Cunning Devil

by Chris Underwood

  When I decided I was no longer having a heart attack, I pointed at the front door.

  “Get out.”

  “Osric—”

  “No. Get out.”

  “My dear boy,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Surely you have time for an old friend.”

  I realized I was distractedly rubbing at the small patch of scar tissue on the right side of my head, where the hair no longer grew. Tightening my hand into a fist, I forced my arm back to my side.

  “What the hell do you want, Dealer?” I demanded.

  “Perhaps I’m just here for a nice chat with my favorite customer,” he said.

  “I doubt that. How the hell do you always get in, anyway? This place is supposed to be warded.”

  Still smiling, the Dealer swiveled on his seat, set his hat down beside him, and gently laid his long fingers on the keys of my piano.

  “I always wondered why you kept this,” he said, ignoring my question. He tapped a piano key. The sound was like fingernails scraping on metal. “You threw away everything else.” He tapped another key; this one was like the moan of an injured tiger. “But the piano you kept. I never understood why.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  But his fingers were already moving. They danced across the keys, swift and elegant. His whole body got into it. His eyes were closed, but his head was swaying. His shoulders rose and fell and his foot feathered the pedals. He smiled, lost in the music.

  I clapped my hands over my ears, grinding my teeth against the cacophony of discordant sounds bouncing around the inside of my skull. It was agony.

  “Stop!” I roared.

  The racket continued.

  I stomped over and kicked the stool out from under him. The Dealer toppled backward and the sound cut off with one last tortured squeal.

  I caught him by the lapels of his jacket and slammed him against the piano.

  “Stop,” I snarled in his face.

  He wasn’t scared of me. That only infuriated me more.

  “It’s a little out of tune.” The Dealer smiled lazily, reached out a single finger, and pressed a key. “That was Rachmaninoff’s second piano sonata, if you were wondering. I’m still getting the hang of the third movement.”

  I wanted to break his misshapen face. For a moment, I entertained the thought of slamming the piano’s fallboard shut on his fingers a couple of times.

  But it wouldn’t do me any good. Taking a deep breath, I released the Dealer.

  He smoothed out his lapels, regarded me for a moment, then pulled down his lower eyelid and pointed at his right eye. “I got this eye from a nine-year-old girl. Did I ever tell you that? She had a brain tumor, and I offered to excise it for her in exchange for her eye. Poor girl was so scared.” He touched his throat. “This voice is from the nineteenth century. It belonged to one of the French soldiers of Napoleon’s Grand Armée, during his failed invasion of Russia. I bought it from the soldier in exchange for a warm greatcoat, a week’s worth of rations, and a talisman that would ward off the Cossacks’ bullets.” He smiled, as if remembering the moment fondly. “Do you know what the soldier’s last words were, before I took his voice?”

  “Don’t wear it out on pointless stories?”

  “He called me a demon.” He shook his head. “You humans are so superstitious.” He laid his hand on my shoulder, like we were old pals. “But of everything I’ve bought, over all these centuries, I think your music is my favorite purchase.”

  He stretched his hands out in front of him, admiring them. I reconsidered my decision not to break those fingers.

  “Such an amazing talent,” he said. “I got lucky with you, Osric. I always thought—where are you going?”

  I walked away from him, opened the fridge, and took out a beer. I pressed the cold bottle to my throbbing head. It didn’t help.

  “Got another one of those?” the Dealer asked.

  I slammed the fridge closed.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’m not very thirsty after all.”

  The dog cage on the table hissed and shook. Whatever that creature was, it didn’t much care for the Dealer. That much we could agree on.

  I cracked open the beer and downed half of it in a single gulp.

  “What do you want, Dealer?”

  “It’s not what I want. It’s what I can do for you, my friend.”

  I brushed past him and unlocked a door leading off the cabin’s main living area. A sharp acidic smell hit me as I opened the door. “I’m too busy for your shit today. Come mock me another time.”

