The Devil in Silver

Loochie caught up to the Devil first, halfway down Northwest 4. She came from behind and grasped its right horn with her right hand. She held the horn and leaned backward, her weight would do the rest. This was a variation on the way she’d taken Pepper out. Apply a little weight and momentum properly and nearly anybody will go down. Loochie was small but she knew how to tussle. She’d learned how to protect herself on the juvenile psychiatric ward.

The Devil’s head jerked to the right, hard, and for the first time it looked back at her. It noticed her. And she saw more of it. The white eyes and the twitching ears and those two sharp horns. The long slope of its face, leading down to its wet nose, which sniffled and snuffed. And last its mouth, which fell open with surprise. Then its tongue shot out, almost a foot long and the color of uncooked dough.

Loochie Gardner had yoked the Devil.

It didn’t speak, it grumbled like an old Johnny Popper tractor. The Devil snorted, once, and from its nose snot slapped against the floor. A gray puddle the size of Pepper’s foot. The Devil shook its head twice and, just that fast, Loochie lost her grip. She was flipped forward. She went down to the floor, on her stomach, right in front of the thing.

The Devil raised its right foot to stomp her in the small of her back. But she wasn’t alone. Pepper was there, too.

He didn’t have the finesse to go grabbing horns like rodeo-riding Loochie, so instead, he just full-body tackled the beast. Well, that makes it sound a bit too graceful. Pepper threw his body at the Devil’s left leg, which was supporting all its weight. This was a variation on the way Pepper had taken down Loochie’s family. It didn’t take much to topple the Devil just then, and Pepper gave it all the not-much he had.

The Devil and Pepper fell into a heap. Loochie scrambled off safely.

Right after they both fell, Pepper felt like he’d been dropped into a freezing pool. The pain in his chest, all along his rib cage, made him lose his breath. He gasped from it. He shivered. His vision went nearly black.

The Devil fell face-forward, onto its stomach. Its head slammed hard against the floor, a thump as loud as a couch being dropped. In that position it couldn’t right itself. The thin arms, frail branches, pushed and strained but didn’t have the strength to lift that enormous head. The Devil huffed on the ground, spraying more snot as it breathed, the mucus catching in the fur around its mouth and nose. Its legs scrambled, but they were pretty powerless, too. The Devil couldn’t get up. Now it looked as vulnerable as any living thing.

So when Loochie climbed onto its back again, when she grabbed both horns from behind, when she pulled with all the strength her wiry shoulders could muster, it was difficult not to feel just a spark of sympathy, yes, for the Devil. Pepper experienced shivers of recognition: when the cops had him in handcuffs, or the orderly wrestled him to his bed, or the days stuck in restraints. Pepper didn’t want to make that connection when looking upon the Devil, but he did.

That empathy wasn’t lost on Loochie, either. She pulled the great head and it reared back. She smelled the fur, sour and unwashed, and she recognized the scent. If she shut her eyes, she might believe this was just another patient, trapped on the unit for so long that he’d stopped bathing, stopped caring. Heatmiser was like that. Hadn’t she felt the same at more than one point?

But then the Devil bucked and kicked and Loochie lost her grip.

Her right hand slipped loose from one horn. The Devil thrust its head up in the next moment. Its horn stabbed Loochie’s palm. It burst through her skin and dug in. Then the Devil yanked its head left and the horn tore out of Loochie’s flesh. Right away, her blood ran fast, down her forearm.

The sound Loochie made, it wasn’t a yell or a cry, it was more like a honk. And yet she wasn’t actually in pain. She was saved by her acute-stress reaction. The trauma of this moment would hit her later, but right now she just had to stay alive. So she stayed where she was, on the beast’s back. Her left hand gripped its left horn. And when she spoke, it was only to give instructions.

“Grab his legs,” Loochie muttered. The blood from her wounded right hand had soaked her whole shirtsleeve already.

Pepper had only half-recovered from the pain of his tackle, but there wasn’t any more time.

Loochie shouted, “Pepper! Please!”

Pepper moved on his hands and knees and dropped all his weight on the backs of the Devil’s spindly legs while Loochie tried to regain control of the head. Her left hand stayed in place and despite the gash in her palm she squeezed her right hand around the right horn again. Loochie held on even tighter than before. She pulled the Devil’s head so far backward that its nose pointed up at the ceiling. Like this, its throat was exposed.

“Now what?” Pepper shouted. “Now what?!”