The Devil You Know

by Richard Levesque

  The dream shifted. Laura no longer stood on the street; she was in the window, lying on the sofa, watching the crowds pass by the storefront. Some stopped and admired the scene in the window, and Laura felt a tingle of excitement at knowing she was being watched. Then she felt the bat’s fingers on her shoulder, and she turned to look into his haggard face. His lips were on hers, and she tasted rotting meat on his breath. It didn’t matter. The wings closed around her, the red leathery skin wrapping her in a cocoon, and she felt the weight of his body on her. She turned over and spread her legs, and then the bat thing was in her. She had never done anything so wrong in her life, and she loved it. When she turned her head to peek over the edge of his wing at the spectators watching her performance, the first orgasm cascaded over her, and she bit into his shoulder, his hot blood salty on her tongue.

  When the waves of pleasure subsided, she looked again at the crowd and now saw the first thing in the dream that struck her as wrong. A little boy, no more than four, was standing at the glass with all the leering adults. He looked innocent and confused, and Laura did not want him to be there. Bothered as she was, though, she could not bring herself to push her lover off her or keep her hands from grasping his buttocks to pull him into her more fiercely. The little boy began knocking on the glass, tentatively at first and then more insistently. She wanted to shout at him, to make him go away, but when she opened her mouth only a gagging sound came out.

  Just as she became convinced that the boy’s now frantic knocking would shatter the pane and send shards flying in at her, Laura awoke from the dream. She sat up with a start, the sweat on her back instantly giving her a chill as her wet skin was exposed to the air. The apartment was dark with the shades drawn, and it took her a moment to lose the feeling of disorientation that her sudden awakening had left her with. Then she realized that the knocking had not just been in the dream. Someone was at her door.

  Telling herself that Taylor had returned, she pulled herself from the bed and almost tripped on the sheet that had gotten tangled around her ankle. She kicked free of it and went quickly around the dressing screen between the bed and the door. When she flung the door open, though, she immediately ducked behind it so that she exposed only her head and neck to the young woman who stood in the hallway. She was tall with auburn hair and wore a smart skirt and jacket. Her expression registered a mixture of surprise and embarrassment at the quick flash she had gotten of the naked woman answering the door.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” the woman said, cringing. “I didn’t mean…”

  Also a bit stunned and still disoriented, Laura did not think to close the door in the woman’s face or to excuse herself to go find a robe. Instead, she simply stood there for a few seconds and then muttered, “What do you want?”

  The woman in the hallway hesitated. “Well…I had been about to ask if I could come in for a moment, but I see you’re not—”

  “No, I’m really not. You caught me a bit off-guard.”

  “I’m so sorry. You’re Laura Tremaine?”

  A bit suspiciously, Laura said, “Yes?”

  “I’m so sorry to bother you, Miss Tremaine, but…” She hesitated, glancing up and down the hallway as if to make sure no one would overhear. “This is going to sound crazy, but I think there’s a chance you’re in danger of some kind.”

  Laura raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there a…” The woman bit her lip and continued. “Is there a man you’ve been seeing lately? A new man, incredibly good looking, like Cary Grant, really.”

  Laura felt a rush of adrenaline mixed with fear and confusion. Her heart pounded, and she wanted to slam the door in the woman’s face. Another girlfriend maybe, but not the wife, she told herself; of this she was certain though she could not have explained how or why. Somewhere, though, in the back of her mind, a tiny part of herself, a new and devious side of Laura Tremaine that had never been there before, wanted to give the woman at the door a little bit of rope just to see what would happen. “Who are you?” she asked.

  The woman’s expression changed just a bit. Some of the tension left her face as one eyebrow rose slightly. The shift told Laura that the woman had been unsure up to this point, not certain if she had the right apartment or the right person. Now, though, she knew, and the knowledge seemed to give her confidence. The woman at the door thought she had the upper hand, and Laura was content to let her think it.

  “My name’s Marie Doyle,” the woman said. “If we could just talk for a minute…”

  “Wait here.” Laura closed the door and walked to her coat rack where her bathrobe hung. Smiling devilishly, she slipped on the robe. The belt had long ago been lost, so she gathered the robe around herself and held it tight with one hand as she walked back to the door. Before opening it, she switched on a small lamp. “Come in,” she said as she stepped aside to let the other woman enter. Then she closed the door and leaned against it while her guest turned to face her.

  “This must be awfully strange,” Marie said.

  “You could say that.” Her arms folded across her chest with one hand still holding the robe closed, she said, “So what kind of danger am I in? Are you his wife or something?”

  Marie shook her head. “No. It’s not that easy to explain. I have a friend who…well, she started having an affair with a man she met at a party. He’s part of a group of men who are going around Hollywood and, well, seducing women. The man you’re seeing is part of the same group.”

  Laura shrugged. “So?”

  Marie smiled, giving Laura a look that was probably meant to be reassuring. “It’s just that…it’s not just sex. After you’re with him, things aren’t quite normal for you, are they?”

