We are Wormwood

by Christian, Autumn

  “Broke into his house? That fake French motherfucker wanted to show off his cheap jewelry so we’d fuck him, now he’s too embarrassed to admit it,” I said.

  “He smelled like old perfume,” the demon said. “Like his dead mother.”

  At least Saint Peter wasn’t here to deal with this. She didn’t have to see Genie come back from the hospital in a wheelchair, her legs bent back, crushed at the kneecaps.

  She didn’t have to see me try to cook dinner for the first time by myself, burned the pasta, and burned the sauce. She didn’t have to watch me as I tried to cut vegetables with my ruined hands. My fingers wouldn’t obey me, I sliced my thumb, screamed, and the dogs cowered.

  I threw a stainless steel pot against the wall and the dogs fled.

  She didn’t have to see my misdirected anger at the demon. Exhausted and sick, we fought. I screamed at her, “Bitch. Demoncunt. I’ll never fuck you again. I blame you for all of this.”

  Afterwards, I curled up in her lap. “I’m sorry, demon. I’m sorry.”

  She chewed on the ends of her hair and stroked my back.

  I caught a reflection of my new hair in the mirror, and remembered something my mother once said.

  “When you grow older, you'll dye your hair a bright red, because it's the closest you'll ever feel to being on fire.”

  Prophecies. I hated fucking prophecies.

  The Witch sat in the middle of the living room in her wheelchair, covered in tattered blankets, the dogs circling around her. Her hair was tied against the wheels. With one hand she carved new sigils into her wrists, overlaying scars. With the other, she shoved blue flowers into her mouth.

  More ghouls escaped out of the cuts in her hands. They escaped from her mouth in thin, wriggling strands. Sick though she was, crushed and broken, the ghouls kept coming. They were bigger than I remembered, more visceral than before. Not only the shapes of people, but of rats and dogs and cats.

  “You’ll die.” I said.

  She looked up at me with eyes like rusted fencing.

  “So?”

  I ran to the demon, through the corrugating shadows, sobbing and ruined, into her arms.

  A walk would make everything better. Get out of the house for a while, stretch our legs, and remember that we’re not trapped underneath sigils and dream symbols, in witchcraft and poison. The demon and I checked for police patrolling the streets then sneaked out together into the cool air.

  Winter came, and we hadn’t noticed. Our thin and tattered jackets were not enough to keep us warm, so we walked together, huddled, clutching, and shivering. Thanksgiving probably passed while I smoked in my room to the grind of the machines and my stomach growled for 4 a.m. munchies. Christmas would be here soon. It would be my first Christmas away from home. My mother, even wracked with Schizophrenia, still managed to get me a gift every year, even if it was a knife to chase away ghosts, or a book of matches, or a pink dress like one I would’ve worn as a child; she tried.

  The demon and I walked into a glowing meadow where the moon hung like a silver crescent in the sky.

  “It’s so bright,” I said.

  The demon’s hands tensed and when I kissed her she froze.

  Then I realized. We’d walked this way a hundred times before and never seen this meadow, glowing and bright.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said, “wrong with the moon.”

  I bent down and plucked a flower. In my hands, the flower turned to smoke.

  She tried to pull me away.

  The trees collapsed around us. The crescent moon fell out of the sky and crashed at my feet, a dirty, yellow paper cutout that could’ve fit in the palm of my hand.

  The walls of the meadow slid in, the metallic night sky crashed on top of my head, and I fell to the ground. I slipped from the demon’s grasp as the walls threaded together, trapping me in darkness.

  The dirt underneath me turned to water, and the river flowed into my mouth, nose, and eyes. I swam. I had to or I’d drown.

  I searched for a way out. The water sucked my shoes under. I coughed. I called out for the demon. I tried to tread water but the current was too strong.

  And, after days of staying awake, I was tired. So tired.

  She tugged at my fingers in the water. She pushed sand into my mouth. All my wounds tore open and my blood glowed as it leaked out in the darkness.

