The Devil's Lullaby

by Chris Scalise

  Jack nodded.

  “Terrific. If I start to see any particular visions or pick up any unfamiliar energies, I may ask you questions to help me understand and interpret what I’m sensing. Just try your best while keeping the eye contact, and try not to let your mind wander. If anything is unclear or unfamiliar to you, just shake your head and I’ll move on.

  “Sometimes the meaning behind these visions isn’t immediately clear, and that’s okay. We’re just a bunch of small-minded mortals trying to make sense of images from an immortal space, and so there are bound to be bumps in the road. But as long as we stay focused, these things tend to become more clear with each new revelation. Does that make sense?”

  Jack nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Great. Now before I get started, is there anything in particular you were hoping to achieve today? This will give me an idea of where to focus my consciousness. Since we haven’t begun the meditation, I don’t have much of a read on you just yet, but I do sense an underlying sadness in you. I get the sense that you go to great lengths to maintain a sense of control in your life, and you do this by focusing a lot on your health and wellness and by working hard to maintain positive social interactions with the people you care about. There’s a certain peace and harmony about you that I usually only associate with vegetarians and vegans.”

  As she spoke, Jack nodded his head in agreement.

  “…and yet, there are events outside of your control that leave you feeling somewhat helpless. You’re realizing that no matter how hard you try, you can’t control everything. Is there a specific tragedy in your life that has brought these feelings to light?”

  Jack smiled. “You’re good,” he said softly. There was a slight choke in his voice.

  “A family member,” Allison said.

  He shuddered.

  Allison reached forward and whispered for him to take her hands. He did as she requested, and she gripped his palms tightly from both sides of the candlelight. “Look directly into my eyes,” she said softly before a prolonged period of meditative silence. The dancing flame obscured the man’s face, concealing the youthful radiance of his skin while highlighting the deep sadness in his eyes. To Allison, the candle in the darkness was like a magnifying glass that revealed a person’s true emotions.

  After nearly three minutes, Allison spoke. “I’m seeing an image of a small child running in the grass. With each footstep, the child grows taller. This gives me the impression that you’re trying to communicate with a child. Not necessarily a young child or even a young adult, but someone whose upbringing you were responsible for.”

  Jack nodded. His hands remained calm. “Are you seeing a boy or a girl?” he asked.

  Allison paused. Sometimes her clients would ask her these types of blunt questions just to test her abilities and confirm that she was the real deal. These questions didn’t intimidate her in the slightest.

  “In my vision,” she said, “I see the child from behind, running across the grass as if searching for you or trying to reunite with you. I can’t see the face, but the child has short hair. This leads me to believe that I’m looking at a young boy.”

  The faint twitch in his eye suggested that Jack was disappointed by the answer. Before he even had the chance to open his mouth and reply, Allison continued.

  “However, I’m definitely detecting a feminine energy,” she said. “The face and head are fairly nondescript, as is common in these types of visions, so it can be difficult to determine gender just based on the visual. But if I look deeper...” she took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m almost certain it’s a girl. In fact, I’d be willing to bet on it.”

  “What’s her name?” Jack asked, almost in an interrogative fashion.

  There was another pause. “I’ll see if I can get a name, but these types of visions don’t typically involve audible information. It’s mostly symbolism and energy and interpretation.”

  The man frowned. Clearly his skepticism was growing.

  Allison took another deep breath. “I’m getting an image of a crescent moon. This typically indicates a letter C. Does the child’s name begin with C?”

  Jack didn’t answer, but his hand trembled slightly.

  “If you don’t help me with these visions,” Allison scolded, “then I can’t possibly know how to interpret them. So please answer my next question honestly. “Is the child’s name Cassidy?”

  The man nodded. To Allison’s surprise, he had an amused look on his face.

  “She’s alive, isn’t she?” Allison continued.

  “Why would you think that?” Jack inquired.

  “Because I don’t feel like I’m communicating with her spirit. I feel like I’m communicating with spirits that are watching over her, trying to protect her from some imminent danger. Tell me, why is your daughter in danger?”

  Jack released his grip on Allison’s hands and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms and studied her. “You put on a good show,” he said finally. “Consider me impressed.”

  Allison studied his distorted face in the candlelight, confused and somewhat taken aback.

  Nevertheless, she remained grounded. “I’m not sure I understand,” she said in a soft voice. “Your daughter is in danger. You want to end the reading now?”

  “Listen, Miss Lockwood, my success is largely due to the fact that I always put aside the bullshit and get straight to the point. I’d like to hire you for a very important job. You obviously know who I am, so you obviously know I can afford to pay you handsomely.”

  Allison reflexively crossed one leg over the other. “Okay, I don’t know what kind of backroom you think I’m running here, but...”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Jack interrupted, “I’m not propositioning you, at least not in the way you’re implying. For the past month, I’ve been looking into every phony psychic, evangelist, and magician in town, and you’re the first one who’s genuinely impressed me with your bullshitting abilities. So I’m hoping you’ll help me bring down a fellow con.”

  Allison stood up. “Look, if you’re not receptive to the reading, then unfortunately I can’t help you. I think it’s best we cut this short.”

