by Laura Bickle
Amanda puts her hand over her mouth.
“Can I touch it?” Garth asks.
The old man shrugs. “Knock yourself out.”
Garth picks it up with more reverence than I’ve ever seen him handle a corpse at the Body Shop. We got bones one time, I remember—an exhumation from the bottom of a well. Garth cleaned the bones for proper re-interment with incredible care, but this is even more fragile-seeming. He picks up the skull, as gently as if it’s made of crystal, and turns it over. The inside is smooth and reflective as glass. I can see where human vertebrae would attach to the back of the skull.
“What the heck is it?” I don’t know if I’m asking Garth or the old man. I think I’m afraid to know the answer. I think I might already know the answer.
“It’s a Devourer,” the old man confirms.
Amanda’s fingers are tracing her own cheekbones. Maybe it’s just me, but it looks like they jut out. Did she always have such awesome cheekbones? Or is she becoming something like…like this?
“Why didn’t you give this to the museum?” my brother asks.
The old man shrugs. “It would have caused a helluva lot of controversy. I’m pretty sure I’d be accused of perpetrating some kind of hoax and then get a whole lot of unwanted visitors. I ain’t got time for that bullshit. Better they find it after I’m dead.”
“I imagine that the Ancient Aliens guy would be on this instantly,” Garth murmurs.
A strangled noise comes from my left. Amanda is pressing her hands to her eyes. She jumps up from the table and lurches out the door.
I follow her.
She’s fast, but I can track her by the chaos of the chickens scattering around her. She stops on the far side of the pickup and sits against the tire, sobbing.
I sit down beside her. The ground is cold under my butt, and I wrap my arms around my knees.
“Hey.” I don’t know what else to say.
“I don’t…I don’t want to become that…that thing.” She forces the words out around hiccupped sobs.
“I know. I know.” I put my arm around her.
And I don’t know what else to do. It doesn’t seem like much, but she puts her head on my shoulder and cries like a little girl. Without even trying to nibble on me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
When we get back home, there’s gonna be hell to pay.
So we don’t go home.
Garth drives down the back roads, close to the river. I catch glimpses of the brown water through the bare trees, with the last bits of the cold sunset sparkling off the currents. As the sun kisses the horizon, the temperature is dropping. I wrap my sweatshirt sleeves over my knuckles and cross my arms over my chest, shivering in the chill. In the jump seat behind us, Amanda chews on a chicken feather. It seems very still, very silent, up to the point where Garth pulls off onto an empty road beside the river and shuts off the engine.
Water rushes in the distance. Garth and I follow Amanda as she weaves around pale birch trees, through dried leaves. Our footsteps make an incredible amount of noise, so at least I know we’re not sneaking up on anything.
“Are we getting close?” I ask.
“Just ahead,” she says.
A muddy bank drops away below us. Beyond is the wreck of the old mill, hiding behind faded orange NO TRESPASSING signs nailed to trees. I think Gramma and Gramps took me here as a child, so I could do a school report on landmarks. It looks a lot different now than what I remember. The wheel is broken, jammed with debris and what looks like a beaver dam. The wood has rotted and turned green. I can smell the decomposition from here.
“This way.” Amanda leads us to the shore, to a sketchy-looking bridge made of boards spanning the distance from the bank to the mill.
Garth looks askance at it, catching my elbow. I shrug it off and follow Amanda across the creaky boards to the structure.
The water is a lot shallower than it seems like it should be. The wheel looks stuck in the mud, as if it’s part of a huge machine that’s come to rest on land.
Amanda is like a shadow haunting the mill house, wavering and flitting over the interior. Huge chunks of sandstone are frozen in broken wooden gears, where the milling used to take place. I try to imagine what this place was like when it was built and full of dust and grain and noise, but I fail. Overhead, holes in the roof drizzle water inside. Below, vast holes in the sagging flooring expose the water beneath, not more than an arm’s length away from the surface. Through broken-out windows, the river stretches out before me.
