Malachai's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

Malachai laid Deborah out on the bed and did not leave the cabin for three days. He did not eat. He did not bank the fire. He watched the light move across the pine walls and change color and go dark and come back. Her body cooled beside him. He did not cover her face. He wanted to see what he had done for as long as he had eyes to see it. On the first day he waited for grief and it did not come. On the second day he waited for fear and it did not come either. On the third day, his birthday, he understood what was wrong. He had spent fifteen years feeding a mouth. Without the mouth, he was hollow. There was nothing under the servant. He had not saved a self for himself. He lay flat on his back on the clean pine floor and set his hands on his chest and waited for his master to come and take him. He had promised his own soul in exchange for hers and the exchange had not been honored, but he owed the debt anyway. He was ready. He wanted the ledger closed. The pressure came at dusk. It came the way it always had, behind his eyes, pushing. But this time it did not stop at pressure. It kept coming. It filled his throat and his ribs and his hands. He felt himself pushed back inside his own body, into a small dark corner behind his own bones. Diablo did not kill him. Diablo stepped into him. Malachai's hand lifted without his choosing. It was his hand. He watched the fingers open and close. He tried to close them himself and they would not answer. His legs stood him up. His mouth smiled with his own lips. The smile was not his. Inside his chest a voice that was not sound said, thank you for the house. He screamed and no sound came out. His throat was already busy. His throat was saying something else, low and pleased, testing the shape of the words. He beat against the inside of himself and felt nothing give. The corner he had been pushed into had no walls he could reach and no door. His body walked to the bed. His hand, which was not his hand, brushed Deborah's hair back from her face with a tenderness he had not been allowed to give her while she lived. The gesture was a joke. It was meant for him to feel. His body turned to the cabin door. It opened the latch. It stepped out onto the porch and breathed the cold pine air through his nose and made a small sound of pleasure in his throat. Malachai, from the corner where he had been put, understood. Diablo had not come to collect a soul. Diablo had come to wear one. The thousand had bought a body. His body.