  The woman’s question made Laura uncomfortable. She had not realized until now how desperate she was to keep to herself her experiences with Taylor and the white light. That someone else should know, that someone else should have experienced it…the very thought made Laura grit her teeth. Trying to hide her feelings, she said, “What do you mean, normal?”

  Marie sighed. “I mean, you kind of pass out, don’t you? You wake up and he’s gone, and you don’t remember when he left, or even how long you’ve been out.” She looked piercingly at Laura. “Would you say that’s what’s been happening?”

  Laura’s sense of having the upper hand had faded while her guest spoke. Marie knew too much about her, and about her relationship with Taylor. Suddenly, Laura wanted nothing to do with this woman; all she wanted was Taylor. She felt fearful and sensed that Marie wanted to keep Taylor from her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she turned her head to keep Marie from seeing.

  “I think you should leave now,” she said, almost choking on the words as she stepped away from the door.

  “Laura, please,” Marie said. “You can’t stop him. You know that. Even if you don’t want to be with him, when he comes around, you can’t resist him, can you? And it’ll get worse. My friend’s been locked up now. She’s…gone somehow—mentally, emotionally. I just want to help you.”

  In spite of herself, she was listening. A knuckle wiped the tears from her eyes. “How?”

  “Just to warn you. To get you away from him so you don’t end up the same way.”

  “Get me away from him?” Laura asked. The thought was absurd. It was as though this woman was asking her to do something preposterous. She may as well have asked Laura to defy gravity or breathe underwater.

  “Move,” Marie said, a bit desperately now. “Leave the city. You can’t just move a few blocks away, okay? Take a vacation. Go visit your family. Just go where he can’t get to you. He’ll find other women.”

  Now Laura shot Marie a fierce look. She twisted the doorknob and pulled the door open. “Get out!” she hissed.

  Marie hesitated. Then she nodded. “All right. I understand.” Clasping her hands together, she walked out of the room, but stopped in the doorway. She pulled a slip of paper from her purse. “Please take this. It’s my number. Call
me if you reconsider. I just…I just don’t want you to end up in the same place as my friend.”

  Tentatively, Laura took the paper and swung the door shut without letting the other woman speak again. She looked at the paper for a moment. There were two numbers—one for daytime, and the other for evening. She wanted to crumple it and throw it in the trash, but made herself set it down on the little table that her lamp rested on. There was something about Marie Doyle that bothered her, frightened her. The woman didn’t just want to save Laura; she wanted to stop Taylor. If there were others like him, Laura didn’t care. Let them do what they wanted with whatever women they could find. Taylor was hers, and nothing Marie Doyle could say or do would change that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  By Friday evening, Marie had gotten into a comfortable routine with Jasper and Tom—perusing old books with Jasper in his library, followed by dinner and coffee and conversation before a late drive home. Twice, she had arrived with Jasper and his bicycle to find Tom at work on the old Dodge in the driveway. She always warmed at the sight of him.

  Tonight, though, there was some deviation in the routine; Jasper excused himself shortly after dinner, saying he had not slept well the night before. Earlier, Marie had told him about her encounter with Laura Tremaine; the details had disturbed him, and he warned Marie not to go back to the woman’s apartment alone. When Jasper announced that he was retiring early, Marie initially took it as a cue to leave. She wondered if her story had inadvertently upset him, but Jasper insisted she stay seated as he shuffled out of the room, cheerfully calling out his goodnights from the back of the house. There was a moment’s awkward silence in his absence, and Tom stood up and took their empty pie plates back into the kitchen.

  “More coffee?” he asked her as he went.

  “Sure,” Marie said, getting up to bring him her cup.

  For the first time since she started at St. Lucy’s, she had lately found herself checking her watch over and over throughout the week, groaning inwardly at the crawl of the hour hand. When not doing any of the myriad tasks Father Joe had for her each day, she turned not to hidden issues of Weird Tales, but rather to the yellow notepad that she had been bringing to Jasper’s every evening. With a sharp pencil, she had written down everything the two of them learned about demonic incarnations, and she studied her notes every day, as though she were back in school and hoping to earn an A in this most bizarre subject. Along with considering all this newfound knowledge, she often simply stared out the window and thought. She replayed the previous Friday and what had happened to Elise; she thought about her encounter with Colin Krebs outside the Chinese Theater; she wondered if she should have handled Laura Tremaine differently; and more than anything she let herself linger over bits of conversation with Tom Glass.

  Now she stood with Tom in the kitchen as he poured more coffee, and she thought not for the first time about what it would be like to kiss him. Tom was smart and charismatic and good-looking. Sometimes he looked a little sad and far away, but he could also make her laugh easily, and he stirred things in her that she had not felt in long time. He smiled at her now as he handed her the cup, and it filled her with warmth as she smiled back. She hoped she wasn’t blushing as she took the cup and turned back toward the dining area.

  Impulsively, she said, “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself I don’t already know?”

  He grinned and ran a hand through his hair as he thought about it. Playfully, he said, “So just how much do you already know? I’d hate to be repetitive.”

