and then the other, but she could not
lift them both at the same time, and the vampire oozed through her soles and into her body and up, up, up into her mind.

  Blot away your beauty, too?

  Blot away your brains?

  I doubt that, Devnee. There will be no blotting. Because your real wish, your real first wish, Devnee, your real wish was to have it all.

  Have it all.

  That means more, my dear.

  More, and more, and more.

  “I don’t want it now,” she said. She was very, very cold. The stain on her hand hurt like a burn, and the stain on her jeans stank like a swamp.

  “Please?” she said. She was crying now, and the tears hurt even more than the stains; they seemed to be cutting trenches in her face; she would have scars from her eyes to her chin; where the tears hit the ground there would be pits eaten away from the acid that was Devnee.

  “Please don’t hurt my mother,” she said brokenly.

  “Well …” said the vampire. “I am willing to postpone your mother.”

  “Fine,” said Devnee. “Anything.”

  His smile was immense. His fangs were all around her now, like some gruesome winter wreath: icicles closing in on her neck.

  “I have certainly enjoyed Aryssa and Victoria,” said the vampire. “But there is a girl my eye keeps going to. Her name is Karen.”

  “I don’t remember a Karen,” said Devnee dully.

  “No? She’s in your gym class. She’s the one who’s so excellent in sports.”

  Now Devnee remembered. She didn’t much care for athletes. Karen was sweaty and musclebound. She was always dribbling a basketball or doing backbends. Devnee herself loathed games. Group showers. Sweat. Coaches. And most of all basketball. Devnee could never remember which end of the court was her basket. In gym, people despised her.

  Perhaps only gym is where I’m still real, she thought. In gym, I show.

  His teeth came out again: long and thin and very slick, for puncturing without slowing down.

  His laugh was the sound of a car that will not start on a winter morning: grinding, dead, batteryless.

  “Karen,” he said.

  She closed her eyes.

  What had Karen done to deserve this? Karen had never even spoken to Devnee!

  “No, I can’t,” said Devnee. “I’ve done this enough. I—”

  “Fine. I accept your mother.”

  Devnee’s tears rolled to the edges of her mouth and there they tasted not of salt but of blood.

  “I’m a little out of control,” said the vampire. “I’m so hungry, you see. All this chatter has whetted my appetite. I want more. Just like you, Devnee, darling.”

  “All right,” she whispered. “Karen.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “Tomorrow,” she said.

  The vampire vanished.

  Devnee staggered back to the house. The tea was steeped and waiting. Her mother had heated a cinnamon coffee cake she had made that morning. The kitchen smelled of love.

  “What was it?” asked her mother.

  “Nothing. Some old piece of plastic that blew into the yard. I threw it in the trash.”

  “Thank you, darling.” Her mother set the cup of tea before her. Steam rose up from the teacup and Devnee thought of evil genies rising out of Egyptian urns. What had risen in this house?

  What had she, Devnee Fountain, given permission to?

  From across the table, her mother blew Devnee a kiss.

  The kiss was visible: as clear on the air as a leaf falling. And fall it did. The kiss did not reach Devnee. It fell in the middle of the table, between the sugar and the lemons.

  She tried to pick it up, but it broke in her hand.

  She was no longer human. Even kisses could not touch her now.

  Chapter 15

  AFTER SCHOOL, VICTORIA BURST into tears. “My parents are really on my case!” she said. “My grades have fallen and I don’t have any energy and they’re so mad at me.”

  Devnee could hardly bear to look at Victoria. But she forced herself to examine the girl. Lost was Victoria’s athlete-breaking-the-ribbon look. Now, she more closely resembled the torn and frayed ribbon itself.

  My mother could be next, thought Devnee. My mother.

  “That’s rough, Victoria,” said one of the other girls.

  How unnoticing they were. Victoria’s problems hardly skimmed the surface of their day. How absorbed each girl was by her own existence, how selfish about others.

  Selfish! thought Devnee. I am actually annoyed with the rest for being selfish? I—who caused this collapse?

  “I don’t know what to do,” wept Victoria. She was wilted, like a flower that had once been a proud tulip and was now just a broken stem.

  I never thought of Victoria as a real person, thought Devnee. I never thought of Victoria as having parents and problems, or even life. I pretended she was just an object, and I could have part of her.

  William gave Victoria a hug. “You’ll feel better in a few days,” he promised, as if he could control it.

  Devnee knew otherwise. It was, after all, her own wish, but she could not control it, either.

