Devourer of Souls

ONEMy childhood friend Jake Burns is getting pretty upset, stomping and waving next to what’s left of Mr. Trung’s koi pond. I’m sitting nearby, writing this beneath an old Oriental-style gazebo, which looks just like I remember as a kid, except its white paint has faded with time. Honestly, I can’t believe it’s still standing after all these years.The koi pond hasn’t fared nearly as well. Its concrete border is cracked and crumbling. Water lilies clog its scummy surface. And I have to wonder. Have the koi somehow survived the years? Do they still live and breed in the pond’s depths? Are they still waiting, after all this time, for Mr. Trung to wade into the water, hands upraised, chanting . . . ?No.I don’t want to think about that. I don’t want to be here, either.Neither does Jake. He’d beaten me here, was standing over the spot where he once destroyed an old stone chest with a hand-sledge. As I’d thrashed my way through overgrown weeds he’d wave

THREESaturday“Here he comes,” Kevin Ellison muttered as we browsed over a table filled with used comic books at the Commons Trailer Park Yard Sale. I glanced up and, sure enough, there was Jake Burns peddling his clunky old bike down the fairway toward us.I snorted and returned my attention to an issue of Rom: Space Knight. “Peachy.”“Y’know, he really seems to dig you,” whispered Gary McNamara from the other side of the table, where he was perusing an issue of Thor. “I mean really. Like you’re best buds or something.”I shook my head and sighed, trying to lose myself in Rom battling these blobby aliens whose tongues turned into drills that bored into a person’s skull and ate their brains so the aliens could become them. It was a little cruel but as Jake clattered to a stop I wondered if that’s why he didn’t fit in. Maybe he was like one of these aliens. After eating the brains of the “real” Jake Burns a few years ago, he’d never learned how to act like the rest of us.His sne

FIVEIt nagged me on my ride home after we all parted ways on Asher Street: something was wrong with Jake. Something had always been wrong with him. It wasn’t just how annoying he was or his lack of social graces or his dirty jokes that weren’t funny or even his lightning-quick temper. It lay deeper, and somehow I understood without actually knowing it had something to do with his dad. Which made me think about the similarities between Jake’s dad and mine, and how similar we were, in a way . . . even if I didn’t want to admit it.Neither of us had a mom. Both our dads worked at the lumber mill (until Jake’s got fired a few months ago) and both fought in Vietnam. Even though he wasn’t a drunk like Jake’s dad, my dad liked a beer every day after work to wind down.This also made me think even more about how Jake had latched onto me, following me around the most. In a burst of juvenile paranoia, I started worrying that maybe Jake hung around me so much because he recognized something i

SEVENDespite Dad’s reassurances that night, I had a nightmare, one of the worst I’d ever had. We were all back at the Commons Yard Sale—me, Kevin and Jake—standing before Mr. Trung’s table. I couldn’t move, frozen in that way we usually are in nightmares. The air felt thick and humid. Everything sounded muffled, as if we stood underwater.Chanting guttural words, Mr. Trung laid tiles out in overlapping rows. I couldn’t see the engravings on them because they blurred and moved across the ivory. He laid the tiles, arranging them, preparing them . . .For us to play.Then Mr. Trung stopped his strange, gurgling song. He stared at each of us in turn. I desperately tried to move my arms, legs, head, something, but I couldn’t. I was locked in place, joints frozen, feet rooted to the ground. Mr. Trung’s eyes—much larger and a deeper black than I’d ever seen—seemed to peel back layers of me until I felt raw, exposed and quivering beneath his gaze.Mr. Trung reached into the black wooden

NINEAfter dropping the blueberries off at home (and telling myself over and over that Mr. Trung hadn’t seen me hiding in his bushes) I pedaled to Bobby Drake’s farm to bale hay. Bobby’s dad ran a dairy farm just outside town. That’s where most of us earned our cash. It was pretty much an all-summer occupation. With Kevin still most likely chopping firewood it was just me and Bobby and Bobby’s younger brother Matt . . . and, well, the last person I expected to see: Jake. Of course, Jake’s family needed the money—his dad out of work again—and Mr. Drake always welcomed the extra help.We all arrived in front of the Drake barn around ten. Mr. Drake pulled his tractor out, hitched up one of his wagons. We clambered on and trundled off. We usually worked until we filled that wagon, then afterward we’d hitch up an empty wagon, work straight until noon and break for lunch, which Mrs. Drake always packed into a cooler for us.Then we’d get back to work. Once we filled the wagons, we’d retur