The Devil's End

by D A Fowler

  Hot shame flushed over Marla’s face as she felt her bladder release, the wet warmth spreading below her. Tears ran down her cheeks. She could hear him laughing, laughing…

  The boy sitting on her right noticed the urine dripping from her chair to the floor and started to snicker. The rest of the class turned to stare. Some laughed out loud. Someone nearby forgot whose class he was in and brayed, “Look at that! Marla’s pissed her pants!” Only a few were too afraid of the New & Improved Dr. Doom to do anything but keep their eyes glued to the blackboard. The rest had a field day.

  Eighteen

  Nancy’s throat felt like coarse sandpaper had been rubbed inside it for an hour. She could barely talk anymore, much less scream. As if any of the screaming she’d already done had benefited her one bit.

  They had tied her to a metal folding chair, which had been placed in the center of the platform behind the pulpit. Four men stood around her: the two who had kidnapped her, and two others, a young, stupid-looking one named Daniel, who had yet to outgrow his pubescent body, and an older, somber man with a skeletal frame, named Frank.

  Nancy thought if she heard “I CAST THEE OUT IN THE MIGHTY NAME OF JESUS!!” one more time, her internal organs would obey the order and start evacuating her body. Her threats to file charges against the men had no effect, since their teachings convinced them that God’s commandments took precedence over the laws of the land, should the two ever conflict. Such as with the case at hand.

  She could take the torment no longer. Obviously the only way they were going to let her go was if they believed she had been successfully exorcized. She knew there was no demon in her, but she could show them one, if that’s what they wanted to see. Then after convincing them she’d been freed of it, they would take her back home, where she would waste no time in calling the police and having the fuckers arrested.

  She narrowed her eyes and hissed at Gibson. “Yer mother sucks cocks in Hell!” she spat, lowering her voice.

  She’d seen The Exorcist; she could do this bit. Too bad she couldn’t spray their faces with green vomit.

  Gibson, whose mother just happened to be dead, turned green anyway. All of them stepped back, their faces slack with shock. Nancy cackled gleefully. “Whassa matter, you mother-fucking, felching faggots? Fucking cat got your ass-licking tongues?”

  Gibson began to tremble violently as his shock turned to horror.

  “So, you show yourself at last!” the young man named Daniel declared with booming authority, emboldened by an extra reserve of faith. He held his right hand out toward Nancy. “Release that body at once, I command you in the name of Jesus!”

  Nancy had created foam in her mouth with saliva, and allowed it to bubble from her mouth. She snaked her tongue in and out and made hideous faces.

  Daniel’s faith wavered. “Brother Mitchell! Everyone! Let’s say it together!”

  “Go FUCK YOURSELVES!” Nancy roared. “I’m not coming out till I’m good and ready! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU—”

  Gibson fell to his knees and all but drowned out Nancy’s obscenities with meaningless sounds. Daniel joined him with his own loud gibberish but remained standing. The skeletal man named Frank pulled Mitchell aside and shouted something in his ear.

  Then the room fell silent, all eyes on Frank. Nancy seethed venomously, “WHAT the fuck did you say?” It had sounded like he’d said something about dunking her in the baptismal font.

  “Do you think that would work?” Mitchell asked uncertainly.

  “Of course,” Daniel said, slowly nodding his head. “Jesus sent that herd of swine into the sea, and the legion of demons perished…”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Nancy balked, resuming her normal voice. “I was just putting on a show for you guys. That was me talking…me. Don’t you dare go putting me in that goddamn—”

  But they were already in motion, untying the knots, freeing her from the chair. Each grabbed a limb and carried her, kicking and yelling hoarsely, toward a small set of steps leading down to a pit at the rear of the platform. A mural above the baptismal font showed Jesus in the river Jordan with John the Baptist, a dove preparing to light on the Christ’s head as a voice proclaimed from a velvet banner in the clouds: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

  Nancy looked fearfully at the blue water in the large tub. “Goddamnit, let me go! I was just ACTING, YOU ASSHOLES!!”

