The Devil's Demeanor

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The Devil's Demeanor Page 43

by Hart, Jerry


  “Then he started talking to me, like we were friends. He would say things that made it sound like he was hitting on me, like ‘You left your panties at my place last night’ and ‘So, when are we getting married?’. So I started saying stuff back to him. And then we started hanging out without you guys.

  “Back then, I felt happy and the voices in my head would go away. I’ve always heard them telling me I should hurt this guy for picking on me or hurt that guy for yelling at me in front of the whole class. Wouldn’t it be great to put them in their place, they would ask me.”

  Jordan and Erin didn’t move or say a word during this speech. They were too frightened of breaking Conner’s trance. His head was still down, his eyes closed. It was like he was sleep-talking.

  “Last night, the voices were too strong, even though I was with Travis. Even though I was happy, it wasn’t enough. There were too many voices talking at once. They told me Grandpa was dead, that he’d been murdered. They wouldn’t tell me who’d done it, but that if I didn’t take out my frustration and pain on someone soon I would die.”

  “You took it out on Travis?” Erin guessed.

  Conner nodded. “I didn’t mean to. All I did was look at him, and then he tried to scream but nothing came out. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. That’s how I left him.”

  Jordan remembered the way Conner appeared that morning. His own eyes burning with a dim light. “Is there any way to undo it?” he asked his cousin.

  “I don’t know. If there is, the voices won’t let me do it. They want me to hurt more people. That’s how I know your cure didn’t work, Erin. They’re telling me to do something bad right now.”

  “Do what?” she asked. “What are they telling you to do?”

  “They’re telling me to kill you right now.”

  * * *

  Don was on top of Monica, kissing her, running his fingers through her hair. He was faintly aware of the sheets falling off his ass, but he ignored them. No amount of cold air on his butt could distract him from this amazing goddess.

  They rolled over, Don on his back. Monica sat upright, arching her back. He covered her breasts with his hands. She looked down and smiled at him. It was devilish and sly.

  She bent over and kissed his lips.

  “I love you,” he whispered again.

  “I know.”

  Don relished in the moment. He tried not to think about what the creature had told him in the cavern. He tried even harder not to believe it.

  * * *

  “Conner, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” said Erin. She was poised for flight, her hands on the coffee table, her butt off the couch. She wasn’t quite standing yet.

  “I want this feeling to stop,” Conner said. He sounded in so much pain.

  “It can. We can help you. Nobody has to get hurt.”

  “Someone always gets hurt, no matter what. That’s what they told me.”

  “The voices in your head?”

  “Not in my head. On the TV.”

  Jordan and Erin looked to the television, which was still turned off.

  “No matter what I watch,” Conner continued, “the people on there will stop acting and suddenly look straight at me. They just stare at me. Even when I change the channel, they’ll be staring at me. And then they tell me to help the people before the monsters get to them. They say Uncle Ethan already killed a bunch of the people, that I have to protect them. It’s fucking terrifying.”

  Jordan could imagine actors in shows and movies simply staring at him, and it was a scary thought. He didn’t know what to say or do, however. “Conner, none of that is real. It’s in your head and you can ignore it if you want to. See?” He turned on the TV.

  “No!” Conner screamed as he spun around to face it.

  Jordan saw actors on a sitcom, going about his and her business to amuse.

  “They’re looking at me right now,” Conner whispered. He sounded completely horrified.

  Jordan looked again and saw nothing unusual. “They’re not really looking at you, Conner. They’re acting—” He stopped suddenly. One of the actors was looking directly at the camera. At him.

  A woman who’d been talking to the actor turned as well and stared at the camera.

  A little kid who had been going through the refrigerator peeked around the door at the camera.

  “Find them,” the woman and kid said together, “before the monsters get them all. There aren’t many left.”

  Jordan’s pulse quickened. The family was staring silently at him. “Oh my god,” he whispered. He had to be imagining this, but it seemed real.

  “Jordan?” said Erin. “What is—”

  Conner spun around, his face completely changed to that of a beast.

  He snarled and leapt over the table, landing on his cousin. Jordan screamed as he fought Conner. The enraged boy was pummeling him with his fists. Erin grabbed a vase and smashed it against Conner’s head.

  Jordan pushed the boy away. “Run!” he yelled at Erin. She took off for the kitchen.

  Conner was right behind her, running on all fours.

  Jordan jumped to his feet to follow and had just enough time to notice the actors on the screen following his movements.

  Erin fell against the cabinet near the stove as Conner approached. Jordan grabbed a liquor bottle from the bar in the den, stood on the steps, and launched the bottle at his cousin. It smashed against the back of Conner’s head.

  Conner spun around and roared.

  Then he grabbed several knives from a rack with one hand and threw them all at once. Jordan screamed and jumped backward as the knives planted themselves into the wall around him.

  One, however, found its way into his shoulder.

  Conner turned back to Erin, but she had a frying pan in her hands now. She smacked him in the face and pushed him against the breakfast nook. She ran over to Jordan and helped him into the living room.

  Conner followed quickly.

