Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  Greer walked to the front and was introduced to her next client by Celia. “I’ll be right with you,” she said to the timid woman who appeared to have a chronically apologetic look on her face.

  She leafed through the appointment book until she found the upcoming Monday. As promised by Dario, the page was full of penciled-in appointments. Greer sighed and started looking for a place to fit in a full hour with the obliging client, making a mental note to give her a nice gift bag of beauty products and an aromatherapy candle for being so flexible, a rare quality in today’s selfish world.

  Even as she leaned down to focus on Celia’s small writing and the times next to the names, her vision seemed to float out of focus. Greer had never needed reading glasses, and she blinked to clear her eyes, but the words did not congeal. Instead another image revealed itself to her, floating over the page.

  A blackened key showed itself as clear as though it were hovering a few inches above the page. A key, clearly indicated over Monday, October tenth, Columbus Day.

  A veneer of sweat seemed to glaze Greer’s face as she stared at the key. Then, to break the alarming image, she looked up and into the mirror behind the counter.

  And there she saw something else: two black wings, darker than a raven’s, motionless and looming. Between them was strung a web in dark, tangled lines. Caught in the center of the web was the reflection of her own suddenly bloodless and horrified face.

  Chapter 27

  The steaks were settling nicely into their marinade of pineapple juice, Worcestershire sauce, and Guinness Stout when the unusual sound of a large truck navigating the rough dirt road came barging through Joshua’s window. He laid down the book he was reading and went to see what it was.

  Immediately recognizing Sheldon Tucker’s profile and a small head bouncing just over the windowsill on the passenger side of the large cab, Joshua went down to see what they might be doing here.

  Sheldon pulled the truck past the parking area shared by Greer’s and Whitney’s homes and up in front of the locked gate that was access for the forest service, the hiking trail, and the few cabins situated farther up the road.

  As Joshua crossed the open area, Sheldon got out of the truck and started to sort through a huge ring of keys, no doubt looking for the unique match to one of the many locks on the chain that secured the yellow swinging gate.

  “Hello again!” Joshua called out. A little concerned to see the water truck there, though he could smell no smoke, he asked, “What’s going on?”

  Sheldon looked up at him from under the brim of his spotless green John Deere hat. “One of your neighbors is having trouble with their well, so they ordered a load of water for their tank.”

  “Oh,” Joshua said, relieved. Their house too was on a well-tank system, and he understood that when there was trouble with the pump, a depleted water table, or no electricity, there was no water. “Have you been working all night and all day?”

  “I got a few hours’ sleep last night.”

  “That sounds pretty tough,” Joshua commiserated, but he was thinking more about Tyler. As though he’d been called out, the other door of the cab opened and the boy himself climbed cautiously down, jumping the last two feet from the metal grid stair to the ground. With a look of excited recognition on his face, he ran to where Joshua was standing.

  “Hey Joshua!” he called out.

  Joshua was pleased that the boy was so glad to see him. “Hey, Tyler, what’s up?”

  After trying a couple of keys unsuccessfully, Sheldon located the right fit and the heavy chain swung with a loud clink against the post. He started to push the gate’s heavy arm around.

  “Here, I’ll get that for you,” Joshua offered.

  “Thanks,” Sheldon muttered. He seemed unaccustomed to assistance. “Come on, Tyler. Let’s go,” he growled.

  “Can I stay with Joshua?” the boy chirruped.

  “Tyler, you can’t just ask somebody . . .”

  “No,” Joshua cut in, “it’s fine. I wasn’t doing anything anyway. I was bored.”

  In spite of his overall gruff-and-skinny-bear demeanor, Sheldon looked pleased. “I’ll be about an hour. They’ve got a small intake pipe, and it takes quite a while to pump thirty-eight hundred gallons.”

  “No problem,” Joshua said.

  “Okay, then.” Sheldon fixed his grandson with a meaningful stare. “You behave.”

  “Yes, sir!” Tyler’s little body almost snapped to attention with the promise.

