Everlasting Arms

4:00am

He was still there. That much she was certain of.

Yasmin held the shotgun to her chest, cracked, bloodied nails digging into the stock. The Louisiana air was thick and hot, but the bugs were silent, no crickets or cicadas at all. She didn’t hear the burbling that came from the nearby swamp, what with gators shifting in and out of water and air pockets popping in the mud. It was quiet. Too quiet. So quiet, she heard her brother’s song clear as day.

”Leaning,” he sang, soft and low, clawed hands dragging down the painted door.

”Leaning. Safe and secure from all alarms.”

Yasmin squeezed her eyes shut. She hummed and tried to block out the sound. It wasn’t quite his voice. A bit too low. A bit too damn good at singing.

“Leaning. Leaning,” he sang. She heard him take a ragged breath, like he was being choked. There was a soft thump as his head hit the top of the door frame.

“Leaning on the everlasting arms.”

12:00am

Yasmin Bowlegger didn’t sleep much. She wasn’t quite good at it. When she was little, her brother Kyan was always crying or something. Their father would yell for him to shut up from the attic upstairs. Their mother was nowhere, probably off, drowned in the bog or in alcohol. So, Yasmin would soothe Kyan. He’d rock back and forth and dig his nails into his skin until she pulled them away. He’d hit and cry and scream, but she’d hold him and take the hits with gritted teeth.

She might not have won sister of the year. But it’s hard to find a perfect caretaker in a preteen.

As Kyan grew, he calmed, quieted. Yasmin was twenty now, her father dead and Kyan fifteen. She spent her weekends dragging him to church, then selling the frogs and snakes she caught to the restaurants. Shopkeepers always told her that her eyes had too many bags, her hair unkempt, clothes torn— it didn’t end. She endured, because that was all she was.

And Kyan was better now. More regulated.

But some nights, he stormed into her room and sat on the floor. He rocked. She soothed. They glanced at the clock. Tonight was one of those nights.

1:00am

Kyan was asleep, and Yasmin was not.

She watched her brother sleep, face twisted in nightmares. He said he couldn’t stop dreaming about huge creatures that chased and swallowed him whole. He didn’t appreciate when she joked that she could take a gator in a fight. He was too busy crying.

There was probably a word for him, for what made his brain so different. There was probably a word for her too, all stoic and anti-social, but she’d never learned.

She promised him she’d be there if he woke up. But the air was so hot, and her eyes were half shut like drawn blinds. She laid down, knowing what would happen, and telling herself it wouldn’t. The wood floor was rough and splintered, but there were patches of moist wood that were softer.

Her eyes closed like clouds covered the sun. Slow, ebbing, flowing, and then gone.

2:00am

She woke, and, for a moment, she didn’t know what was different. Why she was startled awake, feeling alone and somehow cold.

Kyan was no longer on her bed. The door behind her was closed tight.

And it was quiet.

There was always something. Bugs, humming, water, fire, breathing, animals, the refrigerator buzzing, something.

But not now. It felt like when she cracked her head on ice— so quiet it hurt.

Yasmin blinked, rubbed her eyes, and stood. She cracked open her door with hands that she forced to still.

”Kyan?”

Nothing responded. Perhaps he was sleeping, but she couldn’t hear his breathing. The gentle sort of snore he’d had since he was born.

Yasmin took a few cautious steps out, bare feet scraping on the painted-white wood. She watched where she walked, running her hands across the walls like she always did. Her fingertips tingled.

The pictures stared at her. Old, old photographs of ancestors, grandparents in black and white, frayed sepia pictures of parents, and finally, theirs.

She never learned how to smile in pictures, awkward and grim. Kyan always looked worried.

His eyes were more pleading than she remembered. Eating crab cakes on his fourteenth birthday, he looked into her soul as if he was held at gunpoint.

It was then Yasmin heard the first sound of the hour. The silence broke with the sound of groaning, one Yasmin recognized. The sound of Kyan when he was sick, right before he vomited. Bracing herself, Yasmin walked ahead.

The television was on. There was no station that reached where they were in the sticks, so only static played. And Kyan was there, perched on the molding couch, watching in utter fascination. There was no sick bowl, no smell of vomit. He was clean and well, staring into static as if it was one of his favorites.

”There’s not a tape in there, Kyan. What’re you watching?”

He didn’t answer.

Yasmin paced closer, swallowing around what felt like brambles in her throat.

”Kyan?”

His lips were covered in the residue of a dried nosebleed. His eyes reflected the white static, and he blinked as slow as a hunting python.

”Ser…” he began to say, but his jaw went slack. Yasmin tried to put a hand to his forehead, but his hand caught her wrist instantly. As fast as a bird taking flight, and yet his eyes did not flicker, did not look at any part of her. Just kept staring on.

His gangly fingers engulfed her, turning white on the knuckles as he gripped hard.

”Kyan. Wake up. Let me go,” Yasmin said. She pulled, but he held on, tighter, squeezing, bruising.

”Kid, get off of me,” she gasped, “Kyan, you’re hurting— Kyan!”

