It was rutabaga."
Ralph stands still for a moment, trembling, then lowers the gun.
"I"m sorry, Margie," he says, weeping again.
"It"s alright," she says, dragging a breath into her reluctant (and now bruised) lungs. "Now speak a little sense if you can and tell me what happened to your wife."
"Lee went out back. I was . . . watching Cops, fixin" to go to bed, but she goes out into the backyard, you know how she was, with her queer ways, taking the laundry off the line at eleven o"clock at night.
Who would do that? And I warned her not to, many a time, but she was never one to listen to me. And sure enough, they come out of the dark, out of the forest, and they grabbed her. I heard her screamin" too late to get my gun. All"s I could do is grab my shovel off the back porch and come down swingin", but still-" and he starts weeping again. "There was too many of them. And they took her off and into the forest. I tried to follow, but some of them fought me and the rest was gone. And they took her."
"Who was it?" Margie asks. "A gang? Some kinda cult?"
"Demons," he says. He"s stepped back into the light now, and Margie can see a shine creep into his eyes, an animation that she doesn"t like, and she can smell the liquor on his breath.
"There ain"t no such thing as demons and you know it," Margie says.
"There is," Ralph says. "Sure as you"re born. Come see, if ya don"t believe me. I got one locked in the shed right now and I"m fixing to burn it."
Margie scrambles after Ralph Parsons through the dark. He has a gas can swinging in one hand, a lit cigarette in his mouth, and a shovel propped over his shoulder, stained black with blood. As Margie slides down the slick, gra.s.sy slope to the spot by the brook where the Parsons" old shed sits, thoughts blast through her head, livid and bright as fireworks.
Ralph"s lost it.
He mighta killed Lee.
Might be fixin" to kill me.
Or demons. What if he"s right, and there"s really demons?
She"s terrified, but follows anyway. If only she had gone to church more, she"d know the right way to handle a demon. Mrs. Scutt, her old neighbor, G.o.d rest her soul, used to say the way to fight the devil was with a cold shoulder and a righteous heart. She didn"t suppose it would work like that against a pack of demons that could carry off a grown woman and fight off a big man with a shovel. "Course, nothin" ever works out like it"s supposed to, so far as she knows. She doesn"t need no Bible to tell her that.
She realizes suddenly that Ralph has been talking, murmuring, half to himself: " . . . The rest was fast, like hunting dogs, but this "un was slower. Limping, like. After I hit it with the shovel, I drug it by the leg down here. It was knocked out, bleedin" from the head. I figure if it was a person, it"d be dead. Lost a lot of blood and all. But just before you came knockin", I heard it rattling the door from up at the house, and it was hollerin" and cursing and speakin" tongues."
The shed rises up now out of the gloom of the moonless night. Ralph brandishes an electric lamp in the shape of an old-fashioned lantern over his head, casting an eerie, halolike glow over the patch of barren, blood-speckled mud, and the door of the shed, which is made of heavy wood and padlocked shut.
"Ralph-"
"Hush, woman! If it knows we"re here, it might call the others, and that"s a sight you don"t want to see, believe you me. Here."
He hands her the shovel.
"You stand over here." He puts a guiding hand on Margie"s back and leads her over to a small, dirty window.
"This is the only way it can git out. You make sure if it busts through that window, you hit it with this shovel, and don"t you quit until it stops moving. Understand?"
"Yes," says Margie, staring at the opaque window, shaking.
"Good," says Ralph. A sheen of sweat glitters on his forehead in the lamplight. He s.n.a.t.c.hes up a gas can and starts uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the cap. The smell of gasoline makes Margie"s head reel (always has) as she watches Ralph douse the window with petrol, then work his way to the other side of the shed and disappear, jerking the gas can desperately with each splash.
Margie stares at the window, but all she can see is her own smudged reflection. Even though there"s next to no light, she sees enough to know she"s old, and for an instant she grieves. Even now, there"s no rest. No ease, no retirement. All she had wanted was to make her neighbor a pie. Now this.
A stick cracks in the woods and she jerks her head around. A bird swoops out of a tree, probably an owl, and she gasps.
Bam.
Behind her, the shed!
She whirls back, and behind the window, she beholds the pale face of a ghost.
It bangs on the window softly, like it"s knocking-which is somehow much more terrible than if it had slammed against the gla.s.s like a monster. It seems to be . . . pleading.
Margie takes a few steps back, holding the shovel in front of her like a spear.
And the face disappears.
Suddenly, the door starts rattling fiercely. It shakes so hard she thinks the shed might come off its foundation.
"Ralph!" she calls.
"It"s awake!" he says, rushing around the corner of the shed to join her. The door is still shaking.
"Jesus, sweet Lord, save us!" he says. "Lemme get my matches."
He pats all his pockets. "s.h.i.t, I think I dropped them around the other side. Watch the window."
"Ralph . . . " she says, but it"s too late; he"s already disappeared again.
She grips the hard, gritty handle of the shovel tighter. I can do this, she tells herself. I been fighting all my life.
The face is back. Something is going around and around on the gla.s.s, probably the thing"s hand, wiping off the window. She hears its voice, whining, shrill, like a sick child calling for its mother, and it makes her shiver. She can"t make out what the voice is saying, and she"s glad.
Its face. She sees it clearly now that the gla.s.s is wiped mostly clean. Big, dark eyes, pale skin framed in long, black hair. Its lips are working fast, and now that she can see them, she can no longer deny what her ears had heard all along. It"s calling her name.