  Or can I?

  Can I gain control?

  Devnee straightened, firmed, drew herself in.

  He wants Karen. But what he actually said was: He would postpone having my mother. But he does not seem to be able to go out and get victims on his own. He has to have a conduit. He needs to have somebody like me to open his dark path.

  I can’t give him another girl. I can’t give him Karen.

  But if I don’t give him Karen, my mother is right in the house with him! The path is surely already open. What if my mother went into my room to straighten up? What if my mother decided suddenly to wash windows in the tower?

  That sounded like her mother.

  What then? Where would the dark path go?

  Victoria dried her tears, but she did not look done with crying. “I feel as if somebody scooped me out.”

  Devnee almost screamed. She had a vision of the vampire with an ice-cream scoop, taking this and that out of Victoria’s head, and leaving her with pits and holes instead.

  “You probably have mono,” diagnosed William.

  “No. I’m brain-dead.”

  No, no, no, no, thought Devnee. No, I didn’t wish for that! I wished for brains, but surely, surely, I didn’t really wish to destroy Victoria to get them. Did I? Please, please, tell me I didn’t wish to hurt anybody like this.

  “How can you tell?” said William gently.

  “I’m failing every class,” cried Victoria. “Good clue, huh?”

  William’s hug turned to comfort. “I love you anyway,” he said.

  How nice William was. How rare the quality of niceness had turned out to be. Plenty of people had beauty, plenty of people had brains, plenty of people had money—but who in this immense school, with its huge student body, had turned out to be just plain nice? Certainly not Devnee Fountain.

  I should have wished for that. To be nice.

  The wish teased along the edges of her mind and thoughts. If she were nice, as well as beautiful and brilliant … why, she would—

  There was a softening of her skull. A weakening of her brain. A feeling of wind through her ears. The vampire was within a step of her thoughts.

  He comes in when I let him! thought Devnee. I thought he could come of his own accord, but he can’t. I actually open the door myself: I wish for anything—and he comes in.

  She drew her thoughts and her soul together and removed any wishes, stalled any yearning. Even for being nice. For anything at all. She grew hard and solid, like concrete bunkers.

  The vampire was gone before he had quite gotten in. He was not able to converse with her on the inside of her head, the way he had in the past. She had kicked him out.

  Pulses of triumph rocked her body; she throbbed with power.

  “I can’t stand girls who whine,” said Trey, muttering about Victoria. He frowned at the way William was
holding her, as if to offer comfort were to break the rules. “Jeez,” he added. He sighed heavily, burdened by the mere presence of a girl who whined.

  I sold out for him? Devnee thought.

  No, I sold out for beauty. But I needed the beauty to attract a Trey. To make friends. I love my beauty. I don’t want to give it up. It’s absolutely wonderful being beautiful.

  But it doesn’t make a selfish hunk into a nice boy.

  I wish—

  Across the lobby the shadows shifted and became a single line and oozed slowly over the glittering marble toward Devnee.

  I don’t wish!

  She had caught it in time, slashing off the edge of the wish before the dark path could gather speed.

  But if I foil him … If I don’t surrender again and give him Karen … what position will that place my own mother in? And we’re not moving! That’s our house! We’re stuck! We’re all stuck. My mother, my father, my brother, me … and the vampire.

  There is no way out.

  And the vampire knows it.

  “Hi, Devnee,” said an unfamiliar voice.

  Devnee looked up. She felt as if a plate of translucent glass had been dropped between herself and the world: She could see the shapes, but not the people. Because I don’t want them to be people, she thought with horror. I want them to be body parts that I steal.

  “Karen,” said the unfamiliar voice, reminding Devnee.

  A gurgle of sickness rose up in Devnee’s throat and she fought it down. Weakness could no longer be allowed. “Hi, Karen,” she said brightly. “How are you? What’s happening? Did you just come from practice?”

  Karen was damp from a gym shower. Not a pretty girl, Karen had personality—armloads of it: She seemed to vibrate behind that sheet of unclear glass with friendship and other good things.

  Good things waiting to be destroyed, thought Devnee. What could be worse for a dedicated athlete than a vampire’s visit?

  Visit.

  Who am I kidding here?

  Let’s say it plainly, Devnee Fountain, and make yourself realize what is actually going on. Admit the truth. You turned Aryssa and Victoria over to a subhuman beast who sucked their blood for his lunch. A beast whose next victims will be innocent Karen and your very own mother.