Her father looked at her with confusion. She’d never yelled at him like that before. She was ashamed at the hurt she saw on his face, and the spiteful power she couldn’t help feeling.
“But, sweetheart,” he said, “you’ve got it all wrong. How could you think that? We don’t want you upset, that’s all. Mom hates not seeing you, but you need to be with Lorraine more, taking your mind off things.”
Compassion tempered her anger, and she spoke carefully, as if to a child. “What do you think it’s like waiting at home? Never knowing. Waiting for the phone to ring. This isn’t the sort of thing you take your mind off easily. It’s not like a test at school, or a visit to the dentist.” Her hands were clutched beside her, knuckles white with the grip as she tried to contain the fear she felt at speaking her mind. “Yes, it upsets me, but I’ve got to be part of this. I am part of this. Do you think she doesn’t need me anymore?” She was dismayed to hear her voice tremble.
Her father sighed. “Yes, she needs you, she needs you all the time, but sometimes she can’t bear you to see her this way. See her at the times she chooses—please, Zoë, for the sake of her dignity.”
Zoë remembered her mother’s embarrassed apology. It’s Mom who doesn’t want me here, she thought miserably.
“Don’t either of you love me anymore?” she said.
There was a brief flicker of pain on her father’s face.
“There’s no profit in arguing,” he said, trying to pat her shoulder.
Zoë wrenched her shoulder away. “You’re right.” She pushed herself from her chair and headed for the doors. She hadn’t gotten anywhere. She still couldn’t visit her mother when she wanted and, dammit, she hadn’t even told them about the boy.
I made it worse, she told herself all the way home on the bus. I only wanted to ask what to do, and I made it worse. Poor Dad. He didn’t even know that I was angry, until it burst out. They’ll never let me back there now.
The house loomed cold and uncomforting, no longer safe. The rose by the front gate was withered and brown.
She thought about magic again as she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. If only there were some magic she could perform to stop her mother dying. If only she could put things right and make things how they used to be. “If only,” she muttered to herself derisively, and sat up. “Who do you think you are? God?”
But the idea of magic had unlocked something. She pulled her notebook from her desk drawer and scribbled down lines furiously with a black felt-tip pen. She would worry about organizing later. Just let the words come. Then she went back and changed, deleted, and added. She forged the thoughts into form: the spells, the rites, the magic of life. Finally, she was satisfied. She had a poem—“Spells against Death.”
Then she fell asleep on top the covers, her notebook clutched to her chest.
When she woke, she was surprised at how much time had gone by. It was after three already. Thinking she should eat something, she went downstairs.
After a nervous glance out the back-door window, she looked in the refrigerator. There was no milk, which meant she couldn’t have cereal, so she settled on yogurt. She took it into the den and ate on the couch with her feet tucked under her, while she watched cartoons on television with the sound turned down.
Lorraine called just after three-thirty. “Why weren’t you at school?”
Zoë didn’t feel like explaining, it was too complicated. “I was sick.”
Lorraine didn’t even question it. “I can’t come over this evening,” she said. “I’m stuck packing and labeling. The movers are coming tomorrow. A couple of days on the floor in a sleeping bag, and we’re off.”
Zoë didn’t like the way Lorraine was starting to sound excited. “Is that all you can talk about?” It came out before she could help it.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Her cheeks stung with embarrassment. The embarrassment made her angrier. “I mean, all you talk about is yourself.”
“Zoë, I phoned to find out how you were,” came Lorraine’s stricken words.
“Oh, I thought you phoned to tell me all about your great move.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have called if I knew you were going to be a bitch,” Lorraine said. “I’ll talk to you later, maybe.” She hung up.
Zoë replaced the receiver with a trembling hand, the crash of Lorraine’s phone still ringing in her ears. Why did I do that? What the hell was I doing? Hot tears scalded her face.
The house felt even emptier, looming and hollow. I’ll go get milk, she decided. I need fresh air.