"Margie! Margie, it"s me!"
"Found "em," Ralph calls from the other side of the shed. "You watch that window!" And the next time Margie blinks, she sees flames creeping over the roof of the building, wrapping around the walls in a morbid embrace.
A m.u.f.fled scream vibrates the gla.s.s of the window, as the demon-girl realizes her prison is about to burn.
And she screams.
And she screams.
Margie stands frozen, gripping the shovel handle, eyes stinging from the smoke.
Margie!
Ralph appears again, hurrying around the side of the shed, one eye on the flames and one on Margie.
" . . . This fire is Jesus," he declares, and she thinks he might have been talking the whole time, she just couldn"t hear him. "This fire is justice."
He stops, stands next to Margie, his hands on his hips.
It"s me!
"Jist look at it suffer," he says. "d.a.m.n, it"s a beautiful sight."
And a window pane shatters, and a pale hand bursts through in a shower of gla.s.s. It"s a small hand, not a demon"s claw at all. The face reappears at the window.
The fire has crept up the walls, now, and dances, hissing, atop the roof. The wood screeches and pops.
The voice is clear: "Margie, help! It"s me!"
And the face at the window isn"t a demon at all; it"s a person. It"s a girl.
"It"s me, from the diner! It"s me, Christine!"
The realization fills Margie with horror.
"Ralph, we have to let her out," Margie cries.
"Never on your life-that there"s a demon."
"It"s the Zikry girl!" says Margie. "I know her! Open the door! Let her out!"
"MARGIE! PLEASE!"
"They take forms, don"t ye be deceived!" he says, his eyes shining in the firelight. "That there"s a demon, and that there demon"s gonna die."
The heat is coming at Margie in waves.
Screams from inside.
"Margie! Help me! Margie! Mr. Parsons! I"m burning!"
The white hands are pounding through the gla.s.s, sending sparkling shards into the mud, but they can"t break through the wood muntin bars that hold the gla.s.s in place.
"Let her out!" says Margie. "Now!"
Ralph wheels and faces her, and she realizes just how big he is: over six feet tall and very heavy.
"It"s gonna burn," he says. "Now you give me that shovel."
Margie looks down. There"s the shovel, forgotten in her trembling hands, still held in a defensive position, except now the demon it"s holding at bay is Ralph Parsons.
He takes a quick step forward, grabbing at the shovel. Margie brings it back, out of his reach, then snaps it forward again with all the force her wiry little body can muster.
A dull ringing sound hangs in the air for an instant, and the shovel is still vibrating in Margie"s hands when Ralph collapses face-first into the mud. She jumps over him as he falls.
"Look out, Christine," she yells. "I"m breaking you out!"
There"s no sound from inside. The girl is dead, but Margie swings the shovel anyway, not to free the demon locked in the shed, but to vent her rage. Another Hudsonville child lost. How many can they forget?
The shovel splinters the window frame, and she jerks it back and forth, leaving a clean opening.
Margie almost screams, drops the shovel and slips in the mud when the girl, the demon, springs half out of the window frame. Her upper torso extends out of the window, but her legs are still inside.
"Help me, Margie!" she screams, and Margie does. She takes the girl"s hands, pulls as hard as she can, and the next thing she knows they"re lying in the mud together, watching the flames lash the night sky, watching the smoke writhe upward through the treetops.
She hears a trembling breath, looks over and sees the girl, the demon, is crying. Her face is streaked with dirt and soot. Grimy strings of hair hang in her face.
"It"s okay," Margie says, and she pulls the Zikry girl close, feeling her frail frame shudder as she cries. Why, she can hardly weigh ninety pounds! How could Ralph Parsons have ever been scared of her? Then she thinks of his words: they take forms; don"t ye be deceived.
She looks at Christine again, closer, but still all she sees is a scared little girl. She relaxes a little.
"It"s okay, honey," she says. "You alright? You hurt?"
"I think . . ." the Zikry girl says. " . . . I think I got burned some, but I"m okay. And I cut my hands . . . on the gla.s.s."
Margie looks under what"s left of what could only be a singed, tattered nightgown, and sees that there are some burns beginning to blister on the girl"s already scarred legs.
"Yeah, you"re burned alright," she says, "but nothing some salve and a few days of cold baths won"t fix, I think."
The girl sniffs, puts her hair back behind her ears, and pulls herself up and into a ball.
Margie is reaching for the shovel.
"Now, Christine Zikry, I"m going to ask you a question, and you tell me the truth," Margie says. "What are you doing out here tonight?"
The girl wipes some snot off her nose and looks at Margie with big, dark eyes.
"I"m not here, Margie. I wish I was, but I"m not. I"m just dreaming."
Margie holds the girl"s gaze and shivers. Her groping hand finds the shovel, and she grasps it and stands up slowly, backing away.
"I think we"d better have the sheriff decide whether you"re awake or not, Christine, and whether or not you and your friends did something with Mrs. Parsons."
"What do you mean?" the girl asks, a perfect picture of innocence.
Margie keeps the shovel between them.
"Why are you holding the shovel like that?" the girl asks. "Are you scared of me?"
Margie is deciding how to answer when something distracts her. A stain seeps across the mud toward them, red and thick.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," says Margie, and she rushes over.
But there"s nothing she can do.