The Devil's Lullaby

by Chris Scalise

  He smiled and told her that he would pray for her continued protection. “It’s important that you remain faithful,” he told her. “Find a church family. Pray every day. The demon Abaddon is a fierce, vengeful demon, and he may try to return.”

  Abaddon...Cassidy thought about it for a moment. Suddenly, she had a brief memory of that word leaving her mouth. It was like suddenly being reminded of a forgotten event that had occurred during a drunken stupor.

  She looked at Dominic. “Who...or what...is Abaddon? I swear, I never heard that name before tonight.”

  Dominic smiled. “Abaddon is a demon referenced in the Book of Revelation. The important thing is that he can’t hurt you anymore, so long as you remain in the Lord’s light.”

  Cassidy marveled at the whole situation. Her scumbag father had insisted that the possession was just a product of her warped imagination, but she had never heard the name Abaddon in her life. At least, not before tonight.

  When she stepped outside, the crisp night air seemed more refreshing than usual. The cool breeze soothed her senses, and the sound of high-speed traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard seemed almost rhythmic. Off in the distance, she could see the bright lights of the Vegas Strip: the emerald green of the MGM Grand, the neon blue lines that decorated the various floors of the Cosmopolitan. The whole display looked like a beautifully diverse collection of colors, arranged in an array of heights, lengths, and shapes. She saw the top of the High Roller, the world’s tallest Ferris wheel. Across the street, she could see the facade of the opulent Bellagio, one of her favorite hotels for entertaining out-of-town friends.

  At the northernmost point of the Strip, the Stratosphere towered into the heavens. Its peak resembled that of Seattle’s Space Needle, but it stood almost twice as high. Cassidy had once dismissed the Stratosphere as a second-rate hotel in one of the sketchiest parts of town, but tonight, it was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. Life was beautiful.

  She skipped across the parking lot to her silver 2017 Lexus RS. The car was covered in a thick coating of dirt courtesy of the latest Vegas dust storm, but she would remedy that in the morning. In recent weeks, her mind had been plagued with more important matters than a dusty windshield. Now that she was free from the darkness, she could return to some sense of normalcy: car washes, luncheons, art-collecting.

  She pressed the Unlock button on her key fob and stepped into her vehicle just as her tail lights flashed. As she adjusted her seat belt and considered how she would thank Dominic for saving her life, she noticed something peculiar in her rearview mirror. It was familiar, terrifying, but surely an optical illusion. She adjusted her mirror to get a closer look, and there it was: the strange, ghostly presence that had been haunting her dreams.

  It was a man – or at least, it seemed like a man. It was hard to tell. The figure wore a Victorian-era men’s suit complete with a gray tailcoat, burgundy vest, loose slacks, high-collared shirt and oversized black ascot. The suit was like something out of a bad vampire romance novel, but it was the face that triggered horrifying memories.

  The face was human and yet inhuman at the same time. It was pale white like an eggshell, covered in gruesome crimson scars and flesh wounds. The hair was long and matted, dark in color. The flowing hair made the creature appear female at first glance, but the body was unmistakably masculine. The eyes had no pupils or retinas. They were pure white, soulless. This was the very monster that had been tormenting Cassidy’s dreams for weeks. Now it was standing in a dirt field just a few yards away from the chapel, gazing at her through her rearview mirror, informing her that her nightmare was far from over.

  Cassidy pounded her fists repeatedly on her steering wheel, all the while screaming “No!” and “Why?” until she was out of breath. Finally, she cocked her head back. The field was empty. The demon was gone.

  2

  “There’s no need to feel tense,” Allison reassured the trembling man seated at the opposite end of the table. The man closed his eyes even more tightly. “I’m sensing a warm light showering over us. It’s a positive, loving energy. You lost someone very close to you, didn’t you?”

