Devilish

by Maureen Johnson

  Owen leaned over and tested the knobs on the tub. Rusty, dank water coughed out.

  “Still works,” he said, cringing at the color of the water and the numerous bugs that flowed from the tap. “This is old-school demonism. Like having Allison cut her hair. That’s an ancient way that someone makes a pact with a demon. The person offering themselves up gives the demon their hair. That’s why they used to shave witches bald.”

  “They did?”

  “Yup. And then the demon turns the hair into hail. That’s a sign of the pact.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’ve showed me that a weird guy built the school, and I just met a guy who used the same name. There’s no law against weird people building things. That’s your proof that this is all true?”

  “No,” he said, reaching into his bag and pulling out a gun, some kind of old six-shooter that looked like a prop from a Western. “This is.”

  And with that, he stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  twenty-six

  I had never seen death before. Funny how I could know it immediately, unmistakably.

  Owen had been propelled backward and landed in the tub. The top half of his body sank, and his legs hung limp. On the wall behind, there was a long splatter line of blood. The dim light made it look like ink. There was a strange, hot smell in the air that somehow made me think of the inside of my teeth.

  The whole thing took about five seconds.

  I became very calm. I sat down on the foul, dusty floor because there was little else I could do. I stared at Owen’s legs and the tiny river of water that seeped out of the tub and cut a brave path through the grime on the floor. The deafening echo of the shot was still painfully ringing in my ears, but I didn’t put my hands over them to muffle the pain. I wanted my head to ring. It would have been worse if it was completely silent.

  When the ringing subsided, I began to chatter to myself.

  “Okay,” I said, hearing the wobble in my own voice. I steadied it. “Okay. Owen has decided to commit suicide in front of you. This is the kind of thing that leaves a mark on your psyche, so you’re going to take this one step at a time, Jane. This is the shock phase. What you’re going to do is sit and take a few good, deep breaths, and then you are going to go upstairs and get help. Okay, Jane?”

  I felt myself nodding. I was amazed at the coherence of my own plan and felt reassured by it. I took a short, wheezy breath, then lapsed almost immediately into wild, choking gasps.

  “Okay,” I managed to say when I stopped hyperventilating. “Forget deep breathing. Just sit. It’s okay. Just sit.”

  I think I must have been sitting there for a good ten minutes or so. It was enough time for the blood on the walls to start to run a bit. When I’d had a chance to rest for a moment, I managed to get up.

  The gun had dropped from Owen’s hand as he fell. I gingerly picked it up and was shocked by its weight.

  There was a tremendous amount of blood in the water, but I felt I had to try and see if there was anything that might be done. I carefully held the gun away from the edge of the tub since if I was afraid that he might somehow reach for it and do it again. I leaned over as far as I could. There was no question that Owen’s head was completely under—so if he hasn’t been killed by the shooting, he had certainly drowned by now. His one arm hung free. I felt for a pulse. There was clearly nothing. The arm was clammy, rubbery. There was no circulation. Nothing. I let it go gently so that his knuckles wouldn’t bang against the side of the tub. Stupid, but that’s what I did.

  “Why don’t you set that down?” said a voice.

  I turned to find Brother Frank in the doorway, his hands partially raised, as if he was showing surrender.

  “There’s been an incident,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Incident? What?

  “Why don’t you set the gun on the ground?” he asked. “And we can talk.”

  He said this cheerfully, as if he’d just come down to the basement looking for someone to have a chat with and was thrilled to find me there.

  “There’s been an incident,” I said again.

  This was not what I wanted to say at all. I wanted to scream: OWEN HAS SHOT HIMSELF AND I SAW HIM DO IT. But my lips were numb and it seemed like the only sentence I’d be able to say for the rest of my life was, “There’s been an incident.”

  “Yes,” he said, still pleasantly. “But why don’t you put the gun down?”

