MAY 18, 2005
Lorenzo nearly tripped and fell into the mud as he tore out of his friend Jojo’s front door and into the wet street. The rain had come early this year, not that he would have stopped to grab his poncho even if he had brought it with him. He just ran, scarcely able to see in the darkness, flailing toward his house as fast as his legs would carry him. The rain was heavy, and warm, and washed his friends’ blood off him.
Philomena, he thought, feeling his pocket to make sure his rosary was still there. Lorenzo was of an age where the only reason he ever had his rosary on him was because his lola would be disappointed if he didn’t, but at this moment, it felt like the sole thread tethering him to this world. A demon had killed his friends. Now, it was coming for him. Prayer was the only thing that would save him.
“Philomena!” he cried as he ran. She was his mother’s favorite saint, and the one she prayed to most often, but that didn’t feel right. A distant bolt of lightning illuminated the street in front of him, and for an instant, it was as bright as day, showing him a clear and unobstructed path to his house. He sped toward it, not thinking about what it might mean to lead the monster right to his parents, to his lola, to his sister. But what else could he do? Had he not actually seen his friends effectively get dismembered? It all happened so quickly—before they had even known it was in the room with them, it grabbed Jojo, then Lito. He had moved to grab Jojo’s baseball bat to fend the demon back, but before he could grab it, the demon had brought Jojo’s neck to its mouth and—
Lorenzo nearly stumbled at the memory, still not truly accepting that his friends were dead. The demon only had two hands, and there had been three boys in the room; therefore, Lorenzo had gotten away, saved by virtue of not being as close to the window as his friends had been when the creature came inside, silent as a snake. It seemed almost impossible that something so big could be so quiet, that it could be on top of them the instant they even realized it was there.
Lorenzo made it to his house, slamming into his front door—locked! “Nanay, Tatay!” he cried to his parents. Why locked? They usually never locked their door, but they had heard of things, evil spirits in the woods, and started locking the door to calm his little sister’s fears. Of course—his parents didn’t know he was out. Hopeless! This was hopeless, and that’s why Saint Philomena felt wrong; she wasn’t who to pray to when things were hopeless. It hadn’t occurred to him because he had never truly experienced hopelessness in his young life. When he didn’t hear an answer from his parents, he cried to the heavens, “San Judas, San Tadeo, San Tadeo, tulong! Sagipin mo ago!” Save me, Saint Jude, save me.
He banged on the door, screaming and crying and turning his head every which way to scan for the demon. He didn’t immediately see it, and when the door didn’t open, he ran for the tree by the house that his father had nailed a couple of boards to for easier climbing. He stumbled onto the tree, climbed one step, then another. He turned around just in time to see the demon on the other side of the road, illuminated by a flash of lightning, blood still dripping from its maw.
This demon seemed more armored than the smaller one had been, which itself he and his friends had initially mistaken for a crocodile. If the bigger demon could be compared to a crocodile, it would be a saltwater one from Australia or some long-extinct giant species, nothing like the little ones found in the rivers nearby. Both of them had that grayish-black skin that looked like a wet suit, but where the smaller one had eyes that were black and empty, this one had yellow eyes that lit up like bulbs in the light of the storm.
The thing moved with supernatural speed and had traversed the distance between his neighbors’ house and his position on the tree in an instant. When he felt it grab his leg, he lost his grip, and it was only his rib cage getting stuck in the V between two strong branches that prevented him from being torn from the tree altogether. He scrambled to hold on to the tree, and again, he felt a tug, more violent this time, then he heard a howl as the creature let him go.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that someone had attacked the demon with a baseball bat, his father had attacked it with a baseball bat. Lorenzo grabbed once more on to the bark of the tree, focusing on that as he climbed out of arm’s reach of the demon, repeating to himself, “San Tadeo, San Tadeo, sagipin mo ago, sagipin mo ago!”
The branches of the tree were slick, like climbing a giant wet noodle, and he nearly slipped a couple of times before he chanced a look at the ground. In those few seconds, half a dozen of his neighbors had come into the street, wielding whatever they had close by to take the monster down—baseball bats, axes, machetes, and even a couple of rifles. A dozen more neighbors were either getting their bearings or were on their way, flashing torches wildly into the storm, but none of them knew what they were dealing with. Lorenzo yelled at them to run, to get away, but his voice was drowned out by the rain and thunder and shouting below.
