Deliver Us From Evil

by Allen Lee Harris

  5

  Sneaking out of his house and across the yard, Larry took the back route to Abigail’s. He hadn’t really expected to find Jamey there. He just didn’t know where else to look for him and had vaguely hoped that being in Jamey’s room would provide him with a clue as to the other boy’s whereabouts. But as Larry looked around the bleak room, he saw nothing to provide him with a single lead. He went to the window and looked out over Miss Eula Watkins’s backyard. It was the same window Jamey had been standing at when Larry had first laid eyes on him, the night that he and Randy and Clemson and Alvin had come here to stare at the new retard. Jamey had been holding a candle, and Larry remembered that someone, Clemson, had said it was a signal. A signal for something out there waiting. Later, after Larry became friends with Jamey, Larry thought he had figured it all out, how Jamey was just looking up at the stars, using the candle because it was the only light available to him. But as Larry stood there, he wondered if maybe Alvin hadn’t been right all along. Maybe Jamey was expecting someone. Old Doc. Or what if he had been having one of his nightmares? And waiting for the voice, or the nightmare man himself, the creature that had taken hold of Larry the night before?

  And, with a shudder, Larry wondered if that’s what they had seen coming out of the woods that night. The figure that had stopped upon seeing them, then disappeared back into the darkness. And if so, how long had he been out there, waiting and watching? How many nights had Larry been awakened by a noise and, looking out his own window, seen a shadow in his yard—a shadow that he had always told himself was that of a tree or a bush? But what if all along it had been the shadow of something else, his shadow?

  Stop it, he told himself.

  He turned from the window and looked back at the bed. Then an idea occurred to him. He knew exactly where Jamey had gone to. He had to be there.

  Larry hesitated a second, then hurried down Abigail’s back stairs.

  Larry found Jamey down by the river, at the spot where they used to go fishing.

  Jamey did not see Larry as he came up. The other boy was sitting with his legs crossed, his eyes fixed on the river. Larry tried to make as little noise as he could, but just as he got within four feet of the other boy, Jamey, without turning around, whispered to him, “Why couldn’t you believe me? Why didn’t you leave?”

  Larry came around and sat down on the riverbank. He looked at the other boy’s face. “Because, Jamey, how could we?”

  Jamey sat motionless, his eyes fixed on the river in front of them. “Why did you have to be my friend?” Jamey said sadly. “If you hadn’t become my friend, then there would be nothing he could do to me.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “He knows how to twist good things into bad. Anything. Even the best things, Larry,” Jamey whispered. “It’s like the way he tricked old Doc into bringing me back here.”

  “I don’t understand,” Larry said. “What are you talking about?”

  “The reason old Doc changed his mind about me and took me from that place,” Jamey began, obviously referring to Milledgeville. “Remember me telling you about that boy, the one who had hydrocephalus? That’s where I got to know him. He was younger than me, and he was scared to be there, and he used to cry all the time. He kept wanting his momma to come to see him, but she never did. Anyway, I used to tell him stories. And I guess because of the way he looked, nobody had ever liked to touch him very much. So sometimes when I was telling him a story I’d hold his hand and he’d stop crying. Then one night he got real, real sick. They said he was dying. He was real sick, all right, and he had a bad fever and he was talking kind of crazy. He kept asking me to tell him a story. So I held his hand and told him one. The next day...” Jamey stopped, his eyes fixed on the river.

  “Did he die?” Larry asked.

  Jamey shook his head. “He was okay. When they went in the next morning to check on him, there wasn’t anything wrong with him. Nothing. Nothing at all. Even his hydrocephalus.”

  “You mean, he wasn’t sick?”

  “His head was like everybody else’s. Old Doc heard about it and he kept asking me how I did it. And he kept looking at me in this strange way, like he thought it was because of something I’d done that the boy got okay. He kept asking me exactly what story I’d been telling him.”

  “What story was it?”