Walking didn’t relieve the misery in her, however. I would like to do something drastic, she decided, and kicked a stone down the sidewalk in front of her. Something to make them notice me.
She picked up more cereal at the store, as well as milk, and some vacuum-cleaner bags. She was surprised, when she stepped outside, at how dark it had become above the streetlights.
She was standing right by the alley where they had found that woman. She shuddered. Suddenly she remembered the boy standing at the same alley mouth, asking Lorraine to help him. Was that woman his mother? The thought appalled her. But, had they gone down the alley with him, could they have prevented it? Would the killer have heard them and run? Or was it already too late?
She turned into the alley, thinking “Spells against Death.” It was too late for that woman, the boy’s mother, but what about her mother? Was it too late for her?
The alley joined another that ran behind the stores, out to the street on either end of the row. A shortcut, she told herself. But it was darker than she thought inside. Lightning never strikes twice, she reassured herself as her jaw tensed, and she tightened her grip on the grocery bag.
Death had been here, but she would walk on through and show him what she thought of him, the cowardly thief. She held her head high, but her pace quickened.
The alley smelled of damp and garbage. A pile of boxes threw bizarre shadows in the light of a caged bulb by a back door. Was that where they’d found her? She tried not to look for dark stains on the ground.
What if there were someone back here? What if she were jumped? Would that be enough? Would death let her mother go? Only one Sutcliff needed, regardless of age or gender?
She was trying to make herself laugh at the thought, afraid to explore it, but a skittering behind a garbage can put an end to that. She turned the corner, her soft soles hitting cracked concrete silently. The alley beyond was dark, but there was light at the end, the warm glow of Elm Road. But something bigger than her moved in the shadows—in front, to the right, by basement stairs.
She edged to her left. What was it? Could she turn and run? Was it only a flickering of the dim light just past the steps? Yes, that’s all. It made the shadows move unnaturally. She crept along, as close to the left-hand wall as possible.
A trash can got in her way. It went flying—empty, unanchored, smashing the silence, stopping her heart. The shadows leapt, too, from the steps into the light.
The boy crouched there shaking, eyes big as night. Blood smeared his face. Dripping feathers were clutched in his hand.
“Simon,” she whispered.
Sorrow twisted his face.
She turned and ran.
8
Simon
Simon hacked viciously at a broom handle with a large knife. He had stolen the knife that evening from the surplus store, shortly after he had made his decision. He muttered to himself fiercely as he worked, cross-legged, on the dusty classroom floor.
“She’ll never let me in now. She’ll never talk to me again.” I need someone, a voice inside him howled. “Damn girl,” he spat as the knife bit deep, then curled another slice of wood away from the pole.
What was she doing there anyway? What had possessed her to walk down that alley at that time? Stupid girl. Didn’t she know better than to walk down dark alleys at night? Was she asking for trouble? “And I did want someone to talk to,” he whispered, his eyes growing misty for a moment. B
ut the moment passed quickly, and his eyes glittered again like hard, dark stones, as he carefully trimmed the last shreds of wood to leave a wicked point.
I have had enough, he thought, slapping the shank of the stick into his palm. I have waited too long. He stood and swatted at the dirt begriming his clothes. The dust of the grave seemed to follow him wherever he went.
“But never death,” he muttered, “not for me, and never, ever love.”
Like a shadow he could only live on the edge of people’s lives, never touched or touching except to bring a cold shiver like a cloud over the sun, like a shroud over the corpse. The only time he touched, it was in death, yet that was the only thing that proved he existed at all.
“I know who’s trapped me in this hell, and I know whose blood will wash the anger from my heart and help me sleep tomorrow.”
Simon reached the shadow of the bushes in the Chestnut Street backyard, in time to see the boy climb out of his bedroom window onto the windowsill. The boy was dressed for climbing in a pair of overalls on top of a sweater. There were sneakers on his feet. So, Christopher roams tonight. A thin, glittering smile slid across Simon’s face, and he stroked the sharp stick he held.
