Before the Devil Fell

by Neil Olson

I’ll see you guys later.

  Not if I see you first.

  The adults turn their backs on him. A terrible change is taking place. He knows that when they look at him again it will be with hideous faces, and he must run. To the door? He cannot see one. The stairs? No, not the stairs. But out, somehow. He must go, now.

  His hand striking the bedpost stung him to consciousness. The pillow was on the floor. The sheets were tangled around his legs. He had kicked himself awake. A thin line of light showed along the bottom of the window shade. And there was the lingering impression of half a dozen shadows, huddled around the bed. Who disappeared into the room’s dark corners just as his eyes sought them.

  “That’s right, hide, you miserable...”

  Will sat up, examining his reddened knuckles. He was collecting a fine set of bruises. Who knew that dealing with the otherworldly was so much like a street fight? He reached over and tugged the shade, sending it flapping upward. The blaze of light was dazzling. And yet even at midmorning, it had a yellowy autumn cast. The sun was already losing strength. The red and orange leaves would soon be brown, then gone. The tree limbs bare. The long season of darkness was coming. And today was the day.

  * * *

  Muriel slammed the Subaru’s hatchback, where a load of gear was piled. She froze when she saw Will coming up the drive, as if he was one of the specters from his dreams.

  “Do I look that bad?”

  She smiled, shaking off the wariness.

  “Would you believe I didn’t recognize you for a second?”

  “All too easily,” he replied, leaning on the car, hands jammed in his pockets. Despite the sun, it was cold. “Off to your mom’s again?”

  She tipped her head sadly and walked over to him.

  “This could be it. I’ll need to be there as long as it takes.”

  “I’m sorry, Mure.”

  “She’s done well for a Brown. Most of us don’t make eighty. I sure don’t plan to.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m just sorry to leave you alone with these crazies,” she said, brushing his hair lightly with the back of her weathered hand. “You know what today is, right?”

  “The day Johnny died.” He hesitated a moment. “Or do I say ‘Daddy’?”

  “She finally told you.” Muriel seemed almost grieved by the news. “About time.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “Wasn’t my place—it had to come from her.” Which was true, of course. “Was it a bad scene?”

  “No,” he assured her. “It was all right. She seemed to think I already knew.”

  “Does it upset you?”

  “It’s strange, but so much is strange right now.”

  “It doesn’t make Joe any less your father. But you know that. Poor Joe.”

  “That’s funny coming from you,” he replied.

  “What? I got nothing against him. Except he’s mean, and I can’t forgive him for ditching you.”

  “Right, besides that.”

  “He hasn’t had an easy time. How you doing? After the other night?”

  “Well, I’m still here.”

  “Any more visits from Mike Conti?”

  “Not so far.”

  “Soon as they give you the all clear,” Muriel said, “get out of here and don’t come back. This place is poison. These people. Every one of them can go to hell.”

  “Why don’t you leave?”

  He waited for the usual response. She had spent her whole life here. Some people were meant to go and some to stay. Instead, she surprised him again.

  “I’m working myself up to it,” Muriel said. She glanced at him mischievously. “Hey, maybe I’ll crash with you in New York. What do you say?”

  “My place is a dump,” Will replied with a smile. “But you could have the couch for a couple of days.”

  “No, I’m kidding. I’m not fit to live with other people. Though maybe you and me could do it. I imagined that once, when you were little. Getting you away from all this.”

  “What, kidnapping me?”

  “Rescuing is the word I had in mind. But thanks for making it sound creepy.”

  “Mure,” he laughed, squeezing her shoulder. “You did rescue me. But that would have been illegal.”

  “Why did you come over here?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Johnny said if I ever needed to know anything I should ask you.”

  “Johnny? When?”

  “Last night,” he replied, realizing his playful tone was not reaching her. “In a dream.”

  “Don’t joke about that,” she said, in almost-menacing voice.

