2. Chapter 2
In the beginning, it was a while before It deigned me worth its notice.
I felt It clattering around just beyond the antechamber of my mind, pacing, always pacing. Angry. But quiet.
Even I could tell It did not want to be there.
It didn’t answer my first hesitant greetings.
I almost wondered if I was imagining Its noises, the clicking claws, the gnashing teeth, the silken rustle of what sounded like wings.
It cleared its throat the way a human would, as if it was on the cusp of speech, but then I’d be met with nothing but silence.
I’d thought myself mad until It grudgingly confirmed that I wasn’t.
If it has a gender, I don’t know it. It won’t even tell me its name.
Livvy threw holy water she’d stolen from Father Hull on me once, after I’d broken down and confided my affliction.
Said the Latin words of expulsion, pressed an iron cross to my flesh.
That was the first time I heard the demon laugh, a sinister, spiraling sound that had me sinking to my knees, clutching my head.
This is a cursed possession, It hissed, as though I were simple. You don’t think I would leave if I could? It was ordered by forces much stronger than me or this flaccid sack helping you. Holy water won’t save you, even holy water that hasn’t been stolen.
This sudden disease of my soul had to be my fault.
The priests believed general weakness, a frailty of both the body and mind, and a lack of willpower allowed possessions to happen.
Perhaps victims weren’t morally or legally responsible, but guilty of a gargantuan personal failing nonetheless.
The exorcisms we had heard about sounded ghastly.
Holes drilled into the head so the demon could float out.
Burns, branding, drowning. Fumigations with noxious substances.
Priests beating the afflicted until they broke, until the body was so damaged the spirit no longer wished to inhabit it.
Chained and strapped to a padded cross for days, being screamed at in Latin, deprived of food, water.
Failing that, being tossed into an asylum.
Usually the victims were killed. Things were simpler that way.
You really ought to calm down, It said, watching, as I did, those dreadful images running through my mind’s eye. None of that will come to pass, I can promise you that.
Though I couldn’t ignore it, as much as I wanted to. I would turn dangerous eventually, as bad as one of those creatures who called from the wood. The entire village would be at my mercy.
But It didn’t seem interested in manipulating my body. It didn’t seem interested in much of anything.
I don’t want to be more bound to you than I already am, It said, tapping an idle claw. The more I use you, the more entwined we’ll become. How about we just live and let live, all right?
I said all right. What else could I say?
And it hasn’t been all abject misery. It warmed up eventually, if a demon could ever warm to a human.
It grew bored, spoke more. In a voice dripping with disdain more often than not, but still.
It taught me things, helpful things. How to listen to my surroundings, tune into footsteps and cracking twigs and murmuring brush until it seemed as though nothing could sneak upon me.
It guided my hands with the shadow of suggestion, showed me how to throw knives at a target those evenings I needed something to do to avoid attending church.
Taking control might bind us further, but a mutual decision was no more than a tingle in my limbs.
And so we rubbed along as well as we possibly could. How stupid I’d been for thinking it might last.
You’ll see me hanged for this, I said, gazing down at the blood leaking from John Dale’s steaming corpse.
His face cleaved in half, a gully of gore.
Throat in tatters. The red puddle beneath his body growing larger and larger.
Blood seeped from between my fingers, slid between my eyelashes. I could taste the metal on my lips.
You won’t get caught, It said. Calm, reasonable. What human could do that? Leave the back door open. They’ll think something got in.
I whirled around to check the window on the front door and found the shade drawn. Anyone could have seen me walk into the bakery!
You didn’t see anybody. They’re all locked up tight.
Nothing can leave the wood. I wrapped my arms around myself, pacing. Everyone will know it wasn’t one of those things. The shade on the window shivered in the draft of my steps.
So they’ll think something was able to breach the boundary.
I stopped, horrified. You’d have me terrify the entire village, let everyone think those creatures can suddenly leave the wood?
It’s better than telling them the truth.
I jumped back as the lake of blood lapped at the toe of my shoe.
What—how could you—why would you do this?
I felt like a lazy and somewhat petulant pet had just turned rabid.