  As the big truck rumbled away up the rutted road, Joshua turned to Tyler. “You want to come meet my friend Joy?”

  “A girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Mmm.” Tyler looked undecided.

  “But she’s cool, not real girly or anything dumb like that,” Joshua told him, using boy code.

  “Okay,” Tyler agreed somewhat warily.

  They marched up the steps to Luke and Whitney’s and knocked on the door. It was Joy who answered it. “What are you knocking for? Just come in. I’m busy.” Then she spotted Tyler. “Oh, hello.”

  “Joy, this is my buddy Tyler. He’s working today with his grandfather, who owns the big water truck. We’re gonna hang for an hour or so. You wanna do something?”

  Joy smiled at the kid vernacular and slowly nodded as though that were the most fabulous idea she’d heard in a long, long time. “Great. Come on in. I’m making bread. Do you have strong arms, Tyler?” she asked as they went through the hall into the kitchen. There was a pile of dough on a floured board.

  Tyler lifted a scrawny fist into the air and tensed his tiny bicep, Popeye style.

  “Impressive,” Joy said, her eyes sharing a charmed laugh with Joshua. “Okay, get that footstool and wash your hands. We’ve got work to do.”

  Five minutes later, Tyler’s entire upper body was covered with edible white dust, and he was having the time of his life karate chopping the yielding mound of softness. Joy would turn the dough a quarter turn, fold it in, yell, “Now!” He would chop down with appropriate sound effects, and then she would complete the rolling knead, pushing and flattening with the palms of both hands. Then they would do it again.

  “Okay, I think that looks perfect,” Joy said. “Now we make it into a loaf and let it rise again.” She glanced over to where she had three other loaves lined up on the counter with dish towels draped over them. “Look.” Lifting one of the towels, she let Tyler peep underneath it. “See how nice and puffy it is? This one’s going to get that big too.”

  Joshua was content to watch the whole ritual. His mother made bread and he had often helped her. He wondered now if it had been like this, with him much more of a detriment than a help. Probably, he thought. Mostly though, he was amazed at Joy’s ease with Tyler, and he wondered if nurturing came more naturally to women, if it was instinctive, or if it was learned by an individual, male or female. He thought briefly about Joy’s real mother, Pam, quickly eliminated the first two options, and concluded it was definitely the last.

  Tyler was instructed on how to set the oven to the right temperature and then watched, fascinated, as two of the earlier loaves were slid into it and the timer set.

  “Now we wash our hands again and do the best part.”

  “What’s that?” Tyler didn’t seem to think there could be a better part than actively beating up the dough.

  “Smell it while it’s cooking,” Joy said with a gleam in her eye. “You want a snack?” she asked the boy, but her eyes cut up to Joshua to include him.

  “I’ll wait for dinner,” Joshua said. For steaks and fresh bread, he wanted a good appetite, but Tyler nodded.

  “What do you like?” Joy asked him, leaning down to address him closer to his own level.

  “I like Jack’s. My grampa likes KFC, and that’s okay too. But today we had McDonald’s.”

  “I see.” Joy tried not to look too judgmental. “Well, let me make you something and see if you like it.” She set to work rummaging through the refrigerator
and soon had a plate of sliced apples, grapes, some cheese, and whole-grain crackers. She set a cold glass of milk next to it. Tyler looked dubious, but once he started, he went through the whole thing with a ravenous appetite.

  “So you live with your grampa?” Joy asked as she watched him devour the last cracker.

  “Yeah. Grampa says that my mom needs to stop doing drugs, and then I can maybe live with her again.” Tyler did not look at her as he said this.

  “I had a mom like that too. It’s not easy, is it?” Joy asked softly.

  Tyler picked up his milk and took a small sip; then, still without looking up, he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “But you’ve got your grampa,” Joshua said, trying to be cheerful. “And that must be pretty neat riding around in the truck.”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. But sometimes I get kinda bored, you know?”

  “Do you have a grandma?”

