The Devil Crept In

by Ania Ahlborn

  “Oh, I’ll let you know what they fucking said . . .” The Tyrant rose out of his chair.

  “Oh God.” Aunt Mandy wept the words, suddenly caught in a domestic crossfire. “Just stop it,” she demanded. “Nicki, tell him to stop it . . .”

  “Stevie, stop it!” his mom yelled, oddly automatic, desperate to ply her sister into a calmer state.

  “Stop it!” Stevie squawked an echo, his yell pointed at his stepdad.

  But all it did was make Aunt Mandy cry out, “They found Jude’s sweatshirt!” as Terry wrenched Stevie by the arm. She just about choked on the words as they tripped over her tonsils, stumbling out of her throat like a drunk down a crooked set of stairs. This stalled Terry’s inevitable drag of his ten-year-old stepson down the hall toward his room.

  Stevie’s mom gave her son a worried look, but Aunt Amanda continued talking, needing to purge her system of the words, fraught with worry, tragedy, dismay.

  “They found his sweatshirt,” she said again, quieter this time. “I know he’s dead. I’m so sorry, Stevie, but I know he’s dead.”

  Dead. His lips worked around the word. She said “dead.”

  “Mandy, no.” Stevie’s mom. Stern. Edging toward angry. “It’s just a shirt. It doesn’t mean anything.” But Stevie hardly heard her. He was too distracted by his aunt’s hollow eyes, too disturbed by her sunken cheeks. Her mouth looked three times too big for her face—huge and warped, downturned like soft taffy. He pictured her opening her mouth as wide as she could, her entire face disappearing behind a grief-stricken maw, a scream stuck in there somewhere, Jude’s fingers suddenly jutting out of the blackness of her throat as though she’d swallowed him, as if it had been her that had made him vanish all along.

  “He’s okay,” Stevie’s mom said, softly now. “He’s okay, Mandy. He’ll come home.”

  It was his mom’s statement that jump-started his stalled-out heart. Those two cops who had sauntered up Aunt Amanda’s walkway—they hadn’t knocked on the door to announce that Jude was at the coroner’s office. They hadn’t found him. Jude was still out there somewhere.

  “He’s okay.” He found himself repeating his mother’s statement, yanking his arm out of Terry’s blocky grasp. “He’s okay. Okay, okay . . .” Terry’s face twisted up—a rabid dog eager to bite—but Stevie moved away from him fast, and ducked toward the couch, both to comfort his aunt and to find safety in her and his mother’s presence. The Tyrant would keep his distance. He, like Dunk, was afraid of the crushing despair that was wafting off Amanda Brighton, as though it was a communicable disease.

  But Stevie never made it to the couch. He nearly jumped at his aunt’s reaction to his echolalia—a guttural squall that turned into a screechy cry. “Then why doesn’t somebody find him? Why won’t someone bring him home?!”

  Because the search party was a joke. The reporters were convinced Jude had run away. Deer Valley didn’t give a damn. Suddenly, all Stevie wanted was to set the entire town on fire. He hated every single person who lived there, all the jerks who had ever given him or Jude a sideways glance because they weren’t like the other kids.

  Aunt Amanda continued her lamentation. Stevie’s mother rubbed her back, speaking in soft tones. Terry remained where he was, staring at his stepkid like a hunter down the barrel of a gun, for once looking like he wasn’t sure how to proceed.

  “I’m gonna find him,” Stevie told the room. “Aunt Mandy, I’m gonna find him.”

  He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but it had to be done.

  With Terry still silent, Stevie turned away from the living room and marched down the hall. Shutting his door behind him, he gulped against the lump that had formed in the back of his throat. He was keenly aware of just how badly he was gnashing his teeth—hard enough to grind rocks into sand—but he couldn’t bring himself to relax his jaw, because he’d heard of cases like this before. Folks thought if a kid went missing, people would search for them until they were found, but that wasn’t true. Especially not when the kid was a nuisance—a gadfly who irritated the entire police force. Not if the kid’s family was nothing but a badly-off single mom in a crappy one-bar town.