  “Who said I was joking?” But he could see that her menace was hiding hurt. “I’m sorry. It was just a bad dream.”

  “Johnny, huh? He told you to ask me something?”

  Something new entered her voice. Curiosity, or even hope. This quick succession of disorderly emotions unsettled him. Clearly Johnny had been more than a casual fling for young Muriel, and he was sorry to have toyed with her.

  “It was more like I was remembering stuff about him. Things he said.”

  “He was crazy about you, Willie. He never made a big show of it, but he loved you.”

  Will had to swallow back whatever surged up in him before he could speak.

  “Is that why he was going to use me in his summoning? Because he loved me?”

  “No, you’ve got that wrong.”

  “So correct me. Oh right, you can’t.”

  “If you’re talking about that silly oath,” she said, biting off the words, “I don’t give a shit about that.” Did he believe her words, or her manner? Which was becoming more and more agitated. He did not want to hurt her, not Muriel.

  “What is it you think you know?” she demanded.

  “That Johnny was coming upstairs to get me when the lightning hit.”

  “You’re right,” Muriel said, leaning right into him. “To get you out of that house.”

  This was the problem with memory. It distorted everything. He could not reconcile the big, threatening Johnny of his dreams with the worried and loving man his mother and Muriel were trying to sell him. If he could have, he would have figured this part out long before.

  “Johnny was your accomplice.”

  “More like I was his. I was just your wannabe momma—he was your real dad. But neither of us trusted those nuts.”

  “Those nuts, like my mother?”

  “Not her,” Muriel scoffed. “She was just a mess.”

  Could this be right? Could it be the truth?

  “Who was the leader, then? That night. If it wasn’t Johnny, who led the prayer?”

  She closed her eyes and stepped back.

  “I wasn’t in the house. Johnny didn’t tell me everything.”

  “You have no idea?”

  “I don’t want you thinking about this.”

  “Too late,” he shot back, advancing toward her. “If you weren’t there, then you don’t know if Johnny might have been doing it after all. Playing some kind of double game with all of you.”

  “No,” she maintained. “He was pretending to go along with them, but he was only there to get you. We were going to take you somewhere, until things settled down.”

  “How would that have worked?”

  “But they knew,” Muriel said desperately, still backing away from him. Driving her fingers up into her hair and tugging back the skin on her face. “They knew what we were up to, and they killed him.”

  “No, it was the lightning.”

  “Yes, the lightning. And I was in shock. Sitting out there in the car, waiting for him. Waiting for you. Then seeing that white flash and hearing the screaming.” She was going through it all again, hardly looking at him. “And when they told me, when he tol
d me what had happened, and that I had to keep quiet, I just went along.”

  “Who?”

  “Like a frightened child,” she growled. “Like a coward.”

  “Who? Who told you to keep quiet?”

  “That old man,” she shouted. Then she turned on her heel, took three quick strides and collapsed. Will rushed to her side. She had fallen so heavily that he did not know what to expect. But when he got her sitting upright, her eyes were open, and her face was calm. He even detected a faint smile. As if she had come through the other side of something and was proud of herself. She tried to stand but he held her down.

  “You’re shaking,” Muriel said. “It’s okay, Willie, I’m fine. In fact, I’ve never been better.”

  “I shouldn’t have made you speak about that.”

  “It’s over,” she said firmly, tipping her head back on his shoulder and looking up at him with a soft expression. Her eyes just inches from his. “That’s all over now. Those words don’t hold me anymore. It’s broken.”

  Could it happen like that? One will overthrowing another? He wished he knew the rules. Sam would know. And where was Sam, damn it?

  “Who was the man?” he asked cautiously, testing her truth. “The old man?”

  She blinked a few times, studying him with those hazel eyes. As if whatever mental victory she had achieved had wiped away the last few minutes.

  “Who led the ceremony?”

  “I don’t really know, honey. But I think it was Doc Chester. I’m pretty sure.”

