The Child Eater (13 page)

Simon made himself focus on the lights. He hadn't seen them in so long he'd forgotten about them. Not since Eli—He squeezed shut his eyes and shook his head, forcing himself not to remember. It was so unfair, every way he turned—

“Hey,” Jimmy said, “you all right?”

The squirrels looked at him, and the lights jumped, and Simon knew the squirrels wanted to tell him something, but that was so weird. And wasn't that just what the Allens had said about him?
Fucking weirdo
. He remembered once when he'd been at his grandparents' house and Grandpa had put an arm around him and said, “Simon, buddy, when your last name is Wisdom, you have to learn to be normal. More normal than normal.”

Simon was still staring at the squirrels and the lights when Jimmy touched his arm. “Hey, you want to go back? The Allens are so stupid they probably forgot about it.”

Simon pushed him away. Immediately he turned to say he was sorry, but something changed when he did that. He couldn't say what, it was as if something broke, and when he looked back, the squirrels had run off and taken the lights with them.

Jimmy stood up and raised his hands. “Hey, it's cool,” he said. He started to walk away, then stopped, and a moment later turned around. “Hey, thanks,” he said.

After lunch the next day, Simon grabbed Jimmy and said they should go around the side of the building. “Don't forget your popcorn” he said, sing-song, like a joke. The whole time they played, throwing pebbles at a tree, Simon looked around. No squirrels came. All that afternoon he wanted to hit Jimmy, or someone, but he kept himself still.

At night he dreamed of the woman again—his mother?—for the first time in months. He was on a field trip, to a museum or some other dumb place. The teacher (Mrs. Griswold, from back in first grade) took them to a giant dinosaur skeleton so big the bones looked like a city seen from far away. “In winter,” Mrs. Griswold said, “the children let the dinosaur eat them so they can stay warm in its nice cozy belly. Then in spring, the dinosaur regurgitates them, like popcorn, so they can play in the sun.”

From somewhere to his left, dream Simon glimpsed a flicker. When he turned he saw the dancing lights, just a few, and beyond them, under a doorway marked “Emergency Exit,” stood a woman dressed in a guard's uniform. She was tall and pretty, with curly red hair, and she smiled so sweetly at him he wondered, once again, could she be his mother? He tried to run to her but there were so many kids in front of him, pushing, yelling.

The woman—Mom—was saying something, cupping her long, delicate hands around her mouth to call it out, but there was so much
noise
—the teacher, the kids, the dinosaur bones clacking together like those dumb wind chimes Grandma had outside the kitchen window. All he could hear was one word, “Remember!”

“Remember what?” Simon yelled. “What am I supposed to remember?”

For just a moment he could still hear her—“Remember!”—but then the woman, and everything else, the teacher, the kids, the dinosaur bones, they all got drowned out, for suddenly there was that sound Simon Wisdom hated more than anything in the world. The terrible crying and wailing.
No! Go away!
he thought.
Please
. For he knew what had to come next, of course. Pieces of children.

Yes, there they were, scattered all over the shiny museum floor. Fingers, toes, bloody strips of skin. And tongues. Tongues like snakes, tongues
splashing blood like small hoses as they twisted around, trying to speak. “I'm sorry,” Simon said in the dream. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

He woke up to discover he was hitting his father, who was trying to pin down Simon's desperate arms. His father was crying himself now, and when Simon finally calmed down, his dad held on to him for a long time.

Shame filled Simon. Shame he made his father hurt like this, over and over. Shame he couldn't control his dreams. And somehow, shame he couldn't remember whatever it was the woman—
Mom
—was trying to tell him. He wished the lights were there but the air was flat and dull and wet with tears. Simon almost said, “Dad, I'm supposed to remember something but I don't know what it is.” But that just sounded stupid, so he said nothing, and simply let his father hold him.

Matyas might have continued as Veil's kitchen boy for a good while longer if not for the taunts of the other students. At first they, and even most of the teachers, looked at him with respect, or maybe fear. It took a while for Matyas to understand this. Why would people turn away as he passed them, or even appear frightened? The only look he'd ever received from his father was disgust. As for his mother, she could go whole days without even glancing at him. So why did the apprentices, and even some of the masters, look so nervous when he passed them?

