The harvest moon seemed fit to burst and spill its strange, cosmic light upon the valley, the autumnal colours of which had been drained away. It was late at night, and yet Lydia, a sharecroppers daughter, stood outside in the cold and gazed up the western hill where could be made out the silhouette of a hunched figure outlined against an impossibly bright sky. She was calling to it, and it turned to face her then. She could see its eyes – the goat eyes of Jude, the Devil-Child, from the itinerant carnival which had arrived only the day before.

She had watched them set up the tents late in the afternoon, watched the young runaways put together the rudimentary rides and erect the food and game stands. Even from afar she had been able to hear the sound of their hammers drive the stakes – which held the moon-and-star covered tents in place against the warm afternoon breeze – into the ground. She had her mother’s curiosity, and the yearly carnival always snatched her attention, to her father’s occasional displeasure.

Lydia’s father, the old farmer, was a wary sort, suspicious of the sun itself. He put little stock in anything besides his own hard work. How he had ever got Lydia’s mother to marry him was a mystery and was perhaps evidence of a shard of fear in her, for though she was a bit of a dreamer, and one who saw endless possibility in the world, she had also seen how such an attitude had the potential to destroy lives. Too many of her relatives, and her own father included among them, had met their ends impoverished, endlessly waiting for their life to begin, for the great wonders of the universe to blossom in their own small world. So she retreated, and possibly found a bit of comfort in a man who was so unlike her father that she would never have to fear a similar fate for him.

Yes, Lydia’s father was far from impoverished, though that isn’t to say he and his own had it easy. Especially what with the poor harvests they’d had the previous years. This year, after a hopelessly dry summer, was looking to be the worst harvest yet. Thus, perhaps, Lydia’s father’s suspicions of the sun. He wasn’t alone, either, all the growers of the valley felt a nervous apprehension for the coming months.

One might think that such strife, large or small as it was, would extend to the carnival and her odd and colourful people, but, on the contrary such a poor season, always seemed to bode well for the carnies and their kin. It was not in spite of the troubles, but more likely directly because of them that the carnival, without fail, could expect a good turnout. People, trying to escape their woes, would go and gorge themselves on candy floss and peanuts and other junk food, take a spin on those primitive and, frankly, dangerous rides, and perhaps gawk a while in the sideshow tent at the various freaks and entertainers.

Yes, that is where young Lydia had first laid eyes on Jude, who was called “The Devil-Child”, and his dreadful deformity. She had a keen sense of wonder, that girl, and though she had had to contend with an admittedly also strong sense of compassion in her decision of whether or not to visit the “Freak show”, she could not resist the temptation to see a spectacle.

Every year around harvest time the carnival came to the valley, and every year she had convinced her parents to take her. Her father despised the festivities and looked upon the carnies with a healthy distrust, but harboured a guilty pleasure in the shooting games and, being something of a sharpshooter, always came away with many prizes. Her mother had a natural fascination with everything about the carnival, but what drew her more was the feeling of duty in her to make sure that the sense of wonder she detected in her daughter was well tended to. Perhaps this came from a place of regret for the way her own life had played out. Regardless, both she and her husband could tell well enough that their daughter was a bright and lovely child, and there was an unspoken understanding, which Lydia was a part of, that she would be successful no matter what. Point and case, Lydia was to go away the next year to attend school and further her education with the goal of becoming a teacher someday. This path filled her parents with pride, and it is very likely that her mother in particular, knowing that they would inevitably be left behind, wanted to make sure that that small part of her, that spark of curiosity and wonder at the world which dwelt in Lydia’s breast, would live on.

To be sure, Lydia’s mother did all she could to steer her daughter down a path which would lead her to a life of beauty and wonder. She was a covert consumer of poetry, and in secret she would lend an appreciative Lydia some of her most precious volumes. This was in an effort to give her a glimpse into the sublime, which had, for a time in her own youth, been the be all and end all of her existence before the fear instilled by the death of her father had set in. It was through their furtive forays into poetry that she discovered Lydia’s fascination with fables and fairy tales, an interest which she herself did not share (and, in truth, felt a touch of distrust towards) but nevertheless encouraged, seeing the way it lit up the wonder in her eyes. The carnival, in the end, was just one of many ways in which Lydia’s mother continuously tried to reveal to her a more fantastical and mystifying world beyond the farm she had lived on all her life.

