The Devil's End

by D A Fowler

  She froze. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t give me that,” Harry’s voice answered thickly in the dark room. “I stopped at the bar after work for a few beers and got an earful of rumors. You’ve got some people just about pissing in their pants, Jane. Maybe it wouldn’t happen in a bigger town where folks aren’t so superstitious, but with the dumb-shit folklore that’s been hanging over this place for so long…”

  “Please, let’s not get into it.” Jane tiredly slipped out of the uniform, leaving it crumpled on the floor.

  “You’re already in it up to your eyeballs,” Harry shot back. “And if something happens to that girl, I’d say you’d be responsible. No doubt the high school kids will get onto this pretty damn quick.”

  “What was I supposed to do, Harry? Her friend came to me for help. She was scared, and I have to admit I was too. Still am, if you want the truth.”

  Harry was silent for a few moments. Jane slipped under the covers in her bra and panties, too drained of energy to put on a gown or wash her face and teeth. She wanted to sleep for a million years.

  Finally her husband said tersely, “All I gotta say is, you’d better get your shit together in a hurry, and things better settle down, or I’m moving out.”

  Jane sat up on her elbow, alarmed, and searched the shadowed features of his face. “My God, Harry, you’d divorce me over this?”

  He turned his back to her. “I could strangle you over this.”

  Seventeen

  Dawn seeped into Spiro’s bedroom in subtle shades of blue and gray. Night’s darkness shied into the corners, unable to dispel the sunlight. He cracked his eyes open, his nostrils picking up the scent of something cooking in the kitchen. Normally his mother only fixed him lumpy oatmeal for breakfast. Curious, he got out of bed and dressed himself in the same clothes he’d now worn for a solid week. The aroma was activating his salivary glands, and a thin line of drool made its way from the corner of his mouth to his chin. Unaware of it, he shuffled barefoot out of his room and followed his nose to the kitchen. “That smells good, Mama. Can I have some?”

  She turned from the stove and smiled, which was also unusual; she usually greeted him in the mornings with a scowl on her face. But when he wasn’t looking at her, she would always whisper Good morning and I love you, son. “Of course you can have some, Spiro. I made it especially for you. Sit down, sit down.”

  He obediently sat at the peeling Formica-topped table, his eyes alight with anticipation. The string of drool reached the end of his jaw and oozed itself onto his shirt. “What is it, Mama?”

  “Never you mind what it is, boy,” she snapped, her smile vanishing. “It’s good for you, so you just eat it all up. Every bit.” A few moments later she carried a large steaming bowl over to the table and set it in front of him. Handing him a spoon, she commanded, “Eat up.”

  He studied the dark, stewlike substance, and after glancing up gratefully at his mother’s face, dipped his spoon into the bowl and delivered it, full, to his waiting mouth. Bertha smiled again after he had swallowed. “That’s a good boy. Every drop, now.” She remained standing by his chair, apparently intent on watching him eat the entire meal. When the bowl was empty, she took it back to the stove and filled it again. “Here, this is the last of it. Is it good?”

  Spiro nodded happily. “Good, Mama. Can I have it every day?”

  “No, just today, boy.”

  Clearly disappointed, Spiro ate the second bowlful a little more slowly, savoring the spicy meat with every chew, because he would never have it again. Just today. Was it his birthday already?

  After fishing out the largest chunks, he lifted the bowl to his lips and sipped the rest, spilling the last drops of it on his shirt. His mother uttered a sigh of disgust. “You can’t wear that shirt to school now, you clumsy idiot. Can’t you do anything right?”

  He lowered the empty bowl and shook his head slowly. With the intention of going to his room to change shirts, he started to rise from his chair. Bertha forced him back down. “Look at me, boy.”

  Flinching as if expecting a slap, he looked up. But his mother didn’t appear to be angry. Instead, she seemed in a particularly good mood. She asked him cheerfully, “You wanna know what you just ate, boy? You want me to tell ya?”