  The brethren began to pray as they positioned her above the water. “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” Mitchell intoned.

  Nancy thrashed wildly as they lowered her into the tub, then pushed her under. She could see their faces above her, distorted by the tidal waves she was creating. Their lips were moving, but she could hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears. She held her breath. How fucking long did they plan to keep her down? Soon her chest began to ache; she needed air. Panicked, she fought to rise up, but strong righteous hands kept her below the waterline. Her mind was screaming denial. This couldn’t really be happening. She wasn’t supposed to die. She was going to learn the secret of immortality from the Obers and live forever. This had to end. She would never end. Never, never…

  But she could no longer restrain her impulse to breathe. Her mouth opened and she sucked in a lungful of water; the displaced air surged to the surface. The men watched as Nancy’s body relaxed and sank to the bottom of the tub, her eyes still wide and staring. A few more bubbles escaped through her nose.

  “It worked.” Gibson smiled, his face glowing. The men hugged each other, weeping with joy, offering thanks to God for their victory. The mighty demon had been destroyed. But just to make sure, they let her stay down for another minute or two. Then they yanked her out and laid her facedown on the floor, whereupon Daniel, who was in the Coast Guard reserves and trained for such procedures, proceeded to push on her back,

  forcing the water out of her lungs. As soon as it stopped trickling from her mouth he turned her over and gave her mouth to mouth resuscitation.

  After a few moments Nancy began to sputter and cough. There was no fight left in her. She stared up at them dazedly. “I was dead,” she croaked.

  Mitchell nodded, a benevolent smile on his face. “We can’t tell you how sorry we are that we had to do that, but it seemed the only way. Demons can’t survive underwater, apparently. Fortunately humans can be resuscitated easily if it’s done fast enough. But you’re free now, and that’s what matters. I must warn you, though. In the Bible it says, ‘When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. The demon says, I will return to the house I left. When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.’ Fill your heart with the Spirit of God, Nancy, so that when the demon returns, he will not find it empty.”

  Nancy paid little attention to the admonition; beyond the drowning, her brief experience with death had not been frightening in the least, and she knew that no demon had been cast out of her, so she was hardly concerned about its return. These assholes, idiots. What did they know? Nothing, nothing at all. She could hardly wait until Halloween.

  A fistfight had broken out in the parking lot after school. Lana and Bruce edged up to the small crowd to see who was involved.

  “Who’s fighting?” Bruce asked someone in front of him wearing a black leather jacket.

  “Dennis Bloom and Joel Mintern,” the freckled youth replied. “Joel made a crack about Marla in front of Dennis, and Dennis just went berserk.”

  Knowing that Dennis was involved, Lana was no longer worried about running to find a teacher to break up the fight. She silently rooted for Joel Mintern, whoever he was. Dennis deserved a good beating as far as she was concerned. But she remained curious about the cause of the fig
ht. She had overheard bits and pieces of gossip that afternoon, but no one had completely filled her in. She wasn’t sure who they were talking about, but she thought she’d heard Nancy’s name mentioned, and she had definitely heard the word witchcraft. Marla had to fit into that somehow.

  A strawberry-blond Amazon angrily pushed her way through the crowd. Lana nudged Bruce. “Who’s that?” “Joel’s girlfriend. She’s probably going to rearrange Dennis’s face. She doesn’t like her little Joel to get hurt.” The crowd became quiet; only the growls and scathing curses being hurled by the fighters could still be heard. Joel’s girlfriend, Michelle Kirkpatrick, watched the struggle for a few moments, then shouted at the top of her lungs, “STOP IT! Stop it right now!”

  The fists landed their final blows, the two bodies quickly separating as bloodied faces looked up to see who had shouted the command. Joel said angrily, “I can handle this, Michelle! Stay the fuck out of it!”

  Dennis, refusing to be intimidated by a girl—even if she was six-foot-two—was back on top of him in an instant, pummeling away. Michelle glared around at the circle of faces, then turned and stomped away.

