Torn

ago.

Is she joking with me? Is this a game she thinks we’re playing?

“No, Namana, tell me. It’s important. It’s so important.”

She picked her hands up and her fingers danced a little in the air between them, acting out the beast’s movements as she spoke. “It comes to take revenge against people who’ve been bad to you. It comes to whoever sings it just right. It looks around at whoever called it, into their heart, and sees who they think has been bad. Then it gets them, gets every last one they think is bad. That’s why people never liked my great-grandma. She thought a lot of them were bad.”

Devin’s head was swimming. Whoever sings it?

It suddenly made horrible sense. Devin had summoned it. It’d killed Karston because he’d stolen money from Devin, Cody because Devin was disgusted with his behavior. And now it would come for…Cheryl?

An image of the thing’s long arms, wrapping its claws into her long hair filled his head, its sharp teeth and squat face looking oh so familiar.

Oh no. He could practically feel it in his hands. The toy, the furry toy he cradled in his hands when Namana sang to him. It wasn’t a teddy bear. He liked monsters, even as a toddler. He had a grotesque stupid little monster doll, with short legs, long arms, and a batlike face. And he loved it because it scared him so much. Rotted and broken, the pieces had been thrown out a few weeks ago, along with his robot collection.

“Why does it look like that?” he said, more to himself than his grandmother.

“It looks like whatever you want it to. Whatever you think is most horrible,” she said calmly.

It’s me. I made it. I called it. Even onstage, Cody was riffing, but I sang the melody straight. And the little lights danced around Cody’s and Cheryl’s heads.

His face dropped. He felt himself going pale.

“Namana,” he whispered. “Why would you ever sing such a song?”

She chuckled and nodded her head. “To remind you to always be good. But you never had anything to worry about, Devin. I always thought you were good.”

She narrowed her eyes again and made her voice low. “All babies are good. It’s only when they get older they’re bad.” She chuckled at that, maybe remembering her own misspent youth. “Then,” she concluded, “they’re all bad!”

Her hands rose and she jabbed her index fingers, stabbing little points in the air. “And the spirits of the dead hear the song, too. They come and try to warn whoever’s singing. Stop, stop, stop, they say, with their little mouths and their little hands, but no one ever listens. No one hears them. They’re just too small for this world. To small and worn out, like your old Namana.”

Devin exhaled and leaned closer, making sure she was looking him in the eye.

“Namana, this is important. Is there any way to destroy it? To stop it?”

She smacked her dry lips twice and moaned a little before speaking. “Look at my hand,” she said, raising it between them both. Her eyes widened as she marveled at her own body. “All old and wrinkled. This is what a hand does if you keep it around long enough. Hands get wrinkled. Children go bad. That’s it. That’s all.”

Devin felt himself getting frantic.

“What about what it says in the song? What if you lie to the angels? Does that mean something? Anything? Can they help?”

She puckered her wrinkled lips and shook her head. “Pht. No, no, no. That wasn’t in the song. I made that part up so you wouldn’t get too scared. There’s no way to stop it. It just likes the song. It likes being sung about.”

Devin’s face must have registered his agony, because she reached out and patted him on the cheek. “But don’t you worry. You’re a good boy.”

“I have to go,” he said. He stood sharply, but Namana moved faster and grabbed his arm. There was so little muscle to her fingers he could feel the bones dig into his flesh, as if they were claws. Instinctively, he tried to pull away, but her grip was so tight he nearly lifted her whole body out of the chair.

“A good boy!” she said, over and over again.

13

The next day, despite his plans to attend Cody’s wake at four o’clock, after a quiet time at home Devin McCloud went missing. He’d taken his parents’ SUV, all the cash in the house, clothes, and some of his music equipment. There was no note left behind, no nothing. The police pretended to commiserate with his distraught parents, but really, they were now convinced he had something to do with the murders.

He himself also now knew that he did. For a while, he hoped maybe he was crazy like they thought, that maybe he had killed Cody and Karston and only imagined the creature. It didn’t matter anymore. The solution was the same.

By sunset, Devin sat on a certain large rock just outside Macy, where he watched a yellow band of dying sun as it shone between the upper branches of a row of tall trees. This was where he and Cheryl met when they couldn’t find anyplace else to be alone, back when they were together, which seemed so long ago. He was confident his parents and the police wouldn’t think to look here, at least for what he hoped would be more than enough time.

At his back, half-built McMansions peeked through the thinner woods that sat along the dirt road, but here was where construction had stopped. The swelling suburbs behind him, he faced a forest where birds chirped and squirrels rustled in the trees. It was a light, cheerful sound.

The SUV was parked as close to the rock as he could get it, engine idling. His Ovation was on his lap, plugged into a practice amp. He plucked the strings of his guitar and sang:

Sun is low, the sky gray, gray, gray,

All day’s colors gone,

Your heart beats slowly, drowsy eyes,

Soon your dreams will come.

He sang as best he could, inhaling hard and breathing out slow in an effort to get the low notes just right. He wasn’t Cody, but, he thought with some strange pleasure, that he came pretty close.

He had to summon it here, or else it would be coming for Cheryl soon. He had seen the dots swirling around her head in the video. The spirits must’ve known she was cheating on him, tried to warn her even then. And the MP3 of the club gig was making its way across the Internet, with Devin’s recorded voice calling to the creature again and again. It was only a matter of time. He had to stop it. He couldn’t let her die. Or anyone else who happened to earn his anger while the song was on the air. This was the only thing he could think to do, to hold up some bright and shiny object to lure it away.

Himself.

Would it work? It followed the song and took revenge on whoever the singer hated. Now that Devin hated himself for causing the death of his friends, by rights it should follow him. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? His only worry echoed a question Cody had asked him so long ago: Was he bad enough to be worth its while?

A branch snapped. He stopped playing. It might’ve been the wind, but he couldn’t be sure. With his eyes he again measured the distance to the SUV. Could he make it to the driver’s seat? Get the car in gear and gun it before the thing reached him?

Sure. Sure he could. Then he’d drive, fast and hard, as long as he could, with his giant monster toy chasing him. He could take it to the middle of a city where everyone could see, or a military base where they’ve got the big guns, or the desert where neither of them would ever be seen again.

Just so long as he could take it somewhere away from Cheryl.

He wasn’t even sure he’d forgiven her for Cody. He only knew he didn’t want her to die.

When the cracking sound failed to come again, Devin figured it really was just the wind, and went back to his playing. As he sat there, strumming, singing, he thought he felt the little spirits around him, tickling his skin, trying to pull him away with their weak, ethereal hands and vain pleas. He imagined Cody among them now and thought