Deal with the Devil

by Kevin Lee Swaim

  * * *

  The clouds had finally parted, and the sun was rising over the hills when I pulled up the gravel drive and stopped in front of the machine shed. Billy Davenport’s Dodge van was parked in the space next to the garage door, and he was slumped over in the driver’s seat, snoozing. I hit the button on the garage door opener velcroed to the dashboard, and the door slowly rolled up.

  Billy jerked awake and turned to squint at me. I pulled the Chevy into the garage and turned off the engine. Callie got out and spoke to Billy before heading through the door that led into the hill behind the shed.

  The machine shed was large and packed with vehicles. An older Ford van was parked next to a Crown Victoria. A mid-seventies Camaro sat next to the van, and a Ford F-150 pickup that Callie had taken to driving was closest to the big sliding doors. A vintage Triumph motorcycle sat in the corner. I had finally started it the week before, just to make sure it ran, but was still hesitant to take it for a spin, especially since I didn’t know how to operate it.

  The walls were lined with tool chests and benches, and pegboard covered every wall with a dizzying array of tools, most of which I now knew how to use.

  I got out and opened the tailgate, flipped open the topper, and grabbed the heavy toolbox full of supplies and guns. There were footsteps behind me, and I turned to see Billy watching me.

  “Need any help?” Billy asked.

  Billy Two-Feather Davenport, a heavyset Meskwaki, was dressed like a farmer, with worn jeans, cowboy boots, flannel shirt, and a John Deere baseball cap riding high on his head.

  I knew better.

  Billy was a shaman. He communed with spirits and things from the “other side.”

  The things he saw wore heavily on his soul.

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “You know that probably weighs two hundred pounds. Maybe even two fifty?”

  “Yep.”

  Billy shrugged. “I worry about you, hoss.” He turned to inspect the garage door. “Looks like it’s still working.”

  “Better than the old one Jack had jerry-rigged.”

  “And it only took us a day to install after you finally broke down and read the instructions.”

  I carried the toolbox to the back and set it on top of the bench, among the rest. Inside the toolbox, I removed the Ingram, a pair of Kimber handguns, and Callie’s shotgun. “Thanks for help with the door, but how about you help with these?”

  Billy took the Ingram and the shotgun from me. “You … uh … take care of business?”

  “Depends on how you look at it. There were a lot of dead girls. I saved one girl, Billy. One.”

  “Not your fault,” Billy said. “Sometimes setting the world right means saving one life at a time.”

  I snorted. “Some old Indian saying?”

  “I read it on a fortune cookie,” Billy said with a smile. “I love Chinese. Maybe I was born on the wrong continent.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed for the door in the back of the shed that led to the tunnel. Billy hit the button to close the garage door, and I led him through the tunnel to the armory.

  The armory was a big reinforced-concrete room under the hillside. It was at least thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, with a high domed ceiling. Every inch of wall space was covered in pegboard, but what hung from these hooks wasn’t mechanic’s tools.

  Guns of every make and model filled the walls. There were shotguns, rifles, and handguns, but also knives and swords and even something I had learned was an RPG. Metal shelves filled with ammunition sat in a neat row next to a giant safe that I had finally realized, after months of careful consideration, Jack must have installed before pouring the concrete.

  Several Rubbermaid containers of wooden stakes sat on top of the gunsmith’s bench in the center of the room, and I nodded my head at them. “Can you move those?”

  Billy nodded and shoved the Ingram and shotgun into my arms. I carried the weapons in my arms like newborn babies while he cleared the bench, then sat the pile of guns on the bench once it was clear.

  “You gonna clean those?” Billy asked.

  “Later,” I said. We walked through the heavy steel door that connected the armory to the basement, past the enormous industrial freezer, and up into the house. I could hear water running and drawers opening and closing.

  Callie was preparing to take a shower. No surprise, really, as we both stank. We had spent almost two days on the road, sleeping in shifts in the truck.

