The Devourer

“Mary,” Betty gasped.

She stood on my front porch step, dressed in an oversized black T-shirt and plaid sweat pants, with hair that looked partially slept on. It was the middle of the night, and she was clearly in a hurry. But all I could think about was the smell of her blood.

It wasn’t that she had particularly delicious smelling blood. It was like opening a bag of chips. They didn’t need to be the best chips to be distracting.

My vampiric instincts took hold. “What can I do for you?” My voice glazed over with sweet allure, the sugar in my butterfly trap.

“He’s back,” she said, raising the gold crucifix around her neck as a warning.

I hissed, reeling back from the relic. This wasn’t a run of the mill, bible study crucifix. Even at night, a quick glint of sunlight darted across the gold surface, making my skin itch where the light made contact. I hadn’t seen one of those since the late 17th,back in Salem. Where did she even dig that up from? Or rather from whom did she dig that up from?

“Am I supposed to know who ‘he’ is?” I said, watching the cross shaking in her hands.

She glanced nervously over her shoulder, “You will in a second, vampire. Here,” she tossed me a scrap of notebook paper, folded delicately into the shape of a box. “Everything, you need to know is on that paper, in the box that is—and don’t open it yet,” she added as I went to unfold it. “Not until he’s gone.”

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “Shouldn’t I read it before he gets here? Why else would you give it to me—?”

“Just—!” She glanced back over her shoulder again, her foot twitching nervously like she was resisting the urge to run. “Just do it okay!” And with that she brandished the crucifix one last time so I wasn’t able to grab her and demand that she answer my questions before she bolted across my lawn. I barely caught a glimpse of her golden blonde hair ducking past the trees at the edge of my property before she disappeared entirely.

I watched the road where she had been looking. The lamppost flickered ominously, illuminating the empty street but obscuring the darkness beyond it even more. Slowly, I closed the door, the paper box resting delicately in the palm of my hand. It was a crude box, made out of lined notebook paper—probably from her school books—with evidence of a raw, torn edge peeking out of the folds and I could feel something small shifting inside it. I recognized the design. A simple witch’s ward meant to protect the contents from whoever the crafter designated. Did Betty do this herself? I wondered. The paper was very thin, and I could see the red ink bleeding through the exterior. All I could make out, without unfolding it, was the word: “Devourer.”

I had never heard the name before, but it sent an unnerving chill through my spine. Slowly I closed the door and returned to my library.

A proper sanctified crucifix. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Where did a sweet looking girl like Betty get a thing like that? The last one I had seen was six feet down, clutched in the horrified, brittle hands of Prudence Barebone.

Prudence. Now that was a woman. She would have made a real fine Witchfinder General if they’d let her. Nearly got me at the end there.

I was 300, and I thought I had gotten pretty good at sneaking people off into the woods. With one word I could have them up out of bed and walking dreamily down through the fields under the cover of a fresh, moonless sky. Once there I’d lay them down across my lap and feast. Of course I knew she was onto me, the witchfinders didn’t have many subtle methods for witch finding—or vampire finding for that matter—but I was cocky in my youth.

I didn’t even hear her approach. Silent as a damned fox, that one, it would have made her a good wife one day. But as she stepped into the clearing, she gasped. I looked up from my feast and she screamed. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. I must have been such a mess from an interrupted meal. I could imagine the blood dripping down my chin and down my fangs, my pupils dilated past the whites with a feverish hunger. Hunger really does bring out the worst in all of us.

The sight of me like that was enough to make her hesitate. If she’d thought to grab her damn necklace sooner, that would have been the end for me. But before she had the chance to catch her bearings, I dashed my nails through her neck and tore it apart in one swift motion. Had I the time to plan I could have made a meal out of her, but in my haste I ripped her head nearly all the way off of her body. She collapsed onto the forest floor, her still beating heart dumping her blood out across the ground around my feet. What a waste.

It had taken an hour of digging to finally cover up the heavenly glow radiating off of that terrible artifact, but the evidence was neatly disposed of and I soon found myself nice house on the coast for a while away from the witchfinders. Things were much neater now without the witchfinders mucking about, though I kept my eyes and ears open.

The wind rustled the curtains a bit, splashing me with a cold breeze. I frowned, and turned to the window, wondering how long it had been left open. I didn’t remember opening it. The street below was abandoned in shadow. Not a soul in sight. I pulled the window shut, and snapped the lock into place.

Betty was long gone now. I had known the girl nearly as long as there had been a girl to know. She’d lived in this town her whole life, been loyal member of the track team for half—which explained how she’d managed to get away so fast—and been a member of the Herbert’s Deli’s grocery family for the last two months. I’d run into her now and again at the deli, when Mr. Herbert called me in to feed—the two of us had an understanding about the whole deal which suited both of us just fine—but she just sliced the meats at the front counter. We didn’t interact much beyond the quick hello before her boss led me to the back.

How much had she figured out already? What of the town’s other secrets had she uncovered? And if she knew about me, why do nothing about it?

I rolled the paper box over in my hands, feeling the item inside shift and roll across the sides. Devourer. What was a Devourer?

The floor boards creaked above me, and I leapt to my feet. The sound of footsteps. Step. Step. Step. I followed the sound as it moved across the floor above me. It shifted from one room to the next, and I followed its path, through the dining room, and the kitchen, and finally to the threshold of the entryway where the staircase sat. I stopped myself from entering, and it stopped with me. I knew it stood above me, at the edge of the staircase.

I bared my fangs.

“Come out!” I snarled.

The floor boards creaked above me, and it continued down the hall away from the stairwell.

“I know you’re there.” I stepped into the entryway, glaring up the stairs. The second floor sat in darkness. Nothing moving and no sign of life. I took a deep breath in through my nose. The air smelt stale and devoid of blood, just as it had been all day.

For a second I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. Just a second, and then I turned back to the paper box in my hand.

Devourer.

“Betty, what did you do?”

I stared down at the box, and pushed myself across the threshold. I eased myself onto the carpeted stairs, keeping low and listening for any movement. The wooden creaked every few steps, but whatever it was made no echo back—no response. Finally, I reached the top landing. My fingers hovered over the light switch. I peered down either side of the hallway, watching the darkness. There was the flicker of fear in me, which I hadn’t felt in 300 years.

My hair stood on end.

I flipped the switch.

Nothing. My head darted in both directions, inspecting every little shadow and crevice I could find from where I stood at the top of the steps, but nothing was out of place. The doors sat closed, the flowers waited patiently in their decorative vase, even my dirty clothes sat in a pile in front of my room where I left them.

Still the fear remained. It would have been better if some gnarled boney creature with a hundred teeth had jumped out from behind a curtain and attacked me the moment I flipped the switch. At least that would be a problem I could stick my teeth into. But you couldn’t bite a closed door.