  He choked out a sob as he stared at the carpet, the spot where he and Jude had played Monopoly only a few weeks before. They played by what Jude called Mob rules. You were allowed to rob the bank if you landed on GO, and could mug your opponent if you owned a hotel. Mostly, it was a game of Jude stealing funny money while Stevie stomped a plastic Godzilla figure across the board hard enough to rattle tiny green houses. Hopped-up on sugar and caffeine, they had rolled around on Stevie’s floor, cackling and throwing rainbow-colored bills at each other like a couple of whacked-out Donald Trumps. The moment burned into Stevie’s memory like a forever-scar. A reflection of perfect friendship no matter how imperfect the both of them were.

  But now Stevie’s room was a hollow cave. Laughter was replaced by sobs.

  He shoved himself away from his door and grabbed the Monopoly box off his bookshelf, boomeranged it at his window. The box opened up midflight. Money rained down onto the bed and carpet. And still, Jude wasn’t there. Not to roll his eyes at Stevie’s dramatics, and not to cackle at the mess.

  · · ·

  Aunt Mandy’s bawling eventually tapered off and, accompanied by Stevie’s mom, she was led down the porch steps and shepherded back home. A few minutes later, there was a knock on Stevie’s bedroom door. Stevie’s mom stepped inside and, interrupting his harvesting of funny money on the carpet, took a seat on the edge of his bed. He crunched a few colorful bills in the palm of his hand, gave her a doleful look. But rather than asking him about his freak-out downtown, or scolding him for his I hate you blowup, or demanding he pinkie-swear that he’d never go anywhere near that old road in the woods again, she gave him a faint smile and nodded for him to follow her into the kitchen.

  When Stevie stepped out of his room, the house was empty. Terry was gone—probably at The Antler with guys who should have been looking for Jude—and Dunk was AWOL. Stevie and his mom sat down at the kitchen table, where a shoe box of photographs sat in the center, those pictures reflective in the dull glow of his mother’s cheap brass chandelier. Inside the box were photos of all kinds—his mother laughing as she crouched in her tiny backyard garden when Stevie’s dad had still been around; Dunk looking embarrassed while posing with Annie in front of his car for homecoming. And then there were shots of Stevie, many of them with Jude at his elbow. A few featured them flopped on the couch, watching movies or sitting on the floor with game controllers in their hands. Another was of Jude laughing his ass off while Stevie stood in the center of the frame, half-wrapped in aluminum foil, his arms shoved elbow-deep into empty Pringles cans. Jude was smiling in all the pre-death memories. Only a few had been taken after Uncle Scott’s accident. In those, Jude’s grin was either strained or completely missing.

  Stevie’s mom stopped on a photo that had been taken only a month before. In it, Jude and Stevie were sitting at the very table he and his mother now occupied. With their arms looped around each other’s shoulders, the boys mugged for the camera over heaping plates of his mom’s “world-famous” spaghetti. The picture seemed fake; hard to remember, hard to imagine that, despite Jude’s dad being gone and Terry being a monster, they both still managed to find something to smile about once in a while. Now their smiles struck him as obscene. Stevie frowned at the snapshot, refusing to touch it, afraid that Jude’s image would leer forward and bite off the remaining fingers of his right hand with snapping teeth.

  “Let’s use this one,” his mom suggested, sliding the photo in question away from the box.

  “Use it for what?” The funeral? That photo: blown up to ten times its size, propped up on an easel behind Jude’s coffin, everyone shuffling past it with heads bowed and hands clasped. Aunt Mandy standing behind a podium, wailing into the microphone as though singing a horrible mourning dirge. Everyone filling pews, plates of spaghetti in their laps, big white napkins
shoved into their collars, tomato sauce slopping down their chins like blood.

  “Posters,” his mom said. Posters? “The ones we’re going to put up around town tomorrow morning.”

  Stevie slowly turned his head to look at her. Neither one of them said a word for a long while. Eventually, he gave her a faint nod, wanting to leave it at that—a somber response for a kid with grown-up problems. But his heart clenched at the offering, at the thought of Jude’s face being pasted up all over town: Have you seen this boy? This was it, the thing that would spur him into action. This was the answer he’d been looking for. He threw his arms around his mother’s neck, coiled them so tight it was a wonder she could breathe.

