The Sentinel Ledger was a local town paper, rarely more than twelve pages long, but it would do to kill a few minutes. She pulled it out and shook it open.
The picture taking up almost the entire front page was a house she recognized but couldn’t place. Half the house was gone, obviously burned away. The big, grainy dots of the newsprint made the photo appear timeless, something from history. Rebecca’s eyes strayed to the caption:
The house at 118 Cherry Blossom in Fulton burned overnight. Alerted by the alarm, Dave and Caroline Masters were able to escape but despite several attempts, they were unable to rescue their baby daughter, Chelsea.
Nausea welled up in Rebecca’s stomach.
She leaned out the door and threw up.
***
The funeral was horrific. That tiny white casket bedecked in lace and ribbons–it looked to Rebecca like one of those fancy monstrosities on Cake Wars. Behind her two women were whispering in hushed tones to each other about the lack of a body. An infant, after all, what could they have found? The nursery had collapsed right into the first floor! And I heard the fire was so hot that…
Rebecca turned and gave them a scathing look of pure disgust. That shut them up.
She was finally able to talk to Caroline at the gathering after the burial, held at the house of Caroline’s in-laws. After a hug, Rebecca guided Caroline to the back patio. The pretty spring day was almost an insult, Rebecca thought, plus, Caroline never looked good in daylight.
“How are you, lady?” Rebecca gave Caroline a once-over, preparing to give her a reassuring compliment. Maybe the dress, that was usually a safe bet. Caroline’s clothes were expensive enough.
Caroline raised her eyebrows and Rebecca noticed that her forehead stayed smooth. She must have gotten her Botox done soon after their last get-together at the coffee shop. Tears appeared at Caroline’s lower lids and sparkled…almost…almost prettily. The small lines that used to edge her eyes like cat whiskers were gone, too. More Botox? Rebecca wondered.
“I’m…I’m okay,” Caroline said. “I think it just hasn’t hit me yet.”
“No, of course not.”
“It helps that…that we’re moving. I won’t have to see the house or…or anything.”
“Moving?”
“Yes. For Dave’s job. He got an enormous promotion with loads more money and I won’t have to work anymore. We’re moving to France.”
Caroline’s obsession, Rebecca remembered.
“Oh, Rebecca!” Caroline burst out and threw herself onto her friend. “I’m just so…so…devastated!”
Caroline heaved against Rebecca’s shoulder and Rebecca touched Caroline’s back with tentative, uncertain pats.
Why did Caroline’s sobs sound like laughter?
***
“I think we should get rid of her,” Rebecca said. Propped up against the pillows on the big king bed, she smoothed lotion across her arms and hands. It was her most expensive face lotion, but who cared? She could buy more whenever she wanted. It’s not as though she had to check with Brian first. “She gets on my nerves.”
Brian lowered his magazine and looked up at her from his side of the bed. “You’re just annoyed because she’s not terrified of you,” he said. At Rebecca’s sharp glance he continued: “Besides, the kids love her. You wouldn’t want to hurt the kids, would you?”
Her Achilles heel and he damn well knew it. Tucker and Jayden were eighteen-month-old twins and the center of Rebecca’s world.
She would do anything for those babies.
Even though they’d ruined her stomach.
***
She came across Molly and Brian whispering in the corridor off the kitchen. The corridor that led to the nanny’s bedroom. A wave of black cynicism rolled over her.
“Well, hey you two!” Rebecca said brightly, sarcasm snapping across her voice.
Brian turned with a guilty, surprised expression, but Molly merely stared at her over Brian’s shoulder. Level and clear-eyed, a small half smile on her lips.
“Rebecca!” Brian said. “I thought you were at your pilates class.” His smile was simian–stretched and toothy. It turned Rebecca’s stomach.
“On my way right now, darling,” she said and the rage boiling her blood was tempered by the mention of pilates: her fuck session with Sal!
Did Brian know?
Did it matter?
***
“Pizza man!” Sal cried and Rebecca winced. Special delivery for you, pretty lady!” Why was she fucking this guy? He was an ape, sub-human. Then he grabbed her ponytail and rammed into her and she remembered.
