by Rick Hautala
I have reason to be cynical. The doctor who talked with me last night might have some fancier, more clinical terms for it, but I'm tempted to translate his conclusions about me to something a little simpler: let's try—crazy as a shit-house rat.
That's crazy, all right.
But keep reading.
I'm writing this all down as fast as I can because I suspect … no, I know I don't have much time. I'm fighting the English teacher in me who wants to go back and revise, hone this sucker until it's perfect, but if I'm right. .. Oh, Sweet Jesus! If I'm right … Okay, I'll try to start at the start. Oops. Got a little redundant there. Sorry. Anyway, as I've always told my students, every story has a beginning, middle, and end. Life, I've found, unfortunately doesn't always play out that way. Oh, sure—the beginning's at birth and the end's at death—it's filling up the middle part that can be such a bitch.
I don't know if this whole damned thing started when I first saw Rose McAllister … ah, Rosie. She was sitting in the front row on the first day of my 8:00 AM Introduction to English Literature class last fall. It might have been then that this all started, but I've got to be honest here. I mean, at this point, it may not matter at all ... or it may be all that matters. I think I'll be dead … and really in Hell within ... possibly less than four hours.
One thing I do know is, when I first saw Rosie, I didn't think, right off the bat-—Goddamn! I want to have an affair with her.
That sounds so delicate—"have an affair." I wanted to sleep with her, sure; but that was only after a while, after I got to know her. Once we started, though, we slept together whenever we could … which wasn't often, you see, because of Sally, my wife.
Ah, my dear, departed wife Sally.
I guess if I were really looking for the beginning to this whole damned mess, I'd have to say it was when we started our study of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. You know—your classic "deal with the Devil" story. I didn't mention too much of this to the police shrink because—well, if you tell someone like that … that you struck a deal with the Devil … that you sold him your soul—yes, I signed the agreement with my own blood—you've got to expect them to send you up to the rubber room on P-6. If I'm wrong about all of this, I don't want to spend the rest of my life writing letters home with a Crayola.
Wait a minute—I'm getting ahead of myself, but as I said, I don't have much time left … at least I don't think so.
Okay, so sometime around the middle of the semester, Rosie and I began to "sleep together." A deceptive expression because we did very little sleeping. We got whatever we could, whenever we could—in my office, often, or—once or twice—in a motel room, once in my car in the faculty parking lot outside Bailey Hall. Whenever and wherever.
The first mistake we made was being seen at The Roma, a fancy restaurant in Portland. Hank and Mary Crenshaw saw us. The Roma. As an English teacher, I can appreciate the irony of that, too. Sally and I celebrated our wedding anniversary there every year. Being seen there on a Friday night, with a college sophomore ("young enough to be your daughter," Sally took no end of pleasure repeating once she found out), by your wife's close (not best, but close) friend is downright stupid. I still cringe whenever I imagine the glee there must have been in Mary's voice when she told Sally.
Hell, I'll admit it. Why not? I never liked Mary, and I know she never liked me. Hank—he was all right, but I always made a point of telling Sally that Mary was her friend, not mine.
So, Sally found out.
Okay, so plenty of married men (and women) get caught cheating. Big deal. Sometimes the couple can cope and work it out. Sometimes, they can't. We couldn't. I should say, Sally couldn't. She set her lawyer—good ole' Waletr Altschuler—on me faster than a greyhound on a rabbit. That guy would've had my gonads if they hadn't been attached. You must have heard the joke about the lawyer and the shark … well, never mind for now. I have to tell my story.
I'm not the kind of guy who takes this kind of stuff … from anyone. And in an ironic sort of way, I guess I'm getting paid back for that, too. Bottom line? If someone sics a lawyer on me, I'm gonna bite back.
Now here's where it starts getting weird.
If I told the police shrink any of this, he'd bounce me up to P-6 for sure. I mentioned that we'd been reading Faustus in class, and that's when I decided to do a bit of … let's call it “research.” I dug through the library and found what was supposedly a 16th Century magician's handbook. Not sleight of hand magic. I mean something that's called a grimoire.
