The Devouring

by Simon Holt

  “Cold enough for you? Huh?”

  White mist sparkled like fairytale snow. In the fog, Reggie saw something on the ground. She carefully crept toward it, fanning the cloud away.

  It was an abomination unlike any she could’ve imagined. The thing lay on the floor like a prehistoric fish. It had the semblance of an elongated human torso, but rather than legs, the body tapered down into a fleshy tail. In place of arms, several slimy tentacles protruded from its sides and lay in tangled piles all around it. It had no visible eyes or ears, and where it seemed a head might have been, there was instead a giant round mouth with an iridescent tongue lolling out between rings of black teeth. Lumps and veins covered its oily skin. It reeked like rotting leaves.

  All of the adrenaline and tension drained from Reggie’s body, and she started to weep. Her shoulders shook with every sob. She’d done it. She’d destroyed a Vour.

  But, in the harsh light, the frozen hide began to sweat beads of pale green liquid. Yellow sludge bubbled up from the mouth and pooled on the floor. The remains of the monster sagged and oozed into a pool, like toxic waste, nearing Reggie’s boots. It touched the soles and climbed onto the scuffed leather. Reggie’s stomach twisted. The Vour wasn’t disintegrating — it was changing. The lumps of its broken body morphed into dozens of new creatures.

  Blood-red spiders.

  They leaped at Reggie’s feet, and she swatted and stomped furiously, determined to crush every last one. The spiders burst beneath her boots like pustules until the floor glistened with their crushed remains. Out of the corner of her eye, Reggie saw something scuttle across the floor, a small puff of black smoke spilling from a red abdomen.

  The Vour’s voice echoed in her head. Fear is the cancer. We are the cure.

  Reggie snatched up the spider. It stared at her, eyes filled with hate.

  Fear is the cancer. We are the cure.

  The story of King Mithridates. Eat the poison. Make it a part of yourself.

  She grabbed the spider with both hands. It wriggled in her grasp. We are the cure. Her jaw hurt from gritting her teeth. We devour your fear. She brought the spider to her mouth.

  Devour your fear.

  She opened her mouth and stuffed in the horror. Its fangs dug into her tongue, a hot, searing pain. The hairy legs flailed against the inside of her cheeks. The spider belly squirmed against her throat. She gagged, and the spider wiggled halfway out, but she crammed it back in and bit down.

  The tough flesh of the spider’s abdomen burst between her molars, filling her mouth and throat with a gush of thick, bitter liquid. She growled, forcing herself to bite down again and again. The meaty fang-appendages squashed between her front teeth. Her brain screamed: Devour your fear! She gagged again but kept chewing; she turned the spider to a slick, bristly mash. Nausea surged from her stomach, but she sucked in as much air as she could through her nose and swallowed. The vileness slid down her throat, still twitching.

  A final gulp and it was done.

  She slumped, gasping, spitting, shivering from the cold but drenched in sweat. The lump of Vour remains was gone. The thing was inside her now, in her blood. The monster had not taken her over. She had enslaved the monster.

  “You will regret doing that,” it said in her mind.

  Reggie grinned weakly.

  “I already do,” she said. “You taste like ass.”

  Then Reggie sank against the wall, into oblivion.

  Reggie awoke on the basement floor. Something was leaking through the ceiling boards. She caught a drop of the liquid in her hand and sniffed it.

  Gasoline.

  Footsteps crunched on the bones above. Someone else was in the house. Reggie raced up the steps and pushed against the trapdoor. It wouldn’t budge. Heat radiated from the ceiling.

  She put her shoulder to the door and shoved as hard as she could. The trapdoor opened an inch, and the heat and light of flames lashed at her face before it fell again.

  “Come on!”

  She threw herself against the door. It lurched open and fire roared all around. Thick swirling smoke choked and blinded her. Reggie staggered backward, tumbled down the cellar stairs, and hit the dirt floor.

  She lay on her stomach, coughing and wheezing. Her clothes were smoking and she smelled her singed hair. She staggered up, and ash floated down around her. The stairs caught fire and blazed as she circled, looking for options. She dragged the chair across the floor and set it beneath one of the basement’s high windows, then stepped on it and stretched up on her tiptoes.