One man lunged at the creature, only to be caught in midair and thrown into a tree, his back making a horrible thud on impact. Another, whom he recognized as Jojo’s father, hacked madly at the creature. He got a few hits in, slicing into the thing like slabs of old meat before the monster grabbed him by the neck, hurled him to the ground, and tackled him, opening its jaws and taking one large, loud bite so hard Lorenzo could hear the crunching even up in the tree.
More and more men from the village attacked, which gave the monster only more and more fodder to burn through. Even a tiger the same size would have fallen several times over after the pummeling it had taken, but not this thing. It had nearly a dozen people lying at its feet, injured, dead or dying, before it finally showed some sign of slowing. Then one of the men on the ground saw an opportunity, and using his machete almost like a javelin, he skewered the monster right through its neck. It failed to grab the man as blood spurted out of the wound, illuminating the mud with red when another flash of lightning passed overhead. The man raised the machete and brought it down on the demon’s neck like an executioner—once, twice, and the third time brought it down for good.
Lorenzo wanted to stay put, away where no one could see, where no one could ask what he had done to bring this horror down on their village. His six-year-old sister, Clarinda, knew what he and his friends had done, but would she tell? Lorenzo scanned the small crowd forming a semicircle around the demon, but he didn’t see his father. He fell out of the tree, stumbling toward his neighbor, who was still hacking away at the demon’s neck. Another flash of lightning revealed how much blood the man was covered in—not his but the demon’s, and in the back of his mind, Lorenzo couldn’t help but wonder, What kind of demon bleeds like we do?
He saw his mother, too shocked at the situation to begin to take stock of the carnage on the road in front of their house. Others were trickling out into the rain, realizing that their family and neighbors were lying in the road, victims of the same demon that had come for him and his friends.
Then he heard his mother’s voice crying, “Rodrigo, Rodrigo!” with a level of despair that could mean only one thing. He ran toward her, hoping that perhaps this was an overreaction, that she was mistaken, that this wasn’t his father lying dead in the mud by the side of the road.
But it was. His father’s face was partially illuminated by the light coming out of their front door just a few yards away, as was the wound to his neck. The muscles in his face were slack, his eyes unfocused, and what the demon had done to his neck no person could survive.
Lorenzo wanted to say something, do something, pray for this to be undone, but he was rooted in place, still as stone and just as numb. This had to be a nightmare, because if it wasn’t, it was divine punishment, and now his father had paid the ultimate price for his sins. His, and his friends’, who had tried to fight demons. And now …
“Kasalanan namin ito,” he muttered as he watched his mother hunch over his father’s body, her back heaving with sobs. We did this.
We did this. He thought it over and over, like a prayer. We did this.
■ 1 ■
Paris Wells looked at her watch for the third time in the last minute, her 2:00 P.M. now almost twenty minutes late. She’d made over a dozen inquiries to Cora Sabino, Cora Sabino’s people, and Cora Sabino’s people’s people before the girl finally relented and agreed to meet with her at a bar in the financial district. Not an interview, just a meeting, a conversation, a testing of the waters, but by now, she was having serious doubts Cora would show up. After all, she’d successfully avoided Paris for more than a year. Why stop now?
A no-show would almost be a relief, to be honest; Paris didn’t know if she’d be able to conceal her many and complicated feelings about Cora Sabino in the interest of unbiased journalism. When Kaveh had given Paris his essay wrapped in a neat manila package, he had told her to make sure it got delivered to his editors at The New Yorker “if anything happens.” She’d known then that whatever was in that manila folder could get him deported, imprisoned, or worse, but the danger as she understood it stemmed from the weight of his words, not the possibility that his head would take up the wrong square foot of space at the wrong instant. She never entertained the idea that “anything” could mean his death.
And now the last person who had seen him alive had agreed to meet with her. The selfish witness to a government cover-up who had a habit of fleeing when doing otherwise might reflect poorly on her. The careless accessory to murder, the reason Kaveh was dead. After all, he had abandoned his plans to skip the country for her. Because, as a ten-foot-tall space monster had told Kaveh the night before he died, she needed him.
“You who love her so dearly,” Nikola had said. “Who take care of her needs so well.”
She glanced out of the window and was surprised to see her—source? Interviewee?—her 2:00 P.M. arrive nineteen minutes late, scanning the faces inside the bar with unmasked dread. Paris stood up to make herself easier to spot—she wasn’t the only Black woman her age inside this bar, after all, and Cora may not even know what she looked like.
“Nice to finally meet you,” she said as Cora approached her, looking the part of a sleep-deprived college student played by a noticeably older actress. She shook Paris’s hand limply, took off her wool jacket and knitted red beret-looking thing, and sat in the booth.
