The Debt Read online

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You wouldn’t. I know you miss this. It must have been torture for you living in the forest. Weren’t you just a little bit tempted by Jack? When you made love, didn’t you want to take a bite from his shoulder as he thrust into you?”

  “I ate,” she simply said. “I ate the packages you sent us in the food; enough to keep the monster inside from surfacing. Jack never knew it was human meat, although I ate them before he had the chance to question them, anyway.”

  “Enough to maintain yourself, but not enough to keep youthful. Does Lucy know of your heritage?”

  “I’ve told her nothing. She doesn’t need to know.”

  “And she isn’t like us?” he sounded curious.

  “She eats meat—but no—she’s not a monster. I can promise you that.”

  “Shame. Then we have no use for her; she’s meat.”

  “She’s my daughter! Doesn’t family mean anything to you?”

  “She may have your blood running through her veins—”

  “And yours,” she put in.

  He ignored this and continued, “—but she has Jack’s too. She is nothing! Anja—you’re like a bird with a broken wing. I can mend it; you know I can. Bring you back here where you belong. But you must give me something in return. You must give me Lucy. You will go back to the lake house, retrieve her. That’s final. She is eighteen, is she not?”

  “She’s not old enough for the feast—you know that.”

  “As a rule, you’re right. Okay—you shall remain with her until her twentieth birthday—take care of her until she is ready.”

  “Ready! What—ready to be eaten? To suffer the same pain Jack suffered?”

  “I thought you didn’t care about Jack?” He was toying with her. As a girl, she had struggled with hiding her feelings. Today was no exception.

  “I don’t! I mean—I lived with him for a lifetime so I’m going to fuckin care something about him.”

  Francis stepped away from her with a delicate smile, unfazed by her outburst. But there was a part of him that was aroused by her attitude. He knew that she had felt something for him, and still did, but that was irrelevant now. Jack was dead and Anja was here. He said, “I want you to go back to the lake house. You will stay with Lucy until she is ready. That’s not a suggestion, Anja. If you do not obey my instructions I shall breed Lucy here—and I shall kill you.”

  “But I’m your daughter,” she said like she couldn’t understand the reason behind the threat.

  “And this is survival, Anja! You know it’s the right thing to do. She is not one of us.”

  “Am I one of you? I was cast aside all those years ago.”

  “Because you did something terrible, Anja. Don’t you remember?”

  She could, all too clearly.

  “But you’re here now. Your debt is paid. You’ve done well.”

  She sank into the chair, the same chair where Jack had sat and had been given two choices. The similarities were all there. Now she had a choice to make. She couldn’t allow her daughter to be food, but also, she needed her heritage back. It was what she was. She would go back to Lucy at the lake house, and she would stay by her side until she was ready. And when that day came, she would have to deal with it. It had to be this way; she couldn’t lose her heritage again. It was like she was choking, the monster inside of her ripping away at her insides trying to escape. It was uncomfortable, like a drug addict going cold turkey. She could feel the monster tremble around her bones, waking from its sleep. She stood and said to Francis, “I need to eat,” and marched out of the room immediately, headed down the corridor and pushed through the heavy oak doors.

  There wasn’t much of Jack left, but she hurried to the table and removed whatever part of him was available. She didn’t notice which part it was (at that moment she didn’t care), although he tasted alive, his blood firing through Anja’s body like an electric shockwave, and the monster inside surrendered.

  13

  Sixteen months from now, Lucy would turn twenty. By that time, she would be ready for the feast. Anja couldn’t decide what she would tell her when that day came; whatever the words, they wouldn’t flow easily, and probably through tears. But Anja had lived far too long without the ways of her heritage. This is what she was: a monster through anyone’s eyes; a demon’s offspring in reality.

  She figured before that day came, she would sit down with Lucy, try and explain to her what her mother was and the importance of her grandfather. She wouldn’t understand: how could she. But she would try to make her.

