Evil Returns (6 page)

“Make a wish!” He drooled over the words. His trunk pulsed back and forth, as if he were on a spring. He isn’t a ghost, she thought. He has too much form. And he is too dark.

She wanted to run downstairs to the kitchen full of sawdust and paper plates and family laughter.

He said, “Here’s my offer.”

I have to get out of here, thought Devnee. She managed to focus her eyes, managed to find her shadow, managed with her eyes to draw it back to herself. Its thin presence snuggled weakly against her.

“You want to be beautiful?” he said. “I will give you Aryssa’s beauty.”

Have Aryssa’s beauty! Imagine that. Imagine waking up in the morning, looking in your mirror, and seeing Aryssa there! Imagine how the boys would admire; how the girls would envy!

Aryssa’s beauty.

“But what about Aryssa?”

“What about her?”

“What will she have?”

He smiled. The teeth were immense and sharp and dripping with slime. “What she deserves,” he said.

Oh, what a wonderful thought—that people got what they deserved! Yes! Aryssa should get what she deserved. Aryssa and Trey, saying that being buddies with Devnee made them puke! She would show them! They wouldn’t say that again in a hurry!

“I wish I were beautiful,” cried Devnee Fountain. “I wish I looked like Aryssa.”

The cape jerked free, rasping over her skin, as painful as a handful of paper cuts. The cape wrapped itself around him like a container. Just before he vanished, she saw how his teeth overhung his lower lip, sharp as a row of garden stakes.

He was a vampire.

In that dark and terrible moment, Devnee Fountain knew what would happen to Aryssa.

But she did nothing. She did not take back her wish. Hot revenge filled her mind, ugly as a hundred vampires.

Aryssa would get what she deserved.

Devnee smiled, and the smile was sharp, and cruel.

Her shadow did not come back.

I
N SCHOOL THEY LIKED
you to think. Thinking carefully and logically was a reason for school. You got graded on your thinking and Devnee tended to think more inside the building than out of it.

Today, however, Devnee Fountain sat, carefully
not
thinking.

Not
thinking took a lot of energy. It required concentration far beyond mere thinking.
Not
thinking meant taking complete control of her mind and eyes and daydreams.

Not
thinking required Devnee to split her personality and allot some to the teacher, some to the paper, some to the human beings around her, and none whatsoever, not a whisper, not a glimmer, to last night.

Last night.

It crept into her mind even as she fought its memory.

She saw it, smelled it, tasted it, felt it, and most of all … heard it.

“You see,”
he had whispered,
“I cannot get anything for myself. It must be given to me. And so I offer you, my dear, a fair exchange.”

His voice echoed. It did not stay where it belonged, twelve hours before. It spread like spilled oil on a pond, its dark sticky slime rimming the edges of her soul.

Her wish.

It was there. She could have it. She could take it.

It required only Aryssa.

In biology lab they were still partners. Aryssa still did not want to touch anything, and especially not today, when they had progressed to an eyeball. It came from a cow, said the teacher, and today they would—

Aryssa covered her ears and squinted her eyes shut. “You do it, Devnee,” ordered Aryssa.

Devnee did not look at Aryssa. She looked at the rest of the biology lab class. Nobody wanted to look down at the metal dissection tray, and several people had chosen to look at Aryssa instead. Girls looked at Aryssa with a sort of distant longing. Boys looked at Aryssa in admiration mixed with a much closer longing, a longing called desire.

The girls wanted to look like Aryssa, but the boys wanted to have her.

If I looked like Aryssa … thought Devnee.

And
last night
he said,
“But you can! So easily!”

Devnee, too, shut her eyes and winced, but it was not because of the eyeball. It was because of a certain darkness out in the school yard, a long straight glimmering path of …
him.

Aryssa was too curious and eventually had to look down. She literally gagged, put her hand over her mouth, and swallowed hard. Then she went white, panting and acting faint.

“Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the boys solicitously. “Devnee, do it for her.”

“Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the teacher gently. “Take a deep breath and that will help you pull together.”

“Are you all right, Aryssa?” said the girls. “Devnee, she can’t do that kind of thing. You’re her buddy. You do it.”