And I decided to try my hand at necromancy.
Look, I'm not crazy. I went into it more than half-skeptical. And I want to state for the record here that I...
Diary entry two: two hours later. Time's running out, for sure.
Sorry for the interruption. I'm back now after wasting two hours with the police shrink again. He ran me over the story again, but I held up pretty well, I think. At least I didn't tell him what I'm going to write about now. But like I said earlier, I want to have this all recorded so if I'm right ... Oh, Jesus … If I'm right …
Where was I? Oh, yeah—necromancy … a deal with the Devil. Yes—yes—yes. A deal signed in blood.
The library on the Gorham campus had an ancient grimoire. Well, actually it was a facsimile of one, published a few years ago by the University of Nebraska Press. It's amazing what gets published these days. I wonder if the person who edited the text got tenure. I can't recall his name just now. Anyway, I looked up the spell for summoning the Devil and … now I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but you have to believe me on this. I did it.
I actually summoned the Devil.
Go ahead. Laugh. What does it matter? I'll be dead— and in Hell—soon enough.
I have a key to Bailey Hall, so I came back to my office late one night—sometime after eleven o'clock, so I could be ready by midnight. After making sure my office door was locked, I set to work. Pushing back the cheap rug I had by my desk (to keep the rollers of my chair from squeaking on the old pine floor), I drew a pentagram on the floor using a black Magic Marker. I placed a black candle—boy, were they hard to find—at each of the five points of the star and lit them. Then, taking the black leather-bound book, I began to recite the Latin incantations backwards.
Actually, I was surprised that it worked. My Latin was so rusty, I was afraid I'd mispronounce something and would end up summoning a talking toadstool or something.
But it worked—it actually worked.
In a puff of sulfurous fumes, the Devil, "Old Scratch" himself, appeared.
Looking around, he said dryly, "Well, at least you're not another damned politician." Then, getting right down to business, he said, "Okay, what do you want in exchange for your soul?"
With his golden, cat-slit eyes burning into me, I had the feeling that he already knew—more clearly than I did at the moment. Anyway, I told him. I said that I wanted an absolutely foolproof way of killing my wife and not getting caught. I told him I was willing to sign over my soul to him—-yes! Dear God! In blood!—if I could just get rid of Sally and be absolutely certain that I wouldn't get caught.
I'm writing this, you must have realized by now, in a jail cell. I'm the prime suspect in my wife's murder, but I haven't been charged with anything—not yet, anyway. I have a perfect alibi, you see, and there are these other problems. If you read the Portland Press Herald tomorrow, you'll find out whether or not I got away with it.
What the Devil did was hand me a revolver. He called it a Colt .24—a "specially modified" Colt .45—and a box of nice, shiny, brass-jacketed bullets. He told me all I had to do, after I signed the agreement, of course, was load the gun and aim it at Sally. He suggested I sneak home sometime before lunch someday—pull the trigger, throw the gun away, and make sure I went to work as usual the next morning. If I did exactly what he said, he guaranteed that I'd go free.
Sounded okay to me. At this point, I was well past rationally analyzing the situation. I'd been under a lot of pressure, you
understand. My wife's lawyer had stuck the end nozzle of his vacuum cleaner into my wallet and was sucking up the bucks. Even my savings, such as they were, were gone. I'd been without sleep for nearly two days and nights running—I was getting so worked up about Sally.
And the capper was Rosie. As soon as she found out that Sally knew about us, she cooled off.
Cooled off? Hell— she froze.
Maybe—and I hate to think it—but maybe it was just the chance of getting caught that had added to her excitement, her sense of adventure, her passion. Once we got caught, the thrill was gone for her. Could she really have been that shallow? I can't help but think so.
