Consumption

by Heather Herrman

  For the most curious thing was that, yes, there were onlookers. Not a person in the circus was touched. Not a one. We watched. At first it was only my mother and me, but then, from the back tents came the rest of us, everyone entering at a run after hearing the commotion. In half stages of dress: the twins who rode the white horses around the rink, dressed only in the top of their sequined leotards; Sacha, wearing his dress pants and a long-underwear top. They came and if any of them tried to help the audience members (they did, they were not cruel people), one of the Feeders knocked them back to the outskirts. We were meant to watch.

  Within minutes it was over, every audience member in that tent dead. Except Jimmy. I looked everywhere for him, scanned the bodies, scanned those trembling along the outskirts, even scanned the Feeders—better he was alive and one of them. That’s what I thought then, anyway. He was nowhere. In a minute, I had no time to think of him anymore.

  Once again, the woman on the stage spoke: “Your choice, my dears. I said I’d offer you a choice and here it is. Come with me, come live as my children, and I will not kill you. Come Become. I’ll give you an hour to decide. No more. No less. Within an hour, I’ll begin to kill the rest of the town, and those I turn will be random. I’ve asked you, as a whole, to Become one of my own because you intrigue me. I…feel something for you. Forced to wander, to entertain others by degrading yourselves, to whet the appetites of others but to quash your own desires because you are but the show. I can understand these things. Yours is the time in which I will rise to my greatness. I’m asking you to be a part of this because I know you. And I love you. Outcasts, miscreants every one, I have accepted your darkness. It is your life.”

  “You’re a monster!” someone yelled from the ring around the tent’s interior. I don’t know who it was, and even to my young ears the denunciation felt weak, like a line from a play.

  “You may call me what you wish,” the woman said.

  “What is your real name?” It was my mother who spoke. I’d run to her side at the end of her performance, but she had pushed me away, told me to get out. I didn’t obey her, only hid there, behind a flimsy folding chair in the back. Not that there was any need to hide. The Feeders seemed to know who was and wasn’t of the circus, and had left me well alone.

  The old woman turned, rising taller as She did so. Taller and taller She stood, dropping her cane and seeming to actually grow into something inhuman, the lines of her flesh wavering.

  “The first sensible question any of you has asked. I am The Unnamed, He Who Was Forgotten. I am The Fallen. You have called me many things. Legion. Behemoth. Even, mistakenly, Lucifer, though as I’ve said, I am not him. It is best, perhaps, to call me something simple, yes? Something we can all remember? I best like the name given to me long ago by those who thought to keep me from harming others. They called me The Feeder. It is an apt name. It speaks of both my desire to feed you, my children, and my need—no, our need—to feed upon others.”

  “What do you feed on?” asked my mother, and I saw that her flesh was still covered in bright beads of sweat from her dance, so that she shone under the tent’s dim light.

  “On flesh,” The Feeder said. “For a start, but later, on something much more. On the very essence of man, something far sweeter. You, I believe, would call it a soul.”

  My mother stepped backwards, and half fell to her knees. “We would never become that,” she said, unaware that she already was becoming that. Had already begun to turn.

  The woman shrank back into herself, now just another human, hunched over her cane. “As I said, it is your choice. I’m offering you great power. If you don’t agree to it, then I’ll take some of you anyway and kill the rest. There is no escape, believe you me.” Then the woman threw her head back and laughed, and once again I was startled at how charming She sounded, how sweet and merry. “Better yet,” She said, facing the audience once more. “Look around you. Who says bodies can’t talk?” She descended from the stage, and the half-dozen or so of her Feeders followed close around her.

  “One hour,” She said. “If you choose to join me, you will meet me in the mines then. I’ll leave a Feeder here to show you the way. If not…As I said, it’s your decision. But please don’t think to try anything. What my Feeders see, so do I see. What they feel, so do I. I am They and They are Me. One hour. Any questions you have, you may ask him.” She pushed a man covered in dirt, one of the miners, forward. Then She disappeared through the tent door, the train of her children, once humans like us, following her.

