The Devil Crept In

by Ania Ahlborn

  “I’ll be happy to help Amanda answer whatever questions you have for your report,” Stevie’s mom said, “but Jude is a minor. Unless he’s being arrested, you can interview him tomorrow, after he’s gotten some sleep.”

  The cops exchanged a look, with the lead officer finally sighing and issuing a relenting nod. Stevie considered speaking up, but his mom beat him to the punch. She placed a hand on Stevie’s shoulder and gave him a pointed glance. “Get on home,” she told him.

  “B-but . . .”

  “Now.” Unflinching refusal. “You can talk tomorrow,” his mom assured him. “Go home.”

  Home was the last place Stevie wanted to go. Terry was there, still up, waiting for Stevie’s mom to come back and give him the scoop. Now it would just be Stevie scooting through the front door, and maybe that would make Terry mad. Except, no . . . the cops were right there. He wouldn’t dare do anything. This time, Stevie would scream his head off if he had to.

  “See you tomorrow, Jude,” Stevie murmured.

  Jude remained motionless, as though not hearing Stevie’s farewell. Possibly not knowing that he was surrounded by people at all. He just kept scratching, his eyes fixed on some invisible point.

  “I missed you.” Stevie all but whispered the confession, the emotional warble that had crept into his tone leaving him feeling embarrassed in front of all of those adults.

  Jude held fast to his silence, and Aunt Mandy gave Stevie a faint smile. She was trying to look happy, but to Stevie she looked half insane. “He’s missed you, too, Stevie. He’s just really tired.”

  He wanted to protest. Jude wasn’t just tired. There was something wrong. He could have at least looked Stevie’s way to let him know everything was cool, to tell him not to worry—a secret glance, a wink or a faint nod. I saw it, too. But there was none of that reassurance.

  “Stevie.” His mom. “Good night.”

  “I didn’t give up on you, Jude,” he said. “Didn’t give up, I didn’t . . .” Then he crossed the room and stepped out onto Aunt Mandy’s front porch.

  It was only as he climbed the steps up to his own front door that a pang of guilt hit him head-on. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that—to make his cousin feel better, to remind him that they had once been and still were closer than any two kids could ever be? But those things weren’t altogether true, because as he had carefully printed Duncan’s name on the note he’d slipped beneath his big brother’s door, an ugly, awful feeling had crawled into the recess of Stevie’s heart. It had been a sense of surrender. Something about asking for help from someone who wanted nothing to do with him had felt like the beginning of the end.

  Stepping inside, Stevie held his breath and tried not to cry. Because he actually had given up. And at the very moment of Stevie’s concession, Jude had returned, almost as if to say, You’re just like everyone else. I knew you wouldn’t care.

  · · ·

  Stevie should have been exhausted the next morning, but rather than rolling over and groaning for five more minutes of sleep, he was ready to run next door more than an hour before his mom had a chance to tap on his door. His anxiousness was only slightly derailed when he spotted Dunk’s Firebird parked along the curb. He narrowed his eyes at his brother’s pride and joy as he sauntered toward the sidewalk, tailing his mom. Naturally, his note had been ignored.

  He wanted to be pissed, but he couldn’t bring himself to care about Dunk’s typical discourtesy. And why should he have? Jude had come home, which rendered Dunk down to exactly what he was: useless.

  “Sweetie . . .” Stevie’s mom paused her steps before they reached Aunt Mandy’s place. She looked serious; her eyes narrowed, her lips pressed into a tight line. “I know you’re excited to talk to Jude, but you have to be a little careful around him, okay?”

  “Careful?” he asked. “About what?”

  “About what you ask him. Sometimes, when bad things happen, people don’t like talking about it. You know that.”

  “But isn’t it important to talk about bad things?” Stevie asked. “Sad things? Mad things? The cops are gonna ask him, they’re gonna ask anyway, they’re gonna ask, Hey, Jude, we’re gonna ask . . .”

  “Okay,” his mom conceded. “But the cops are trained for this sort of thing. Right? Just like the guys on all your shows.”

