by Kevin Singer
No one ever taught Vickie how to prepare for her own death. The road ahead was solitary. Perhaps it was that way for every soul. When she stepped back inside her cabin she took the necklace – the one that Yani despised – from around her neck and placed it on the key hook beside the door. She'd considered maybe somehow using it against this monster – if she only knew how. But she couldn't risk Randy.
She ordered pizza that night and watched as Randy devoured four slices while she barely touched hers. Then she fed him ice cream and soda, spoiling him to the end. When he fell asleep on the couch she stroked his black hair, letting herself feel the strands beneath her fingertips, and she wondered what type of man he would grow up to be. She prayed he'd be a brave one.
While she slept she dreamed of a woman, one like Yani but with a gentle face and a body soft with curves. This woman rocked her and called her daughter. It wasn't her mother, she knew that in the dream, but it felt the same as when she was a child and the world was still new.
The morning sun poked through the slit in the blinds, searing a white line across the bed. Vickie heard Randy padding around the main room. He clinked a glass and then came the sound of the television. She lay there, her heart thudding as she wondered when the end would come.
Run! A voice in her head screamed. But she couldn't listen to that voice, not if she was to protect her nephew.
"You've finally learned."
Vickie's lungs seized. She wanted to breathe but didn't dare. She twisted her head. Yani lay beside her dressed in a cream lace nightgown, her glossy hair coiled around her shoulder.
"Relax, my dear. It won't hurt much at all. I promise."
"I...I can't. I can't do this. I can't let you do this."
"You've already made your choice. We both know it." Yani caressed her cheek. All Vickie felt was a cold lick of water.
"There's so much I never got to do."
"That's all past now. Come."
Vickie felt splintered into a thousand selves, each wanting to run in a different direction. She rose from the bed and dropped her feet on the floor. She slipped a sundress over her head and stepped into the main room.
"Hey, Vickie, how's it hanging?"
She wouldn't look at him. She couldn't break what little will propelled her forward. The clock on the wall said noon. If she could've mustered it she would have laughed. Demons are supposed to come in the dead of night, not at the height of day. It was the dead of day, and no one would ever know. She opened the door. The sun stung her eyes.
"Where are you going?"
The air was so clean that it hurt.
"Vickie, what's wrong with you?"
Don't turn around, she told herself.
"Aunt Vickie..."
She paused and bit the inside of her cheek. Her feet shuffled as she pivoted back toward her house. There, the boy standing in the doorway, so innocent to all of this, so free of this loneliness and emptiness. She prayed he'd always stay that way. Her mouth was dry. She swallowed hard and found her voice. "Whatever you do, don't follow me."
"But–"
"Don't follow me," she yelled, and hid "please" in a whisper.
Her back to the cabin again, Yani was just a foot away. "Come."
Her bare feet scraped against the sharp pebbles. She wanted it that way. She wanted to feel every bit of life while she still could. Her soles pricked and nicked and scraped and bled but she found comfort in the pain. It meant she was alive.
Yani strolled ahead, luminescent, nearly floating off the ground. The sun was vicious and the rocky ground was cruel. The wind lashed her and the heat left her parched. There was no sign of another human: no house, no car, no marker of life, not even a rabbit or coyote, no bush or blade of grass. Finally this land stripped away all its beauty and showed Vickie its true face. It was cracked and parched and barren. She despised it.
The sun quickened its descent. When Vickie was sure her body could take no more, Yani faced her. "Close your eyes."
Vickie obeyed. The air turned cool and damp. A soothing murmur filled her ears and she could smell something: rich, green, earthy.
"Open."
Around her was an oasis. There was a gentle river, ten feet wide, clear water with smooth rocks covering the bed. There were trees, broad with droopy leaves, fat bushes and velvet grass that was soft and cool beneath her bleeding feet.
For a second Vickie wondered if Yani were an angel instead. Maybe this was all a test of her faith. Would she believe? Would she follow? She did, and she'd passed.
“Your people called this place Demon's Reach. They believed it was cursed, and they stayed away. In truth it was blessed.”
A bird dropped from the sky. It landed at Vickie's feet. She bent down. It was gray. Its belly was split lengthwise, precisely, as if carved. A track of blood crept out. It wriggled, then it became still. She gasped. Then another bird fell, this one yellow, also sliced. Then another, and another. Dying birds poured from the sky around the spot where she stood.
"It came for me in a whirlwind, right here," Yani said. "We came for her, in a whirlwind, right here."
Vickie wondered who she was talking about.
"Then hundreds of birds fell from the sky, their bellies carved open. It was terrifying and beautiful. A sign of their power," Yani said. "A sign of our power."
The river hummed a lullaby. Vickie imagined its cool blanket feel. She tottered back a step. "I don't understand."
Yani no longer possessed that otherworldly beauty. She was simply a girl, striking, but still, only a girl. "I was alive once, and they came for me. We came for her. They said they needed me. We needed her. I would birth them into this world. She would birth us into this world."
"Who are you?"
Something in Yani shifted and she shimmered inhuman. "She is us. We are her. We claimed her. She took us in. There is no her. There is no not her."
Vickie tried to fathom what this girl before her was but she couldn't. She backed closer to the river.
"And we are so very hungry."
There was no angel. Vickie's hope died.
"I want to thank you." Yani was otherworldly and beautiful once again.
"Why?"
She fluttered her arms around her body. "For this. They all see me as they want to see me."
"There were others?" Vickie wanted to scream. She alone was supposed to be the sacrifice. No others.
"Yes, many others. Each one saw me as they wanted to: grotesque or ordinary, a wolf or a vulture. One even saw me as a tree on fire. I like your version best, though. So rich. Your longing suits me."
Yani's phantom fingers darted into Vickie's forehead, bloodlessly cleaving through flesh and bone and settling into the folds of her brain. She stretched her fingers. Ecstasy fell upon Yani's face and she sighed. "Yes, there it is."
Vickie's head was heavy and full. It was as if she was staring out a window into a night of fog. Then the fog lifted, and Vickie saw her life spread out before her, and she tumbled into regret.
Yani's eyelids fluttered. "Oh, there's so much here for me."
Every bit of loss and pain from Vickie's earliest days was lived again. And then she saw herself, sitting in the doctor's office the moment she learned she never was pregnant, and never could be. She watched that dream child fade away, leaving behind a pit of nothingness that echoed and grew until it pounded louder and louder in her head, louder as Yani's fingers rustled and probed, louder until she couldn't take anymore. She slipped backward into the warm rush of the river, Yani still gripping her tight and devouring her pain. The water washed over her. It clogged her lungs and her pulse grew faint. She grew weaker, until there was barely anything left.
Yani withdrew her hand. "Your life was always worthless."
The model girl mask slipped away. In its place was a cracked bone-white thing, neither male nor female, a thing made of hunger, a thing of despair. Vickie wondered if this was the demon's true face, or was it merely another mask. Then it was gone. Vickie was alon
e.
One second. That was all that remained for Vickie. Just one second.
She knew she was drowning in that one second but she felt dry. Then the other woman was there, the one from her dream, the one who was so much like Yani, but softer. This other woman held Vickie tight and whispered in her ear. "She was once my sister but I lost her. Now I come for my daughters when they are lost."
And then Vickie saw it all in that one second. She saw the demonic Yani over the centuries. She saw the pain played out over and over, and she knew it all. Then she saw Randy. But he was older, a man. He was fighting against the dark.
It was just one second, but in that second she became whole.
"The necklace," she whispered. Then it was over. Her body fell still. It glided downriver over the weathered rocks.
8.