  Anja was shaken awake as the car rumbled over the wooden beams of the bridge. She rubbed her eyes, moist from a dream she hoped was true. She looked on through the side window hoping that she would see Jack skimming stones on the cobbled shoreline. But the taste of him still lingered in her mouth and his flesh stuck between her teeth. She could smell his blood and hear the gluttonous release of air from his body as she had dug her teeth into his meat.

  Anja closed her eyes, regretting immediately what she had done. She opened them to see Lucy standing where she had imagined Jack to be. The tyres crunched over the cobbles, the car suddenly coming to a halt. Lucy went up to the car just as her mother stepped out. Anja forced a smile, a motherly smile that everything was going to be fine.

  The car left them without so much as a goodbye. Anja watched it leave for a good few minutes, following its dust path as it disappeared where the trees seemed to eat the road.

  Lucy was worried. She said, pulling at her mum’s sleeves, “Who was that? You left me, mum, all alone.”

  Anja turned to her, grabbed her by her shoulders and embraced her. She didn’t want to let her go. “I told you I wouldn’t be long,” she whispered, kissing her ear.

  She prized her away. “It’s been a day. Where did you go?”

  “To—,” she began, but how could she tell her? She sighed, then reached out to twist her daughter’s hair through her fingers. She hoped that she couldn’t see through her lies because she was not prepared to tell Lucy the truth. “To find your father.”

  Lucy began to cry. “Where is he?” It was like she knew that he wasn’t coming back. She was so much like Jack. Perhaps a little too much. Her brown eyes stared desperately at her mother for answers, which she couldn’t find the courage to give.

  As Anja pulled her daughter into her breast, all she could offer was her tears.

  14

  Lucy’s twentieth was a week away. Since her Uncle Sam was the closest relative she had to her father, all she had talked about lately was spending quality time with him on her special day. She couldn’t recall the last time she had seen him, but her father had been present. She thought about Jack often. Her mother had explained to her that he had been in trouble with the wrong people and had to leave. She had promised that he would return, a promise that stung her deeply in the heart. But there was no point in truths; it would hurt too much. And besides, it would all be over soon.

  Francis Dupont had once asked, ‘is she one of us?’, to which Anja replied, no. She hadn’t lied to him because he would have known anyway.

  At seven twenty in the evening, Lucy and Anja sat together on the cobbled shore listening to the hypnotic sound of water fizzling into the stones. They both looked out across the lake, mist hovering above the water like smoke, and they said nothing. They held each other, an action that spoke many words. And although Lucy had a week to go before her birthday, before she would die, Anja still kept a watch on the road at the other side of the lake where not a single car had passed since she had been reunited with her father. The solitude had been welcome, saddened by the fact that it would soon be at an end, and then chaos. But for now, she considered this a very pleasant fiction.

  It had only been a month ago since Anja’s perspective changed. She started questioning herself over Lucy and had wondered whether death was really necessary.

  Lucy removed her head from her mother’s shoulder. “Would I be able
to see Uncle Sam on my birthday? I keep asking, but you never answer.”

  Anja held her breath, swallowed down spittle that could have been guilt. “Of course, dear,” she lied, and immediately began grinding her heel into the cobbles.

  “Do you think father will ever come back? What type of people was he in trouble with?” She had asked the same question repeatedly before, the answer either avoided or unclear.

  “I’m sure he’s in a safe place, Lucy,” is what she mostly told her, and today was no exception. This time she looked at her. Jack had always known when Anja had been lying. She had wondered whether Lucy possessed the same gift. Although, technically it wasn’t a lie; he was in a safe place. No place safer than heaven, if that’s what you’d believe. No one can touch you there. “Do you remember a while back when I asked you whether you’d heard anything outside? There was a noise in the forest. It may have been two-three in the morning, but I did ask when you’d woken up.”

  Lucy inclined her head away from her mother. Her voice was quiet. “I remember you asking. You thought someone had been outside the lake house.”

