The Devouring (7 page)

Dad had confined her to the house for the day, and even though he was gone until tonight, she was pretty much under house arrest. He’d call home every hour or so, making sure she picked up. She’d violated the rules once before and it cost her an entire month of cell phone, friends, and freedom. Even if she snuck out for an hour and made it back before the next check-in, Henry would snitch for sure.

Henry. He’d turned on her last night.

They’d fought countless times before; argued, yelled, wrestled, argued, slapped, smacked. Henry had tattled, baited, blamed, annoyed, meddled, and eavesdropped on her like any little brother. But he’d never lied. Not until last night.

Reggie pulled on a pair of maroon cords and her favorite gray hoodie as she thought through a plan of attack. With Dad gone for the day and just her and Henry in the house, maybe she could get through to him. She’d make Henry’s favorite breakfast, chocolate-chip waffles, and then they could get down to it and really talk. Tomorrow was their first Christmas without Mom, and Reggie knew that was at the core of all this. How couldn’t it be?

Reggie headed for the bathroom to pee and wash her face, but stopped in the hallway. It was still and cold. Something felt different.

She walked toward Henry’s room. The door was open, and she realized why the silence bothered her; there was no incessant scritching of tiny claws on glass, no high-pitched twittering or rusty cheeps from that obnoxious spinning wheel. Dawn to late morning was General Squeak’s most active time, when he would run and skitter and scratch about until he curled up and fell asleep around noon. But not this morning.

Reggie pushed the door open and peeked in. Henry was still asleep, his brown curls spread across his pillow. He had a heavy wool blanket over his thick down comforter, even though Dad had cranked up the heat that morning. Henry had to be sweltering, but his covers rose and fell in perfect calm.

The floor of the hamster cage was littered with pine shavings and gnawed corncobs. Clear plastic tubes of various colors and widths sprawled into terrarium compartments that each housed some silly piece of rodent furniture: a truck, a lounge chair, and a play tunnel.

Reggie tiptoed to the cage and looked for General Squeak, but the hamster was nowhere to be found. The wheel on the bottom level was on its side, and the small water dish was knocked over. The door latch was unlocked.

Henry occasionally left the cage open by mistake, and his inquisitive pet had escaped a few times before. Its favorite destination was the bathroom at the end of the hall, and once there it took whatever delight hamsters take in chewing on empty toilet paper rolls, snotty tissues, and used dental floss. The last time Reggie found the fugitive hamster, it had squirmed into the bathroom cabinet and gnawed through a box of her tampons.

She crept back out of Henry’s room and headed for the bathroom, half expecting to find it up on the sink, where it would have left a lovely pile of hamster turds on Dad’s shaving kit.

No such bad luck; the bathroom was vacant. But the toilet gurgled and choked at her.

“Damn it, I thought Dad was going to fix this,” Reggie muttered. She jiggled the handle and flushed. The water level swelled. Up and up it swirled, threatening to rise above the porcelain rim.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She grabbed the plunger and shoved it in. “Merry Christmas Eve, Reggie!”

The drain opened and sucked in a huge glop of water. The toilet chugged a couple of times but then stopped, the returning water unable to rise more than a few inches above the hole. Reggie cursed silently as the shallow water rippled. Then a small, leathery strip slid into view beneath the water’s surface. At first Reggie mistook it for a clump of hair. She looked closer and slapped her hand over her mouth.

A tail.

Reggie found rubber gloves under the sink and snapped them on. Now she could see that a hind leg had emerged from the hole.

“Oh, no . . .”

She plunged her hand in and grabbed the hamster’s slimy leg. Reggie felt the tiniest crack of bone within the already mangled limb. She pulled. Ribs poked through the skin like broken toothpicks.

The hamster was practically shapeless, little more than a drenched pile of hair and flesh. Reggie stood and stroked the hamster’s fur.

For two years she had watched Henry nurture the annoying ball of squeaks and peeps, had watched it roll across the living room floor in its stupid plastic ball, had come to see the dumb thing whenever it climbed inside a plastic television Henry had bought with his birthday money.

“Look, Reggie!” Henry would giggle. “It’s the General Squeak Show!”

How do I tell him?
Reggie asked herself.

The ringing phone made her start, and General Squeak’s broken body slipped from her hand and dropped to the floor with a splat. She heard Henry scamper into her father’s bedroom, where he answered the phone. Reggie picked up the crushed hamster, pumped two foamy dollops of scented soap onto the rodent’s body, and ran it under the faucet.