  Something about the question scared him, but he didn’t know why. She’d asked pleasantly enough, but there was a taunting quality in the tone…he’d heard it too many times before not to recognize it. He glanced nervously at the empty bowl. “I…guess so, Mama.”

  Bertha tilted her head back and brayed sadistic laughter. “You jest ate that goddamn puppy, boy! You ate your puppy! How d’ya feel about that? You gonna rat on me ever again?”

  A shattering eruption occurred in Spiro’s brain; for an instant he saw nothing but bright red webs before his eyes, and his only impulse was to claw through them. He realized, vaguely, that his body was moving—moving fast—but he had no idea what it was doing. The webs were bursting all around him as he fought his way out. Then there was a terrible sound, the sound of a ripe cantaloupe hitting the sidewalk. Soon afterward his vision cleared, but the world remained seriously out of focus. His mother was half sitting, half lying against the front of the stove, her chin resting on her breast.

  You ate your puppy! Ate your puppy! Ate your—

  His gorge rose with lightning speed, and he knew he would never make it to the bathroom. Being careful not to step on his unconscious mother, he groped for the sink, spraying vomit all over the counter cabinets below it.

  They sat hunched down in the seats of Mitchell’s yellow Cadillac, which he had parked half a block down on the opposite side of the street from 2314 Glen wood. Mitchell kept glancing nervously at his Timex and asking, “Are you sure this is what the Lord wants us to do?”

  “I heard His voice plain as day,” Gibson insisted for the fifth time in as many minutes. “Whether she wants to go or not, we’ve got to get that girl on holy ground and cast that demon out of her. We can’t just sit back and let Satan march on to victory. Bless God, it’s our duty to fight, tooth and nail, if we must. I don’t want to have to stand before the throne on Judgment Day and say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, Lord, but it seemed the laws of men were more important at the time.’ I want to bow before Him and truthfully say, ‘I have done what the Lord my God commanded me to do,’ and to hear Him say, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ ”

  Mitchell nodded bleakly. “Amen, brother. Amen.” The front door of the house opened, and a young dark-headed girl wearing a white turtleneck sweater and green skirt stepped out. Since the split with Marla, Nancy had started riding to school with Jennifer Parks. But Jennifer had called this morning and said she was sick and wouldn’t be going to school today, and Jay was in the hospital, so Nancy had to ride the bus. The stop was two blocks away.

  “That’s got to be her,” Gibson whispered, his gray eyes bulging behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “Demon-possessed. Lord have mercy.”

  The girl closed the door behind her and stood on the porch for a few seconds, looking up the street. Mitchell and Gibson dipped farther in their seats.

  “Should we do it now?” Mitchell asked, somewhat tiffed that he, the pastor, was having to take instructions from a mere deacon. Why God had chosen to speak to Gibson was beyond Mitchell’s spiritual comprehension, but as he reminded himself, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, and furthermore, God could use whomever He’d a mind to.

  Gibson began rattling off in tongues (Mitchell could swear at times he’d heard Gibson saying things like “See me on my Honda” and “Shonda like coconut”—he himself had yet to receive that particular gift of the Spirit, a slight heavenly oversight which would soon be corrected, he was sure) then Gibson stopped suddenly and said, “Yes, Brother Mitchell. The Lord says to go.” Just then a red Toronado made a left turn behind them; not wishing to be see
n, the two men again ducked toward the center of the car and cracked their skulls together. The Toronado roared past.

  Mitchell, rubbing his head, sat back up and said, “I guess He didn’t mean right that second.”

  Nodding in agreement, Gibson opened his door. Nancy was walking in the opposite direction. “Brother Mitchell, I think maybe you should follow in the car. We can’t be dragging her all the way down the block to get back to it. If she doesn’t want to go, she might make a little noise.”

  “Or a lot,” Mitchell acquiesced, and started the Cadillac’s engine.