Aryssa managed not to throw up or pass out. She patted Devnee’s knee. “I’m glad I have you, Devnee. It’s so nice to have a buddy.”

The eyeball before them was immense, as if it were several eyes rolled together. Its texture was both jellylike and rocklike. The rest of the class gripped and dug in. The room was noisy with the squeals of horrified girls and the grunts of sickened boys. The room was definitely on an equal opportunity basis when it came to being squeamish.

Devnee looked at Aryssa’s lovely fragile face, her gentle mouth, her sweet eyes, her hair flowing like a dark and shining river.

“If I dissect it for you,” said Devnee, her voice and her resolve faltering, “what will you do for me?” She was horrified to hear her voice break, hear, herself begging. She might as well be on her knees. She might as well be weeping.
Be my buddy. Like me. Sit with me because you enjoy my company. Say something nice to me! Please!

Aryssa was amazed. Me, do something for you? her eyebrows said.

Surely Devnee was joking. The equation did not go both ways.

I want friendship even more than beauty, Devnee realized suddenly, and she almost decided against beauty; she almost waited for the next night, to explain to him that—

But then she thought: None of these people really like Aryssa anyway. It’s her beauty they like. They don’t want her to faint or throw up because she wouldn’t be beautiful anymore. She wouldn’t be something for them to adore.

She tried to sort out what was beauty and what was friendship but they were running out of time.

“Girls,” said the teacher sharply.

Devnee looked up guiltily.

Aryssa opened her eyes to see that Devnee was not dissecting, either. “Come on, Devnee,” she said impatiently. “Do it.”

A queer sick thrill ran through Devnee.

Aryssa had just chosen her future. Aryssa had just given permission.

Aryssa had just made a very serious mistake.

“All right,” said Devnee. The thrill ripped through her, like some weird electrical charge that did not kill, but energized. Devnee’s eyes were very wide, they felt as large as the cows’ eyes; they felt as if they would burst. How clearly she could see the dark path now.

She got up off her high lab stool.

She did not even blink. She felt less human, as if no bodily functions were going on, no blinking, no digesting, no breathing, no pumping.

She was all desire.

She was all choice.

She knew where she was going, and she did not care.

She was going to be beautiful.

For a moment she stumbled, as something was wrenched away, and she looked around in surprise, and almost in anger, but nobody had touched her and nobody had seen anything.

Only her shadow. It had pulled loose again.

Her shadow would attach itself only to a human, and what Devnee was going to do was not human.

For a moment she let herself think. For a moment the thoughts—terrible, shameful, evil thoughts—circulated in her brain.

But nobody was paying any attention to her. Even the teacher did not care that Devnee was walking to the back of the room instead of working. Even Aryssa had lost interest. Devnee Fountain was not worth the effort of tracking.

In the rear of the classroom, Devnee opened a window.

A shaft came through. Not light. Not as if the sun had suddenly come out. But as if the dark had suddenly come in.

It lay vibrating, that path.

Devnee went back to her stool. She picked up her scalpel. “If you want, Aryssa, you can stand over there at the back of the room till I’ve finished up.”

The eyeball looked right through Devnee, into her heart. It saw what she was doing, and how.

She carefully did not think. If she thought, she would know. If she knew, she would stop. So it was best neither to think nor to know.

Aryssa slipped off her high stool and drifted to the back of the room.

The teacher said with a frown, “Aryssa?”

“I have to get a sip of water,” explained Aryssa, giving the teacher her meltingly beautiful smile, and getting the usual melting response.

The eyeball stared on.

Devnee put a scalpel through it.

The tower was dark, and she did not bother to turn on the light. He was more likely to come in the dark anyhow. It was a matter of waiting. She waited a long time.

She wondered what he was doing all that time.

All night long.

When he came, it was almost dawn. At first he was quite hard to see: He was all oozing cape and wrinkled foil fingernails.

And then he smiled.

She had never seen him smile before.

His teeth were immense as posters on walls, dripping blades.

Dripping blood.

Devnee gasped. “What—” she whispered.

