The Devil's End

by D A Fowler

  She began to cry. “I did what I thought was best. I didn’t think anyone ever went near that place. I don’t want innocent people to die. I refuse—”

  The blue flame darkened to indigo. “If you truly hadn’t wanted, as you say, innocent people to die, Eliza, you would have burned it. You’re really not much of a heroine; you were far more concerned about your own welfare, weren’t you? But believe me, there are no such things as innocent people, my dear. If nothing else they are thieves, every last one of them. And once we have our freedom, we shall rid this world of them once and for all. Excluding our converts, of course. But those who worship the Master will no longer pull us through the cunt of physical existence and send us on petty errands. They will dance when we pull the strings; and ah, Eliza my dear, we have such delightful entertainment planned. Sodom and Gomorrah were nothing compared to what will be.”

  She clutched the arms of her chair and trembled, knowing what it was going to do. She was a confessed traitor, and of no use whatsoever to it. The infernal being stood up slowly and looked down at her without mercy. Its civility gone, the wicked glory of its innate evil shined through.

  Unable to bear the sight of it, Eliza turned her head, which was suddenly gripped in an unseen vise. Beyond the point she could turn it herself, it continued to be twisted. With a blast of incredible pain she could hear an odd snapping sound. For a moment she was looking straight at the back of her rocking chair. Then came the final savage jerk in which the epitome of torment was abruptly ended and her head, turned a full 180 degrees, fell limply on her right shoulder.

  Nancy came back to the dinner table looking quite disturbed. “That was Jay’s mother. She said he started having some kind of seizures, and they had to take him to the hospital.”

  Beth put down her fork and laboriously swallowed an unchewed piece of Swiss steak, unaware that her husband was making an unfavorable assessment of her physical appearance: the lifelessness of her dark brown hair, adhering as usual to the nape of her neck; her rounded peasant features, and too-pale skin still plagued by occasional blemishes; gray-green eyes too closely set, which held a perpetual look of disapproval whenever they were turned on him.

  “Oh God, how terrible,” she said, gaping slightly. “He’s never had one before, has he? Do you want to go up to see him?”

  Nancy shook her head nervously. “There’s nothing I can do.” She stared at her plate now without interest. Surely what she had done had nothing to do with it. ..

  Her father drained his glass of California white wine and poured another. “He’s not into drugs, is he?”

  “Not that I know of, Dad.”

  “Well, you never know. Kids nowadays think their bodies are experimental labs. They drink Lysol, sniff anything that comes in an aerosol can, eat any pill they can get their hands on…” He lit his pipe and blew a cloud of cherry tobacco over the table. “I hope you have better sense than that.”

  Beth irritably waved the smoke away from her face. Roger knew she hated for him to light up before she was finished eating. He only did it to antagonize her, she was sure of that. But she wouldn’t make an issue of it now, at the dinner table, in the presence of their impressionable daughter. She would bring it up again later, specifically, when he reached for her after all the lights were out.

  “How’s Marla doing?” she asked her daughter. “Haven’t seen her lately. She’s still upset about her grandmother, I’ll bet. Poor dear.”

  “Marla’s no poor dear,” Nancy said hotly. “We’re not even friends anymore. I hate her.”

  Beth wasn’t really that surprised; it was bound to happen. Sooner or later the jealousy had to creep in. Nancy couldn’t compete with Marla’s clothes, or her car, or her hundred-dollar-a-month allowance.

  Pamela had to rub it in, all right. This is how the Upper Class lives. Nancy had no more stomach for it than she had. “Well, that’s too bad, I guess. What happened?” Nancy looked sulkily at the wine bottle in the center of the table. “Don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “All right, you don’t have to.” Beth searched for a different subject. Let well enough alone. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Montgomery got out of the hospital today. They thought they’d lost him Sunday; Dr. Prescott had even pronounced him dead. But then he started breathing again, and seemed to be just fine…no more pain, nothing. They kept him a couple of extra days to be sure, but…Nancy? Are you all right?”