But not behind.
The new dam is less than a football field’s distance away. It’s an earthwork dam, a pretty small structure for a small tributary of the river. The yellow construction machines can be seen through the trees and the orange construction fence, and the lip of the dam is visible, gravel and dirt.
“If this is Catfish Bob’s hangout, I can see why he’s pretty pissed,” Garth observes, carefully picking a safe spot to stand. He tests each step with his sneaker.
Amanda says nothing. She just stares at the darkening water.
“Why are they building it, anyway?”I ask.
Garth shrugs. “I remember reading about the dam in the paper. It’s supposed to do something for farmland, keep it from getting so wet or something.”
“Seems dumb,” I say.
Amanda doesn’t move. She just watches the water. I touch her shoulder to offer some comfort.
Below us, something moves in the water. I catch my breath. An undulating shadow slides into the shallows, where polished bits of milk-quartz gravel lie. I grasp Amanda’s arm. “Oh my god. Is that him?”
Amanda nods wordlessly.
Garth reaches for his phone, likely so he can take a picture. I swat his phone out of his hand, and it lands on the rotting floor with a crack. The shape darts away.
“Now you’ve scared him,” Garth hisses, bending down to pick up his phone.
The floor erupts in a shattering roar. I scuttle back on my elbows, crying out as something dark comes out of the water, breeching the soft wood like a whale in waves.
Bob is enormous. He’s easily the size of a car, green and black and smelling of rust and algae and rotting leaves. His whiskers slash right and left, his black eyes darting. He lunges for me.
I yelp and jump, teetering on a millstone. The fish snaps around me, splashing, searching for something to eat.
Garth grabs me and hauls me back toward the bridge so we can escape.
I struggle against him. “Where’s Amanda? We can’t leave her!”
“Look,” he breathes.
Amanda stands in the shallows, water up to her waist. Catfish Bob moves around her, circling her. She holds her hands out, seemingly entranced as his fins gently break the surface of the water. Her fingers play over the mottled surface of his skin.
I feel like a voyeur, a strange interloper on some intimate scene. Her pale fingers reach out, stroking the spine of the suddenly-placid fish.
Garth releases me, but I remain rooted in place.
I can’t move. Not even when the light drains out of the sky and the giant fish swims away. And not when Amanda silently climbs up the bank and walks toward the truck.
*
I don’t know what that fish said to Amanda.
She won’t say.
Garth turns off the lights of the pickup truck, shuts off the engine, and lets it coast down the driveway toward the house. We hope to get home undetected. A dim light burns on the second floor, but none on the first. Mom’s SUV is gone from the driveway. I let Amanda and myself in through the Body Shop and sneak upstairs to my room.
Garth goes in the front door and makes lots of noise. Footsteps go down to greet him. I figure that if there’s no screaming, that means Mom’s not home yet. Maybe it’s just Dad. Or maybe we got a two-fer, and neither one of them is around.
I’m freezing and soaking wet, so I assume Amanda is, too. I want to treat her like she’s as human as possible. I dig some fresh clothes out of
the laundry. The coast looks like it’s clear, so I lock us in the bathroom and crank up the shower, the water as hot as I can make it.
“You can go first,” I tell her, digging some towels out of the closet.
Amanda strips down to enter the shower, her back to me. I glance up. I’m not trying to look, honest, but I glance up in the mirror and catch a view of her back. I remember that it was smooth and pale as a fish’s belly during the autopsy.
Not anymore. Uneven mottling has emerged on her spine, the color of a fresh bruise.
I turn away, fear twitching through me. I get really focused on digging through the cabinet under the sink to find the right conditioner for my hair while she washes.
I take my turn in the shower, get dressed, and crack open the door. I can hear Garth talking to someone downstairs. Probably Gramma. I tiptoe back up to my room with Amanda on my heels and collapse on my bed in relief.
“Oh my god. We got away with it,” I murmur, staring up at the ceiling.
“Yeah,” Amanda says. She sits on the floor, staring at her hands. “I guess.”
