40
Rayne
The Devil’s Book
“H old the door! Hold it back, damn it!”
My shoulder ached as the door slammed into it again.
Pain exploded through my chest, but adrenaline numbed me enough to endure it.
Claws scraped and scratched against the other side, as if a massive dog was trying to dig a hole through the wood.
Even with me and my cousins all holding it back, the beast was stronger.
“Watch out!”
My uncle slammed a thick wooden beam across the door, barricading it as my cousins and I leapt back. Gerard’s hair was disheveled, a wool coat thrown over his night clothes. “The lights now. All of them! James, get the rifle!”
As he and my cousins began flipping on the house’s external floodlights, I found Salem standing in the hallway. She was gripping the staircase railing with both hands, staring at the door with wide, terrified eyes.
With the lights turned on, the banging stopped. The boom of gunfire sounded from upstairs as James fired at the creature from an upper window. There was a high-pitched shriek and a clatter as the beast fled, before bone-chilling quiet fell over the house.
In the silence that followed, Salem’s eyes met mine and filled with tears. Her knees trembled, but I caught her before she could fall.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.” I held her tight as she shook, tremors racking her tense body.
“Ruth was—God, did you see her, she—it ripped her apart.” She took several rapid, sharp breaths. Stroking my hand up and down her back, I rocked her slowly. “Did she... oh, God, can’t someone do something...”
“Don’t think about it, Salem.” I kept rubbing her back, trying to pretend Ruth’s screams weren’t echoing in my head too. The smell of blood was cloying in my nose. No matter how many times I witnessed death, it never got any easier.
It wasn’t normal to see these things. It wasn’t something we were supposed to get used to.
Kissing the top of her head, I murmured the only lullaby I knew: the one my mom used to sing for me as a child, whose words I didn’t know but tune I could remember.
Bringing my mouth close to Salem’s ear, I said, “I’ve got you. Just like I promised. I won’t let anything hurt you. You’re okay. The sun is almost up. We’ll be safe here.”
The pop of gunfire echoed throughout the town. James kept a lookout from the second floor, and I would occasionally hear the crackle of his walkie, other lookouts providing updates on the beast’s movements.
A short time later, I was able to move Salem into one of the bedrooms. Aunt Veronica brought us water, then mugs of tea and a plate of cookies. My younger cousins, Mark and Jacob, both in their early twenties, stood awkwardly in the hallway for a while before shuffling upstairs to join James.
“Thanks, Aunt V.” I took a cookie, eating it in two bites. Although I wasn’t hungry, I needed something to keep me going. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open.
Salem sipped her tea slowly, glassy-eyed. I kept one arm around her, and she leaned heavily into my side. If only I could take those images away from her. She’d have to live with those horrors now, and I couldn’t protect her from them.
“Poor thing,” my aunt murmured, hovering in the doorway with concern. Salem didn’t seem fully aware she was there. She just sipped her tea in silence, shuddering now and then, wordless.
“Sheriff Keatin and his men are on their way from Dowton,” my uncle announced, coming to stand in the doorway beside his wife. “They’ll figure out what to do with Ruth.”
Salem made a small sound—a hiccup or a sob, I wasn’t sure. I wanted nothing more than to be back at the house with her, back in our bed, safe behind those haunted stone walls and boarded windows. I wanted to take her away from this, shelter her from the horror.
“Are you badly hurt?” Aunt Veronica said, catching her breath at the worsening bloody stain on my shoulder.
“I popped a few stitches,” I said. “I’ll be fine—”
“She needs a doctor,” Salem said suddenly. Her voice was strong, but calm. “I do too. I don’t know if you have a pharmacy on this fucking island, but I need diazepam. Please.”
Aunt Veronica nodded determinedly. “I’ll call Dr. Hale immediately. Sit tight, dears.”
My uncle, too awkward to stand there and talk to me without her, mumbled something about checking the locks before he followed her down the hallway.
With our privacy at last, I took Salem’s face in my hands. Her skin was cold, her eyes reddened. She looked at me with such tiredness that my heart ached.
“I can’t forget,” she whispered. “It’s all I see.”
I kissed her face as the tears rolled down her cheeks. I pulled her into my lap and just rocked her as she sobbed. To my surprise, my own eyes stung too. Her pain ran through me as surely as if it were my own.
