Devil in Ohio

by Daria Polatin

  “I saw Isaac,” she explained. “He said you were doing an interview for the school paper. Very exciting!” she chirped to the roomful of students, who were now all staring at an unwanted parent. My parent. Extremely unwanted at the moment.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed.

  “Well,” Mom started, “I thought you could show Mae around.” She stepped aside, revealing none other than our new houseguest, standing innocently beneath the doorframe.

  Mae was at my school. Interrupting the most exciting moment of my scholastic career—and possibly personal life.

  I tried to silently communicate to my mother that I was in the middle of something very important, but she didn’t seem to get my telepathic message.

  “I enrolled Mae to start here tomorrow,” Mom explained. “She’s going to be in your class!”

  Wait. What? Mom had said Mae was just staying with us for a few days. Why was she now going to my school? And what about that sign of Satan symbol that her town, Tisdale, was associated with? Did Mom know about that?

  My leg started shaking under the table. I had to focus on the matter at hand: salvaging this interview. I needed to get my mom and Mae out of there as fast as possible.

  “Mom, we’re in the middle of an interview,” I explained, trying to hide my mounting anxiety from Sebastian and the editors.

  Mom didn’t take the hint. “Wonderful, that’ll be exciting for Mae to see! I’m going to run some errands. I’ll pick you girls up in an hour. Have fun!” Mom added as she strode out of the room.

  This was not happening.

  Mae stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure what to do. Everyone was watching. Was I supposed to invite her in? I wasn’t exactly feeling charitable at the moment.

  After an awkward lull, a warm tenor voice piped up. “Feel like sitting in?” Sebastian kindly offered to Mae.

  Mae turned to me, as if for approval.

  I definitely wanted to say no. But what else could I do? Tell her to go stand in the hallway? It wasn’t really her fault that she was here, after all. It was my mom’s.

  I forced my face to reflect pleasantness. “Sure,” I offered with effortful positivity. Seeing that the situation was somewhat resolved, the rest of the room turned back to their screens.

  Mae glided over to the table and took a seat. Naomi, Zeke, and even Sebastian stared at the beautiful girl who had somehow inserted herself into our world.

  “I’m Mae,” she told them quietly. “But I guess you already know that,” she added with the hint of a smile.

  Sebastian, Zeke, and Naomi laughed.

  “Super nice to meet you,” Zeke returned, a little too eagerly if you ask me.

  “So, back to the ‘People You Don’t Know’ column!” That came out louder than I had intended, but I was trying to draw the attention back to the matter at hand. Me.

  I jumped to the important part of my pitch: “I thought what I’d do was take in-context portraits of the subjects, so the image they present is related to who they are. But it doesn’t have to be obvious. Like a basketball player doesn’t need to be on the basketball court. Maybe I take his picture in the library because he’s a history buff but never told anyone that.”

  “Great idea,” Sebastian encouraged me.

  “Then for the interviews, I’d ask a set of five questions that maybe you wouldn’t have thought to ask each subject.”

  “Interesting.” Naomi nodded. “Tell us more about that.”

  The meeting now back on track, we continued to discuss the details of the column, how and when it would run in the paper. Naomi said she wanted to brainstorm a social media aspect to it, like maybe for one week the questions to the subject could be crowd-sourced, which I thought was super smart.

  “If we’re all on board, let’s get started!” Sebastian concluded. “Come up with some sample questions and send them my way. Since it’s our first edition of the column, we’ll give ourselves a few weeks to get things sorted. We distro on Mondays, so you’ll e-mail final files to Brianna the night before,” he said, gesturing to a girl with cat’s-eye glasses a few desks away.

  “Works for me!” I agreed.

  Despite the interruption, I’d pulled it off. I’d be working at the paper on an awesome project. Not to mention, with Sebastian.

  “And,” he added, “looks like we already have our first subject!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. How could that have been decided? We hadn’t even discussed it yet.