  On the verge of drowning, I gripped the dirty embankment and managed to crawl away from the river. The water howled as it moved. Water for wolves. I crawled through the mud, my blood a glowstream tracing patterns across my fingers, illuminating the dirt.

  She sat on my back and pulled my hair.

  “Stop,” she said.

  And I collapsed.

  “Look up at me,” she said.

  She twisted my hair around her wrists and forced my head up. . Her fingers smelled of thick machine oil. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her, thin and dripping like a wet rat, human-shaped, plastic for bones. But she was strong. Stronger than me.

  “I said look up at me.”

  I coughed up mud.

  She climbed off my back and hauled me out of the dirt by my hair, forcing me on my toes.

  The hush place my mother spoke about, was real. The hush place that followed her from the kitchen windowsill to the stomach of a carnivorous plant was here. It seeped through my skin, sunk its teeth into my blood, and wailed as it rushed past. It made the air cold here, so cold that I couldn’t move my fingers, my jaw. My bones would rust in that cold, and no matter how far I swam in the water and mud, I wouldn’t be able to find my way out.

  “Did you know there’s blood in your teeth? You look like you’re eating lights,” she said.

  She released my hair. I stumbled backwards, trying to keep from falling into the mud.

  “I wanted the other one.”

  “The demon?” I said.

  “I’m going to let you go now,” she said.

  “Why do you want my demon?”

  Silence. I couldn’t feel The Nightcatcher next to me anymore, and I thought that maybe the river swept her away. I took a step forward. Another. The mud gurgled underneath me. No matter how much I strained to see, there was only the sewn-in darkness, my blood like little fireflies.

  She appeared beside me, the air screaming around her, as she cloaked me in her hair, and whispered into my ear.

  “Everyone needs a pet.”

  The river sunk into the ground; she left me alone in the empty meadow, the mud still caked onto my clothes, the moon paper cutout at my feet.

  I picked up the moon, folded it, and put it in my shirt pocket. I found the trail leading out and walked back home.

  Waiting for me on the porch steps was the demon, head in her hands. I tried to call for her but my throat was scabbed and sore. I fell in the lawn on my way toward her.

  The ringing in my ears sounded like the river screaming as it rushed over me. The machine on the lawn, nearly finished, loomed over me. Not just any machine, but a beast, a bad science fiction killing machine. Its head was a ragged claw, its nose a gunmetal proboscis, plus two protruding, rusted limbs, studded with nails. Why had I never noticed until then? All those months the shadows worked on the machine, and I never noticed its deathskin, its slobbering mechanical arms, its glass-rimmed mouth. I’d been too busy trying to scrape together money for drugs, and chasing the demon across planes of ecstasy, to see the terrible thing The Witch was building.

  The demon knelt beside me. She bloodied her hands on my shirt and spoke. I tried to tell her it was too loud, I couldn’t hear her. I vomited in the grass. I gasped and gasped. We had to get away. The Nightcatcher hadn’t just been waiting outside the house, she’d been clawing her way into The Witch’s head and into the shadows carved from her arms long before we even came here.

  I called for the demon. I called for Saint Peter, long gone.

  The demon carried me into the house.

  She’s coming for you, I tried to say. She’s coming for y
ou. We have to call Saint Peter. Saint Peter will know what to do. Where’s my hunting bow? Get the bow. We have to go after her. She’s coming for you. Get help. I don’t know what she’s going to do with you, but nothing good can happen in the hush place. Look at me, I’m bleeding everywhere. You’re getting the sheets dirty. Let me go. Stop holding me down. Stop kissing me. She’s out there. The machine’s going to kill us all.

  The police are looking for us. They’re at the door. Can’t you hear them knocking on the door? Aren’t you listening to me?

  The noise is so loud it’s going to liquefy my brain. Cut off my hair already. I won’t be a Viking warrior. Not again. My tongue has turned into foam. The tongue is always the first thing to go, but you already knew that. You’re suffocating me. Get my hunting bow. She’s here with us right now. We have to dismantle the machine. My tongue. It’s turning into foam. Help me or I’ll never speak again.