  Gibson shut his door quietly and began jogging toward the unsuspecting Nancy. When he was about ten feet behind her, she turned around, saw what she thought was some squirrelly accountant jogging before work, and dismissed him. But then she noticed the car following close behind, moving very slowly near the curb. Though she was not yet afraid, she began to suspect something was up. The car looked like the same one she’d seen out front the night before. Was it the same two men she’d seen leaving the porch? Surely they wouldn’t be kidnappers, though, not at 7:25 in the morning. Gibson caught up to her and she stopped, turning to challenge him with a fearless glare. “Are you following me?”

  “Well, uh, guess I was,” Gibson politely admitted, signaling Mitchell with his eyes to get ready. “But you see, I was kind of hoping you would follow me…to church. You’ve got a problem we need to take care of.”

  Now Nancy was afraid, but she cloaked her fear in anger. “Are you crazy? I’m not going to any church with you. I’d say you’re the one with the problem.”

  “Miss Snell, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but you are possessed of a mighty demon. We’ll get him out of there in no time, though, if you’ll just come with us, please.”

  Nancy started to run, but Gibson was quick—because the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, he would later tell his wife, just as it had been upon Elisha when he outran a horse to Jezreel—and he caught her before she could get away. Mitchell pushed open the passenger door and Gibson pushed in the screaming girl, whom he soon learned was about as easy to subdue as an angry bobcat with twelve sets of claws. But Mitchell somehow managed to drive them safely to the church without having an accident, which was a miracle indeed.

  Marla had still been a little nervous about having to face Nancy at school that day, but she wasn’t present in first hour, nor in third. But something worse than facing Nancy was happening. Most of the kids thought she and Nancy were still friends, and under the present circumstances, that was very bad news for Marla. The grapevine was tittering with the message: Nancy Snell is a witch. Two plus two equals nine—Marla, her best friend, must also be a witch. Halfway through the day Marla was feeling like a germ on a petri dish full of penicillin.

  Hey Marla, my art teacher’s been a real bitch lately. Can you put a hex on her, too?

  Hey Marla, can you turn yourself into a black cat?

  Do you ride a broomstick?

  Got any spare eye of newt?

  Her denials, including not being a friend of Nancy’s any longer, received derisive responses ranging from disbelieving smiles to loud, ripping raspberries and snide declarations of “Oh, is that so?” Finally her frustration level reached its peak in fourth hour, Mrs. Potter’s literature class. Becky Snodgrass, a snotty redhead who had won popularity by virtue of her double-D tits, received a slap in the face after asking Marla if Dennis was a werewolf.

  This action landed Marla in Mr. Greer’s office, where she sat staring blankly at the glossy sheen of the large oak desk upon which thin strips of light, shining through the Levelor blinds on the window, contorted themselves across the principal’s hairy folded hands. His normally gentle features were pinched in irritation.

  “Teasing is a fact of life all through your school years,” he was saying in a stem fatherly tone, “Kids are cruel…sometimes I can’t believe how cruel. You should hear some of the labels that were laid on me when I was your age. But you don’t solve this problem by hitting people—that’s only going to compound it. The best way to deal with it is just to ignore it…that sort of thing will die of starvation if it doesn’t receive any feedback. It’s no fun to torment someone if they don’t react. I learned the hard way. You don’t have to.”

  Marla nodded with false contrition. “I know, I know. I did ignore it for a while, but…I just completely lost it for a minute. I’d had too much. I should’ve just kept my big mouth shut. But after what happened to Mr. Montgomery, I was so sure…and there were other things…”

  “What’s that about Mr. Montgomery?” Greer leaned forward on his desk. “What’s all this have to do with him?”

  Marla felt cornered; the only way to explain herself was to admit Montgomery’s intention to have her and Nancy expelled. But she couldn’t think of a handy lie, so she went ahead and confessed. If Montgomery was still planning to do it, well…then he would do it. Otherwise, Greer knowing about it probably wouldn’t make any difference. Unless Montgomery pressed the issue, Greer would just forget about it.

