The Demon Boy

Day Three - Evening

     It's raining. Still raining. Has it let up for a second today? Every spark of warmth and comfort the boy soaked up from the pub's fire is immediately washed clean from his skinny frame. Perfect. Abso-bloody-lutely perfect. Better still, he's got a full hour of slogging uphill to look forward to. He doesn't bother putting on his shoes. What's the point? They'll only slow him down.

     The cloud cover ushers in premature nightfall. It makes it look later and darker than it should be at this hour. It's why the boy got his times wrong and left sooner than absolutely needed. He wishes he'd stayed, but he didn't, so he uses the extra time to fight the downhill slide of the decayed trail. In hindsight, he's glad he left when he did.

     Ash grey clouds crash into each other. The sky grows thick, heavy, and as friendly looking as a lead pipe. The boy scampers out from underneath it to avoid getting hit, gaining as much ground as he loses to gravity and the soupy earth. He screams his rage into the storm. Thunder joins his chorus and roars with him as a flash of gold sparks mere feet away. He braces his arms in front of him. It's a futile defense against lightning's fury and he knows it, but he does it anyways. What else can he do?

     Thunder booms in front of him and he's at point blank range. It shakes the air in his lungs, not just the skies. It shakes his shoulders too, except neither thunder nor lightning have hands to grasp him by.

     He pries his eyes open and, to his surprise, sees neither death nor destruction in a smoking crater at his feet. He sees the foreigner of all people, darker than the sky above, glowering at him. The boy mistook his voice for the sounds of thunder and didn't make out what he said.

     The foreigner doesn't like to repeat himself, but he does it anyways. "Why are you here?"

     Shock and cold have taken their toll on the boy. They rattle him from the inside out and clip his words into stutters. "G-going b-b-back-k."

     The foreigner's frown deepens. When the clouds above start to growl again, he directs his attention upwards to reappraise the threat from the elements. Finding it a more urgent matter than discussion with the boy, he nudges him on his way up the hill. "Find shelter quickly." And then he disappears down the path.

     The boy continues his upward crawl. The foreigner doesn't need to tell him twice. He doesn't need to tell him at all. What else would the boy be doing? He's fleeing to the only place he can for the night. Where else is there to go?

     He's closer to the old house than he thought. After the unexpected encounter with the foreigner, it takes him just twenty more minutes of slopping through muck to arrive. He thought it would go on forever. He thought he'd be stuck climbing up and up for eternity or until he collapses from exhaustion. He's not far from it. He staggers the remaining steps. He can't feel his feet.

     His hand trembles towards the door. The knob slips from his slick grasp several times before it turns. He can't feel his hands.

     When he gets inside, he shivers towards the sitting room. He doesn't close the door behind him. He's too tired. Too cold. Too, too cold. He can't feel his legs.

     He needs warmth. He needs to melt the ice in his bones before he freezes solid. He remembers the fireplace in the sitting room. Surely there's a fire lit in every hearth on a cold day like this? He can only hope. He can't feel his face.

     To his horror, there's not an ember anywhere amid the ash. His legs buckle under him. He swears he hears, not feels, his kneecaps shatter like glass when they hit the floor. He can't feel anything, just the cold. He's cold.

     He limps to a chesterfield and flops onto it, too tired to go anywhere else. What's the point? What else can he do? Where else is there to go?

     His breathing comes out in gasps between the shivers that wrack his small body. The cold wouldn't be so bad if he weren't wet. Stupid rain.

     You know what else the cold and damp does to you? It makes you tired. Like, really tired. On any other day, the boy wouldn't know how anyone could sleep, being so cold, shivering so hard. But this isn't any other day. Today is Monday, arguably the worst day of the boy's life, and he is sick and tired of today. He's too weary to care if he wakes tomorrow so long as sleep takes him away from his present chills and pains.

     His eyes slip close and he lays there, leaving a growing water stain on the upholstery. He's curled into the cushions as deep as he can go, trying to conserve what little body heat he has left. He's still shaking.

     This is the sorry state the boy is found in an hour later. He's never slept so deeply in his life.

END OF DAY THREE.