  “You stupid asshole!” Dennis roared at Joel, now pinned on the ground beneath him. “You really think Marla’s a goddamn witch? What is this, the Middle Ages? And for your information, Nancy and her aren’t even friends anymore! Nancy told Marla to fuck off. Now take it back, you douche bag!”

  Joel dug his thumbs into Dennis’s eye sockets. “FUCK YOU!!”

  Lana grabbed Bruce’s arm. Maybe Dennis was a creep, but he didn’t deserve to get his eyes poked out. “Shouldn’t somebody do somethin’?”

  “Yeah, we should be moving right along,” he said, leading them away from the sporting event. “And I hope after what you just saw, you won’t think any more about hanging out with Nancy. Look what you’d be doing to me.

  Lana wondered if Bruce really would engage himself in a gladiator match for the sake of her honor. Somehow she couldn’t quite picture it; his spirit was undoubtedly willing, but his flesh only weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds, with no apparent muscle. And he wasn’t stupid.

  On their way to the drive-in for a Coke, she brought up the subject of the rumors. “Did you hear anything about witchcraft today? I guess that’s what that fight was all about, huh?” She wondered if Dennis still had his eyesight. A vision of him tapping down the hall with a white cane entered her mind. It actually wasn’t that heartbreaking.

  “Yeah, sure did.” Bruce began shaking the steering wheel, enhancing his action with special sound effects: “OOOOooooo-eeeee-ooooOOOO.” His eyebrows made alternating, rapid bows over narrow, long-lashed slits.

  “Come on, Bruce, get real,” Lana pouted. “I wanna talk about this. I just wanna know what’s goin’ on. I wanna know if Nancy lied to me.”

  Bruce made a stab at sobriety. “Lied about what?”

  “About killin’ that rabbit. They kill things in Satanic rituals, or so I’ve heard. Maybe that explains it. Maybe the rumors are true.”

  Bruce resisted the urge to pretend a spastic seizure. “You really believe in that stuff?”

  “A’course…I thought I already told you that. I thought you were a believer too.”

  “Okay, I’m a believer.” He flashed a toothy grin. “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

  Lana rolled her eyes. “All right, I’ll settle for that. So how do we get to the bottom of it? Nancy’s obviously not gonna tell the truth.”

  Bruce gulped loudly. “Why do we want to get to the bottom of it? I kinda like it where I am. Uninvolved.”

  “Bruce, Bruce.” Lana slumped down in the seat, not knowing whether to kiss him or knock him upside of the head. “Listen, if something like that is really goin’ on, we gotta help try to stop it. Don’t we?”

  “I don’t know how to find anything out,” Bruce said uneasily. “Nancy’s the only one that would know for sure, and like you said, she’s not gonna just come right out and admit it. If there’s anything to admit.”

  “What about Jay?”

  “I heard he’s in the hospital.”

  Lana gasped. “Hospital! Well, let’s go see him. Now.”

  Spiro felt unusually blessed as he made his way home. Not one person had teased him all day; no one had been lying in wait for him after school to make him lick the spit off their boots, or to sit atop his face and blast him with farts while others watched and hooted with laughter. Amazing what one small lesson taught them all.

  He let himself in the house. His mother wasn’t sitting in front of the television set as she usually was when he returned home from school. He shut the door and took a left off the living room toward her bedroom at the end of the hall. Her door was still open, just as he’d left it that morning after carefully laying her unconscious body on the bed. He stepped into the doorway and stared. She hadn’t moved.

  After putting his book bag on the floor, he approached the bed, his heavy footfall creaking the bare wooden slats. “Mama?”

  When she didn’t answer, he took a thumb and pried open one of her eyelids. Her flesh was cold, and something in the room stunk. He moved his hand away from her face and the eyelid remained open, but she still didn’t speak. He covered her with the right side of the bedspread and quietly tiptoed from the room.

  The man followed Roger Snell into the house and handed him the ancient timepiece, a pocket watch on a heavy gold chain. “I’ll take a look at it in my shop,” Roger said, opening the glass casing. “This way, Mister?”