  When she was finished, having omitted only the part about the bodies missing from the tomb—that might be begging for an official investigation, which could spell Big Trouble should the police come around asking questions at home—Greer looked down at his hands. “Very interesting. You know, the doctors never could come up with a physical reason for his distress…said it was mental. He was even pronounced dead at one point, you know.” Then fearing he’d just disclosed confidential information—he had, in fact, been unconsciously talking to himself—he quickly added, “Of course, that’s just between you and me.”

  Marla’s mouth fell open. “He was pronounced dead?”

  “That’s what I understand, yes.” Greer suddenly looked very uncomfortable. “But you don’t need to repeat any of that, as I said. I was just thinking out loud, I guess.”

  “Why did you say it was interesting?” Marla queried. “You almost sound like you believe—”

  “Oh no, no,” Greer smiled, wiping his brow. “I wasn’t saying that at all. The only strength any of that nonsense has is a person’s belief in it…so it’s very simple. I don’t believe. No, I’m quite certain that we’re just looking at a coincidence, and like you say, you don’t really even know for sure that Nancy found such an object. And Albert is back on the job, in spite of my insistence that he take another week off, so there’s obviously nothing to your fears.”

  It sounded to Marla as if he were trying to convince himself more than her. She could tell that he wanted to say more—something seemed to be eating him—but why should he discuss it with her, a mere student? And by doing so probably violate some stupid code of ethics. “Well, I’m sure you’re right. So…can I go now? I’m sorry I slapped Becky. Am I still in trouble?”

  “Well, I’d say you’re probably still in trouble with Becky, but I think I can drop the issue from this end…as long as I have your promise that it won’t happen again. Ignore the remarks. Better yet, go ahead and laugh at them. Even if you feel like you’re going to explode, keep a smile on your face. It’ll blow over. They’ll get bored and look for someone else to give a hard time.”

  “I hope so,” Marla sighed, thankful that he apparently had no interest in the suspension subject. Greer picked up his phone and prepared to make a call; Marla was officially dismissed.

  Taking her cue, she picked up her purse and left, leaving the door to his office open behind her. While the secretary was writing her a pass to get back into class, the principal’s office door was firmly closed by a very grim-looking Richard Greer.

  Entering her final class at 1:45, Marla studiously avoided looking at the desk in front and the man sitting behind it. She was tense to the point of being classified as petrified wood; any moment he would bark out her name and demand that she plan to stay after class. But he didn’t.

  She took her usual seat on the back row and slid behind t
he desktop, aware of the empty seat next to her. As the other students took their places, she heard the whispering start again, saw the suspicious glances, the amused smiles. She wanted to get up and slap every one of them off. Ignoring such persecution was much easier said than done. Greer had admitted his own inability to do it. It seemed so unfair. She was popular; a member of the upper echelon, Le Superior Clique; they shouldn’t be treating her like this. Not like gold one day and scrap iron the next. Such loyalty she would find in a viper’s nest.

  The bell rang, and the desk next to her on the right remained empty, as Marla had known it would. Her ex-best friend had either skipped the whole day or had called in sick—Jennifer wasn’t there today either, so most likely they’d cut together—or maybe Nancy had heard Montgomery was back, and had caught the last train for Marrakech.

  She suddenly noticed that the room had become as still as a tomb. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her eyes to see what was going on. Mr. Montgomery was staring straight at her. At least, something that resembled Mr. Montgomery. He looked to her like death warmed over thirty times. As dark as the circles around his eyes were, from her vantage point he looked very much like a raccoon. The rest of his skin reminded her of a cheese omelet. And to top it off, he was smiling. Not much, but even a slight smile of the face of Albert Montgomery was the eighth wonder of the world. Marla’s hands suddenly felt clammy, her throat dry as old parchment. She became conscious of her heartbeat. Thumpa thumpa thumpa. Too fast. Much too fast. She gave her head a quick shake. It seemed Montgomery had spoken to her, but his lips hadn’t moved.

  Piss yourself, you little cunt…

  She tightened her thighs. Her bladder began to ache. What was…? No!

  Go on, piss in your pants, you arrogant little bitch. You’re no better than the rest of these crawling insects. Do it, do it.