  She jumped, but her fingertips were still a foot away from the window. The ceiling had become a sheet of fire, and the smoke and heat were suffocating. She grabbed the empty fire extinguisher and hurled it through the window, and the hot air sucked out of the room.

  She’d bought herself a little more time.

  With a sudden, torturous crack, the stairs collapsed into the room. The flames pushed Reggie back, roaring like demons, hemming her in.

  She looked up and saw a cast-iron pipe a few feet below the ceiling that ran the length of the room. The house wasn’t straight, and neither was the pipe. It was lower at one end of the room than the other, and it rose up all the way to the window.

  Reggie set the chair against the far wall, squatted, and sucked cooler air near the floor deep into her lungs. She climbed onto the chair and jumped. Her hands grasped the pipe, the metal already hot enough to sear her palms. She moaned but would not let go.

  Ignore the pain. Let go and you burn to death.

  Three feet above the pipe, the fire licked the ceiling. Her flesh stuck to the hot pipe. The blood on her pierced palm sizzled.

  Keep going. Focus on the window.

  Hand over hand, inch by inch. Ten feet to go. Nine. Eight.

  There was a sudden, sharp creak and the pipe sagged behind her. Its iron was giving out. Seven feet. Six. Five. Four. The pipe groaned again and snapped behind her. Her end of it swung toward the window, and Reggie lunged. Her burnt fingers snagged the window frame as the rest of her slammed into the wall.

  She hung there, heaving, desperate for air.

  Do a pull-up, or die.

  Reggie pulled her aching body up and through the window as the ceiling caved in behind her.

  She fell into the backyard and crawled across the icy lawn. She collapsed and let the frost bathe her cheek. Crisp, early-morning air slid down her throat. She pressed her blistered fingers into the cold earth.

  She looked back at the house through blurry, tear-filled eyes. The entire thing was a ball of fire. On the other side of the house, an engine revved, tires screeched, and the car of her would-be killer peeled away.

  The drive home was filled with visions of spiders, shadowy monsters, and the cold eyes of the thing that lived inside her brother’s body. Only the sickening ache in her hands kept Reggie grounded enough to keep from swerving off the icy road. She skidded to a stop in her driveway and staggered out of the car. The sun was just peeking out over the horizon.

  At the front door, her burnt hands shook so much, the key kept missing the lock, and she dropped it on the stoop. She reached down to grab it, and when she straightened up, Henry stood in front of her. He was barefoot in his Spider-Man pajamas, grinning, and he held a piece of muffin.

  “Blueberry. Last one.” He popped it in his mouth. “Show and tell,” he said, opening his mouth wide to display the chewy glop. Reggie thought of the twisted, grotesque torso on the basement floor, the yellow slime bubbling out of its maw.

  “Bad hair day, sis. So, where you been?”

  “Destroying one of your wicked little buddies.”

  Henry’s eyes turned to slits. “You’re lying.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t just destroy it. I busted it into a million frozen pieces. And then I ate it.”

  The boy stepped back and Reggie stalked him into the foyer.

  “Scared? Not me. Not anymore. I devoured my fear, you little freak. What do you think about that?” She sho
ved Henry hard in the chest and he fell to the floor. “And now I’m coming after you. I’m getting my brother back.”

  “Henry belongs to me now,” the boy seethed as he scuttled away. “You can’t get him back.”

  “No?” Reggie towered over him now. “Then maybe I’ll start kicking your ass until you’d rather be someplace else.”

  She loved her brother, but he was somewhere beyond her reach, and a body without a soul was just fibers and fluids. She grabbed him by the shirt, yanked him out the front door, and threw him onto the snowy lawn.

  “Dad!” The boy looked up at the second-floor windows.

  Reggie placed a foot on his chest and he sprawled out in the snow.

  “Dad! Help me!” He sounded so real, so like Henry.

  Reggie slapped him hard across the face. His hand flew to his cheek. He shivered in the snow as black veins spread across his bare feet and up his ankles.

  “Cold.” He rattled. “Too cold.”

  “What’s the matter, Henry?” Reggie dug a knee into his stomach. “You love the snow.”

  “Let me up!”