“What did you think?” the vampire said.

“I thought—”

“You knew,” said the vampire calmly.

“I—” Devnee staggered backward. “I thought you were—like—a visitor—or—a—night creature—or—like—a dark ghost.”

The vampire laughed. He sounded rich and contented, like cream soup.

She cried, “I thought you would—like—haunt her!”

“Now, Devnee. You knew what I would do. You saw the tools of my trade. You counted the hours of night in which I was busy.”

This night—this night in which she had done her homework, and written up her lab experiment, and argued with her brother, and had an extra snack—this night he had … the vampire had … Aryssa had …

She could not think about it.

It was not decent to think about things like that.

“It was a good trade,” he told her. “You got Aryssa’s beauty, and I got—” He smiled again. He dried his teeth on his cape, and once more they gleamed white, shimmering like sharpened pearls.

Now she knew why the cape was dark and crusted, and why it stank of swamps and rot.

Devnee licked her lips and wished she hadn’t. She clung to the shutters for strength and wished she hadn’t. At last she said, “But what happened?”

“What do you think, my dear?”

“I’m trying not to think,” said Devnee.

“Ah yes. You humans are very good at that. It’s probably for the best, Devnee, my dear. And of course, a beautiful girl does not need to think. And now you are beautiful.” His eyebrows arched like cathedral doorways, thin and pointing, vanishing beneath his straight black hair. With his eyebrows up, his eyes seemed much wider. Too wide. As if they were from biology lab. As if they were half dissected.

“Is Aryssa—is she—I mean—will she—that is—”

“She’ll be fine,” said the vampire. “She’s just rather tired right now. She won’t be in school much for the next few weeks. And of course when she does come back, she’ll be plain. Nobody will notice her. The way it was for you. But that’s all right, isn’t it, Devnee Fountain? You thought it quite a reasonable exchange, didn’t you, Devnee Fountain?”

“Don’t call me by both my names,” she said to him.

“Why? Does it make everything too real?” He laughed drowsily. He rocked back and forth contentedly.

Devnee tried not to think about that.

Actually, he did look healthier. His skin, usually the color of mushrooms, had a pinkish tinge. As if for the first time blood circulated in his body.

“What about my shadow?” said Devnee.

The vampire blinked. Frowned. The eyebrows landed and sat heavily over his eyes, as if keeping them from falling out as he rocked. “Your shadow?”

“It keeps on separating from me.”

The vampire’s smile was slow and pleased; his lips spread like drapery over a dark window. Teeth hung over the narrow lips like foam on a sea wave. “It does, doesn’t it?” he said dreamily. “Shadows,” said the vampire, separating the words in a cruel, bored way, “shadows … prefer not … to be present … when the …” He smiled again. “… when the event … occurs.”

“Event?” said Devnee. She was very cold. Her skin felt slick, as if she were growing mold. Or as if the vampire’s mold was migrating and attaching itself to her flesh. She wrapped the quilt more tightly around herself, pulling its hem up around her neck, until she was hooded in a comforter. It did not comfort her.

Especially when the vampire touched her cheek. She flinched and jumped backward.

“Shadows love the dark. I am the dark. Your shadow needed, as you say in this century, to make contact.”

She heard a noise outside the tower. The wind increased and came through the closed windows as it had before, and the chill was greater and the mold colder.

“Morning,” said the vampire.

He sifted back through the slits of the shutters, into the vanishing night.

“What are you made of?” said Devnee.

“Shadows,” he said. “Victims of many centuries. Collected in one cape. Under one set of teeth, as it were. I am thick with the shadows of the dead.”

“Aryssa?” cried Devnee. “I thought—
she isn’t dead, is she?
I thought you—I thought I—”

“She’s not beautiful anymore,” said the vampire. “She might as well be dead. Isn’t that what
you
told me?”

He was all gone except his fingernails, wrapped around the final slat.

But his voice continued on. A separate funnel of sound and horror.

“Sweet dreams, Devnee,” his voice said.

And his laughter curled into the dawn, his dark path retreated and, after a long time, Devnee Fountain turned around and went to find a mirror.