  I slowly turned and followed Sebastian’s gaze. He was staring at Mae.

  CHAPTER 13

  OUT ON THE FRONT STEPS OF THE SCHOOL, MAE AND I were awkwardly waiting for my mom to pick us up. But of course she was late. She was probably trying to force me and Mae to bond. Paper-thin tactic, Mom.

  Mae was leaning against the brick by the double doors, as if trying to camouflage herself with the wall. Meanwhile, the caffeine I’d drunk at lunch still hadn’t worn off, so I was pacing up and down the stairs like a psycho, trying to burn off the energy. I almost wanted to run across the street to the field and do drills with the boys’ soccer team.

  I snuck a glance at Mae. She’d tried to refuse when Sebastian suggested she be the first subject of “People You Don’t Know,” but Sebastian insisted, and he had a unique combination of confidence and optimism that made people go along with him.

  Mae hadn’t said a word since we left the Regal office.

  I’m sure it was my mom’s brilliant idea to enroll her at the school and stick her on me. Whenever Mom had a task that was uncomfortable she always left me, the easygoing middle child, to do it, probably because I was too quiet to complain.

  And yet I couldn’t wrap my brain around the fact that Mae was going to be in classes with me. I really didn’t know what her situation was, but what if it actually had something to do with devil-worshipping? I wasn’t far enough up the social food chain to survive something like that. Especially not at our suburban, churchgoing school. Around here it was better to be a criminal than someone who didn’t go to church—Satanic worship had social extinction written all over it.

  “You did a good job.”

  From the bottom of the stairs I looked up to see Mae, who had moved to the top of the staircase, now towering above me. She was twisting her braid through her fingers.

  “In your interview,” she finished.

  I was surprised she’d been paying attention. She had spent the whole meeting staring intently at a container of pencils on the table.

  “Thanks. I was pretty nervous,” I admitted, kicking the bottom step with the sole of my oxford.

  “Didn’t seem like it,” she said, a matter-of-fact compliment. “Have you been taking photographs for a long time?”

  “My dad gave me his old camera when I was seven, so I guess since then.”

  “That’s nice of him,” she replied. I looked at her. Something about the way she said it sounded kind of judgmental, almost. I guess I hadn’t thought about it like that—I was so used to my parents giving me things, mostly at birthdays or holidays, providing for me, that it never felt that special. But I guess she was right. It was nice of my dad. Not all parents give their kids cameras when they’re seven.

  “If you want, I can show you my feed,” I offered.

  “For cattle?” she asked, confused.

  Um, no, not for cattle, I replied in my head.

  “On Instagram,” I clarified. “Just pictures from my phone, but I post them.”

  Mae looked like she didn’t quite understand the words I was saying.

  “Are you on it?” I asked. “Instagram?”

  She shook her head no, looking perplexed by the whole conversation. How could she not know about Instagram?

  “Do you have a phone?” I ventured to ask.

  “No,” she answered. “I wasn’t allowed.”

  I didn’t understand. “Were you not allowed any phone, or just one with internet? Like, you have a phone for emergency calls, right?”
r />   Mae shook her head no.

  “Why?” I had to get to the bottom of the strangeness.

  Mae thought about it for a moment, how to explain it. “People in my town didn’t really like it.”

  “Like what?”

  “Technology,” she stated, as if not liking technology was an option in our wired world.

  I took a few steps up the stairs. “Were you Amish or something?”

  “No,” she answered. “We just had—our own way of doing things. People said we didn’t need it.”

  “If you didn’t have phones and stuff, how did people keep in touch?”

  Mae twisted the soles of her purple Mary Janes on the cement. I realized they were new. Where had she gotten new shoes? Had my mom bought them for her?

  “People mostly congregated at the church. Or the schoolhouse,” Mae muttered.

  Schoolhouse? What was this, Little House on the Prairie?