  “Montgomery.”

  “Ah, that’s right. Nancy’s chemistry teacher?”

  “Algebra.”

  “Oh yes, excuse me. Say, you’re the one my wife was talking about at the dinner table last night; she’s a volunteer at the hospital. Said they thought you were down for the count.”

  The imposter smiled. “Obviously they were wrong.”

  “Well, my shop is this way—”

  “I’ll just wait here in the entry hall, if you don’t mind.”

  Roger shrugged. “Fine with me, wherever you want. If it’s something simple, I’ll have it ready in just a few minutes. Otherwise you’ll have to leave it with me, and you can pick it up tomorrow afternoon. Or I can have Nancy deliver it to you at the school Friday morning. It may just need a new mainspring.”

  “Take your time.”

  “Have a seat in the living room, if you like. You look like you’re still not feeling too well.”

  “I feel quite all right,” the demon Nephyrcai argued, its claim unsupported by the physical appearance of Albert Montgomery’s body. But Roger was hardly going to force him to sit down.

  “Whatever you say.” He went through the kitchen to get to his shop, leaving his stubborn customer in the entry hall. As soon as Roger had disappeared into the garage, the demon turned right down the hall that led to the bedrooms. It felt in no hurry. It was a creature that created fear, never experienced it.

  The first bedroom on the right was obviously Nancy’s; teen idol posters covered the walls, stuffed animals sat on pink shelves over the standard stereo equipment and rock albums, clothes were strewn on the floor. A vanity next to the nightstand was stocked with makeup articles and perfumes, hair spray, an earring tree. A gum wrapper chain dangled from the light fixture. Nephyrcai went in. The first place it looked was under the bed.

  And there it was.

  Nineteen

  Bruce and Lana stepped up to the information desk.

  “We’d like to visit Jay Gorman,” Bruce said. “What room is he in?”

  The pale, white-haired prune stared at him through inch-thick lenses, her pale gray eyes magnified six times their normal size. “Eh, what was that, sweetie?”

  Bruce cringed at the term of endearment. “Jay Gorman,” he repeated, somewhat louder. “Room number?”

  “Faye Morgan,” the rec
eptionist mumbled, running bony fingers over a Rolodex.

  “Gorman,” Bruce shouted, drawing the stares of a family sitting in the adjacent waiting room. “Jay Gorman. ”

  “Ah Gorman, yes. Room 122.”

  Jay was in a semi private room. The lights were off, but the television was on with the volume turned completely down. He lay peacefully surrounded by white, his mother sitting beside the bed in a chair, holding his hand, staring at the silent television screen. The other bed was unoccupied.

  Rita Gorman smiled tearfully at Bruce and Lana when they quietly entered. “He’s been in a coma for about three hours,” she said, her voice strained.

  Lana dropped her gaze to the highly polished floor. “What happened to him?”

  “They don’t know. He started having…seizures, I guess. Last night. They’ve done CAT scans, X rays, blood tests, everything; they just don’t know. They say there’s no reason for it. But look at him. He justs lays there…” Her voice began to crack. Bruce and Lana waited uncomfortably for her to compose herself, not knowing what to say.

  “I guess I need a break,” Mrs. Gorman said weakly, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “I was here all night, and now all day. I should probably go to the cafeteria and get something to eat. Will you…would you mind staying with him until I get back? I won’t take long.”

  “Oh, of course,” Lana said quickly. “No problem at all. Take your time. By the way, my name’s Lana. This here is Bruce.”

  Rita Gorman nodded gratefully. “It was kind of you to come visit him, very considerate. Well, I’ll hurry back.”

  After she left, the two teens timidly approached the bed. Staring at Jay’s serene face in the dim light, Lana whispered, “Well, what do you think? The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. You don’t suppose…”

  Bruce slowly shook his head. “I don’t know. This is all pretty strange, I gotta admit that. But doctors don’t know everything, even though they think they do.” He leaned over the bed. “Hey Jay, wake up. I’ve got a killer joint with me. Let’s light up and party, bud.”