The Child Eater (31 page)

“No,” the girl said. “That isn't possible.”

“Don't lie to me. I am sick of lies.” He began to pace back and forth, like an impatient wolf. “You don't have any choice. I've penetrated your secrets, just like Joachim did. You can't refuse me.”

The boy said, “We cannot give you what we don't have.”

“I told you! No more lies.” Matyas pointed a quivering finger at him. “No more great powers telling me what they can't do for me. Do you have any idea what
I
can do? I am Master Matyas!”

“Please,” the girl said, “if you know what this place is, and who we are, then you must know that what we do is important. Please don't disrupt that.”

He looked up and down her flat, hairless body, smiled as she winced and turned her head. “Don't think you're so valuable. Or pure. Do you think no one knows what you two really do with each other? Do you think the world still needs you? The wizards broke you. We took away your power. I could kill you and the Sun would still get up and fall down, the Moon would still grow and die and grow again. No one needs you anymore. Don't you know that?

“Joachim knew he couldn't trust you, so he created laws. The world runs on geometry and numbers now, remember? Not games and stories. You're only good for one thing now. To teach me to fly.”

“I'm sorry,” the girl whispered. “We can't do that.”

“Then you don't deserve to live.”

The boy fell to his knees, held up his hands, palms forward. “Take me,” he said. “Let my sister go.”

Matyas laughed. “Aren't you afraid you'll unbalance the world? Take the sun away? Or make the Moon too ashamed to show her face?
Teach me to fly
.”

The girl said, “We cannot give you what we cannot give you.”

“Don't tell me that! That's what Veil told you to say, isn't it? You think I don't know? You were there that night. In the courtyard. You and . . . and the trees.” He could see it again, himself at the window, Veil far below, and all the buildings gone, replaced by the trees, the children—the Guardians. He didn't understand then. He let himself forget. Not this time. “She told you to lie to me, didn't she?”

“No,” the boy whispered. “It wasn't about that.”

“Liar!
Teach me to fly
.”

“We cannot.”

“Stop lying. I'm so sick of lies.”

Matyas looked around wildly. He saw the two trees, bent, as if they hoped he wouldn't notice them. He jabbed his right arm straight out, first at one, then the other. Power surged through him, fire and ice.

“Please,” the boy said, “you don't know what you're doing.”

“I know exactly what I'm doing.” Now he raised his left arm, and pointed the first and last fingers at the sky, with the other fingers and the thumb turned into the palm. Colored fire ran between the extended fingers.

The boy and girl hugged each other. They looked at each other and cried, and then their faces moved closer and they began to kiss. Light and dark shimmered up and down their bodies.

“Well, well, your true selves,” Matyas said. It was time to punish them, at long last, time to punish everyone who'd refused him. And yet as he watched them, he knew he couldn't kill them, though he had no idea why. They deserved to die. Even after what Joachim had done, they still thought themselves superior to a lowly human. He should kill them and free the world from the Guardians once and for all. But he couldn't do it.

His body shook with the energy built up in his hand. What should he do? A thought came to him. Of course! They weren't worth death. He should just do to them what village witches do to bratty children who steal a taste from the cauldron.

He lowered his hand. The fire leaped from his fingers to flood the boy and girl, who cried out—and in their place a pair of green and black toads gulped the air! Matyas laughed, gestured again, and the frogs changed into swans frantically waving their wings. Again and again he changed them, goats, hedgehogs, foxes, until finally it all began to bore him. Something trivial, he thought, something . . . He had it! Laughing wildly, he moved his hand elaborately through the air, and then, with a final gesture he turned them into . . . squirrels. “Stay that way,” he said. “Stay forever.” Then he walked away.

He found himself at the foot of a mountain. Confused, he looked up at dark, tangled trees, then down at dead grass all around his feet. Wasn't he just in a garden? A queasiness ran through him. He could hardly stand. He needed food, he told himself. That's all it was, this strange state, he just needed something to eat. That and a place to rest. In the valley below the mountain, he could see a town. He started to walk toward it, though he could not gauge how far away it was.

