This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © Sara Tantlinger 2019

  Copyright © Unnerving 2019

  TO BE DEVOURED

  Sara Tantlinger

  “Sara Tantlinger’s To Be Devoured capitalizes on our macabre preoccupation with the uglier side of nature, with love that topples into obsession, and with madness that is strangely beautiful in its barbarity. Her writing is equivalent to those unremitting avian beings her protagonist is so enamored of: It will hook its talons through your flesh, sink its neck into the ribboned edges of your wounds, and only relinquish your blighted body when it has swallowed your very soul.”

  —Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, winner of the Indie Horror Book Awards for Best Debut Collection

  “Vultures, obsession, and an unnatural hunger: What more can you want in a horror story? With To Be Devoured, Sara Tantlinger has done it again as she ratchets up the terror in wonderfully surprising ways while crafting prose that’s always a heady blend of the vicious and the vibrant. A book that's absolutely not to be missed!”

  —Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens

  TO BE DEVOURED

  “In what distant deeps or skies.

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand, dare seize the fire?”

  —William Blake, “The Tyger”

  1

  Something is dead over there, hidden among the tall trees separating my property from Mr. Landon’s. Between our homes rests a football field-sized strip of land, lifeless and brown from the December days. The early hour stretches on outside, morphing periwinkle clouds into buttery tones of the rising sun.

  They don’t stop circling the trees; those poor, ugly, bastardized versions of birds. “Bird” doesn’t seem like the right term. Birds eat insects, seed and grain—the turkey vultures feast on marbled strips of the deceased. It’s easy to picture their bald, red heads and ivory beaks spearing into the bloated body of a cow or whatever else decays in the woods.

  Luna’s sleepy mumbles pull me away from the window. Her body slumbers in peace while I place a gentle kiss on her warm cheek before disappearing from the bedroom. Excitement jitters through my chest as I navigate my way into the basement where her surprise waits.

  A few summers ago, these beautiful, bright green moths took up residence on Mr. Landon’s barn. He said they were called Luna moths, so I spent my days yearning to understand their lifespan and smooth, dusted patterns. How could I gift them to my own Luna?

  The seasons turned colder; sometimes the internet is a wonderful place, and I was able to order Luna moth eggs. The big, plastic fish tank where the eggs turned to caterpillars proved to be a sustainable home. A few caterpillars didn’t make it, but dozens survived after I corrected the temperature in the basement and kept the shelter sprayed with mist to maintain the humidity.

  The shed skin of the caterpillars sits in a glass jar near the tank. It isn’t part of Luna’s gift, but throwing away the husks that once sustained each beautiful moth seemed too callous. Metamorphosis of the most recent batch happened four days ago. The adult Luna moths won’t live much longer. Such short lifespans for such magnificent creatures.

  Their silky, lime-green wings lay on the bottom of the tank between white oak sticks. With a careful hand, I collect the dead moths and secure the screen back over the remaining live ones. Luna’s present is almost done, so I won’t even need to wait for the rest to die.

  Across the tank on a wooden table rests my artwork—an elegant, sewn collage of moth wings for my Luna. The pieces are so delicate to work with, and I can only touch the edges or else the patterns will tatter and ruin. Thread the color of key lime pie holds the portions together in a distorted shape. Old moths merge to create a pair of larger wings. They’re too delicate to stitch on any more pieces. This pair would suit a young child more than an adult, but they are still so striking. Almost as beautiful as my Luna.

  Basement lights reflect off the emerald green, and particles of dust swirl through the air as I carry the masterpiece upstairs.

  “Andi?” Luna calls from the kitchen. Fresh brewed coffee wafts through the house and entices me into the kitchen where Luna sits at the table. Her raven curls are pulled back into a messy bun. She sees me peek around the corner and her face breaks into a cheery smile. The warm hazelnut tones of her skin glow from the stretches of early morning sunlight yawning in through the bay windows.

  Soft wings brush my arm from where I hold them behind my back. “I have a present for you.”

  “What for?” she asks but her eyes light up. The coffee mug is left forgotten on the table as she moves nearer.