The boy edged along the windowsill and climbed down a drainpipe with the grace of a circus performer. There was a bundle across his back. When he reached the ground he untied something, sniffed the air as if testing it, and shifted the bundle to under his arm. Simon shrank farther into the shadows. As the boy crept past the shrubbery, Simon disincorporated slightly to blend in with the night. He would follow the boy to a more deserted spot, where a single cry would not set windows blazing with light.
Christopher walked with a purpose, once he reached the street. He kept to the inner edge of the sidewalk, away from the lights, but did not make as much effort to avoid attention as one would expect of a boy that size out late at night. The streets were mostly deserted, but outside one mock-Tudor cottage an elderly man stopped while unlatching the gate and stared at Christopher, ready to make comment. Simon, from across the street, could not see what kind of look Christopher gave the man, but it killed his question in his throat. He continued through his gate with a shrug of the shoulders.
Sometimes they slipped through dark backyards, both mere shimmers against the night. Too near houses, Simon thought, but I must reach him soon. The boy would sometimes stop and look around him puzzledly, as if seeking something. Shift, shift, Simon would urge his molecules, and drift into the night. But not too much, he warned himself, or I shall lose my thoughts as well.
He had lost himself like that once, for the devil knows how long. He had totally lost touch and drifted off until a rapidly changing air current had thrown him together again, and landed him naked in a roaring campfire. He had fled into the woods with the cries of alarmed hunters behind him, one screaming his Hail Marys at the top of his lungs. Simon shuddered now at the memory of the awful burn on his leg that slowed his hunting for weeks. It would be worse, he thought as he crept from tree to tree, to be a semisapient cloud, never quite able to get back together again into corporeal form.
Christopher climbed a stone wall. Simon followed at a careful distance, scrambling up, hindered somewhat by the broom handle he held in one hand. Crouching at the top of the wall, he saw the boy turn from the street beyond and go left down Old Market Street toward the train station. With Christopher out of sight he did not slither down, but leapt in a joyful bound to the sidewalk and bounced his landing with animal grace, waving the sharpened broom handle above his head. The train station was lovely and quiet at this time of night. He hurried after so he would not lose his quarry.
Christopher stood at the entrance to the underpass, the dimly lit, tiled tunnel that led under the tracks to the ticket station in the middle, and across to the parking lot on the other side. The stairways that led to the tunnel were crooked and angular, and the light bulbs were often broken, leaving many dark corners. The entrance was well lit, however, and Christopher’s bundle now assumed the shape of a teddy bear dangling from one of his small hands.
Simon settled into the rough stone of the embankment where the streetlights did not reach. Too light up here, he thought. Maybe he’ll go down those steps. He licked his lips in anticipation.
But there was a click of heels in the distance. It came closer. A lone woman walked down the sidewalk, a smart red wool coat swaying with her determined step, a clutch purse tight in her hand. Maybe she was coming home after a date. Perhaps she had had an argument with her escort. Whatever, she was alone, and approaching the underpass. Simon stifled a groan. Not now.
She stopped when she saw Christopher. Simon heard the questioning tone of her voice, brisk yet kindly. Christopher chirped back at her, and she shook her finger at him, trying to be stern. He held a hand up to her, and she took it, unable to hide a smile. They turned and descended the underpass steps.
An oath burst from Simon. He struck out at the air with his pole and ran lightly for the tunnel mouth. He heard voices ahead, around the turn of the steps, and followed, shutting his senses against the damp, and the reek of old urine.
The woman’s shoes clattered an echo in the chill air. Their voices ricocheted. The last train had come through an hour ago, so there was no thunder of wheels to challenge or drown them. Simon slunk silently behind. The station was closed for the night. The only ones possibly here would be the teenagers armed with spray paint, who declared their undying love all over the seeping walls, but no one ever saw them.