  Suddenly Jamey stood up, his eyes still fixed on the river. “J-Just a story so he’d feel better. That’s all. I told Doc that was all. I wasn’t trying to do anything else.”

  “What story, Jamey?”

  Jamey turned around and looked at Larry for a moment. “I didn’t care about the story. I only wanted him to be happy before he died. I didn’t even believe it, about how Jesus used to heal people. I only wanted him to feel better. So I made up this story, how Jesus would come and heal him, too. I didn’t think he would even live through the night. I just wanted to help him, that’s all. But he said something, something so strange. He looked at me and he said, He’s here already. Jesus is here already....’” Jamey whispered. “I d-didn’t know what he meant, except that he was just so sick with fever, and was talking crazy. But when I told old Doc about what the boy said, about Jesus, Doc got this strange, scary look. And he said, ‘Don’t you see what he meant?’ And then old Doc started talking to himself, saying they had all made a terrible mistake. And that’s why he got me out of that hospital and brought me here,” Jamey said, he turned and looked back at Larry. “But it was all just a trick. That boy getting healed up like that. A trick to make Doc bring me back to Lucerne, so it could all happen, just the way Simon saw it would. A trick to make old Doc think I was...” Here Jamey stopped and gave out a strange and forlorn laugh. “Jesus or something. Pretty crazy, isn’t it? But when he saw the last painting at the Randolph house, he realized who 1 really was and what 1 was meant to be. That’s why he tried to kill me.”

  “When?”

  “The night we went to the Randolph house, old Doc was waiting for me at Abigail’s when I got back. He knew who I was and that’s why he wanted to kill me, before I could become the thing in the painting. He said that what happened to the boy down in Milledgeville was to fool him into bringing me back here, where I started. He was pointing his gun right at me, but I didn’t even want to run. Not after what I had seen out at the Randolph house. I wanted him to shoot me. But then he looked at me and he began crying and he said, ‘Just tell me the truth. Who are you? What are you?’ I told him that I was just Jamey, that’s all. And then he started mumbling again, saying, ‘What if this is just another trick? To make me kill you?’

  “And then he said, ‘If only I could be sure.’ And that’s when he lowered the gun and ran out of my room. Then he had his stroke.”

  There was a long silence. Then, looking up at Jamey, Larry whispered, “Remember what happened when the water moccasin bit you?”

  Jamey nodded.

  “You got upset afterward because it was like those other things that happened to you. Living through that fire. Or healing the boy at Milledgeville. Something people aren’t supposed to be able to do.”

  “But I told you. He did all that, not me. It was part of his plan. His way of tricking everybody. Of making them do what he wanted them to do.”

  “What if it’s not, Jamey?” Larry said. “What if that boy was right?”

  “No. That’s crazy, Larry.”

  “But you are special, Jamey.”

  “Don’t you see? That’s one of his tricks. Just like he did in the Bible, when he tempted Jesus. He was whispering, ‘You’re special. You’re different. You deserve to rule.’ And if Jesus had started to believe that, he would have stopped being Jesus. Everything he taught was to make people see that nobody’s special, that we’re all alike deep down. We all hurt the same, get scared the same, get lonely the same, die the same. That’s what the Golden Rule really means. That nobody has a right to treat h
imself like he’s special. Even the way Jesus died, so lonely and sad, it was just to show how even He wasn’t special.”

  “But He was, Jamey,” Larry said, staring into the other boy’s eyes. “The same way you are.”

  Jamey stepped back and shook his head. His eyes full of terror, he looked into Larry’s face as if into a stranger’s. “He’s using you now,” Jamey whispered.

  “What if it’s true, Jamey?” Larry yelled. He grabbed the other boy’s arm. “What if he did everything just to keep you from seeing who you are? What if you really healed that boy, Jamey?”

  Jamey jerked his arm away. “I told you! I know who I am! You don’t! I know where 1 came from.” His eyes frenzied with despair, Jamey looked at the woods behind. “Back there. That’s where I came from.”