Oh yes, yes, yes, she remembered.
Afterwards, sweating and worn out, relaxed–a mostly foreign state for her–she toyed with the cross on his chest.
“I think Brian finally decided to stray,” she said. She was not expecting comfort or insight from Sal. She was really just thinking out loud.
“Oh yeah?” Sal said. Mostly disinterested. “Who’s he fucking?”
Rebecca snorted. “How’s this for gross: the nanny!”
Sal shook his head. “Yeah, you gotta watch out for sure, bringing a young, hot girl into your house. What is she? Philippino? Asian?”
“No, she’s…regular, I guess.” She struggled to remember just what Caroline had told her. “Swiss or something. Her last name is Och.”
“Ock?”
“O–C–H…Och, Molly Och. One of my friends recommended her and...” She stopped at the confusion in Sal’s features. “What? Do you know her?”
“No, but, let me get this straight,” Sal said and sat up. The cross tumbled against his chest, glinting. “Molly Och? Mol Och?”
“Yeah, I call her Mol sometimes. What are you...”
“This was the girl that was watching your friend’s kids? The one whose house burned down?”
“You listen better than I thought,” Rebecca said and laughed. She sobered as Sal’s face drained of color. Shit, don’t have a heart attack, she thought. At least not yet. Wait till you’re in your damn car.
“I gotta go, listen,” he said, throwing his feet to the floor. “We can’t…we can’t do this anymore.” He brought the cross to his lips and kissed it then he crossed himself shoulder, shoulder, lips again.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Sal? You’re acing like a jackass.”
“Yeah, sure, I’m a jackass.” He struggled into his poly-blend slacks and pulled on a shiny striped button down. He stuffed his feet into his loafers and his wallet in his pants and scanned the room, hand on the doorknob. His other hand still gripped the cross around his neck. Panic was written on his tightening features.
“Sal, what the fuck?” Rebecca threw the sheet back, alarmed and annoyed.
His rolling eyes rested on hers. They were full of fear but also…pity.
He looked around the room again, nervous. Sweating.
His eyes came back to her.
“Look it up. Do yourself a favor and look that shit up,” he said. “Don’t call me. I’m sorry, but…just don’t call me anymore.”
He turned out of the room and slammed the door behind him.
Rebecca sat in the bed, mouth agape, shocked into unaccustomed silence.
Then she thumbed her phone alive and tapped the Google app.
***
She ran every red on her way home and screeched into the driveway. The garage door scraped the Benz’s roof as she entered. She slammed on the brakes at the last second, sending herself into the steering wheel, then threw herself from the car and paused, panting, scanning the wall. What she needed was in here somewhere.
Then she went into the house.
She found Brian at the kitchen table. He looked up in shock at her entrance.
“Jesus, you look like shit!” he said. His eyes went to what she held in her hand. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Why?” she asked and her voice barely squeezed out between clenched teeth. “Why are you doing it?”
He sighe
d and clasped his hands together. “I’ve been under your thumb a long time, Rebecca. And under your Dad’s. You think I like it?” His voice was querulous and he crossed his arms over his chest.
“You never complained,” she said. She stayed in the doorway, gauging the distance between them.
“No, I always had everything I wanted. Enough money, vacations, golf, and enough…everything else.” His expression turned sly, vicious. He smirked. “If you know what I mean.”
She nodded even as her stomach turned over. She didn’t know him as well as she’d always thought. “Yeah, sure. I know what your mean. But why, then? Why the kids?”
“Not both of them!” he said and his features brightened in hope of her understanding. More, in hope of her acquiescence. “Just one! That’s all it takes, Rebecca! Just a small sacrifice and I…we…can have everything we want.” He grinned and the simian appeared again, sly and conniving. “You can have your old body back, your good, pre-baby body. You’ll never have to work out and you’ll have it forever. You’ll be young forever!”
Above them, a baby cried out. Rebecca scanned the ceiling over their heads.
“Which one?” she asked without looking at Brian. “Which one did you decide on?”
“Well, Jayden, of course,” he said. His voice was threaded with derision as though the answer should have been obvious.