  The demon pinned me on the bed.

  “Listen to me! Why aren’t you listening to me?” I asked.

  She whispered.

  “The police aren’t here. She isn’t here yet. We still have time. A little while.”

  I was too hot. I tried to throw the blankets off.

  “You’re shivering,” she said.

  “Why do these wounds never heal?” I asked. “No matter how much time has passed, they never heal.”

  “Just rest,” she said.

  The river rushed out of the demon’s eyes. No matter where I ran, no matter what sort of tranquilizers the hospital gave me, the river would always be with me. The water filled the bedroom, lifting the bed to the ceiling.

  On the other side of the door The Witch screamed. The demon rocked me in her arms and whispered.

  “Just rest. We still have time.”

  Yet, I know my demon. I know when she’s lying. I know when she’s afraid.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  THE DEMON NURSED and bandaged me.

  “I’ve been preparing your palace all my life,” she said, trying to soothe me.

  It would be a palace on top of a mountain at the edge of the world. The palace would have a roof of glass so that we could see the stars and the moon. She’d build me a telescope so I could find the planets, and cradle them to me like pillows. In the winter, snow would fall over our palace, trapping us inside. She’d wrap me in furs, bring me spiced wine, call me “baby” and “goddess” and suck my clit until the snows melted.

  I scratched at my bandages. She pulled my hand away.

  I thought I would sweat out of my skin.

  She cradled my head in her arms for hours. She forced me to drink water, even when I insisted it burned me. When I cried she whispered,

  “Pay no attention to the river.”

  Later the demon took me into the bathroom and I took a shower, lying down in the tub. She peeled off my wet bandages; the water turned the color of tongues.

  “Why does The Nightcatcher want you?” I asked the demon.

  She rested herself against the wall, her eyes fluttering and heavy from lack of sleep.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She traced the patterns on the wall with her nail and cut into the wallpaper. Above her head, a glossy spider spun her web. Her spiders had insinuated themselves into every corner of the house, including the bathroom, transforming the ceiling into a silk cityscape.

  She told me once that the spiders were psychic, the patterns of their webs changed, depending on the emotions around them.

  That would explain why lately they spun webs ragged and disjointed, webs that went nowhere, webs that hung down like sad faces.

  “I’m a pest to The Nightcatcher. An insect,” the demon said. “She shouldn’t want me.”

  The demon wrapped me in a towel. I lay in bed with the towel still wrapped around me, my hair knotted around my fists.

  The demon opened her hands and spilled dead birds onto the bed. Little wrens, with mouths gaping, ribbons tied around their necks.

  I never got around to telling her, “Stop leaving dead things in my bed. Those aren’t the kind of gifts you give to people.” I couldn’t, because it was the best way she knew to show me she loved me.

  “I wasn’t always a demon, you know,” she said.

  She lay beside me. She was smaller than I ever remembered. She could have curled up inside the sleeves of my dress.

  “Once, I was a girl,” she said. “I lived in a town full of sunshine, in a time when my father still loved my mother. It was a place where the fields glowed in the summer with fireflies big as our heads. I was going to be a scientist. Just like you, Lily. I wanted to find the Wormwood star my mother talked about. It’s from the book of Revelation. They said it wasn’t a real star, but I knew better.

  “I fell in love with a boy, because he made me feel good when he kissed me. He took me to Christmas dinner with his family and bought me spring dresses and pressed flowers in between the pages of my books. He transformed me into a strawberry girl, sunshine girl. He took me to the highest point in the city, like he was the devil and said, 'This could all be yours' as he knelt in front of me with a ring in his hands. I said, ‘I don’t want it all, I want you, my love, I want you.’ And I threw my arms around him and knew I’d never have to be lonely again.”

  “Have you ever felt that way?” she asked me. “Like you met the one person who would make sure you were never lonely again?"

  Yes, I wanted to say. Yes.

  “We were married. That was the only time I ever remember feeling beautiful. We lived in the countryside and had two children, two little girls with wispy blond hair and dark eyes. I thought I was happy.