  “Where, Jamey? Where did you come from?”

  “From the well,” Jamey said with a gasp.

  Larry stepped back from the other boy. He shook his head, his face pale. “What are you talking about? I don’t understand, Jamey. How could you come from the well?” Jamey turned, the tears in his eyes, and ran breathlessly into the woods. Larry watched the other boy disappear, his legs weakening beneath him as the meaning of Jamey’s word sank into him. “No, Jamey,” he whispered. “It’s not true. It can’t be true, Jamey. It can’t be.”

  6

  Robins was standing outside the sheriff’s office, smoking a cigarette. He glanced down at his watch. Nearly six o’clock. Ever since they had gotten back to Lucerne, Charlie had been on the telephone. First to the GBI, then to a crew of divers over in Willard. They had promised to be in Lucerne first thing in the morning to retrieve the Anderson boy’s body, as well as to find out it there were any more at the bottom of the well.

  First thing in the morning, Robins thought. He glanced up at the sky. There was less than an hour’s light left.

  Just as Robins was about to toss his cigarette away, Charlie stepped outside. “Goddamnit,” he muttered. Robins looked at him and asked him what was wrong. “The line went dead,” Charlie told him. “Right when I was talking to—” Both men turned around. Slim McGee had just emerged from his barber shop. “Charlie, your phone working?” he asked. Charlie shook his head. “Mine, neither. I was just talking to Edna May, asking her what we was going to have for supper, when I don’t hear nothing. Nothing at all Guess maybe the line’s down.”

  Charlie nodded, then glanced at Robins. “Reckon so.”

  “You think maybe the phone over at Becky’s still working?” Charlie said he wasn’t sure but that he and Rollins would go over and check. Then, without letting Slim get in another question, Charlie took Robins by the elbow and led him down the steps into the street. Already that day there had been a few close calls with Slim. Since they had gotten back from the well, Slim had poked his head into Charlie’s office twice. Once was to ask why old Doc’s funeral hadn’t taken place, and Charlie—not accustomed to lying even when it was helpful to do so—had looked over at Robins with an expression of desperate appeal. Robins had picked up on this and had offered an explanation, though unfortunately it was not one that Slim could stay content with for very long. Telling Slim that they had postponed the funeral awaiting the arrival of some distant kin, Slim nodded at first, then started frowning. “What kin?” he asked. “I didn’t think old Doc had any kin except you.” Robins had improvised, but Slim persisted, until finally Charlie told him they had some important matters to take care of. But Slim wouldn’t be put off. “What kind of matters, Charlie? Something I should know about?” Finally Charlie had just about shut the door in Slim’s face. Whenever there was trouble, Charlie noticed, people just picked up on it. No matter how cleverly you tried to conceal it. Eye contact, conversational tone, even the way a person stands invariably changed their form enough to make even a Slim McGee start scratching his head. “You sure there ain’t something going on, Charlie?” Slim called out as the two men crossed the road to Becky’s. To which Charlie responded, “Not a thing, Slim. Not a thing.”

  But when they got to the steps of Becky’s, Robins turned to Charlie. “You think you’re going to be able to keep things quiet much longer?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No.”

  “What are you going to start telling people?”

  “I don’t know. You got any suggestions?”

  Robins frowned. “Not really.” The two men stood there. Charlie looked back over at the Texaco and at what he could see of the houses along Philippi Street.

  “Besides, you really think they’d be better off not knowing?” Robins asked. “There’s something out there, Charlie. Maybe it’s Jamey. Maybe it’s something else, dredged up from the past, from the bottom of the Allatoona River, even. But it sure as hell’s out there, and I get this feeling it’s not finished yet. You got to face the fact, Charlie, there’s no reason to think that anybody around here is safe. Especially once it gets dark.”

