Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  But her personal demons remained invisible and impossible to contain. By the time they had reached the car, she had worked herself into a cold sweat of expectant fear. Would Weston want to kiss her good night? Would he never want to see her again? If he tried to touch her, would she recoil? Scream? Retch? Did she want him to touch her? She had a taste in her mouth like bad Gorgonzola, and her head was starting to pound.

  She tried for casual friendliness. “Hop in and I’ll take you back to your truck,” she offered, but it was impossible to keep the trembling in her throat from making her voice warble.

  “That’s okay,” Weston said easily, either not noticing or politely ignoring her visible discomfort. “It’s only a few blocks back to the restaurant. I’ll walk.” After she had unlocked the car door with her remote, he moved next to her and opened it. “I had a great time. You’ve got my number; give me a call sometime if you’d like,” he said. Keeping the door between them, he waited as she climbed into the BMW and then swung the door closed. Feeling churlish to let the evening end so abruptly, Leah rolled down her window.

  Looking up at him from the relative safety of her leather seat, she said, “I had a great time too. Thank you.”

  The light in the parking lot was dim. The large fir trees that studded the ground around the play structure shadowed Weston so that she couldn’t see his expression, giving him an ominous presence. As though sensing that the angle was too foreboding, he bent down until he was level with her window.

  Then, without speaking, he leaned in, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and then straightened up and headed under the trees toward the street. Leah could make out his excellent form, striding confidently away from her, leaving her safe and alone.

  It was a sensation she didn’t care for.

  Joy and Joshua climbed out of his car noisily in the parking area shared by both their houses.

  “You want me to walk you home?” Joshua asked mockingly, as her front steps were less than ten feet from where he had parked.

  “I don’t know—it’s really far.” Joy was holding the purple giraffe she had won under her arm as though it were a purse. She put her hands on her stomach and grimaced. “Man, I don’t think I should have had that second chili dog.”

  Joshua tried to keep a straight face. “I don’t think it was the chili dog so much as the cotton candy, the ice cream, the churros, and the funnel cake.”

  “Ugh, please.” Joy threw up a hand to silence him. “I will hurl all over you if you don’t shut up.” “You guys got any Alka-Seltzer?”

  “I think I have a few packs left over from the good ol’ days,” she confirmed.

  “Well, go take one and lie down. Or hurl, not on me, of course, but you might feel better if you do.”

  Joy laughed and clutched her stomach. “Shut up! Don’t make me laugh; it hurts.”

  “Well,” said Joshua, raising a hand in farewell, “Good night. Thanks for going with me. I had a really good time.”

  “Me too,” Joy said. “It was fun, thanks.” Then, as though it was a casual motion that they were both used to, she swooped up and kissed his cheek. “Good night!” she exclaimed as she made her escape up the steps onto her porch and let herself in with her key.

  Joshua stood, his feet rooted to the gravel parking area, one hand on his cheek, his mind exploding with far too many explanations of just what that tiny, moist, warm spot could possibly, maybe, perhaps mean.

  Simon rode in the back of Loc’s car next to Tic. They cruised slowly down an alleyway that ran behind a group of stores on Foothill Boulevard. In the front passenger seat, Juice’s shiny pate glowed as he turned from side to side, his dark eyes shining in the striped lights of the streetlamps, watching left and then right. Tic frequently jerked around to look behind them. Loc pulled up in a dark spot between the two exterior lights of different stores and left the motor running. “Go, man, go,” he told Juice.

  In response to the order, Juice jumped out of the car and, taking a spray can from the deep pocket of his jacket, quickly and expertly tagged the white back door of a tobacco shop. Then he walked, slumped, eyes shifting rapidly and watchfully from side to side, but feigning innocence, back to the car. Loc pulled away, moving farther down the alley.

  “Teach that motherfucker to not sell me smokes,” Loc muttered with malice in his voice. He looked pleased with himself. Then, without turning to look at him, he said, “Yo, Sy.”

  “Yo,” Simon answered from his seat behind Loc.

  Nothing else was spoken between them, but Simon knew what was coming. He’d been expecting it.

  Loc drove two more blocks down the alley, crossing the quiet side streets to access it. Finally he pulled the car into the darkness under overhanging branches, away from the streetlights. They all four sat in the car.

  Simon’s eyes were fixed on the back of the building. He knew it. He knew the reason he was there. A churning fear and hatred turned his stomach.

  The other boys were waiting. “What you gonna do?” Loc finally said.

  “This is where I get out,” Simon said, a deadness in his voice that he had deliberately put there. He could not let them taste his fear; they would make him pay for it. He knew that they would not tolerate weakness.

  “Shit, fucker. You gonna walk on us?” Loc said. He did not look or sound happy.

  “I got shit to do.” Simon let his eyes rest on Loc’s, knowing that the older boy would understand this.

  A tight, twisted, mean smile crept across Loc’s thin mouth. “Do what you gotta do. Later, Sy.” Juice and Tic both swore softly and refused to look at Simon.