  Nothing out of the ordinary. No reason to think about her in the shower. No reason at all.

  I led Billy into the kitchen, but then the mental image of Callie opening the shower door, her naked body glistening as she soaped her pale skin, was so intense that I actually stumbled on the tile floor.

  “You okay, hoss?” Billy asked.

  “Fine. Just tired.”

  I sat at the kitchen table and Billy joined me. There was a letter on the table from Rhea Slinghuff, Albert Slinghuff’s wife. Albert and Rhea cash-rented my farmland in exchange for freshly slaughtered beef and lots of discretion. They were in their sixties and had rented from Jack since their late twenties. I wondered if they had ever noticed that Jack had never aged, not one day in forty years.

  Surely they’ve noticed. How could they not?

  I wondered what they thought of my sudden appearance after Jack’s death.

  Do they ever wonder where all the meat goes? How any one man, or even a man and a young woman, could eat so much fresh beef? They’ve seen the armory’s steel door. Do they know what’s behind it? Did they know what Jack did? What I do? What do they think of Callie living here? Do they wonder if we’re … intimate?

  Again, the image of Callie’s naked body appeared in my mind, and there was heat under my skin, blazing to get out. My head throbbed until I almost couldn’t see the kitchen table.

  “Sam?” Billy asked. “Sam?”

  His voice was … nervous. “I’m fine, Billy. I promise.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look gray around the edges.”

  I ignored him and skimmed through the letter. Albert Slinghuff had a side of beef to deliver later in the week. If I wasn’t going to be home, I could leave the door unlocked, and he would put it in the freezer for me. My stomach growled just thinking about a juicy steak, pan seared on the outside and bloody red in the middle, and how good the blood tasted as it ran down the back of my throat.

  I shook my head and glanced up at Billy. “You want to go to King Tower?”

  “I could eat, especially if you’re paying.” He noticed the look on my face and sighed. “What’s the catch?”

  “What catch?”

  “I don’t need to be a shaman to read your face.”

  “Henry Hastings is meeting us for breakfast.”

  Billy jerked back. “No way, hoss. I know what he is. You got to be crazy to even consider being in the same building as him.”

  “He’s not like that.”

  “They’re all like that, Sam. You’re just kidding yourself if you think otherwise.”

  “He’s helped me more times than I can count.”

  “Yeah? Remember that old saying about the scorpion after he stings the frog? It’s his nature.”

  “I owe him, Billy.”

  “For what?”

  “Helping me with Jack. And with Santiago.”

  “You ever think those were more about him helping himself? He’s been creeping around this country for how long?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Two hundred years, Sam. Maybe even three hundred years. You know how many vampires reach that age?”

  “Not many—”

  “Because he kills them. He works for the Ancients—”

  “I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

  “He’s the sheriff,” Billy said. “I spoke with the spirits about him.”

  “What? I thought you were trying not to do that.”<
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  Billy leaned back in his chair. “I’m a shaman. There’s no escaping it. I got myself a gift, and I got to use it.”

  “What about the booze?”

  “I haven’t had a drink in months. I’m not cured. I’ll have to work at it for the rest of my life.”

  “You think you can stay sober?”

  “I have to try. But, I also have to commune with the spirits. It’s like…”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a piece of my soul dies if I don’t. You understand?”

  I didn’t, but I wasn’t about to tell Billy that. He was notoriously reluctant to talk about his talent and how it affected his drinking problem, and I didn’t want to scare him away or keep him from mentioning it again. “So, you spoke with the spirits about Henry. What did they say?”

  His eyes narrowed. “They get real … agitated … when I ask about him.”

  “Didn’t they get pretty agitated when you asked about Maria Diaz?”

  Maria Diaz was the matriarch of the Mendoza family. Ignacio Santiago had killed her after realizing he could have her daughter, Leticia, as well as her granddaughters.

  “There was something else about her, Sam. I think she might have been…”

  “What?”