  Nancy’s face had gone paler than her white stoneware plate. She pushed it away and stood up. “I’m…sorry. I guess I’m not very hungry. I think I should lay down.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Roger asked around his pipe, squinting with either concern or smoke in his eyes, Nancy wasn’t sure which. And either her nerves or the smoke was going to make her vomit in the next minute or so. It didn’t matter which. She could feel it coming.

  “She’s fine, Roger. She’s just upset about Jay, aren’t you, sweetheart?” Beth likewise pushed back her plate and rose from the table, initiating the Cold Shoulder ritual. Because of the smoke, she was not able to finish her dinner. It had probably made Nancy sick as well. He knew how much it bothered her when he did that. How could he be so inconsiderate? And speaking of inconsiderate, why did he insist on operating his business in the garage? An office downtown would attract a lot more customers. Didn’t he want to get ahead, if for no other reason than his family’s happiness? Didn’t he want to take his wife and daughter on vacations or buy them expensive clothes or a better house to live in? Did they mean nothing to him? She was rehearsing.

  Nancy hurried from the kitchen with one hand on her stomach, the other over her mouth. Beth began clearing the table. A few minutes later there was a knock on the front door. Trudging like a mistreated slave for Roger’s benefit, she went to answer it.

  There were two strange men standing on the front porch. They looked like salesmen. Beth’s expression and tone were less than encouraging. “Yes?”

  Brother Mitchell cleared his throat, hoping fervently that as he and Timothy Gibson had prayed, God had already prepared the hearts of the girl’s parents to receive their message. “Yes, ma’am. You’re Mrs. Snell?”

  Beth nodded slightly, still unsmiling.

  “Well, we’re from the Faith Tabernacle Church,” Mitchell went on solemnly. “I’m the pastor, Carl Mitchell; this here is Timothy Gibson.”

  “What do you want?” Beth asked coldly, now wishing she hadn’t answered the door. Almost nothing bothered her more than religious fanatics barging into people’s houses trying to make new converts. She was Catholic, and highly resented anyone who tried to sway her from the beliefs she’d embraced since childhood. Some fundamentalists had told her once that Catholicism was a cult. The nerve!

  “We need to talk to your daughter, ma’am. Is she home?”

  The question both surprised and confused her. “Nancy’s not feeling well…she’s lying down. What do you want with her?”

  Mitchell sucked in a deep breath and briefly, silently, prayed for God’s assistance before answering, “We are convinced beyond a doubt, Mrs. Snell, that your daughter is in need of an exorcism.”

  Beth blanched as though he’d hit her in the face with a frying pan. As soon as the shock subsided, she bellowed over her shoulder, “ROGER!”

  Mitchell and Gibson exchanged worried glances. This was not how they had pictured things going.

  Roger appeared several moments later wearing his work apron, his pipe clenched between his teeth. He peered curiously at Mitchell and Gibson over his wife’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  She turned back to face the two men and growled, “I’d like you to tell my husband exactly what you just told me.”

  Brother Mitchell reluctantly repeated the message. Roger’s face immediately became crimson with rage.

  “What kind of a nut are you, anyway? You get off my property right now, and I don’t want to see yo
ur faces around here again. And if you so much as even approach my daughter, I’ll have both your asses thrown in the can. Got that?”

  “God has commanded us to do this,” Gibson complained in his nasal tenor. “We have to obey Him. Don’t you understand the danger your daughter is in? That all of us might be in? Sir, I beg you, please—”

  The green plywood door crashed forward in his face, cutting off his plea with a thunderous crack. He shook his head sadly and turned to Mitchell. “I think we need to pray about this situation some more, brother.”

  Nancy, having heard the commotion, peeked out the bathroom window. She watched the two figures, one tall, one short and stocky, slowly descend the porch steps and merge with the shadows on the sidewalk toward their car, a dented yellow monstrosity parked against the curb in front of the house.

