RED HOLLOW ROAD
By Chloe York
Chapter 1
Instead of sleeping with Cassandra Smith, I killed the devil in front of her.
I raced to the trunk—to him—my prepared excuses dying before they passed my lips. I couldn’t worry what Cassandra might think. There wasn’t enough time.
The cool air whistling through the basement’s ceiling vents tightened the bare skin on my stomach while Cassandra mumbled some confused protestations over my sudden departure from the sofa and her arms. I couldn’t hear her, not over the familiar snarls and thunks coming from the ornate wooden trunk beside the long-defunct air hockey table.
I found my shirt on the ground and wrestled myself back into it. Upstairs, the phone was ringing.
“What are you doing, Blythe?” Cassandra asked, crossing to me while she fiddled with her eyebrow ring. Shuddering at a violent jolt from the trunk, I finished buttoning my shirt with clumsy fingers and regarded Cassandra with as much calm as I could.
Gorgeous Cassandra Smith with her blue hair and the little birthmark on her temple I had long fantasized pressing my lips against. And now she was here. Actually here with me after all the anxious texts, stammered flirtations in front of my locker and invented excuses to see her after school. After all the agonizing uncertainty, she was actually here.
This perfect moment, our first kiss, my first time laid bare with someone I cared so much about and I wasn’t even present for it. The entirety of me was in the shuddering casket with the red-skinned monster. I wouldn’t let him ruin this. He’d taken enough from me already.
Inspired, I gestured for Cassandra to kneel with me on the thin carpet. After all, there was always a chance she could see him and if she could see him, then she would understand why I never went out, why I kept everyone at a distance and why I was so afraid—
But beneath that fear, a selfish part of me longed for her—for everyone—to know that I had given up my life to protect theirs. Because without Mom and without me, our devil would take the world.
“Can you hear that?” I asked, voice shrill. I cleared my throat.
Her shoulder brushed mine as she joined me in front of the trunk. After a beat, she shook her head. “What should I be hearing?”
“I’m going to open this,” I said, placing a hand on the trunk’s lid. Even in the dark room, the wooden surface gleamed with fresh oil. I was certain Mom had polished it that day. Stuck at home monitoring our devil with nothing better to do, she cleaned incessantly. “I need you to hang back and give me some space. And whatever you um… Whatever you see, don’t be scared. Okay?”
Cassandra kissed the corner of my mouth as she rose.
“All right, I’ll play. As long as we can get back to…”
I stopped hearing her. The devil’s shrieks were louder than I had ever heard them before. The coffin’s lid flew open and slammed back down, making Cassandra jump.
“Get back!” I shouted and in the same breath, I pried a pointed shard of wood from the nearest cigar box on a shelf above my head and heaved the trunk’s lid open, facing the devil as I had done so many times before. While the sight of him awake should have instilled a primal fear that hastened the killing, I could never resist taking a moment to study him before I did.
The monster’s skin was a pinkish red, a color I used to love before I learned of his existence. Multiple horns crowned his bald head and he had pointed ears like an elf or a pixie. He had no nose. Instead, he breathed through two slits above his tusked mouth. Thick dark fur covered his lower half, the hair tapering off around the ankles. His eyes were entirely black, inky and gleaming. As those eyes took in my approach, I could see myself reflected in them, Cassandra close behind me with a dazed look on her lovely face.
“I don’t see anything,” she said.
My heart panged. No. Of course she couldn’t see him.
The monster’s bisected tongue stretched behind his sharp teeth as another animal cry emanated from his throat.
“What are you holding?” Cassandra asked.
The devil thrashed as I grasped one of his arms and pushed it aside to reveal a black X tattooed across the monster’s chest.
“Blythe?” she pressed.
Before the monster could stop me, I plunged the stake through the X, careful to release my grip before the stake glowed orange and disintegrated into ash. The devil’s scream was equal parts animal and human, a sound I could never wash out of my head. That scream lived inside my chest, a constant buzzing itch. I wondered if Mom felt it, too. Like the headaches she always got when our devil awakened, we must have experienced him differently.
With a shudder, his chest caved in, his skin dried out, and every bit of him shriveled like a mummy. Within moments, the monster lay still—a desiccated carcass in a pretty carved trunk inside the basement of a middle-class, suburban home.