  I felt myself starting to say, “There’s …” I clamped my lips shut. Along with not being able to speak, I also appeared to be unable to move. I was half crouched, gun dangling from my hand, looking like I was either about to sprint or maybe leap into the air and perform a frolicsome dance.

  “Jane …”

  He stepped closer. I crouched a little lower.

  Owen’s foot twitched. Then the ankle flexed.

  I found some new words.

  “Jane,” I said quickly as my field of vision went black and white and spotty. “Pass out now.”

  And I did.

  twenty-seven

  When I came to, I was stretched out on the floor. There was something lumpy under my head, propping it up a little. I was looking at a ceiling. A very dirty old ceiling, painted in a hideous fresco of demons eating off one another’s legs and pushing one another into lakes of fire. It was like a photo from a demonic travel brochure.

  I twiddled all my fingers. I was not holding a gun. That was probably for the best.

  Owen was standing above me, dressed in a terrible oversized sweatshirt with a shark wearing sunglasses printed on it. Brother Frank had his sleeve rolled up and was draining the tub.

  “You okay?” Owen asked.

  “I’m conscious, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

  “That’s good enough for now.”

  “Can you explain what I just saw?” I asked.

  “That was me dying,” he said. “A little.”

  “What’s dying a little?” I asked. “That isn’t something I’m really familiar with.”

  “Well, I guess I’m what you would consider dead because I died once.”

  “You’re dead?” I asked, just to be clear.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sort of. Not all the time. It’s complicated.”

  “Jane,” Brother Frank said slowly, “you may have trouble accepting some of the things we are about to tell you.”

  “Will I?” I said, my voice breaking into a laugh.

  They looked at each other. I don’t like it when people exchange looks in front of me.

  “Get up,” Owen said, nudging me a little.

  “No,” I said, stiffening. I put my hands over my eyes and tried my mind-blanking, Friends-humming trick. It didn’t work.

  “Get up, Jane. You can’t panic now.”

  I disagreed. This was the best excuse for panic I’d ever come across. I continued to panic and started making a kind of loud humming noise. Why, I have no idea. I just needed to do something. To hear something.

  “Stop humming and listen,” he said, standing over me. “I’m here to help you.”

  “You said it was a game,” I answered. “You said Lanalee was playing a trick. This isn’t feeling like a game, Owen. I’ve played games. They are fun. This is not.”

  “I know,” he said. “I lied to you. I was trying to protect you. I didn’t think you’d believe the real story, so I made something up to try to get you to stay away from Lanalee. This is the truth now, Jane. No more stories.”

  “I’m not moving,” I whimpered. “Leave me here. Rats will eat me. I’d like that.”

  “Get up!” he yelled. “Get up or I’ll splash some of that water on you. You don’t want that. Believe me. It’s like centipede soup.”

  I got up. I don’t like centipedes. They are about 250 places above french fries dipped in ketchup on the spook-Jane-out scale.

  “Perhaps,” Brother Frank said, “we should continue this at the house.”

  “I live with Brother Frank and t
he other brothers,” Owen explained. “We’ll have some privacy there.”

  It was a quiet ride over to Brother Frank’s house. He had an old tan sedan and had NPR on at low volume. A very boring man was talking about the merits of a book called The Tiny Puddle We Call the Sea, punctuated by dry little bursts of jazz music.

  We arrived at a small, prim place that he shared with two other brothers. They both were sitting in front of the television watching the Discovery Channel and grading papers when we all trundled in. They seemed like they belonged to another world, and I was very jealous of them and their sanity. Nothing in the world seemed quite as appealing as checking tests and watching shows about grasshoppers—nothing.

  But we didn’t stay with them. We went into the kitchen, where Brother Frank shut the door and slid the heavy old bolt.

  “Cup of tea,” he said, his brogue coming out again nice and strong. “A nice cuppa. That’s what you need.”

  “I think I need something more than that,” I said.

  He got up and put the kettle on the stove.

