It was a fairly simple tale. One of those ‘heard it from a friend of a friend of mine’ stories that always make it into heritage books and television shows like The Twilight Zone. Legend had it that if one sat in that chair when alone, that the Devil himself would come out to get you. He would rise up from hell and eat your heart before sending your soul down to hell, taking over your body and using it to walk around the earth unabated until it started to rot and fall apart. Then he’d go back to his chair and wait for some other person foolhardy or suicidal enough to climb up on it.
Roxanne chuckled a bit as she took another puff of her smoke, letting it curl out of her mouth and into her hair slowly. The memory of the legend had managed to distract her from her life for a few minutes, which she was grateful for. She recalled how that story had terrified her as a child, how she used to stare at the rock as she passed by the gym on her way to school every day, wary of Satan coming to get her. Once in third grade she’d seen her older brother back there eating a sandwich and wouldn’t go near him for a week, afraid that he had been possessed.
But she wasn’t scared of urban legends anymore. Urban reality was frightening enough. So when her legs began to buckle at the knees from being on her feet all day bussing tables and cleaning the back of house, she walked out and plunked herself down on the stone, taking another draw of her smoke from between two yellowed fingers.
It was an odd feeling for her, sitting on the stone slab. It was like being in the darkness of your room and thinking that you’d seen the image of a ghost in the darkness. You could tell yourself over and over again that ghosts didn’t exist, but in the end you’d have to turn on the light to make sure before your overactive imagination would let you get any sleep.
From her current point of view, though it was only a few feet from where she had stood a moment ago, the fall leaves that had been orange, yellow, and inviting a moment ago now seemed a more visceral red. The trees hung lifelessly, their branches forming sagging faces that stared at her with woe and despair, as if to say, “Look at this poor soul. She doesn’t even know what she’s gotten herself into.”
The toes on her left foot felt like they were fusing together as they rubbed against each other. She glanced down and saw that the tea was sticking there on her foot and tisked at herself, taking a napkin from her breast pocket and wetting it on her tongue, then bent over and cleaned off her foot.
When she turned her head back up towards the trees, they stopped moving. They hadn’t been moving when she’d been staring at them and they were still again now, but clearly they had been even though Roxanne had felt no breeze. It was like walking into a room where people were talking about you and they all shut up at once. The shrubs seemed to have joined the trees in staring at her now, as if the trees had let them in on the joke.
There was a silence in the air so thick that she was tempted to poke her fake nails forward to see if she could jab a hole in it. There were no birds chirping. There were no sounds of rats at the garbage around the corner. There were no voices fading in and out as people walked down the street. When the trees moved they rustled, but they weren’t right now. Right now the only sound that happened was made by her when she took a puff of her smoke, hearing the paper tube crackle and pop as it burned.
The smell on the air was the crisp clean that came with fall, dew, and condensation weighing down every leaf until they couldn’t hold on anymore and fell to earth. She drew in breath hard, half expecting to get a nose full of fire and brimstone. When she did not, she laughed at herself for being so silly, allowing a smile to caress her lips. If nothing else, this non-adventure had taken her mind off the conversation she had had with Tim White.
She felt heat on her fingers. She looked at her hand and realized the cigarette was almost down to the butt. She brought it to her lips quickly for one last puff before turning around to doubt it against the cement wall.
As soon as she turned, she heard the familiar rustle of branches she had a moment ago. Dropping her smoke immediately, she turned back around towards the trees, again watching them as they stopped moving. This time it was the bushes, still waving a little bit before halting completely.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice cracking slightly.
There was no response, just the silence and motionlessness of the trees.
She hissed in pain and jumped off of the rock as her smoke burnt though the fabric of her pants and onto her leg, swatting at it with her hands and sending embers flying everywhere. The trees and shrubs seemed to go insane as she did this, like they were laughing at the punch line they hadn’t bothered sharing with her. When she looked up this time they continued to move, finally coming to rest after a few moments. She raised one of her carefully plucked eyebrows in curiosity. Checking her leg quickly to make sure it wasn’t burned, she took a step towards the tree line.