Slowly he understood. It wasn't him they were scared of, it was Veil. Veil, who didn't teach or attend councils, who was rumored to explore terrible secrets in her tower, who had not taken an apprentice in many years. And now she'd chosen Matyas. She'd even demanded that Lukhanan make sure the ragged boy stayed at the gate when he first arrived until she could come down from her tower to fetch him.

Knowing this, Matyas did his best to practice an aloof and superior air as he moved around doing his errands and chores. Over time, however, as those errands continued, and Matyas showed no sign of power or even knowledge, the students began to become more comfortable around him. At first they sniggered, then joked openly about such “magical” tasks as hauling wood.

One afternoon, Berias, one of Lukhanan's students, saw Matyas carrying two large water bags. “Aha,” he said. “The sorceress' apprentice. Wouldn't it help to summon a demon to carry those for you?” His friends laughed.

Matyas wished he
could
call forth a demon, maybe something with a great bull's head, and lion's paws, and stone feet. Then he would order it to kick Berias from one end of the courtyard to the other. But since he had no idea how to do that, he pretended to ignore them and kept walking. Just a few steps. For all their brave talk, they wouldn't dare to follow him into Veil's tower.

Berias stepped in front of him to hold a sheet of parchment before his face. “Great wizard,” Berias said, “would you read this for us, please? We find it too subtle for our simple skills.” Matyas rushed inside, but not before laughter rolled over him. He was shaking as he closed the door and set down the water bags.

He left the bags and ran up the stairs. Veil sat in her plain chair, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes open, staring at nothing. Matyas slammed the door. It took a few seconds before Veil slowly turned her head. “Where is the water?”

“I don't care about that.”

“You will when you get thirsty.”

“Stop it. I want to know when you are going to teach me.”

“When you are ready.”

“You always say that! I'm ready right now.”

“Indeed. And were you ready when you looked into Eternity?”

It took him a moment to realize she meant the red box. “That's different. You didn't warn me.”

“Ah. So you are only
ready
when you have sufficient warning?”

“No! I mean, yes. No. You're just playing tricks. I have talent, you said so yourself. I want to start. Right now. At least teach me to read. How can I do anything with all your damn books if you won't even teach me to read?”

She looked at him for a long time, her face impassive. Finally, she said softly, “Matyas. Come brush my hair.”

“No! I'm sick of taking care of you. Brush it yourself. Or let it fall out. I demand you teach me.”

“My hair, Matyas. Now.”

Should he leave? He could stamp out and show her he was not a slave. But then what? None of the other teachers would take him on, that was clear. If Veil turned him out for disobedience, he would end up a beggar. And he would never learn to fly. With a great sigh he picked up the brush and began to run it through Veil's hair.

At first he jerked it down as hard as he could, hoping the bristles would pull out tufts of hair, one for every time she'd refused him. Soon, however, the motion calmed him, and he moved the brush in long, smooth strokes.

Her hair became like water flowing all around him, first his hands, then his arms, then his whole body and all around him. He began to cry, he had no idea why, and his tears ran into the sea of the old woman's hair. The water sparkled, lifted, became weightless waves of liquid light. It poured over him, lifted him, until he dropped his arm and closed his eyes and let light fill him and carry him.

He was like the man in the picture, not the Beautiful Boy about to Fly but the Hanging Man. He might as well be upside down and tied to a tree with a snake for a rope, for just like that man on the tree, his face, his whole body, was all awash in waves of sparkling light. The light was fire but also water, and he opened his mouth, his whole body, to drink it in.

Within the light were shapes. No, not just shapes, letters. Letters all around, swirls and waves of them. They rolled over him, danced on his fingers, he tasted them, some sharp or salty, others voluptuous or sweet. And numbers, and formulas, and gestures and words.

He learned the language of demons and how to summon them (and why he shouldn't). He saw and heard the spirits of rocks and trees and places and objects he'd never known existed. He heard the cruel laughter of angels and understood the terrible pain of the Kallistochoi, the saddest tribe who had ever lived. He knew how to summon birds, and snakes, and lions. He could look behind the sky and under the night.

