THE DEVOURER

Peace comes at a price. If I’m willing to take on a burden the weight of which few people could bear, should I not be called a savior? My kindness has gone unstated. I do not care for it to be mentioned either, it is enough to survive.

Water splashing into the sink, I stare at the mirror; a pale, sunken face looks back at me. It’s midnight already, and the bathroom is lit only by the streetlight flickering across the road. I shroud myself in a dark robe, to blend in with the gloomy night. The town sleeps on, safe in the knowledge that their vigilante hero will work to keep it that way. My hands shake slightly. I leave my house, hammer secure at the waist.

It started around three months ago. There’s no telling the exact date it appeared. A young boy was the first to notice. A small hole, as wide as a candle, had materialized in the center of our town park, on the stone tile of a gazebo. Kids would often throw pebbles and sticks inside its seemingly endless depth, but the adults barely noticed. A week later, it had expanded to the size of a basketball. This started to cause concern among the adults, who kept their children well away from it. The mayor hired workers to fill it up with cement, but after 3 days of pouring the liquid down this endless void, the idea was given up. The townspeople were wary and didn’t dare to wander anywhere near the gazebo. I, however, went there sometimes still, puzzled and intrigued, just to take a look at it expanding ever so slowly. It wasn’t every day you saw such a strange thing happen in an uneventful town like ours. I had covered it up with a rusting metal sheet, after all, it would’ve been troublesome if a small child accidentally fell into it. A week later the metal sheet had disappeared. The hole had doubled in size. The darkness of it was dense, even reaching inside it made my muscles stiffen up in fear. My friend suggested we lower a phone into it, and see what we could capture. As soon as he had said it, I knew it was a pointless idea. There was nothing inside; you cannot shine a light into the infinity of space and expect it to light up the air. Even so, I agreed to it. Tying a phone to a long rope, he lowered it carefully, into the pit. Only a few meters down, it was swallowed completely by the dark. There were five or six of us, on our knees, waiting to hear it hit the ground. Nothing. Hours passed by as all of us took turns to gently lower it. When the rope reached its end, we tied another one to it. Then another one, and another, and another. As the evening fell, we finally gave up and decided to pull it back up and see what it had managed to record, if anything. Only, the phone never came back up. We were surprised and horrified to find the rope frayed, and the phone missing. The park was sealed off after that, an undercurrent of fear running through the townspeople. No one would dare approach it, or even spare a glance. It was talked about in low voices, speculations running wild. The mayor delegated a few officials to keep a check on it. Not that it would’ve done anything. The hole still grew larger, with every passing day. When the gazebo disappeared too, that was when the gravity of the situation dawned on everyone. No matter what we did, the pit kept on growing, devouring. No fences could stop it, and no amount of cement could fill it up. Week after week, expanding its stretching darkness until it had consumed the whole park.

The Johnsons were the first to leave. Their house was the nearest one to the park, it made sense. They had called me one night, to load their things in the moving truck. I didn’t ask too many questions, it was obvious by their uneasy glances in the direction of the park that they were terrified beyond measure. Their moving out marked the beginning of our town’s abandonment. It was a busy couple of days, packing up the lives of whole families, some of which I had known since childhood, into moving trucks, bidding them farewell.

Reporters started pouring in from the nearby cities, eager to witness the mysterious phenomenon. The government also sent scientists, and people with equipment to study this ever-expanding abyss. The result was more or less the same. Nobody knew. They sprouted nonsense about EMF, tectonic plates, sinkholes, and whatnot, but I knew all of it to be false. What it was couldn’t be defined. The dark of it wasn’t oppressive because the light couldn’t reach the bottom, it was because it devoured the light too. I don’t blame them. Facing something unholy and mysterious as this was bound to make them uncomfortable. It is difficult for people of scientific persuasion to imagine something inhumane could just appear out of nowhere, seemingly without reason, to wreck our perception of what’s ‘possible’.

