We are Wormwood (20 page)

“I wasn’t always a demon, you know,” she said.

She lay beside me. She was smaller than I ever remembered.
She could have curled up inside the sleeves of my dress.

“Once, I was a girl,” she said. “I lived in a town full of
sunshine, in a time when my father still loved my mother. It was a place where
the fields glowed in the summer with fireflies big as our heads. I was going to
be a scientist. Just like you, Lily. I wanted to find the Wormwood star my
mother talked about. It’s from the book of Revelation. They said it wasn’t a
real star, but I knew better.

“I fell in love with a boy, because he made me feel good
when he kissed me. He took me to Christmas dinner with his family and bought me
spring dresses and pressed flowers in between the pages of my books. He
transformed me into a strawberry girl, sunshine girl. He took me to the highest
point in the city, like he was the devil and said, 'This could all be yours' as
he knelt in front of me with a ring in his hands. I said, ‘I don’t want it all,
I want you, my love, I want you.’ And I threw my arms around him and knew I’d
never have to be lonely again.”

“Have you ever felt that way?” she asked me. “Like you met
the one person who would make sure you were never lonely again?"

Yes, I wanted to say. Yes.

“We were married. That was the only time I ever remember
feeling beautiful. We lived in the countryside and had two children, two little
girls with wispy blond hair and dark eyes. I thought I was happy.

“Except every time I looked in the mirror, I didn't see a
girl. I saw a demon. I’d seen her my whole life, hiding behind my skin. She
followed me everywhere I went. I started to scratch off my skin. I scratched
and scratched, even when my husband said I wouldn’t ever be able to go back to
the way things were.
Even when my children clung to me and
begged me to stop.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop. I scratched until I tore
the skin of the girl away."

This is the end, I thought. She's telling me this because
she knows this is the end.

"Do you know what happened after that?" the demon
asked.

"Tell me."

“They didn't love me anymore," she said softly.

I couldn't stop shivering. We had to get away. There were
too many poisons and slinking things out in the dark. The Nightcatcher would
steal my demon away. The machine would descend upon the house, pry open the
roof, and devour us. The earth would collapse. We were running out of time, I
needed to grab the demon by the collar and run.

Instead, we curled into each other, too tired to move, and
collapsed amidst the bodies of dead wrens.

She sighed in my ear, scattering spiders, and we slept.

***

When I awoke, the demon was gone.

I dressed and went searching for her. I searched from the
living room to the kitchen, to the attic. She was not there. I went outside to
the backyard where the trees were burnt husks and the grass was wild haired and
black. I went to the porch and to the empty driveway where Saint Peter once
parked her van. She was not there.

My veins throbbed like war weapons. My blood spilled out of
every cut. The Nightcatcher couldn't just take the demon away from me. She
belonged here. She belonged with me.

The Nightcatcher thought she was scary? She should wait. I'd
become a raging beast, rabies from osmosis. I'd tear the sky down and strangle
her with the horse-headed nebula.

The Witch sat in the living room in the dark. She rolled her
wheelchair back and forth across the floorboards. The wheels creaked, slowly,
encrusted in her dried blood.

“I’ve lost her,” I said.

“She’s waiting for you.”

Ghouls wriggled out of her mouth. They snuck out through her
eyes.

“Where?” I asked.

Her skin sloughed off the muscle. Through the bandages, she
smiled. Pressure built up underneath her cheeks. She pointed toward the door.

"There's not much time left."

The black dogs at her feet howled.

On the lawn ghouls slipped inside of the machine, into its
gears,
its
angry eyes, and its rusted arms.

The dogs rushed past me to the machine. They surrounded it,
barking, foam on their black muzzles.

The machine roared to life.

I ran down the street. A taxi waited at the end of the
cul-de-sac.

The Witch, queen of psychedelic drugs and black-hearted
machines, had called me a taxi.
 

I climbed into the back and the cabdriver turned to talk to
me, then paused when he saw me shivering in my tattered, thin jacket, my legs
locked and arms crossed.

"Do you have any money?"