He saw Joachim the Blessed, and the creation of the Tarot of Eternity, and how Joachim used it to travel to the Creator Herself where he pleaded for helpless humanity. But when Matyas tried to see why Joachim hid the pictures, the waves of light grew dense and murky, and he had to look away. Then that too passed, and the wonders returned, and he found himself looking back through the ages, mystery upon
mystery, all the way to the Creation of Names, beyond which no one, not even the Kallistochoi, were permitted to see.

Finally the waves ended and Matyas fell to his knees in a room full of books and relics, alongside an old woman sitting calmly in a narrow wooden chair. He opened his mouth to thank her but was shaking too hard to speak.

“There,” Veil said, “didn't I tell you that you would be thirsty?”

After school that day, Simon rode his bike to several stores until he found the right brand of popcorn. Then he headed for the schoolyard, where some kids were playing soccer. He sat down on the fallen tree. As soon as he opened the bag, they were there, the red and the gray, both on their hind legs with their front paws out. He tossed some popcorn on the ground and they grabbed it up a piece at a time. When he threw some more, however, they ran off a few feet, then stopped to look back at him.

He followed them into the small patch of woods that ran from the schoolyard to behind the drugstore. The trees were thick, with branches and thorns constantly in the way. The squirrels stopped next to an old oak hemmed in by upstart trees. Even though it was spring, a mass of rotting leaves lay at the base of the trunk. In his head, Simon heard, “Dig.” He began to pull out clumps of leaves while the squirrels ate the popcorn that had spilled from the bag. Simon had no idea what he would find, but it gave him a kind of peace to stick his fingers in the dark dirt. A few minutes must have passed when he touched a flat, hard surface.

He moved the dirt away to find a blue cloth wrapped around a package about five inches long and a couple of inches thick. The cloth was stained but very soft. It looked like there were designs painted on it, but Simon couldn't tell with all the dirt. Excitedly, he unwrapped it.

Picture cards. They were just a bunch of people in dumb costumes doing dumb things. He realized what they were. Tarot cards. A couple of girls at school had brought some and were showing them off in the cafeteria, with lots of giggles and dumb faces. They went around to kids and waved the cards in their faces and said things like, “Let me tell your future,” in a silly
woo-woo
voice. They even went up to Simon, who'd never needed a bunch of cards to know what was going to happen. He needed something to help him
not
know, and so he knocked the cards out of Ellen Lorenzi's hands. From the floor where she gathered up her cards, Ellen said, “I'll tell
your
future, Simon Wisdom. You're a stupid jerk and you'll always be a stupid jerk.”

Now, as he held the old cards in his hand, Simon first thought he would throw them as far away as he could. Instead, something made him look at them more closely. They were worn, and a little ragged, yet still brightly colored, each one like a miniature story. Here was a picture of a man walking away from a row of brightly shining glasses that appeared to hold something rotten in them even though you couldn't really see it. And here was a man hanging upside down by one foot tied to a tree branch, with a snake for a rope. Light surrounded his face and he looked happier than anyone Simon had ever seen.

He sat down on the pile of leaves. The pictures made him a little dizzy, as if he was jumping from one place to another, like a character in a video game who can't stay on one level. When he closed his eyes, the pictures all spun around him and he had to lie down on the leaves. Even though they were dirty and wet, they felt like a soft bed where he could sleep and not be afraid of his dreams.

And in fact he must have fallen asleep, for he found himself in a dark grove of trees, tall and laced together like a fence. At first he felt trapped but then the squirrels appeared, and he followed them to an opening, a sort of gateway. It led to a dirt path, and at the end of the path was a garden, with red and white flowers and high plants that moved in the breeze. The air was fresh and sweet, a mix of flowers and fruit. Simon breathed deep and closed his eyes.

When he opened them he cried out, for in place of the squirrels, two children had appeared, a boy and a girl. They were younger than him, about eight years old. The girl wore a white dress, and her hair was so pale it might have been strands of silver. The boy wore a gold-colored, loose T-shirt over black pants. His short hair was thick and curly and blond.

