Imp

by Andrew Neiderman

  She thought she didn’t want this. All day long she had fought it, fought the desire to talk to Bobby, to look at him, and to have him look at her. Last night’s visit passed like a dream. Keeping the memory thin and ephemeral, she was able to avoid the guilt; but tonight, sitting here like this, watching for him, thinking about him, she could no longer deny that for which she hoped.

  She studied the shadows below, waiting for some movement, something that would send chills up her spine and bring back the exquisite sense of danger she had felt when he was here. When he didn’t come, she was disappointed. As more time passed and it became obvious to her that he probably wasn’t going to show, her disappointment turned to anger, first at herself, and then at him. She chastised herself for wanting him, for succumbing to her sinful desires. Why did she want him to come? What did she expect would happen? What did she want to happen?

  She couldn’t help but recall the way he had said, “I’m not in your bedroom.” As a result, she fantasized it. When she let herself imagine it, she saw him on the landing; she saw him talking softly to her until she let him come through the window. Where would they go but to her bed to embrace passionately? Just before she gave herself to him in her fantasy, she forced herself back to reality. It was like dreaming of falling from a tall building and then waking up before you hit the ground. She snapped to with the same abruptness.

  She got up from the windowsill and brought the window down, but she did it too vehemently and as a result, the sound was loud enough to attract Mary’s attention. Just as Faith got into her bed, Mary was at her door, coming from her own bedroom.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing. I had my window open, because it was so hot, but the bugs started coming in.”

  “Bugs?” Mary walked to the window. “Why is your screen up?” Faith hesitated. Leaving the screen up was a mistake. How would she explain it? “Have you been going out on this landing?”

  “Yes,” she said weakly. Mary opened the window and closed the screen.

  “I don’t know where your brains are sometimes. Why didn’t you simply close the screen?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think of it,” she said quickly. It wasn’t a good answer, but she couldn’t think of anything else. Mary looked about suspiciously. Faith held her breath, expecting that somehow her mother would know everything.

  “You shouldn’t go out on the landing. I’m not sure it’s safe.”

  “It didn’t feel shaky or anything.”

  “Nevertheless, I wouldn’t do it.”

  “OK,” she said, hoping that would end it. Mary turned back to the window. By the way she stood there staring down, Faith thought she might have spotted Bobby O’Neil.

  “This heat does make it hard to sleep,” Mary said, but she said it with unusual softness. There was no hint of anger in her voice; it was more like sadness. Faith opened her eyes wider and looked at her. Mary turned away from the window, embracing herself as though she were in pain. “He was killed on a night like this,” she said. Faith held her breath. Mary rarely mentioned him and almost never reminisced. She didn’t look at her when she spoke. It was as if she were talking to another part of herself. “I knew he was dead the moment I saw the police car drive up, and I thought, ‘And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shall find them no more at all.’”

  Faith sat up slowly and embraced her knees. Mary was at the foot of her bed now and the invading moonlight turned her into a chalky statue. Her hair was down and the strands lay flat over her shoulders. There was a long moment of silence, during which neither of them moved. Faith felt as though they were both captured in an eerie painting that might very well be entitled, “While Death Slipped In Between Them.” She felt a cold chill and shivered silently. Mary turned toward her slowly, her hands now clasped together and held just below her bosom.

  “I remember when they came to the door to tell me. They tried to hide their smiles, but I could see what they thought, knowing where he had been and what he had been doing. They thought I would fall apart like some weak-faced, clinging vine of a woman who had tied herself to the whims and the promises of a man,” she said, her voice harder, sharper.

  “But shouldn’t you mourn for a sinner, too?” Faith asked. She was surprised herself that she had thought of the question.

  “One who shows signs of repentance, yes; but he was so steeped in his lust that I knew he was beyond redemption. He was the Devil’s own, and when he became that, what was his, was not mine,” she added. Even in the cool moonlight, Mary’s face turned hot with passion. She came around to the side of the bed, her hand trailing along the blanket, until it reached Faith’s leg.

  “They come to you on nights like this,” she said in barely more than a whisper. “They know you’re weak and vulnerable; they know you’re lonely and afraid. You yearn for their affections, for their softness, for their strength. They talk away your resistance and you open yourself to their lusting. They spend themselves in you. Their seed is so hot it burns into your very soul and, when they withdraw, you have been contaminated with their evil.”

  Mary brought her face close to Faith’s and Faith couldn’t keep her heart from beating hard. She was certain that Mary’s fingers felt her quickened pulse.

  “Promise me you’ll be honest,” Mary said. “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good,” she said and relaxed her grip on Faith’s leg. “Good.” Faith lay back slowly. Mary turned as though in a trance. She paused when she looked at the window and then continued on out of the room, moving like a shadow, as silent as a silk curtain lifted in the breeze.

  Faith released her breath, but she was afraid to move. She lay there, cover pulled to her neck, listening. She felt if she heard Bobby O’Neil’s footsteps on the fire escape, she would scream. When she closed her eyes, she did hear herself screaming. But that was a long time ago, the memory resurrected by Mary’s remembrance of that fateful night.