Rebecca nodded, her eyes coming back to his. She smiled. “Of course.”
***
The fear was large in her as she navigated the dark hallway, but there was also a comforting numbness, a hardness surrounding her heart. She felt fierce and not in the way her gay friends used the word.
At her side, her burden rocked and bumped at knee level, placing hot, wet kisses on her knee. She ignored it and tented her fingers on the nursery door and pushed it open. Molly sat opposite in the nursery rocking chair, her head down.
“Hello, Molly,” Rebecca said. With every ounce of her will she kept her voice even. Slightly mocking. Only slightly.
The girl looked up. Rebecca wanted to take a step back, but she controlled that impulse, too. She kept her features neutral. Cold. Numb.
Molly’s eyes were deep with jumping, licking fire; the area around them sooty and blackened. Rebecca fancied she could feel the heat flash across her face. The girl’s brown hair twisted and twined, sighing like a nest of winter-groggy snakes.
As Rebecca watched, Molly’s skin cracked like a desert floor and her clothes began to flake away and sail lightly on the drafts in the room. Red glowed deep within the fissures of her body, like lava.
Molly was gone, the façade burned away; Moloch showed Itself, truly.
“Hello, Rebecca,” It said and Its voice was the rasp of dead time, burned into the past and forgotten. It was all the screams of all the lost souls bending and burning according to God’s will. It was the gun to your back in the alley, the rough hand under your skirt, the gaping throat of the tornado.
It was all ruin and all ruined things.
It was the Demon, Moloch.
And It held Rebecca’s daughter on Its fuming lap.
***
The baby girl lay on her back and stared into the face of Moloch, seemingly mesmerized, her small hand lax and open at the end of her chubby baby arm.
Rebecca’s eyes traced the rings of her daughter’s vulnerable wrist, drinking in the sight of that perfect white skin. A red burst of rage tried to spark along Rebecca’s nerve endings but she controlled it.
“I want you to put my daughter down,” Rebecca said and once again her voice was calm. Slightly mocking. Only slightly.
Moloch chuckled and the sound caused Rebecca’s heart to contract. She wanted to put her hand to the black spike of pain in her chest to see if her heart was still beating, but she controlled herself. Her fear.
“Shall I take the boy, then?” Moloch asked. Its eyes slid over Rebecca, seeming to weigh her. She wanted to shrink away from that hot gaze, cover herself with burlap, fork the sign of the evil eye. But she stood firm and let Its eyes slide. “Would that be your wish, Rebecca?”
She shook her head and allowed a small, insolent smile to play across her lips. “No. My wish is that you get your ass back to hell and leave my babies alone.” She hefted the burden at her side, but Moloch’s eyes never strayed from hers.
It nodded and though Rebecca thought she detected anger in the Demon’s eyes, It chuckled again. “Your wish is of no concern to me, woman.” Moloch traced the baby’s pink pajamas with one finger and a line of twisting, snapping fire charred where It touched. Jayden’s reaction was immediate. She wailed and flailed her arms as her eyes squeezed shut in pain. Rebecca’s heart lurched again.
“Shhh,” Moloch crooned, “have a suck, little one.”Its burning finger descended toward the baby’s wailing red cavern of a mouth.
“Wait!” Rebecca said and stepped forward, panic like a hot knife slicing into her racing thoughts. “Don’t hurt her!”
“I only want to comfort her! I do…so…love…the babies.” Moloch’s eyes were on Rebecca again, sliding and mean. “Caroline knew that.” Its tone was a sly rebuke for shortsighted people like Rebecca who couldn’t see the Demon for the trees.
“Caroline is an obsequious ass and always has been,” Rebecca said, her anger flaring again. She put her free hand on her hip. “I’m done screwing around with you, douche. Let my daughter go.” Rebecca stepped closer and raised her hand in the Demon’s face. She snapped her fingers twice and with all the insolence she could muster said, “Chop, chop!”
Moloch roared and stood, Jayden tumbling from his lap to the deep pile rug. Rebecca thought fleetingly how glad she was she’d bullied the builder into giving her the best padding for free instead of charging her the upgrade price.