“Reggie!” Henry hollered from the hall. “It’s Dad! He wants to talk to you!”

“Tell him I’ll call him back!”

Reggie cringed as the soap foamed over the hamster’s dead, open eyes. Strange, she thought, how when the essence of even the smallest living thing vanishes, the world feels colder and bigger. She wiped its black eyes with her pinky.

“Now, he said! He wants to know you’re in the house ’cause you’re grounded!”

“God, Henry! I’m in the bathroom!”

She shut the water off and blotted General Squeak with a washcloth. She wrapped the little corpse with it and stood in the middle of the tiled floor, unsure what to do next. Henry’s footsteps came closer.

“What are you doing in there?”

“Parasailing, Henry!” she shouted angrily, kicking the door completely shut. “What do you think I’m doing in here?”

“General Squeak got out of his cage. Have you seen him?”

“No.” It stunned her that her first impulse was to lie. She heard Henry start back toward his room. “Henry, wait.”

She opened the bathroom door and stepped out, cradling the wrapped towel to her chest. Henry stood in his oversized flannel pajamas, looking every bit like the boy she knew and loved.

“What? What am I waiting for?”

“Something happened to the General. Something bad.” Reggie unwrapped the outer flap of the towel. “I think he’s dead, Henry.”

“Like Mrs. Boswell?”

Reggie chilled. He hadn’t mentioned the babysitter since they’d found her body. She had naively hoped that he’d somehow forgotten the ambulance pulling up, the black-jacketed coroner’s knock on the door, the woman’s corpse being wheeled away. But he knew what had happened.

“Mrs. Boswell died because she was old and it was, well, her time, I guess. But General Squeak . . .” She squatted to show Henry the tiny corpse. “I think he climbed up on the sink. Dad must have left water in there after he shaved this morning. He drowned. I’m so sorry.” She couldn’t bear to tell Henry the even more horrible truth.

The boy’s mouth opened a little as he leaned toward the dead hamster, his eyes wide.

“Do you think they suffered?”

Reggie had not expected that question and she heard herself swallow, remembering the awful crackling of bone when she’d pulled General Squeak from the toilet, and the mask of horror that had frozen on Mrs. Boswell’s lifeless face.

“I don’t think so,” Reggie lied.

Henry reached out a hand and stroked the hamster’s head with an index finger. “He looks so broken. All twisted up.”

Reggie bleated. She wasn’t prepared for it and the sound came out like a gag. And then she started crying and she couldn’t stop. She knelt there in the hallway, a dead rodent on a washcloth in her hands like some bizarre sacrifice.

“You’re crying.”

Reggie looked up at her brother. He tilted his head slightly, and his blue eyes stared at her, cool and curious. He touched a tear on her cheek, dabbing it softly so that it pooled on his fingertip. He examined it like there was something alien about it, like it required study and dissection.

“Of course I’m crying. First Mrs. Boswell, and now this? Aren’t you sad, Henry? Don’t you want to hold him?” She held the hamster out. “Say goodbye?”

“I don’t know what to say or what to do with it,” Henry said flatly. “Now that it’s dead.” His lip quivered, the first sign that he was feeling
something.
Reggie didn’t press.

“Well, we need to find him a nice coffin.” She wiped away the streams of snot that had bubbled out of her nose. “Something warm. Make him cozy inside. And then take him outside and bury him. Say a prayer and let his spirit go.”

Henry looked intrigued. He placed his hand on General Squeak’s body. His finger squished into the corpse, and the furry skin gave like a sponge.

“Where does it go?” he asked matter-of-factly. “The spirit?”

“To heaven, Henry.”

“Have you seen a spirit?”

“You can’t see it. You feel it. Inside you.” She pointed to Henry’s chest. “In your heart. It’s what makes you who you are.”

The boy stood still for a long moment and then turned away. “I’m going to get a shoebox. You can bury it after I have waffles.”

“He didn’t want to come out with you to bury it?” Aaron climbed off the rusty twelve-speed he’d owned since the seventh grade and joined Reggie, who was tromping through the unbroken snow of the side yard, carrying the shoebox coffin and a shovel. “That’s harsh. Is he messed up bad, Reg?”

“Well, I broke some ribs pulling him out of the toilet, but he was dead by then.”

“No, not the hamster, dork. Henry. How’s his head?”