Simon thought he should be amazed by their sudden appearance. Instead he just said, “Are you a prince and a princess?” and immediately thought how dumb that sounded.

They only smiled. “Something like that,” the girl said.

“But you're also the squirrels?”

The boy nodded. “Yes. You get to see us as we really are.”

“Cool.”

They each took a hand, and the three of them walked along the path to the garden. There were roses and lilies and flowers of every color and season, and broom and heather, and green and brown and red herbs, and even patches of yellow grain. A waterfall fed it. The water came over a cliff far in the distance, gushed into a stream that vanished under the dirt to make the ground vibrate under Simon's feet. Though it all appeared to go on for miles, it also felt small and friendly. Simon didn't understand that, how something could be both big and little at the same time, but he didn't care. He didn't feel like a bad person here. He was happy.

He found a bench made of interlocking vines and lay down to casually shuffle the cards. The children stood on either side, swaying slightly. They made him think of two trees, silver and gold. He laughed. First they were squirrels, then children, then trees. What a funny dream.

He closed his eyes, and all at once he felt a warm and loving pressure, and he knew who it was, it was her, the woman, and he was sure now, she was his mother. She didn't hate him at all, she loved him. He wanted to open his eyes and jump up to hug her, but he was afraid she would go away again. So he just lay there and smiled until finally, even though he was already dreaming, he fell asleep.

He woke up in the woods a few feet from the pile of leaves and dirt, his back against a scrawny tree. He knew for sure he was really awake because he was filthy and there was a cut on his elbow. He didn't care. He looked down at the Tarot cards scattered in his lap.
So that's what they're for
, he thought.
Not to tell the future but to give you a safe place to get away.
He wrapped the cards in the blue cloth and stuck them in his backpack. Maybe he shouldn't tell his dad, he thought. Simon might forget and say something about the squirrels, and Dad had a real thing about them. Anyway, when he looked around, the squirrels were gone.

When Simon got home from his time in the park with the squirrels, the Tarot cards carefully wrapped and hidden in his pack, he found his dad
at the kitchen table with some papers in front of him. Looking at the dirt and grass stains, Dad said, “Where have you been?” He had that tightness in his voice and Simon didn't have to cheat to know Dad was worried he had got into another fight.

“Out in the woods,” Simon said.

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“You look like you've been digging for buried treasure.”

Simon rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Everyone knows there's no buried treasure around here. We're not exactly living on a desert island, you know.”

Dad smiled. “Of course,” he said. He looked at Simon a little funny. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Dad, I'm good.”

Dad stared at him for a while, almost like the way Dr. Howard sometimes did, and this made Simon laugh. Now his father looked about to say something but stopped himself. Simon thought maybe
he
should speak, so he said, “I'm really good.”

Dad glanced down, and when he lifted his head his eyes were wet. When he spoke his voice shook a little, but all he said was, “Well, why don't you go upstairs and take a shower?” He stopped, took a breath, then in that same funny voice said, “I'll start dinner. And make sure you put those clothes in the hamper.”

Simon hid the cards, with the blue cloth still wrapped around them, in a box of old toys under the bed. In the shower, he found himself laughing as he remembered how the squirrels had changed into those weird kids. What a funny dream. And then he realized it was true. He
did
feel good. He felt better than at any time since his dad first told him he was cheating.

Jack Wisdom had no idea what had changed in his son. He didn't dare to ask. Maybe like people said, all the nightmares, the anger, were just a phase, because suddenly it was as if he'd got his son back. Simon smiled and laughed a lot, and over the next couple of months, his grades began to improve, and he even started making friends again. Jack told himself he didn't dare ask what had happened because he didn't want to make Simon self-conscious, or in some way jinx it. In fact, maybe he didn't really want to know. Whatever had changed, he was grateful.

A couple of times he thought of the strange kids he'd seen that day he got lost in that decrepit neighborhood on the other side of town. Had there ever been a danger Simon would end up like that? Jack didn't want to think it was possible, but he still thanked God it couldn't happen now. His beautiful boy was safe.