  “Thanks,” he murmured, trying not to cry. But the tears came regardless. Because he wasn’t alone in this anymore. Someone other than him believed it was possible that Jude would still come home.

  8

  * * *

  FIRST THING THE next morning, Stevie and his mom went to a local print shop and got fifty flyers made. They stapled Jude’s face to electrical poles and asked shopkeepers to put the black-and-white printouts in their windows.

  It had been the ideal time to bring up the monster, the chase, the house. But he didn’t. He didn’t go next door after he and his mother returned home, either, too afraid to upset his aunt with stories that would make her look at him as though he’d finally lost it.

  But the promise he’d made to help find Jude burned bright in the forefront of his mind. Thanking his lucky stars that his mom seemed to have let go of the enforcement of his grounding—he had stuff to do that couldn’t wait—Stevie made his way down the sidewalk, back in the direction of the general store, less than an hour after combing Main Street with flyers in hand.

  He hadn’t seen Mr. Greenwood when they’d come in earlier, and even if Mr. G. had been there, Stevie wouldn’t have started a conversation with the old man while his mom was around. But they definitely needed to have a discussion, because if anyone was going to take that shadow figure seriously, it was one of Deer Valley’s oldest residents, the one who had suggested there was something living out there in those trees.

  Stevie stepped into the place feeling more nervous than he expected. Spilling to Mr. Greenwood hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal moments before, but now that he was inside the store, bringing up the monster felt like a shot in the dark. There was a chance Mr. G. would shake his head and call Stevie’s mom—Come collect your Looney Tunes kid—or bark him out of his shop. But it was either give this a try or never forgive himself for giving up.

  He spotted the old man at the back of the store, hiding out in a corner that smelled heavily of fresh baked cookies and something malodorously floral. Mr. G. was wearing his standard uniform; a short-sleeved polo tucked into khaki pants, which were hiked up to his chin. Mr. Greenwood dipped his hands into a cardboard box and brought out two jarred candles, then slid them onto the shelf of an open armoire that served as a display case.

  Stevie watched the man work for a while, lingering in the small greeting card section of the shop. He had tried to find Jude a birthday card here once, but all Mr. G. stocked was grandma stuff: kittens in baskets, still lifes of roses, cranes flying over calm lakes; cards that were blank on the inside flap, offering ample room for old ladies to get gushy about how proud they were of their grandkids. Stevie had considered buying Jude a kitten card just to be funny, but ended up getting one about blowing out candles with farts, courtesy of the Walmart on the outskirts of town.

  He took a breath and, although hesitant, stepped out from beyond the card shelves and gift bag display. “M-Mr. Greenwood?” He kept his distance, not wanting to crowd the man or seem too needy or desperate. When Mr. G. glanced over his shoulder, Stevie tried to smile, but it felt awkward. Stupid. An idiot grinning at the scene of a crime.

  “Mr. Clark.” Mr. Greenwood’s greeting caught Stevie off guard. He hadn’t expected the old man to remember him, let alone know his name, but he supposed that was silly. Mr. G. knew everyone, always regarding his younger customers by their last names, using first names with the older folks, probably having known them all their lives.

  “H-hi,” Stevie stammered.

  Mr. Greenwood regarded him with a knowing expression, then turned back to his candles, arranging them by color. Stevie’s mom sometimes bought the red ones, which smelled like apples, which was okay. Aunt Mandy had always preferred the pink ones, but those smelled terrible, like someone had sprayed an entire bottle of perfume on a bouquet of flowers just before setting it aflame. The pink ones gave Stevie headaches, and the throbbing sometimes made weird things come out of the walls. A pink one had cost him the tips of two fingers after he had crammed his right hand down the garbage disposal. They hadn’t been fingers anymore, but a clump of fat, squirming earthworms. Stevie’s mom had been at the grocery store. Stevie and Jude had been getting a snack during a commercial break. Aunt Mandy called 911. The ambulance came. There was a surgery involved, but the tips were gone. It had been a complete disaster. At one point, Aunt Mandy had passed out from all the blood. The smell, he had explained. Brain strain, itchy crawly migraine. Ever since then, he hadn’t seen a single jar candle in Jude’s house, pink or not.