The shrubs in the far right of her vision moved. She turned her head towards them and they stopped, with the only hint the event had really happened being the steady vibration of the leaves. One fell from its branch finally, twirling and baying until finally hitting the ground. Now that it was gone Roxanne could see into the shrub a little more than she could a moment ago.
It was hard to focus, but whatever was in there looked... white. White and glimmering dully in the low light inside the foliage. It was in the rough shape of a half moon with the fat side down. As it slowly came into clear view, she saw that the crescent-shaped object was further divided, sectioned off in tiny squares.
It was the Devil’s smile.
Her hand was at her mouth with instant shock. The second she saw the teeth and gums of the smile, it was impossible not to see the whites of the beady green eyes locked onto her own, burning with hatred and bloodshot.
A fist shot out through the shrub and caught her in the chin even as she pulled away, trying to remember the self-defense training she’d taken a few weeks ago and coming up empty. She stumbled to the ground even as the Devil rose out of the orange and red leaves. Once again she was reminded of Hiroshima, the man being the mushroom cloud that rose up into the sky and towered above her.
He didn’t have red skin or a pointed nose or a tail, but he was the Devil all the same. He was slim and toned, smelling of cheap drugs so strongly that she didn’t know how she hadn’t gotten a whiff while sitting on the stone having her smoke. His hair was short and wiry, looking like the crew cuts that had been very popular a few years back. He had a small mustache that looked like it had been scribbled on with a pencil. His face was trim and there didn’t seem to be any fat on his body. There was a stench of B.O. and cologne. Not expensive cologne, but the type with a sailboat on the bottle. Roxanne’s quick-witted mind wondered instantly if it was to hide the stench of brimstone.
Because she didn’t care that the man in front of her looked just like Allan Bishop. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was looking square into the eyes of the Devil.
He laughed wickedly as he descended upon her, grabbing for her breast and ripping off a chunk of her blouse instead.
Mike started to walk home from school early, and none of the teachers or administrators did bugger-all about him skipping fifth period. It was Family Education, a subject that he found positively mundane. He only went to see Cathy, and with her gone his attendance seemed moot.
What was it Sara had said? “You know society’s going down the shitter when you need a class on how to not hit your kids.”
That one had always made he and Cathy laugh. Not so much Xander, though. He had found the whole subject of domestic violence appalling while growing up. Surprising, considering he’d grow to become the poster-child for abusive tendencies. He grunted to himself, pushing the idea aside. He hadn’t realized that he was thinking about Sara until long after the fact and it wasn’t an avenue he particularly enjoyed exploring. Traveling down memory lane is like traveling on Baltic, he mused, thinking of the popular board game; both are completely useless.
His train of thou
ght kept defaulting back to Julie and Greer. He couldn’t tear his mind away from those poor girls, or what had been done to them. Now Greer was in a coma, but the lumps and scrapes told the story pretty well for Tim and his forensics department. Julie wasn’t talking, and it didn’t seem like she ever would. Unless something happened quick, those assholes would get away with everything they’d done. He kept seeing poor, young Julie Peterson being held down as they each climbed on, beating her and calling her vulgar names. Making her feel as though they were doing it to her, just like Grendel had. Argh! he screamed inwardly, grabbing at his hair with one hand while clenching the other into a fist. The knuckles ached, still sore from trying to punch in Tommy’s locker yesterday. At that precise moment, he would have given anything for something to hit.
Then he heard it. Down by The Factory, right around the old sitting rock where he and Cathy had made-out for the first time. Cathy and Xander always acted weird when they went down there, though he didn’t know why. He couldn’t see the actual stone from where he was standing, but the sounds of struggle were clear. He peaked his head around the gray slate corner of The Factory and saw Allan Bishop slamming Roxanne’s back against the rock, choking her and riding his free hand up her skirt. Mike barred his teeth as he stepped around the corner. Suddenly his hand didn’t hurt anymore. That’ll do just fine.