  “Jane,” he said, “I would normally have tried to do this in a much slower, more organic way—preferably over the course of several years, with a team of spiritual counselors and psychologists on standby. But there is no time now, so I have to be blunt, and you have to rearrange your concept of reality very quickly. For this, I apologize. But you must listen, and you must listen well.”

  He dropped tea bags into some mugs with amazing calmness.

  “Everything you have seen tonight is quite real. Everything you have seen over the last few days, and I have no doubt you have seen some interesting things, is quite real. Your friend Allison made a compact with an emissary of what we sometimes refer to as Satan.”

  “You’re saying Lanalee is the devil?”

  “It’s complicated,” Owen said. “People get it all mixed up. There is no one Satan. Satan is kind of like a corporation. It’s made up of its members. Lanalee is a member.”

  “A corporation? And Lanalee works for them?”

  “She’s …” Owen struggled for the words. “She’s like a really good intern who’s definitely going to get a full-time job there. Demons are always moving up; new ones are always coming in. You always have to keep trying to get promoted.”

  “Many large corporations are actually modeled on hell,” Brother Frank added. “The policies and organization are almost identical. Hell, of course, is much worse. Sugar?”

  “What?”

  “In your tea?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “When you make a contract with them,” Owen went on, “one of two things happens. Either they simply suck you dry of energy and life force to keep themselves going, or they recruit you and you join the company. They decide which; you don’t.”

  “In your case, Jane,” Brother Frank said, setting a mug in front of me, “I think they will probably try to recruit you. You would be demonized. You have intelligence, talents, strength. I have little doubt that you were always the target and that Allison was used to get to you.”

  “Which is when I was sent,” Owen chimed in.

  “By who?” I asked.

  Brother Frank and Owen glanced at each other.

  “We should just move on,” I said.

  “We should,” Brother Frank agreed.

  I drank the scalding tea. It burned my lips, but I didn’t care.

  “What happened between you and Lanalee?” Owen asked. “We need to know.”

  There was nothing else for it now. The story had to come out. They got the whole thing—the book, the dream, the contract, the works. They didn’t say a word the entire time.

  “Where did she mark you?” Owen asked when I was finished.

  I grudgingly pulled up my sleeve. He took my arm in his frigid hands. He poked it roughly with his thumb, rubbing at it.

  “This is not good,” he said. “It’s real. No question.”

  There was a knock at the door. One of the other brothers came in to get some hot chocolate, so we had to pretend that we were doing a math review session for a few minutes. I couldn’t really get into it. I kept staring at the wall while Brother Frank talked about the wonders of parabolas. He promptly switched back as soon as the other brother was gone.

  “The Poodle Club is not the only secret organization operating inside St. Teresa’s,” he said. “It’s very much time that you understood this.”

  “Oh?” I said, trying to sound calm.

  “Along with being a brother of the Order of St. Sebastian, I am part of the Order of St. Otto. We exist to fight demons and to hold back the presence of the Dark One.”

  “You’re … a demon hunter?”

  “It’s not really as exciting as it sounds,” he said. “There is a surprising amount of paperwork involved. We are unknown to many members of the church. Only the highest echelons know of our existence. We have only one other member inside St. Teresa’s.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Sister Charles,” he said.

  “Shut up.”

  “Sister Charles,” he said darkly, “is twenty-eight years old. I recruited her personally six years ago.”

  They watched me take in this news.

  “She’s one of the few people I’ve ever known who has repelled an advance from Lanalee. Sister Charles was a ballet dancer, you see. A very good one. She was poised for great success—and she was in fact offered this success by an agent. She was tempted but ultimately refused. In retaliation, Lanalee severed her toes.”

  “Twenty-eight?”

  “Lanalee sapped her life force. She literally consumed her youth. In one three-day span, I saw Sister Charles—who was then named Emma Bright—go from a muscular and vibrant dancer to an old woman. And she was lucky. Very lucky. She has been watching Lanalee very carefully. She knew, for instance, that Lanalee brought you and Allison to the chapel on the night that she had the Poodle display set up.”