Reggie’s boots cracked the thin crust of ice and sank deep into the powder beneath. Aaron clomped awkwardly beside her.

“Bad,” said Reggie. “He’s so mixed up, Aaron. Like he needs to act all tough and hard now. He didn’t even cry when he saw Squeak was dead.”

“I didn’t cry when my cat got hit by a car.” It was true, but he’d wanted to. “I was about Henry’s age, but then again —”

“You’re a natural tough guy.”

Aaron smirked. “Yeah, well, you know me. Maybe I could talk to Henry. Guy to guy. Sounds lame, I know —”

“Would you do that?”

“Sure.” Aaron took the shovel from Reggie as they trekked through the backyard. “Here, let me do the honors.”

He cleared some snow away and then stabbed the shovel into the icy ground. It was like digging into clay bricks. He didn’t know if they could even get deep enough to cover the shoebox, but he didn’t want to tell Reggie that. She seemed pretty set on the hamster’s funeral plans.

“Is it totally frozen?” she asked.

“Well, let’s just say this is going to take a while.”

From the corner of his eye, he noticed a shape in one of her house’s windows. Henry stood in his second-floor bedroom, still as an ice sculpture, staring at them through a pane of cracked glass.

“Hey, Reggie? That creep you out a little?”

Reggie followed Aaron’s gaze.

“I told you.” She sighed. “He’s acting weird. Like some gears aren’t matching up right in there.”

“Let me see the hamster.”

“What for?”

Aaron grabbed the box from Reggie’s hands and opened it. He lifted the hamster out of its cardboard coffin and turned it over, hoping his suspicions were wrong.

“And you found it in the toilet?” he asked.

“Yeah. Clogged it. Really jammed in.”

“Its neck’s broken.” Aaron lifted the creature’s head, examining how ruined the pathetic thing really was.

“Yeah. I told you, I broke a couple bones when I pulled it out, because —”

“I don’t think that’s how it happened. Look.” He pointed to the thin layer of skin that seemed to be the only thing keeping the head attached. “Somebody, well —”

Aaron glanced back up at the window. Henry was no longer there.

“What are you doing here, Aaron?”

Henry had appeared on the back deck. Bound up in several layers of sweatshirts and then wrapped in Dad’s green down parka, he looked like a lumpy zucchini. Aaron would have laughed if it weren’t for the venom in the boy’s voice.

“I came to pay my respects to General Squeak, Henry.” Aaron took the box from Reggie’s hands and laid the hamster back inside. He closed the lid and gave it back to her, not taking his eyes off of Henry. “I’m really sorry about what happened, man. You okay?”

“Reggie’s grounded. You better go home before my dad calls.” Henry pulled the parka collar tight around his neck as he turned to go indoors. “He doesn’t like you much.”

“Henry,” Reggie snapped. “Back off! He’s burying
your
pet.”

Aaron held a finger up to silence Reggie. He walked after Henry.

“Hey.”

Henry didn’t stop.

“Hey, Henry, wait. Come on, bud, wait up a minute.”

The boy faced him with flaring eyes. “I’m going inside. It’s cold out here.”

Aaron squinted up at the bright sun. “Not so bad. A little above freezing today, eh? And you like winter, big snowboarder that you are.”

“Yeah.” Henry just stood on the porch.

“Can you come down here a minute? I want to talk.”

The boy balked but said nothing.

“Just for a minute. Please?”

Henry teetered down the deck steps. He stared at Aaron ex-pectantly.

“Reggie’s worried about you, Henry. Are you doing all right?”

“I’m fine.” Henry shook his head. “Can I go now?” He started back up the steps, but Aaron reached out and grabbed his wrist.

“Come on. Just talk a sec. Did you have an
accident
with General Squeak?”

“Let go of me.” The command was calm and threatening. Henry’s eyes locked with Aaron’s, and the older boy felt a cold force closing in on him. Something inhuman lurked behind Henry’s stare, and it held Aaron firmly in its grip.

Aaron struggled to look away, but he couldn’t. Drowning in the child’s blue gaze, his body wouldn’t answer his mind. He was underwater, paralyzed and suffocating. Sunlight faded; a tunnel closed in until there was blackness on all sides. His lungs burned. Henry’s image rippled before him. Aaron couldn’t breathe. The water rushed into his chest . . .

He coughed and gagged. There was no water, only the cold blue depths of Henry’s eyes. Henry cracked a smile as Aaron fell to his knees in the snow, gasping for breath.