"We're not letting it in here!" she shrieked. It had reached our sidewalk.
"It's the only way," I said, and shoved her back. She lost her grip on the door, and tumbled against the wall, staring at me with the same horror she had given the demon. It was the first time she'd taken her eyes off the demon, and her eyes moved across the blood that smeared my chest and arms.
The monster inside of me reared up, remembering the knife in the kitchen, eager to dominate her again with fear, but I soothed it and unlocked the door to the mortuary. You'll kill soon enough.
"Where are we going?" Mom asked.
"To the back room."
"The embalming room?"
"I just hope it can find the way." I pulled her with me into the mortuary lobby, flicking on the lights, and hurrying toward the back room. The door banged behind us, but we didn't dare look. Mom screamed, and we ran for the back hall.
"Do you have the keys?" I asked, shoving Mom against the door. She fumbled in her coat pocket and pulled out a key ring. The demon bellowed from the lobby and I bellowed back, screaming out my tension in a primal roar. It staggered around the corner just as Mom opened the lock. It was practically dripping now as its body fell apart. We burst through the door into the room beyond. Mom ran to the back, fumbling again with her keys, but I turned on the lights and went straight to the side of the room. Coiled in a neat pile lay our only hope—the bladed trocar, perched like a snake head on the tip of its long vacuum hose. I flipped the switch to start it, and looked up at the ventilator fan slowly sputtering to life.
"Let's hope the fan doesn't give out on us," I said, and threw myself against the wall, right next to the open door.
Across the room Mom opened the lock and flung the outside door wide, looking back at me in abject terror.
"John, it's here!"
The demon burst into the room, reaching out for her with claws like bright razors. I swung the humming trocar with all my might straight into the demon's chest. It staggered back, eyes wider than I'd ever thought possible. I heard the wet slurp as something—its blood, maybe, or its whole heart—tore loose from its half-decayed body, and slid down the vacuum tube.
The demon fell to its knees as more fluids and organs were sucked away, and I heard the familiar, sickening hiss of flesh degenerating into sludge. The vacuum tube curled and smoked with the heat. I backed away and watched as the demon's body began to devour itself, drawing strength and vitality from every extremity to help regenerate the tissues it was losing. The demon seemed to decompose before my eyes, slow waves of disintegration traveling in from its fingers and toes, up its arms and legs, then creeping darkly across the torso.
I didn't notice Mom come to my side, but through a haze I became aware of her clutching me tightly as we watched in horror. I didn't hold her at all—I just stood and stared.
Soon the demon was barely there at all—a sagging chest and a gnarled head stared up at me from a man-shaped puddle of smoking tar. It gasped for air, though I couldn't imagine its lungs were whole enough to draw breath. I slowly pulled off my ski mask and stepped forward, presenting a perfect view of my face. I expected it to thrash out, driven mad by rage and pain, and desperate to harvest my life to save itself. But instead, the demon calmed. It watched me approach, yellow eyes following me until I stood above it. I stared back.
The demon took a deep breath, its ragged lungs flapping with the exertion. "Tiger, tiger. . .," it said. Its voice was a raspy whisper. "Burning bright." It coughed harshly, agony tearing out of every sound.
"I'm sorry," I said. It was all I could think of to say.
It drew another ragged breath, choking on its own decaying matter.
"I didn't want to hurt you," I said, almost pleading with it.
"I didn't want to hurt anybody."
Its fangs hung limp in its mouth, like wilted grass.
"Don't. . .," it said, then stopped in fit of horrible coughing, and struggled to compose itself. "Don't tell them."
"Don't tell who?" asked Mom.
The hideous face contorted a final time, in rage or exertion or fear, and that excruciating voice rasped out a final sentence:
"Remember me when I am gone."
I nodded. The demon looked up at the ceiling, closed its eyes, and caved in on itself, crumbling and dissolving, flowing away into a shapeless mound of sizzling black. The demon was dead.
Outside, snow began to fall.
19
I stared at the black mess on the floor, trying to understand everything that had happened. Just a minute ago, that sludge had been a demon—and just an hour before that it had been my neighbor, a kind old man who loved his wife, and gave me hot chocolate.
But no, the sludge was just sludge—some physical remnant of a body that had never truly been his in the first place. The life behind it, the mind or the soul or whatever it was that made a live body live, had disappeared.
It was a fire, and we were its fuel.
Remember me when I am gone.