  She remembered how her father had come home drunk and angry. She had seen him drunk before, but never as angry. His eyes were blazing just as Mary said they would be when the Devil took hold of him. When he looked at her, he seemed not to see her. His hair was wild and his shirt sleeves were rolled up, the shirt unbuttoned nearly all the way. Even standing six feet or so away from him, she could smell the whiskey. It was as though he had bathed in it. His face was red. Later, Mary would say the “fires of perdition” burned within him. He did act as if he were in some kind of pain; he couldn’t stand still.

  When he came through the door, he spun around. The door flew open; he nearly tore it off its hinges. Luckily, neither she nor her mother were standing nearby. Mary was in the kitchen. She heard him scream, “Mary, you bitch. Where are you?” But she didn’t come forward. Faith wanted to say something to him, get him to calm down, but she couldn’t get herself to make a sound. She could only stare at him, and he was completely disinterested in her. He went on into the kitchen, his hands clenched into fists. She wanted to follow, but she didn’t. She waited on the couch in the living room.

  He didn’t yell at Mary when he went into the kitchen. Faith could barely hear his voice. He spoke in a low tone that sounded almost soothing. She remembered being confused by that. What was he asking her? It didn’t sound like an argument, but Mary came running out of the kitchen shortly after and fled up the stairs. He followed. Faith went to the doorway of the living room just as he went by. She would never forget the look on his face—he didn’t appear angry or wild; he looked hurt, in despair, in pain. At that moment she actually felt sorry for him. Once again, she tried to speak to him, but he was on the stairway and up before she uttered a sound.

  She heard him force his way into the bedroom. Mary had locked the door. She heard their voices raised now. Mary was calling him her usual names, only this time he wasn’t taking it quietly. When Faith heard the slap and the scuffling, she we
nt to the foot of the stairs. She heard Mary’s screams, shrill and sharp, piercing the walls. She covered her ears, but that didn’t block it out, so she began to scream herself. She formed a bizarre chorus, an audience gone berserk, in sympathy, standing at the foot of the stairs, the tears streaming down her face, her fingernails digging into her scalp.

  She embraced herself and sat on the step, until the screaming and the fighting stopped. Afterward, she went back to the living room and curled up on the couch. Later that night, Mary came to her. Her face was swollen from his blows, her lips were bruised. She took Faith’s hand and made her kneel beside her on the floor. Upstairs, satiated, in a drunken stupor, he slept.

  “Pray with me,” Mary whispered. “Pray that we be saved, for the Devil is in this house and he has taken me unto him and violated me.” As though to demonstrate what had happened, she clutched at her own breasts and grimaced in pain. Faith was terrified. She looked up obediently when Mary turned her eyes to the ceiling. “Pray. Pray that the Lord brings down his sword of righteousness and delivers us from evil. Pray.”

  She prayed. She repeated Mary’s words and when she was finished, she went upstairs to sleep, leaving Mary in the living room, holding a night-long vigil.

  Two nights later, the police came to tell them he was dead; killed with the woman in the car. When they left, Mary turned to her, her eyes lit with religious ecstasy.

  “But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption.”

  She walked off in a trance, fixated on her memorized scripture. Faith couldn’t believe it all had happened and couldn’t help feeling partly responsible. Hadn’t she prayed with her, asking for this very thing? But if Mary had such power that God listened to her, then, Faith thought, Mary must be right in what she did and said.

  She hid her pregnancy from the world … wearing the tight girdles, remaining within the house during the last two months, and giving birth like a beast, squatting in the basement, screaming like a wild animal. The first time Faith saw the baby, she thought Mary was right—he was so bloody and ugly with the face of a rat. Faith fled from the scene and remained in her room trembling, nearly hysterical, until Mary came to her to tell her God had spoken to her and they would do what He had told her to do.

  Faith was stunned, hypnotized by the events. She let herself be led down to the basement again, where she knelt with Mary before the infant in the box. Three lit candles in holders were placed around it. It was the only light Mary wanted. She had the cup of wine and the wafers, and the large silver cross, which she clutched in her hand like a weapon. For a while she just held it over the infant. Faith didn’t make a sound. The whole time she waited, half expecting some magical thing, perhaps a light, to come from the cross and cover the child.

  When Mary made her clutch the cross, she thought it was hot in her hand. Mary prayed silently and then she told her what they must do.

  “We mustn’t kill it. That’s what the Devil would want us to do, to commit murder; but we mustn’t let it be seen. We mustn’t let it grow in the open, where it could contaminate and spread his evil. No one must know that he’s here and you must never come down here, unless I tell you first.”

  The baby began to cry. Faith turned to it. This was the product of evil, the Devil’s work, yet he looked so helpless, so soft, and good. She wanted to ask Mary if she was sure, but she didn’t have the courage. Nevertheless, Mary could see the thought in her face.

  “Stay away from him. He can tempt you to the flood. One day, you will see, he will speak just like the serpent in paradise. We must be ready. It’s the greatest test of all. Do you understand?”

  Faith nodded. She watched Mary lift the baby from the box and give it her breast.

  “Until the Lord wants it otherwise,” she said and she prayed as the infant sucked.