  6

  I’m growing tired, Pill, and I don’t think I can write much more of this without going crazy from the memories. Not at such detail, at any rate, so I’ll try to tell you the rest as briefly as possible. The most important thing is that you understand the nature of this creature and its offspring, and that you know what you must do.

  The miner that She left with us was a jovial fellow, and more than willing to answer our questions. It was a game for him, you see, because he was The Feeder, just as the woman had said. All his children were him.

  “It isn’t bad at all,” the man said. “Look at me. I remember everything that ever happened to me. Everything. It’s just that now I’m more. Before…” He paused, as if unsure how to put this. “Before I Became, I loved to smoke. I’d smoke and smoke and smoke cigars like a chimney, but they were killing me, don’t ya see. The doctor said my lungs were black with the smoke. But now…” He pulled a stack of rolling papers from his pocket and then a tin of tobacco, and began to roll a cigarette. “Now I’m saved. I’ll live forever, and I can smoke what I want. Drink what I want, too.”

  “How did you…Become?” someone asked.

  “Oh, it weren’t nothing much. You just eat a little bit of flesh. The smallest amount will do. Eventually, when you’ve Become all the way, you can feed others.” He looked up, and his eyes blazed with joy. “Don’t you see what She’s offering you? You can make others immortal. You can choose. There’s a new order coming on this earth, and He’s giving you the chance to be amongst the favored.”

  “You’re asking us to eat people,” my mother said. “Worse, to consume their…their souls.”

  “It’s the most delicious thing you’ll ever eat, ma’am,” the man said, pinching the end of the newly rolled cigarette closed and then clamping it between his teeth. “The most dee-licious. Guaranteed.”

  He told us other things, that miner. Him. The Feeder. One and the same, I guess. I won’t go into them now, but I’ll list them for you later. The important thing is to know what we did with the information. We decided to fight. We decided to stand.

  We couldn’t trust everyone. Which is not to say that they were not good people, those in my circus family. They were. But what was at stake was too much. My mother, Trees, Sacha, and I were the only ones in on the plan. It had to be that way. There was no other hope. If you had seen the slaughter in the tent, you would understand, Pill. Please don’t judge me.

  We would go down into the mines; that was our decision. We’d go down as if agreeing to The Feeder’s demands. This meant that we’d have to convince the rest of the circus to go down with us, not an easy thing. But we did it. Humans can be convinced of almost anything in times of fear, and I am ashamed to say that many wanted what The Feeder offered them almost from the moment He opened his mouth. Power can be a hard thing to resist, Pill.

  The others were not to know also because if they did, they might fight us. They were to go like lambs to the slaughter.

  It was Sacha’s idea to use the squirrels. “If I die, my darlings will die, too. Better they die a noble death. They would want it this way.” Even as he spoke, one of the creatures ran up and down his arm and along the side of his neck, chattering to him. The squirrel wore dress pants much like Sacha’s but no shirt.

  When the hour was up, we marched down into the mines, taking the bodies with us.

  Down, down, down, on the backs of two show horses and on the backs of some of the men.
I have never seen braver people. Down, down, down they went. I went, too, although Trees and my mother made me wait at the top. My job was to finish it all.

  “It is a task worse than ours, Little Bear,” Trees told me, kissing me on the forehead before he, too, went down, down, down.

  I did not cry. Not then. Not even when my mother followed Trees, when they all went underground and I saw them for the final time. Why didn’t I cry? I don’t know. I just couldn’t. If I had cried, I would have lost all of my nerve.

  Within the half hour, I felt the heat from the fire they’d started. The plan was for everyone to take the communion, or begin to take it, and then Sacha would let the squirrels loose. Each squirrel would have a bottle of alcohol and a gasoline-soaked rag tied to its tail. They only needed to be lit and then they’d be running firebombs, impossible to catch in their terror, impossible to put out. The timber of the supports the miners had put in to keep their caves upright would be the first to go. Trees and Mother would make sure of it. And then they would all die. Each and every one.