Roxanne was crying, her shirt ripped in several places and a clump of her hair blowing about in the wind. Mike could see the blood rising to her scalp where it had been ripped out. Her purse had been thrown aside, makeup and pictures spilt out everywhere. Allan was huffing something sensually disturbing about how he knew she liked it. Mike grimaced. Give me Adam Genblade any day of the week, he joked inwardly, then he thought better of it and simply got ready to fight.
Carefully, he snuck up behind Al, then shoved him as hard as he could. Al flew over Roxanne, who seemed just as surprised as the would-be rapist. It was only then that Mike noticed her leg had been sliced near the pelvis and her underwear was dangling lazily around one ankle. The hole for the other leg had been ripped off. The image provided more fuel for his rage as she turned to run, not bothering to look back at either of them. That was fine by Mike, who had wanted nothing more than five minutes alone with this creep for well over twenty-four hours now.
Al started to rise to his feet, blood gushing from his nose and cheek from where he’d skidded across the ground. Grass stained the front of his white Yankees shirt as well, and his jacket had been ripped. The man suddenly seemed to grow, as if he’d gained a foot in every direction since Mike had shoved him. Mike gulped loudly, starting to feel the sweat dot his brow randomly.
“First the brunette,” Mike observed as he clenched his fists and got prepared for an attack. “Then the blonde and now a redhead. What next? Some silver haired old lady? Geriatrics style, sponge-bath rape? Am I close?” Mike kept quipping, mostly just to keep from wetting himself. The insults made him smarter than Al, made him braver.
“You’re close to death,” the rapist replied, and there was no humor in his tone. No anything, actually. It was like a teacher reading from a textbook. He wrote Mike’s death sentence as if it were a god-given fact.
It stripped Mike’s bravery away in an instant. “Um...” he started. He didn’t have time to crack wise again. Instead, he felt Al’s fist against his face before he even saw the killer move to strike. He felt his teeth chatter and one come loose, slithers of blood being unleashed into his mouth. His eye was swelling before he even hit the ground, which he did at twenty miles an hour. His other eye jammed against the sitting stone, snapping his head back to the sound of a large snap. When he tried to open his eyes again he found that he could not, bruises having already formed over them. Blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. Pain shot into his scalp as Al picked him up by the hair, slamming the child’s face into the concrete wall of The Factory. Blood splattered in all directions, and something in Mike’s cheek cracked.
With every ounce of energy that was still inside of him, he drew back and punched Al, breaking the child abuser’s nose and quite possibly his own hand. The cracking sound was amazingly loud, echoing several times before fading completely. It didn’t matter. It disoriented Al long enough that Mike could make a mad-dash back to Xander’s house.
“Soon,” Mike promised himself, trying to stop the blood that poured from his face.
He thought he heard a scream, then realized that Al must have entered The Factory, where Roxanne would be alone... He kept running for Xander’s, cursing himself and trying not to think of what that monster might do to her.
When the bell to end fifth period rang, most of the kids in Coral Beach High were bolting out through the large double doors that welcomed children into their halls each and every day. They were all running to get home to their warm little houses, safe from all the bad things that went bump in the night. Not Cathy Kennessy. She was going up those stairs, her shoulders bumping and being shoved by the unmannerly teens that were racing to get home and play Nintendo. A few of the senior males were looking at her backside -- she could feel it. Feel their eyes moving over her. She bit her lip spitefully, then continued into the school. The halls were bare, her every movement echoing off of the tiled walls. There were splotches on each one of the doors where students had ripped the numbers off of classrooms, many of which ended up decorating lockers or bedrooms. Trophies proving that these few managed to get back at this school in some small way. Mr. Larkin, the school custodian, wheeled his squeaky pail and mop down the hall opposite her, no doubt heading to see what mess of graffiti Tommy and Sud had left in the men’s room today. His eyes fluttered over her as she walked past, an obscene smile playing over his lips. For a moment, she actually thought she saw him reach out to grab her, fear swelling up inside her. But it was just the mop handle he was reaching for, and he went about his business whistling the theme to Gilligan’s Island.