His legs hurt and he limped slightly. Wasn't there some way to move more quickly? He couldn't remember. If only he could fly. He smiled at the thought. What a wonderful idea. What would it be like to just open your arms and lift up into the air? A lot less painful than walking!

The Sun set and it grew cold. He looked down at the thin, useless robe he was wearing. Why didn't he have something warmer? He made a face at the designs that filled the fabric. There were pictures—a tree, snakes—and a bunch of lines and curls that made no sense to him. Maybe they were some kind of writing. He made a noise. What use would that be to
him
? How would
he
ever learn to read?

Below the mountain, the town lit up with hearth fires and torches. He longed to be there, where he hoped some kind person would take him in. But it was too far away for him to reach it that night, so he piled up leaves against an old tree and hoped the animals would leave him alone.

Simon sat in the chair or walked back and forth or lay on the bed. Every few minutes, he looked out of the window to see if he could spot the squirrels, but there were never any there. “I want to go home,” he whispered. “Please, please, can't I just go home?” He tried again to call his father, and when the cell told him once more “No service,” he threw it at the wall. It bounced off and landed on the bed where Simon ran to pick it up and make sure his dumb act hadn't damaged it. When he saw that it was okay (though still without service), he squeezed it in his right hand like some kind of magic talisman. A talisman that might work if he just trusted it.

When night came, Simon put on his pajamas and got into bed. He didn't dare to wash his face or brush his teeth for fear he would swallow something.

He began to feel sleepy, and even though he was scared of what he might dream, he thought how sleep would at least take him away for a while. Then he remembered his mother telling him to pay attention. He shook his head, and just as the hunger had vanished earlier, so now did his tiredness. He lay in bed and waited. At home he sometimes lay awake for hours, scared of his dreams. He listened to the wind in the leaves
outside his window, or occasional cars, or the furnace or water heater in the basement going on and off. Here there was nothing.

No. There was a sound, very faint: crying. Crying children. At first Simon wasn't sure he heard it, and then, when it became unmistakable, his first impulse was to cover his ears, make a noise. Sing, something, anything to block it out. But then he made himself take his hands away, made himself listen. Pay attention. What should he do? He went to the door, reached out to open it, then pulled back his hand. What if something terrible was waiting on the other side? He imagined seeing the hallway littered with fingers, bones, the pieces of children he saw in his dreams. But this wasn't a dream, was it? If you wondered if it was a dream, then you weren't dreaming.

He was just reaching for the handle again when the noises stopped. Shaking, Simon listened for a long time before he let himself go back and sit on the bed.

It was difficult to keep track of time here, but after what felt like hours, he became sleepy once more, unable to keep his eyes open. Just as the sky was getting brighter, Simon slept.

He woke to daylight but no sense of how much time had passed. Panicked, he jumped up to see if anything had happened, if he'd missed something by letting himself sleep. Pay attention, his mother had told him, that was all he had to do, and he'd blown it! But when he glanced around the bedroom, and out of the window, everything looked the same.
It's okay
, he told himself.
I didn't do anything wrong
.

He had just got dressed when Dr. Reina opened the door. “At last you're awake,” the doctor said. “You were very tired, I think, to sleep so long, almost the whole day.” Simon glanced out of the window again. Was it really that late? Dr. Reina said, “You must be very hungry.”

Just as the day before, Simon thought he would fall down if he didn't eat something. How could he be so foolish as to go days without food? What if he was too weak to pay attention? Wouldn't his mom want him to keep his strength up? When they came to the dining room and he saw watermelon and cookies and macaroni and cheese and barbecued steak, he wanted to grab all of it at once. It looked so wonderful! And the smell!

But just as the day before, he made himself sit and say, “No, thank you. I'm not hungry,” and the hunger immediately vanished, replaced by disgust at the piles of food, the odor which now smelled more like decay, as if everything had suddenly turned rotten.

“You must eat,” Dr. Reina said, and leaned forward so that his face appeared to float inches away from Simon's eyes. “You eat and become well.” Then, just as the day before, the squirrels appeared, and Dr. Reina, enraged, ran to chase them away. Simon put food on his plate, filled his glass, then dropped it all out of the window. When he looked down to see if the food had disappeared or the ground had covered it, it just lay there. Yet when Dr. Reina looked, he once again nodded his satisfaction.