  And if they didn’t? I was to finish them. There was only one entrance to the mining caves, a narrow hole that had to be crawled down into with a ladder. At the top of it, I was to lay down the door and light a fire on top of it. And if they still came through? Just before he left, Trees had given me his gun. I knew how to use it, too, because he had taught me many, many moons before. As I said, Trees was as good as a father to me.

  —

  That is all I will tell you of it, for I am not proud of what I had to do to the few who tried to escape. When the fire was over, I went back to the tents, my gun in hand, and I found nothing left. Trees had set fire to them before we left so that there would be a cover for all of us to go down into the mines. Unexpectedly this fire had spread, and I found the town in a panic.

  In the streets, I found Jimmy. He was covered in blood, screaming that his sister was dead. When I asked him how she’d died, he would not answer, but he took me back to his home and took care of me the best he could. Both his parents were missing in the fire, killed in the mines or in town, I never found out. Jimmy asked me no questions the first two nights. On the third night he asked me to marry him. I said yes.

  And on the fourth night I shot him. I dragged his body to the back of the house and burned it. Everyone thought he’d simply died in the fires. No one but me knew. And now you. I killed him, Pill, killed him without ever really knowing if he was infected at all. But he’d been with Clara, you see, and you have to be sure, Pill. You have to kill them all. Each and every one.

  Part V

  The Feast

  Chapter 15

  1

  Inside the large Lutheran church built in Cavus before the fire, all of the town’s residents (all that were still alive, anyway) busied themselves setting up for the Feast so that everything would be just so—the dishes warmed and ready to go after the Service. There were the usual: Jell-O molds with carrots and marshmallows floating inside them, Mrs. Guernsey’s peach cobbler, Gretta Morgan’s famed green bean and mushroom casserole. Yes, all the usuals were there, but they looked haphazard. Hurried. Sarah Newman had even made her chocolate meringue pie with a frozen crust—a sin unheard of before this day.

  The Feast was always held in the Event Hall, which was, in reality, half of the old Worship Room, where the benches had been torn out and regular tables and a small kitchen put in. The floors, however, were still the same beautiful old hardwoods of the main chapel, and the tall ceilings and one wall of stained-glass windows remained. The partition separating the Event Hall from the Worship Room was a thin wall of plaster decorated in various seasonal hangings. Now the Festival’s Quilt Competition entries were proudly displayed, many of them featuring geometrical representations of black woodland creatures. Along one wall five long tables were laid out and covered with white cloths. Each table was full to the brim with food.

  As Star and Mabel passed the hall, Star peeked inside, noting the women uncovering casseroles, remembering a time, just last year, when her mother would have been among them.

  Inside the Worship Room, Star found a place in the last row, Mabel sliding in beside her. All the other pews were already packed. Everyone sat in silence, heads bowed respectfully. Usually, before services, an organ played and people chatted, but now there was nothing. Not a baby peeped. Not a toddler rustled in his seat. The congregation waited, calmly and quietly, for Father James.

  Next to Star sat a woman in a polka-dotted dress. As she knelt to pray, the woman’s elbow caught Star in the ribs, but the woman did not try to apologize. On the other side of Star, Mabel knelt, her skirt sliding up to reveal a good chunk of thigh as she did so. The front of her dress gaped open, too, revealing the ungodly tarantula-like mole on her friend’s chest.

  “Jesus,” Star said under her breath, and she did not know if it was a prayer or a comment. Overhead, the lights were dimmed, leaving only the copious amount of candles placed at the altar to light it. In front of her an elderly couple sat, the man with a bald head and his wife with a walker, which she left in the aisle beside them. As the lights flicked off, the man turned a startled head around, and then, catching Star’s eye, smiled at her before taking his wife’s hand. The gesture comforted her, and Star allowed herself to breathe more deeply. The comfort was quickly lost, however, as Star lifted her head to study the darkened church. The newly revealed shadows gave the place an eerie feeling, almost like they were in a cave underground, the shadows becoming jagged rock reaching from the top and bottom like teeth.