  “A bruja.”

  “What’s a bruja?”

  “A witch, Sam.”

  I had met a coven of witches in Bement, Illinois. They were scary powerful and not the kind of people I would want to cross. “That can’t be. If she was a witch, she would have done more against Santiago.”

  “She might have given it up,” Billy conceded, “but there was power there. Power denied…”

  “What?”

  “It goes bad. Burns you up.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “That’s why it’s so hard for you, isn’t it? You have to spirit walk or you … burn up.”

  Billy rocked back in his chair and smiled, but the humor never made it to his eyes. “You’re not so dumb for a white fella. Then again, if you’re dumb enough to meet with the sheriff…”

  “What did the spirits say, Billy? Give me something useful.”

  “Ain’t like that, hoss. They don’t ring me up and gossip like a gaggle of housewives. It’s…” He paused and made an unpleasant face. “Kinda hard to talk about it. It’s like impressions. Feelings.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “They don’t all happen at the same time.”

  “The images are spread out?”

  “No. The images come fast, but they’re not all of this time. It’s the past and future all mixed together. Most of the time it’s not facts. It’s emotions. Anger. Regret. They want to tell me things, but they don’t make any sense. The sheriff scares them. There are images of death over and over again. Death.”

  “He’s a vampire,” I said. “At some point, I know that he must have—”

  “The images, they keep coming. Bodies piled like firewood. Rows of them. Endless rows.”

  “Henry has had control of his hunger since shortly after he was given the gift. He’s a man of honor. He’s—”

  “Then how do you account for the dead bodies I saw?”

  “You said yourself that it doesn’t always make sense. Maybe it means something else?”

  “Maybe,” Billy said. “Sometimes they speak in metaphors. Sometimes…”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Sometimes … not so much.”

  “Henry isn’t like that. He’s always been in complete control.”

  “Watch yourself, hoss. Be a shame to have to commune with your spirit. You’d probably just tell me I was right.”

  * * *

  We sat in silence for a moment. The sound of running water stopped, and I knew that Callie was stepping out of the shower and drying herself with a towel.

  It’s almost like I can see it.

  My hand trembled, not enough for Billy to notice, but I pushed the image to the back of my mind and said to Billy, “I’m still having visits. Things go missing. Or they move.”

  “Anything bad?”

  “Nothing malicious. Just pranks.”

  “You talking to her like I told you to?”

  I nodded. “At night. Before I go to bed.”

  “She’s not your daughter,” Billy said quietly. “She’s an afterimage. Not quite a spirit or ghost, but not quite a person, either. Keep talking to her, and she’ll eventually respond. When she feels comfortable, she’ll move on.”

  “Move on to where? If she’s not a real spirit, where can she move on to?”

  Billy gave me a look filled with pity but also something ancient and wise. “I don’t really know, Sam. Nobody does. What makes us people? Our souls? Or spirits? God, and the afterlife, and what comes next? I walk with the spirits, and even I don’t know. Maybe it’s better we don’t.”

  “Maybe I want to know.”

  “Why? You’re just gonna make yourself—”

  “Dammit, Billy! Why is it wrong to want to know?”

  Billy sighed, and his eyes caught mine. I felt a pull to them, like I was falling toward him, and when he spoke, his voice was rough. “You want to know what I believe?”

  I leaned away. There was an intensity to him that I had only ever seen when he was spirit walking. “Yes.”

  He licked his lips. “I think when your daughter died, her spirit left her body. That thing you killed wasn’t her.”

  “I’m pretty sure it was.”

  “It was her mind and body, but when she rose from the dead, her spirit was gone. And, when her spirit left this world and went to the next, a piece of that spirit rubbed off on you. That’s the poltergeist that’s hanging around here. I think that once that small piece of her feels comforted, when it forgets the horror it saw before it died, that small piece of her will … dissolve away.”

  “Dissolve away into what?” I whispered.

