Hemlock Veils

She sighed, wrapping her jacket more snugly around herself. The storm had stopped before sunset, but the air still felt like rain: crisp, moist, and cool. It even smelled like rain. She turned, making her way to the back door, when a wretched scream echoed from within the forest, shooting a shiver up her spine.

Her stomach dropped when his roar followed, more fierce and deafening than that of a lion’s. She could only watch the trees, as though they would tell her what lay within. The scream pierced the air again, high-pitched and drawn-out. But it wasn’t the scream of a person, since no human could leave such a chilling note in the air. The sound, ghostlike and u

It came over her then: the sensation that left her arms goose-fleshed and her chest tight. The evil loomed out there, and so did Henry.

She jumped from the porch without taking the steps and ran the trail as fast as she could. She could see nothing and lifted her arms for protection against twigs and branches, praying her feet’s memorization wouldn’t fail her. As she ran, wishing for another sound to lead her, she recalled section eight of her father’s book, the section she had just read a couple of days before. The demon, Diableron, and its relation to Aglaé.

The scream sounded again, a blood-curdling eeeeee hanging in the air, and before it could ebb away, a growl overpowered it, making Elizabeth run harder and faster. Though she was close, a strange stillness suddenly settled over the forest, hitting her and the trees as though a physical drape. She stopped short, and with a heaving chest and sweating neck, she looked through the blackness all around her. She wanted to call for him but couldn’t catch her breath.

Before she could take one more step, she was thrown into the air, her back breaking twigs as it slammed into the trunk of a cedar. It knocked the wind from her, and with her back against the trunk—the tree seeming to hold her itself—she winced, looking for the source.

“Brave Elizabeth,” she heard at her ear, startling her. It was a whisper and a voice at the same time, as though the words were spoken on the tongue of a snake; but she saw nothing. She struggled against invisible shackles, unable to move. “Fearlesss,” it hissed again, and this time it came from her other side. Still, nothing there.

Her pulse heightened, her face perspired. “Show yourself,” she managed through tight ribs.

It appeared before her then, right at her eye level, and Elizabeth flinched. This Diableron, unfortunately, appeared less cartoonish than the one in her book. Much more frightening. Her face of flesh, bone, and black nothingness melted, and as Elizabeth tried to steady her breaths, wondering where to look since the creature seemed to have no eyes, it smiled, revealing the black void inside its mouth. Elizabeth swallowed deeply, recoiling.

“Not so fearlessss anymore, are you, Elizabeth Ashton?” Elizabeth waited for a slithering, long tongue to appear.

“Where is he?”

The Diableron’s face pressed against Elizabeth’s, her cold and damp being akin to the dense air from an underground cave. “He’sss worth dying over, mortal?”

Before Elizabeth could answer, a dim light glowed from within the demon, from the place a heart would reside, and then it wasn’t the demon at all. Elizabeth squinted as the light faded, and in the Diableron’s place was an image she couldn’t accept. She blinked to make sure she saw it correctly.

“Beth,” a shaky voice said. His blue eyes were bloodshot and sunk-in, his head shaved, his tall body scrawny, and his face glistening with sweat. Desperation fueled him as he grasped the collar of her jacket. “Help me, please. They’re go

Elizabeth’s jaw fell slack as she recoiled, and tears welled in her eyes. “Willem,” she said in a painful breath.

“How could you let me die?” He shook her, the sensation jarring, and blood began to pour from a hole in his chest, then from his mouth—so much blood it looked like too much to fit in a human body. He brought his hands to his chest and gagged, then coughed blood all over her in the way he’d done the last time she saw him. She hyperventilated, his face swirling in her vision. She’d been brave at his death once before. She had no bravery left.

“No, Willem…I tried,” she sobbed.

“You killed me.” With blood still pouring from his mouth, he grasped her jacket again, and her chest shuddered. Through the blood, he shouted, “You killed me!”

She shook her head, beyond words.

Then his face transformed, grew younger. Even his hair grew, and every stage of his life passed in reverse on his face, until it was the face of a seven-year-old boy—the same as the one she remembered most, the one in her locket. “Bethy?” he said in the boyish voice she had almost forgotten, the one that knocked the air from her lungs yet again. He looked around in confusion. He brought a hand to his face then pulled it away, viewing the blood on his small, childish fingers. With eyes enlarging, he screamed, the prepubescent sound catching in his throat. “Bethy!” They seemed to hyperventilate at the same time. “Bethy, what’s wrong with me?”

“Will, it’s all right,” she managed.

He sobbed in confusion, as though the demon had plucked him from the past and placed him before her. Even the cowlick that used to spring up at the crown of his head danced with his movement. “Did you hurt me?” he asked with betrayal in his eyes, and she shook her head. “Why would you hurt me?”

“No, Will, I would never hurt you!” She tried reaching for him, tried not to let him see her sob. But he’d never been covered in so much blood. “You’re going to be all right,” she assured, but through her weeping it sounded less than convincing.

He grasped her jacket, pleading as blood began to escape his nose in addition to his chest and mouth. All she wanted to do was save her young, helpless brother, and she couldn’t escape this damn tree. “You can’t let me die, Bethy! Don’t let me!” As his face grew more ashen, his voice weakened, and so did her limbs. His blue Dr. Seuss shirt—his favorite—was covered in so much blood that Thing One and Thing Two were unrecognizable, and she hoped she could get the blood out, that she could get it clean for him again.

Her stomach rose, her head spun, and she closed her eyes, trying to breathe, trying to replace his bloodied image with a different one—one that didn’t pull her under. “It’s all right, Willem,” she barely managed in a breath. She thought of him in the park with her and their father. Laughing. It was the best image.

An image: that’s all this was. It wasn’t real, he wasn’t real. The Diableron.

“You’re not real,” she said, eyes still closed.

“Beth,” Willem said, his voice now the adult version of him, the same choking one from the night of his death.

“No.” Her voice found strength. She lifted her chin. Staring into eyes that weren’t really her brother’s, she said, “You aren’t Willem.”

With the disappearance of her brother, darkness and the demon appeared before her, and as it had the first time, the horrifying sight startled her. Behind the angry, melting face—the face that would have given her nightmares as a child and the face she was sure could transform into a most beautiful Aglaé—the black, spear-like tail raised. It came to her neck, rubbing its cool wetness over Elizabeth’s skin, and just when it retracted, about to strike, the creature was thrown from her. Elizabeth fell to the ground, trying to adjust her eyes to the swift movement of shapes in the darkness. Snorts and grunts gave the beast away, ones that could belong only to him.

He tossed the Diableron into a hemlock, and with a piercing cry she fell to the ground. The beast stood on all fours, snarling at the dark silhouette that rose with difficulty. They circled each other, she hissing and he growling.