I and my friends were helping another family move out one late evening. Their daughter ran around, trying to carry small things to the truck. The street was quiet, shop displays boarded up, and the windows of the apartments were all dark. It made me realize just how much the population had dwindled. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I looked out at the hole, half a kilometer away. By tomorrow the distance would be less. In a week, this building would be swallowed too. Sighing, I opened up my water bottle to take a swig when I noticed a figure stumbling around near the edge of the hole. Squinting, I tried to make out what the person was trying to do. As he swung his arms about, there was a sound of glass shattering. I shouted at him to be careful and took a step in his direction. It’d be no good if some drunk fool fell into the hole, town spirits were low enough. I’d only taken a few steps before that man let out a howl and broke out in a run to the edge of the hole. I ran too, and so did my friend. I heard my friend gasp in horror as the man jumped off. By the time we reached the edge, the man was long gone. We called out to him, no response. The same quiet, but it sunk my heart. Rescue operations were no use, nothing that had ever gone down was ever seen again. The town mourned for him. A debt-ridden father of three who had nothing to live for. After gambling away the last of his money in a desperate attempt to earn enough to relocate his family, he had found no other way or reason to live on. In life he had nothing, but in death, all of us cried for him. We held a vigil, candles lit at the church to pray for his soul.

Amid all this fear and grief, it took us a few days to notice that the hole had stopped growing. The edge hadn’t moved an inch outward. The coincidence did not escape our notice. Even if outwardly we mourned for the sacrifice, we were relieved. If one death was all it took to save all our lives, then it wasn’t too bad an exchange. Even if his life had meant nothing, in his death he had been honored. People, however, seemed to think that this was the end of it. I knew better. This monstrosity hadn’t just appeared in this town to consume one human life and stop. There had to be more to it. Fencing around the hole went up once again. The relief was short-lived though because two weeks later, the whole fence had disappeared, once again, fallen into the unfathomable darkness. The anxiety returned with full force. The ones who could afford to leave, left. The ones who couldn’t, well they stayed and waited for death. In a few months, the whole town would be devoured.

A child had gone missing. His mother’s cries shattered the quiet of the terror-riddled atmosphere of the town. The leftover people banded together, and organized search parties to look for the missing child. Street cameras were checked. Every corner of the town was searched thoroughly, posters stuck on every surface. That was until they noticed the hole had stopped growing once more. Again, the town was struck by a cold terror. Another vigil. More candles. The news stations had resorted to calling it ‘the Devourer’. We still called it the hole. Rumors spread, as they do when little else is known. I believed that it called people to it. A thrall the poor victims couldn’t resist. If you gazed into the darkness long enough, you could just about hear it calling out. It didn’t surprise me when another one went missing. It was a young woman this time, who had left her boyfriend’s house late one night and never made it back home. A homeless man, an elderly woman, another child, a nurse, a sick man. All of them, one by one, week after week, disappeared without a trace. Sometimes, people were even taken from their homes. It was believed that they went themselves, while some whispered about a monster that came in the dead of the night to whisk them away. I didn’t know where the monster theory had come from, but it was a little ridiculous and offensive. People claimed to have seen it, a figure shrouded in black, red eyes popping from its taut pale head, razor-sharp nails, and back twisted beyond that of a human.

I’ve noticed that the first time for anything is difficult. Mine was an accident, born of a moment of panic and frustration. I regretted it greatly afterward, prayed for forgiveness, lit the most candles. The priest thought me a kind soul. But the weight of my sin was heavy. I went out less. By now I reckon they think I’ve disappeared too. But the only thing I wanted to do was to save us. It had worked. I had bought us time. It was unbelievable that the rest of them didn’t see such an obvious solution. What was a couple of lives against a hundred? But it was an accident, the poor child hadn’t done anything. He was just curious, as kids are. My hand had slipped, I only meant to pull him back, but he got surprised, and fell, stunned, engulfed by the darkness.

Covered from head to toe in my dark cape, I helped people. Every week I’d find someone. I used to cry at first, but I didn’t anymore. My actions weighed heavily on my shoulders, twisting my spine until I couldn’t stand straight anymore. I didn’t sleep, or eat. It wasn’t needed. My work was always clean, they went so peacefully. The bodies were still warm when I threw them down. The darkness wasn’t so impenetrable anymore. I could see the smiles of the people I sent there. The scent of blood was so thick I wondered if one could smell it on me.

The thought made me laugh.