  Jordan was knocked to the ground as Conner landed on his back. Jordan wrapped his arms around his head to protect it, trying to kick at his attacker. Erin was slapping at Conner, trying to get his attention. He pushed her away, just in front of the fireplace.

  Jordan kicked Conner in the back, launching the boy forward. Conner was between him and the front door. Jordan pointed to the fireplace and said to Erin, “Go through there, into the office!”

  She crawled over the artificial logs and fell onto Dad’s office floor. Jordan was right behind her. Before he could get all the way through, however, Conner grabbed hold of his ankle and began pulling him back into the living room. Erin grabbed Jordan’s hands and pulled him into the office. Conner lost his grip, causing the other two teens to fall against the desk.

  Jordan jumped up and quickly closed the partition in the fireplace before Conner could get through. He locked it and then ran over to the office door. He could already hear Conner running down the steps into the den. He managed to get the door closed just in time as Conner rounded the corner and slammed into it. Jordan locked it and shoved a file cabinet against it.

  After a moment, the attack on the door ceased. Jordan and Erin stood in the office, daring not to breathe despite all they’d gone through. They simply listened. They heard nothing.

  * * *

  Diedre tried to enjoy her dinner but could not. She tried to enjoy the company of the man across from her but could not. She was thinking of a completely different man than the one she’d agreed to go on a date with. Her date’s name was Roderick; the man she couldn’t stop thinking about was Donovan Scott.

  “Are you okay?” Roderick asked her. He was a handsome man, a few years younger than her, with curly black hair and light brown skin.

  Diedre smiled as best she could. He had such a strong jaw bone, she wanted to run her fingers along it. Despite his wonderful looks, however, she couldn’t get into the spirit of the date. “I’m fine. Just distracted.”

  “By what?”

/>   They sat in a nice Italian restaurant in downtown Fort Worth. The place was dimly lit and busy as hell. Diedre and Roderick were lucky to have gotten a table at all. She felt guilty for being in such a funk with a man she really liked.

  “Let me guess,” Roderick went on. “It’s that story.”

  Diedre never talked about the story with him, considering they hadn’t been going out for very long. She also didn’t want him to know that she was obsessing over it. Somehow, he knew.

  “It’s not,” she finally said. “I’m not on that anymore.”

  “How long have we been going out?” he asked.

  “Two months?”

  “Two and a half, but who’s counting?” He waved it away. “My point is: You’ve been letting this run your life.”

  “It’s work,” she protested.

  “No, it’s obsession. I bet this isn’t even an official story.”

  “You nag just like a woman,” she joked.

  Roderick’s eyes went wide. “That was a very sexist thing to say.”

  “I can’t be sexist; I’m a woman.”

  He crossed his arms.

  “That was supposed to be funny.” She poked at her Alfredo with her fork. She was usually so full of life and passion, but this story had drained her. You would be too if you’d spent so much time and energy on something only to run into a brick wall and have to give up.

  “You said it was over,” Roderick went on. “Why now?”

  “Because I have nowhere to go anymore. I thought I had what I needed and then I got the rug pulled out from under me.”

  “You still won’t tell me what it’s about?”

  “I don’t see the point now. I just want to forget about it.”

  He sighed. “Fine.”

  They dined in silence for a while. And then Diedre exploded.

  “The detective I spoke with said he didn’t believe she truly killed her boyfriend, that the marks in the wound didn’t match those of her nails, but she stayed silent during the trial, and there has to be a body buried in that backyard, but I can’t dig it up because it’ll look like I had something to do with it, and I can’t go to the cops now because if I’m wrong, my career would be in jeopardy.”

  She stopped to take a breath. Roderick stared wide-eyed at her from across the table. “I only caught half of that,” he responded.

  “An anonymous call,” she said under her breath. “You’re right. I need to make an anonymous call. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  Roderick looked confused. “I never said that. How did you get that from what I said?”

  She backed from the table, excusing herself, and then ran outside, looking for the nearest pay phone. She couldn’t very well call from the restaurant, now could she?

  * * *

  Jordan screamed when Erin applied pressure to his shoulder wound. When he begged her to let go, she did, and was overwhelmed by the amount of blood on her hands. She didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to help. He was sweating and breathing hard. He looked awful.

  “We have to stop the bleeding,” she said after a minute.

  “The first-aid kit is in the kitchen,” Jordan replied. “We can’t get to it.”

  “I can.”

  Jordan looked at her like she was crazy. “You’re not going out there.”

  “I have to. You could bleed to death.”

  “We can make a tourniquet or something out of my shirt.”

  “Conner hasn’t attacked us for a while. Maybe he went outside.”

  Jordan shook his head. “He’s still out there, waiting for us to come out too.”

  “How do you know that?”

  A silent moment. And then, “I just do.”

  Erin helped him out of his button-down plaid shirt and T-shirt. She set aside the outer shirt and wrapped the blood-soaked white T-shirt around his shoulder. She pulled it tight.

  Jordan passed out immediately.

  Erin touched his forehead. He looked so helpless, she wanted to kiss him and tell him everything would be okay. But she couldn’t because she didn’t know if, in fact, everything would be okay.