  She laughed a little. Mocking him, she tapped her forefinger against her chin and said, “Hmmm. What do I know about you? You like old cars and John Wayne movies. You fought in Europe. You cook a mean roast beef. And you like gazebos.”

  “Makes me sound pretty pathetic,” he joked. Then he raised his eyebrows and said, “Aha! Bet you didn’t know I play the guitar.”

  “That old thing in the other room? I’ve wondered about that. It didn’t quite seem like your grandfather’s cup of tea.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly mine, either,” he said. “It’s kind of an exaggeration to say I play it. I haven’t picked it up since before the war. Besides, I think I only know two songs.”

  “I’d love to hear one,” she said.

  “Don’t be so sure, Marie. All I know is ‘You Are My Sunshine’ and ‘Singin’ in the Rain.’”

  She laughed loudly and then clapped a hand over her mouth when she remembered Jasper had gone to bed.

  “It’s not that funny, is it?” he asked.

  She held her lips firmly together for a few more seconds to keep from laughing and then was able to say, “You only know songs about the weather?”

  Now Tom laughed with her. “I never thought about it like that before,” he finally said.

  “So do I get to hear one?”

  He sighed with resignation and handed her his coffee cup. “Let’s take it outside. I don’t want to wake Gramps.”

  Marie felt a tingle of excitement as she waited with the coffee beside the screen door while Tom went to fetch the guitar. She told herself she was being silly, acting like a schoolgirl about to be serenaded by some gawky boy. But there was nothing gawky about Tom Glass, and when she saw him come back into the room with the battered guitar in hand, the tingling feeling ignited again.

  “Thing’s got a busted string,” he said as he took the coffee cup and walked beside her out to the gazebo.

  Marie knew nothing about guitars and said, “Can you still get something out of it?”

  “I can fake it,” he said.

  When they got to the gazebo, Tom brushed away the dust from a bench and then stepped aside to let Marie sit first. “My grandfather tell you why I’m here?” he asked. “With him, I mean.”

  “He did,” Marie said quietly. She smoothed her skirt as Tom sat beside her and started tuning the guitar.

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “Why would it?”

  Tom shrugged. “You hear things. ‘Buck up.’ ‘Pull yourself together.’ ‘You wouldn’t be this way if there were still machine gun fire whizzing over your head.’” He paused to listen to the notes for a moment before adding, “People think you’re weak if you can’t just put it all behind you.”

  “I’m sure it’s not for lack of trying.”

  Tom grunted a short laugh. “That’s for sure.”

  There was a few moments’ silence between them as Tom kept hitting notes on different strings and twisting the tuning pegs. As she watched, Marie knew what she wanted to say next, but held herself back. When Tom said nothing else, she ventured, “It was pretty awful for you. Over there.”

  “At times.” He looked up from the guitar. “Other times not so bad. There are actually a lot of good memories when you think about it. Even when things were dangerous, there’s a kind of exhilaration just thinking about it. Regular life back here just…well, it doesn’t compare somehow.”

  “Hard to adjust,” she said with a nod.

  He turned to her suddenly, a puzzled smile on his face. “That’s just what I was going to say.” He shook his head and reached for his coffee before he went on. “It’s so damn weird that being back here actually seems tougher. Nobody behind the trees, no land mines or pillboxes or machine guns. But every now and then it’s like there may as well be.”

  “How often does it happen?”

  “At first, three, maybe four times a day. Now not so often. Gramps wouldn’t want you to know, but I’m the reason he slept so badly last night. I get pretty loud with the nightmares sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marie said.

  He shrugged and went back to tuning the guitar. “Thanks. Like I said, it’s getting better. I haven’t had to take a Nembutal in about a month now.”

  “They help you sleep?”

  “Mm-hmm. There was a while where I couldn’t get to sleep without them, but I don’t like feeling dopey, so we started cutting them in half.”

  Mar
ie was unsure of what would be the best thing to say, and came up with, “That’s admirable” after a few seconds.

  “Gramps told me about you, too,” he continued. “What happened to your husband. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No.” She shook her head and gave a grim smile. Thinking about the wedding ring she had taken off only a week ago, she said, “It’s all right, really. I’m moving on. It’s so strange to think, you know, that someone you love just stops…being. And the rest of us just keep going—eating, sleeping, hearts beating. The days go by, and you get older, and before long you’re not even the same person anymore. You’re not the one who got left behind. It’s like you’ve died, too. Or that part of you has.”

  Tom strummed a chord. The guitar sounded in tune even with the missing string, but he set it aside. “I know that feeling,” he said quietly.

  She nodded and finished her coffee. A silence hung between them for a moment, and Marie had to wonder if she hadn’t touched a nerve. She had never been around someone with a problem like Tom’s, and she worried for a moment that he had somehow slipped away from her now. Finally, she spoke again, not knowing what she would do if Tom did not respond. “Did Jasper tell you what he and I are looking for in his books?”

  “A little.” His voice was quiet, but not at all far away, and Marie felt relieved to know he was still there with her in body and mind.

  “Do you find that strange?” she asked.