  When Star had emerged from the bathroom at Mabel’s, she’d done so with the full intention of leaving. But when she came out, there was Mabel, looking so like Mabel, that all Star had been able to do was fall into her arms, crying, her body weak from the vomiting, but her mind a little less clouded from what must have been a liquor-induced paranoia over Mabel’s stupid cupcake joke.

  “It’s okay, Star,” Mabel’d said, comforting her. “Everything will be just fine. I know you’ve been through something—you must’ve, to come all the way here.”

  Star nodded, burying her head in her friend’s chest and letting Mabel stroke her hair.

  “I know,” said Mabel. “And you can talk about it more when you’re ready, okay?”

  Star breathed her assent, barely keeping the tears at bay.

  “All right, then,” said Mabel. “Right now, let’s just go to church, and then we’ll have some dinner. I know you don’t believe much in the church, but I just have a feeling about tonight. Give it a chance, why don’t you?”

  So they’d gone, Star clutching her friend’s hand as they walked together through the nearly empty streets. Now, looking around her at the eerily silent church, Star wondered if she’d made the right decision.

  At the far end of the red-carpeted aisle, the doors burst open, and three women, walking single file and wearing white robes, entered. The women walked down the aisle and then up the three steps to the raised altar platform where the priest presided and behind which the choir sang. There was no choir today.

  A man with a large belly and wire-rimmed eyeglasses followed the women through the doors and heaved his way up the steps and onto the stage. Star recognized him immediately as Mayor Thomas, a retired lawyer who’d been political head of the town for years. Last, but certainly attracting the most spectacle, came Father James. He wore a green robe today, and a tall hat, meant to commemorate the ceremony of the occasion. He held the Bible before him as he walked, a testament to God and the path he followed. Star noticed that Father James did indeed look like he was on the path to enlightenment; the smile on his face was beatific as he studied his flock in the candlelight, their heads solemnly bowed.

  The mayor held up his hand to signal that things were beginning, and immediately the slight rustling in the crowd stopped. Everyone perked to attention.

  “Greetings,” the mayor said.

  Even though the candles were the only light present, Mabel’s eyes glowed gr
een, reflecting them.

  The liquor Star’d drunk was beginning to wear off, and a deep unease was replacing it. She’d come here with Mabel because she hadn’t known what else to do and because, if she was completely honest with herself, she’d wanted the comfort of the Church. She wanted all of what Mabel believed in to be true. She wasn’t religious, but maybe today, if she prayed hard enough, she’d find a miracle.

  “Welcome to the sixty-eighth annual Festival Service,” Mayor Thomas said. He paused for a polite smattering of applause from the crowd. “As you know, this year has been an especially important one for Cavus.” A murmur of agreement ran through the crowd, like the drone of small insects.

  “This year, a year of turmoil and disappointment for most of the country, a year of grave economic unrest, has, for Cavus, been one of the highest boon.”

  More applause.

  Star saw that the woman next to her was physically trembling with excitement. She remembered Mabel’s trembling, almost panting, that morning over tea. Star felt that jolt of unease hit her stomach again, and she sat farther back in her seat, pressing against the wooden pew.

  “We are thankful,” said Mayor Thomas, “that SweetHeart Industries decided to honor our small town with its newest plant. The plant now employs roughly forty percent of this town.”

  A yell from the crowd. More clapping.

  Star had never heard such a response in the church before. Usually there was a silent but carefully followed law: no clapping. Even when the celebrated soprano from the Ozarks had come to bless the church with a song, no one had clapped at the end of the performance. They’d only bowed their heads, or tipped their upper bodies in approval. Now, though, the sound grew deafening. Star heard Mabel utter a low noise from the back of her throat.