That night the crying was louder. Simon tried to ignore it, or cover his ears, but it beat at him. What did that poem say?
Take the time and stop the crime. Set the children free
. But how? Simon was just a kid. What could he do? Just as the night before, he put his hands over his ears, but this time it didn't work; the noise only grew louder. Finally he got off the bed and put on the moccasins his father had bought him for the trip and stepped into the hallway.

No horrible pieces of children littered the clean carpet. It all looked the same as during the day. Trying to move toward the sound, and at the same time check that Dr. Reina wouldn't catch him, Simon made his way through the building.

The house confused him. There were so many turns and corridors, all hazily lit, although he couldn't see any lamps. He kept rehearsing in his mind what he would do if Dr. Reina jumped out at him. Run? Better to have some excuse ready. He thought of sleepwalking, or just curiosity, or even saying he'd heard someone and wanted to check who it was. But none of them were necessary. Wherever the doctor was, he apparently paid no attention to the sad cries that filled his empty hospital.

At the top of a flight of stairs, Simon came to a room with a dark red door. When he touched the handle it was very hot and he jerked his hand away twice before he could open it. Inside, instead of a hurt child, he saw only rows of what looked like very old wooden stands, each with a stack of small papers on top—no, not papers. Cards. Despite the urgent cries that still surrounded him, Simon could not resist going closer. Yes, they were Tarot cards. A whole roomful of them. He reached out for the nearest pack.

And stopped. Something about it felt wrong, even more scary than the poisonous food. He stood there for what felt like a very long time. Finally he dropped his arm and looked closer without touching. The top card on each pack was the Fool, his favorite, the one he always thought of as the Beautiful Boy about to Fly even after he found out its true name.

On each one the head had been cut out, slashed away with a jagged pair of scissors or a knife.

Simon ran from the room so fast he nearly tumbled down the stairs. If someone had asked him why it scared him so much he couldn't have answered, but he knew he had to get out of there. On the ground floor, he discovered he could find his way back to his room as easily as if he'd left a trail of breadcrumbs. When he lay down, he discovered that the crying had stopped, and gratitude surged through him. It was okay, there'd been nothing he could do anyway. It was okay to go back to his room. But as soon as he closed his eyes, he immediately saw those cards with the heads cut out so savagely a wild beast might have attacked them.
I want to go home
, he thought to himself,
I just want to go home
.

The third day was a repeat of the others. Simon wondered how Dr. Reina let himself get tricked like that—the thrown-out food was right there, right under the window. But really, Simon didn't care. He was just hoping he could do whatever it was he needed to do and go home.

That night the crying was worse than ever. Simon got straight out of bed and tried to follow the sound. He came to the room with the Tarot cards and kept going. At what felt like the very top of the house, he saw a door as dark blue as the other was red. The crying was so loud here that Simon's whole body shook, and he was scared he might break apart just from the sound. He stared at the door a long time before he reached for the handle. It was cold, colder than the red had been hot, but he managed to get it open.

At first he thought the room was empty. It was dark, lit only by the light from the stairs, but Simon couldn't see any furniture inside, let alone crying children. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw in the center of the room a single metal stand, dark and plain. It stood about as high as a grown-up, and on top of it was something like a ball. Simon stared and stared at it, while his mind yelled at him,
Run, get away
.

Then he cried out, for he realized—or just admitted to himself—that the thing on top of the column wasn't a ball. It was a head. A child's head.

Simon cried out again, just a noise. Right then the weeping stopped. Simon almost fell, for he'd been bracing himself against the sound as if against a powerful wind. But who had been crying like that? It couldn't
have been the head—it was dead, and murdered children don't make any noises. Suddenly he thought of Eli, the kid who'd disappeared, and how he'd called out to Simon for days, until suddenly the voice in his head just stopped and Simon had known it was over. He looked around. “Hello?” he called.

“It's you,” a voice said. “You're next, aren't you?” The voice was young and old at the same time, and sadder even than when it was crying.