  “You knew that?”

  “We also knew St. Sebastian’s was an old Satanist property, of course. And it didn’t take us long to figure out that it was connected to a very powerful force. But Lanalee’s never actually turned up here before. She usually appears in big cities—New York, Boston, Vienna, London, Paris…. But we knew it was only a matter of time before she returned here. One day before class started, her name simply appeared in the registration lists.”

  “We don’t have time to mess around,” Owen said. “We have two days until Halloween, when the contact expires. This is not good news for you.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “We’ll try to think of a way that the deal can be broken. Otherwise, go to school tomorrow, act as normally as you can. Let Lanalee think you’re not even trying to do anything about this, like it doesn’t scare you. It might increase the chance of her making a mistake.”

  “And Jane,” Brother Frank added, “don’t go trying to fix this one on your own again. From now on, you’re with us.”

  twenty-eight

  I didn’t sleep. I didn’t even think about sleeping. I dressed for school at four in the morning and startled my dad by being at the kitchen table long before he got downstairs.

  At school, the halls were humming with a low-frequency jumpiness that I’d only felt one time when the Sebastian’s guys came over to help move some desks. This feeling was even stronger. Girls were fingering their necks a lot. I noticed that a lot of people seemed to be wearing similar gold necklaces. Cassie walked by, furiously trying to balance her Filofax on a pile of books and write in it.

  “Hey,” I called. “Cass.”

  She begrudgingly spared me a moment. She focused on my neck while I looked at hers. She was wearing a short gold choker with a poodle charm dangling from it.

  “Where’s yours?” she asked. “Didn’t you get one?”

  “Sure,” I lied. “I got one.”

  “The note said we’re supposed to wear it all the time,” she said. “You should put it on. And God,
did you get all those e-mails this morning? Alumni reps from every school I’m applying to got in touch with me. This is so it, Jane. Harvard, Yale, Princeton. There was even one from Oxford! Did you get those?”

  “Sure,” I lied again. “And the Poodle Prom stuff. Where is it again?”

  “The Biltmore Hotel ballroom. Tomorrow night at eight. Halloween. Jane, didn’t you read your note?”

  “I was too busy with all those e-mails,” I said. “Hardly any time to get ready for all this.”

  “I know! I was supposed to take the SAT again on Saturday, but I’ll just skip this time. I mean, I need a dress, a manicure, shoes…. Pretty much everyone is going to blow off at some point today. A lot of people didn’t come in. You better get started.”

  “Right,” I said. “Definitely.”

  Sister Albert and Sister Charles were coming down the hall with a purposeful gait. Sister Rose Marie was trailing behind them, but I got the feeling that her presence wasn’t official. I think she was following along like a demerit vulture, waiting for her chance to pounce.

  “They must know,” Cassie said, buttoning up the collar of her shirt to hide the charm.

  I stepped aside to watch and see where they were going and was surprised when they stopped directly in front of me.

  “Miss Jarvis,” Sister Albert said. “Please open your locker.”

  When someone storms up like that and demands that you open your locker, the chances seem high that something in there is going to produce a very unwelcome surprise. And with Lanalee running around, that was no shock. But it wasn’t Lanalee who came up and stood beside Sister.

  It was Allison.

  I noticed the roots were gone, and the little red hair helmet was looking more shiny than ever. She locked eyes with me, then lifted her chin just ever so slightly and ran her fingers along her neck, making sure I caught the faint glint of gold there.

  “Now, Miss Jarvis,” Sister said. “Don’t try to stall.”

  I looked at her blankly, shrugged, and turned and opened the lock. A crowd had gathered now. I could feel them at my back. I swung open the door. It looked like my locker, nothing out of the ordinary. A big mess of books and papers and Post-its.