  As they got in, a movement beyond the car caught Nancy’s eye. A door was opening across the street. Maude and Eliza Chandler’s house. They were strange old women. An aloof spinster and her prehistoric mother, both hardly ever seen since they moved in a couple of months ago, but Nancy on several nights had seen candles burning through the lace curtain over the picture window in front. She’d noticed strange odors about the place too, and for some reason it gave her the creeps to be very near it. Which was why she sometimes snooped around anyway.

  She squinted, attempting to sharpen her vision. Someone was coming out the door, but it didn’t seem to be Eliza, certainly not her mother. No, it was definitely a man, and something about his shape seemed familiar. She couldn’t see his face so she couldn’t possibly be sure, but a name came to mind; she quickly dismissed it. She was only being paranoid. What would he be doing over there? (What was he doing anywhere? He was supposed to be dead!) The fact that they’d had a visitor at all was strange enough.

  Suspending her wonder at that, she moved away from the window and went back to her bedroom, her stomach voided of her supper, and sat on the bed. The ledger was lying open on her pillow.

  Across from it, on the nightstand, was the bloody crystal ashtray in which she had killed a white mouse two hours earlier. The ashtray was positioned in the center of a piece of red construction paper on which she’d drawn the same symbols she’d copied off the wall of the tomb. The mouse was now wrapped in an old newspaper and stuffed in the bottom of her trash can; she had planned to take it out after her parents went to bed. She couldn’t remember any of the words she’d spoken, as if that mystical language refused to make an impression on her brain. She only remembered her wish concerning Marla.

  She realized she was trembling. In the hallway she could hear her parents arguing over whether or not to question her about something. Nancy snapped the ledger shut and tossed it under her bed. Marla had probably started something. Well, Marla would be going down very soon—

  Oh, by the way! Mr. Montgomery got out of the hospital today!

  and there was nothing at ALL to worry about Nancy, this is Jay’s mother. Something terrible’s happened…

  and her plan was running quite smoothly, oh yes, it was all so easy. That dumb hick was so unbelievably trusting…

  Something went wrong. Maybe she’d mispronounced some of the words. Maybe the sacrifice had been unacceptable…maybe it had to be a human baby, like the Obers had used. Why the hell wasn’t Montgomery dead? And why was Jay in the hospital having seizures?

  She curled up in a tight ball under her blanket and eventually fell into an unsound sleep, her nightstand lamp burning brightly.

  Sixteen

  The puppy had grown tired of pawing against the walls of the small box in which he had been imprisoned. He was also weak from lack of food and water, it had been almost twenty-four hours since he’d had any of either.

  When a small strip of light suddenly fell across his forepaws, he lifted his head and emitted a low whine. Footsteps approached. Sam’s tail thumped softly against the cardboard wall. At last, at last.

  The flaps above him were pulled open, temporarily blinding him with harsh light. He blinked rapidly and pulled himself up, searching for friendliness on the unfamiliar face hovering over him. There was none.

  He began to whine in earnest, anxious for the hands that had closed him up in the cruel box to reach in and lift him back out. He pounced against the wall in an attempt to climb out and nearly tipped the box over. The person righted it, then reached for the back of his neck and roughly clutched the soft, loose skin before yanking him up by it. The pup yelped in pain.

  He was savagely thrown to the floor of the fruit cellar. His breath knocked out of him, he lay still and wondered why he was being hurt. He didn’t understand; he had never experienced torment before. He tried to get up, but a foot came down on his back. His large brown eyes rolled upward and caught the glint of something shiny being positioned horizontally above him. He didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t look like something to eat.

  The shiny object plunged down, and Sam’s world became silent and black.

