Devil in Ohio

by Daria Polatin

  DR. MATHIS: Who were the leaders?

  MAE: Older men, and a few younger ones. They were in charge. And they ran the ceremonies.

  DR. MATHIS: What kind of ceremonies?

  MAE: Rituals. They’ve done them since the town was started. They say they’re from the dawn of time, but who knows … They do them in church. Ceremonies for different holidays, or full moons—those are important.

  DR. MATHIS: And what do the church ceremonies consist of?

  MAE: Singing, some prayers. And people confess anything they did bad. Then they get punished.

  DR. MATHIS: They get punished in front of everyone?

  MAE: Yes.

  DR. MATHIS: Why?

  MAE: To keep Him happy.

  DR. MATHIS: Him?

  Who’s “Him,” Mae?

  [Pause.]

  MAE: I’m not supposed to say his name. [Pause.] But you’d call him the Devil.

  [Silence.]

  DR. MATHIS: They would employ corporal punishment on people publically—including children—to keep “the Devil” happy.

  MAE: “Pleased,” they’d call it. And we’d say prayers, give sacrifices.

  DR. MATHIS: What kind of sacrifices?

  MAE: Usually animals. Rabbits, foxes, coyotes. Sometimes bigger ones too, like a deer. I saw that once. There was so much blood.

  DR. MATHIS: And they kill them? The animals? [A moment.] Note that Mae is nodding yes.

  MAE: Then they drink the blood.

  [Notes being scribbled on paper.]

  DR. MATHIS: Mae, I’ve noticed that you have scars on your palms. Could you tell me where you got those?

  [Quiet.]

  MAE: My mom. They do it to all the kids. Babies.

  DR. MATHIS: Do what?

  MAE: Make them hang upside-down. Overnight.

  DR. MATHIS: Let me get this straight: When you’re a baby in the town of Tisdale, they make you hang upside-down overnight?

  MAE: Yes. More like toddlers, actually. A little older than a baby.

  DR. MATHIS: Is this in front of the church congregation also?

  MAE: No, it’s in your own home. But then they bring you to the church and they do a ceremony. It’s like a rite of passage.

  DR. MATHIS: Where do they hang in your home?

  MAE: On a cross. They use nails.

  DR. MATHIS: Through your palms?

  MAE: Yes. [A moment.] They don’t give you any food or water. Everyone has to do it. It makes you stronger. If you can stand the pain, then you can withstand anything. The Lord only wants the strongest of the flock. That’s what they say, anyway. It doesn’t always work.

  I mean, not everyone makes it. Overnight. Or if they do make it, they get infections after—in their hands or feet. That’s why there aren’t a lot of kids in the town. Or as many as there should be. But the ones who do survive are the strong ones. The ones strong enough to serve Him. That’s what they try to make you think, anyway.

  [Silence.]

  DR. MATHIS: That must have been very painful for you.

  [Sniffling is heard.]

  DR. MATHIS: I’m so sorry this happened to you, Mae. When they did this to your younger siblings, did they—

  [Sound of shuffling.]

  MAE: I need to go outside.

  DR. MATHIS: Oh. It’s dark out—

  [A door opens.]

  DR. MATHIS: Can you just tell me one thing before you go?

  [Footsteps stop.]

  DR. MATHIS: The other boy who they marked on his back—Victor. Was his last name Peterson?

  CHAPTER 25

  DANI WAS AT A SLEEPOVER, AND MAE WAS holed up in Mom’s bedroom. I’d put my ear to the door, and it sounded like Mom was asking her questions or something; I wasn’t sure why. In my/Dani’s room, I worked on the finishing touches for my interview with the pianist Sebastian had suggested, Michael Wells.

  Meanwhile, I tried not to scour social media for every post Sebastian liked and investigate if he had a girlfriend at his old school. He had a bunch of photos with a pretty cousin, but that was about it. He and I had started texting, mostly about Regal stuff, but sometimes we’d just go back and forth a bunch making jokes. We hadn’t gone on an actual date yet, but it felt like that’s where we were heading, and I would just have to be patient until he got up the courage to ask me out.

  I did think about kissing him sometimes, though.…

  Spell check! I had to run through my article one more time. Must stop distracting myself with All Thoughts Sebastian.

  When I finished work I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I passed Mom’s closed door in the hall, I could hear Mae still speaking quietly with my mother. They did that sometimes, stayed up late talking to each other. One time I saw Mae come out of my mom’s room in the morning—I guessed she had fallen asleep in there. I wondered what my dad thought about that.

  Turning off the light and climbing into bed, I made a mental note to tell Sebastian about an article I had found on the impact of James Dean on 1950s cinema, which I thought he might like.

  * * *

  I awoke to a pressure near my feet.

  Thinking I must have imagined it, I closed my eyes again to go back to sleep.

  Then I heard a sound. A breath?

  I opened my eyes to the dark room. Adjusting to the gray light, a poster for Hamilton came into focus on a nearby wall.