  Stevie frowned, on the verge of posing a question destined to get him in trouble: Why wasn’t Aunt Mandy demanding answers? It seemed to him that Jude should have been tied to a chair by now, lights shining into his eyes, being interrogated like how they did it in the movies. You’re gonna talk, see? You’re gonna tell us everything, or you ain’t gonna be walking on your own two feets anytime soon, see? But Aunt Mandy had pulled a similar move when Uncle Scott died. Stevie remembered his dad muttering about how crazy it was. She won’t let us see the report? How stupid it was of Aunt Mandy to not sue the hell out of the trucking company that had hit him. He could have been over his daily eight. Hell, he could have been high. There’s a whole culture of drug use with those guys, Nick. They’re doped up. This could have been a DUI. But nothing swayed Aunt Mandy’s resolve. She didn’t want to know. Stevie supposed that, for some people, it was easier to make things like that disappear. Having answers meant knowing what you could have done to prevent those awful things from happening. Stevie, though . . . he had decided days before that, for him, knowing wasn’t a choice.

  “Fine, whatever,” Stevie huffed. “B-but I can talk to him, right? About things before he left, right?”

  “Just don’t push it,” his mom said, then stepped past him to ascend the steps. He rolled his eyes at her back, then followed her to the front door. But as they waited for his aunt to answer the bell, Stevie decided that his mother had a point. The last thing he wanted was to freak Jude out. Stevie had missed his cousin like crazy, was eager to get back to the fort, but he knew that returning to the way things used to be would take a little time.

  But that thing . . .

  If it was real, it had to be dealt with . . . or avoided, at the very least.

  11

  * * *

  EVERYONE WENT DOWN to the police station except for Dunk. He remained at home, sleeping. And while Stevie had been excited to visit a real-life police headquarters, nearly everything about the visit left him disappointed. For one, there was no jail—at least not that he could see—and the lobby was empty. No criminals in handcuffs. No crazy people blabbering on about The Man or how they’d been framed. And despite the cops questioning Terry and Stevie’s mom, they made Stevie sit in the waiting room rather than inviting him along.

  Twenty minutes later, after his mom and Terry were done giving their statements, the trio moved to leave the precinct behind. The plan was to hop across the street and have some breakfast while waiting for Aunt Mandy and Jude to be released. But before they could step outside the building, Stevie’s mom hesitated. Her hand, which seemed to rest on his shoulder in perpetuity these days, gave him a backward pull. A lady reporter stood beyond the plate glass. Her cameraman was casually leaning against a news van. He looked bored, as if they’d been there for a half hour at least.

  “Parasites,” Stevie’s mom glowered. “How did they know we were here?”

  “Press conference.” The voice came from a woman sitting behind the receptionist’s counter. She looked a lot like Velma from Scooby-Doo, if Velma had been a hundred years old. “Detective Ridgewell is due to make a statement about the case this morning.”

  Stevie stared at Old Velma, then looked back at his mom in search of answers. “Jude is gonna be on TV?”

  “I guess so.” Stevie’s mom didn’t look too excited about that. She frowned at Velma as though the receptionist had called the reporters herself. “He’s just a little boy,” she said, then pivoted on the soles of her flats and stepped out of the building, head high and defiant.

  · · ·

  The Gooseberry Diner was just across the street. Terry worked on a plate of eggs and sausage while Stevie’s mom
sipped at a cup of coffee. Stevie couldn’t resist ordering a pile of French toast covered in gooey strawberries and whipped cream. By the time Jude came out of the station with his mom—nearly an hour later—he was stuffed to the gills and hating himself for eating so much, that sugary toast lead-heavy in his gut.

  He watched through the windows as the news crews—of which there were now three—swarmed Aunt Mandy and Jude. Ravenous for a sound bite, they shoved their mics into Jude’s face as if he were some famous movie star. And while Stevie couldn’t hear them, he imagined their questions were echoes of his own burning inquiries. Where have you been? What happened? Can you tell us about who kidnapped you? What about the monster? How did you get away?

  Jude stood motionless on the station steps, but he eventually leaned in to the bouquet of mics and said something. Aunt Amanda offered the news crews a tense smile and followed up Jude’s statement with a few words of her own.

  “W-what’re they saying?” Stevie asked.