So it was that when the carnival came around once more, after that dry and bitter summer, Lydia, now a responsible young lady was allowed to go with her friends and without parent supervision. Lydia’s father, unlike others who enjoyed the carnival as an escape from their worries, rather seemed to enjoy his current anxiety and would not be persuaded to go, even for all the sharpshooting prizes in the world, and Lydia’s mother, despite her own interest in going, thought it might be a good experience for her daughter who was about to venture into the wide open world, to get some life experience away from her parents’ watchful eyes.

Lydia went with three girls from school. To call them her friends would be a bit of a stretch. Truth be told, Lydia didn’t really have any friends. Perhaps her peers could sense something different about her. She was certainly the most intelligent for her years, and she knew it well enough. The other girls were fond of her, to be sure, but they couldn’t help but feel a distance between her and them that was neither positive nor negative, but simply was.

They went out in the late afternoon after an early supper while the sun was low in the sky and the dirt path they took was bathed in a warm, orange light that deepened the colours which had started to stain the leaves in the trees. They had departed from another girl’s house and were taking the main road. Slowly as they went, the sound of music began to grow on their ears, carried by the brisk wind that promised a harsh winter to take the place of dying summer. Then came the smells: the fried food and the treats, intermingled with horse manure and mud.

The girls giggled as they came to the carnival and Lydia in particular, feeling no need to hide her joy, impressed her companions with her enthusiasm for the spectacles. To them, the carnival was just something to do, a way to kill time, a novelty at best, but to Lydia it seemed to promise something more. She looked upon the carnival as an intellectual, and rather than simply accept its strangeness as entertainment tried to dissect it and understand it.

They started the night with junk food – this was a mistake, and Lydia, knowing that, refused to overindulge. The others, however, subconsciously feeling the thrill of the liminal space that was the carnival, stuffed their stomachs with candy floss and corndogs, not caring how they looked, and wrongly judged Lydia as just being too self-conscious. The consequence of their mistake came later, as Lydia predicted, after a period of playing games at various stalls when they decided to go on the rides, starting with the ubiquitous tea cups.

Lydia had a lovely time, spinning around and around under the steadily darkening sky, while the other girls only just managed to survive. One girl, the tenderest of the bunch, needed to have a rest afterwards to keep from getting sick and the others were happy to join her. Lydia, on the other hand, not one to suffer fools (though neither one to say “I told you so”) politely excused herself to go on another ride while they recovered. Embarrassed, the girls said they would stay where they were and wait for her before joining her on the next one.

“Maybe the ferris wheel,” the poor, tender girl, who now looked distinctly green, tentatively suggested, and the others sombrely nodded in agreement.

So Lydia went on the swings for a while, but when she returned the girls were gone. For a moment she felt a rush of panic – not at the thought of being abandoned by her “friends” but more so at the thought of the trouble she would be in if her father found out she had been left alone at the carnival. This panic, however, quickly shifted into a kind of mischievous thrill. She was alone, yes, and the feeling of freedom, of being able to explore and do whatever she wanted was one she had never known.

Hesitantly, she began to walk around. The carnival was busy enough, almost to the point of being crowded, and yet she felt a great sense of space around her. She freely ducked in and out of crowds and with no particular direction in mind began to walk and explore. With her attention freed from any necessity for socialization, she found her eyes wandering. It seemed to her she could see clearer than before.

She observed, for example, the faces of the carnies, young and old, the mischief in their eyes. She could hear them speaking to one another, their strange and indecipherable cant, a language as foreign to her as Chinese and yet one which had, it seemed to her, the flavour of her own tongue. She observed the people too, most of them her townsfolk, some of whom she vaguely recognized. She saw the different way they looked around them, the varieties in their apparent interpretation of the festivities. There were those, like her mother, who seemed to take it in with a kind of restrained fascination, and others like her father, who looked, for the most part, disgusted at the display. What drew them? She wondered.