  “Finding everything all right, Mr. Clark?” Mr. Greenwood asked.

  “Um, yeah, yes . . . ,” Stevie said, then added, “Just browsing.” A very grown-up line, one he’d heard his mom use a million times.

  “Well, if you need any help, you let me know.”

  Help. That word resonated within Stevie’s chest like a gong. Mr. G. was wise enough to know Stevie wasn’t shopping.

  Stevie peered down at the tips of his sneakers, somehow unable to gather enough guts to speak. Yes, he wanted to say. I need help. But he just stood there, mute, glaring at the scuffed-up floor beneath his feet.

  “Mr. Clark?”

  Stevie looked up.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, yes, thanks, yup.” Just browsing, he nearly echoed. That flowery smell was starting to make his brain squirm inside his skull. He looked down at his damaged right hand, making sure his remaining fingers were just that. Guess I’ll go eat worms . . . When he saw that they were, he turned and started walking toward the door, as if having forgotten why he’d entered the store in the first place, suddenly wanting nothing more than to be in the vacuous safety of his own room.

  But he stopped midflight. What, exactly, was he going to do when he got there? Stare out his window and cry about how helpless he felt? Wonder if he’d ever see his best friend again? And if the police did eventually find a body, if Jude really was dead, how would Stevie feel then, going through life knowing that he was one of the people who lost all hope? Would he be able to live with that?

  Stevie turned to face Mr. Greenwood again. “S-sir?”

  The old man flipped an empty cardboard box onto its top and pulled a box cutter from his back pocket. Stevie stared at the blade for a moment, sure that Mr. G. was going to wave it in his face. Get outta here! No loitering!

  “Do you know anything about that house . . .” He hesitated, not knowing how to describe the structure other than bringing up the nameless road it was on. But before he could figure out how best to explain its location other than in the woods, he noticed Mr. Greenwood’s expression shift from curious to stern.

  “You’ve been to the house?” he asked.

  Stevie opened his mouth, but no sound came. Yes, no, yes.

  Mr. G. took a few shuffling forward steps, the box cutter still in his hand, ready to slash at anything that might come his way. Stevie’s eyes widened when the old man reached out and snatched him by the arm, his bony fingers surprisingly strong. Something bad was happening. Something in Mr. Greenwood’s pruney old brain had snapped. He’d lead Stevie off into the shadows of the back office where no one would hear from him again. Another missing kid. And, lo and behold, Jude’s body had been there the entire time, stuffed beneath Mr. Greenwood’s des
k. And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!

  “Come with me,” Mr. Greenwood said, and while his grip was steadfast, he waited for Stevie to move his feet. When Stevie did, Mr. G. directed him to a back door that opened onto the gravel delivery road that ran behind the store. Just a few doors down, Jude’s hammer was hiding in a juniper bush.

  Mr. G. stepped into the sun, released Stevie’s arm, and squinted against the brightness of daylight. Glancing at the box cutter still in his hand, he retracted the blade and shoved the tool back into his pocket with a single gruff move—an old-timey gunslinger, smooth with his trusty weapon. “How many times have you been out to that place?” He scrutinized Stevie through the tiny slits that now made up his eyes.

  “I . . .” Stevie shook his head. He wasn’t really sure. The first time he and Jude had spotted it, they’d stayed away, having spooked themselves with stories of witches and killers—because those were the only types of people who lived in rotten, broken-down homes like that. But eventually, Jude wanted to see it again. He dragged Stevie along. They’d crept close, just shy of the broken fence and the blue chicken coop, the place teeming with cats—like someone had been feeding them, and that’s why they stayed.

  After that, Jude kept wanting to go back, as though something had crawled into his brain, beckoning him over and over again. They started taking the long way to their fort whether they had to or not, because the house was in that direction, and Jude insisted.

  So, when Mr. Greenwood asked how many times he’d been there, Stevie’s brain tripped over itself. Had it been five times? Six? Probably at least a dozen, if not more. But he was afraid to fess up to that. So, instead of telling the truth, he said, “M-maybe three times . . . ?” and left it at that. Any number beyond that felt flagrant, as though he and Jude had been courting disaster. If you ask me, your friend got what he deserved.