I sit up. “What’s wrong?”
She smiles. It’s not a happy smile. It’s a bitter smile. She starts laughing, a harsh, scraping sound. “Everything. Everything is wrong. I’m dead, you know? And I’m probably gonna turn into a giant fish girl or become Bob’s main squeeze. What the hell, man?”
I duck my head. “I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head. “Look, it’s not your fault. I’m just…I think it’s beginning to sink in. For real. And I’m scared.”
I screw up my courage. “What was it with you and Catfish Bob out there?”
She presses her fists to her eyes. “That’s not his name. It’s something…something so inhuman-sounding…It sounds like water rushing over rocks. A growl. I can’t repeat it. It’s…beautiful.” She falters.
“Did he talk to you?” I try again, now that we aren’t in the truck anymore.
“Sort of. It was like I could see images in my head that weren’t mine. Feel what he feels. I saw lots of muddy water, tasted how it changes. It should taste like iron and silt and now it tastes like…something artificial. He wants…to feel that deep, dark water again. The water that the dam took away from him.”
Her hands move to her ears, covering them. Her eyes are wide. “It’s like he’s in my head, like I can feel him. Whispering.”
I scoot closer to her. “What’s he saying?”
“That he’s angry. That he wants the dam gone. He wants to go to sleep in the mud. He…he won’t stop until he gets what he wants.” Her eyes fill with tears.
“You don’t have to go to him. We’ll fix this.” I reach out for her, but there’s a rap at my door. Amanda scuttles away and crawls under my bed. When I see her foot disappear beneath the bed skirt, I stand up and open the door.
It’s Gramma. She’s holding a covered plate and an oil lamp. “Hi, sweetie. You must have had a tough day.”
“Uh, yeah. Did Garth tell you?”
“Yes. He said a guy tried to carjack him. He’s already trying to find a replacement door for the truck on the internet.”
I nod. Garth didn’t tell her who it was, or anything about my involvement or Amanda’s. She comes into the room and sits down on my bed. I do the same.
“Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Your mom is probably scraping up things from the crime scene with a spatula. Your father is out with her, likely holding the bag.” I can’t help but picture my mom scraping leftovers off a plate into a garbage bag held by my dad and yammering at him.
Gramma puts the plate on my lap and holds the oil lamp in hers. “I brought you a snack.”
I lift the lid. There are cookies. Chocolate chip, from the look of them. And also what appears to be slices of something grayish brown that stinks to high heaven.
“What is that?”
“Liverwurst. For your friend.”
Oh, shit. I blink stupidly. “My…friend?”
“The undead girl you’ve been hiding in your room.” She says it matter-of-factly, taking a cookie from the plate.
Anger spreads hotly over my face and singes my voice. “Did Garth—”
“No. He didn’t say anything. I’ve known longer than he has.”
“Then why…why didn’t you say anything?” I stare at her, at the pale scar creeping up over her collar.
“It’s not like I didn’t worry. But I trust that you have things under control and that you would tell me when you were ready. Besides. She isn’t like the others. She has Nora’s eyes.”
“Oh my god.” I’m floored that an adult would have that kind of completely unwarranted trust in me. “How do you know about the Devourers?”
“I never called them that. It’s quite rude. But my grandmother had stories about creatures who sometimes crawled out of the river. One year, she said that Catfish Bob even took a wife. This was before Nora. A lovely young lady walked into the river under a full moon. They assumed that she drowned. My grandmother took care of the body. But it vanished, and the rumor was that it had gone to the river to become another Fish Wife for Bob.”
Something moves under the bed skirt. A small voice asks: “Can I come out now?”
I look at Gramma. “Yeah. I think so.”
Amanda crawls out from under the bed, in a peculiarly flat and boneless fashion. She sits against the wall opposite us, her hands knitted together.
“Amanda, this is my Grandmother.”
Amanda lifts a hand in a weak wave. “Hi, Mrs. Sulliven.”