  “What kind of church?” I wondered, fishing for info. “Episcopal?”

  “Not exactly,” Mae replied. “We kind of—did our own thing.”

  “How so?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I joined Mae at the top of the stairs. Now that we were standing on the same level, she still stood a little taller than me. Although she was pretty quiet and mild-mannered so far, standing right next to her I got a weird sense that she was much stronger than she appeared to be.

  “Was the town kind of old-fashioned or something?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  I pushed on, wondering if the confidence of the meeting going well—plus all the coffee—was making me bolder.

  “Why?” I pressed.

  She thought about it for a while, then eventually figured, “They’ve done things a certain way for a long time, so they just kept doing them.”

  “Like what kind of things?”

  Before I could get more answers, I recognized a voice—

  “I thought you were gonna text me!” I turned to see Isaac bounding out from the building. “How’d the interview go?”

  I forced a smile. “Good!” Although just barely.

  “Did your mom find you? She was looking for you with—” As he approached, he noted Mae. “Her,” he declared. He regarded Mae for a moment, then introduced himself. “I’m Isaac.”

  Mae seemed to clam up, and offered an anemic nod hello.

  “This is Mae,” I told Isaac. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “O-kay…” He eyed me. He knew I wasn’t telling him the whole story, and he didn’t like being out of the loop.

  I had to tell him something. “She’s—staying with us for a few days,” I explained. I wanted to say more but didn’t want to be rude in front of Mae.

  This was not enough information for Isaac. “Well then,” he said with a flip of his hair. “You taking the late bus?”

  “My mom’s picking us up.”

  “Cool.” He turned and practically ran down the steps, clearly annoyed.

  “I’ll call you later!” I yelled after him. “Promise!”

  He didn’t answer. I felt like crap. I could tell Isaac was not happy with me. He was my best friend, and here I was making him feel excluded because of Mae. I knew he’d get over it, but this girl had been in my life one day and was already ruining things. The rational part of me knew that it wasn’t her fault.

  But then again, it kinda was.

  CHAPTER 14

  REMINGHAM REGIONAL HOSPITAL, TRAUMA UNIT

  CONFIDENTIAL CASE FILE

  DATE: September 12, 2004

  PATIENT NAME: Joseph Trauma

  AGE: 10

  CASE SYNOPSIS:

  SYMPTOMS: Extensive slashes covering the child’s back. Five-pointed star-shaped laceration in the center of the back, with a circle encompassing the star, which points downward. Multiple layers of scar tissue beneath the wounds, evidence of repeated abuse.

  TREATMENT: Patient refused ingesting liquids, solids, or medication, received emergency treatment for pain management and antibiotics intravenously. Skin graft surgery scheduled for dermal recuperation.

  RESULT: Presurgery, patient’s parents attempted to remove child from care. Child Protective Services intervened and matter was set for judgment by the court. However, child disappeared from the hospital premises and after police investigation, family could not be located.

  REMINGHAM REGIONAL HOSPITAL, TRAUMA UNIT

  CONFIDENTIAL CASE FILE

  DATE: April 30, 2009

  PATIENT NAME: Henrietta Trauma

  AGE: 12

  CASE SYNOPSIS:

  SYMPTOMS: Patient arrived highly disturbed, had multiple lacerations on her back and bleeding from restraints on hands and feet. Patient was treated for extensive physical and emotional trauma, including possible sexual assault. Patient displayed evidence of multiple personality disorder.

  TREATMENT: Psychiatric treatment, pain management medication, antipsychotic medication.

  RESULT: After wound care was addressed, the patient was released to guardianship of her uncle on contingency of continued psychiatric care. Before discharge was complete, patient took her own life.

  Suzanne stared down at the files. While she had never learned the patients’ real names, she vividly remembered the two cases from years ago. Both children had suffered extensive abuse.

  She sifted through the folders and, although she couldn’t find a birthplace for the girl, discovered where the boy was from: Tisdale. And he had a pentagram carved onto his back, just like Mae.

