Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Tucholke, April Genevieve

  I looked at Luke. “Be careful? Someone is coming? That’s just vague enough to be terrifying. Good job, brother.”

  Luke shook his head. His eyes were sort of keen, and restless. “It wasn’t me. I think we have a ghost, Vi. Seriously.”

  River looked down at me. “Maybe you do have a ghost, Vi. I think Luke’s telling the truth. We’d better go talk to the Ouija board again.”

  I nodded. “All right. You guys win. I’m intrigued. Let’s do this thing.” I turned and headed back to Luke’s bedroom. I had a couple of good questions for the Ouija board myself. I wanted to see how far Luke would take this.

  River, Sunshine, and Luke followed me. The four of us sat down by the game, River by my side. We put our fingers on the wooden pointer.

  And waited.

  I fidgeted. Sunshine giggled. Luke had taken off his pinstriped jacket, and he began to flex his pectoral muscles in the way I hated. River sat, one lean arm around one bent knee, and looked amused. Nothing happened. I shifted onto my other hip, wishing my little black attic dress was longer. I looked at the ceiling, looked back at the board, looked at Luke, and told Sunshine to stop laughing. And still nothing happened.

  “Is this True?” I asked, finally. I looked at Luke as I said it, but he was watching the board.

  The pointer skidded to YES, so fast and hard, I fell onto my elbow.

  I glared at Luke, but he seemed surprised. Was my brother this good an actor?

  “Are you the girl in the picture? The girl who drowned?” This from Luke.

  Again, straight to the YES.

  A few seconds passed. And the pointer moved.

  LOOK

  FOR

  ME

  BY

  MOONLIGHT

  The hair on my forearms rose. I could almost hear the girl saying the words as I read out the letters—slow and deep like they were being said under water.

  The pointer began to move again.

  SOMEONE

  IS

  COMING

  Luke and Sunshine were silent, staring at the board. River smiled his lazy smile and looked like this was all great fun.

  “Who is this?” I asked the board one last time. “Who are you?”

  The pointer shook back and forth under our fingers for a second, and then moved.

  D

  E

  V

  I

  L

  I put my hands on the Ouija board and shoved. It went flying into the wall.

  “What the hell, Vi?” Luke punched me in the arm. “That game is vintage. It’s probably eighty years old. Be nice to it.”

  “That crossed the line, Luke. Don’t joke about the Devil.”

  Luke locked eyes with me. “I didn’t. God, Vi, after all of Freddie’s talk, do you really think I would make it look like the Devil was talking to us through a Ouija board?”

  We stared at each other for a moment.

  “Take it down a notch, siblings,” Sunshine said, her voice relaxed and purring and completely unaffected by everything. She fell onto her back and put one foot up on Luke’s bed. The vintage yellow dress hiked up to her white inner thigh, but she acted as if she didn’t notice. “It’s too late at night to fight.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Fine,” Luke said.

  I swept my hand in the direction of Sunshine’s thigh. “I’ll leave you to it then, brother.”

  CHAPTER 14

  RIVER AND I walked to the guesthouse. He had picked up more groceries in town after he dropped Jack off, and had made me a late supper of Caesar salad and sweet potato fries. The windows were open wide and the fresh sea breeze drifted in and combined with the earthy, clay-ish smell of old oil paint and good food to make something pretty wonderful. River still wore his peasant costume, and I was still in my black Audrey Hepburn dress. The electricity in the guesthouse stopped working for no good reason during dinner, so River lit candles and placed them on little plates all over the kitchen, and the atmosphere was so thick, you could taste it.

  River and I were alone for the first time since the tree house.

  I was unsettled about what he was going to tell me—the answers he’d promised in the attic. And the good food and the sweet breeze and the thick atmosphere weren’t really helping all that much, to be honest.

  “You ran off during Casablanca,” I said. My fingers were oily with salad and sweet-potato fries, and I wiped them on the little lamb towel. “Where did you go?”

  I had waited all through dinner for River to start talking. But nothing. I would have preferred not to push him, since it just seemed to make things worse. But hell. I needed to know if the boy who had just made me supper, the boy staying in my guesthouse, was the kind of boy who would run off into cemeteries and convince kids he was the Devil. And I needed to know it soon.

  River picked up my plates and put them in the sink. “Later, Vi. Later.”