  “No need to be like that.” He followed me into the back room. “I have information to trade. Information that will interest you greatly.”

  “Pass.”

  I pulled the light cord and the bulb overhead flickered uncertainly to life. This was my workshop, my laboratory. Wooden workshop tables were set around the walls of the small room, littered with vials and pouches and Bunsen burners. The shelves above were even more crammed with ingredients, everything from table salt to chicken feathers to the pickled tongue of a kelpie.

  I gathered an armful of vials and bottles, then pulled up a stool and got to work. I had a shelf full of grimoires and archaic books of the occult filled with thees and thous, but I didn’t need a recipe for this particular spell. It was one of my bread-and-butter jobs, and I could recite the preparations in my sleep.

  “Don’t be so hasty,” the Dealer said. I could feel him peering over my shoulder as I worked. “I wouldn’t offer you this information if I didn’t think it was useful.”

  I turned to face him. “Because you’re always so fair in your dealings, right?”

  His smile faded, replaced with a serious frown. “I am. Always. My brethren haven’t always been so discerning, but I always ensure that my customers get a fair deal. I give them what they want most. What they need most. I never trick anyone. I never force anyone into any deal they don’t want.”

  His breath had a rotten stink to it. So did the rest of him. I didn’t know for sure, but my theory was that the flesh and organs and body parts he bought from other beings had a limited shelf life. The Dealer had visited me half a dozen times in the last seven years, and every time there was something different about him: a new hand, or nose, or set of lips. As if he was replacing the dying parts of himself.

  “You prey on the vulnerable,” I said. “You said so yourself. The little girl with the brain tumor. That French soldier.”

  “Survival isn’t free, Osric. You of all people should know that.”

  I forced myself to turn back to my work. Getting pulled into an argument with him was a waste of my time. I had a job to do. A job that I was barely going to break even on, granted, but a job nonetheless.

  I struck a match and lit the Bunsen burner. While the Dealer hovered over my shoulder, I brought a few ingredients together and set them boiling.

  The Dealer had fallen silent for now, but I could feel him watching me as I worked. I couldn’t be bothered trying to toss him out.

  Even though he was the one who’d granted me my ability to work a cunning man’s magic, he was no expert in it. He’d traded it from someone in some other place, some other world, and sold it on to me in turn. In exchange for the part of me he wanted most.

  My music.

  That music had always been inside me. As long as I could remember, I’d heard it in the back of my head.

  There was only a hole there now.

  I was six when I decided I wanted to be a concert pianist. Most kids wanted to be fire fighters or astronauts. Not me.

  But no one took me seriously. I was a big kid even then, a tough kid from the wrong side of town with a father who’d split and a mother who worked minimum wage eighty hours a week to keep us afloat. Pianists were classy, and I was anything but.

  When I was eight, a teacher of mine asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I told her, expecting her to laugh like all the others. But she didn’t. She didn’t pat me on the head and go off
to help the gifted kids. She had me wait behind after school, sat me down behind a tinny little keyboard, and started to teach me.

  I worked hard. Damn hard. I flunked most of my subjects over my teenage years, but I kept on playing. I won some competitions, and eventually I scraped together enough cash to buy myself a real piano. The piano I still own.

  I played, and I played, and I played. It was the only thing I was good at. But I was really fucking good at it.

  And then I won a scholarship for a prestigious music school. It was what I’d hoped for since I was a kid. There was nothing that could’ve made me give that up.

  Or so I’d thought. Turns out, you make a man desperate and angry enough, there’s not much he won’t sacrifice. The Dealer knew that all too well.

  Still, the Dealer was right about one thing: I’d made my decision willingly. Would I do it again, knowing what I know now?

  That, I hadn’t quite figured out.

  I banished the thoughts, turning my attention back to the concoction I was brewing up. The Dealer had draped himself over the bench next to me, watching as I removed the brew from the burner.

  “You’re wasted on this kind of work, Osric,” he said. “You know that.”

  “The client I’m helping might disagree.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps.”