  The two of them had been sitting hand in hand for several minutes. The room was dark, and the silence was occasionally interrupted by the faint sounds of the traffic outside as it made its way along Tropicana Ave. This was Las Vegas, the city of neon. Most people dreamed of winning it big in this town, but Jesse Meyer simply dreamed of making contact.

  Jesse shook his head and wiped away the tears that were streaming down his face. The heavyset man looked like the sort of badass biker you would go out of your way not to annoy. He even had the beard and the leather jacket. The wavy Steven-Tyler haircut also gave him a bit of a rock-star edge. But this guy wasn’t looking for a bar fight or a guitar solo. He was a broken man who had wept openly from the minute Allison took him by the hands. Allison Lockwood was, apparently, his last desperate hope for peace.

  Allison continued to clench Jesse’s trembling hands from across the table. “It’s your wife,” she said after a brief hesitation. “I sense a close bond, but it doesn’t feel maternal. It’s an intimate bond, and one with a tremendous amount of history. I feel like the two of you were married for many, many years.”

  The man let out an agonized squeal. “She was my high school sweetheart,” he bellowed. “We were about to have our twenty-fifth anniversary.”

  “I see,” Allison replied softly. “She’s in a place of peace. She’s trying to communicate.” Allison paused. “She says, ‘It’s me, Sarah.’”

  The man’s sausage-like fingers squeezed Allison’s hands so tightly that she was losing all feeling in her fingertips, but she quietly bit her lip and tried to ignore the pain. Heartfelt cries thundered from the man’s diaphragm. His cheeks were now soaked with tears, and there was no stopping the deluge from raining down onto the oak table between the two of them.

  “She—she was everything,” the man said in a weak voice. “Sarah…Sarah…can you hear me?”

  Allison nodded. “She can hear you. She wants you to know that she is at peace. She’s not suffering any longer, and she doesn’t want you to suffer anymore. She loves you, and it breaks her heart to see you carrying this sort of burden. One day, the two of you will be reunited in a place where there is no death, no suffering, no pain. She says it’s time to let go. She loves you, and she wants you to be happy. She promises that she will always watch over you, like a guardian angel.”

  The tears continued to flow, but the audible weeping stopped as Jesse gave an accepting nod. He wiped his eyes using the sleeve of his leather jacket. Allison briefly opened her eyes to make sure that the man’s long hair wasn’t too close to the lit candle in the center of the table. The room was mostly dark, and so it was difficult to see the immediate surroundings, but everything appeared to be okay.

  Jesse slowly opened his eyes, his retinas glistening and dark red. “Sarah,” he called out in a shaking voice. “Baby, I just need to know one thing. I need to know that…” He tried to continue, but he couldn’t push the words past his trembling jaw and tear-soaked face. He emitted a high-pitched wail, but he couldn’t articulate what he really wanted to ask.

  Allison nodded again. “She understands. And the answer to your question is no. She didn’t suffer. When she woke up, the smoke was already in her lungs. She was gone before the flames even made it to the bedroom. She didn’t experience any pain, just a moment of discomfort before being welcomed into the loving embrace of God. Again, she wants you to stop losing sleep over this. She is in a happy place. She loves you, she’s looking over you, and she looks forward to being reunited with you in eternity. But not for a very, very long time. She says you still have a lot of living left to do, and it’s time you started doing it.”

  He pounded his head on the wooden table. “I’m so sorry,” he shrieked. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Allison said in a near-whisper. “She doesn’t blame you, and there’s
nothing you could have done. You were working the night shift to provide for her, and she loves you for that. Stop looking for ways to blame yourself, and just be free. She’ll always be watching over you.”

  Jesse let go of Allison’s hands and wiped the moisture from his eyes. Though he was still visibly shaken, he was now much calmer. Allison stood up, walked across the table, and wrapped her arms around her emotional client. She whispered a few more gentle words of encouragement, and Jesse stood up to leave the room.

