One-Eyed Jack by Lawrence Watt-Evans Page A

cares
for me, and I care for him. I take care of him when his own mother
won’t.
    I didn’t have an immediate answer for
that. I took another cautious step forward. “He cares for
you?”
    He feeds me. I’m so
hungry, so very hungry, and Jack is good to me.
    I shuddered. “He feeds you? Feeds you
what?” I had a horrible suspicion I already knew the
answer.
    He feeds me flesh. I can’t
eat anything else.
    “ What flesh?”
    It didn’t answer at first,
but just as I was about to suggest that it had eaten Jack’s own
finger, it said, He brought me a cat once,
but I couldn’t eat it. My teeth wouldn’t touch it.
    I felt slightly ill. “Whose
cat?”
    Jack brought it to
me.
    “ You don’t know where he
got it?”
    He brought it to
me.
    Whatever this thing was, it clearly
didn’t worry about details. “Was it alive?”
    Of course. Jack knew I
can’t eat dead things. He had brought me meat, meat from his
father’s table, but I couldn’t touch it.
    That was something, anyway. I had been
afraid the kid was killing neighborhood pets even before he brought
the cat. I hoped it was just a stray he’d caught, and not one he’d
kidnaped.
    If the thing could eat cats, of
course, then bringing that live one might have been even
worse.
    Have you brought me
food?
    I stepped back involuntarily. “No,” I
said, a little more vehemently than I intended. I paused and
glanced back at the house, but there was no sign my little outburst
had roused anyone.
    Go away, then. Let me wait
for Jack.
    “ I want to know more about
you,” I said. “Do you have a name?”
    It turned its head toward
me; I could just barely make that out in the dark. A name?
    “ Yes, a name.”
    I did once. I was called
Jenny. Jack calls me Jenny now.
    “ Jenny?”
    Yes.
    “ Any last
name?”
    It shook his head. Not any more.
    That implied it had a last
name once, and that meant it might have been human once, or at least passed for
human. This might be a ghost; I’d met ghosts before, or at least
I’d met things that claimed to be ghosts. “What happened?” I
asked.
    Go away. I don’t want to
talk to you.
    “ I’m not going anywhere
until I know more about you.”
    I’m hungry.
    “ I don’t have any food for
you.”
    Then go away. I’m so
hungry! I could feel its hunger now, a
gnawing emptiness. This wasn’t anything as natural as an empty
belly.
    “ Jenny, tell me what
happened,” I coaxed. “Why are you hungry? Why are you here, under
this tree? Where were you before, when you had a last
name?”
    Go away.
    I wasn’t about to leave, but I thought
a change of subject might help. “Why is Jack good to
you?”
    He loves me. Jack is a
good boy. He loves me.
    “ Why?”
    His mother doesn’t comfort
him. His mother doesn’t speak up for him. I do.
    “ You aren’t his
mother.”
    I could be his
mother.
    “ He has a mother.”
    I could do better. Not
like with my other children.
    That was interesting. “What other
children?”
    Its first response wasn’t words, but a
wave of anguish. I stumbled back involuntarily.
    Then the words came.
    My lost ones my loves my
babies, dead dead dead, I lost them, I starved them, I killed them,
how could I? How could I? What did I do? What have I done? No no no
no no... The thing was curled up into a
ball, its hands wrapped around its head, and I thought I heard an
actual sound, a low moaning, as it bewailed its loss.
    Something looked odd about its hands
as it pressed them against its skull. The nails were very, very
long, the hands were very bony – except for the little finger of
the left hand, which didn’t seem to match.
    That finger was shorter, thicker, the
skin a little darker than the horrible pale complexion of the
others, the nail trimmed back.
    I didn’t think I would need to concoct
any elaborate explanations or look for any other creatures, after
all. I was pretty sure I knew where that finger came
from.
    “ You love Jack?” I called
quietly. “Then why did you chew off his