After it was over, I stood panting over him, my blurred vision snagging on the couch over Cassandra’s shoulder. The demon’s emaciated husk shifted, making a leathery scraping sound I flinched against. Eyes locked with Cassandra’s, throat bobbing, I reached down and closed the lid, sealing my monster away until the next time he woke.
Cassandra blinked while I held my breath. While I’d put my devil to sleep countless times, no one had ever seen me do it. I knew Dad had watched Mom stake our monster on several ill-timed occasions, but he had no memory of it. Whatever magic made the red demon invisible to anyone outside of some old bloodline dating back to my great-great grandmother was very good at keeping secrets.
And tonight, that suited me just fine. It meant Cassandra and I could pick up where we’d left off, like nothing happened. Maybe I’d even work up the courage to tell her I’d been accepted to New York University, the college she was set to attend next year. Tell her I’d follow her there—that I’d follow her anywhere, devilish burden be damned.
Mom didn’t know I’d even applied to NYU. It was an impetuous urge, only partially influenced by the eighteen-hundred miles it would put between me and that ticking time bomb of a casket. No, what I really desired was to remain in Cassandra Smith’s spectacular orbit after high school. We only just found each other. I couldn’t lose her now.
“Were we just—?” Cassandra murmured with a tilt of her head. She hugged her shoulders, studying me with an odd sort of blankness.
“I—Sorry about that,” I said to the floor. I tousled my hair, brunette and curly with some fuchsia highlights I’d gotten to impress Cassandra, a feeble attempt at edginess.
“About what?” she asked, knitting her brows.
I inhaled, forcing my gaze up.
“Nothing,” I smiled.
Everything was fine. We were going to be fine. We’d go to New York together, cram into a tiny dorm, frequent bookstores and art galleries and night clubs every day. We could do whatever we wanted. Complete, delicious freedom. No more isolated nights standing guard over the devil. No more denying myself. I deserved a life beyond this prison and I deserved someone to share it with.
For so long, it was only Mom and our monster.
And I’d had enough.
Cassandra was my future now. My everything.
I closed the distance between us, prepared to show her as much, but when I reached for her, she stepped back, eyes flicking to the stairs leading up to the living room. We’d been up there a short while ago eating pizza rolls and watching bad reality TV before the power went out and we moved to the basement to trip the breakers, opting instead to paw at each other in the dark. With Mom at work all night, this evening should have been perfect. But then, like my devil sensed how much this night meant to me, he decided to wake up and ruin everything.
“We should slow down,” Cassandra said, leaning forward to straighten her stockings.
“Oh,” I said, breath hitching. Before I had a chance to get the flush out of my cheeks or offer further monosyllabic apologies, the front door clattered open and Mom burst into the basement, flawless blonde curls bouncing as she clomped down the steps.
“Why weren’t you answering your phone?” she snapped. Cassandra fidgeted, shuffling her stockinged feet on the carpet. “Why are all the lights off?”
“The power went out,” I blurted, dazedly off-kilter from Mom’s sudden, unwelcome arrival. My eyes darted from my mother to Cassandra and back again. “We were just about to try the breakers.”
Shoving past us, she gave the devil’s casket a meaningful look as she crossed to the breaker box. My breath hitched at the sight of my bra on the floor. Subtle as I could, I kicked it under the couch and out of Mom’s sight.
The door to the breaker box gave a metallic thud as she opened it and flipped the switches. There were several clicks and beeps from upstairs as all of the kitchen appliances came back on and the television blared to life. Mom turned on the overhead lights. I blinked at the sudden luminescence, feeling my face grow hotter. Thankfully, I had my dad’s olive complexion instead of Mom’s fair one. Not that anything ever made her blush.
Finally noticing Cassandra, Mom plastered on one of her beauty queen smiles.
“Hi, there! I’m Andie,” she said, opening her arms wide. She never shook hands. She hugged.
“Um, hello!” Cassandra replied, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. Mom’s
energy made you want to match it. “Is that short for Andrea? Cause I have an aunt named Andrea and she likes people to call her Andie. Mine’s Cassandra.”
Mom grimaced and rolled her eyes. “My full name is Andromeda. My daddy loved Greek mythology. Andromeda, leader of humanity. I never liked it. Your name’s Greek too, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” Cassandra replied with a thin smile, out of genuine ease or anxious politeness, I couldn’t tell.