  As the two of them walked toward the beaded curtain that separated the dark séance room from the rest of the New Age magic shop, Jesse turned to Allison and whispered, “I’ll never forget this. You might have actually saved my life today.” Allison smiled and hugged the large man once more before he exited. Another satisfied customer.

  Allison turned to the counter where her cashier, Tara, stood with a visible look of surprise. Nineteen and barely out of high school, Tara was still new to Allison’s operation, but surely she knew the drill.

  “Sometimes you amaze me,” Tara said. “Seriously, you had me believing.”

  Allison laughed. “What, that? That was fucking amateur hour. The guy made his appointment through email, and once I had the email address, it took me about four seconds to find his Facebook profile where he just drones on endlessly about his dead wife. I mean, sometimes these people make it so easy it’s, like, not even fair.”

  Allison chuckled and began straightening the various vials of herbs beside the cash register. She was good at her job, and it had nothing to do with the number of healing crystals she sold.

  At twenty-eight, she was old enough to know how the world worked but still young enough to look deceptively innocent and naive. She was pretty, but not stereotypically gorgeous, which made it easy for her to influence people without looking like a potential threat.

  Hers was a face that people trusted: a warm smile, bright brown eyes, a slightly upturned nose, and a soft coating of freckles that appeared most prominently along her nose but were almost invisible from a distance. Her face-framing auburn hair fell gently to her shoulders, covering her ears and curving slightly inward as though the two sides desperately wanted to meet at the chin. No one suspected that Allison Lockwood was anything less than a gifted and compassionate medium.

  Tara was quite different. Full-figured and with a penchant for sarcasm, she tended to give the impression that she was quietly judging everyone. Her stare said it all: ‘I’m smarter than you, and you’re breathing my air.’ She was every bit as light-skinned as Allison, but her dyed black hair and thick eyebrows caused some people to assume that she was of Hispanic, Italian, or perhaps even Middle-Eastern origin.

  She leaned against the wall behind the counter. “Don’t you ever feel even a little guilty, though?” Her indifferent tone suggested that the question was more a matter of morbid curiosity than of genuine concern.

  Allison stepped behind the counter and picked up a FedEx box that contained her most recent shipment of wholesale crystals. These were rose quartz crystals, each about the size of a golf ball and worth about seventy-five cents. She would make a killing selling them to New Age fanatics for twenty-two dollars apiece.

  Tara continued when Allison didn’t respond right away. “I mean, at some point, you have to think, ‘I’m screwing with these people’s memories and emotions.’ Not that I’m judging or anything. I just think it’s kind of interesting.”

  Allison carried the box to the crystal aisle and set it down. “Let me tell you something,” she said, marching back to the register. “I am doing a public service for these people. You saw that guy with the greasy hair and the jacket?” She pointed to the entrance door. “That guy was days away from blowing his brains out. So if I have to play a little make-believe to give these people some closure, then strap a fucking beard on me and call me Santa Claus.”

  “Sorry,” Tara muttered. “I didn’t mean–”

  “Deep down,” Allison interrupted, placing her wrists on the counter, “these people know it’s a game. Think about it. When some dipshit wears his Raiders underwear on game day, the logical part of his brain is fully aware that his team’s success has nothing to do with his choice of briefs. But if the game is starting and he can’t find that pair of underwear, you know he’s still going to freak the fuck out like his team is depending on him. We cling to these goofy rituals as a way of coping with all the shit that rains down on us, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just part of being human.”

  Tara was visibly unconvinced, but she didn’t press the matter any further. “Hey, can I leave a little early today?” she asked. “I have to get my car smogged, and all the places around here close at six.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” Allison replied. “Can you help me with these crystals?”

  3

  Allison spent the remainder of the afternoon stocking shelves and taking inventory. The new rose quartz crystals shimmered nicely as the sunlight poured in through the window. As she predicted, it was an utterly quiet Tuesday. She only sold one item the entire afternoon: a book of Wiccan spells. The buyer, a heavyset man in his 40s, bombarded her with questions about whether the incantations actually worked.