"A little." I said, lying. “Take me
downtown."

"Downtown is a big place."

"Take me anywhere. I don't care."

He took off. The night sky churned purple foam, a color as
angry as I was. The skyscrapers were burnt metal.

The Witch said, “Go find here,” but I didn’t know where.

The taxi crossed the bridge toward the city; the ocean
underneath us was corrupted like computer static.

“I’ve seen a lot of kids like you.” He said. “You should go
back to someone who loves you.”

"I didn’t ask for a therapist,” I said.

“You don’t have any money, do you?” he asked.

He stopped at the next corner.

“Just get out,” he said.

I opened the door. He took his foot off the brake and the
taxi rolled forward. I stumbled onto the curb as he sped off.

I picked a direction and started walking. She couldn't
expect me to find her like this. I wasn't a demon. I didn't have ice in my
blood, or a golden chip in my head, pointing the way. The streets were strained
and dark and empty because of the cold. It was ferociously cold, colder than I
remembered, the kind of cold that children die in.

The blood drained from my face and fingers. I could barely
walk.

I ran into Francois with a blonde haired girl on his arm.
She was small and blue-mouthed, and wearing a black pearl necklace bigger than
her throat. He'd thrown his coat around her shoulders and pulled her close to
his chest.

"Francois!" I called.

I laughed, stumbled, and grabbed a light pole to keep myself
from falling. It didn’t matter
I was on a sacred mission
,
I couldn’t help myself
.

"Do I know you?" he asked.

"You never called me back. You were going to teach me
your French tongue.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. He pulled the girl away from
me, shielding her ears with his hands. He must’ve shed the Francois persona;
being a Frenchman could only take you so far when you didn’t know French.

As I laughed, choking, clinging to the light pole so I
wouldn’t fall over, baby spiders flew past me, riding the air currents.

“What are those?” the girl said. “What’s wrong with this
city?”

I followed the spiders because it seemed like the kind of
sign to follow. Invisible webbing stuck to my eyelashes, my mouth.

The current split them into two paths, one heading toward an
alley, the other toward a bridge. A few spiders flew into my hair, and then
leapt off and swirled above my head. I followed them into the alley.

It was a dead end.

I stood next to a pile of fetid trash as the spiders blew
past me and into the air. I looked behind me to the street. Francois and the
girl were there. Francois was talking to someone on the phone.

“Yeah,” he said. “She’s here.”

“
Who
are you talking to?”

“You better come and get her. I’ll make sure she doesn’t go
anywhere.”

“Fucking fuck,” I said.

I curled my fists and was about to head toward him, when the
demon found me.

Her hair, my baby’s hair, dark and hot with magic, came to
me from above. It was living hair, stained with black ichor - wild things
growing there. It grasped me by the wrists as her insects spoke softly to me.

“Come here.”

The girl in Francois’ arms saw the hair winding itself
around me, and she burst into tears.

The demon’s hair pressed itself into my eyes, nose, and
mouth. It tied itself around my waist as if winding me up for a
dance,
then pulled me upwards.

She led me up the alley, down the street, and through a
collapsed window. I cut my feet on delicate glass and junkie’s needles. I bled
across platform ladders, dirty boards, and toppled bars. I walked through
heaving, whiskey soaked skins that used to be human. I went down an elevator
shaft, her hair lifting me so that I walked on the ceiling. My feet left behind
bloodied prints.

She took me down a flight of staircases. My hands burned
against the railing as she hurtled me from one wall to the next.

She opened a door and I flew down the long, gray hallway. I
flew into an abandoned hotel basement. She released me on the floor and her
hair retracted.

I found her kneeling beside a rusted, reignited boiler.

 
The demon did
not belong here underground, in this heated box of metal with her skin cooking.
She wore my boots, thick woolen socks, and one of my sweaters. She wrapped
herself in layers of scarves and chunky gloves.

“I thought I’d lost you,” I said.

She folded her arms and turned her face to the fire.

“You will,” the demon said. “I just wanted us to have a
little while longer together.”