By far, the most interesting expressions Lydia saw were those worn by the people emerging from one of the sideshow tents – namely, the one containing the freakshow. Here, the same kind of reactions to everything else seemed magnified. The people who left the tent were flushed, some thoroughly revolted by the sights they had seen, others strangely enthralled. Lydia, feeling her curiosity being piqued, approached for a closer look, and stopped to read the bill:

• Griselda, the Bearded Lady
• The Lee Twins
• Claire, the Human Pretzel
• Pip, the Shark-boy
• Knut “The Maw” Knutson

and, Presenting

• Jude, the Devil-Child

The names of the various acts, such as they were, only hinted at what lay behind the curtain, and some more than others. Lydia had of course heard of bearded ladies, and even if she hadn’t, it was easy enough to imagine. Names like “the Maw” or the seemingly benign “Lee Twins” left almost everything to the imagination, and she could only begin to wonder. The rest of them at least called up some kind of visual.

She stood there, trying to visualize the show inside the tent, trying to imagine what could give the people emerging such a look as she repeatedly saw on them, until she was suddenly hit with the realization that she could simply enter. The admission fee was a little steep, but well within her budget for the night (especially considering she hadn’t blown it all on junk food, like the others). Then she began to consider the reality of the place – they were people in there. Once she had heard her mother mention how cruel it seemed, to stare at, or worse, mock the freaks who, despite their deformities, were human nonetheless (one had to assume, anyway). Her father wanted nothing to do with them, though that certainly didn’t come from a place of compassion.

Eventually, she made her decision. She could not have articulated her justification, but what it came down to was an agreement with herself that she would look upon the pitiable creatures not for entertainment but purely to satisfy and intellectual curiosity. To this end, she would try to treat the people with as much dignity as she could, refusing to laugh or gawk at them, but to keep a professional air of observation at all times.

She could not have known that most of the acts actually, in one way or another, appreciated the attention they received, and derived their own satisfaction out of shocking their observers. In any case, Lydia was mostly successful. The bearded lady seemed nice, she thought, and the Lee Twins (Siamese twins, unsurprisingly), though a little strange to be sure, when looked at at the right angle could have been two shirtless young brothers simply sharing a bench. The acts got more grotesque as she continued, however.

Claire, at first glance, was the most normal of the bunch, but her talent proved disturbing. She was a contortionist to the extreme, capable of bending her joints beyond what Lydia would have thought possible. The worst part was the sound: the popping and the snapping of joints and ligaments, and all the while Claire (who truly enjoyed frightening her “guests” as she called the spectators) wore a horrified mask of agony. Lydia hurried on to the next act.

Pip, the Shark-boy, was an odd one. He was hardly a boy, and was indeed bigger than most of the men at the carnival. He was a Pacific Islander, and his body was covered in intricate tattoos which Lydia secretly thought were splendid. His teeth had been filed down into razor sharp points, like shark teeth, but what really completed the picture were his webbed hands and feet.

Next up was the mysterious Maw, and much like Claire, Knut seemed rather normal at first glance, again, up until he began his act. Knut Knutson could, supposedly, eat anything, and he tried to prove this night after night by consuming the most inedible of foods, from rancid meet, to broken glass, and finally metal nails and screws. At this point, Lydia had some trouble maintaining her composure, for she was well and truly disgusted by Knut Knutson’s act, and the way he looked lustily upon the female spectators, deriving, unbeknownst to anybody, sexual pleasure from the looks of disgust they gave him, did nothing to help.

Finally, Lydia came to what she had heard people referring to as “really, the main act of the whole show”: The Devil-Child himself. Perhaps it was the fact that she had already had a hard time with Knut Knutson, or perhaps the Devil-Child really was just as horrible as all that, but the moment she saw him she dropped all her airs entirely. Despite herself, her face contorted into an expression of pure horror and disgust.