After several minutes, she wiped her tears. I held her as she slowly ate another cookie and sipped the remainder of her cold tea.
“This used to be my room when I’d sleep over,” I said, running my hand over the bed’s familiar quilt.
Salem looked around, taking in the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling, the board games piled on the old bookshelf.
“Me and my cousins would drag all the kitchen chairs in here and cover them with blankets to make a fort. I would pretend I was the warrior queen and made them my soldiers. James would always argue with me that he wanted to be king, but I never let him.”
To my relief, a smile spread across her face. “I miss making blanket forts,” she said.
“When we get back home, we’ll make the most epic blanket fort in the world. We’ll cover the whole house in blankets.”
“Home.” She repeated the word with fondness, but with sadness too. She was silent, plucking at a loose string on her sweater, before she asked, “Did Ruth used to be called Rue?”
The sound of her nickname sent an unexpected pang through my chest. “Yeah. That was what I called her in middle school.”
“You were friends?”
“Believe it or not, we were close. Our last summer in eighth grade, we did everything together. She was different when she was a kid, she was... well, she was...” Shit, this hurt.
I didn’t let pain linger like this; I pushed it aside or left it behind, I had no time to dwell on it.
But I think Salem needed this. Maybe I did too.
“She was the first girl who ever kissed me.”
Salem gasped. “What? Ruth ? But she... the things she said...”
“She inherited a lot of hatred,” I said. I could remember that summer only faintly now, like a bizarre dream. Ruth and I separated over the winter, and when I saw her again in spring, she had changed. Those long, cold days locked in the house with her family had warped her perspective.
“Ruth lost herself a long time ago,” I said.
“I already saw part of her die, and today, I saw the rest of her go too.” I sounded flippant, but the words were only a shield against the pain battering my chest. “This island eats people, Salem. It chews up your life and spits out the husk when you’ve been sucked dry.
And when you’re finally dead, it rots your flesh and disintegrates your bones.
But you and I, Salem...” I laid my forehead against hers.
“We’re not going to die here. I promise you that. Blackridge will never have you.”
By the time Dr. Hale arrived, Salem was asleep.
I sat on the old floral-print couch in the living room as the doctor cleaned and re-stitched the gash across my chest, then applied disinfectant to the numerous other cuts and scratches covering me.
Luckily, besides the popped stitches and fresh bruises, the beast hadn’t injured me this time.
“Do you want to wake her?” Dr. Hale asked, nodding her head toward the bedroom where Salem slept.
But I shook my head. “Let her sleep. She doesn’t get enough of it. Do you have pills for her?”
She nodded, withdrawing an orange pill bottle from her bag and handing it over.
Turning the bottle over and over in my hands, I said, “When my mom was murdered, did you perform an autopsy?”
“No. Your father was very adamantly against it,” she said, peeling the vinyl examination gloves off her wrinkled hands. “He made it clear to me from the start that he wanted a private wake in the home. He didn’t even want Eddie touching her.”
Eddie was Dr. Hale’s late husband, the previous mortician and manager of Blackridge’s only funeral home. I couldn’t remember him well; he’d been at my mother’s funeral, but that day was a nightmarish haze in my memory.
“A private wake?” I said, and she nodded. “I see. Thank you.”
“Look after yourself,” she said, hoisting her backpack onto her shoulders.
The horror of Ruth’s death was spreading outside.
The muffled sounds of weeping and screaming could be heard, but I tried to block them out.
“Try to take it easy.” She held up her hand before I could give a snarky response.
“I know, I know. You’re fine. But take it easy , okay?
Take one of your girlfriend’s pills and relax for a while. ”
“Alright, alright. I’ve had enough of getting beat up by angels this week anyway.”
I stayed on the couch long after she left, alone with my thoughts and the echoes of grief.
A soft knock on the doorframe announced my uncle’s presence. “May I join you?”
I nodded. “It’s your house.”
He sighed heavily as he sat in the large green chair across from me. He looked too much like my father, although his face was softer and his eyes were gentler. He’d always been kind to me—distant, but kind.
He wore his church vestments, looking stiff and uncomfortable in his white collar. “I’ll be going to the church soon. The people need comfort, especially now. Perhaps you—”
“The church is full of broken glass,” I said. “That’s where all this started. In the church. Salem and I stayed there last night, and when Ruth came in this morning, the angel came too.”