  Simon said nothing as the car sped away, its old gears protesting with a whine. And for a long time after the red taillights of the car had faded, he stood in the gloomy shadows, looking at the empty blackness where the tiny crimson glow had disappeared.

  He waited for a full sweep of an hour hand, standing perfectly still in the shadows on the far side of the alley, watching and listening. When he was convinced that the alley, the store, and the neighborhood were asleep, that no eyes were observing him, he moved out of the cover of darkness and crossed the alley.

  Chapter 21

  He lay in the hot, still air and stared at the crosshatches of light on the brick wall. He had lain down a half hour ago and no sleep had come. His body and his brain were saturated with the temperature. The arid heat was bringing his restless spirit to a boiling point. He threw off the sheets and lay sweating, rocking rhythmically from side to side.

  The seductive image of fire dominated his thoughts. Undulating and alive, lapping at the earth like a thirsty dog. Powerful, insatiable, unleashed by him. The very thought of it excited him and sent a thrill of pleasure surging through him, causing his penis to stiffen, his breath to quicken. The erotic sensation was followed quickly by agitation, need, and a driving hunger.

  The edginess made him rise from the bed and pace back and forth in front of his window. His fingers itched, and his lust for flames lured him like a siren call. Careful to be as silent as possible, he dressed himself, left the bedroom and went down the stairs, and exited through the back door, keeping a hand on the screen door to restrain the squeak that he had learned to silence long ago, when he began his nightly outings.

  Free of the constraints of walls and doors, he stood in the open air and breathed deeply. The air was dry, almost painfully so, and it smelled clean; there was no trace of smoke or ash in it tonight.

  He smiled and fingered the lighter in his pocket. Soon enough, he would change that. He would change everything.

  Clyde had worked as a security guard for the last fifteen of his sixty-seven years. He enjoyed the privacy it usually afforded him, working at night, left alone with his books or TV and his bottle of Seagram’s.

  The bottle and its effects he was careful to conceal from his employers. The TV and books they never minded as long as he made his rounds; in fact, most of his bosses seemed sorry for him and glad that he had the distractions. If their
pity allowed him his pleasures, that was fine by Clyde. He didn’t much care for human company. He had one fishing buddy who wasn’t dead yet, and they saw each other a few times a year. His daughter lived with her fancy-shmancy husband in Tucson and seldom, if ever, acknowledged his existence. Bitch. He’d never thought she’d amount to much, so it didn’t surprise him now that she was a crap daughter. He’d expected it. He’d told her she would be.

  He’d finished his last check about twenty minutes ago, and now he sat in the work-site trailer with his mini-DVD player—a gift from Shaina, who had been too lazy to visit him for Christmas—playing a Steven Seagal movie. He loved the fight scenes, loved the way the big man cut through dozens of bodies with minimal effort and movement. Sure, he’d gotten fatter over the years, but he was still a badass. The only thing Clyde didn’t like was when they tried to fit in too much moral. Fuck that. Action pictures were for one thing, action. And the more bodies that flew apart and necks that broke, the better.

  He reached for his bottle and poured another inch into the dirty mug he was using tonight. It still smelled of stale coffee as he raised it to his mouth, but the bite of the liquor soon erased the odor.

  The movie was passing through one of its long-winded bits when he checked his watch. Time for a walk-through. Pressing PAUSE on the little device, he rose from his chair with a number of complaining creaks from his joints. But a series of rolling movements cracked most of the bits back into place, though his knees still objected strongly to the three steep steps down out of the mobile office. Pulling his heavy, black metal flashlight from his belt, he switched it on and started trudging along the broken earth away from the looming hills behind him. After a couple hundred yards he came to the end of the cleared ground and stood just in front of a framed-out home. His feet finding the more secure footing of asphalt, he increased his pace and walked to where he’d left the golf cart. He turned the key and pressed the accelerator. The vibrant hum of the little car gave him satisfaction as it surged forward, moving his face against the still air in a feeble imitation of a lukewarm breeze.

  Sixty seconds brought him to the end of the cul-desac, and Clyde was making the wide circle when something from beyond the skeletal frames of the houses, below the edge of the man-made steppe, caught his attention.

  It was the sound of a motor running. A sound that should not have been there. After parking the cart, Clyde ambled along the bare earth down the narrow corridor between two of the gigantic house frames. When he came out into what would eventually be the backyards, he walked the length of them in less than twenty paces and peered down over the incline to the back of the framed houses on the next planned street below.

  On the far side of them, moving along very slowly with its lights off, was a barely visible car. Clyde shone his flashlight through the impossibly thin wood of the house frames, but just as the light was about to reveal the vehicle, the driver must have spotted the beam, because the car shot away down the street, around a curve that blocked it from Clyde’s view. Cursing, he stood listening to the retreating engine.

  “Fucking kids,” he muttered. The only problems he had had on this development were teenagers trying to find an isolated spot for their amorous adventures. Clyde enjoyed sneaking up on them and either startling them, or, if the moon was right, watching them surreptitiously from a distance. He especially enjoyed the convertibles. One particularly obliging young man had used a flashlight in the darkness on his partner’s body as she danced for him on the hood of the car. Clyde smiled, heated from the memory. That had been a good night. He’d waited until they were hot and heavy, and then he’d pulled up next to them in the golf cart and sounded his air horn. He cackled out loud now at the memory of how they jumped and the girl had started to sob. He’d enjoyed that.

