She realized he was trying to make it to the room the little ones shared so he could protect her little sisters from her. Poppy summoned all her will, tearing at the beast who shared her skin. But it felt so strong. So ancient. Poppy knew she could never defeat it on her own, but she didn’t have to beat it. She only had to slow it down.
She steadied herself, preparing to strike out against it. But it snapped her will like a twig and flung her body toward the wall. After grabbing ahold of the iron fire poker, it jumped clear across the room.
Henry turned, raising his arms above his head in an attempt to protect himself. She watched, helpless, as the creature brought the heavy iron down against her love’s arms. He shrieked, a piteous, weak sound, as his arms fell broken and bloody by his sides.
The thing inside her was enjoying the sight and smell of Henry’s blood. The breaking of his bones. Henry stumbled backward a foot or so down the hall. Pursuing him, the creature raised the rod again and brought it down with a heavy crack against Henry’s skull. Henry dropped to his knees. No. No. No, she pleaded even as her arm pulled back to deliver the fatal blow.
Poppy wanted to drop the iron, or at least close her eyes, but she was in control of nothing. Sensing her anguish, the beast hesitated so that it could savor it. Soon, though, it had consumed its fill of her pain. The poker began its descent, but it stopped
in midair when the beast perceived the form of a small girl in the shadows of the hall, just outside her bedroom door. The poker slid to the floor. Poppy’s body crouched and prepared to pounce. Jilo’s eyes widened. The poor thing was horrified, but she still didn’t scream the way Poppy would have done at that age, at any age. Jilo dived back into her room and slammed the door behind her.
Poppy’s body tensed and leaped over Henry. She landed on all fours, like an animal, slipping a bit in Henry’s blood.
Somehow, Binah had slept up until then, but the noise must have finally roused her, for her powerful voice sang out in an angry wail. The sound excited the monster inside Poppy. It forced her to crouch by the girls’ bedroom door and scratch against the wood. Making giddy sounds with her vocal cords, it drew in more deep breaths, savoring the smell of one child’s confusion and the other’s fear. Saliva began falling from her mouth, and her stomach rumbled.
There had to be some way to stop this. Or at least a way to shut it out. Would she really have to witness this devil devouring her sisters? Dear God, would she have to taste them?
She saw her hand reach up to touch the doorknob. The door had no lock. It provided the girls with no protection.
Binah’s crying continued, but it sounded muffled. Then it came to a sudden stop.
Had Jilo stifled her sister’s cries in a misguided attempt to hide herself? Or had she realized what was happening, the hopelessness of the situation, and seen to it that Binah wouldn’t suffer? Poppy began to turn away in her own mind. Let herself drift. Though she could still feel the beast’s impressions, its sick desires, their impact was somewhat lessened if she didn’t try to interfere. She watched as the hands that had once been hers turned the doorknob and pushed the door wide open.
Jilo stood near the window, a sheet hanging over the ledge. The beast moved Poppy’s body forward, still crawling on hands and knees as it breached the threshold of the room. Her head reared back in a delighted howl as her body carried her nearer and nearer her sister.
The beast turned Poppy’s head to scan the room, but there was no sight of Binah. Hope rose up inside Poppy like a blooming vine, but then the curtains of the window behind Jilo billowed inward, causing the beast to raise her nose and sniff the wind that made them dance. It caught Binah’s scent. She loped to the window and looked out. The moonlight betrayed a wisp of auburn hair. Jilo had lowered the child out of the window and to the ground, swaddled in the hanging sheet.
Jilo stepped quickly away from the window, as if she were trying to draw its attention away from her baby sister. For the moment, it seemed to work. The beast circled Jilo, bumping into the little girl and pressing her nose right up against her flesh. Poppy wondered how her sister could stop herself from fleeing, as Jilo stood frozen in place. The creature and Poppy experienced the same thought at once. Something about the girl’s scent wasn’t quite right. Wasn’t quite human. Jilo had something more, something different about her. The creature was disgusted by what it smelled on her. So was Poppy. The two conjoined beings both willed a step backward, away from her.