“Hello, Amanda.” Gramma doesn’t mention the murder, or missing corpses, or anything like that. In a very civilized fashion, she hands the plate to Amanda. “Would you like some liverwurst?”
Amanda’s eyes light up. She fairly snatches the plate from Gramma. She grabs the pieces of liverwurst with her fingers and stuffs them in her mouth. I notice that there’s a thin webbing forming between her fingers. On her face is an expression of bliss. “It tastes just like…oh.” She stops herself, probably realizing that what she’s about to say is not exactly a compliment.
Gramma’s perfectly-manicured fingers creep to the oil lamp. She turns the key on the wick, turning it up so that the light shines through the ruby-colored glass. She looks at me. “This oil lamp belonged to my grandmother.”
And I understand. Gramma knows about fire. She wasn’t sure what she would find when she saw Amanda. She brought something to kill her, if needed.
That chills me. Maybe she doesn’t trust me so much, after all. Or she thinks I’m in need of serious protection.
Oblivious, Amanda looks up, having scoured the plate of anything but cookies. “Thank you, Mrs. Sulliven…That was delicious. What was that, again?”
“Liverwurst. My maternal grandmother’s recipe. I started making it when I guessed that you were here.”
“Did she…did she feed that to Bob’s wife?” I ask.
“Yes. She was an unusual lady, Grandma Anna. You would have liked her.”
I try to imagine this. I’ve never felt much deep connection to my family history, but it’s odd to imagine that I’m walking in nearly the same footsteps of my ancestors. I shudder.
“Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?” I ask, reaching for a cookie.
Gramma looks carefully at Amanda. “I don’t think I need to do that right now. Your parents are well-meaning people, but this would…blow their perception of the world to smithereens.”
Amanda heaves a sigh. “But somebody’s going to figure it out.”
“Eventually. But we can do a better job of hiding you.”
“How?”
Gramma tips her head, tapping a finger on her lip. “I think that you need to quit being a winter. Become a summer.”
Amanda looks at me, baffled.
All I can do is grin.
*
Gramma pulls pizza out of the freezer for dinner and bakes it in pans over the fireplace grate. She’s received two squawking calls f
rom Mom, and it doesn’t sound like our parents will be home anytime soon. They’ve got another removal to do on the way back, and it’s just a cluster out there with the weather. They remind us to put more gas in the generator and check the temperature on the cooler.
Rain spangles the window in my bedroom. Garth is stretched out on the floor, drawing in his notebook, gathering information from his tablet about the local dam. Amanda sits on the edge of the bed, her head in a towel. Gramma meticulously cut her hair into a short shag and has used the last of my hair bleach on it. It’s been rinsed and I’m dying to see the final product.
Amanda’s pallor is kind of green, sort of the color of celery. Gramma has dragged out her little wheeled cart of corpse makeup and is applying various foundations and colors to Amanda’s face. The green is counteracted by a pinkish red tone. Her lips are painted a soft pink, to draw attention away from the sharp teeth in her mouth. Gramma plays up her eyes for effect, adding plenty of brown eyeliner and smoky kohl. Lothar has dragged a tube of lipstick out of the bottom of Gramma’s kit and is chewing it to death. He looks like a clown with it smeared all over his face.
“Will you teach me how to do that smoky-eye thing?” I ask her.
“Sure. You just have to remember to draw with the pencil in short strokes and then blend. Blend a lot.”
Amanda pulls off her towel. Gramma fluffs her hair with her fingers, making it stand up in a pixie spike. The bleach really took to her hair, making it almost platinum. She doesn’t look like her usual Goth self—she’s been transformed into something wholly other. Her face is pink and dewy. She looks at least two years younger. And she looks alive.
I hand her a mirror as Gramma nods, assessing her work. “I think that anyone who sees you casually won’t recognize you. People who know you very well will probably figure it out, but they’ll be a bit confused. That should give you time to escape notice.”
Amanda smiles, but with her lips closed. “Thank you, Mrs. Sulliven.”