The last girl was black. Julius said it didn't matter. He also said no one would care because she was colored. She was here three months, nearly. I only got to see her twice. Todd saw the sign and the next night he took her into the thing. She was so scared she didn't even move. Julius did the it. He called when we have to bring her in because he has to start by himself, because he doesn't like us to see how it's done. He wants to be the only one who knows.
Todd knows the time, and Julius does the it, but I'm the only one who can put the right mark on the girl. That's been since Father took us out to the first farm. Julius says it made me slow. He opens the girls up and gets the sack away, and then tells me put on the mark. It's hard because the heart jumps all over. You can't smudge. I always get it right because I practice. Then Julius grabs it and cuts all around and pulls it out. He always gets soaked because they take a while to stop going. Todd has to come up with the bowl and Julius puts it in it, because they have to burn it, and then it gets burnt and the spare-rib smell, smoke all over and then they come, they get into the girl, then we can go in the palaces.
The mark always looks different. I just paint it because I don't know it. I see it and then I paint it on. I tried painting it on me once but the brush tickles and I don't see anything. I think the it has to be happening. I try not to tickle the girl's heart too much.
Todd
Claire came down and set out the dishes for supper. Julius kept her locked up in the attic room during the day and didn't want her to «mix» with Ruth. He never let her out and made her read the books all day long, over and over. He allows her to put on a frock before coming down to eat. When he feels like showing off, he makes her conjugate, standing by the table, in her miserable, reedy little voice.
I left Ruth to herself and out of the way. I didn't watch her, but I watched him. He never forgave me getting ahead of him.
She looked nothing like Lorraine. She was less than a year old when Lorraine last saw her, and time has disguised her. I took great pains to get her away, recruited Amelia to carry her back home on the train while I hitched. Julius must have made up his mind about Amelia the moment he saw her coming in with the baby. I'll bet she was pregnant by the time I made it back.
I went out to wait for Ruth on the veranda, and she came along through the tall grass, just at the reddening of the setting sun. She was quiet, from being alone all day. I took her by the hand and led her to the table.
Julius
They're outside now. One glance is all I have time for. Grover is standing in front this time, and between him and Todd there's Ruthie with her shoulders in their hands.
I move into the second part. I have to go on and on and on, remembering how Father did it. The way he did what the elders did. They showed it me through him. I have to time each breath right. I can't stop in the wrong spot. Not even to draw breath. Every word has to get out exactly right. It's like a long elastic that draws me in closer. They're far away, but I feel them stirring. They hear me. It's stepping out into the light.
I finish that part and wait. My breath comes tight and I can feel the sweat run down my sides. The fane is stifling, like a grave. They will call in Todd and Grover.
Now the smell — I never could get used to that.
I begin to recite. They're taking their time coming in but I have to keep my mind on the words and not stumble. I close my eyes and I can hear them shuffling. I'm in the dark, and the palaces shine out there and I pull up to them like rowing up to still islands in a black lake. That gold light spills over my face I open my eyes and turn as Todd is throwing her up on the stone and as her hair falls back from her face I lock eyes with Claire.
Todd
He has to keep going and he can't so much as falter. He knows what will happen.
You're the one who does it, Julius.
Well.
Just go ahead on and do it.
I'm not afraid of Julius. Without me he'd miss the sign and we all know what'll happen if the sign comes and we don't act on it.
That gold light is all around — I can feel their greed blending in with his hatred in a cold, steady gush.
I pick the time.
He looks down at her. His eyes are in the shade.
I tear her frock open, baring her skinny chest. She doesn't even cry out, just stares into her father's face.
Any idiot can break a lock, Julius.
Lesser Demons
Norman Partridge
Norman Partridge is the author of the short story collections Mr.Fox and Other Feral Tales (Roadkill Press, 1992), Bad Intentions (Subterranean Press, 1996), The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists (Night Shade Books, 2001), and the horror novels Slippin' into Darkness (Cemetery Dance, 1994), Wildest Dreams (Subterranean Press, 1998), Wicked Prayer (HarperPrism, 2000), and Dark Harvest (Tor, 2007). He has also written the hard-boiled detective novels Saguaro Riptide (Berkley, 1997) and The Ten Ounce Siesta (Berkley, 1998) and has edited the horror anthology It Came from the Drive-In! (I Books, 2004).
Down in the cemetary, the children were laughing.
They had another box open.
They had their axes out. Their knives, too.
I sat in the sheriff's department pickup, parked beneath a willow tree. Ropes of leaves hung before me like green curtains, but those curtains didn't stop the laughter. It climbed the ridge from the hollow below, carrying other noises — shovels biting hard-packed earth, axe blades splitting coffinwood, knives scraping flesh from bone. But the laughter was the worst of it. It spilled over teeth sharpened with files, chewed its way up the ridge, and did its best to strip the hard bark off my spine.
I didn't sit still. I grabbed a gas can from the back of the pickup. I jacked a full clip into my dead deputy's.45, slipped a couple spares into one of the leather pockets on my gun belt, and buttoned it down. Then I fed shells into my shotgun and pumped one into the chamber.
I went for a little walk.
Five months before, I stood with my deputy, Roy Barnes, out on County Road 14. We weren't alone. There were others present. Most of them were dead, or something close to it.
I held that same shotgun in my hand. The barrel was hot. The deputy clutched his.45, a ribbon of bitter smoke coiling from the business end. It wasn't a stink you'd breathe if you had a choice, but we didn't have one.
Barnes reloaded, and so did I. The June sun was dropping behind the trees, but the shafts of late-afternoon light slanting through the gaps were as bright as high noon. The light played through black smoke rising from a Chrysler sedan's smoldering engine, and white smoke simmering from the hot asphalt piled in the road gang's dump truck.
My gaze settled on the wrecked Chrysler. The deal must have started there. Fifteen or twenty minutes before, the big black car had piled into an old oak at a fork in the county road. Maybe the driver had nodded off, waking just in time to miss a flagman from the work gang. Over-corrected and hit the brakes too late. Said: Hello tree, goodbye heartbeat.
Maybe that was the way it happened. Maybe not. Barnes tried to piece it together later on, but in the end it really didn't matter much. What mattered was that the sedan was driven by a man who looked like something dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant pond. What mattered was that something exploded from the Chrysler's trunk after the accident. That thing was the size of a grizzly, but it wasn't a bear. It didn't look like a bear at all. Not unless you'd ever seen one turned inside out, it didn't.