Simon never visited the dream garden again. He went back to the dead tree a couple of times, but didn't see the strange squirrels. It didn't matter. Every night, before he went to sleep, he took the cards from their hiding place and looked at them. Sometimes he quickly went through the whole deck, jumping from picture to picture like some superhero jumping between worlds. Other times he slid them in and out of each other, then selected one at random. He made up stories about them, or maybe the stories were already there, each picture a doorway into a tale. It almost felt as if
they
were telling
him
stories, like his dad used to do when he was little. It wasn't like there were voices or anything, but the stories just kind of appeared in his head. Sometimes they were simply of a place to go, like the garden with the squirrels who turned into children. Sometimes a group of them would lay out an actual tale, kind of like a comic where you didn't need any words to know what it was about. There was a boy who found a gold cup and a talking fish came out and told him to travel over the sea with a woman who covered her head so he never saw her face, until they came to an exploding tower . . . That one went on for a couple of days.

Other times the cards just made him feel a certain way. One day, when he'd been looking at them a little longer than usual, he stood up and suddenly the room, and the house, the whole world, it seemed, was filled with waves and waves of color. Except they were colors no one had ever seen before, colors that were somehow impossible, yet there they were. Simon wanted to run and tell his dad about them, but he was afraid that his dad couldn't see them, or worse, that he might suspect Simon was cheating in some way, seeing colors no one else knew about. So Simon just watched them all until slowly the world settled back to its usual dullness.

There were scary stories, too, or rather the beginnings of them. Sometimes a card, or more likely a combination of two or three, would open a door to a place Simon knew he did not want to go, like a reenactment of the terrible dreams of the children, or even a memory of Eli, as
if the dead boy was still alive somewhere, hidden in the cards, and pleading with Simon to save him, forever and ever. But Simon discovered he could recognize when something like that was going to happen and then stop it by putting the bad cards back and smooshing them all around on the floor, face down, until nothing was left of the awful story. The sound of the cards moving in and out of each other was like a woman's voice telling him, “It's all right. You don't have to see that. You're safe.”

None of the pictures had titles at the bottom or anything to say what they were called. Simon didn't really mind that, they seemed kind of cool just the way they were, but he remembered seeing titles on the ones Ellen had brought to school, and he wondered if maybe he should know what they were. He tried to make up his own titles, like “Upside-Down Tree Man,” or “Talking Fish,” but he was afraid he'd make a mistake and they wouldn't work right. So one morning, he asked his dad if he could have some money for a video game.

Dad looked at him a little nervously. “Which one?” he said.

Simon knew that grown-ups had some list of bad games, the ones with too much killing or bad words or sex. He said, “It's called
Knights
. You ride around on horses and kill dragons and stuff.” That wasn't really a lie, because there were actual knights on horses in the cards (though no dragons).

Dad appeared to think a bit but Simon was sure he'd say yes. His dad was so happy that Simon had stopped getting into trouble that he probably would have given him anything. “How much is it?” Dad asked.

Simon had checked online for what Tarot cards cost, so he was ready. “Twenty dollars.” Amazon actually said fifteen but sometimes things were more in stores.

“Well, that sounds fair,” Dad said. He gave one of those half-laughs grown-ups sometimes did. “These days that's downright cheap. How about we go this weekend to pick it up?”

This was the tricky part. For just a moment Simon considered checking Dad's thoughts to know just what to say, but he quickly put the idea aside. He said, “Could I go myself? After school?”

Dad looked startled. Simon's school ran after-hours programs in the gym for kids without someone at home. You were supposed to use it for homework or clubs, but lots of kids just hung around, and none of the teachers seemed to mind. The school allowed kids to leave with a note from their parents, either to go with another grown-up, or even on their
own if the parent said it was okay. The signature on the note would have to be checked against the signing cards the school kept for every parent.

Dad said, “Wow, you really want this game, don't you?”

“I don't need to do the after-school, it's not so much fun, really. And I promise to do all my homework as soon as I get home.” He hoped his dad couldn't see him holding his breath.

“Well,” Dad said, “you have been a really good boy lately. Maybe it's time to let you do something on your own.”

Yes!
Simon thought, but he kept his face and body still.

Dad said, “You'll come right home from the game store, right?”