53
The boy did not know where he was going. He was angry, and grief-stricken. The woman who had been mother and more to him was lost, and he had seen again the face of the man who had briefly sent him into the void, into the pain of non-being. He wanted to kill him, but he wasn’t strong enough yet. He had not even properly regained the power of speech. The words were in his head but he could not form them with his lips or force his tongue to speak them.
So he ran through the woods, and he wept for the woman, and he plotted his revenge.
There was a buzzing in his head, the voice of the God of Wasps, the Reflected Man, but so lost was the boy in his rage and hurt that he was not able to understand it as a warning until he was already aware of being followed. There was a presence among the trees, shadowing him as he unwittingly ran further north. At first he feared that it might be Parker or one of those who stood by him, come to finish him off. He stopped at a copse of low cypress and crouched low behind them, watching and listening.
He glimpsed movement: a flicker of black on green, like burnt paper blown by the wind. He tried to recall if any of those at the plane had been dressed in black, and decided that they had not. Nevertheless, there was danger here: the voice told him so. His right hand searched the ground beside him and found a rock the size of his fist. He clutched it tightly. He would have only one chance to use it, and he would have to make it count. If he could hit his pursuer in the head, then the impact would give him time to pounce. He could use the same rock to beat him, or her, to death.
More movement, closer this time. The figure was small, only a little taller than himself. The boy was puzzled. Could it be an animal of some kind, even a dark wolf? Were there wolves in these woods? He did not know. The thought of being attacked by a carnivorous animal frightened him more than the threat posed by any human being. He feared unreasoning hunger, the sensation of teeth tearing at his flesh, of claws ripping his skin. He feared being consumed.
The girl appeared from behind a tree barely ten feet from where he lay. How she had moved so quickly without being seen he did not know, but he reacted instantly, firing the rock and watching with satisfaction as it struck the girl above her right eye, causing her to stumble but not lose her footing. He prepared to move on her, but the buzzing in his head rose to a crescendo, and he saw that no blood came from the wound in the girl’s head. He could discern clearly where the rock had impacted by the abrasion on her skin, but other than the initial shock of the blow she appeared untroubled by hurt. She did not even seem angry. She simply stared at the boy, then raised her right hand and silently beckoned him to her with a crook of a filthy index finger, its nail long gone.
That unreasoning hunger that the boy had feared to find in an animal was now manifested in another, more terrible, form. This was not really a child, no more than he himself was one: this was loneliness and fear, hatred and hurt, all bound up in the skin of a little girl. Cut her open, the boy thought, and biting bugs and poisonous snakes would tumble from her innards. She was neither good nor evil, and was therefore beyond the remit of the boy and those like him, beyond even the God of Wasps himself. She was pure want.
He backed away from her, and she made no move to follow him. She simply kept crooking her finger, as though certain that, if she persisted, he would eventually surrender to her, but he had no intention of succumbing. The boy, in all of his incarnations, had encountered many threats, and understood the nature of most entities. He saw in this one a tethered beast. She was a dog on a chain, free to roam within certain boundaries, but ultimately constrained. If he could move beyond the limits of her domain, he would be safe.
He turned and ran, heedless once more of the direction, caring only that he put as much distance between the girl and himself as he could. It was growing dark quickly, and he wanted to be well beyond her reach before night fell. She moved again, staying with him, a fleeting blur between the trees. He gasped for breath. He was not healthy, had never been healthy, and although he was capable of summoning massive strength when required, he could do so only in short bursts. Lengthy pursuits, either as hunted or hunter, were anathema to him. There was a pain in his side, and the goiter at his neck throbbed angrily. He could not keep up this pace for much longer. He paused to catch his breath, leaning against a tree, and saw the luminous shape of the girl continue north, then pause. She looked around, and he threw himself to the ground. Was it possible that she had trouble seeing in the dark? He watched her slowly retrace her steps, her head slowly twisting left and right, seeking any sign of movement. She was gradually making her way toward where he lay. If he moved again, she would be on him. If he stayed where he was, she would discover him. He was trapped.
The tree behind him was massive and old, some of its roots as thick as the boy’s body, its great, spreading branches, now entirely bare, as twisted as arthritic limbs. At the base of its trunk was a vaguely triangular hole, perhaps the lair of a weasel or other small mammal, widened over time by the actions of nature. Beside it lay a broken branch about three feet in length. It was as thick as his wrist, and sharp at one end. The boy gently scuttled backwards until his feet were in the hole. It would be a tight squeeze, but he could make it. Once inside, he could hide from the girl and, if she found him, he could keep her at bay with the stick. The blow from the rock might not have stopped her entirely, but she had clearly felt the force of it. The stick might be enough to torment her and make her keep her distance. All the boy knew was that he could run no longer, and here he must make his stand.