I wasn't completely convinced this whole business with the Devil had really worked, because … well, I must've fallen asleep after he pricked my finger so I could sign the contract, gave me the gun, and disappeared. Next thing I knew, I woke up, stiff-necked and hurting all over, flat on my back on my office floor mere minutes before my eight o'clock class. The candles had burned down and extinguished themselves, but in the pale wash of morning light, I could see the pentagram on the floor, so I knew I hadn't dreamed everything.
Also, I had the gun … a Colt .24.
I'd been asleep—I don't know how long. Not more than four hours, I guessed. I remembered that I had started the summoning right at midnight, like I was supposed to, but I had no idea how long it had taken. At least for me, old Satan didn't waste any time with dizzying visions of power and glory, or processions of spirits. Nothing, really—just a straightforward business transaction. Thinking about it later, it could just as easily have been Lars Olsen, the overnight janitor in Bailey Hall.
But like I said, I did have the gun, and—damned if I didn't decide then and there that I'd use it. I had my two morning classes first, but right after them, I planned to go straight home, point the gun at Sally, and pull the trigger—even if, then and there, it blew her through the picture window. I'd reached my limit, which, I'd like to think, is considerably beyond what most men can stand.
So I did it.
After my second class—between classes, I had time to drag the rug back and gulp down some coffee and an Egg McMuffin—I took off for home. As luck would have it, Sally was—
Damn! Here they come again.
Diary entry three: more than an hour wasted—not much time left.
This time the police came in again, not the doctor. Talk about being confused. I know they want to charge me with the murder, but my alibi is rock solid, and the funniest thing about it all is, they can't get my gun to fire. So they asked me some more about my relationship with Sally, using the excuse that maybe it'll give them a lead on who else might have wanted to kill her. They said I might be released soon.
Hah!
As if that's going to make a difference.
Where was I ... Oh, yeah—Sally … She was home, and her lawyer, old Walt-baby, was there with her. I sort of wondered why he was there at my house so early in the morning. If it was business, wouldn’t he have done that at the office? Maybe nosing around gave him better ideas how to skin me alive. Or maybe getting into Sally's pants was part of his fee. You know what they say about lawyers … But I couldn't afford to leave a witness, so whatever he was doing there, that was just his tough luck. One more lawyer in Hell wasn't going to make a difference, anyway.
I walked in from the kitchen and nodded a greeting to the two of them, sitting there on the couch. A little too close and maybe a bit disheveled. I mumbled something about having forgotten some test papers as I put my briefcase down on the telephone table, opened it, and took out the gun. Shielding it from their sight with the opened top of the briefcase, I brought the gun up, took careful aim at Walter, and squeezed the trigger. Not once—not twice—three times. Good number, three. A literature professor knows all about the significance of the number three.
But nothing happened.
Although I'd been careful to slip a bullet into each chamber before I left the office, there was no sound, no kick in my hand. There wasn't even much of a click. The only thing I could think was that maybe the Colt .24 wouldn't work for someone who wasn't part of the deal, so I pointed it at Sally and fired off three more shots … with the same result.
Nothing.
I do remember—at least I think I remember—smelling a faint aroma of spent gunpowder, but I chalked that up to wishful thinking. The scent had a tinge of sulfur.
Sally and Walter never even noticed what I had done They just kept right on talking, ignoring me as I gawked at them—confused and angry that nothing had happened. Frustrated, I slipped the gun back into my briefcase, shut it, and went up to the bedroom, shuffling around a bit up there while I tried to figure out what to do next. I'd been packing my things to move out, but Sally—against old Walt-baby's advice, I might add—had said it was all right for me to stay in the house until the apartment I'd rented in Gorham opened up the first of the month. Thanks, Sal. As it turned out, that was the last favor she ever did for me—except a day later, when she dropped dead.
So anyway, I came back downstairs, got my briefcase, and headed back to campus with Sally and Walter still sitting on the couch just as alive as they could be. I was feeling like I'd been ripped off, set up or something by the Devil. As far as I was concerned, his Colt .24 was a dud, but that’s his job, right? Cheating people.