  “Just a guess?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is just my guess, understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think there’s a fundamental spiritual energy beyond our world. Maybe it’s the Dreaming. Maybe it’s Heaven. Maybe it’s the red clay we were molded from. That is where our spirits come from and where they return. The spirit realm I walk through? It’s just a place between our world and the place where we all began.”

  I heard Callie open and shut her bedroom door and then footsteps. When she entered the kitchen, Billy’s eyes lost their weight.

  “Billy,” she said with a smile as she entered the room. She had changed over into a pair of jeans and a thin green shirt that matched her eyes. “How are you?”

  Billy nodded to her. “Right as rain, Sister. You going to try and talk sense into our boy?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Seriously?” Billy asked. “You’re going to let him see the sheriff?”

  Callie frowned. “Henry has been helpful.”

  Billy shook his head. “Stockholm syndrome. You’ve got Stockholm syndrome.”

  “What?”

  “Stockholm syndrome is when—”

  “I know what Stockholm syndrome is,” Callie said. “I’m not blind to Henry’s true nature.”

  “Then how can you—”

  Callie sighed. “Life is difficult, Billy. You have to seek help wherever you can. I don’t trust him and I never will. But, if he can help us achieve our goals, then I will utilize him as a resource.”

  “Utilize him as a resource,” Billy muttered. “You make him sound like a toaster. He’s an immortal feeding machine. Keep thinking he’s helping you and you’ll wind up dead.”

  “Is that the spirits talking?” I asked. “Did they warn you?”

  Billy spun to stare at me. “Didn’t I just tell you? They’re too afraid to give me anything useful. Just death. That’s all they’ll tell me.”

  “I’ll take it into considerati
on,” I said. “For now, we’ll meet with him and see what he wants.”

  Billy rolled his eyes. “It’s your funeral.”

  As he stood to leave, Callie asked, “Did you speak to your friend?”

  “He’s not my friend anymore,” Billy muttered. “But, yes, we talked.”

  “And?”

  Billy sighed. “I’m still banned from the sett. Forbidden, actually.”

  “I’m sorry. I was hoping that if you spoke with him—”

  “There’s no place for shamans on the settlement. They think it’s nonsense. They’d rather play on their iPhones than learn the old ways.”

  “They don’t believe?” I asked.

  “We’re like flies trapped in amber,” Billy said. “We have one foot in the past and one foot in the modern world. The casino is a moneymaker. You see the new houses along the highway? That’s casino money. You go to the back of the sett, and it’s just like the old days. Poverty. Misery. Addiction. They play dress-up now and then, but only a handful of them still believe. It’s a damned shame, too, because I’ve got messages for them.”

  “Messages?”

  “From their ancestors,” Billy said. “Things to pass on. You think the spirits commune for my benefit? They want their messages heard. The more I learn and don’t pass on, the more agitated they get. Kinda hard when I can’t get back on the sett.”

  “I’m sure you and your friend will reconcile,” Callie said. “You are like brothers.”

  “We were like brothers. Now he’s on the tribal council, and he doesn’t want an old drunk like me spreading tall tales.”

  “Maybe you should show him,” I said.

  Billy grunted. “You ever happy to learn the truth? Makes people grumpy as hell.” He raised a finger and tapped me on the chest. “Nobody likes the truth.”

  * * *

  I pulled up next to Henry’s black Chevrolet Suburban in the parking lot of King Tower Cafe, parked, and followed Callie through the gravel lot and into the restaurant. As I started to open the door, a wave of nausea churned in my stomach, and the oily presence of a vampire brushed against the back of my neck. I shrugged it off and opened the door, and a plump girl in a white top and black apron raised an eyebrow and shoved a pair of menus into our hands. “Your party is waiting.”

  Henry sat at a booth near the back. He was a big man, a couple of inches over six feet tall, with a long face that was worn and creased. A passerby might place Henry in his late fifties.