  “I know, I know,” Charlie said. “But what am I supposed to do—go from door to door, telling them . . . telling them . . . what?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Besides, I know how some folks’d react. Big Phil Beck and some of his good old boy friends, they’d get them up a vigilante crew and, shit, probably start shooting at anything that moved. Jamey. You. Me.” Charlie shook his head.

  “What about Tom Harlan? You can trust him, can’t you?”

  “Yeah. Besides, I’m sure he’s already got an idea something’s up.”

  At that moment the door to Becky’s was opened and Tom Harlan stepped out. He stopped short when he saw the two other men. “I was just coming to talk to you, Charlie. See if your phone was dead, too.”

  Charlie hesitated. “You want to go inside, Tom? There’s something we need to talk about.”

  Inside, Tom listened to the whole story without saving a word, except when Robins told him the part about how Jamey was old Doc’s child, including what Robins had found up in the attic. I always wondered about those windows.

  “I just never thought...never imagined it was anything like that.” Tom sat looking down at his ledger books in front of him. “I reckon maybe there’s something I should have told you before, Charlie.” And then Tom explained the various times he had checked old Doc’s garage and found his car missing. “I reckon that’s where he went them times. Up there to see that boy. It makes sense now. I just figured . . . figured we owed old Doc his privacy. Reckon maybe I was wrong about that, Charlie.”

  Then, just as the three men started to go back over the whole story again, there was a knock on the door to Becky’s. Tom said he’d get rid of whoever it was and went to the door. He stopped and turned around. “It’s Lou Anne, Charlie.” Tom unlocked the door and let her in. Just from looking at her face, Charlie knew something was wrong. “Larry’s gone. I kept trying to get you. But the line was busy and then the phone. I’m not sure, but I think it must have—”

  “Gone dead.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The line must be down,” Charlie said. “Everybody’s phone’s dead.”

  “Everybody’s?”

  Nobody said a word for a moment. Then Lou Anne went over to Charlie and took his arm. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”

  7

  Tom stayed at Becky’s to finish up some work, while Charlie took Robins and Lou Anne back to the house. Charlie let them out and told them he was going to try to find Larry. But just as he was about to pull away, he saw his son in his rearview mirror. The boy was standing in the middle of the street, about three houses down. Charlie turned the car around and drove to him. “You okay, son?”

  Larry nodded at his dad, but his eyes looked dazed and confused, as if he weren’t sure that it really was his father.

  “Get in. I’ll drive you home.”

  Larry did. Charlie was on the point of taking him to task
for sneaking off, but seeing how the boy was acting, decided to put it off. “Did you find Jamey?”

  Larry nodded yes. He was staring out the window.

  “Where was he?”

  “Down by the river.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Out there. In the woods.”

  “What happened, son?”

  Larry shook his head, his eyes still fixed on some distant point in space. “Nothing.”

  “Larry? Son? What’s—”

  Suddenly Larry turned and looked at his father. “Dad,” he whispered, “something terrible’s going to happen tonight. I know it is. Something…” The boy stopped.

  Charlie was on the point of saying, “No, son. Nothing’s going to happen. I can take care of it.” But as he looked into his son’s eyes, he remembered what Larry had whispered through his tears to him that morning, standing at the edge of Charlie’s bed, the words: “Why did you lie to me?” Charlie wasn’t going to lie to him anymore. He looked away. “Well, I guess we got to do our best, son. To keep it from happening. Sometimes that’s all a man can do.”

  Back at the house, Larry repeated to his parents and Robins what Jamey had told him down by the river. The hardest part for Larry to get out, and the only place where he stumbled, were the words Jamey had spoken to him at the last. “He said he came from the well.”

  “What did he mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Larry lied.

  Lou Anne’s face turned pale. She looked at Charlie, then got up and went to the window. She stood there for a moment and then, without saying a word, walked out of the living room.

  Robins glanced over at Charlie uneasily. Then Robins, too, stood up and walked into the kitchen. Charlie followed him. “Have you ever heard of a case like that boy’s. . . the one down in Milledgeville? Of somebody just healing up like that?”