The Devil Crept In

by Ania Ahlborn

“But I’d stay out of those woods if I were you,” he said. “There’s something out there, and I can tell you it’s not a cougar or any of the nonsense the police keep trying to sell.”

Strange how life could turn on a dime.

But after what Mr. G. had suggested, Stevie couldn’t help but wonder, was the fence there to keep kids in, or to keep something out?

The cry was so all-encompassing that it seemed to blast in from every direction, as though an angel had stuck her head through a cloud and screamed down from the sky, her cry wrapping around the world like a choking veil.

Stopped and shone upon the back of a naked, knobby spine. A fleshy tail. A huddled thing.

The twisted-up man-thing snapped its giant head around. It sneered, its teeth black and glistening with gore.

There was clawing behind him—long nails skittering across a slick surface.

The Not-Jude, eyes little more than bruised hollows, glinting cold blue from the depths of those darkened pits; skin as thin as a rice-paper wrapper, peeling away from the apples of his cheeks in flesh-toned curls. That putrid basement smell filled Aunt Mandy’s kitchen with the scent of warm garbage. And Jude’s lips . . . they were no longer chapped as much as they were gone, corroded away to reveal those gruesome teeth, like a gaping hole in his head.