“Can I get you a drink?” asked Paris, not taking her seat.
“Sure,” she said, eyes to the window as if she were expecting a brick to fly through it.
“What’s your poison?”
“Um, you can choose.”
“Okay—beer, wine, cocktail, tequila shots?”
“Cocktail.”
Paris ordered an IPA for herself and a whiskey sour for her 2:00 P.M.—the fancy kind made with egg whites instead of sour mix—while her guest continued holding herself like an abused circus animal relocated to a sanctuary that wasn’t itself a huge improvement. A couple of minutes later, Paris returned with their drinks, pushing the sour in front of Cora.
“You’ve been difficult to get ahold of.”
“I know,” said Cora tersely.
“So what changed your mind?”
Cora looked at the sour. “I suppose there aren’t a huge number of people in this world who deserve an explanation.”
Paris straightened. “You feel like you owe me an explanation?”
“I’m not saying I, personally, owe you anything. I don’t know you. But you deserve one, and I’m the only person who can give you one. So here I am.”
“Thank you,” said Paris, relaxing her shoulders and taking a long swig of her IPA.
“I know I cannot legally compel you to make anything we say off the record, but I would ask that you keep this conversation off the record.”
“Of course.” Paris felt herself softening. Bleeding heart that she was, she couldn’t help but wonder what this girl had been through since Kaveh’s death to make her like this. “I had no intention of putting anything on the record.”
“So you’re working on a story for The New Yorker?”
“I hope so.”
“I thought you were an associate editor there.”
“Not at the moment. Indefinite hiatus.” Paris was unable to keep the bitterness out of that last word.
“What happened?”
“Well, sort of a one-two punch. Kaveh’s death alone I probably could have pushed through, but my dad died not two months later.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Kaveh left me some of his assets, thinking he was going into exile, not that he was going to die. But I had money, so I said screw it, I have to have some time to heal from all this before I’m able to write again.”
Cora looked at the whiskey sour she had not touched. “Who are you with?”
“Freelance Enterprises Inc.,” said Paris, pointing two finger guns at herself. “Congratulations, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For Columbia. I was on the basketball team for a minute at NYU, although as you know, Columbia is our historical enemy.”
“NYU has a basketball team?”
Paris chuckled. “The Columbia team’s taunt for us was, ‘Safety school!’”
Cora didn’t even begin to crack a smile. “It was what Kaveh wanted,” she said mechanically, like she’d used this phrase so often it had lost all meaning.
“I hope they aren’t cutting you with tuition,” said Paris.
“I have a trust that pays my tuition.”
“Oh … does that mean—”
“My lawyers say I can’t disclose any details.”
Paris didn’t know how much of this was just natural churlishness, but her nonanswer confirmed Paris’s suspicion that the “trust” had likely been set up by Kaveh before he died. “I have to ask … I understand why you—they—chose Japan to seek asylum in, but … did you know doing that would effectively kill the Third Option?”
“No,” said Cora, almost cutting her off. Eighteen months ago, it was a practical inevitability that Congressman Jano Miranda’s Third Option, a bill that would have created a separate subcategory for “personhood” under which extraterrestrial intelligence would be classified, would become the law of the land. Kaveh’s New Yorker essay froze it in its tracks, but Japan’s refusal to extradite any ETIs to a country that did not legally consider them “people” killed it. After all, you can’t try a nonperson for murder.
“It was purely about survival,” said Cora. “It had nothing to do with affecting policy. I just … they … Jude … neither of them were … they were both sick. I couldn’t take care of them by myself. I needed help.”
“And Japan helped?”
“A few of their eccentric billionaires did. Money can’t cure all ills, but…”
“And Jude has been doing better since—”
“Just tell me—” Cora cut her off, collected herself, and continued. “Just tell me what you want from me.”
“Well, if I’m being honest, it’s not you who I want,” said Paris coolly as she pulled out Kaveh’s journal. “Do you recognize this?”
“Yes.” Cora looked at it, seeming to be running through some interior Rolodex of what humiliatingly intimate details he might have written about her.
Paris slid the book across the table, and Cora looked at her like she’d just slid her the Necronomicon. “Aren’t you curious?”
“You said it didn’t have anything to do with me,” said Cora.
“I said it wasn’t you who I’m after. I wouldn’t be talking to you if it didn’t have anything to do with you.” Paris opened the journal to the page she had bookmarked, and Cora hesitated before looking at it. “Did you ever see this?”
Copyright © 2024 by Lindsay Ellis