Mallory glances back, mildly startled as she turns around without waiting for the goo to make space for her. The Lesser demon also snaps it’s head back to stare at me with it’s bright, yellow eye.

It slowly turns back around to Mallory, and she stares back. Not quite paralyzed with fear, but more like she was unsure what to do. Her eyebrows raise in response to something I couldn’t see—but sounded like someone was mixing spaghetti. Really thick spaghetti.

And then, in a voice that sounds like sheet metal being dragged against concrete and broken glass, the demon utters a single word, “Hungry.”

“Oh. You must smell the chicken.” Mallory flips her backpack to her front and looks past the demon to me. “I’ve got this. Keep cutting!”

She seems unphased by the horrid noise that came from the demon, and by the way the demon approached her so confidently. I wonder if she’s interacted with this Lesser Demon before?

Technique 4: Provide offerings of food. Often.

Wary as I am to take my eyes off the demon, anything with a craving for that shitty chicken is unlikely to harm Mallory—as she’s the only one who brings it to them. Well, as far as we know. Apparently there’s people wandering around this forest that we don’t know, putting up pointless pentagrams.

“Should I just drop it in?”

As Mallory feeds the Lesser Demon pieces of chicken, I set back to cutting through the rest of this rope. Just bringing out the chicken seems to have caught the attention of all the trapped Half-Spirits, all struggling to take on their normal forms in the limited space.

The rope soon snaps, falling to the ground and freeing the various beings. Most of them sprint away, but a few stick around to collect chicken from Mallory. I contemplate whether or not I should remain battle-ready, and decide against it.

Wouldn’t want to accidentally aggravate anything.

I retract my spear and walk over to Mallory and the slowly dissipating group of Half-Spirits. She tosses chicken into the mouths of the bigger ones, and bends down to gently place smaller pieces in the openings of the small ones until she runs out of chicken.

“Alright guys, that’s it.” She straightens up, exposing the chicken bucket to demonstrate that it was empty.

I look past her to where the mound was, noting what was most definitely the remains of a human. I walk past her and the lingering demon who had taken the empty bucket and was staring into it.

I nudge the body with my foot, more annoyed than disgusted by it. His jaw was dislocated, permanently locked into the open position, crusted black goo blocked his nose. Bones stretched against his skin, some of them managing to break through the skin—mostly at joints. All of these things were signs of a demonic possession gone horribly wrong.

In addition to the possession-induced injuries, his torso looks like it had been picked at by rats. He has missing chunks of flesh of varying depths, deepest around his chest area where you’d normally find a heart.

“Ah, shit!”

I look back as Mallory suddenly cries out. She punts a rabbit-looking Half-Spirit away.

“Go hunt something, you lazy bitch!” She yells at it, rubbing her ankle.

“Aren’t we supposed to be being quiet?”

“It’s okay in clearings. Too open to sleep.”

“If you say so.”

The Lesser Demon had dropped the chicken bucket at some point, and was pawing at Mallory’s bag.

“What? There’s no more, look.” Mallory opens her bag wider and lets the demon sift through it.

“I think I found the ‘not-kid’ that cat thing was talking about.” I point out.

“He looks pretty bad from there… Do you think the police will accept animal attack?”

“I don’t see why not.”

Mallory puffs her cheeks out as the demon pulls out a pack of beef jerky.

“That’s mine…”

“Did that demon do this?” I huff, mildly exasperated that she was still giving this thing her attention.

“Did you do this?” She looks up at the demon.

It’s quiet for a long time, seemingly frozen in place. From here, I could see what had caused that gross noise a few moments ago. The demon’s ‘face’ shifts and twists to create a ‘mouth’ that seemed to be filled with actual glass.

Despite forming its mouth (and I’m being liberal here, it’s more like a hole), it still didn’t say anything. After a moment of hesitation, it finally says something in that horrible voice.

“They were hungry.”

Well, that’s a confession of guilt if I’ve ever heard one.