  Returning to the cart, he finished his rounds and then retreated to his trailer. He fast-forwarded through the expositional part of the film until he got to the next action sequence, poured himself a couple more inches of whiskey, and settled back to wait out the next half hour.

  By the time the end credits were running, Clyde’s head had dropped back to one side and a thin trail of drool snailing its way from his mouth was interrupted only by his raucous snoring.

  He stood and listened. It had been a hike up here, and he was sure that the rasping of his breath could be heard in this absolutely still night. But though he waited long after his breathing had steadied, he heard absolutely nothing.

  Picking up the heavy can he had brought with him, he proceeded cautiously into the open, making his way toward the darker mass that stood out in the night. A hundred yards away, he could see a flickering light in the office trailer, but this did not concern him. He was familiar with the lax work ethic of nocturnal security guards. And even if the man did come out, it was a hundred to one that he would see the single form among the piles of building materials, scrap wood, and large open spaces.

  He made it to his destination, and paused. Pulling a short hunting knife from his pocket, he went to work, scratching away busily, occasionally flicking his lighter to admire his work and check on its progress. After fifteen minutes, he was content that it was deep enough, and he put the blade away.

  Then he emptied the contents of the can all around, careful to let the liquid soak the places that he felt needed it most. This was the second such operation tonight. With the first he had scattered the accelerant more sparingly just below the mobile home, where the shrubbery still grew unimpeded by bulldozers and land-moving monsters. He needed fuel for that job, the dry shrubbery supplied it, and all that was required was a little encouragement from the contents of the can. He liked the smell of the gasoline, always had. It reminded him of something that he couldn’t place. A time when he had not always felt the gnawing of ravenous hunger.

  The next part was a bit tricky—it necessitated no wind—and thankfully the night had obliged. Taking a small stump of candle from his pocket, he propped it up carefully in the loose earth and then piled some shredded paper around it, almost to the wick but not quite. Within ten minutes, he estimated, the flame would reach the paper, the paper would ignite, the fire would spread to the gasoline-soaked ground, and his work here would be done.

  Time enough to separate himself from the scene and gain a view on the spectacular results of his efforts. This would be worth watching—from a comfortable distance.

  The lighter flared in the shadow; the candle flickered to life. Straightening, he checked the trailer for signs of life—there were none—then he hurried through the open darkness, over the crest of the hill, back into the cover of the shrubbery, and within minutes was safely away, feeling the high, the elation, the power. The courage and nerve to do this made him invincible, a dark force to be reckoned with. This was his triumph, his legacy.

  As he raced away, two small fires leapt to life behind him, spreading quickly as they seemed to strive to reach each other. The first, released in a field of dry tinder, crackled noisily as it ate, crunching and snapping the spines of its meat. The second fire flushed silently across the ground and then began to crawl upward, licking and lapping as it went, until it too settled into its meal.

  Without warning, the wind began to move across the space between earth and sky, gusting lightly at first, but growing steadily more constant. It fanned the flames, already alive and happy with their work, and eased them in new directions, pushing gently, nudging. With a crack, a burning leaf fell from its broken branch and, encouraged by the wind beneath it, fluttered like some incendiary butterfly a few yards across open ground and landed on a pile of scrap lumber, choosing as its resting place a particularly narrow and brittle piece of wood that a workman had soaked in turpentine while thinning paint earlier that day.

  The combustion was instantaneous, and the flames leapt merrily up from a new and willing source. Within minutes, a bonfire worthy of Guy Fawkes was scrabbling with greedy fingers toward the sky. Delighted with its newfound freedom, and cheered on by the strengthening wind, th
e fire skipped along from source to source until it reached the mobile home, where it stretched out its exploring hands and seemed to seek an entry along one side of the fake-panel exterior.

  Halfway between deep sleep and a drunken stupor, Clyde snored loudly. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted in the reclining chair, his head lolling from one side to the other, and into his addled dreams came sounds that created images he did not understand: the crackling sounds of paper rustling in the wind, of branches scratching at the window. He grimaced, flinching from some nameless threat; then he sank deeper into his nightmares.

  Chapter 22

  Joshua shot up in bed, his whole body soaked with sweat. The image of a burning tree was seared into his brain. He had seen it, as clearly as though he had been standing in front of it. A massive tree in full flame, he could almost feel its pain as the fire consumed its ancient life.

  It had not been a dream, he was sure. One thing he had learned since his uncanny visions had begun, anything he saw was happening now. His mother saw images of the future, or glimpses and premonitions of what was to come, but his sixth sense was present.

  Jumping to his feet in his loose cotton pajama pants, he pulled on a T-shirt and flung open his door. He went down the hallway and hesitated in front of the door to his mother’s room. He knew that Sterling was in there, but he heard nothing except the sound of even breathing.