Jilo cast a nervous glance over her shoulder, out the window, reminding the beast of the other morsel awaiting him. This odd one was not right, but the smaller one smelled delicious. The softest, sweetest flesh. The beast carried Poppy over to the open window and pressed her hands against the ledge, preparing to swoop out and carry the child off into the quiet of the pines before tasting her flesh. Down below, poking out through the tangled sheet, Poppy recognized Binah’s tiny head. The beast within her smiled, ready to leap through the opening. Ah, but then a sound, the tiniest of cries, came from inside the chifferobe, behind them. The beast stopped, and Poppy felt her head wrench to the side. The beast eyed the chifferobe, then began padding quickly toward it.
“No,” Jilo screamed, leaping on Poppy and riding her, pulling her hair, scratching, screaming, doing anything she could to stop her. Poppy’s arm twisted backward at an impossible angle and struck out, knocking Jilo to the floor. Poppy felt herself lunge across the room and claw open the cupboard’s door. Inside lay Binah. Her diaper had been removed. Poppy realized that had been the source of the scent; the auburn hair, she realized, belonged to Jilo’s favorite doll. For an instant she felt so proud of her little Jilo. Her plan had almost worked. She had almost lured the beast outside, where with any luck Nana’s charms would have held it at bay. But her moment of pride was fleeting, for the beast beat her back down and turned to lay hold of its feast.
When she realized the inevitability of what was about to occur, Poppy tried again to step back, to turn away. But the beast that was riding her wouldn’t allow it. It somehow held her consciousness in place, forcing her to experience its every action, its every hunger. She watched as her hand reached into the cabinet, lowered itself to lay claim to Binah’s tiny wriggling form.
Poppy felt Jilo’s hand grasp her shoulder again, the girl unwilling to be defeated. The beast turned, intending to destroy the pesky little bug that was coming between him and the thing he so completely craved. It reached out for Jilo with both hands, intending to snap the child’s spindly neck, but then there was a blinding flash of light, and the world around it seemed to freeze. It was now the beast’s turn to cry out in anguish, but Poppy couldn’t understand why. The flash had left her eyes confused, unable to focus. Then, little by little, they resolved on the image of Jilo standing—no, her feet weren’t touching the ground, she was floating—before her.
Lights, some white, some blue, burst like fireworks around the room. The earth beneath the house itself began to shake. And the creature began to lose its hold on Poppy. She could feel its power draining away. Jilo had somehow tapped into the demon’s energy, and she was burning it up. The creature raged, but when it could not escape the girl’s thrall, it tried to make a dash out the window. The moment it rose up on Poppy’s legs to make the leap, Jilo turned her head toward the window. It slammed shut. The beast bounded toward the glass, but though it tried to use Poppy’s body to leap through the window, the thing was ripped clear out of her instead. The windowpane splintered into a thousand shards.
Jilo slipped back down to her feet and rocked back and forth a few times before falling forward unconscious.
EIGHTEEN
The New York Clarion
December 8, 1942
Page C12
Making Spirits Bright, Singers Entertain the Troops at USO
With crooner John Briggs acting as MC and dozens of beautiful girl singers in the lineup, the tinsel on the tree wasn’t the only thing sparkling last night at the USO canteen.
“Those Jerries aren’t going to keep our boys from having a good Christmastime. Not if we have anything to say about it . . . and we do,” said stunning redheaded, hazel-eyed singer Betty Wills, pictured here with Briggs and several of our adoring servicemen looking on. Her words were met with thunderous applause. Miss Wills, 28, and many of her peers from last night’s performance will be taking leave of our shores soon to spread holiday cheer to our troops stationed around Europe and Northern Africa.
January 1943
May shook her head several times as she held the newspaper clipping up to the light, doing her damnedest to recognize any familiar part of her former daughter-in-law in the black-and-white—mostly white, May noted—photo that accompanied the text. Sure, it was Betty all right, all hips and curves and victory-roll hair, but if May hadn’t known it was her, she could’ve passed this woman on the street without looking twice.