  “And he’s the one who made you take the oath?”

  “Corralling us like cattle,” she mumbled in disgust. “Which is what we were, I guess. Explaining how nobody outside the circle would understand. We had to keep it to ourselves. I don’t think we knew what we were promising. I sure didn’t.”

  Doc Chester. It made sense. He was the elder of the group, knowledgeable about other cultures. It was he and Johnny who had brought new ideas to the circle, new rituals. And Abby had said that he owned a ceremonial robe.

  “He’s dead,” said Will. Muriel nodded.

  “There’s nothing for you to do,” she said. “There never was. Now help me up.”

  Will relented and tugged her to her feet. After a moment or two of getting her balance she seemed fine. Better than fine. Flushed and energetic, and ready to fight the world.

  “You should lie down for a bit,” Will said.

  “No can do. I got to hit the road. Couldn’t forgive myself if she died without me there. I’m the last child left.”

  “You need me to come with you?”

  “You sweet kid,” she answered, reaching out and holding him by the shirt collar. “That would get you out of here, anyway. But no, you need to be with your mom. You need not to go out tonight. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Tonight’s the anniversary. But they’re all dead.”

  “Not quite all of them. Look what Eddie almost did. And there are children. How about Jimmy? You’ve made a lot of enemies.”

  “I know.”

  “Stay home tonight. Stay safe. Promise me.”

  “I already promised Abby,” he said.

  She released her grip and smiled at him.

  “Good boy.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Clouds rolled in. Despite the sunny morning, Will had been expecting them. A gray sky felt right for this evening, though no rain was forecast.

  “Go over and check on her,” said Abigail. “You’ll feel better.”

  She sat on the green sofa with her feet pulled up and a sketch pad in her lap. The wreckage of an early dinner was still on the table. Neither of them had much appetite, and Will had been too lazy to clean up. He rolled a half-empty beer bottle between his hands.

  “She’s not there,” he replied. “I haven’t seen her for a couple of days.”

  “The lights are on.”

  That didn’t necessarily mean anything, but it caught his wandering attention. His mind was unsettled. Thoughts circled the pile of inert facts like crows around carrion. Diving in now and then for an indigestible bite. He had learned some things, but how did they help him? How did they tell him who or what to trust?

  “She was supposed to come here when she had more to say.”

  “Maybe she wants you to chase her,” said Abby. Making it a romantic thing. Missing the point. Good old Ma. He was glad to see her sketching again, glad that the two of them had made their peace. They could never get back what they had lost, but they could still be friends. No small thing. Yet she was little help to him in this crisis. Sam and Muriel had abandoned him, both for their own good reasons. But on this particular night, he felt terribly alone. His body had not stopped vibrating since Eddie Price pointed that gun at him. Meaning to kill him. He tried to hide it from Abby, but could not manage to any longer. His skin went hot and cold, like a fever he needed to burn off, but how? Surely not by staying locked inside all night.

  “Did Muriel say any more about Johnny?” his mother asked.

  Johnny. His father. Another thing he had learned, but to what end? He hadn’t really known the man. It did not change his relationship with Joe, except to make it more distant. It did make Johnny’s death that much more terrible. But no less mysterious.

  “What you said,” Will replied. “That he wouldn’t have hurt me. That he was coming upstairs to, um, protect me.” Better to put it like that, he figured, than to say that her best friend and ex-lover meant to steal her child.

  “That seems right,” she said, sitting up and leaning toward him. “That sounds more like the truth. Do you believe it?”

  But his ravenous thoughts veered off after a new target.

  “What did you think of Doc Chester?”

  “Doc?” She smiled a little. “He was a good guy. Smart as hell. Liked the girls too much, but then, they liked him.”

  “You included?”

  “Nah, I was too close to Nancy. But plenty of the others. Louise Brown was mad for him. Not back then, I mean later. Right before he took up with Sally Price.”