  Erin looked at the shoulder wound, already bleeding through the shirt. He needed proper aid. They both needed to get out of the house, or call for help. Erin searched for her cell phone but couldn’t find it. She tried the landline on Jordan’s father’s desk, but there was a busy signal. Another phone must have fallen off the hook.

  She looked to the office door, still blocked by the file cabinet. She didn’t want to risk moving it, because it would be hell putting it back if Conner showed up again. That only left the fireplace.

  The partition was easy to open and close. She could crawl out, grab the kit and her phone, and then be back before anyone noticed. Jordan wasn’t awake to discourage her, and she was slightly disappointed by that because she didn’t really want to go outside. She was too scared.

  She had to get help, though. Jordan’s parents wouldn’t be back for hours, and she didn’t think Jordan could wait that long.

  She decided.

  She reached for the lock in the fireplace partition.

  She opened it a few inches.

  Conner was right there, on hands and knees in the fireplace, his bright eyes glazing.

  Erin screamed and closed the partition, locking it quickly. Her breath came in such fierce gasps she feared she’d pass out.

  Conner had been there the whole time.

  * * *

  Don lay exhausted next to Monica on the sweaty bed. He could barely catch his breath and was pleased to see she was in the same situation. He smiled; she smiled back. That smile, however, wasn’t the same he was used to. It seemed cold, somehow.

  “Are you okay, honey?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know.”

  Don’s grin faded. “Why do you keep saying that? Don’t you love me too?” He tried to make it sound playful, didn’t want to sound like he was whining, but wasn’t sure if he’d succeeded.

  “I’m sure Monica loves you,” said Monica, “but I shouldn’t speak for her.”

  Don stared at his wife for a moment, trying to make sense of the words.

  And then it hit him.

  He jumped from the bed, away from the now-grinning Monica. If the smile had been cold, this grin was even worse.

  “Who are you?” Don asked.

  “Who do you think?”

  He stood there, next to the bed, in all his naked glory, his body freezing now. He didn’t know where to look, what to say. He hopped from one foot to the other, looking as if to prepare for flight. “Which one of you goddammed creatures is in my wife?”

  Monica tilted her head back and laughed. And then she looked at him again and said, “My name is Carutha. We just spoke in the cavern.”

  “Get out of my wife!”

  “No thanks.”

  “Did you enjoy getting fucked, you little bastard?”

  “It was quite an experience, one I wouldn’t mind having again. Come here, loverboy.”

  She reached out her arms to Don, but he backed away.

  “You all want our lives, is that it? That’s what I was told. Why my family?”

  Monica shrugged her shoulder, the sheet slowly lowering from her breasts. “Because you are our only links. Why start from the beginning when the groundwork has already been laid?”

  “You mean what your brother started?”

  “Yes.”

  “I won’t let you do this to us. You won’t have our lives. That’s just a fact.”

  Monica lost the grin and stared at Don. His blood ran cold. “What are you going to do to stop us? Are you going to kill our hosts? Your wife and children?”

  Children?

  “That’s right,” said Monica, recognizing the look on his face. “We’ll have your children soon. That’s why I agreed to come here with you, so you couldn’t stop what is happening at this very moment.”

 
; “What’s happening?” Don forced himself to ask.

  “One of your children is about to kill someone. Once he does, he’ll be ours forever. Your race is slippery, our holds on you very tentative. That pesky love does manage to break our holds every now and then, but once we take full control, like I have of your wife, we can never be removed so easily again.”

  “My wife?” Don couldn’t breathe. “Who did she kill? She didn’t kill anyone.” He tried to convince himself of this.

  That grin was back. “Your father.”

  A sharp pain in Don’s chest nearly struck him to the floor. No. It couldn’t be true. He stood by the bed, shaking. The room took on a terrible smell, like rotten meat and ammonia, but he wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined. He also didn’t know if he was really seeing his wife’s face grow pale and dry before his very eyes. It looked like it was being vacuumed.

  “This isn’t personal, Donovan,” said his wife. “Your family was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’re merely a marriage of convenience.”

  Don shook his head. “I won’t let you take my family.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, honey.”

  She leaped from the bed so fast Don could barely react. He instinctively grabbed a lamp from beside the bed and smashed it into her face while she was still in midair. They collided and fell to the floor, with Monica on top of him. Bits of shattered lamp lay about them.

  Don pushed his unconscious wife off of him and jumped to his feet. His heart was still racing, but he didn’t have time to think about what had just happened. He had to warn his children.

  He grabbed his cell phone and called home.

  He immediately got a busy signal.

  Since the boys’ phones seemed to be turned off, he could think of no other way to get a hold of them quickly. He had to get home.

  * * *

  Diedre finally found a pay phone a comfortable distance away from the restaurant and didn’t see any traffic cameras close enough to get a good view of her. Either way, she made sure to face the wall with the phone as she approached, despite the fact it made her walk funny.

  Before she could dial the police, however, she noticed a curious sight.

  Donovan Scott was hurrying out of a hotel a block away from her. He looked terribly nervous, darting his eyes from left to right as he ran for a parking garage at the end of the block.

 

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