The Devouring by T. M. Wright

Author:T. M. Wright
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2011-09-13T11:33:12.646000+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Joan Mott Evans said, "I loved her. I loved Lila." She paused, on the verge of tears. "I've told you that, haven't I, Rye?"

Ryerson reached out and put his hand comfortingly on hers. "Don't worry about repeating yourself, Joan. Just tell me what you want to tell me."

She closed her eyes briefly, sighed. "It's like putting a puzzle together, Rye. But the puzzle's got too many pieces, and they're all the same color."

He patted her hand. "Yes. I understand."

She glanced at him, then down at the table. "Maybe you do. I hope so." A short pause. "I didn't kill her." She looked up at him entreatingly. "Did you think I killed her?"

"No. I never thought that."

She looked down at the table again andsaid softly, "Lila killed herself. And her boyfriend. She knew that something was wrong inside her; she knew they'd gotten her."

"They?

"The demons."

"Yes. Of course."

"You think I'm nuts, don't you?"

"No. I think you have good reasons for your beliefs. Many people believe in demons. I have a friend, a cop actually, who claims that there are demons who sit on his chest at night."

Joan looked offended. "Don't make fun of me, Rye."

He frowned. "I'm only trying to let you know that if you thought you were alone—"

"I never thought I was alone." It was a simple statement of fact. "Never alone. Only by myself from time to time. Like Lila."

"Are you saying there are similarities between you and Lila, Joan?"

She looked surprised by the question. "Of course there are. We're both vulnerable—we were both vulnerable; I was the lucky one; they got her, not me. Trouble was, they wouldn't let her go. They stayed with her."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning just that. They stayed with her; they stayed inside her somewhere. I don't know where. In her belly, in her intestines, in her heart. And they wouldn't let go of her. They made her get up and move around."

An image came to Ryerson then. It was an image from his childhood, when the same awful dream had tormented him for months. In the dream he entered a stone crypt. At the center of the crypt lay an open stone sarcophagus with a man inside dressed in a loose-fitting dirty white gown. When Ryerson drew closer, he could see that the man's face was yellow, his eyes large and round and pale, his lips a dull green. The man sat up. A kind of stiff, halting laugh came from him as if he were trying the laugh out to see if it still worked. He turned his head very mechanically, as if his neck were on dirt-encrusted ball bearings, and he said, "Boys! Bimbos! Beads!" in a high, hollow whisper that made his yellowish cheeks puff out briefly, then deflate. It should have been comical. It wasn't. Not from him. It was an image which had, then, pushed Ryerson screaming into wakefulness. Now it merely made him cringe.

"When?" he asked.

"When she was buried," Joan answered. "Of course."

"So I had to stop her. For her own good, I had to stop her.

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