  “Wicca isn’t my specialty,” she had told him, “but a lot of my friends swear by it.” Another lie. The only Wiccans she knew were customers, and she had never said a word to them besides “That will be twenty-eight fifty” and “Have a nice day.”

  Tara left just after 5:00, and Allison thought about calling it a day. Business was always slow on Tuesday, and she had better things to do than stare at the wall and continue inhaling the godawful stench of incense that permeated every square inch of the building. When she first opened the shop, she assured herself that she would get used to the aroma. Two years later, it was still as unbearable as ever.

  Shortly after 5:30, she emptied the register and recorded her meager earnings for the day. Then she stepped over to the light switch and prepared to call it a night. Before her index finger could even reach the switch, she heard the familiar bell of the door opening. Typical.

  She had so been looking forward to going home, but she couldn’t say no to the prospect of a sale. “Welcome to Lockwood’s Metaphysical Supply,” she said.

  The customer made his way past the dusty shelves filled with stones, herbs, and occult books. When he finally stopped at the counter just inches away from her, she forced an awkward smile.

  He wasn’t very tall, maybe five-seven. Though his graying hair suggested middle age, his unwrinkled face made him appear youthful and energetic. It wasn’t surprising. This shop catered to a large number of ethical vegans, and they tended to age far more slowly than the average Whopper-loving American. Based on his healthy appearance and lanky build, Allison guessed that this customer was probably a tofu-loving, marathon-running environmentalist who juiced his own organic vegetables and constantly bored his friends with speeches about the incredible healing properties of essential oils. Allison liked those types of customers because they typically didn’t mind overpaying for herbs.

  “What can I help you with?” she asked with a forced smile.

  The man smiled as he placed his elbows on the counter. “I was hoping you could give me a reading,” he replied. “I hear you’re the best.”

  Allison laughed. “I’m only the best when I tell people what they want to hear. When I have to be the bearer of bad news, people don’t like me so much.”

  The man pulled a silver money clip from his front pocket. “How much for a standard read?” he asked.

  “It’s a hundred dollars for fifteen minutes,” she said, “or three hundred for an hour. Unfortunately, though, my assistant already left for the day, so I don’t have anyone else to watch the store during a reading. Would you like to schedule a reading for tomorrow?”

  The man pulled two crisp hundred-dollar bills from his money clip and placed them on the counter. I’m a little short on time,” he said, “but I’ll pay you doubl
e for just a fifteen-minute read. That’s all I need.”

  Allison looked down at the bills. Since she was about to close up anyway, she could just lock the front door and proceed with the reading. Since she was alone with him in the store, safety was a concern. She observed his skinny frame and decided that, if need be, she could probably take him down with a couple of moves she had learned in her judo class.

  She placed the bills inside the register and guided him behind the counter, past the beaded curtains, and into the séance room. She lit a single candle as the man made himself comfortable in the same chair where the greasy biker had sat only a few hours earlier.

  “I was actually just about to close before you came in,” she said, “so let me go ahead and lock the door really quick.”

  She stepped through the curtain and made her way across the store while the man made himself comfortable. Allison returned a few seconds later.

  “So what’s your name?” she asked as she moved the candle to the center of the oak table.

  “Jack,” the man replied.

  Allison took a seat. “It’s very nice to meet you, Jack. Have you ever had a reading before?”

  Jack shook his head. “This is my first time.”

  Allison nodded. “Okay, awesome. Then let me just take a moment to explain how I do things. In a moment, I’m going to reach toward you and take your hands in mine. Then I’m going to ask that you look directly into my eyes and meditate with me. We’ll need to keep this room absolutely silent as I get a feel for your aura and connect with the energies that surround you. Please try to remain absolutely quiet, and clear your mind if you can. If meditation isn’t your thing, that’s totally fine, but the more you can quiet your mind, the easier it will be for me to connect and get a strong read on you. Is this all making sense so far?”