  Jack shuffled in his chair and pulled the silver money clip from his pocket once again. He retrieved five crisp hundred-dollar bills and placed them on the table right beside the flickering candle. He laid them side by side to ensure that their full value was in plain sight. Then he waved his hands over them like a model presenting a prize on a game show. “This is all yours if you just tell me how you got all of that information about me so quickly.”

  Allison stood beside the beaded curtain and glared down at the cash. This guy had some serious fuck-you money, but Allison was still skeptical of the whole arrangement. “What makes you think this is all a ruse?” she asked, crossing her arms. “I don’t know you from Adam, and I just gave you intimate details about your family.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s why I want you for this job. You’re obviously not one of those three-card Monte hacks who cons gullible tourists with dime-store tricks. You’re the real deal. I took every precaution to make sure you couldn’t read up on me. I came unannounced. I paid with cash. I made sure to keep my driver’s license out of sight. And it’s not like I have a famous face.” He leaned back and chuckled.

  “And look,” he continued, “you can relax. I know this is a con, but I honestly don’t care. I’m not interested in outing you. I’m interested in finding a talented person like yourself to help me take down a really bad guy. That’s all this is. No one is ever even going to know that I met you.”

  Allison stared down at the five bills on the table and contemplated her options. Five hundred dollars was nearly half her rent, and business was slow. Plus, she knew for a fact that this guy was filthy rich. She approached the table, grabbed the five bills and turned back toward the beaded curtains. “You want to know how I did it? Blow out the candle and follow me.”

  She led him back into the
shop and gestured toward the small, mounted dome camera that hung from the ceiling, its shiny lens pointed at the entry door. “You see that camera?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s a high-res, motion-sensitive security camera. It photographs everyone who comes in here, and the quality is way better than any iPhone camera.”

  “Okay,” Jack said with a nod.

  “So every photo is sent straight to my iPad over here.” She walked over to the register and pointed at her point-of-sale tablet. “All I have to do is load it into my facial recognition program and it almost always comes up with a bunch of useful Google results. Social media profiles, personal websites, blogs, whatever. In your case, the first result was actually a Wikipedia page, which doesn’t happen very often but makes my job a hell of a lot easier.

  “You’re a very important person, Mr. Sinclair. Founder of the Sinclair Steakhouse chain. Fuck, you have locations all over the country. I wanted to try your restaurant at the Bellagio, but I’m just not at a place in my life where I can spend a hundred and forty dollars on a porterhouse.”

  “You do this job for me,” Jack said, “and I’ll give you free steaks for life, plus fifty-thousand dollars. I’m curious, though. How were you able to look me up on Wikipedia so fast? I haven’t even been here ten minutes.”

  “When you sat down in the séance room,” Allison said.

  Jack laughed. “When you went to lock the front door? You were only gone a few seconds.”

  Allison nodded. “It was more than enough time to scan your security photo, find your wiki page, and determine that you’re a multimillionaire restauranteur with a 26-year-old son named Jonathan and a 22-year-old daughter named Cassidy. I also caught a glimpse of a recent Las Vegas Sun article that mentioned you were estranged from both of your children. I didn’t know which one of your kids you came here for, so I had to improvise a little bit.”

  “My son hasn’t spoken to me in ten years,” Jack said. “He still blames me for divorcing his mom. But Cassidy, she’s my pride and joy. She’s always been the light of my life, and we’re basically inseparable. In the last few weeks, though, she’s been getting tangled up with some bad people. One guy in particular has really been messing with her head. I’ve tried explaining it to her, but she won’t listen to me. She thinks he’s some kind of disciple from God. That’s why I need help from a pro. I want my baby girl back.”

  “So you want me to expose some religious nut?”

  “No,” Jack said. “I want you to expose one of this town’s biggest and most dangerous con-men: The Las Vegas Exorcist.”

  Dominic Maffiore. Allison knew him only by reputation. She had never met the guy, but they both advertised in the back pages of the same local news rags, often sharing advertising space with criminal lawyers, pot dispensaries, and erotic “massage therapists.” All in a day’s work.

  “Fifty-thousand dollars,” Jack reminded her. “If you’re willing to help me out, I’ll even give you half the money up front just to show you I’m serious. This guy plays some crazy mind games and pulls off stunts that even scare the shit out of me, and I’m a lifelong atheist. If you can just give me some concrete evidence that the guy’s a fraud, the money’s all yours.”

  Allison thought for a moment. “What do you consider concrete evidence?”

  “Anything that would hold up in a court of law. Video evidence, documents, ex-wife testimonies. I don’t fucking know. I just want my little girl back. She’s absolutely certain that the guy is some kind of heavenly ordained miracle worker, and I’m terrified of what’s going to happen if he keeps seducing her with his mind games.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on this guy, and people in his circle have actually wound up dead. Look it up for yourself. I will do whatever it takes to get her away from that psycho, but she’s a grown woman, so it’s not like I can just lock her up in her room. I have to be able to show her what a fraud he is. But I can’t do that on my own, because he’s really fucking good. That’s why I need you.”