  “Should have stuck with Louise,” Will observed. “Might have lived longer. What about other women in the circle?”

  “Louise, Liza Stafford, Jenny Branford.” Abby ticked them off finger by finger. “Maybe Molly. She said no, but I was never sure.”

  “All of the women but you,” he said.

  “I guess.” She looked a little perplexed, like she hadn’t thought of that before. “It was a different time—there was a lot of sleeping around.”

  “Everybody looked up to him,” Will stated, rather than asked.

  “Sure. He had this calming, grown-up manner. And a doctorate in, like, anthropology. Or maybe archeology, I don’t remember. He taught us all a lot.”

  “So he had a certain degree of control over the group?”

  “Wait, you’re thinking... No, honey, Doc was a good man.”

  “You think everybody was good,” he said impatiently. “But somebody was up to no good that night.”

  “He went and got you from the field,” she answered weakly.

  He had. Did that exonerate or implicate him? Had Will fallen under the spell of this theory too quickly? It fit in many ways, but also left questions. What it mostly left him was nowhere to go. The man was dead. He could extract no revenge, or even explanation. Unless Nancy Chester knew something. He lifted the beer bottle to his mouth, then put it down again.

  “How old was Doc?”

  “When he died? Early sixties, I guess. Too old to still be fooling around.”

  “So he was what, forty back then?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “Not even. He always seemed older.”

  That old man. Would a nineteen-year-old girl think of a man that age as old? And wasn’t a dead
man exactly the direction Muriel would point him? Freeing him from both doubt and danger. Doc was a seeker, like Johnny, and clearly full of himself. But he was mature, calm. Whereas the summoning that night had a recklessness about it. Will stood up.

  “I’m going to check on Sam.”

  “Good,” Abby replied. “Bring her back here. She shouldn’t be in that big house alone.”

  “Let’s see if she’s even there.”

  Through the cold glass of the back door he could see his mother standing in the kitchen archway. Exactly where the ruined specter of Christine Jordan had stood, moaning his name. What shadows would he see this night? What might be waiting for him in that dark field beyond the terrace?

  “Come right back,” said Abigail pensively.

  “I will,” he lied.

  Clouds moved swift and low across the night sky. Black pines swayed. Dead leaves scuttled away from his marching feet. He crossed the broad yard unchallenged, and stepped carefully through the trees. The porch light was on. The Honda was sitting in the driveway, yet Will was certain that Sam was not in the house. He could not feel her presence.

  The front door was unlocked. Possibly an invitation. More likely acknowledgment of how useless locks were in a town full of witches. The front hall was dim and quiet. The parlor, dining room and kitchen were empty. He stood in the stairwell, thinking to call her name, but why? If she was there, she would have sensed his arrival. If she wanted to hide, he would not find her. Will went into the study.

  The desk lamp was on. The leather chair protested as he sat down. Their books and notes were still on the desk. He picked up the demonology and flipped through it. Then noticed that the scrap of paper marking the Murmux/Murmur entry was gone. He looked again at the illustration of the hooded rider on the huge, ugly bird and felt an involuntary shiver. He slapped the volume closed and went to their notebooks. In the one Sam had been using, the passage translating the Murmur entry had been torn out. In his own, the page on which he had written the eleven suspected coven members was likewise missing. Someone might have come in and taken just those pages, but why? And why remove the bookmark? More likely Sam had removed all of these to keep them from prying eyes.

  Will gazed about the room. One of the framed photographs was crooked again. He stood and went to it. A gray, grainy shot, one of the oldest in the room. A large white clapboard house filled the background. In front of it were four figures. The tallest was a middle-aged man in a white shirt and suspenders, with a haunted expression. His hands were on the shoulders of two little blonde girls, smiling shyly at the camera. To their right was a pale-haired boy, possibly a brother or other relation, tipping his head to one side. Will began to straighten it, then on impulse lifted it from the wall and carried it to the desk.