Before the Devil Fell

by Neil Olson

  He turned away from the grave, turned a slow circle again. No older woman. He was alone. What had she been trying to tell him? Why had his steps directed him to this place? Only one idea occurred to Will.

  * * *

  She opened the door after his second ring. He hadn’t seen Molly Jordan in ten years or more, and was startled by how much she had aged. Her face was thicker, her hair grayer, and she gazed blankly at him for a moment or two. Then smiled. It was a brittle smile, but did not seem false, nor did she appear surprised.

  “Will. You’re soaked.”

  He looked down at his wet clothes. Why had he come here like this? Why hadn’t he gone home and changed? It was as if he traveled to her doorstep in a dream and was only waking now. Yet if he had thought too much, he would not have come.

  “Sorry, I should have called. I was out running and saw the house...”

  “Come in.”

  She stepped back and pulled the door open farther. The big wooden door, still painted forest green, with that useless little window near the top.

  “I don’t want to interrupt anything.”

  “Really, it’s fine. Please come in.”

  She put a dish towel on a kitchen chair and made him sit. Then busied herself making tea. More tea. If he got out of this town alive, he would never drink tea again. The kitchen was as he remembered. The creamy beige walls, blue Dutch tiles around the counters and appliances. He could vaguely remember Christine moving about in this space, but only vaguely. She was slender, wasn’t she? He was not certain anymore. He had looked at her picture in his high school yearbook the night before, and been surprised to find it not quite matching up with the one in his dreams. He was losing her, making her up.

  Molly brought the cups to the table and started talking, about anything. She didn’t mention the divorce, but Will had heard about it. Her older son, the banker, had moved from Boston to Charlotte. Which meant seeing less of her grandchildren. The younger son was doing something with an environmental group in Boulder. She didn’t ask why he had come, though the question hung in the air between them.

  “How is Abby?” she finally said.

  “She’s doing really well,” Will assured her. “Almost back to her old self.”

  “I have to go over and see her,” Molly said firmly, as if trying to convince them both. “It’s been so long.”

  Molly had been a core member of the spirit circle, but her relationship with the Conner family had not survived her daughter’s death. She had been friendly to Will the two or three times he had bumped into her since, but she avoided Abby’s house.

  “Will you leave now?” she asked, looking at him closely. The way all the women around here seemed to do. “Now that she’s better?”

  It was not such a strange question, but her leaping to it so swiftly felt odd. Lines were forming. The people who wanted him to stay and figure things out. Which was really only Sam and himself, although you might throw the Price women in there. And the people who wanted him gone. Which was pretty much everyone else.

  “Not yet,” Will answered, returning her gaze as steadily as he could manage. “She needs me a little while longer. And maybe I need to be here.”

  “Do you like coming back?”

  “There are people I like to see. But not really, no.”

  “You were smart to get away,” she said, breaking eye contact. Sipping her tea. “I don’t know why I don’t leave.”

  “Some people feel attached to the place. Like they couldn’t live anywhere else.”

  “The old families, yes. But that’s not us. My sons have gone. My husband too, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Just me now, and this house is too big for one.”

  “You don’t want to leave Christine,” he said, his mouth ahead of his brain. But her expression turned warm, and she put her hand on his knee.

  “That’s right. I think that’s just what it is. It’s nice that you understand.”

  “She’s very...” Will fumbled for the right word. “She’s very present to me when I’m here. Well, all the time, but especially here.”

  “You don’t still...” A worried look came over Molly’s face and she squeezed his knee, seemingly without knowing. “You’ve moved on, haven’t you? You have a girlfriend or fiancée or something?”

  “Sure,” he replied awkwardly. It was weird having her ask him these questions. Weird, too, that he had not thought of Helen once since he’d been home.

  “It was so long ago. Of course, you meant the world to her. Dear God, she was mad about you. Wanting to spend every moment with you that she could. Picking colleges just to be close to where you were. It made me a little nuts.”

  “She meant a lot to me too.”

  “Oh, I know that. I know that, Will. It’s just that you were both so young. And it was useless for me to say that you don’t spend the rest of your life with your high school sweetheart. Or anyway, it doesn’t usually work that way.”

  None of it was ill meant. She was just spilling things out of her bag of grief. Probably grateful to talk about it, and sensing the same desire in him. Yet he felt bludgeoned. Incapable of speech. As sick in body and spirit as if the news of Christine’s death had just reached him.

  “I’m sorry, is this all too much?” Molly asked.

  “No, it’s...”

  “Do you see her?”

  There were darting spots in his vision, and he closed his eyes. Trying hard to disappear from this place, but the pressure of her hand on his leg kept him tethered. Something both comforting and unsettling about that pressure.

  “I see her sometimes,” Molly went on. “Or just feel her close by. Sometimes she’s hurt and needs my help. But I can’t help her.”