As his nails began to dig into her flesh, leaving crescent-shaped wounds, she pulled. She wrenched her hand away and stumbled back. She pulled hard enough that his feeble little fingers should have lost the battle.

They didn’t.

Yasmin froze, not understanding. She was a few steps away, yet his hand was still on her wrist, and he was sitting there, eyes on the static, a gentle smile on his lips.

His forearm was too long.

She pulled again, and the hand stayed, and the arm stretched.

”Kyan.”

Her breath suddenly very quick, she pulled at one of his fingers. It pried off of her wrist, but in the struggle, it grew. Bones popped like cracking joints as the finger grew inches longer.

Kyan let go. His long arm thudded on the ground like a corpse.

Yasmin ran.

Her legs, jelly and slow, were sprinting before she knew what she was doing, bringing her to a room she hadn’t been in for years.

The door of the armoire fell off when Yasmin wrenched it open, her breathing short and clipped. In the dark, she fumbled through moth-eaten clothes.

”Fuck, mama, where’d you keep it? Where did you— I—“

The sound of pained breaths stopped her. The static had faded, and twisting, stretching flesh wormed into the air.

Yasmin took tiny, frantic breaths, heart rapping against the wall of her chest so hard it could burst through. Her stupid legs just wouldn’t move. Her brother made sounds of quiet agony, and she stood still. She closed her eyes, tried to will whatever was happening to stop.

”Sis…ter…?”

His voice— it wasn’t right. Twisted and deep, as if every word was swallowed by a crocodile, growls and grumbles echoing under his words.

“Come… help?”

Yasmin gasped, hands clamping over her mouth, tears flooding her eyes.

Tough-as-nails Yasmin Bowlegger cried as his little voice fought through the distortion. It got her foot to shuffle forward, then the other. She padded out like a frightened child, head craned to look down the hall.

She whimpered.

Her brother was sitting on the ground, every limb longer than they should be. His spine was stretching as she stared, and he had to duck, his head pressed against the ceiling. The edges of his smile were dragged wide as if there was string sewn in the corners, shining yellow daggers in his mouth, and his tear-filled, glowing eyes looked up.

”Sister?”

His head twisted like an owl, nearly flipping upside down with his neck cracking. Yasmin swallowed back bile as she stumbled back into the room.

With shaking legs, she dropped to the ground, searching the dust-layered floor under the crumbling bed frame. Her mother’s shotgun was nowhere, and the creature that stole her brother to use his body as dough was beginning to move.

It was dragging itself, one long arm forward, plunging into the ground and lugging the rest of its limbs along.

”Sister. Come help?”

From her spot on the floor, Yasmin saw a hand grab the hallway floor. Alligator-like claws sunk through the rotting wood like a knife through boiled chicken. There came a wet scraping sound as the creature sniffed the door and licked the ground. Her footprints washed away by a gargantuan, slimy tongue.

But, the beast did not come in. Instead, it chuckled, and began to sing.

”Leaning… Leaning…”

She recognized it. A hymn that they sang in church long ago. How he remembered it, she didn’t know.

”Safe and secure from all alarms.”

It was there Yasmin stayed, trapped. She stayed, and waited, and cried. Yasmin Bowlegger cried.

3:00am

When the clock hit three, the beast retracted.

“Ser… sermon,” Kyan said, guttural and bellowing. He dragged himself back down the hallway, photos crushing against the wall and falling.

Static filled the air.

Yasmin lowered from her perch on the rusting bed frame, sweating, every step as fragile as a snowflake. In the corner of the room, covered in her mother’s dresses, was a trunk. Her mother always put her folded gloves and pearl earrings in it.

”Baby, when you need it, when I’m dead and gone, take what you need from the trunk,” she had said.

The day Yasmin realized she was never coming home was the day the young girl broke into the trunk, grabbed her mother’s gloves, and slipped them on. Her ears weren’t pierced, so she had shoved a needle through them to thread her mother’s pearl earrings in. Yasmin only glanced in the mirror to admire the beauty for a moment before removing it all, blood-stained, and selling them in town.

She always wondered if that was what her mother meant. Hope flaring, she tip-toed over, but found it still empty. She dug into it, one hand leaning on the bottom, when it fell through. Yasmin bit back a gasp as she fell , a gentle thud echoing through the silent room.

A false bottom, hiding beneath a sheet of plywood with stapled-on cheap green velvet, and there her mother’s old double-barrel shotgun lay. Sawn-off and coated in cobwebs, but Yasmin grabbed it and whispered a prayer to wherever her mother was.

It was still loaded. Two shots.

Yasmin forced her legs to move as she crept to the door. She cocked the gun, wiping a sweaty hand on her nightshirt before landing on the trigger as she snuck into the hall.

Kyan was just barely in view, the side of his head and hunched shoulders visible through the hallway’s arch. He was sat, watching the static, singing that damned hymn.

”Leaning on the everlasting arms...”

Yasmin crept forward silently until she had a clean shot at the creature’s head.

She didn’t know how to kill this thing. But this seemed a damn good guess. She repositioned, finger itching on the trigger.

But she stopped.

