2
I don’t know who first called them demons. It’s a church word, so it must have come from the enclaves, but the demons I’ve seen don’t have forked tails or devilish grins. They aren’t even red, save for their eyes.
Still, they say demons are spirits freed from hell by the fifth trumpet, along with cancer and microplastics, which slink into people’s souls and change them into monsters. I don’t know about the trumpets, but one thing is true: people change.
They hide it at first. So there are pinfeathers pressing out between your ribs: you pluck them. So there’s a second row of teeth coming up through your gums: you pull them. So you’re sick—terribly, mortally sick: you lie. Claws can be hidden in boots, gills beneath thick scarves. You can puke in private, with no one to hold back your hair.
Of course, the hiding is how they’re caught, most often. A playful child now takes to her bed; a man who used to work in his undershirt now buttons his collar up to his chin, despite the heat; a woman who used to bathe naked now goes down to the river only at night, when the moon is new. They change their habits, and change is always the first sign of a demon.
People start to talk, and once they’ve talked long enough, they act. They pull the child from her father’s arms. They rip the man’s shirt from his back. They haul the woman down to the river in broad daylight.
If they’re quick enough, they take care of the demon themselves. It doesn’t matter who the demon once was—neighbor, lover, son—they don’t hesitate. They barely even mourn. The wheel turns, they say, which means: Sorry about your wife, kid .
But if they’re too slow—if they missed the signs, and the change is too far along—if the demon is already red eyed and slavering, a great beast which shifts unnaturally, continually, into whatever shape suits it—well.
That’s what knights are for.