“It was not a plague year, but I was born with a sickness,” the woman said in a soft voice. “I became blind from it. If nothing had been done for me, the disease would’ve spread all over my body—I would’ve become deaf and mute, unable to move on my own, unable to breathe, and ended up having to die a torturous death. At least, according to the sorcerer.”
Her voice became even softer. “So my father and brother found and kidnapped an orphan child from outside the village and sacrificed him to the cave.”
She whispered, “Was that you?”
He had no answer.
The woman waited. Because he said nothing, she asked, “Are you still there?”
He barely managed to give the chain a shake.
The woman said, “I did not know such things had been done. I only learned later, when I heard others talking. I was a child myself, but to learn that another child had been killed to save me … That has always been a great source of sadness.”
He made no sound.
Softly, the woman spoke again. “After sacrificing the child, my father died in an accident a short while later. I thought that was the revenge the sacrificed child had taken on our family. But the real person who deserved to die was me.”
The youth stroked the chain and could only gaze at the woman silently.
“So … if you want revenge, do whatever you want.”
She stopped talking.
They sat in silence. The woman spoke again. “Are you still there?”
He threw the chain to the ground, wrapped the woman’s white face in his hands, and kissed her lips.
XVIII
The next morning, the woman’s brother opened the door to the shed to find her sitting alone, in tears.
“He’s gone to kill the monster,” she said through her sobs. “He said it wasn’t my fault, that I did nothing wrong. That what made the people sick in both body and soul, that what made them harm the children of others was the monster, that he must therefore kill the monster, that he would kill the monster …”
The brother took his sister in his arms and consoled her before taking her back to the house. Of the news he just heard, he didn’t know whether to be joyful or dread what was coming to the village.
XIX
Relying on old memories, the youth made his way up the mountain. The words he had heard from the woman echoed endlessly inside his head.
“An orphan child from the outside the village.” He was a little crestfallen with those words. But if the woman’s brother had been there when he had been kidnapped, he could at least learn where he’d been found, and under what circumstances. From that scrap of knowledge, he might be able to find his home, his parents, maybe even his name.
But that didn’t help him think of a way to kill It. He hadn’t set out with a clear plan. But then again, never in his life had he made a plan or had an inkling as to what to do.
To not be caught and consumed by It. To survive somehow and return.
Just like when he was trapped in the cave before, survival was his objective and plan.
And that was what he vowed when he stood at the mouth of the cave.
He entered.
XX
Because he was used to the light of the sun outside, the complete darkness of the cave briefly disoriented him. He slowly began feeling his way forward.
How strange a person’s fate was. When she was little, the woman had had an older brother and a father. A family that worried over her health, a home, a life. All that had been granted to the youth was this damp, moldy cave and its hard rocks, the handcuffs and manacles on a chain, and a stake attached to that chain. Every person has only one childhood, and instead of being full of hopes or dreams, his had been crushed by the fight for survival. He never once imagined in all his years spent in the cave that a different childhood from the one that had been accorded to him might have been possible.
And now that he was back inside the cave, senses that had been long dormant revived inside him. The cave was his world, and whether he liked to or not, he remembered every wrinkle in the rock and rise or depression in the floor.
If he was this used to it, perhaps he himself was a part of this cave …
Just as he was thinking this, his hand touched the iron stake.
From the woman’s shed, the youth had brought the chain that the woman’s brother had linked to his right cuff. Now that he had arrived in the prison of his childhood, he crouched down next to the stake like he used to. This was his place, and it had been kept empty for him. If he were lucky, no one would ever have to take his place.
The distant white spot that was the cave’s entrance was blocked by a huge black form.