Sometimes being a bitch paid off.
Most of the time.
Let’s see about this time.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” Rebecca screamed into Moloch’s twisting, burning face. “And don’t ever fucking come back!”
Moloch brought a hand up but it wasn’t a hand anymore, if was a fire glove, a fire claw. It swung, catching Rebecca across the shoulder. Her blouse melted onto her skin and then pulled away, pulling her skin with it.
She screamed and dropped to her knees. She reached forward and even as her shoulder tore more, she pushed the screaming Jayden under the cover of the rocking chair. Dimly she became aware of Tucker’s matching wail.
She staggered up and Moloch grinned in her face. It reached behind her and grabbed her ponytail. The smell of scorched, cooking hair filled the room. Moloch twisted her head to the side until she faced Tucker, standing at his crib rail, crying. Moloch’s mouth burned across her ear. “It will have to be this one, then.” It said, Its breath so hot she felt her ear canal dry up.
“No!” Rebecca screamed. “Neither of them! Neither of my babies!” She brought her knee up in a sharp jerk between Moloch’s legs. The Demon pulled in a breath...
...then let it out in a laugh of such base good humor that Rebecca felt herself grow faint. The room was growing hotter. Unbearable. She felt her knees begin to give out.
“God…” she said, her eyes closing. “God help me.”
Moloch shook her back to wakefulness and heat rippled across her face, scorching and painful, tightening her skin. “God won’t help you! Why would He?”
Did she hear a thread of fear in the Demon’s voice? It was hard to think past the pain in her shoulder. Her face.
“You can’t take innocent babies! You can’t!”
“We have a deal,” Moloch said and let go of her arm. She collapsed onto her knees. But still she gripped the burden in her hand.
Moloch turned toward the wailing boy. “Come now, we’ll have none of that!” It stretched out the flame claw. The fire flashed an orange glow into Tucker’s eyes and the baby released the crib rail, shrieking. His tiny hands went to his face as he fell back.
Rebecca screamed.
“No! I
didn’t promise! I didn’t!” She felt words slip into her mind, foreign and strange, words from somewhere else…
“I know Thy name Demon!” she said, bellowing and rough voiced. “I know Thy name! It’s Moloch and I’ve had no truck with thee!”
Moloch turned, Its writhing features registering disgust. “We’ve struck a deal, fair-square, and I’ll not let thee go back on thy word, woman.”
The nursery ceiling, painted blue with white, floating clouds, cracked.
Moloch looked up in surprise. “No!” Its voice was a bare whisper. Its features contracted in rage and It turned toward Tucker again, reaching.
“Moloch!” Rebecca screamed, standing, holding her burden before her like a bowling ball. “I give thee the one who hath bartered the deal!” Rebecca heaved her husband’s head across the short space. Entrails and gobbets of gore trailed and whipped, flinging bright splashes of blood across the pale walls.
An ax is a rough, biting instrument.
The Demon grabbed reflexively and swung Brian’s head high above Its own. Moloch’s gaze filled with surprise and deep within the Demon’s eyes, a mad, merciless entity capered and gibbered, clapping small scaly hands with glee.
Satisfied with the sacrifice.
In a flash of cold, white light, Moloch disappeared.
***
Rebecca applied more ointment to the healing line on Jayden’s stomach. The doctor said that she would need corrective surgery but she was too young for it just yet.
Jayden cooed and Rebecca smiled, but only half her mouth lifted. The other side, the side above her bandaged shoulder, was melted almost to her eye socket. Rebecca’s father had begged her to have plastic surgery; to at least get the process started. But she wouldn’t be going, she’d decided. Not any time soon, anyway.
Tucker stood at her legs, clinging and swaying, almost asleep. Rebecca pulled Jayden’s pajama top closed and lifted Tucker up next to his sister in the bed. He grinned sleepily, half his face normal, the other half melted almost as badly as Rebecca’s. His hand reached for Jayden as Jayden reached across the space to him. Their hands held, clasped, even as they began to sleep.
The Demonologia Biblica Page 18