  The sheets felt tight on my left side. I turned to see:

  Mae, sitting at the foot of my bed.

  I was startled, but immediately attempted to calm myself, trying not to act too alarmed.

  She was sitting perfectly still, like a statue. Her long black hair was loose, hanging down past her shoulders. It glinted in the light from a streetlamp that filtered through the window. Mae was staring at me.

  “You all right?” I ventured, seeing if she would give me a clue as to why she was sitting on my bed in the middle of the night.

  She was wearing a white nightgown. It wasn’t mine, so I guessed Mom had bought it for her.

  Mae didn’t say anything. She just kept staring at me through the darkness.

  I tried again. “Are you okay, Mae?”

  Mae looked down at the pink bedspread, took a handful of material into her hand, and squeezed it. She shook her head.

  I pushed myself upright, hoping it was nothing serious.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  After a quiet moment, she finally spoke.

  “I think … I think they’re trying to get me back.”

  “They?”

  Mae nodded. “My family.”

  Right. Her family from the satanic cult. Mae was becoming so integrated into my family and life, I often forgot she’d had a whole other life before us.

  “I doubt they would be able to find you. They probably don’t even know where you are,” I offered.

  “They’ll find me,” she guaranteed.

  “How?”

  “They followed me, to the cemetery,” she insisted. But that just couldn’t be true. How could they have known we were going there? We didn’t even know we were going there.

  “That was just some noise from the woods, Mae.”

  “They cut down the branch—”

  “The one in front of the house last month?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s an old tree. Branches fall all the time,” I reasoned.

  Mae shook her head adamantly. “They made it look like it fell down,” she explained.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “As a warning.”

  “Warning for what?”

  “That I should go back to them. That I’m not safe here, or anywhere except with them.”

  Then she looked me in the eye.

  “And neither is anyone around me.”

  My heart froze. Why would anyone want to hurt us? We were the ones trying to help her.

  I shook the idea off, sitting forward. “Mae, you’re staying with us now. You go to Remingham High, you have frien
ds. No one’s going to hurt you here. You’re safe.”

  Her face took on a thousand-yard stare. “I hope so.”

  I hoped so too.

  “Have you told my mom?” I asked as the idea of possible danger started to sink in. “That you’re scared about this?”

  “She knows about them,” Mae revealed. But then she admitted, “I don’t want to do anything that would make her send me away.”

  Mom knew that Mae had come from a possibly dangerous community but hadn’t said anything to us? Maybe that meant she wasn’t really worried and Mae was probably just imagining things. She’d had a traumatic past, as my mom would say, and so she was just scared that it might happen again—even though she was safe in the suburbs now. It was like the soldiers we had learned about in school who, after returning from war zones, had nightmares even though they were back home safe.

  “I’m sure it’s all fine,” I said, convincing myself and her that she was okay.

  “Yeah,” Mae agreed half-heartedly. She didn’t make a move to go back to her bedroom.

  “You okay?”

  “I—” Mae started. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Oh.”

  Since Dani was at a sleepover, there was an extra bed in here.…

  “Do you want to sleep on the trundle?” I finally offered. I didn’t mind sharing the space, but something made me pause at sharing a bed with her.

  “Yes,” Mae answered without hesitation, as if she’d been waiting for me to ask. She climbed into the bed on the floor next to me.

  Her face was extra pale, looking like a ghost in the gloom.

  I lowered myself back under the covers, staring at the ceiling. The streetlight cast a shadow from the ballerina figurine that hung in Dani’s window.

  “Could I hold your hand?” Mae asked quietly.

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard her right.

  “Just until I fall asleep?” The question hung in the air for a moment. It was a strange request but seemed harmless.

  “You don’t have to,” she backpedaled, but seemed sad about it.

  “No, it’s fine,” I assured her.

  I reached my hand down the side of the bed to the trundle and felt Mae’s cool, soft skin envelop mine.

  “I used to hold my little sister’s hand so she could fall asleep,” Mae explained in the quiet darkness.

  “That’s sweet.” Dani would never want me to hold her hand falling asleep, and I might’ve wanted Helen to hold mine when I was little, but I doubt she would have.

  “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Amelia,” she answered. “Amelia” was what Mae had accidentally called Dani. Maybe Dani reminded Mae of her sister, who must be back in Tisdale. Dani annoyed the crap out of me, but I’m sure I’d miss her if I had to move away and couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Do you miss her? Amelia?”

  “Oh yes,” Mae answered. “A lot.” Mae’s palm closed around mine a little tighter.

  “Does she get along with your parents?”

  “No,” she said sadly, “but she’s in heaven now. They said she’s not but I know she is.”

  My stomach sank. I’d had no idea her sister had died, and now suddenly I was desperate to find out more but didn’t know what I could say to draw Mae out.

  “I’m so sorry, Mae.”

  “It’s okay. Now she can finally be at peace.”