Her baby brother, stretched to the seams of his muscle and bone, was sitting on the couch, mesmerized by the white flicking screen.

And his nails were digging into his skin, as they always did when he was scared and overwhelmed. Kyan rocked back and forth, singing along to a sermon he heard long ago, and he was just a kid who needed to have his nails pried from his own skin. The clawed hands dug into the stretched, gray flesh like clay.

Yasmin lowered the gun and stepped back. A floorboard creaked.

The head cracked at her instantly, wet eyes gleaming, smile too wide and sharp, and the neck craned to stare. It just looked at her, horrifyingly still, gleeful and manic. His breaths were ragged.

”Sister. Come.”

Yasmin shook her head.

”The fuck are you? What— what’d you do to him?”

Yasmin stepped closer, aim steady between the distorted, glowing eyes.

“Haint? Letiche? Demon? The fuck are you?”

The head swung back and forth.

”Patron.”

Yasmin swallowed her confusion and spat, “Of what?”

Eyes glided away from her until they were facing the static, yet the head stayed where it was. The eyes were looking through the side of its own skull, watching, just watching.

The static. His eyes were distracted by the static, listening to the hymn of the static possessing its body and soul.

Yasmin shot, but right past the demonic form of her brother into the television screen. It shattered, the static broke, and hell broke loose.

Kyan howled a beastly, hissing scream and launched, long arm slashing the air. Yasmin stumbled back, but her right eye was sliced. The beast’s hand crashed through the floor, plunging through the stilts into the swamp . Blood gushing from her ripped socket, Yasmin screamed, but all she could hear was the sound of her brother.

The beast laughed, gloating, gleeful, evil. Yasmin couldn’t see, but she turned and ran, stampeded into her room and slammed the door.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—“

Her brother’s laugh echoed as it slithered through the hall, climbing onto its long legs and crawling her way. Yasmin whimpered, blindly opening her dresser and plunging a cloth into her weeping eye, stifling.

Yasmin slammed herself against the door. As if that would keep the beast out. She saw it break the floor like it was honeycomb. It could rip the door off, wrap its fingers around her, unhinge its gaping jaw and swallow her whole.

But. It didn’t.

His breaths were too guttural to be human, but too desperate to be predator.

He just stood there. Waiting.

And the singing returned.

5:00am

Yasmin Bowlegger didn’t sleep that hour. She wasn’t quite good at it in the best of circumstances. Sleeping with one barely-stopped-bleeding eye was impossible. Her stretched brother lingering outside the door, singing and begging her to come out didn’t help.

But he refused to kill her. He could, as easily as picking a daisy.

He didn’t. Like he was fighting the instinct off. Like he was still in there.

The sky was just barely lighter than the dead of night when he moved away, his huge, lumbering body moving back down the hall.

Yasmin could jump into the swamp. Pray the lurking alligators wouldn’t rip her to shreds.

She peeled the screen over the open window and forced one trembling leg through.

But Kyan cried, and she stopped.

It was instinct. The boy cried, and she would fix it. She would hold him until it stopped.

She endured the hits and spit, because the only reason she was still here was because he needed someone to take care of him. He was her little, weak brother, and she was the hero saving him.

And then he grew.

But when he had the strength to shove her off, to pin her down, he never did. Because he loved her. She was his sister, and the world could crumble around them, but they’d always be together.

He was crying, and she couldn’t move. Half out the window, she stopped, clamped her eye shut, and listened.

”Leave me,” Kyan was mumbling, “Leave me, leave me, leave me, leave me—“

And her leg was back in, and she was walking to him. Instinct.

”Are you fighting it?“

”Leave me!” A young voice screamed before being swallowed by glottal echoes. She could hear him rocking back and forth, shaking the house, crying, crying, crying, and suddenly, she was out the door. Gun in her hands, she charged out and down the hall, ready to kill, or heal, or something.

The creature stopped. Glittering eyes turned her way.

His trembling, chapped, stretched lips smiled. Not the grin that was possessing him, but something soft. Yasmin walked forward, reflecting the smile as if she was calming a horse.

“Are you back with me, baby? Did you fight off that evil thing?”

His mouth opened as if to speak.

And it kept opening.

His lips opened like a flower bloomed, splitting into eight folds, revealing the teeth-lined, lamprey throat inside. A slimy tongue licked a row of teeth, drool dripping to the ground.

And Yasmin didn’t shoot. She had one bullet left, but she didn’t shoot.

Maybe it was fear paralyzing her. Maybe it was defeat. Maybe it was acceptance.

The last thing she felt was teeth digging into her skin as a warm, wet throat closed around her, and swallowed. Through the swallowing, it sang, strings of vocal cords webbing her.

”Leaning… leaning… safe and secure from all alarms.”

6:00am

The creature roamed the swamp, half of its face male, the other half hers. It carried the faces and skin of what it ate with a twisted grin. Someday, someone would find a way to stop it, distract it with static, hunt it down with a sawn off shotgun to protect their loved ones.

But for now, it wandered and ate, and ate, and ate, not satisfied with Kyan and Yasmin boiling in its stomach.

The world could crumble around them, but they’d always be together.