Simon looked around again but he knew now he wouldn't see anyone. Any
body
. He walked up to the head. Like the voice it was old and young, the features those of a girl about Simon's age, yet with wrinkled, cracked skin. There were marks on the cheeks and a dark smudge like a burn on the forehead. Somehow she looked familiar and Simon wondered if he'd dreamed about her, or was it just that he dreamed about so many? He said, “Who are you?” It felt safer than anything else he might ask.

“I thought I might be the last,” the head told him. “I'm almost done, and I hoped, I hoped so much—I don't know why, I guess I just wanted to hope that somehow I would be the last one. That maybe he wouldn't find another one. That it would be over, finally, finally.”

“What would be over?”

“This. What he does to us.”

“I don't understand,” Simon said, though he was terribly scared that he did. “Do you have a name?”

“I think I was named Caroline. It was a long time ago, I think. You see? I'm almost finished.”

“I'm Simon.”

The head—Caroline—made a noise, then squinted at him. “There's an old poem.” Softly she recited, “Simon, Simon . . .” The voice trailed off.

“I know that one,” Simon said. “My mother said it. I think it was my mother. It was kind of in a dream.” He didn't recite the rest of it.

“Come closer,” Caroline said. “I want to look at you.” Simon hesitated, then walked up. “Is it possible?” Caroline said. “Do you have protection?”

Protection
. Maybe, even with whatever terrible thing was going to happen, he was safe. Then, suddenly, Caroline began to wail and Simon realized there would be no safety.

“Oh no, no,” Caroline said, “there's a hole in the shield. Someone—a woman—tried to protect you. When you were a baby. She knew, she
knew. But she wasn't able to finish. Some stupid person stopped her! Your foot—she didn't manage to protect your foot. He can get you that way. As long as there's an opening. Now nothing can stop it.”

Simon didn't want to ask but he couldn't keep it in. “Stop what? What's going to happen to me?”
Will he cut off my head? Will he make me like you?

“I'm getting old,” Caroline said. “I'm wearing out. Tell me, does Reina seem at all weak to you?”

“Doctor Reina?”

“Doctor. Yes, that's a title he would use. Have you seen any weakness?”

“No. Well, maybe. Not really weak, you know, but he sort of misses things.” Simon told Caroline about throwing the food out of the window and Dr. Reina not seeing it.

“You didn't eat anything? Or drink?”

“No. Nothing. I was really hungry but then it went away.”

“Oh, thank God,” Caroline said. “Then you still have a chance. Listen to me, Simon. Whatever that food looked like, it wasn't real. Reina feeds you pieces of himself. His body. And if you take any of it you belong to him.”

“I didn't!” Simon said. “I didn't even touch it.”

Caroline didn't seem to hear. Her eyes flickered and she spoke softly, with a shake in her voice, “Then he comes to you. With that stone knife. Oh God. He cuts and cuts, a piece at a time, until there's nothing left but your head! And then he writes things on your face, and oh God, the last thing is the picture. He cuts it and burns it into your forehead.”

The Fool
, Simon thought. That was why all the Tarot decks had the faces cut out of the Fool! Sickness came over him and he almost fell. “I want to go home,” he said. He started to cry. He was trying to be strong, but it was all so scary and worse even than any of his dreams.

“You can't,” Caroline said. “None of us can. You're on the other side now.”

“Why? Why does he do this? Who is he?”

“He used to be a man. Many centuries ago. Then he discovered the great secret. He could live forever if he created the heads.”

“Then why does he need me? If he's already got you.” Maybe Dr. Reina would let Simon go if he realized he still had Caroline.

“I'm weakening, and so
he's
weakening. That's why you were able to trick him. My time is almost up and he needs a replacement.”

“I'm sorry,” Simon whispered.

“No, no, no. I want to end. Finally. But you! You must save yourself, Simon. If you can keep him from taking you,
he
will finally end. So many years, so many children. And we're the special ones. He takes others, devours them, just because . . . because he can. But we're the special ones, the ones who keep him alive.”

“What do I do?”

“I don't know. No one has ever escaped him. Ever.”

“I'll run away. I'll climb out through the window or something. I just have to get to where my phone works and then I can call my dad.”

“You don't understand. This is not really a place. It's hard to describe. It's his world.”