Unlike Pip, who was no boy by any stretch of the imagination, Jude really did seem something of a child. The smallness of his size was compounded by the way he hunched himself, and behind the terrible deformities of his face could be seen a young complexion. Just so, it was as easy to see where the name “Devil” came from, for his body was covered in fine black fur, his hands and feet were clawed, and his face, while distinctly human, seemed permanently fixed into an impish glare. From his forehead, a little off-centre, protruded a hideous, twisted horn, and when his hairy lips were parted one could see a set of teeth which rivalled even the shark-boy’s. But there was something worse about him yet, something which Lydia could not exactly put her finger on.

She would work it out in a little while. For the moment, she didn’t really have a chance to take it in, for as soon as she saw the Devil-child for herself she stifled a scream and fled the tent, running into the cool night and through the still flushed crowd outside.

It took Lydia a while to compose herself once more and the calmer she became, the guiltier she felt, by her actions as much as her thoughts. At first she was horrified by her reaction and this horror was amplified by her initial impression that the Devil-Child was indeed just a child. Poor boy! She lamented internally, to be so hateful! Then she got to wondering if what she saw was even really human, but this only made her rebuke herself. Of course it was human! She told herself. Didn’t you see the way it stared and blinked?

There it was. That was the worst part: the eyes. The child had had the eyes of a goat, with strange elongated pupils, simultaneously unfeeling and, yes, she realized: sad.

The poor boy!

After some time passed, she managed to steady herself, though the pang of guilt did not leave her. For a while she considered going back into the tent and apologizing to the unfortunate creature, but she didn’t have enough money for another ticket of admission, and in any case the other girls had reappeared. To Lydia’s surprise, they seemed almost as disturbed as she was, and the cause of this they revealed to be the fact that they had just sat down with a fortune teller who had said nothing but hurtful things to them all.

“Shes a witch,” one of the girls, the one who had been sick earlier, whispered fearfully. Her green complexion had turned now pallid.

The girls explained that they had had to leave in order to find a privy, and when they came back they waited where they’d been but it was apparent that Lydia had come and gone and so went to look for her before getting distracted by the horrible fortune teller. Lydia, preoccupied as she was, did not think to ask even herself why they hadn’t left one of them behind to let her know this, but it didn’t matter. The girls themselves were so focused on their own dreadful encounter that they noticed nothing wrong with her, or if they did they assumed it was only a displeasure from the sting of having been ditched.

The girls, disappointed overall with their experience, decided to call it a night then. As they went to leave one of them tugged at Lydia’s sleeve, pulling her out of her guilty, self-torturous thoughts, and pointed out the fortune teller who, presently, stood outside her tent.

“That’s her,” she said, “that’s the evil woman.”

The fortune teller was a dark gypsy woman, with long black hair that was braided and decorated with arcane ornaments. She was bare-footed, which was a baffling sight to behold, and her dress was covered with colourful patterns that no local woman, including the girls, would be bold enough to wear in public. She smiled at the girls, a devilish smile, and they hurried along. Lydia stayed back a bit, returning the stare from the Fortune Teller. They seemed to eye each other curiously for a moment, before Lydia turned and hurried to rejoin her group.

On the way home they described the awful things the gypsy had told them. They had asked questions typical of girls their age, mostly relating to their love lives and their dreams for the future. They were told, essentially, that none of them would marry the love of their life, that they would remain in town until the end of their days as pitiful farm wives, slaving away inside just like their mothers before them, that they would never see the world, and that their deaths would be a relief from all the toil in the end.

“Foul bitch,” one of the girls muttered.

Once home, Lydia went straight to her room and collapsed into her bed. The talk of the gypsy fortune teller had managed to take her mind off of the Devil-Child, but slowly the topic came back to her, and before long she was writhing with guilt. “The poor boy, the poor boy,” she repeated to herself forlornly.

Eventually she tried to go to sleep, but it was no use. The image of the Devil-Child was seared into her mind and it scared her terribly, and every time she felt the wave of fear rise up it was met by an almost worse wave of guilt and unbearable compassion. How can someone live like that? She wondered.

All the while, tossing and turning, she drank from a cup of water on her night table. Eventually, around midnight, this had a natural effect on her, and unable to sleep anyways she rose to go to the privy.