Panic threatened to poison my blood, but a curious chill chased it out.
Still the bakery was suffused with heat, the warmth from the ovens not yet gone.
Who do you think snapped Noelle Hawthorne’s pretty neck? It said, almost bored. Or any of the others? You’re right, isn’t it strange only women have died? Women who bear a passing resemblance to you.
They said an incubus did that.
She’d have been drained if that were so.
I heard a twist of vertebrae. That, or at home, expecting a baby she doesn’t remember conceiving.
A woman can only leave an encounter with an incubus a bloodless husk or pregnant.
None of you know the first thing about the creatures that live in the wood.
Big cats that breathe hellfire, little goat men with horns and pitchforks, it’s all nonsense—
And you think John Dale did all that based on what evidence?
Has it ever occurred to you that I might have a lot of evidence, even if I don’t share it with you?
He’s good to the children, I said, staring down at the man who was sometimes quite literally the difference between life and death in the village, between mere hunger and starvation, the saint more than one grateful mother had dubbed him.
He tries his best to keep people fed when he can possibly help it—
Ah. Yes. Endearing himself to the community. It’s a good ploy. Keep everyone in the village singing his praises and you’ll never cast a suspicious eye on him. And when I didn’t answer: I’ve been around monsters all my life. You think I don’t know one when I see one? I should have let him have you.
I clapped my hands to my ears as though it would help. Shut up shut up SHUT UP.
It actually listened to me. I could hear It breathing, deep and slow, the languid crack of knuckles.
I had to clean up, had to drag the body outside, as close to the wood as I could get. And I had to do it as quickly as possible.
I grabbed John’s slack wrists and yanked. He moved, but barely. One of his eyeballs had burst, I noticed. Bile stormed my throat.
Help me, I ground out.
I thought you wanted me to shut up.
You don’t need to talk to help.
I felt another frost in my blood, my muscles tingling, and John was moving now, sliding across the floor, a red road of gore left in his wake.
I kicked the back door open, stepped into the swirling fog, my back hunched with the strain.
The bakery stood three doors down from the wood and night was falling fast, the gray deepening from dishwater to a thick and roiling charcoal.
I made it there before I thought it possible, sweat pearling at my hairline.
John Dale’s wrists hit the dirt with a muffled thump.
I did not spare the baker a last glance before running back to the bakery, careening through the open door.
There’s no use cleaning, It offered, surveying the scene through my hopeless gaze.
The muted mineral glitter of the stone floor was washed in blood.
I imagined Its fingers steepled, its expression an utter void.
Stone is porous. It’s drinking in the blood.
Even if you mopped up this mess, there’d be a stain.
I grow weary of all my counsel being ignored.
I grow weary of YOU, I snapped back. I’ve tolerated you as best I can all these years, and this is how you repay me. I almost felt as if we were…
I trailed off, but It knew what I was thinking. It always did. It had thoughts I would never be privy to, but It knew all of mine.
You thought we were friends? Its laugh had an edge of surprise. We’re not friends, Desideria. We never have been. The only reason I care about you even a little is because if you died, I’d be stuffed inside a different host. I’d rather not be forced to learn someone else.
And even then, I marveled at how a demon’s myopic opinion should wound me. Of course we weren’t friends. Ours was a relationship of Its convenience.
That It could put me in this position after all our time together was a slap of reality so profound it left me breathless.
Mechanically, I made my way to the back of the bakery, where I found a bucket of water.
I cleaned up the mess It had made of me in silence until the blood marbling the water turned it a solid, shocking pink, garish as a hag’s poison.
My black cloak would not give what I had done away, but I could still smell the metallic notes of what was left of John Dale on the material.
Now march home, sweetheart, It said as I stood. Night has fallen. Things have woken. Hurry home before you have to explain why you were out after dark.
I headed to the door in total silence, not even a thought. Just a static blank pierced by Its omnipresent company. A whirling, fog-fumed night welcomed me as I stepped outside. But that was not the only greeting.
“M’lady,” a small voice rang out through the mists. “M’lady, can you hear me? I need help.”
Every hair on my body bristled.
March, It ordered.