Her hair drew me close. I buried my head in her soft sweater
and felt her jagged bones underneath. In all the layers of my clothing, she no
longer smelled like herself.

“I won’t let her take you.”

“There are things greater than both of us. She’s one of them.”

“I’ll kill her,” I said.

“You have to stop fighting. You can’t fight her.”

“I should have known. It was you The Nightcatcher wanted all
along.” I said.

“We couldn’t have known.”

I wouldn’t admit to myself I couldn’t save her. Kill The Nightcatcher?
I couldn’t even kill the thing inside me that I hated.

“Why did we have to come here?” I asked. “Maybe I could’ve
saved my mother. I should’ve never set fire to our tree. Maybe it was a gateway
out of this hell.”

“You’ll drive yourself mad,” she said, “with what could have
been.”

She clung to me like a child and I rocked her. How small she
was, how well we fit together. For all I knew she’d been in the crib with me
when we were infants, our clumsy feet reaching out for each other, past
bedtime, both of us eating spiders like children sometimes do.

“You can’t go,” I whispered. “You’re all I want. Please.”

She stroked my hair. She pressed my forehead to her own,
and, though she was sweating, her skin chilled me to the touch.

In her eyes, the Wormwood star collapsed. When I tried to
look away she tugged on my hair.

“Don’t,” she said. “Not now.”

I cupped my hands underneath her chin. The demon’s mouth
parted.

Pay attention, this is what it feels like to lose your
shadow.

Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke.

She slipped her webbed tongue into my mouth and her insect
noise vibrated inside my head. Burning. Pulsing. She kissed me again and again.
Until the fire in the boiler dimmed and a chill crept over
her.

The smell of machine oil.

“You need to go,” she said.

“No.”

Her hair hissed and wrapped around my wrists and ankles. I
coughed up black hair, billowing hair, as she pushed me toward the exit.
Needles and spiders scraped against my skin. I braced myself against the doorframe
with my arms and legs.

“You can’t make me leave.”

“She’ll kill you,” the demon said.

There was a sound like a bullet train.
No,
the sound of a stampede.
The sound of a great rushing
wave.
It was the sound of hell. Forget the wailing and of teeth, hell
was a rushing noise that intensified until it replaced the blood in my head.

The demon’s hair released me. It was as if someone reached
through the wall behind her and grabbed her by the back of the neck. Her eyes
were wide and empty, her throat exposed. She swallowed. And although I thought
the crushing noise would kill me, I heard her as if she spoke beside me.

“Lily,” she whispered. “I’m afraid.”

I will fight this. I will fight The Nightcatcher. I am weak
and ready to fall apart, but if you come for my demon, I will destroy you. I
will plunge my fists into your face, if you even have a face at all. I will
tear you apart with my teeth, even if your skin is made of metal.

I ran to her. The floor stretched between us, the basement
walls collapsed like they were set props, made of paper; there was a great
darkness like deep space beyond them.

The demon had been dragged across the floor, toward the
darkness beyond the wall. Oil oozed underneath her. The oil grew a face that
chewed gashes in her cheeks and tore her clothing apart.

She reached for me.

It seemed as if I’d run for miles across the boiler room
before I gripped her arms. I tried to pull her away, out of the oil sucking her
hair into its mouth.

I screamed.

They can’t take you from me, demon.

Demon.

“I won’t let you go,” I said. “I promise.”

You’re all I have left.

Maybe my curse was that everyone I ever cared about would
look at me with those eyes - eyes that, if they had mouths, would gasp. Eyes
calling for help, windows to the soul, shutting me out forever. They said, “You
could have saved me Lily.”

“You could have saved me by staying away.”

The Nightcatcher dangled a fake paper moon in the darkness
like a fucking smile.

The Nightcatcher pulled her across the floor toward an
infinite nothingness where there was nothing to fight, nothing to kill. I
stumbled as I tried to hold onto the demon. My arms ached.
Everything
in me strained.
If there’s any blood left in me, take it from me. Quick,
tie my hair to your hair. If I can’t pull you out then I will go in with you.