It was an awful thing on any night, to have to go out into the dark to use the privy, but on such a night as this, what with the state she was in, plus the chill in the air, it was unbearable, but the more she tried to resist the urge the more she felt the need, and so, putting on a brave face, she went outside.

Initially she felt a relief at how bright the night was. A few scattered clouds hurried along, illuminated by the shining moon and seemed even to spread its light out further. For a moment Lydia forgot her need and stopped to admire the beauty, but it quickly came back to her and she rushed to finish her business. It was on the way back inside, stopping again to admire the way the moonlight lit up the fields and the western hill that she saw the silhouette of the Devil-Child standing high on the horizon.

The breath was ripped from her chest in an instant, as though by a sharp cold wind. She stared wide-eyed. The guilt she had felt had slowly begun to fade, but now it evaporated entirely. What is he doing here? Did he follow me? What does he want from me? These questions flew through her mind.

Then she heard the sound: The child, the creature, whatever it was, softly weeping. All the compassion flooded back into Lydia along with a hefty dosage of guilt at having suspected any ill motive on the part of the child. It occurred to her that it was not at all even aware of her presence, and suddenly she was filled with an urge to call out to it, though she didn’t know what to say. Then the answer came to her: What could give the creature more dignity than to call to it by name?

“Jude?” She called, quietly at first, as though uncertain she wanted to be heard, “Jude, is that you?”

The creature turned to her, and there were the eyes, those goat eyes. Once again they horrified her, but this time she kept a hold of herself. “Jude, are you okay?” She asked.

The crying stopped, and for a moment Lydia felt the cold of the air penetrate a little deeper than her skin. Then she heard its voice.

“Who are you?”

The voice was uncanny, for though the creature before her did not hardly seem human, its voice was entirely so. Its voice was that of a boy’s, and a young one at that. It sounded sweet and sorrowed, and it was enough to wring Lydia’s heart and urge her up the hill.

“My name’s Lydia,” She replied, boldly. Its voice had rid her of any fear. She felt, with a certainty that would have concerned most, that this creature truly was just a poor boy as she had both feared and hoped. “You’re Jude, aren’t you?”

“Stay back,” the creature said, and there was fear on its voice now – a scared little boy. “Don’t look at me.”

“I saw you earlier,” Lydia said, the guilt rising up in her throat, “I’m afraid my reaction was unkind. I wanted to apologize to you.”

“Di you follow me?” Jude asked, confused.

Lydia almost laughed. “This is my home,” she told him.

“I’m sorry,” Jude quickly exclaimed, “I shouldn’t be here.” He spoke shakily. “I’ll leave, I promise. Esme will be expecting me.”

“It’s alright, really,” Lydia protested, unsure of why it was she wanted this creature to stay. She had said her apology, as she wanted, but her heart went out to the pathetic being. She wanted know to reach out to it, to help it in a way. “Who’s Esme?”

By this point she found herself nearly at the top of the hill. The creature was only a few yards away from her, and up close, in the clear moonlight, she could make it out well: There in the pale light were his clawed hands and feet – he wore no shoes, presumably due to the fact that there would be none that could fit them. His face, half obscured by the night and half by the hair that covered it was turned away from her, and the large protruding horn glistened in the eerie light. He watched her suspiciously with one large goat’s eye which, like his face, betrayed no hint of emotion. Only his voice seemed to give him away.

“Esme takes care of me,” he said and then in a quieter voice explained, “She’s a fortune teller.”

The image of that barefooted gypsy woman and her malicious grin flashed across Lydia’s mind, followed by the words of the other girls: “Evil woman.” “Foul bitch.” “She’s a witch.”

As though reading her mind, the boy added, in a fearful tone: “She’s a witch.”

“I see,” Lydia replied, a little stunned.

“She used to be nice to me, but she’s changed,” Jude explained, and his words were tumbling out of him like water through a crack in a dam, the way children sometimes talk, so lacking in self-consciousness, and with a mixture of terror and relief, which presumably came from his ability to confess something he had kept secret for a long time, he declared: “I’m frightened of her!”

A small part of Lydia could see a glimmer of humour in this declaration – here was a truly monstrous creature declaring that he was frightened of his mother-figure. But Lydia, in all her compassion, took the creature’s confession very seriously, and gravely asked it, “Why are you afraid?”

“Esme used to be kind,” he explained, “she used to talk with me, listen to me, but she doesn’t listen anymore, and she talks strange. She used to look at me like she looked at other people, not the way other people look at me, and she would comfort me when I felt bad, but she doesn’t do that anymore.”

Lydia thought of scandals she had read about parents abusing their children. She tried to make sense of this confession. “Does she hurt you?” She asked, helplessly.

“No,” the boy admitted, lowering his head even further so that his words came out muffled, “But I think she wants to. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“That’s awful!” Lydia cried.

“People used to hurt me,” Jude said, and his voice trembled. He shook with tiny sobs though Lydia noted that no tears fell from the unblinking eye with which he stared at her. “They would say mean things – they still do that – or they would just run away from me.”

“I’m so sorry,” Lydia said, now feeling tears well up in her own eyes.

“You’re nice though,” the creature said, almost seemingly wanting to comfort her. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Lydia.” She extended her hand.

Jude eyed her hand and shook his head slightly. “I’d better not,” he said, without any further explanation. “It’s nice to meet you, Lydia. You’re kind. You’re just like how Esme used to be. You don’t scream at me or say mean things.”

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” Lydia asked.

“Sometimes, when it gets to be too much, I leave and I wander the hills,” Jude said wistfully, ignoring Lydia’s question. “Esme used to get mad at me about that. She used to say I would get in trouble if someone found me, but you’re so nice, Lydia.” He giggled then. “Thanks for talking with me.”

He took off then, back down the hill. It made Lydia jump, to see the boy get down on all fours and instantly break out into a sprint. She watched him descend the hill on the other side, down towards the Carnival which stood silent under the harvest moon, the tents rippling in the cold wind. She shivered then, feeling the cold for the first time since she had started talking with Jude. She realized her hands and her feet were numb and quickly hurried in the opposite direction, back towards her own house.

-

The next day Lydia went through her chores in a haze. Her experience with Jude had bled into a short, restless sleep which had only come to her once the cold and her exhaustion had taken their tolls. As a result, she spent much of the morning dazed, trying to separate dream from reality. Looking back, she realized, though the boy had sounded very childlike his words were not so. There seemed a kind of intelligence to them that betrayed his apparent years. This fact, such as it was, rather than concerning her only made the creature more alluring. She wondered ceaselessly: Just who is this Devil-Child?

There was no school that day, but Lydia’s mother kept her busy while her father tended to the crops, poor as they were. Lydia felt detached all the while. Her body went through the motions while her mind remained atop the western hill conversing with the strange malformed child in the moonlight.

In the early afternoon, when there was a break in the work, Lydia found her feet taking her back to the hill. Later she would think that subconsciously her mind must have felt incapable of righting itself until she went back to the scene of the meeting. Reaching the top of the hill in the golden afternoon she took a quick glance around. There were no traces of the Devil-Child. Then she turned her attention back down the other side of the hill and towards the carnival.

It was quiet. There were only a few people milling about, tiny specks crawling amidst the large, colourful tents, and the megalithic structures of the rides. One figure, however, she made out, was walking towards her from the bottom of the long, shallow hill – a figure in a bright and colourful dress, with long black hair blowing in the light afternoon breeze.

Lydia froze. She was tempted to turn and run back towards her house, but the thought of her parents kept her in place, for if this woman, this “witch” apparently, were to speak to them, who knows what she would say? She remained where she was in a state of indecision until at last Esme was within shouting distance.

“Lydia?” The gypsy shouted. “Is that you, girl?”

Lydia said nothing. Esme continued to approach her, her voice quieting the closer she came.

“What did you see, last night, I wonder? Up here on this hill?”

“You’re Esme, I guess,” Lydia said, trying to sound big.

Esme did not respond to her statement. “I was just coming to warn you,” she said, “Don’t trust that devil. He is exactly how he seems, in his flesh I mean. He’s the devil’s own child. I mean that.”

“How can you say such a thing?” Lydia exclaimed, genuinely outraged.