  He started to make some espresso, and the good smell of coffee added to the good smell of everything else. I sipped at mine. I was a night owl by nature, and had been since I was a baby. Some of my earliest memories were sitting up with my mother and father while they painted late into the night, Luke having been put to bed hours ago. My parents weren’t perfect, even when they were around, but they did some things right, like let me stay up late if it was in me to do so. Anyway, I knew drinking coffee on the wrong side of the p.m. would make my night-owl side worse, so I stood on my tiptoes when I sipped.

  “River, did you go to the cemetery, when you left?” Pushing, pushing . . .

  He turned. “What on earth are you doing?” he asked, ignoring my question and smirking a crooked smirk at me as I wavered back and forth on my feet.

  “Trying not to drink too much coffee.” I put my heels back down on the guesthouse kitchen floor. “It’s hard to gulp it down when you’re on your toes.”

  River lifted his cup, and then his heels. He was barefoot again. He didn’t like to wear his shoes. Which I liked because I liked his feet. He teetered, drank, came back down, and looked at me. “Vi. You are strange. Did you know this?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid?”

  I nodded again.

  He smiled at me. “Well, I like strange. People aren’t as strange as you want them to be. We’re all pretty weird as kids, and then we grow up and . . .”

  “River, are you changing the subject?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t,” I said. I narrowed my eyes and hoped it made me look like I meant it.

  “Just let me tell you this story first, before I answer your questions.” River looked at his coffee, looked at me, sighed, and then looked at the wall. “There was this kid I liked to hang out with when I was younger. I guess you could call him my best friend. He was always in trouble, always in fights, always pissing off some kid a whole lot bigger than he was, and never thinking before he acted.”

  River paused, and his eyes went serious. Serious like when we were in the cemetery the second time. It scared me, that expression, because it looked so odd on his sly River face . . . but it kind of thrilled me too.

  “People didn’t understand him,” River added, after a few seconds. “He wasn’t trying to pick fights, he was just . . . honest. He would say what he thought, no matter what.” River still wouldn’t look at me. “I had his back in every fight. I spent my childhood covered in bruises. God, it pissed my dad off. I’d get beat in the fight and then again when I got home.”

  River kind of laughed. And then stopped.

  “What happened?”

  “What?” River asked, after a second.

  “What happened to your best friend? Finish the story, River.”

  “What happened to the kid?” River’s body tensed and his jaw tightened, so hard, a dimple f
ormed on the left side. He breathed in, let it out. “I set him on fire.”

  “What?”

  “I still get nightmares from it sometimes.” River drank the last of his coffee and set the cup on the counter.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. He finally looked at me. “Bullshit,” I said.

  River shrugged my hand off. “Well, I did. We were screwing around, having a bonfire on the beach. We were playing some game, and I tripped. I fell against him and he . . . went into the fire.”

  “But that was an accident. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Well, it still happened, didn’t it? And I was the cause. He burned, Vi.”

  River’s eyes glistened a bit. He looked, I don’t know, sort of tragic.

  And I was a goner, seeing him like that.

  I reached up and hugged him. He went very still, and then relaxed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Truly. You don’t have to talk about it anymore if you don’t want to.”

  I felt River’s hands go to my hips. He leaned down and kissed me. Slow.

  He was good at it. Gentle. Not hard and fast like Sean Fry. River’s kiss was more I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world-because-I-know-you’re-not-going-anywhere.

  And I wasn’t. This kiss came as less of a shock than the cemetery one. I’d grown still as a statue from the neck down, that time. But not now. Now I moved. I kissed back. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I felt like I did.

  River’s kiss tasted like coffee and storms and secrets.

  And slowly, slowly, he began to move faster, and then faster . . .

  And then he stopped.

  River let go of me, just like that. Just about the time I’d forgotten who I was, just about the time I’d forgotten we were even two separate people anymore and not just one glowing, quivering, ocean of kissing . . . he let me go. He stepped back and took a deep breath.

  “Are you going to stay here tonight?” he asked, his breath coming a little short. Like mine. He put his hand in his hair and made it stand on end in the way that was so sexy, it kind of pissed me off.

  River looked out the kitchen window, at the purple-black sky and the purple-black sea. “I’ve been having nightmares since I turned fourteen. Always. But then I took a nap with you a few days ago, and, all of sudden, they’re gone. I leave for a day, and boom, they come back, just like that.” He paused. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It means that you’re just going to have to sleep next to me, for the rest of my life.”

  A few seconds passed. Then River put one hand in my hair and the other on the small of my back, and tugged me into him. Tight.

  “River?” I asked.

  “Yes, Vi?”

  “What was Jack talking about? What did he mean, about wanting you to show him how you did it?”

  River’s arms fell away. I felt cold, suddenly, and wondered if I should shut the window.