  After a few quiet moments, I couldn’t help myself. “How did she die?”

  Mae took a slow, deep breath.

  “She couldn’t withstand the pain,” she answered, as her hand gripped mine even tighter.

  Then, Mae started to sing softly:

  “Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top. When the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”

  I didn’t sleep a wink.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE NEXT NIGHT, DANI COULDN’T STOP SINGING THE whole ride home from the restaurant. She wanted us to hear all the cool parts of the song she was going to sing in the musical, but she didn’t want to spoil the whole song so was only singing phrases. It was majorly annoying.

  I pulled out my phone and typed a text.

  After a moment, Mae pulled out hers, hearing a DING. Mom had gotten her a cell phone a few weeks ago. While she was still getting used to having a cell, at least she wasn’t jumping every time it rang like she had when she first got it.

  She looked at the screen and smiled at the wide-eyed emoji I’d sent her in reaction to Dani’s belting.

  She tapped back a laughing-while-crying smiley face.

  I couldn’t complain to Mom directly about Dani. It was my little sister’s twelfth birthday. She had been super irritating all day, extra bubbly and doubly loud, knowing full well that she could get away with just about anything. She even ate the last of the cornflakes at breakfast, leaving me the remains of a gross-looking muesli. Not to mention the fact that for her birthday meal, she had made us all suffer through dinner theater. It had been a murder mystery where, surprise surprise, the butler did it. These people needed to watch some Hitchcock and get tips on … suspense.

  Mae had thought the whole experience was very strange but seemed to enjoy being out with the whole family. She talked to my mom and dad about school in the car on the way there, and even got Helen—who had kindly graced us with her presence—to chat with her during intermission. Mae ate all her chicken and then even had my potatoes. I wondered how she consumed so much food and still managed to stay so skinny. She also ate two pieces of birthday cake, which had been brought out by the “maid” in the play, which thrilled Dani.

  Mom was trying to put on a good face, but the dark circles under her eyes told me she hadn’t been getting much sleep lately. A few nights ago, I’d gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw the light on in the living room downstairs. I leaned down the steps to see her reading over work files and typing on her laptop. She seemed to be working all the time these days, and always seemed distracted. I wondered if it had to do with Mae.

  Thankfully Dani reached the finale of her car performance as Dad pulled his Toyota Land Cruiser into the driveway.

  As we filed out of the car and down the stone path to the front door, Mom rummaged in her purse for her keys.

  “I got it,” Dad assured her. He stepped up to the door.

  “Larissa wants to know if we want to go shopping next week for Halloween costumes,” Mae said to me, looking at her phone. “Jessie and Christine are in.”

  “Totally,” I replied, digging my hands into my pockets to check my phone, which had no messages. “They texted you?”

  “Yeah,” Mae said, texting back.

  I wondered why I hadn’t been included in the group thread.

  “What the heck?” Dad stared at the lock on the front door.

  I turned to see the metal door handle hanging at an angle. It was dented, as if someone had taken a hammer and smashed it sideways.

  “Stand back,” Dad warned, his voice lowering. He leaned down to inspect it more closely.

  “Did someone break in?” Helen worried, pulling her attention from her phone.

  I looked at Mae. Her face was pale.

  Suddenly I remembered my late-night conversation with Mae. Was it possible that her family had tried to break in?

  “I’m not sure what happened.” Dad’s response was measured as he checked out the frame of the door for signs of forced entry.

  “Here.” I went over and turned on the flashlight function of my phone so he could see better.

  I looked back at Mae. Mom, who hadn’t said anything, had stepped closer to her, almost like she was protecting her.

  “Should we call the police?” I wondered. I glanced at Mae, thinking that the police would be a good idea if she thought it really was the cult coming after her.

  Mae avoided eye contact, just stared at the ground.

  “I’m texting Landon,” Helen declared. “Their house got broken into a few years ago, so now they have the highest-en
d security system. I’m finding out what it is, ’cause clearly we need it.”

  “Look!” Dani said, pointing at a branch nearby. “It’s from the tree!”

  A new piece of branch had fallen from the oak in our front yard, which I was beginning to think was at least partially dead.

  “That’s probably what happened,” Mom spoke up, trying to calm everyone. “A branch fell on the door handle. No one was trying to break in.” She squeezed Mae’s shoulder. “The door isn’t even open.”

  “I think your mother’s right,” Dad agreed, jiggling the still-closed door.

  Dad paced to the fallen branch, then tilted his head up, examining the tree. “Could definitely have dropped at that angle, especially with this wind,” he determined. I knew it had cost a lot to repair the bay window from when a branch came down last month, so I’m sure he wasn’t happy about having to do more repairs.

  “I’m going to check out the house just to be safe,” he continued, heading inside. “Stay here until I get back.”

  Mom put her arms around Mae. “There’s nothing to worry about,” Mom said to me and my sisters.

  “We’re all safe and sound,” she went on. “Safe and sound…”

  CHAPTER 27