Back at my office, about two o'clock, I checked the Colt .24. I was surprised as all hell to see six spent shells in the chamber—no bullets, just empty shells. I wondered if I could have been so dumb as to load the gun with empty bullets. I didn't think so—I'd used the ones the Devil had given me. I shook the empties out into my hand and then tossed them into the trash. Then I slipped six fresh bullets from the Devil's box into the chamber. I was getting a bit scared that maybe I had hallucinated the whole thing, but that still didn't explain where I had gotten the Colt .24.
I'm sure by then I wasn't thinking too clearly, lack of sleep and tension and all, so I decided to test the gun right there in my office. I sighted along the barrel at one of the pictures on my wall—one of my favorites, actually: a silk-screened advertisement for the Dartmouth Christmas Revels—and gently squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Turning quickly, I aimed at my doctoral dissertation on the top shelf of my bookcase. Now there was something else to hate. I pulled the trigger a second time.
Nothing.
Again, aiming at the pencil sharpener beside the door, I squeezed the trigger.
Nada.
Pointing at the wall, I snapped off three more shots, and still nothing happened. I caught the faint aroma of gun smoke mixed with sulfur … the same thing I had smelled back at the house. Again, I attributed it to my imagination.
But you should never guess when you're dealing with the Devil … not once you've signed your soul over to him.
Again, though—and this time it struck me as really weird—when I opened the chamber, all six bullets were spent. Maybe they were dummies or something, I thought—not really made of lead ... or maybe I was the dummy.
I picked up the box of shells, now missing twelve bullets, and after inspecting them very carefully—they sure as hell seemed real enough to me—I reloaded, placed the gun on my desk, and tipped my chair back to try to think this through.
I'd been had, I knew that much.
Rage and stark fear filled me. I had signed my soul over to the Devil for what?
For a revolver that didn't even work?
Regardless, like I said earlier, the next day, by noon, Sally was dead.
A neighbor of ours, Mrs. Benton, said she heard five gunshots from our house. Afraid there was a robbery or something going on, she stayed inside her house and, clutching her living room curtains to hide herself, peeked out at our house while she called the Gorham police. They came right away and found Sally dead of three gunshot wounds to the head. I've heard it wasn't a very pretty sight.
Of course, I didn't know this at the time. I was returning to
my office on the Gorham campus after conducting my graduate seminar on Elizabethan Drama on the Portland campus. I hadn't gone home the night before and had slept—again—on my office floor, so I wasn't in the best of moods.
I spent the next hour or so at my desk, working through a stack of papers and pondering everything that had happened lately when there came a hard knocking at my door.
Without thinking, I scooped the Colt into my desk drawer but—foolishly—didn't slide the drawer all the way shut before I went to the door. Two uniformed police officers and a detective entered, politely shook my hand, and then informed me that my wife had been murdered … shot to death … with a Colt .45.
I fell apart, wondering which I felt more intensely—shock or relief. I hadn't been able to do it, but someone had. The policemen and detective waited patiently for me to gain control of myself, then explained that they wanted to know where I had been in the past three hours. Apparently Mrs. Benton had seen fit to fill them in on our domestic problems. They also asked if I owned a Colt .45.
If this whole story has a tragic mistake—for me, anyway—it was not following the Devil's advice precisely to the letter. That's how he gets you, you know. I should have realized that. I'd read enough plays and stories about him. He had told me that if I aimed the gun at Sally, pulled the trigger, and then threw the gun away, I'd never get caught.
But there was the gun. Right there in my desk drawer.
I hadn't thrown the damned thing away.
If you had asked me then, I suppose I would have said the gun was worthless. What difference would it make if I kept it or tossed it? It wasn't the gun that had killed Sally. I had to accept that I hadn't summoned the Devil that night. I had fallen asleep and, worn out by exhaustion and stress, I'd had a vivid nightmare. I hadn't really summoned the Devil. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen.