The Cannibal Heart

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About a hundred yards below the house, to the south, the woods began, and it was here that Luisa said the devils lived. Some of them were shut up in the old well, now gone to salt and useless, and covered with a concrete slab. The others lived in the swimming pool which had been boarded over so they wouldn’t escape.

Jessie tried to see the devils by lying on her stomach across the planks and peering through a knothole. Inside, there was nothing but blackness and a very faint rustling noise.

“I think I hear something,” Jessie said.

“That’s them.” Luisa hugged her knees and rocked back and forth on the planks with fierce delight. “If you don’t quit pestering me and following me around all the time I’ll let them loose. I’ll tell them to sneak into your room while you’re sleeping.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” But the protest was feeble. She knew Luisa would dare. She had, also, an uneasy feeling that if there were any devils in the woods, they belonged to Luisa and would obey her. Luisa wore a veil of mystery. Though she was only fifteen she was already different from other people, and Jessie respected this difference, and despised it, and was a little afraid of it, too. Luisa had wild dark eyes that she could roll up until only the whites were visible, like peeled grapes. She could turn her eyelids inside out by pressing them with her thumb, and when she combed her long black hair in the kitchen, it gave off sparks and made the music, coming from the radio, crackle and splutter. Luisa’s family was a little mysterious, too. Her mother, Carmelita, spoke nothing but Spanish — sometimes so fast and loud that Jessie’s ears twitched — and Luisa’s father, Mr.

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