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John walked right up to me, swaggered really, and stopped within reach, facing me. He was proud of what he was about to reveal. He didn’t writhe or squirm as if he were being forced to do so, he was glad of the opportunity. He smiled and then stuck out his tongue. But the tongue began to change. The pink color turned black, and his tongue grew long, longer, until it was a two-headed black snake writhing between lips that had begun to change as well, turning a dark red.
The mouth was wide and lipless, more a gash than a mouth, and within I glimpsed rows of tiny sharp teeth, shark’s teeth. His eyes had migrated across his face, split apart into smaller pools, like spilled mercury. Two human eyes became six eyes that could only make me think of spiders. Not dead little doll eyes, but six active, searching, leering eyes.
His body was wiry rather than bulky, with something like skin that seemed too mobile, too . . .
My breath caught in my throat. His skin, his entire now-unclothed body was covered in barbs, like the stem of a fresh-cut rose. “Do you know what I would do to you?” he asked me. “With my tongue I would lick the flesh from you, flay you alive until you were nothing but raw, red flesh.” All the while the barbs that covered him quivered, and the two-headed tongue would quickly dart in and out between words, so fast that his speech was not interrupted. Heat came off him, as if he were packed with glowing charcoal.
“Get back,” I said in a voice much weaker than I intended.
“And once I had reduced you to a single vast island of pain, I would take you, I would take you!”
His tongue lashed out at me. His hands, claws now, swiped at me. He was furious. He was a single nexus of all the rage in the world. He hated me.
He hated me.
I couldn’t help it, I backed away, not even conscious of what I was doing. Not conscious of anything but the monster before me.
“This one cannot harm you,” Messenger said. “Nor can he physically harm Graciella. He can only pour his poison in her ears.”
The demon—what else to call such a creature—nodded agreement. “Oh, it’s true, sadly. But others—greater than myself—can take your precious immunity from you, little messenger girl. Oh yes, they can. And if it pleases them they can give you to me. They can give me your mind and body and your quivering soul, and then, oh the fun we would have.”
He moved closer, ever closer, and I felt the door behind me, my back pressed against it now, and panic, sheer terror possessed me.
“You want to see the demon?” he taunted me. He swung his arms wide and roared, “Here is the demon incubus!”
I panicked.
I fled.
6
FEAR TAUGHT ME TO USE MY NEWFOUND POWER. Blind panic accomplished what I had been reluctant to do. For when I fled, I did not run, but simply went elsewhere, as Messenger did so easily.
I don’t believe that I thought, even for a microsecond, about where I would go. I just felt sudden animal terror and I was gone from Graciella’s home, gone from the demon.
It took me a few shaking, quivering moments to realize that in my panic I had instinctively gone to where I felt safe. I was at the mall.
Not just any mall, but the mall where I had often wandered with my friends after school, or less happily with my mother who was never a great shopper, except for herself.
It was the Village at Corte Madera, just a few miles from my home in San Anselmo. The mall is really two malls, one on the west side of the 101, one on the east side, both open-air, as is fairly typical in temperate Northern California.
I was on the east side, the part with a Macy’s at one end and a Nordstrom at the other. I was standing in front of the Apple store, close to the Macy’s end.
The sky was dark and I sensed that it was near closing time. Accounting for the different time zones between California and Nashville, I had evidently stayed within the same time line. I had traveled through space but not time.
I don’t know why my subconscious mind chose this as my destination. Why not my home? Why not my school? Maybe because this place was innocent of any association with my past misdeeds and their consequences. Or maybe it’s because malls are uncomplicated and familiar.
And maybe it was because I had never seen a demon there.
There were chairs and tables outside the Peet’s. I sat down in one and lowered my head to the table. Too much. Too much, too fast.
Too much.
I felt like I was coming apart. Like my head might crack open and spill filth across the metal table.
I raised my head just as an elderly couple began to sit on me, unaware, of course, that I was there. I slid out of the way, invisible.
I walked to Abercrombie & Fitch, weaving around and occasionally through kids my age, in the faint hope that I would see someone I knew. I did.