  Tisdale must be the same town where Mae was from.

  KNOCK, KNOCK.

  Suzanne snapped the case files shut and looked up. Joanne Montecito, the hospital administrator, stood in the doorway. Suzanne surreptitiously hid the files under some papers on her desk.

  “May I see you in my office, Dr. Mathis?” Joanne requested.

  Suzanne plastered a smile on for her boss, knowing she didn’t really have a choice. “Sure.”

  * * *

  “Unacceptable,” concluded Joanne as she sat across from Suzanne, now in the administrator’s sea-green office. That, combined with the fluorescents, cast a gloomy light over the small room.

  “Dr. Mathis, that kind of thing just isn’t done. Do you know what kind of hot water you could get us into?”

  “It wasn’t safe here,” Suzanne countered, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Safe?” Joanne scoffed. “See how safe it is when the hospital board finds out that one of our employees took home a patient! You know they already have it out for Psych. Do you have any idea what kind of budget cuts I’m dealing with? I’m trying to keep them from cutting whole departments.”

  “I know you are, and I’m sorry about that,” Suzanne empathized to calm her. “However, I am a registered foster care provider. And I got the judge’s approval on the case.”

  “But you took her home before you got the approval!”

  Suzanne avoided eye contact at the truth of Joanne’s accusation.

  “And approval or no,” Joanne continued, “you were the patient’s attending psychiatrist.”

  “I transferred her treatment to Dr. Brenner,” Suzanne countered.

  “Without checking with me first!”

  Suzanne nodded. “I—apologize for that. It was a heat-of-the-moment assessment. That man came in, and he was very threatening. I had to make a judgment call.”

  “I really don’t approve.” Joanne pulled at the bottom edge of her fuchsia suit jacket. “And,” the administrator continued. “And,” she said again for emphasis, “you engaged with a visitor in an inappropriate manner.”

  “Inappropriate? What was I supposed to do, discharge her to him? He was clearly threatening me and Mae.”

  “Obviously no, you were not supposed to let him near the patient, but you should have let security deal with it.”

  “I would have if Jerry was in the building,” Suzanne defended, her voice rising.

  “No need to lose our tempers,�
�� Joanne cautioned. “We have to follow protocol around here.”

  “I was following protocol.” Suzanne leaned forward. “Do you know that more than one person cut her? On her back?” she pressed.

  Joanne didn’t make eye contact.

  “The girl was abused. Severely. It’s not safe for her to return home.”

  “No one’s arguing with that,” Joanne agreed. “We just—have to take certain precautions.”

  “Precautions like not sending Mae to a group home where she’d be thrown in with a dozen other girls. Precautions like giving this child a chance to heal. Precautions like keeping her safe from a violent man.”

  Suzanne took a breath to pacify herself.

  Joanne placed her palms on the desk. “Look, all of us are trying to look out for the patient’s best interest, and every other patient we have at this hospital. I understand your concern about the girl,” she went on. “But you are treading on dangerous territory here. The Board of Psychiatry is going to need an explanation,” she warned.

  Suzanne stood, taking a hard candy from a glass dish on the desk. “I know what I’m doing.”

  She popped the candy into her mouth and headed for the door.

  “You can’t save everyone, Suzanne,” Joanne called after her. But Suzanne had already gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  THAT NIGHT I TRIED TO ASK MY MOM about Mae going to my school, but she said she had too much on her plate at the moment to talk. She was poring over work files at the kitchen table, completely absorbed.

  I video chatted Isaac. He was still annoyed at me, but I redeemed myself for my earlier offense of not telling him about Mae by listening to his entire speech in support of repealing Citizens United for debate, and promising to watch a doc on Cold War USSR for our Social Studies presentation.

  Then I told him everything I did know about Mae, which wasn’t much. He was intrigued that she was from a town that had satanic associations.