Short Stories

Devourers

Sitting on the end of the pier with our feet skimming the cold water, my grandmother wraps her arm around my shoulder and gently squeezes it.

"It's coming now, Kyra, don't look up," she warns, but she knows I can already see its start in the reflection of the water. She knows I can feel its presence weighing on my bones, because she can feel it too.

The sky is churning.

"I don't want to," I cry, tears welling in my eyes. Panic floods my chest, and her frail hand clasps over my mouth, so I don't scream.

"I want my mom, let me _go,"_ I whine and plead, but my words are muffled against her perfumed skin. I fight against her iron grasp, desperate to run. My mom doesn't make me face them, she wouldn't make me do this. Burning tears slide down my cheeks. That thing is coming to kill us, it's almost here. I don't want to see it, I don't want to be near that thing ever again.

"Mom can't help you. You have to face it, without fear, or you'll never live," she hisses under her breath, digging her nails tighter into my shoulder. My parents are lounging in the cabin behind us, but Gran is careful not to let them see. Our backs are facing the windows. They can't tell she's taken me hostage.

I kick and flail, crinkling the glassy surface of the lake, but I can see the sky hemorrhaging in the rippling reflection. Pale red bleeds into the thin clouds, and I squeeze my eyes shut, but I know what's coming.

Forty three.

A massive writhing serpent tears through the bottom of the clouds, looping through the open skies dangerously close to the tops of the trees. The air is filled with a roaring sound, like a train passing overhead. Its jet black scales look otherworldly in the cloudy skies, like a demon descended to kill us all. Gran and I are rigid, our heads tipped down toward the water with blank expressions, almost mournfully. Her hand loosens on my mouth, but I don't try to scream. Its presence is bone chilling.

The creature's long spiked tail whips through the air with a crack like thunder, and it vanishes back into the rift as quickly as it came. The monster is gone, and silence has crept back over the peaceful lake.

Forty three.

Gran says that the monsters have always come and go, even since she was a young girl. Some call them monsters, others call them demons, but no one knows what they truly are. I have seen forty two of them since I was born. This one makes forty three. The new number scratches itself into me every time I see another, and won't go away until I see forty four.

"I hate them," I say to Gran, my voice wobbling.

"I know, honey," she says in her softest voice. Her gentle hands run through my hair, but it feels like torture. If she loved me, she wouldn't make me look at them. She would protect me.

"I wish I could take Sight away from you, so you never have to see them again," she says, as if she's reading my mind.

"Why do we see them?" I ask. This is the question I always ask, and Gran has never known. I shift my eyes across the sky carefully, worried that another might emerge, but I can't feel any coming. Forty four won't be arriving for a while.

"I don't know," she admits, "Truthfully, I've never known. There aren't many who can See. There is only one absolute rule that comes with Sight, as I've already told you."

The rule made me more frightened to be among the colossal creatures than ever before. I could have lived my entire life without knowing there was a rule that must always be followed. It may have been a short life, but a life with much less constant fear.

_"Imagine we live in the lake, Kyra,"_ Gran had told me years ago, when we first visited our cabin as a family. _"We are the fish, happily swimming. The water is our air, we don't know what's behind the surface, the water is all we've ever known. In their element, they are faster, and stronger."_

I looked down into the water, but it was too murky to see anything, let alone fish.

_"But-"_ Gran started, holding up her wrinkled finger, _"if we lure them to us, we can bring them into our world."_ She dropped her lure into the water, and it settled on the surface comfortably. I leaned over the edge of the pier and watched, excitedly, as it began to bob. She reeled it in, and a tiny green fish broke the surface. It flailed on the line with the hook snagged through its lip. Its small eyes pleaded for life, making me uncomfortable. But Gran didn't toss it back.

_"Do you know why I'm telling you this?"_ she asked, looking dead into my eyes. I shook my head.

_"Those things in the sky are like us, and we are the fish,"_ she said, still holding the dying creature out of the water. _"Their eyes are their lures. You must never make eye contact with them. They are Devourers, Kyra, and they are starving. They won't throw you back. If they see you, they will hunt you to the ends of the earth."_