  Finally, I took the small zip-lock bag from my pocket. Inside were the hobgoblin hairs I’d found at Mills’ house. With a pair of tweezers, I carefully extracted the hairs and dropped them into the flask. The concoction bubbled and hissed, and a stink like sulfur wafted off. I corked it quickly, before I stunk the whole damn place out.

  I downed the last of my beer, tossed the bottle into the trash on the other side of the room, and pushed back my chair.

  “Well, thanks for stopping by,” I said to the Dealer. “Now, if you don’t mind getting the fuck out of my house…”

  “You haven’t given my offer any thought yet.”

  I stood. “Oh, I’ve given it as much thought as it deserves.”

  “I’m trying to help you, Osric. You’re in danger.”

  “Uh-huh,” I grunted, unconvinced. I scanned the shelves, looking for my eyedropper. Where the hell had I left it this time? Oh, there. The Dealer was leaning on it. I nudged him aside and pocketed both the dropper and the newly brewed potion.

  The Dealer followed me out of my workshop. “You should take this seriously, my friend. There are forces moving against you, even as we speak.”

  I sighed. He was never going to leave me alone at this rate. “Fine. I’ll bite. What kinds of forces?”

  He gave me a sly smile—it was particularly creepy with these new lips of his—and waggled a finger. “That’s as much as I can tell you for now. Consider it a free sample. For the rest of it, you’ll have to pay.”

  “Here we go. How much this time, huh?”

  He pursed his lips and looked to the ceiling, like he was doing sums in his head. Like he actually had to think about it.

  “Let’s say…a kidney. Left or right, I don’t mind.”

  I snorted.

  “You don’t need both kidneys,” he said. “And you’ll need them a lot less if you’re dead. Please, Osric. I implore you.”

  “Your imploring has been noted. Now get out.”

  He stared at me for a moment, then sighed and lifted his hands in defeat. “If you refuse to see reason, what can I do?”

  He picked up his ridiculous top hat, set it atop his head, and strolled toward the door. The dog cage hissed and whined as he passed.

  “I hope you don’t come to regret your decision,” he said as he opened the door. “I truly hope that.”

  “Bye-bye, now.”

  “And I hope your friend Early doesn’t come to regret your foolishness either,” he said over his shoulder. And then he shut the door behind him.

  My guts tightened. “Wait,” I shouted after him. “What did you say about Early?”

  I rushed to the door, threw it open. He had vanished.

  “Dealer!” I roared. “What did you mean about Early?”

  A startled trio of sparrows took flight. I glared after them.

  Across the yard, by the main house, that bastard Rhodes was crouched by Early’s chicken coop, staring at me like I was a madman. I supposed, from over there, it was a fair assessment.

  I waved, stepped back inside, and closed the door. The Dealer was just screwing with me. It was what he did.

  A kidney. Hell. Slimy bastard.

  Shaking my head, I went back to the table and checked I had everything I needed. The potion I’d concocted would need a little time to reduce, which gave me time to drop by Alcaraz’s.

  I scraped together the contents of my refrigerator into a sandwich, poked a chunk of it through the bars of the dog cage, and stuffed the rest down my throat. Inside the cage, Lawrence hesitantly approached the hunk of bread and meat.

  The presence of the Dealer seemed to have cowed the thing somewhat. He sniffed the sandwich chunk, gave it a testing lick, then snatched it up in its claws and shoved the whole thing into his mouth. He even sucked up the crumbs afterward.

  “See,” I said. “I’m not so bad.”

  The creature gave me a look like he still wanted to rip my face off.

  I grabbed the cage and started for the door. But as I passed the piano, I paused.

  My fingers stretched out on their own, brushed along the well-worn keys. Just as I did almost every day. Hoping that some part of it would come back to me. Hoping that there was some fragment the Dealer had missed, when he’d cut into my brain and taken out the music.

  Just a simple little tune would do. Beginner grade stuff. Every now and then I pulled out all my old books, tried to start learning it all from scratch.