  My shoulders shrug. “Well, I have that new appointment today, and you’ve been so supportive. I wanted to show my thanks by giving you something as beautiful as you.”

  Her cheeks flush as she smiles. “Love you, Andi.”

  “Love you, Luna-bug. Now close your eyes and hold out your hands but be careful because this is really delicate.”

  “Okay.” Dark eyes close and her smooth hands stretch out with palms up. Anticipation sends my heart into frantic beats. With gentle fingers I navigate the stitched quilt of wings onto her open palms. More green dust dances through the dim kitchen and sticks to both our clothes.

  “It’s so light! Can I open my eyes?”

  My lips stretch into a pleased smile. “Yes.”

  Luna looks down at the wings in her hands. Her grin slowly morphs into an open-mothed expression of revulsion.

  “What the hell? Are these…real?”

  Static clicks in my brain, trying to compute the situation. Heat rushes into my face. “Of course.”

  She yelps as if she’d just stepped on a bee and throws the wings toward me. They cascade lightly onto the floor before I can pluck them from the air. Half of a wing tears off from Luna’s throw and emerald dust billows like a sooty vapor.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers, looking between me and the mess on the floor. “It’s a bunch of dead bugs, Andi.” Her face distorts in disgust.

  My teeth clamp around the insides of my cheeks, as if I can gnaw and bleed away the hurt of her refusal. Silently, I nod and gather the wings up. Luna says something in the background, but the words blur together.

  “I love you, but…you focus on the weirdest things sometimes.”

  Luna leaves while I’m in the shower, but she placed a sweet apology note on my pillow, saying she’d go get lunch for us by the time I’m back from my session. I love her too much to stay mad, but the raw sting of rejection keeps pulsating in my brain, reminding me of all the time and attention I put into taking care of the eggs, the caterpillars, the moths—of cautiously stitching everything together to give my own Luna a set of wings.

  The wings live on in secret in my basement. After all that care, throwing them away would be disrespectful. As I get dressed, I give each moth whose sacrifice went into the collage of wings a small burial in my mind where my brain is already riddled with tombstones. Each grave marker nothing more than a symbol of solid pain, constantly digging broken concrete slabs deeper into my head, reminders of all the funerals I’ve attended in my nearly three decades of life.

  “Stop it,” I say to no one. A mild chill encircles the room. Hardwood floors bounce the cold back at me as if to say, we don’t want your frost and your death, keep it away.

  The soft flesh of my arms cradles the snowed-over memories, forces them back inside to the darkest attic corner of my brain. They stay rooted there in sticky cobwebs until my therapist pulls them free, like a spider knocking away the remnants of dead bugs.

  At least that’s how my old therapist maneuvered bad parts around. What will this new Dr. Fawning do? If I don’t talk to someone, all the sour fury inside my marrow builds up. An old doctor from my teenage years told me I’m in the gray area of suicide, meaning I contemplate it often, but most likely won’t pull the trigger or drive my car into a river. I loved my parents, but don’t want to follow in their footsteps to an early death. Freedom is all I want, to shift my spine and shoulder blades like tectonic plates and grow wings instead. Fly, fly away…

  After bundling up to face the early morning, I step outside and let the brisk air finish waking me up. Overhead, a kettle of vultures circles the expanse of field while another group rests in the bare branches of winter’s trees. All the beautiful leaves are gone, having long fell victim to the freezing nights from earlier this month. Today, however, promises sun and slight warmth because it’s Pennsylvania and the weather is indecisive, even in December.

  Ugly birds drift in slow, lazy circles, but I shouldn’t judge for what is simply in their nature. Every body is a waiting carcass to them, a future meal to be enjoyed—they don’t care about aesthetics. They take care of it, strip away the decayed flesh from bones like a ravenous, sacred obligation, sharing the duty with pulsating maggots and buzzing flies. A voracious feast of the dead, purging rot and liquified tissue from the skeleton until advanced decay claims everything, giving the remaining nutrients back to the soil, to nature. The way Mother Earth intended. Nothing wrong about it.