  “Yeah, she lives in Riverside. I don’t really remember her.”

  “Have you got any brothers or sisters?” Joshua asked.

  The little head started to nod, hesitated, and then shook no.

  Wondering what that had meant, Joshua said, “Do you have stepbrothers and sisters?”

  The no shake again, a small breath, and Tyler spoke in a hesitant voice that sounded as though the little boy had been rehearsed in—or perhaps had distanced himself from—the text. “I had a little sister, but she got sick and my mommy couldn’t take care of her, so some people came and took her away.”

  Joshua could hear the tightness in Joy’s voice as she asked, “Where is she now? Do you ever get to see her?”

  This time the head shake was almost imperceptible and accompanied by a slight, almost apologetic shrug. “She died.”

  There was a quiet moment while Tyler scraped a dirty fingernail along the tabletop, seeming fascinated by something visible only to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Joy said empathetically.

  The shrug again. Tyler’s eyes squinted harder at the imaginary spot. “It’s okay. I mean, she was a baby. I don’t really remember her much, except that she used to cry a lot and my mom would get really mad.”

  Joy looked at Joshua and they sighed together silently. “Tell you what,” Joy said. “Why don’t I give your grampa my phone number, and if he’s working in the neighborhood, he can drop you off here sometime, and we can hang out. Cool?”

  “Cool!” Tyler said, and his eyes finally came up to meet hers.

  When the rumble of Sheldon’s truck announced his reappearance, they went out to meet him. He was fumbling through the huge ring of keys to unlock the gate again.

  “Good grief,” Joshua commented. “You must have keys to every locked gate in Shadow Hills.”

  “Just the ones that need water,” Sheldon grumbled, then added with an amused snort, “And sooner or later that’s most all of ’em.”

  Joy introduced herself and repeated her offer to watch Tyler on occasion. Sheldon asked her how much she would want to be paid, and she answered, “Nothing. I relate to the little guy, you know?” Much like Tyler had, she looked away when she spoke about her mother. “I spent some pretty hard years with a mom who couldn’t get her shit together, and people helped me, so . . .” She let the statement drop off, but not without a glance at Joshua that told him the reference had meant him.

  Sheldon’s wrinkled face took on a rough smile. “That’s real nice of you. I might just take you up on it.” He shook his head. “This time of year, between the fires and the wells drying up, I don’t get much time off. Ever. And now, with that Golden Door development ripping the skin off miles of dirt, they constantly need watering down to keep the dust from blinding everybody up there so bad they can’t work.”

  Joshua thought of the sheer size of the exposed earth. “That must be a huge job for you.”

  Sheldon’s face looked sour. “I don’t care much for working for that outfit. That Rowland Hughs guy—” He seemed to check himself, and then he muttered, “It pays the bills.” He turned to ruffle Tyler’s hair. “Were you a good boy?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tyler said, beaming up at Joy. “I made bread!”

  “You did?” Sheldon looked surprised but pleased.

  “Oh yeah,” Joy said, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm in her voice. “He was a big help.”

  For the first time ever, Joshua recognized the sensation of a vision coming to him well before it happened. There was a warming, prickling pulsing in his chest, and he actually turned from one person to another to see where the image would appear. As he watched, a figure materialized over Tyler’s right shoulder.

  It took most of Joshua’s self-control to hide the tears he felt come into his eyes.

  A small girl, less than two years old, with the thin, almost malnourished look of a neglected child, was looking straight at him with large eyes. Though her physical appearance should have been one reflecting her weak, depleted body, the glow of energy, peace, and joy coming from her incongruously wise face filled Joshua with a sense of wonder.

  Seeming to be content that he had sensed her, the small figure turned her eyes down to the boy who Joshua knew must be her brother. She pointed a thin, childish finger at Tyler and then moved it slowly up to Sheldon; then she turned back to Joshua and shook her head, holding one hand up to signify that something must be stopped.

  Unable to speak in present company, Joshua thought hard the words I don’t understand.