“Poor little girl,” Esme replied, shaking her head. Her smile was cruel. “How does he sound to you? Like a helpless little boy? It’s a trick, can’t you see? He uses it to lure people in. I have heard his real voice – it would curdle your blood.”

Lydia felt a kind of hesitation. She wasn’t sure what to say, but Esme went on.

“He’s got his eyes on you now, girl. He won’t leave you alone, not until we move on together, which wont be for another week or so. Until then, I suggest you stay indoors at night. Don’t come out, no matter what he says to you, or how he sounds. He is exactly how he seems on the outside – just remember that.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lydia said after a little while, but there was no force behind her words. She didn’t know what to believe.

Something fell in Esme’s face then. The cruelty dropped from her mouth and she seemed to Lydia much older all of a sudden. “I can’t make you follow my advice,” she said, bitterly, “but I hope to God, for your sake, that you do.” She half turned away then, and said, “One day, I’m going to have to kill that creature, I think. I’m starting to realize that now.”

Lydia was shocked by this statement, though not as much as she would have been before the conversation. Uncertain, she watched Esme descend the hill once more, slower now, just as she had watched the Devil-Child descend the night before.

When Lydia returned to the house, she felt faint. Her cheeks were flushed, and her legs were shaky. Her mother, perceiving something was wrong, sent her to bed and started to fix her some soup. “Maybe you caught a chill at the carnival last night,” she said, “It was a cold night, after all.”

In bed, Lydia could not find rest or ease. She tried to take her mind off of things by reading from one of her books. She pulled out a tattered old tome of fairy-tales that her mother had bought in secret at a secondhand book shop in the city. This one seemed nearly ancient, but it had lovely illustrations. She flipped through it idly, reading a passage here and there, until at last she stumbled upon a picture of a Satyr – half goat, half man. She stared at it a while and read the description - “A lustful spirit, dwells in the woods and other remote places. Lovers of wine and women. Great pursuers of sin.”

Lydia shut the book.

-

At some point after supper she must have fallen asleep, for time had jumped from a brilliant, gold and red evening to the cold dead of colourless night. She awoke from a terrible dream, slick with perspiration, gasping for breath. A roar echoed in her ears.

She blinked at the darkness around her, breathing heavily for a moment, before burying her face in her hands. She stayed that way for a while, her mind racing over confused thoughts and images. Then came the loud tap at the window. She jumped and nearly yelped with terror. She looked at her window. There was nothing there.

Another tap. She had seen it this time: a pebble had flown through the air and bounced off the window frame.

Hesitatingly, she rose and peered out the window and to the yard below. There he stood: the Devil-Child, or his shape at least. Though the moon and the night were still bright, it wasn’t anywhere near as much as the night before. So it was that she could only make out the rough shape of the creature, but a distinctive shape it was.

It seemed to see her in the window, for it through no more pebbles. Instead it raised a clawed hand and waved gently. The gesture was so sweet, so childlike, that for a moment Lydia forgot everything Esme had told her that afternoon. She felt the urge to rush downstairs and meet him outside. For the moment, she simply waved back. Then it motioned for her to come down.

Hesitation took over. She remembered Esme’s words, the weary look in her eyes when she said that one day she would have to kill the creature. She had said those words as though they were a great burden. Still, she did not entirely trust the gypsy woman.

She stepped away from the window and considered her options. The longer she considered them for, the more her compassion began to slip through. She thought about how the creature had said Esme had changed, how her kindness towards him had left. Then she thought of him standing out there in the cold, needing someone to talk to, craving the kindness that everyone else refused to show him, waiting for her to emerge. Tentatively she descended the stairs, trying not to wake her parents.

In the kitchen, standing at the back door, she looked into the night and was only barely able to detect Jude in the obscurity. A large cloud had drifted in front of the moon, turning the land dark. She poked her head out into the cold air and called out softly: “Jude? Is that you?”

His voice, though quiet, seemed to be carried clear by the cold wind to her ears. “Lydia, thank your kindness! I need your help. Esme has gone crazy. I think she wants to kill me!”