Simon turned to the left for the second flight down. The landing was dark; the light bulb smashed. Ahead he could see the woman and the child, down the tunnel, in a pool of light that seemed as if it could not quite break through the dirt. They were near the dark maw of the steps that led off to the right, to the platform. The mottled tunnel continued past it to the other side of the tracks, and another twisted stairway, that looked like a dead end. It felt as if it were raining above, when it hadn’t rained for days. The floor was slimy in places. There were parts of the wall that looked cheesy, provoking the disquieting thought that if a person touched one of those places, his arm might sink in to the elbow.
All of a sudden the boy tripped and fell. He cried out in fear. The woman gasped, looked quickly around her in repulsion, but knelt on the filthy floor at his side anyway, laying down her purse beside his tumbled teddy bear? Simon stood in the shadows and watched the scene with a sneer on his face, his hands clutched tightly around the pole.
The boy was crying. He reached out to the woman, and she took him in her arms to comfort him. He burrowed himself into her coat, as if searching for warmth, while she patted him on the back. His head nestled in the hollow of her throat. His arms went around her neck—tightly.
Then she tried to pull back. Her eyes grew wide. She pulled at his arms, but they wouldn’t release. She tugged at them harder. They were like a vise. She pushed at his head, but it wouldn’t move. It was fast to the side of her neck. She started to scream. “You disgusting beast! You foul little animal!”
Her arms flailed wildly, her legs kicked, but she couldn’t remove him. She tried to roll, but he had her pinned on her back with abnormal strength. He wound his hand in her hair to pull her head back more, and she tried to scream again, but it turned to a rattling gurgle as blood came out of her nose.
He moved his chin into her neck with a rhythmic push as if milking her. Her legs only twitched slightly now. Her arms lay useless at her sides. Her life flowed rapidly out of her veins into the small leech astride her.
Simon felt sick. He could almost hear the slurping and gulping of Christopher’s gluttony. He couldn’t take them gently. He couldn’t take what he needed and leave the rest, leave some life. He had to take every drop they had and defile them in the process. He wasn’t content with the blood, he wanted to feed on their fear. This woman had been let off easy, though. Simon had seen Christopher do much worse.
The woman’s legs gave one last twitch, then lay still. An arm
curved up, then fell to the ground with a meaty thud. Christopher dragged his head from her throat. He had his back to Simon.
Now, Simon thought, while he’s sated with blood. He descended the stairs, his face grim. He raised the broom handle to waist level with both hands—a sharpened stake—and began a careful advance up the tunnel.
Christopher reached for something in the pocket of his dungarees. He pulled out a knife and quickly slit the woman’s throat to disguise the fang marks. He wiped the knife on her coat, streaking a clashing smear into the wool blend. He stood up, still facing away, and pulled an arm across his mouth.
Simon drew closer, and closer still.
Christopher kicked the woman in the chest and grunted satisfaction.
Simon was almost there. He was too intent on his purpose to see the purse, and it skittered along the ground at his kick. Simon stopped, aghast. Christopher spun around to face him.
“Simon,” he said, and was momentarily shocked, but he altered his tone to pleasant surprise. “How nice to see you again, dear. And so well prepared.” He laughed, but it turned into a shrill giggle. His clothes began to writhe, bulge, and collapse. His face seemed to shrivel. The giggle changed to high-pitched squealing. All at once there was just a pile of clothes on the ground.
Simon dived for it, but a black shape struggled from the neck of the sweater and flapped to the ceiling. He threw the stake at it, but it flittered unharmed out of the tunnel, still squealing.
Simon cursed in every language he knew. He bent and picked up the pair of abandoned Oshkosh overalls, then flung them to the ground in frustration. The despicable boy could have transmuted his clothes too. One of their kind could shift the molecules of anything in close contact. He had left the clothes to taunt Simon.
Simon spat. He had better not linger with this corpse. He glanced over at the woman, shuddering at her grimace of death. There was something under her. Despite his repulsion he went over to explore.
It was the teddy bear, now spotted with blood. Simon picked it up. It was lumpy and hard, not a comfortable toy. There was a rip under one arm, and something pattered to the floor—soil. Simon smiled, then a chuckle rose to his lips. Soil.