  “Except every time I looked in the mirror, I didn't see a girl. I saw a demon. I’d seen her my whole life, hiding behind my skin. She followed me everywhere I went. I started to scratch off my skin. I scratched and scratched, even when my husband said I wouldn’t ever be able to go back to the way things were. Even when my children clung to me and begged me to stop. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop. I scratched until I tore the skin of the girl away."

  This is the end, I thought. She's telling me this because she knows this is the end.

  "Do you know what happened after that?" the demon asked.

  "Tell me."

  “They didn't love me anymore," she said softly.

  I couldn't stop shivering. We had to get away. There were too many poisons and slinking things out in the dark. The Nightcatcher would steal my demon away. The machine would descend upon the house, pry open the roof, and devour us. The earth would collapse. We were running out of time, I needed to grab the demon by the collar and run.

  Instead, we curled into each other, too tired to move, and collapsed amidst the bodies of dead wrens.

  She sighed in my ear, scattering spiders, and we slept.

  ***

  When I awoke, the demon was gone.

  I dressed and went searching for her. I searched from the living room to the kitchen, to the attic. She was not there. I went outside to the backyard where the trees were burnt husks and the grass was wild haired and black. I went to the porch and to the empty driveway where Saint Peter once parked her van. She was not there.

  My veins throbbed like war weapons. My blood spilled out of every cut. The Nightcatcher couldn't just take the demon away from me. She belonged here. She belonged with me.

  The Nightcatcher thought she was scary? She should wait. I'd become a raging beast, rabies from osmosis. I'd tear the sky down and strangle her with the horse-headed nebula.

  The Witch sat in the living room in the dark. She rolled her wheelchair back and forth across the floorboards. The wheels creaked, slowly, encrusted in her dried blood.

  “I’ve lost her,” I said.

  “She’s waiting for you.”

  Ghouls wriggled out of her mouth. They snuck out through her eyes.

  “Where?” I asked.

  Her skin sloughed off the muscle. Through the bandages, she smiled. Pressure built up undern
eath her cheeks. She pointed toward the door.

  "There's not much time left."

  The black dogs at her feet howled.

  On the lawn ghouls slipped inside of the machine, into its gears, its angry eyes, and its rusted arms.

  The dogs rushed past me to the machine. They surrounded it, barking, foam on their black muzzles.

  The machine roared to life.

  I ran down the street. A taxi waited at the end of the cul-de-sac.

  The Witch, queen of psychedelic drugs and black-hearted machines, had called me a taxi.

  I climbed into the back and the cabdriver turned to talk to me, then paused when he saw me shivering in my tattered, thin jacket, my legs locked and arms crossed.

  "Do you have any money?"

  "A little." I said, lying. “Take me downtown."

  "Downtown is a big place."

  "Take me anywhere. I don't care."

  He took off. The night sky churned purple foam, a color as angry as I was. The skyscrapers were burnt metal.

  The Witch said, “Go find here,” but I didn’t know where.

  The taxi crossed the bridge toward the city; the ocean underneath us was corrupted like computer static.

  “I’ve seen a lot of kids like you.” He said. “You should go back to someone who loves you.”

  "I didn’t ask for a therapist,” I said.

  “You don’t have any money, do you?” he asked.

  He stopped at the next corner.

  “Just get out,” he said.

  I opened the door. He took his foot off the brake and the taxi rolled forward. I stumbled onto the curb as he sped off.

  I picked a direction and started walking. She couldn't expect me to find her like this. I wasn't a demon. I didn't have ice in my blood, or a golden chip in my head, pointing the way. The streets were strained and dark and empty because of the cold. It was ferociously cold, colder than I remembered, the kind of cold that children die in.

  The blood drained from my face and fingers. I could barely walk.

  I ran into Francois with a blonde haired girl on his arm. She was small and blue-mouthed, and wearing a black pearl necklace bigger than her throat. He'd thrown his coat around her shoulders and pulled her close to his chest.