  “I know,” he whispered. He tried to say more but all that emerged was a sob. And then she was holding him while he cried. Pulling him against her and making soothing noises while his whole body shook. He tried to stop several times but could not, until his ribs ached and he pulled desperately for air. At length he drew away from her. Shamed. Wanting to flee, but knowing that would not be right.

  “What does it mean?” he asked at last.

  “I’m not sure,” Molly mused. Looking a bit lost, or bereft. “I think it means we haven’t let her go. Maybe we’re holding her here.”

  What a hideous thought. He did not want to believe it, but there was poor Alice. Wandering the woods. Who was keeping her?

  “How do we release her?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know, but we have to try. It’s not fair to any of us, going on like this. Poor Will, I think I’ve made you feel worse for coming here.”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yes,” he replied after a moment. Looking at her again. “You can tell me what you were all doing the night Johnny Payson died.”

  She nodded, unsurprised by the question. But the nodding motion mutated somehow into a shaking of the head.

  “Of course you want to know. The only wonder is you waited this long. Or maybe you’ve been asking others?”

  “Actually, you’re the first,” Will told her. “Believe it or not. I mean, besides my mother.”

  “Lucky me. Well, I’m honored, but I can’t. I’m sorry. We agreed not to talk about it.”

  “I was there, Mrs. Jordan.”

  “Molly, please. I know you were there.”

  “I was too young to understand what was happening, but it’s never left me. I have a right to know.”

  She closed her eyes, pained lines gathering in her forehead.

  “You have a right, no question. But you misunderstand. It wasn’t a casual agreement.” She opened her eyes again but looked away from him, thumb and finger rubbing the bridge of her nose. “More like an oath.”

  “You swore an oath? Why?”

&nbs
p; “It was his idea. We all went along. I can’t say any more.”

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  “I can’t say any more,” Molly replied harshly. Her head was clearly hurting her badly, and she had gone pale. He should stop now, but the deflection was driving him mad. Why did everyone have a right to know what had happened to him, except him? Maybe if she did not have to tell, but only confirm?

  “You called something. Johnny brought a spell and you summoned something.”

  “I didn’t know what we were doing,” she said. “Most of us didn’t understand.”

  “But something came.”

  “He said it didn’t,” she moaned. Closing her eyes again and rocking back and forth in the chair. “He said we failed. But there was this...”

  “Go ahead.”

  “After the lightning. Right after, while we were still in shock. Before we understood what happened. Something rose up in that room. We all felt it. Some powerful presence. It was—”

  She bolted up from her chair and rushed to the sink, vomiting tea. Then sagged weakly against the counter. Will rushed to her before she reached the floor, and held her, unsure what to do. Within a few moments, he felt strength return to her limbs.

  “Do you need to lie down?”

  “No,” she said hoarsely. “Just help me back to the table.”

  She hardly needed help and was fully under her own power by the time she sat again. But she was still pale, and very worn.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you like that,” he said.

  “I had it coming. We all do, for whatever we did to you. I thought Christine was my punishment. I thought that would be enough. But I guess it doesn’t end.”

  “Please don’t talk like that. Do you need help? Can I get you anything?”

  “You need to go.”

  He waited another half a minute, then stood.

  “I’m sorry I troubled you, Molly. It wasn’t what I intended.”

  “No, Will, I mean go. Get away from here. You want to understand, I know. You’re a seeker, just like...like some men are. But it’s better to let some things be, if you can. Let us alone—we’ve suffered enough. You’ve suffered enough. Leave this town. Just leave.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “It’s possible,” Samantha said. Looking away from the demonology long enough to consider the question. “Depending on the kind of oath and how it was given. Trying to break it could definitely make you sick like that. More than sick.”

  “What?” asked Will, straightening the framed photographs on the wall. A twitchy habit of his. “Stroke? Heart attack? Spontaneous combustion?”

  “You can laugh.”

  “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

  She shrugged and turned her face to the window. It was a bright day, but little light penetrated the room. Had Tom Hall liked it that way? Would he be offended that they commandeered his study to discuss such fanciful matters? Will sat down across the desk from Sam, his attention drawn back to the names on a sheet of paper. He tapped each one with his pen, counting silently for the fourth or fifth time.

  “You can keep doing that,” she said. “The number isn’t going to change.”

  “Abigail Conner,” Will read. “John Payson, Doug Payson. Eliza Stafford. Jenny Duffy. Louise Brown. Doc and Nancy Chester. Molly Jordan. Marty Branford. That’s ten. We’re missing two.”

  “Because Jimmy said so?”

  “Why would he make that up?” Will asked. “Besides, twelve is the traditional number for a coven.”

  “You would know,” she sighed. “Eddie Price.”

  Big Eddie. Shambling and social until the day he “accidentally” shot his best friend, Henry “Doc” Chester. Since then he had become a bitter, angry lout.

  “You know that or you’re guessing?” asked Will.

  “He was around, wasn’t he? And you don’t have a Price on there.”

  “So?”

  “Look,” she said, stabbing a finger at the list. “You’ve got all six of the other families.”