  Before she died, my last therapist told me I must confront what I’ve internalized about my own “perceived wrongness.” She understood, what it is to be a woman and how to come to terms with your own sense of wrong, what socie ty deems wrong about you—wrong nose, wrong tits, wrong thighs, voice, mannerisms…

  The carrion birds are survivors; they’ll outlast us all, thriving long after any apocalypse. Envy sends a hot jolt through my stomach for both the birds and their dead meals. The body is never wrong for them. They devour it. They just eat. They are ugly, and I cannot blame them for this, cannot fault their design the way society faults mine, faults us all.

  But today I move forward, inhaling the earthy scent of Dr. Fawning’s office, as if dozens of woodsy candles and wall plug-ins are alive around us. She settles in across the room and stares with an unblinking gaze. Her eyelashes are thick as a black forest, and her irises are the deep brown soil beneath. Silent encouragement settles in the air like a welcoming hug from an old friend.

  A deep breath rises in my lungs. “Guess I’ll start?”

  Quiet. A polite smile.

  “My story always feels the same. I mean, it’s what I told my last therapist before she…”

  There exists a horrible ache below my ribs from where I miss her. She was the last person I really trusted, the last person who felt like family besides Luna, but cancer doesn’t give a damn who you trust; it just takes away, eats up a person without giving anything back to the earth. No purpose, no place in the ecosystem—a giver of pain and nothing more. And now she is there in my brain’s forest of tombstones.

  What if scientists could shrink the vultures into incredibly miniature beings, tiny as bacteria? Maybe we could place them into our bodies, have them fly through our blood streams, our veins, our bones, our organs, our everything. Have them soar through and clean out all the bad parts—the cancer, the tumors, the buildup of what will one day bring our fleshy husks down into the unloving dirt.

  What a strange, marvelous thing it would be. Eat away the bad parts—for me, eat away my sadness, the sticky, bitter feelings with their rage inside my body, cloying my will to live somedays. Most days.

  A strangled cough erupts in my throat. “I hate winter. Every year, every tiny fucking snowflake reminds me. I drove past the elementary school the other day and saw those kids building a snowman. All so friggin’ happy.”

  Dr. Fawning twitches. It’s a slight movement, but the glassy expression in her eyes tell me she’s about to ask, and how does that make you feel?

  “Pissed off,” I answer the silent question. “And I know it shouldn’t. Not everyone has dead little brothers. Life isn’t fair, you know?”

  Dr. Fawning still says nothing, but the wind howls outside and she nods her head slightly. Quiet. Polite.

  “And then what my father did… It was like we were cursed. Or maybe I’m the cursed one since…” My voice dies into a whisper. “Since I’m the only one left. And my mother, I miss her so much.”

  My tongue becomes too heavy, like a dried onion bulb stuffed into the back of my throat. Enough sharing for today.

  The rest of our time blurs by, but she listens better than anyone, maybe even better than Luna.

  The harsh wind blows a chill through my coat and layered shirts when I leave. My hatred for winter remains as strongly now as it did thirteen years ago. There’s danger beneath the false purity of snow. Death in the speared points of icicles and frozen lakes. All of this cold, it never deserved my mother. She was brilliant, bright as a Shasta daisy, faking her attempts at happiness all those years after my brother died. When those daisies pop up now, I have to blink away scarlet stains on white petals. Always.

  All the therapy I attended, all the medications I endured, none of it filled the vacancy left inside me from losing her. They are all here, my family and more, buried deep in my brain, trying to save me from the desire to fall, to drown, to bleed.

  My palm strikes hard against my left cheek. Pain and heat. A slight ring in my ears as I drive.

  Do not dwell in graveyards. Do not dwell in graveyards.

  Hot air blows from the car vents, warming my fingers on the still-cold steering wheel. Outside the windshield, beyond the reflection of my cloudy face, the vultures mark the gray sky like a connect-the-dots game. A shudder dances through my spine as the car moves beneath the circling scavengers. Mr. Landon’s property is before mine, but hopefully he’s busy tending to cows or doing whatever he does in his barn.