  The cold turned him a grayish blue. He writhed in agony and tried to rise, but Reggie grabbed his wrists and shoved him back down. The Vour roiled beneath the skin as the monster seethed inside the boy’s body.

  Reggie squeezed Henry’s wrists harder, forcing them deeper into the snow. He squealed and she felt something awaken in her and race through her veins.

  A door opened deep in her mind.

  “How … ,” the Vour croaked.

  The fabric of reality tore around her; the warp and weave of time and space contorted and collapsed. Reggie couldn’t tell where her body started and Henry’s ended. The world of Cutter’s Wedge melted away as she fell through an invisible psychic barrier and into a cold, black abyss…

  14

  Darkness receded from the edges of her vision like a slow tide.

  She lay in a thick, wet fog. Through the mist she heard laughter, the grinding of calliope music, and the ding-ding-dings of carnival games. She perceived the faint aromas of caramel and buttered popcorn. Confused, she stumbled toward the sounds and smells. She had just been out on her frozen lawn fighting with the monster inside Henry. Where was she now?

  The fog parted, and the mud beneath Reggie’s feet gave way to sawdust. Game booths, candy vendors, and balloon-toting clowns filled a crowded midway. A roller-coaster, a log ride, a fun house, and an enormous Ferris wheel punctuated the dark sky. Reggie pushed through a red turnstile and walked into a dreamlike version of the Bottle Hill fairgrounds.

  Gaggles of happy children ran from one booth to the next, carrying funnel cakes and stems of cotton candy, and one tiny girl skipped by with a bear almost twice her size. As she passed Reggie, the girl tripped and fell on her plushy prize. Reggie reached down to help her, but the girl popped up on her own and raced after her friends, laughing.

  Since she was four, Reggie and her parents had driven each summer to the town of Bottle Hill for its annual four-day carnival. The first three years it had just been Reggie. The summer after Henry was born, Reggie and Dad rode the Ferris wheel again and again, waving down from the top at Mom and the blue stroller far below.

  The carnival, more than any other place, reminded Reggie of the happy times her family once shared. Even when she had outgrown the joys of roller-coasters and bumper cars, Reggie took vicarious delight in watching Henry. He loved the Bottle Hill Festival as much as she had.

  Until Mom left. They had not been back since.

  With every passing moment, the scents grew richer, the noises louder, the colors brighter. The memory of the fight with Henry pulsed like a failing heartbeat in the back of her mind. She tried to revive it, to resuscitate the details — the snow, the cold, the smoke in the boy’s eyes. But the memory faded beneath the sounds, smells, and sights of the carnival.

  She stood in front of the Ferris wheel and looked up. The red, yellow, and white carriages swung in the breeze as the ride slowed and stopped. A freckled red-haired boy and an apple-cheeked blond girl hopped out of a carriage and scampered down the ramp, clutching strips of pink ride tickets and ice cream cones. The little girl dragged a teddy bear behind her.

  “Hey!” Reggie shouted. Her voice sounded paper-thin.

  The boy stopped and gave her a puzzled look.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  Reggie moved toward him, but the boy stepped back.

  “You’re a stranger here,” he said.

  “A stranger where? What is this place? It looks like the Bottle Hill carnival, but —”

  The boy took a nervous lick of chocolate chip ice cream. “Did he invite you?”

  “Did who invite me?”

  The boy leaned in close and sniffed. His eyes grew wide.

  “You’re an intruder.” Ice cream dripped from the boy’s chin as he spoke. “You weren’t invited. You should go.” He pointed into the fog, his pudgy finger shaking.

  “An intruder where?” Reggie clutched the boy’s shoulders. “Where are we?”

  The blond girl glared at her. She whispered in her teddy bear’s ear and then held it up in front of Reggie. It looked mangy and dirty, and its eyes were missing.

  “I can see you,” said the girl, wagging the bear at Reggie.

  Black smoke poured from the bear’s eye sockets. A glistening tongue shot out of its mouth and waggled at Reggie. She stumbled backward and let out a startled cry. The girl giggled and raced off.

  “Where am I?”

  The boy opened his mouth to speak, but he only made guttural clacking sounds.

  His tongue had been sliced off.