  But every time I tried, my mind would go fuzzy. The keys seemed to shift and dance in front of me. The music on the page was nothing but gibberish, no matter how hard I studied it.

  Nothing but a waste of time.

  I slammed the fallboard down over the keys and put the past where it belonged. I had work to do.

  7

  Alcaraz’s estate was really something. She’d probably bought it for a pocketful of buttons and a shiny brass kettle back in 1903, and now it had to be one of the most expensive properties in Lost Falls.

  Or at least it would be if she ever sold it. I’d heard rumors that some rich dude had been sniffing around the last twenty years, trying to get the old woman to sell up so he could develop it into a golf course and luxury hotel. Alcaraz hadn’t sold, and she hadn’t had the good decency to die either. I wondered if she was staying alive just to spite him.

  The estate was set atop a ridge overlooking the valley in which Lost Falls and the river were nestled. High stone walls surrounded the perimeter, the manor house peeking over the top. It was a lonely, winding road to get out there, and the house loomed above me the whole way, as if watching my approach.

  The gate was closed when I arrived, but she hadn’t changed the code since the last time I’d come. Alcaraz was always a little lax about security, especially considering the kinds of things that were on her property. Then again, maybe they were why she didn’t have to worry. Even the more ignorant townsfolk had heard rumors of strange roars and growling echoing down the valley on moonless nights. The only people who came up here when they weren’t invited were the occasional tourists, and even they tended not to stick around too long once their skin started prickling.

  I drove up to the house. The driveway was lined with overhanging trees, and the grounds beyond were lush with overgrown gardens and artificial lakes slick with algae.

  Before I went in, I took out the potion I’d brewed and rested the flask on the dashboard to mature. Moonlight would’ve been best, but sunlight would do the job as well.

  I lugged the squirming dog cage up to the grand double doors that formed the manor’s entrance. It was four stories tall, and each of those stories was lined with windows. But most of the windows were blacked
out or shrouded with curtains, giving the place a still, silent feeling, like the owners had packed up and left a long time ago.

  I pressed the buzzer, and heard a bell ringing in some distant corner of the house. Lawrence rattled the door of the dog cage.

  “Knock it off,” I said. The creature paid me no attention.

  After a few seconds, I hit the doorbell again. Nothing. It wasn’t unusual for Alcaraz to get wrapped up in some experiment she was doing, or to be so busy studying the mating behavior of bloodfiends that the whole rest of the world passed her by. I think that was half the reason she kept Lilian around.

  I tried the door. It opened.

  “Hello?” I called out as I stepped inside. “Doctor? Lilian?”

  My voice echoed in the cavernous entrance hall. It was a disconcerting sound.

  All across the entrance hall, grotesque creatures had been stuffed and mounted to the walls. Some kind of man-sized Stranger that vaguely resembled a giant bat had pride of place. It stood hunched at the bottom of the stairs, glaring at me with glass eyes as I came inside. A small brass plaque was affixed to the base, no doubt detailing the taxonomic information Alcaraz had gathered on the beast. I decided I’d rather not get close enough to investigate.

  The lights were on, but when I called out again, I still got no response.

  A growl drifted down from somewhere overhead, and I could hear snuffling in another part of the house.

  The sounds were unsettling, but they weren’t unusual. Most of the manor’s bedrooms and sitting rooms had been repurposed into holding cells for the innumerable Strangers that Alcaraz studied.

  Still, I was starting to get a little creeped out. Where was everyone? For a moment my thoughts flashed back to the Dealer’s warning. I couldn’t believe I was letting the bastard get inside my head.

  To prove to myself I wasn’t scared, I let the door swing closed behind me. It shut with a thud.

  “Doctor Alcaraz!” I called again. “You upstairs?”

  If she was home and not answering, she had to be pretty deep in something. Dealing with one of her creatures, probably. I started for the main stairs, resigning myself to the idea I’d have to spend the next half hour searching every room of this damn house.