  “Yeah, it felt that way. But you said that you hadn’t heard anything.”

  “Well—I hadn’t,” Lucy confirmed, and looked at her.

  “It happened quite a few times after that, and before.”

  “You never said about the other times.”

  “I didn’t want to alarm you.”

  Now, it was Lucy who was stamping her heels into the cobbles.

  “You see, Lucy, I found some of your old clothes out back. They’d been buried but an animal must have smelt the blood on them. Do you know the clothing I’m talking about?”

  She turned her head away from her mother and shook it as if to say that she didn’t know.

  Anja put her hand on her shoulder, prompting her to turn around. “Don’t be frightened, Lucy. You know that you’re different, don’t you? Lucy? How long have you known?” Relief spilt across her face.

  Eventually, she looked at her mother, tucking her hair behind her ears. She seemed ashamed, shrugged and said, “I dunno—when I was fifteen I suppose. But I didn’t do anything about it until recently. I’m sorry, mother. I’m really sorry.” She sobbed into Anja’s shoulder.

  Anja pushed her away, placed her hands on either side of Lucy’s face, smiled. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lucy.”

  She sounded apologetic. “But the ache in my stomach just got too much. It was hurting.”

  “As it would. That’s natural, but you did nothing wrong. It’s what you are, Lucy. I thought you were like your father, but you’re not, are you? You are like me; you are like your grandfather.” Anja pulled her daughter closer, held her tightly and said into her ear, “You are like us!” She was relieved, because now, Francis couldn’t take her away. She was family, a part of the heritage. “Everything’s going to be okay, Lucy.” But then she realised something else, something that would frighten the hell out of her daughter because she hadn’t been born into the heritage, didn’t know their ways.

  As Lucy began to ask about her grandfather, it dawned on Anja that Francis mustn’t know what Lucy was. Because if he knew, then she would probably welcome death as a preferable solution. Her mind wouldn’t relax on the reality, and would most likely drive her crazy.

  No—he mustn’t know. And more to the point, she would never meet him, neither as a meal nor equal.

  They walked slowly into the lake house where Anja explained to her daughter as little as possible about what she was. She tried to refrain her from placing a connection between werewolves and vampires and other beasts with fanged teeth, largely because they didn’t exist. But Francis Dupont, Anja and siblings did exist. She couldn’t tell her where Francis had come from or why he was here because, in truth, she didn’t know herself. But her father had told her what he was.

  A demon.

  Though he had escaped hell and had found himself here, living among us.

  Anja came in from the kitchen. She carried a plastic container in both hands.

  Lucy was on the sofa with her knees tightly into her chest. Her eyes were red like she had been crying. As her mother came in, she hastily wiped them dry with her woollen sleeve.

  “It’s really not that bad, you know. The cramps in your stomach, it hurts, I know it does. But it will go.” She put the container on the coffee table so Lucy could see it. “So, what was it? Rabbit?”

  She was still sniffing away her tears. “They were already dead,” she said in her defence. She shrugged. “I started off with rabbit, sometimes birds. I found deer sometimes, too. They tasted better, although some had been dead for a while and maggots were already there. But they tasted good, too.”

  “You survived, Lucy. You did what you had to.”

  “Did dad ever know?” Past tense. Anja figured that she must have known he wasn’t going to return.

  “Your father? God no!” she said sharply.

  “Did you ever think about telling him?” She glanced at the container. She could smell the meat inside.

  She nodded and considered this. “A few times—yes.” But she knew that if she had, then the door would be open to more questions, and perhaps Jack would have eventually asked the wrong question. She peeled back the lid from the container. “Now this meat is what you should be eating. Rotten meat will do you no good. It’s about strength, about keeping something dangerous away, locked up inside your skin.” The lid was fully removed. “It tries to get out, and if you can’t control it, it’s lethal. It’s a monster—a demon. Strong, insane, and it will consume any living being until it’s satisfied. It usually takes an average sized person.”