  Blood oozed from the stump and coated his teeth. He dropped his cone and ran after the girl. Reggie stood there, shocked. The ice cream pulsated and oozed in the sawdust at her feet. It formed a crude face, the cone sitting atop its head like a crooked dunce cap. The face gurgled at her in a high voice:

  You’ve been devoured by his fear,

  And he will spend forever here!

  Reggie picked up the cone.

  “Whose fear? Devoured by whose fear?”

  The ice cream dripped from her hand to the dirt.

  A wave of children ran past Reggie toward a bustling game stall, and Reggie followed, peering over the dozen little bobbing heads. Three water guns were bolted to the middle of a splintery wooden counter, and ratty stuffed animals hung from rusted nails around the booth.

  Reggie knew the game well. Be the fastest kid to shoot water into your plastic clown’s mouth, pop the balloon behind its head, and win a prize. This was how Henry had won Kappy, his beloved koala bear. Mom had been so proud.

  “Where are the heads?” asked a curly-haired boy, hopping up and down.

  “Here they come!” shouted a boy with thick glasses and a baseball cap. “Look! Here come the heads! Here come the heads!” He pointed to a tall, thin clown in a brown-stained polka-dot jumpsuit who had stepped out from behind a curtain.

  The clown had one hand tucked inside his suit, and the other held the decapitated heads of three children by the hair. Their expressions were a mix of shock and fright. The scene was like something torn from a B-horror movie, but that did not reassure Reggie. Beneath the scent of butter and cotton candy lay the rankness of death and decay.

  The clown put the severed heads in a row on a table, and two girls stepped onto the rickety milk crates set in front of the counter. The excited crowd pushed a little boy up onto a third crate between them. Both girls turned to the boy and giggled, wispy black smoke curling out of their eye sockets. They pressed their smoky eyes against the scopes and wrapped their fingers around the triggers. The boy tried to step down, but the throng forced him back up.

  “Get up and play, wimp!” yelled one kid.

  “Better not lose!” warned another.

  The boy turned his head. The curly hair, the round face, the wide and terrified eyes…

  “Henry!” Reggie screamed, but her voice was drown
ed by the loud blare of the clown’s air horn. “Henry, it’s me!” Reggie pushed forward, but the cheering kids blocked her. Dozens of black eyes oozed smoke as the crowd’s excitement grew.

  “Stay away from him!” she yelled.

  “No,” a pug-nosed boy warned, “you stay away from him. Unless you want your head on that board.”

  He punched her in the gut. Reggie choked at the blow and hunched over her stomach, coughing and gasping for breath. She crawled through the sawdust, the demented children kicking and shoving her down every time she tried to rise to her feet.

  “Please … ,” Reggie burbled. “Don’t hurt my brother…”

  She looked over the crowd to see the girls firing bursts of red fluid from their pistols. The brains expanded out from the top of the heads like balloons.

  “You’re gonna lose!” teased the boy in glasses, smoke filling his thick lenses.

  “He’s too scared to play!” the little blond girl spat. “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!”

  The crowd joined the chant and pumped their small fists in the air. Henry placed his trembling hands on the pistol in front of him and squeezed. The red stream shot into the air and drenched a prize, a one-eyed toy monkey, dangling from a beam.

  The crowd erupted in laughter.

  Reggie staggered to her feet, her legs still shaking from the blow. She pushed a little girl aside and attempted to reach Henry again. The girl snapped her head toward Reggie.

  “Look! I got my face painted!” Her cheeks morphed into a squirming palette of bugs and slimy larvae, hanging raggedly from her jaws. “Do you like it?” Thick segmented worms writhed out from her face and crawled onto Reggie’s arms. “Want me to paint yours?”

  Reggie recoiled and slapped at the worms. They turned to black smoke and left a powdery residue on her skin.

  Henry slipped from his crate and fell backward into the sawdust. His gun spurted into the tattered awning of the booth. Laughter boomed again and one of the kids kicked the fallen boy.

  The brains of the girls’ targets stretched to maximum capacity, quavered for a moment from the pressure, and then exploded simultaneously with sickening pops, splattering the clown’s costume. He sounded the air horn several times, then turned his eyes on Henry. The ghoulish children backed away and taunted the boy as he scrambled to his feet.