Cathy could faintly remember feeling safe here, once upon a time. She remembered not having to worry about everything around her as if even the walls would try to kill her, when she would not have had to do what she was about to. If things had been the same, she would have been able to talk to Xander or Mike. More importantly, she wouldn’t have had to. She would have still had Sara, her best friend in the entire world. Three seconds in a secluded bathroom stall with that blonde would have melted all of Cathy’s fear and doubt away. Minutes later, they would have been laughing at Julian Grendel and plotting an equally devious way to get him back. But she was dead, and so was Grendel. Cathy had been robbed of her chance to get even on more than one occasion, and it was getting to the point that she could not even hate their killer. After all, he was her best friend.
Still, with nobody else to turn to, she had to talk to somebody. Even if it didn’t solve anything, she could still find more solace here than with Xander. At least the man behind those doors would pretend to listen. To fain interest. The letters on this door had been left untouched, and read: Dr. Phillips, school counsellor.
When she reached out for the doorknob, her hand began to shake violently. She closed her eyes tight, making one last wish to wake up and have all of this been a dream. When she opened them, she caught Shnieder out of the corner of her right eye, pretending to pick up a pencil to get a better look at her. She huffed loudly, then opened the door to Phillips’ office. The door closed with a click and she leaned up against it, as if wanting to stay as far away from the man as possible.
Phillips looked up from the papers that he was working on and smiled warmly at Cathy. “Hello, Catherine,” he said politely, using her full name as he did with all students until they asked him not to. “Is there something I can do for you today?”
She felt instantly safe. Or at least, safer then she had out there. His eyes were not wandering. In fact, they seemed to want to go back to his work. He wasn’t mentally pulling her jean jacket off of her, the comfort she felt in that making her realize just how uncomfortable she really had been before. “Y
es,” she sighed, then brought a hand to her head to stop it from pounding, “No,” she corrected, then fell into his chair. “I don’t know,” she decided on finally, ducking her head between her knees and wrapping her arms around it.
“Hey, hey,” he said soothingly, getting up and then sitting on the edge of his desk. He laced his fingers together, resting both hands on his kneecap. “What’s the matter here? What’s going on?” His voice was so peaceful. It took you out of yourself, made you feel as though you were telling somebody else’s sad story instead of your own.
“There’s nobody else I can talk to,” she said, trying not to make the words come out as a dry heave.
Phillips actually chuckled softly at this. “That doesn’t really surprise me, Catherine. This may shock you, but I’m typically not a student’s first choice for a person to come talk to. Now, what has happened to you?”
She sniffed. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but it came out as another sniff. Finally, she managed to force a word out. Once that first one came, it was as though she couldn’t stop. “I don’t want to be here anymore. This town, it’s just too much. First Julie, now Greer in a coma, and I just can’t take not feeling safe anymore. I picture them laying there and feeling so helpless... and it’s easy, because it happened to me once.” She paused for him to say something, her hands shaking. When he didn’t, she kept going. “It was a few weeks ago, at the party where all those kids... where they died. Grendel he... he and his friends tricked me into going upstairs. He locked the door behind us and trying... trying to make me... His hands were everywhere. It was like they were everywhere. Every time I thought I could stop him, could get him off of me, his fingers were already there, stopping me. It was like he could read my mind, like I was stupid... Guess I was...” Again, she paused for words. Again, none came. “I can still feel his greedy palms. They were sweaty, forcing my clothes off of me, pulling at it. He...” she stopped, feeling that she’d gone on long enough. “I just needed someone to talk to, that’s all.”
Habeas Corpus: Black Womb (Black Womb Collection Book 1) Page 30