  My car creeps forward down the dirt and gravel road, too low to the ground to press the gas any harder without risking a nasty scrape. The old farmer emerges from the barn and waves at me as he walks toward the driveway.

  “Shit.” My foot presses the brake and I roll the passenger window down. Strong traces of hay and cow manure drift in with the wind. Polite Fake Smile mode switches on. Landon isn’t a bad man, it’s just there are simply so many conversations about farm animals and the winter weather forecast a girl can take.

  We’re the only two out this far in the woods, isolated by a circle of trees connecting our driveway to the main road. Now I haunt my family’s old house, more of a ghost than my mother or brother, or even my father, ever could be. I don’t have enough money to leave, and I have come to take comfort in the familiar surroundings. There is always a song here—the cicadas of summer, hooting owls in the fall, and coyotes howling in the dead of winter.

  There’s comfort in Mr. Landon, too. He always looks the same—thick, snowy white hair. Even thicker glasses. He looks like the kind of man who was very handsome once, probably with dark hair and light eyes. He smiles, revealing a strong set of teeth and dimples that blend in with his other lines, like a great wrinkled bug. Big eyes blink at me with suspicion.

  “What are you up to, Miss Andi?” His voice harbors a slight Tennessee lilt despite the decades he’s been in Pennsylvania.

  Polite Fake Smile wavers. “Just coming home from a drive, Mr. Landon.” The old man doesn’t need to know all my business.

  “Cows are restless this morning,” he continues, as if I asked. “Winter storm’s gonna roll in.”

  “Ah. Well, I’ll let you get back to work.”

  He waves my words away like they’re gnats. “About lunchtime for me. You want some gravy and biscuits?”

  “No, thank you. I have plans with Luna.” My grip tightens around the steering wheel.

  “Yep, saw that red car of hers go up the drive earlier.”

  Thanks, eagle-eye. You friggin’ watcher of all.

  “If you girls get hungry, walk on down. I made plenty. Have to with my appetite.” He chuckles and pats his stomach, which isn’t nearly as pudgy as I’d expect from someone who eats like he does. “Before my old lady passed on, she used to look me straight in the eye and say, ‘Henry, you’re gonna eat yourself to death one day. You glutton!’”

  He wags his finger through the open window and the whiff of damp hay strengthens. “That’s still my sin. Nothing like a homecooked meal, but if you’re gonna have a sin, I say gluttony is the best one.” He winks, like we’re sharing a good inside joke.

  A forced laugh rasps itself out of my dry throat.

  “What about you?”

  “What about what?”

  The good-natured smile on his face gets replaced by a darker grin. “What’s your sin?”

  “Oh…” I trail off. My answer turns to a dawdling uhmm as the question catches me off guard. He can’t mean Luna. Landon’s old, but he’s never showed us any hate. “My mom used to say I had the sin of wrath in me. She wasn’t wrong.”

  He squints and leans forward so his head protrudes through the open window. “Wrath. You gotta watch that one.”

  “Right.” Our eyes meet. “Well, I’m going to go. Take care.”

  “You too, Miss Andi.” He lingers for a moment and then backs away, but there’s no hesitation in me to roll up the window and drive. Jesus.

  For a moment I almost considered telling him, but the cold way he looked at me changed my mind. My mother and I were alike in many aspects, but her depression was quiet and hidden, softly bubbling beneath her surface. Mine was more active, more vengeful. During these times, I felt more like the daughter of wrath itself rather than my mother’s child.

  After my brother’s death, I beat the shit out of anyone in school who said anything about him. One wrong look, one twisted joke about him landing like a potato sack on the ground, about my parents being too stupid to watch their own child, and I flew at my victim like a winged tiger, baring my teeth and going for the jugular. My mother understood my rage, but she made me change schools after I slashed a girl’s forearm with an X-ACTO knife in art class. Four years later, my parents were dead. A nearby aunt took me in until graduation, but I did not speak to my peers and told myself to be content in my loneliness.

 

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