  Allison stared down at the counter and gazed at her thoughtful reflection in the dark iPad screen. The rotating blades of the ceiling fan above her head created the illusion of a spinning halo around her head, and the whole effect was rather hypnotic.

  Jack Sinclair was offering her a tremendous sum of money, but as an entrepreneur herself, she sensed that his wealth and desperation provided the perfect opportunity for negotiation.

  “I’ll do it for a hundred grand,” she said finally. “You still only pay me twenty-five up front, but if I can actually pull off this Hail Mary, I think the extra seventy-five will be much deserved. And just to be sure, I want your guarantee in writing so that everything’s on the books. You know, from one businessperson to another.”

  She raised her head and looked into Jack’s eyes. He was smiling as though he couldn’t help but admire her brazen counteroffer.

  “Okay,” he said, “but you better come up with the kind of evidence that can sink this guy once and for all.”

  “That shouldn’t be hard. I mean, if I can impress you with just a security camera and an iPad, imagine what I can do when I’m actually trying.”

  “You think that’s what impressed me?” Jack said with a chuckle. “No, technology doesn’t impress me at all. What impressed me is your intuition. You knew that I owned one of the country’s biggest high-end steakhouse chains, and you still went with your gut instinct that I was a vegetarian. No one would guess that in their wildest dreams, and most people don’t even know that about me. Imagine what it would do to my business? See, that’s what sets you apart from all the amateurs I’ve dealt with. That’s why I want you for this job. I’ll be back tomorrow with a check and a contract. I have a really good feeling about this.”

  He turned and exited the building. Allison couldn’t help but notice that he had a certain spring in his step that hadn’t been there before. Well, she thought, this should be interesting.

  4

  In a small suburb in the heart of Henderson, Nevada, just a few short miles from Dominic’s chapel, Cassidy Sinclair made her way through each room of her rented house, turning on every light. That horrid, decomposing face was burned in her mind. It was just your imagination, she quietly assured herself.

  It was the same thing that Dominic had told her when she ran screaming back into the chapel. He had thrown his powerful arms around her and said, “My dear, you’ve just been through an extremely terrifying experience. Your mind will take a bit of time to recover, and there’s going to be some post-traumatic stress. But you’re free.”

  She desperately wanted for him to be right, but she still felt more comfortable sleeping with the lights on. If indeed her eyes were playing tricks on her, it would be much easier for them to do so in the dark. She wanted no part of that.

  As she tiptoed down the brightly lit hallway on the second floor, she slowly opened each door she passed. Some of the rooms she hadn’t even entered before. This house was a temporary rental she had acquired to get away from her possessive father and get the help she needed.

  Ever the cynical atheist, Father wanted no part of this demon business. He first tried reasoning with her. When that didn’t work, he threatened to cut her off financially. Finally, she collected all the money she had saved over the past few months—a paltry seventy thousand dollars and change—and left home for the first time in her life. No longer would he use his wealth to hold her hostage.

  She had found the house on a rental site that catered to part-time Vegas residents. Affluent Canadians and New Englanders would purchase a winter home in Vegas to escape the snow and frigid temperatures, and some of these homeowners would rent out their Vegas homes for the remainder of the year in order to cover the mortgage costs and prevent squatters from swarming in.

  The spacious two-story house was located nearly thirty miles from her father’s mansion and concealed by a labyrinth of winding residential streets and cul-de-sacs. She could relax on the grassy front law
n for hours at a time without ever worrying that someone she knew might drive by and see her. And even though the two-thousand-square-foot house was less than ten years old and in flawless condition, the homeowners were only asking seven hundred dollars a month for the rental. It was perfect.

  But there was one catch. This suburb was terrifyingly quiet, and that only fueled her ever-present discomfort. Her neighbor to the left was a senior-aged widower who only occasionally ventured outside to water the lawn, and her neighbors to the right were a young couple and a baby. Often, she could hear faint echoes of the baby’s cries in the middle of the night, and that brought her a bit of comfort. If nothing else, it reminded her that there were, in fact, other human beings in her immediate vicinity.

  When she reached the end of the hallway, she stopped cold. She was certain she heard an unfamiliar sound nearby. After pausing for nearly a minute, she turned toward the master bedroom. She heard it again. When she realized it was just a creaking floorboard, she let out a relieved laugh and marched into the bedroom.

  She quickly changed into a tank top and a pair of boxer briefs and hopped into the king-size bed. The bright light from the ceiling fan was nearly blinding, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t turning it off. Not tonight. She assured herself that she would be fine in a couple of days, but for right now, she would need the comforting embrace of bright light to wipe away all fear of the decomposing demon that may or may not have been stalking her in the hopes of a repeat possession.

  She leaned over to the nightstand and retrieved the TV remote from on top of the clock radio. Then she flicked on the 42-inch TV and situated herself beneath the heavy covers as the familiar voice of talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel filled the room. She had light, she had sound, and she had—ostensibly—freedom from a long and painful possession. As Kimmel cracked a joke about the president’s recent visit to China, Cassidy closed her eyes and silently prayed.