* * *
Anxious to see what his sister was up to, David tugged on his mother’s hand. “Come on, Mom. Come on!”
Melanie sighed, thinking, I don’t even want to know, but allowed her son to drag her the hundred feet or so down Stillman and onto the bridge. David let go of his mother’s hand and ran a few feet further down the walkway. Without slowing, he clambered up onto the railing for a better look below. Exuberance and momentum carried him a little higher than he expected, and for an instant he teetered belly down on the top bar. David panicked and instinctively grabbed for something in front of him, but there was nothing there, and his weight shifted forward.
He screeched, “Mom!” and toppled over the railing.
Jilly stood in the water bending down to rinse the mud from her knees. At the sound of her brother’s cry, she jerked upright, her jaw dropping at the sight in front of her.
She screamed, “David!”
Not a foot in front of her face, David hung upside-down in the air staring at her with eyes bulging, mouth wide open in shock. Frozen in place, she screamed his name again. David made a squawking sound.
For several seconds Jilly stood immobile, staring at David’s upside-down form hanging unsupported in thin air. She was aware of Patty standing beside her, equally stunned. Another squawk from David, and both girls snapped out of it at once. They jumped forward, each grabbing a firm hold on him just as his weight suddenly returned. All three wobbled, then collapsed into the shallow water unharmed.
Jilly scrambled to her feet, dragging David up with her.
“Creep! You creep,” she yelled at him. “You little creep! What were you doing?”
She shivered with fear, frantic at what could have happened if she had not been able to…to what? …to catch him? She knew she hadn’t caught him. As confused as she was, she had no doubt that he had not been falling, but hanging there, unsupported, in the air.
She wiped mud from his face, roughly. David looked shaken, but none the worse for wear. She stepped back from David and looked down at Patty who lay on her back propped on her elbows to keep her head out of the water.
Patty, ashen faced, was looking up towards the bridge overhead. Jilly tilted her head back and saw her mother standing at the railing looking down at them, arms crossed, face set in a very dark, very unmotherly-like expression. “So,” came Melanie’s voice above the rush of the river, “…anybody care to guess just how many people are double-grounded for the next twenty years?”
Jilly whispered, “Crap,” and tried to look very small.
FIVE
ONCE UPON A TIME, when there weren’t all that many people in the world, the devil had free rein to putz around and do about anything he wanted, and so he did. Being the devil, he didn’t have a real job, so he had plenty of time to fool around and just have a good time.
His real name was Lucifer, but since pronouncing it sounded a little lispy, people had taken to calling him Lucy for short. Being a bit homophobic, he wasn’t too fond of the nickname, but much to his chagrin, it stuck.
Basically, Lucy wasn’t all that bad of a guy, but after all, he was the devil, so he enjoyed messing with people and causing mischief—nothing serious, just a little minor havoc to relieve the boredom. He left the really evil and terrible stuff up to normal everyday people who were much better at it than he could ever hope to be—or even wanted to be.
In those days, except for Lucy who was just a little naughty, people were full of evil and often treated each other in awful ways. Of course, no one wanted to admit they themselves were evil, so somebody came up with the idea that Lucy, whom everyone knew was hopelessly mischievous, was a bad influence and therefore undoubtedly the cause of all their evil thoughts and deeds.
The idea caught on fast and spread far and wide. From then on whenever something really bad happened, like somebody going berserk and whacking their neighbor, Lucy the bad influence got blamed. In no time at all Lucy became the focus of everyone else’s evil, and was shunned by all. Lucy thought the whole thing was hilarious. He even bought a bright red suit with fake horns and a pointed tail, and took to sneaking up behind people and whispering mischievous suggestions in their ears just to freak them out.
Eventually, all the misguided, self-righteous, holier-than-thous who were convinced their own evils were the work of the devil decided to banish Lucy to Hell so he couldn’t influence people anymore. Not trusting him not to sneak out, they hired some weird women to put a spell on him that would ensure he stayed home—in Hell, that is.
Unfortunately, the women weren’t as good at spells as they claimed, and the devil was able to slip out for a few hours during every full moon. As a result, and since they’d already been paid, the weird women and forever after their descendants, had to be there during the full moon when the devil popped up—just to keep him from wandering around spreading evil.
Although over the last few thousand years Lucy had popped up in many different places, currently he’d taken to popping up at Blue Springs in Brandell, West Virginia. And on this night of the full moon, five very distant descendants of those original weird women sat on an old picnic table by the waterfall waiting for him to make his regular monthly appearance.
Goodbye Lucifer Page 7