  Lucy looked distant, not really taking in what her mother was telling her. She peered inside as her mother showed her the contents. “What is that?” She squirmed, repulsed by its content, though curious, and felt drawn to the smell like it was the most beautiful scent in the world.

  Like Coco Chanel.

  Lucy glanced at her mother, frowning, but her attention was soon grabbed by the meat that still bled, its pungent freshness floating up her nose like the scent of newly plucked flowers. There was a part of it where the skin hadn’t been stripped away, laden with dark hairs too few to be any animal. She brushed her index finger over the fleshy part, a raw cold surface, pressed down on the meat. Blood separated from underneath, and she pulled back her finger, inserting the juices into her mouth. She shut her eyes as though it was the best Pistachio ice cream she had ever tasted. She wondered what all this meant for her: what her mother was trying to tell her? And then she was distracted by how good it tasted.

  “Tastes good, doesn’t it? That’s the meat we need. Animals are one thing; they maintain us, but that’s all it is: maintenance. This—” Anja picked up the container, placed it on Lucy’s lap, “—is what makes our heart beat, what keeps the blood pumping through our veins. It’s what keeps the monster inside of us at bay.”

  “Inside of me?”

  “Me too. Your grandfather—a few others.”

  “If it’s not animal, then what is it?” she put the container to her side, shuffled away from the meat, a hint of disgust returning to her face.

  “There are them, and there are us. It’s only human meat.”

  “It’s a person?” she yelled. “This meat—it’s actually a person?” She moved a little further from the container. She had wondered how the meat had come to be there, whether her mother had killed whom it belonged to. Too many question rattling inside her skull.

  As a hunger that she had never experienced before began to make her tremble, she could also feel bile burn into her throat.

  * * *

  Lucy exited the bathroom. She watched the container ominously, which her mother had re-sealed and returned to the coffee table. She was picking at her nails when Lucy sniffed to make herself known. Her mother looked regretful that she had opened up to her daughter.

  “I’m not going to pretend that I understand this,” Lucy told he
r, falling beside Anja.

  “I didn’t expect you would—not straight away, anyhow.” She tried to smile, but it was thin and strained, a blank starry-eyed of unhappiness.

  “But you do expect it—eventually.” She folded her arm defensively, eyes burning into the container. She paused to take a moment. “Monsters? Demons?” she huffed. “For fucks’ sakes, mom!” Then she laughed out, cried again—laughed some more.

  Anja moved closer to her. She noticed that Lucy hadn’t detached her gaze from the container, and decided to slide it closer. “It’s in your blood, Lucy.” Her voice was gentle. “I know that now. You know that, too. It runs through you. It’s who you are.” She reached out to take Lucy’s hand, could feel her flesh tremble underneath her skin, warmer than it should have been.

  The monster grew inside of her—stirring. She considered Lucy with concern.

  “What about father? Is he—like us?”

  “No.” She was about to tell her more; she had no idea what or in which order. She could just feel herself wanting to talk to her, allow the words to flow loosely from her mouth. But she stopped herself.

  “So,” Lucy was thinking, her eyes closed as if the answers would be found in her head, “he’s one of them?” When her mother never responded, and she had waited long enough, Lucy reopened her eyes.

  Her mother watched with sadness, eyes darkened underneath by the months of worry and secrets. Her attention was divided between the container of meat and Lucy’s question. Least of all because she was hungry. She was aware of her daughters rising temperature, and the fact that she needed to eat what was being offered.

  “I never loved him any less,” Anja cajoled but sounded like she was hiding a confession that was too terrible to admit, and that this was her only reasoning. She placed the container on her lap tapping rhythmically at the lid.

  In part, the noise was strummed out to cause a distraction, to make Lucy look at the container, make her want what was inside. But it also served to distract herself. Because Anja had begun to salivate; she could taste the meat, feel the texture as she thought about sinking her teeth into the flesh.