  The small, wise girl smiled kindly at him from forever and then faded.

  Exhaling hard but forcing himself to remain inaudible, he turned away and pretended to be absorbed in the view as he thought about the feeling he had gotten from what he could only think of as a sound bite from eternity.

  Something was wrong; he could sense that she had meant that. She hadn’t just come to give him the message that she was all right, something he often felt when he saw images unbidden over people he didn’t know. He’d even had a visit like that from his own father once, but this was different. She had wanted him to do something, to stop something.

  He didn’t know what, but he was damn sure it wasn’t anything good.

  “Well, we’ve got to get going. Thanks for watching Tyler,” Sheldon was saying, and his gruffness had returned. He and Tyler climbed up into the big cab, and with a whoosh of air brakes and an easy grinding of gears, they drove their home away from home laboriously back up toward the highway.

  Joy came up to stand beside Joshua and they watched the truck maneuver the rough road. “Poor little guy,” Joy said. “He’s really lucky he’s got his grandfather. Not many single men that age would take on an eight-year-old.”

  Joshua said nothing. He was still thinking about the waiflike little girl and her warning. He wasn’t so sure if her surviving brother was lucky or not.

  Chapter 28

  As Leah slid into her seat up front in the crowded community center, she was struck by how many people had turned out. The hall had been set up with folding chairs in rows with an aisle down the middle and an eight-foot folding table at the front, behind which six chairs faced the rest of the room.

  As the primary bank officer on the Golden Door development site, she had been obliged to come. She could think of quite a few things she would rather be doing. Walking on hot coals toward hungry wolves came to mind.

  Susan turned her head and smiled at Leah tightly. Leah noticed she was sitting oddly, as though the lower half of her body wanted to face the room and the upper part was more inclined to face the right wall; she appeared locked in that position.

  Next to Susan sat an aging fire chief. He looked primarily bored. Leah knew that he was there to field any questions about public safety requirements. She also knew that, per the zoning agreement, all the statutes had been satisfied for stages one and two and they were attached to the loan deal, otherwise her bank would not have been able to approve the loan.

  The meeting hadn’t started yet. The councilwoman, Wendy Sostein, nodded hello
to Leah and then checked her watch pointedly. There was one open chair at the table, and Leah assumed that they were waiting for its intended occupant. The other people in the room passed the time by talking among themselves and shooting murderous looks at Susan and, Leah noted with some alarm, herself. It was difficult to keep from mouthing, “I’m not with them; I’m with you,” to the assorted members of the crowd. Truth be told, I’ve sold out. I’ve learned to hate this development that I have to look at every day and that I’m here defending, I hate sacrificing anything and everything for profit, and I hate myself.

  It was a very strange setting for such a big self-confession. The fact was that Leah had never given much thought to how or where the money was made at her bank; she had just wanted to control it, to make a big chunk of it for herself, to have. Now, here in this ugly, sterile room filled with cold metal chairs and a mass of people, most of whom she didn’t even know, Leah felt as though she’d been scratching and laboring and climbing all her life, so intent on reaching the summit that she had never bothered to notice that she had picked the wrong mountain.

  But almost simultaneously the thought of all the people who came in and trusted her with their money, who expected dividends, who received loans for homes and schools and bills, rushed up on her. The services she provided for them didn’t go very far toward making her feel like a philanthropist, but it was the system she’d come into and—when used ethically—worked better than most other financial systems.

  Before she could begin to consider whether or not she’d be able to find a balance between her greed and her newfound sense of fair play, Wendy Sostein cleared her throat and spoke loudly.

  “It appears that Mr. Farrad is either quite late or not coming, so I need to call the meeting to order without him.”

  This announcement was met with many angry shouts from the assembly.

  Wendy spoke over them. “I’m sorry, but I see no alternative. Now, we are going to do this in an orderly and respectful way. One speaker at a time, please come to the podium at the front and speak into the microphone. You will have five minutes maximum, and you may ask questions of any of us seated at this table.”