Back, back he went, until the edges of the hole were biting into his sides. There was a moment when he felt sure that he was stuck, incapable of going forward or back, but he wriggled his flabby body and the hole seemed to suck him in. Once inside he stayed quiet and still. He could see nothing except the patch of forest beyond, and even that was growing dimmer as the darkness drew in, but he caught sight of the girl’s form as she passed into view. She was crouching as she walked, her upper body slightly extended, her fingers curled like claws. He thought that he heard her sniffing at the air, and her head turned so that she seemed to be looking straight at him. He held tightly to the stick, ready to thrust the point at her if she came. He would aim for one of her eyes, he decided. He wondered if the stick was strong enough to impale her on the ground. He had a vision of her struggling against it like a dying moth. It made him smile.
But she did not approach him, and instead moved on. He realized that he had been holding his breath, and let it out in a gasp of relief. The sound of the God of Wasps subsided a little, for which the boy was grateful. After a few minutes he shifted position, trying to make himself more comfortable. He used the stick to test the limits of the hole and found that it was bigger than he had anticipated. He could not have stood up inside it, but there was room for him to stretch out his legs. If he curled up a little, he might even be able to sleep, but he would not sleep, not with the girl outside, roaming, searching. To pass the time, and keep himself amused, he sorted through his memories, the great rush of them that had returned to him when he heard again the voice of the man who had tried to destroy him, the hated detective. His time would come: once the boy had found more of his own kind, and grown big and strong again, he would take the detective, this man whose nature even the boy did not understand, and in a deep, dark place he would discover the truth about him. First, though, he would kill the detective’s woman and his child, just as his first woman and child had been taken from him in blade and blood, but this time the detective would be forced to watch as it happened. There was a circularity about it that appealed to the boy.
The woods grew black, and he heard the scurrying of night creatures. Twice the darkness before him was lit by the passing luminescence of the girl, and he heard her calling to him, coaxing him into revealing himself. She promised to show him the way out of the forest, swore that she would guide him to safety, if only he would play with her for a little while. He did not answer, and he did not move. He stayed where he was, and prayed to the God of Wasps to sacrifice a little of the night so that dawn might come more quickly.
He did not remember sleep coming. There was no instance where his eyes briefly closed only for him to realize what was happening and jolt himself awake. There was only wakefulness, and then sleep. When he opened his eyes again he was slumped against the inside of the tree. It was still dark outside, but the texture of the night had changed, and the woods were silent. Something had caused him to wake, though. He was aware of a disturbance, a sound from close by. He also desperately needed to pee, and he was very, very cold.
The boy listened. Yes, there it was again: a scuffling, a digging. An animal, maybe, some mammal hunting for buried prey. It was coming from nearby, but he could not pinpoint the precise source. The noise echoed inside the tree, further distorting his perception. With it came the warning buzz in his head as the God of Wasps called to him in a voice that he still could not yet fully comprehend.
It was coming from his right, he decided. Now he could hear the scratching of claws against the tree trunk. He leaned over, his ear close to the wood, his face barely six inches from the ground. What are you, he thought. What are you?
A small hand exploded from the dirt between his legs, and gripped his face. He felt fingers on his skin, digging deep into his flesh. One found his open mouth and he bit down hard upon it, severing it entirely, but the grip did not weaken. A jagged nail dug into his right eye, and a fierce, intimate pain insinuated itself into his skull. The presence in the dirt rose up still further, now not just a forearm but a head, and a torso. The girl’s sickly light infected the gloom as she ascended, her right hand forcing itself deeper and deeper into the boy’s face, her left pushing against the ground for leverage. He struggled hard, tearing at her dead flesh with one hand while the other scrabbled in the dirt until he found the stick. He raised it as high as he could before stabbing down, and felt it enter the girl’s body. She spasmed, and he struck again, but he was sinking now, and he sensed collapse all around him. The girl was no longer forcing herself up: instead she was dragging him down, deep into that lonely place in which she herself had been interred, with its ceiling of roots and its walls of dirt, where the beetles and the millipedes scuttled over her bones.
The stick caught in the dirt and snapped. The earth rose to the boy’s chest, then his neck, and finally his chin. He opened his mouth, but the earth silenced his final scream.
And the girl had her playmate at last.