Before the Devil Knows You're Here by Autumn Krause

Author:Autumn Krause
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781682636480
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2023-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

JOHN

THAT FIRST NIGHT AFTER SEEING THE GIRL die from eating my apples lasted forever.

And I know what forever is. I live it now. As it is, my life is a book with no ending, just chapter after chapter. All of them full of the same words and read by only me. But as I huddled among the trees and stared up at the bangle of stars overhead, guilt raged over me like a fever. Daybreak eventually spilled its yellow ink into the sky, and I looked dully up at it, stunned that a new day was beginning. The night had been so consuming, so vivid, so agonizing that something as ordinary as the morning’s gentle sunshine no longer seemed possible. Not for me.

I picked myself up. Continued. But since I now knew the full weight of my consequences, the joy and meaning I’d found in planting was gone. My trees were alive, yes, but they caused death. While the strap dug into my shoulder, this knowledge dug into me. Burrowed like a poisonous tick that could never be extricated, and even the laud from the agricultural community, universities, and government couldn’t ease it.

And, in the most secret part of me, I mourned because my gift of fecundity came hand in hand with death and destruction.

Once my trees started bearing fruit and eager people ate from them, I was pulled to their deaths. Sometimes, when many people ate them, time would suspend, and I’d walk from one to the next. Every sort of person lay at my feet. Adults. Children. Rich, poor, everyone in between. My apples called to all equally and destroyed all equally. I received their last words, their last gazes as they left the only world they’d known. Some feebly tried to touch my Bible and whisper scriptures, some fumbled with amulets at their necks and spoke to the great spirits, some called for their children or parents or lovers. Others merely stared at me, bewildered, terrified, fighting for one more minute, one more second, one more millisecond. As it happened, over and over, the red birds sang their doleful song and the trees whispered in satisfaction and asked if they made me proud.

The birds followed me. They tried to nest in my hair, sit on my shoulders, and peck up the bugs that had made me their home. After they started tearing out my hair to make nests, I found a rusted pot and wore it on my head for protection. No matter how quickly I moved or tried to lose them, they found me.

Like my curse, I could never be rid of them.

Eventually, I was in a hell like the one described in Marguerite’s Bible, which I wore tucked into my belt at my waist. Scenes of death played out before me; tableaus reset with new players stricken with a single fate. Pain racked my body. My shame and loneliness were so strong that they sometimes brought me to my knees.

It needed to end. Once I knew that and what to do about it, some manner of peace settled upon me.

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