31

Gage heard the laughter, and the screams. He pressed shaking hands to his mouth, checking if the noise was coming from his own throat. But there was only the rattle and wheeze of his breath, and his lungs were pushing only thick, moist air from his lungs.

On legs that tottered, feeling hollowed out, a dry stick of a man, Gage stumbled across the grass of the clearing. He smacked into his children’s tent, but didn’t recognise it. He no longer even knew he had children. Perhaps he should have been able to remember, if he’d been just a slightly different man, but as it was, there was little left in his mind. He’d seen the reflection of something in the water, and his mind had emptied. Had it been himself he’d seen, or something else? Something that played with him by showing all the marks of his own greed on his face? Gage wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Not now. The shock of recognition had wiped his mind like a faulty hard drive.

The screaming laughter was coming from a small house. Pushing the clinging nylon tent out of the way, Gage walked toward the house, and if his mind was gone, there lingered in his very cells something close to memory. Saliva dripped from his mouth, and his torn lip hung forgotten. There was a party going on in the house. Women, booze, drugs, his body knew those things, hollowed out as it was.

The stone was warm under the spider grip of his hand. Nostrils flaring, he sniffed, scenting hot meat, and he dripped drool onto the ground. There was a feast going on in there. Light-headed, he pushed himself forward into the dimness, seeing nothing other than an emptiness filled with women, food, booze, drugs.

The laughter was loud and he staggered closer. Someone was screaming, but someone usually was, at the parties, weren’t they? The girls, they always had too much, couldn’t handle the coke, the champagne, couldn’t live up to their end of the bargain. Usually at least one of them screamed. Mostly when they were hoisted into the swings, fastened there.

He sniffed, and the smell of blood woke something in him darker than even he’d seen inside himself. He looked at the figure standing over the girl on the table, and bared his teeth at the blood dripping down its chin.

It grinned at him, the soft flesh of a liver caught between lip and teeth, and Gage opened his own mouth in an answering smile, a comradely leer. It gestured at the table, and Gage looked, and hunger roiled in his belly, and he pressed a clawed hand to his belly to stifle the grumbling. Licking his lips, he cut his tongue on the razor-sharp teeth lining his gums and never even noticed. He was hungry. So hungry.

So hungry. Reaching out, he poked at the soft belly with one long finger, a yellowed nail sharp on the end, perfect for ripping and tearing. A glance to the side, at the tall figure covered in blood. It nodded at him, grin reaching from ear to ear.

Gage nodded, sniffed, inhaled the rich aroma of blood and swayed where he stood. He needed to eat, and she was laid out so nicely. The blood wet his finger, and he slid it further into the open belly, groped around in the cavity, oddly delicate, then pierced a kidney with his nail. Yes.

A feast fit for a king. The blood was warm, intoxicating, the best vintage wine, the best mind-altering substance, it was blood, life, and filled him, filled his own belly, spread out in a warm glow. He chewed the flesh, and that was a gift too, but not enough. He dived back in for more. The other kidney, the gristle of a stomach lining, the spongey lung.

And finally, the prize. Reaching under Teddy’s ribcage, he stroked her heart, feeling the last limp convulsion, then tore it from its mooring and brought it out. For a moment, he held it high, eyes wild with triumph, blood dripping down his arm, painting his naked body in the tattoos of the wild cannibal, the one who succumbed to the tricks of that which stalked the forest. And then he lowered it, and bit into the flesh with a ripping and shredding of a mouthful of pointed teeth.

When he was done, and fallen upon the floor in a stupor, stained red from head to foot, pieces of liver, lung, heart smeared on the stone floor under him, the Chemei stood back, satisfied, breathing in the corruption, dark glee stealing through its fathomless mind.

But it was not done. This had been fun, but it had been too easy. One as ancient as this needed more of a challenge to really entertain it. For so long, it had fed on birds and fish, crushing their little minds and scattering their bones, but now it had tasted real fear and flesh again, and it wanted more. It had saved the best for last.

Outside in the clearing it stood, sniffing the breeze. The young ones were gone. It howled, and tore runnels of blood in its own flesh with its claws. How had it let them get away? Cursing its preoccupation with the older ones, it sniffed again at the air. They were not supposed to have left. The dog was a warning, and it had thought seeing it would paralyse the young ones.

They should be cowering somewhere in the bushes. It had been prepared for a game of hide and seek in the trees, but it lowered its head and its face contorted in wild rage. It was the bigger one’s doing. The one it had been looking forward to most of all – how tender that flesh would taste, how fine it would be to rend it apart into strips and suck it up piece by piece.

It had never tasted flesh that incorrupt before. What pleasure it would be to darken the soul of that one, stain it with its lust and violence, break it and then, when the girl knew there was nothing in the world but darkness and fear, then it would begin to eat, and it would keep her alive until the very last moment, watching the hope and light go out of her eyes. And then it would pry the eyes from their sockets and eat them too.

Nose wrinkling, it howled again, breaking apart the clouds overhead with its outrage. The girl was gone beyond its boundaries. The Chemei lowered its head and considered.

Then straightened. It had been centuries – beyond its memory – since it had gone beyond its territory here in the darkness and closeness of trees stained with its wild and ancient evil, but it was tired of feeding on unwary birds that strayed into its path. It blinked.

Once, long, long ago, shrouded in the early mists of time, it had tasted the flesh of men regularly, but then the creatures had learnt, and stayed away, and the years had passed with fish, birds, and then finally, another came, and played at the river. It had watched then, salivating, wanting to rush forward and eat, but the man had known strange words, words that kept it back in the trees.

The words had not lasted, though. The man had filled with greed, and then it knew it would be able to feed. When the greed and lust for the metal in the ground and river grew strong enough, the man forgot his words and power, and the Chemei came forward to take what now belonged to it.

Then these two, so many years later. The same greed and lust, and this time no words to stop it from playing.

But the girl. She was different. The smaller ones, they smelt of innocence enough to make it scream with hunger, but the bigger one was the delicacy.

The Chemei decided. It would leave its territory. It would go after the bright one and when it caught up with her, it would squeeze every ounce of light from her and darken it with the stench of its own sulphurous soul, and then it would eat every last little bit, sucking every last drop of blood from its fingers.

Another cry, this time a roar of triumph, a battle cry, and a moment later it was running through the trees, chasing the light, ready to corrupt, consume. And it was hungry. Still so very hungry.