  Lana watched from the front yard until Bruce’s taillights disappeared, then turned to walk slowly back to the house. She was past the initial liking stage and into heavy infatuation now, and her step was light, her feet seeming to land on springy clouds instead of solid ground. Her first poem for Bruce had already begun writing itself on the tablet of her mind…

  You reach, we touch and blend, I take a breath, you…

  Got a worm hanging out your kazoo…

  Movement at a dark curtain next door captured her attention. Was someone watching her? Spiro again? She frowned deeply, hoping her expression was visible in the dim light. It also occurred to her to lift her middle finger, but she really didn’t want to be mean to Spiro— supposing he would even know what the gesture meant —she just wanted him to leave her alone.

  She couldn’t be friends with him anymore, even if his mother hadn’t forbidden it. Because of that, for a while at least, she didn’t have to deal with telling him about Sam, unless he should happen to catch up with her at school. She wouldn’t make it easy for him.

  The curtains ruffled again, indicating that whoever had been peeking out had moved away. Lana sighed and went back into her house.

  Luke, still mourning Sam’s disappearance, sat glumly on the couch watching a sitcom, the canned laughter in response to horrendously unfunny lines having no effect on him. Normally he would be laughing anyway, or berating the show and switching channels. Carol was at the dining table writing a letter. Lana ignored her and plopped down on the couch beside her brother.

  “You still depressed about Sam?”

  “Just lemme alone,” he pouted.

  “Well, it wasn’t my fault—”

  He punched her on the leg. “I said lemme alone!”

  Lana reflexively whacked him back. “You don’t have to hit me, turd face. I’ll gladly leave you alone.” She escaped to her bedroom before the Referee could step in, and slammed her door, thinking how too damn bad it was that Luke hadn’t disappeared instead. What had she ever done to deserve a bratty brother like him?

  After clearing the textbooks and papers from her bed, she stretched out on it, the twinkly ceiling plaster above her head soon marching in patterns as she continued to stare at it with unfocused vision. An entertaining hallucination. Heart shapes swirled, cupids arrows pierced them through. Bodies entwined, rose and fell in sultry rhythm. The room began to feel stuffy.

  Moving dreamily, she got up and opened her bedroom window to let in some fresh air. The frigid breeze blew against her face and neck, feathered her hair. For the moment it felt good.

  You reach, we touch and blend, I take a breath, you…

  She closed her eyes and smiled as the words, like honey, dripped into her consciousness from the hidden hive of creativity.

  You sigh:

  Then through your eyes I see, and together we fly;

  One mind, One body, One dream…
/>   She could see Bruce’s eyes, the jester’s mask laid aside. Even if he refused to admit it to himself, he had a lot to give.

  The shining, gold-flecked eyes in her daydream began to stare at her more intensely.

  Through your eyes I see…

  See what? What?

  Suddenly the eyes became scarlet, the color of blood. Lana gasped, her lids fluttering open in dismay. That hadn’t been Bruce. The face, yes, but the eyes…definitely no. They hadn’t even been human. Why should she have imagined such a thing?

  Through her bedroom wall the raucous laughter from the television seemed to mock her. She stormed back into the hallway and yelled for Luke to turn down the volume, initiating another name-calling contest that quickly sent their mother slamming out of the house.

  At 11:15 Jane stepped into the dark, silent trailer and quietly made her way through the living room. She stumbled into a pile of beer cans by Harry’s chair and cursed softly, hoping the sound hadn’t woken him. If he awakened, he’d more than likely need to have sex before he could fall asleep again, and Jane was far from being in the mood for that. She had a sinking feeling that she’d started a rock slide of sorts, and the entire load was threatening to crash down on her and bury her forever. And for what? The girl had called around ten-thirty and said it was all a false alarm. Call off the Witch Busters. Forget the whole thing. Just like that. Sure, right.

  In the bedroom she set her purse on the dresser and began to unzip the back of her white uniform when Harry turned on the bed, weary slats groaning beneath him, and muttered groggily, “You’ve started some shit, haven’t you?”