  Afterward, they did the ritual with the wine and the wafer, swearing their secrecy, promising God what Mary said He had demanded they promise. There in the candlelight, the shadows pressed against the old fieldstone walls, the darkness draped around them like a shroud, they looked down at the sleeping infant. Something within her wanted her to think of him as her brother, wanted her to lift him out of the box and hold him close to her. But Mary’s power was too great. Faith could feel her force radiating beside her. She dared not reach out to touch him; she hesitated even to look closely at him. Consequently, she couldn’t remember his facial features and imagined him the way Mary had described him.

  She would often think about him down there, and, when she heard his cries, she would again feel the urge to think of him as her brother. But simply thinking about touching that basement door handle was frightening. Mary, sensing the temptation for Faith, installed another lock on the door. She practically forbade any mention of him and refused to acknowledge any references to him. For all intents and purposes, he didn’t exist. Sometimes Faith questioned it herself, hoping that it had all been a terrible nightmare. If she did make any mention of him or try to get Mary to talk about him, Mary would tell her it was the Devil’s way of tempting her.

  Tonight, as she lay there in the dark thinking about Bobby O’Neil, she wondered if Mary’s warnings weren’t God’s. It was a warm night; she longed for his affection and softness. She was lonely and afraid. She wanted him to come. She trembled, both from her own longing and her own fear. Unable to deal with it any longer, she got up quietly and closed the window softly, locking it shut.

  When she got back into bed, she wished for the morning and the chance to bathe her face in sunlight. That made her think of him in the basement below, hovering alone in the darkness, waiting for the sound of her footsteps and the feel of her breath through the cracks in the floor. Had he already become the serpent? Was he tempting her to evil? The thought frightened her. Perhaps she had better stop communicating with him, before it was too late. She promised herself she would try, but the promise wasn’t enough. She had to get out of bed and kneel on the floor to pray for God’s forgiveness.

  Still, she was unable to fall asleep. She had the feeling she had betrayed someone. Who? Not Mary. Certainly not her father or the baby. Could she have somehow betrayed herself? That thought lingered with her, until sleep mercifully rescued her from the conflict raging within.

  After he slipped back through the hole, he could barely lift the rocks to return them to their proper places. That was how frightened he was. While he worked, he whimpered like a frightened puppy. As soon as he finished, he scampered back to his box, where he clutched himself and hummed his sound and rocked back and forth. But nothing seemed to help. Never before had he felt so cold and alone. He looked for something to clutch, something to cling to for sympathy and comfort; but there was nothing, nothing but the sounds of the water running through the pipes above him and the creaks in the ceiling.

  When he heard the large creature’s footsteps, he got very quiet and very still. He listened as hard as he could to determine whether or not she was headed down to beat him. He imagined she had found out he had been outside and she had learned what he had done. But her sounds went off in another direction, so he released the nervous grip he had on the sides of his box and relaxed. He grew calm enough to think about what had just happened.

  With the fear subsiding, his curiosity grew stronger. He thought about the look on the boy’s face when he had grabbed him and scratched him. The boy’s pain and fear had been so vivid, it had driven fear into him, but now he felt different. He was regaining his confidence, but along with it came a new sense of power. He could make someone else, someone bigger, scream and cry. True, he had been afraid of the dog and had run from it as well, but what if the dog hadn’t been there? There was no dog where the little girl was, only rabbits, and rabbits didn’t scare him.

  He stopped sobbing. His breathing became regular again and he stretched his body out with more assurance. The box had become too small for him some time ago.
He could no longer straighten out his body completely. Even so, he could loosen and unfold himself enough to be more comfortable.

  He was sorry now that he hadn’t been able to go to look at the little girl. It was what he had been waiting for all day. He felt his frustration turn into anger. Searching for a way to express it, he recalled the sounds made by the dog. He had tried to imitate them out there, but the boy had interrupted him. Now, he tried it again: he imitated the growl and even tried the bark.

  When he made that noise, it came out so loud and sharp and accurate that it frightened him and he curled up in his box again quickly. He actually looked about to see whether or not the dog was in the basement with him. After a moment he realized he had done it successfully. He unfolded his body, started the growl, and experimented with short, low barks. It began to amuse him. He barked faster and louder and scurried across the basement floor pretending to chase away invaders like the boy and the dog. In his imagination it worked.

  When he grew tired of it, he went back to his box and thought about the outside world. He was eager to get back into it, but he didn’t have the courage to do that now. Besides, by now the world had grown very dark and the little girl would be in the other big house. He wondered if there were a way to get into the bottom of that house, just as he had gotten out of and into this house. He couldn’t recall if there were any rocks to pull, but it occurred to him that there might be and that he should look for them when he went back there.

  Still embracing himself, he closed his eyes and from his bank of new and exciting images, drew out the picture of the little girl. He heard her laughter and saw her smile. He saw the way her hair floated over her shoulders and bounced gently when she ran. He heard her giggle and dreamed of that sound. He wished that he could make it, but all his attempts failed. They lacked the softness and the happiness. He wanted her to teach him that sound most of all.