  “No way to tell,” Stevie’s mom murmured against the rim of her mug. “But the whole state of Oregon will know by tonight.”

  · · ·

  With everyone packed into Stevie’s mom’s 4Runner, two news vans tailed them as they drove home. Stevie was forced onto his own porch by The Tyrant’s hamlike fist while Aunt Mandy vetted questions next door. Stevie’s mom stood a few paces away from her little sister so as to not appear on camera. Jude, like Stevie, had been made to go inside, surely to the newspeople’s chagrin. When they all finally left, both Aunt Mandy and Stevie’s mom disappeared inside, and Stevie retreated to his room, anxiously awaiting his mother’s return so that he could take her place. But it took Nicole Clark more than an hour and a half to come back home, and by the time he managed to escape his house, he was greeted with an apologetic smile and a shake of the head.

  “Sorry, Stevie,” Aunt Mandy said. “Jude’s taking a nap.”

  A nap? Stevie stared at his aunt for a long while, convinced that she was pulling his leg. And yet, her smile didn’t crack into laughter. She was serious. All of that waiting, all of that need, and Stevie wasn’t going to get to see Jude after all.

  “Since when does Jude take crappy naps like a sap?” he asked.

  “He’s really tired.” Aunt Mandy was being patient, but there was tension at the corners of her mouth.

  “Like a crappy sap. It’s a trap!” Admiral Ackbar’s famous line came spilling out of him—not supereffective, since Aunt Mandy had heard the boys use it on each other at least a million times.

  “I don’t think he wants to see anyone right now anyway, honey,” she said. “He’s not feeling very well. Jude missed you just as much as you missed him, sweetheart. But he needs a little time. It’s nothing personal.”

  My ass, he wanted to say. Nothing personal? There couldn’t have been anything in the world more personal. How could Jude choose a nap over seeing him?

  “I’m sure as soon as he feels up to it, you’ll be the first person he talks to.”

  No. Stevie shook his head, refusing to believe it. No, Jude wouldn’t do this to him. Jude knew how much Stevie had worried. They had a gazillion things to discuss. But rather than pushing past his aunt, he just stood there, feeling angry and hurt and stupid—not like the last kid to be picked for kickball, but like the one who didn’t get picked by his best friend. Utter humiliation.

  “I’ll tell him to go over to see you as soon as he’s up to it, okay?”

  But why isn’t he up to it now, brown cow? he wanted to ask. He’s had all night to sleep. Is he sick? Was it a trick? But all Stevie managed was a defeated “Y-yeah, okay.”

  And then he shuffled home.

  · · ·

  Jude never came over.

  Stevie found himself sitting on the couch next to his mom while The Tyrant occupied his armchair, the three of them waiting for the local news. When the broadcast finally blinked onto the screen, there was Jude’s face. A reporter’s voice-over explained that Tonight, the missing boy from Deer Valley has been found, safe and sound. That story and much more, coming up next. The show segued into a Ford truck commercial—Terry’s pickup, shiny and new, pulling a giant horse trailer behind it. Stevie glanced away from the muscled farmer enjoying his super-manly set of wheels and looked at his mom.

  “What’s it called when they turn bad guys into zombies?” he asked. “Y-you know, when they scramble their brains like eggs and bacon for breakfast?”

  Stevie’s mom gave him a look he knew all too well—a disturbed expression that was feigning amusement rather than the unease he was sure she so often felt.

  “Bad guys?” she asked. “What kind of bad guys?”

  “Like the bad ones they put in prison jail because they’re bad and do things that are bad because they’re bad because they do bad things because they’re bad and do ba—”

  “You mean criminals?” Terry cut in, clearly annoyed by his stepkid’s inability to rein himself in.

  “Yeah,” Stevie said. “Criminals.”

  “A lobotomy?” Stevie’s mom seemed unsure, despite knowing the answer.

  He frowned at the word. That was it: a lobotomy. Maybe that’s what had happened to Jude. Whoever had taken him had messed him up, stirred up his brains with a screwdriver through the eye, and now he’d rather sleep than hang out. What other explanation was there?