The voice was as childlike as ever, but she recalled what Esme had said about Jude’s “real voice”, and she shuddered at the recollection.

“What can I do?” Lydia asked, still trying to decide whether she should stay indoors or rush out to him.

“I don’t know,” Jude said, and she could hear him crying, “Nobody will help me. They’re all afraid of me. Esme keeps saying terrible things about me, but they’re not true! She just doesn’t want anyone to help me. She said something about a sacrifice! I’m so scared of her, but I have nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. Please, Lydia, you’re the only one who can help.”

Lydia’s heart raced, and emotion surged upwards from her guts into her throat. She stepped outside and started towards the creature. “You poor boy,” she cried, “you poor, poor boy! Come to me!”

Still weeping, the creature rose and took a few steps towards her, its goat-eyes glowing in the darkness. What little moonlight shone through the massive cloud glinted on his sharp, razor-like teeth. “Oh thank you, Lydia, thank you!” He cried, so childlike it broke Lydia’s young heart.

The gunshot which followed was nearly deafening. It sounded from directly behind her, and Lydia could feel the air shifted by the bullet as it whizzed by and found its mark in Jude’s chest. He fell, with a cry that paralyzed Lydia – a terrible scream, half child and half beast, full of agony and outraged shock, followed by animal like whimpering.

“Jude!” Lydia cried and then turned back to face her father who stood at the doorway, his rifle still smoking. He looked pale.

“I saw it from the window,” he stammered. “That thing isn’t human. Get back inside, Lydia!”

disobeying her father, Lydia ran to the slumped body of the creature. Jude stared up at her with those terrible goat-eyes – she could see no pain in them, no sorrow, no fear. His pointed teeth were stained from the blood which bubbled behind them and dribbled down his cheeks from the hairy corners of his mouth, and from deep in his throat rose a forlorn, high pitched whistle. It sounded as though a child, somewhere inside of him was calling up to her: “Lydia, it hurts! Oh, Lydia it hurts! Please, help me, Lydia!”

The hot tears streamed down Lydia’s cheeks. “Oh, God,” she said, “Oh, God!”

Then she heard her father shout, not at her, “Stay back! Who are you?”

Lydia looked. Esme, in her long bright dress, was coming down the western hill. The cloud had passed from in front of the moon, and in the new ray of light they could see that she had a knife in her hand. She stopped and stared at the scene, her eyes wide and crazed.

“You killed him?” She asked. “You shot him and killed him?”

“Stay back, I said!” Lydia’s father boomed, levelling his rifle at the gypsy woman. He stepped out from the door and moved to position himself between Lydia and Esme. Lydia’s mother appeared at the door frame with a look of horror. “Get Lydia inside,” Lydia’s father commanded her, and she ran to her daughter.

“Come along, Lydia,” she urged her, but Lydia was inconsolable. She would not move for as long as the creature still wheezed its bloody breathes. Finally, her mother had to forcibly lift her up and drag her into the house.

“Shut the door,” Lydia’s father said to them, and then turning his attention back at Esme shouted once more, “I won’t say it again, stay back!”

Now Esme stopped. Her hand which clutched the knife fell limp at her side and she just kept repeating her initial statement: “You killed him. You killed him.”

Inside the house Lydia sat and stared at nothing as her mother tried to comfort her while listening for her husband. It was difficult to make out what was said. There was an exchange of words, and then a scream, and finally another gunshot. After a few moments the door opened and Lydia’s father entered, his face pale and slick with sweat. It was as close as Lydia had ever seen her father lose composure.

“That woman was crazy,” he said, “I had to do it.”

At first light there were police. Questions were asked, and honest answers were eventually given. In the end, Lydia’s family never saw any trouble, though the manager of the carnival did try to stir some up. Lydia never found out what happened to the body of Jude, the Devil-Child – more than likely he was incinerated. She had heard one of the police officers call him an “abomination to God” when he first saw the remains, and this had sent her into a hysterical fit.

The shock of it all would stay with her for a long while, and the dreams would never really leave until the day she died. In those dreams of hers she saw his goat-eyes in the moonlight, full of sadness and betrayal.