Still holding Cassandra’s shoulders, Mom looked her over while I died of embarrassment. My mother knew I liked girls even before I did. Accepting my pansexual identity was nothing. A shrug instead of a gasp. But this was the first time I’d ever dated anyone and Mom was humiliatingly ecstatic for me.
“You’re as cute as a bug’s ear,” Mom said. “I’m sorry if I spoiled y’all’s evening. I just get paranoid when I can’t get ahold of my baby girl.”
Mom shot me a look that I withered beneath.
“So do you have to go back to work now, or…?” I asked, the expectant question spilling clumsily out.
“Nope. Got off early. Thought I’d catch up on my stories. But I’ll get out of y’all’s way.” She gave Cassandra another squeeze. “It was so nice to meet you, honey.”
Then she padded upstairs, giving me another hard look on the way.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “She can be a little intense.”
“No, no,” said Cassandra. “Your mom’s nice.”
I stifled a scoff. If it hadn’t been for Mom, this night with Cassandra might have happened a lot sooner. Pete Wakelyn’s party last Fall. I had planned on finally asking her out then. Worked extra shifts at the bookstore to pay for a slinky black dress I’d been coveting, dyed the edges of my hair, perfected the dreaded winged eyeliner technique, armor for a battle that would win me the girl of my dreams.
When the night of the party arrived, Mom had knocked on my bedroom door just after I’d zipped myself into the dress. Seeing me standing there in the uncharacteristically daring garment, wide-eyed and eager, the regret on Mom’s face was obvious, even though the words she’d spoken had been business-like, clipped.
“I need you here tonight,” she’d said. I’d only managed an incredulous blink before she’d added, “The clinic called me in at the last minute. There’ll be other parties.”
And that had been that. She had her job and I had mine.
I’d spent the night on the basement couch in the expensive dress, fondling a wooden stake, wishing the devil would wake up so at least I wouldn’t have missed the party for nothing. But of course by morning, he hadn’t so much as stirred and Cassandra’s social media profiles were flooded with photos from Pete’s party, Janine White’s lips pressed against hers in the last of the selfies.
Cassandra and Janine dated for months after that, my one chance blown. All because of that monster in the casket. I couldn’t let him do the same thing to us now.
“Well listen, would you um… We can put a movie on,” I tried. “I’m sure Mom’ll be asleep any minute. The night shift always wipes her out.”
“Actually, I… I better get going,” Cassandra said, avoiding my eyes.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, heart hammering.
“No, yeah! I just feel really tired all of a sudden.”
Fighting an instinctual urge to grab her by the shoulders and beg her to stay, I worked at my lower lip, sloughing away a ribbon of dry skin. The bitter tang of blood sat heavily on my tongue as my eyes trailed back to the ornate wooden trunk.
My mind returned to Cassandra’s lips on mine, her fingers on my bare skin, touching me in places I’d never been touched in my entire eighteen years of life. I pushed my lust down, defeated and confused, and walked her upstairs.
“Text me tomorrow if you want to meet at the bookstore or something,” I tried.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said, staring at the ground. With great hope, I kissed her cheek. That’s when she finally looked at me.
Her expression told me everything. Whatever happened between us had ended no sooner than it had begun. Whatever she’d seen or remembered I would never know, but one thing was certain.
Cassandra didn’t want me anymore.
Mom stayed up with me until I fell asleep, rubbing my back and letting me sob into her shoulder.
“You’ll never forget your first heartbreak, baby girl,” she said softly. “But I promise, it’ll get easier.”
“Does it still hurt when you think about Dad?” I sniffed.
I wanted honesty from her, not the empty cliches all mothers told their jilted daughters.
“Yes,” she said with no hesitation. “I will always miss our old life. I’ll always miss him.”
“It’s always gonna be like this, isn’t it?” I said quietly, dread growing in my heart to displace the heavy ache there. “We can’t have both.”
She knew what I meant. As long as we had our devil, we couldn’t have a normal life. A part of us would always remain hidden from any partner we chose. I supposed I should be grateful for learning it from Cassandra, like I should have learned it from my parents’ failed marriage. This life with my monster was a life I could never share.
And I knew that for once, Mom had no comforting words for me. Because she had none for herself.