  He checked. If his mother stood in for the Halls, it was true.

  “Does that matter?” he asked, “having all the families? Does that add strength to the circle or something?”

  “If you need to ask that, you haven’t been paying attention to anything you’ve heard.”

  “Then we add Eddie,” he said finally. “Johnny gets killed by lightning that night. Four years later, his brother Doug throws himself out a window. Eliza Stafford drowns in Chebacco Lake, what, a couple of years after that?”

  “Yeah, about then,” Sam agreed sullenly. Rubbing the edge of the Latin dictionary with her thumb. His obsession with identifying the coven members and their fates made her uncomfortable, but she let him go on.

  “Another couple of years and Jenny Duffy dies of lung cancer. Then a gap of a dozen years until Eddie shoots Doc Chester. Then Louise Brown has a heart attack in her garden. And last Christmas Marty Branford dies of a gas leak in his house. That’s seven of them.”

  “Can’t argue with your math.”

  “Seven counting Johnny,” Will went on. “Over twenty-seven years. Some of them pretty odd or violent deaths. Plus Nancy Chester getting hit by an unknown driver.”

  He did not add Christine Jordan’s death in her mother’s car. Or Abby falling down the stairs. It was too painful to include those. Yet if he did include them, that left only Eddie Price unscathed. Unless you counted killing Doc as the bad thing that had happened to him.

  “And we’re still missing our twelfth,” he mused aloud.

  “And where is any of this getting us?”

  “I’m trying to understand. Isn’t that what all of this is about? Understanding what’s happened so that we can...”

  “So that we can what?” she challenged. Blue eyes boring into him. “The important thing is making you right. Getting rid of whatever is hounding you.”

  “You don’t think information is useful?”

  “It might be. Anything might be useful. But look, you’re just guessing. The people who know are the people who were there.”

  “Right,” he snapped. “Which is why I’m trying to figure out who they are.”

  “But think,” she said, pleading now. “Molly said they all took the oath. Which means none of them is going to be able to tell you. Not even your mother. Why do you think she’s ducked it all these times? Why does she just get tired and can’t speak? About something so important to you?”

  He slumped back in the hard wooden chair. She was saying no more than he had been thinking since leaving Molly’s house. If it was true, it would be true for all of them. In a funny way, it would let his mother off the hook. But he was not willing to swallow it yet. Both because of how far-fetched the idea was—an oath that sealed their lips for thirty years!—and because he so desperately wanted the truth. Whatever Sam thought, Will was convinced that understanding what happened that long-ago night was the key to everything.

  She slapped her hand down on the old tome. Releasing dust motes into the shaft of golden light reflecting off the yellow basswood outside the window.

  “This book,” she said.

  “Be careful with that, it’s fragile.”

  “Have you looked at it at all?”

  “Yes. The fifteen minutes you were in the kitchen.”

  Cleaning up days’ worth of dishes, she said, but he was sure he could hear her on the telephone. So what? She was allowed to talk to people. Yet he kept listening for the front door. As if afraid of being ambushed.

  “And?” Samantha asked.

  “What did Muriel say to you the other night?”

  Now she slumped back in her grandfather’s leather chair, hissing like a stuck balloon.

  “Hell, William, what does it matter?”

 
“It’s a secret then?” he said casually, toying with his pen. He could sense her ready to leap over the table and shake him in frustration.

  “She told me to leave you alone. That I was filling your head with bad ideas. Upsetting you about stuff that was better left undisturbed.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing, I just listened. Wasn’t much point in trying to argue. She was pretty, um, vehement?”

  “That’s a good word for Mure,” he said, ready to let it go. Then his brain veered back. “She wasn’t threatening you or anything?”

  “I don’t know what she thought she was doing. She likes to act tough.”

  “You don’t think she is?”

  Sam gave him a hard look. It always surprised him when her soft eyes got stony like that.

  “I’m not threatened by her,” she said.

  Will returned her gaze, waiting for her to give up something more. Nothing more came. Turning, his eye caught one of the four black-and-white photographs he’d just been straightening. The only hangings in this room of bookcases. A man and woman on a porch, smiling. He felt a chill and looked away. She was watching him, so he tipped his head at the book.

  “I didn’t start translating,” he said, “just tried to get an overall sense. It’s an introduction to the subject of demons, then a list of types and names. I don’t see anything that looks like a formula for calling them. Or for sending them away.”

  She bit her lip and started turning pages. Tense, annoyed.

  “Evelyn gave it to us for a reason,” Sam insisted. Us, Will noted. She had thrown in with him completely. As if the would-be curse were upon her also. “Do you recognize any of these?”

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  She stopped at the fourth woodblock. A five-pointed star, bounded by a double circle, with lettering between the two rings. Overlaid with other lines and small circles.

  “Astaroth,” Will said. “Master of knowledge, especially the sciences. He’ll answer any question put to him, but he’ll seduce you all the while. Appealing to your pride.”