  “Don’t they do it with electricity?” Stevie asked. His mom shifted her weight beside him, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. “They hook something up to your head and flip a switch, right? Kinda like the electric chair, except it doesn’t kill you? It just, like, fries your brain like fries with a shake? Shake and bake?”

  “Watch your words,” Stevie’s mom said, calm as ever, ignoring his line of inquiry. She got up and left for the kitchen without so much as an I’ll be right back, and Stevie found himself turning his attention to the last person he’d ever expect to get an answer from. Terry Marks wasn’t someone Stevie wanted to converse with, but he was a cruel son of a bitch. If anyone knew about fiendish ways to mess up a person, this was the guy.

  “You’re talking about electroshock therapy,” Terry mumbled, as if bored with the discussion. “They don’t do that anymore. Lobotomies, either.”

  “What do you mean?” Stevie asked. “They do it in hospitals, to crazy people. I’ve seen it on TV.”

  Terry grunted, offended by his stepson’s ineptitude. “Crazy?” he scoffed. “Crazy is as crazy does, huh? I just told you, they don’t, didn’t I? That stuff is inhumane, outdated. Don’t believe everything you see on the fucking tube.”

  Inhumane. Stevie almost laughed, but he knew to hold it in. He didn’t feel like experiencing The Tyrant’s own brand of inhumanity that night. Rather, he pressed his lips into a tight line and turned his attention back to the television. The truck was gone. There was a warehouse full of mattresses now; probably the same kind that Jude was lying on next door. A bulldog sat on one, like the fat and slobbery king of springs and memory foam. Rosco says our mattresses are great; no bull!

  His mom was banging around in the kitchen. There was the soft sucking sound of the freezer being opened, the metallic ting of silverware against the counter, the clap of cabinet doors slamming shut because they were missing their felt bumpers. Stevie kept quiet through a fifteen-second Budweiser ad, wondering if he’d ever be like one of those guys—laughing and having a good time with a bunch of girls; partying on a beach next to a bonfire. Nah. At least not if he and Jude stuck together. Jude wasn’t the type to party on beaches. If things kept going the way they were, he’d be the guy robbing those people’s cars while they got drunk; and the fact that Stevie even considered something like that bothered the hell out of him. Because wasn’t that what everyone else thought, too? Wasn’t that why Deer Valley had only pretended to be interested in finding Jude instead of actually looking for him?

  Stevie’s mom returned to the living room just as the news logo reappeared. She was carrying mugs of Rocky Road ice
cream, handing one of them off to Terry before retaking her seat. She was trying to make things better, but eating ice cream while watching Jude on the news felt indecent. Sure, it could have been seen as celebrating Jude’s return, but a party seemed a little premature.

  Stevie had eaten hardly more than three spoonfuls of his dessert before Jude’s face flashed on the screen. There was the blond reporter lady he’d seen outside the police station, looking both serious and concerned. She yammered on about the details of Jude’s case as she faced the camera head-on, retelling the story of how Jude had been missing only to appear out of nowhere on his front porch in the middle of the night. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stevie knew all that stuff.

  Finally, the story cut to Jude and Aunt Mandy stepping out of the police station. Jude looked dazed, like the cops had bonked him on the head with a frying pan. Aunt Mandy was all smiles in her polka-dot dress. Stevie could tell she was eager to soothe Deer Valley’s frayed nerves. Everything is fine now, thank you all for your concern.

  “How does it feel to finally be home?” the reporter asked.

  Jude squinted at the camera, as if never having seen one before. He seemed to sway as he stood there. It was slight, but definitely there, as though he’d spent those lost days on the deck of a ship. Aunt Mandy could have been right; perhaps Jude was out of it because he was just that tired. But there was something about Jude’s eyes, about the blankness of his face, that turned Stevie’s stomach inside out.

  “Can you tell us anything about what happened?” The reporter tried again, hoping that, if she put her words in the right order, her question would break Jude’s silence. “Do you know who took you, where you were?”

  She hit something—a nerve, a quick flash of memory. Something in Jude’s face seemed to shift, as if a particular thought was finally squirreling its way out of his brain and into the muscles of his face. His mouth tensed. His eyebrows knit together. He scratched at his arm. Leaned into the microphone. And, with lowered eyes, said, “I don’t remember.”