  “Before I answer that, let me ask you something. Have you enjoyed the past few days with me? Have you been happy?”

  I searched his face, sensing a trap. “Yes. No. Mainly no, I think. I’ve got a liar living in my guesthouse who tells kids to go looking for the Devil and then disappears after they find him. My neighbor is hallucinating in the town tunnel, and then I’m getting kissed in the cemetery. I wouldn’t call that enjoyable, really. I’d call it unsettling.”

  River shrugged. “Ignorance is bliss. Why not just sit back and take what comes? That is an option, you know. You can just ignore all these questions that are taking up space in that blond head of yours, and come with me to bed. Let me wrap my arms around you, and we’ll both sleep the sleep of the blissful. And ignorant. Me, without my nightmares, and you, without your answers.”

  I thought about it. I did. But only for a handful of seconds. “No. I want to know what’s going on. I do.”

  River sighed. “Okay. But remember. You chose this.” His brown eyes found my blue ones, and held. “I’ve got a secret, Violet. Something I can do, that other people can’t.”

  “You’ve got my attention.”

  “It’s—I call it the glow,” he answered me, and his eyes were deep and open like they’d been before, in the attic. But his mouth was sly as always and I didn’t know who to believe.

  “Mostly,” he continued, “because it . . . it makes me kind of glow when I do it. Inside. All over. It’s like the feeling you get when you take a nap—you have a grand, epic dream, and then you wake up and the sun is shining and you stretch and your whole body tingles. It’s like that, but a thousand times better.”

  He hesitated for a second, and then continued. “It’s the same feeling I get when I’m kissing you, Vi. And nothing, nothing, has felt as good as the glow before. I just think you should know that.”

  He said this quick, almost as if he was ashamed of it. But afterward, his face slid back to its normal wily look so fast that I couldn’t tell which part was real. Besides, my mind was still snagged on the word glow, and all my thoughts were tangled behind it. I put my hands to my head and pressed, because my brain felt as if it was bursting out of my skull, like the pulp of a too-ripe plum squeezed in a fist.

  “The glow, River? What is that? What the hell is that?”

  River grabbed my hand and brought it to his heart. I stopped talking. I could feel the beat, hot and strong, and, without my consent, it made me feel better.

  “Here, I’ll show you.” His hand pressed against my hand, which was still pressing against his heart. River stared at me. Hard.

  And then I saw him.

  Jack’s devil.

  He stood behind River, tall body looming out of the dark, red eyes sharp as knives in his pale face. He was thin. Too, too thin. Just bones and shadows beneath a pointed black hat. I felt evil coming off him like a strong cologne. I didn’t want it to get on me. I knew I had to move, but the demon was starting to lean over River, his upper lip curled back into a snarl, his white collar stroking River’s ear, his white teeth gnashing, getting closer, closer to River’s face—

  I screamed.

  River didn’t move. He didn’t even turn around. The devil began to fade, fade, fade, until I was staring at the corner of the guesthouse kitchen, looking at nothing but dark.

  “You gave me the idea for that one, you know,” River said, voice calm, almost cheerful. “You were reading Hawthorne’s short stories when we first met. Young Goodman Brown sees the Devil in the forest. Good stuff.”

  “Puritan clothes. That’s what Jack was talking about.” At first I wasn’t even sure I’d said this out loud, because my brain was screaming at me and I couldn’t hear if the words came out of my mouth.

  But River nodded. “I wanted my devil to be dressed in sin, but I figured the kids wouldn’t know what sin looked like. So I made him traditional Hawthorne—the Scarlet Letter clothes, the snake staff that’s in the short story. I added in the red eyes myself. I thought it would be more vivid.” He paused. “And Blue . . . that was you as well, Vi. The story you told us by the tunnel inspired me. Of course, I had to improvise, not having any idea what a mad, tunnel-living, rat-eating recluse would look like. Hence, the hairy teeth. I was proud of that. Nice touch, no?”

  I snapped my hand out of River’s and backed away. My hands were shaking, and I saw dark spots around the rims of my eyes. I thought of Sunshine, of her screaming, and falling to the ground in a faint. I knew exactly, exactly how she felt. This was fear. This was biting, scratching, howling, screeching, burning hot fear.

  “What the hell are you? What the hell are you, River?” I was shaking my head and inching toward the door and biting back the urge to run, because it would look stupid, and I didn’t want to look stupid in front of River, even then.

  He shrugged. “A monster. A saint. Neither. Something in between. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this a
nd all I’ve come up with is . . . me. I’m River. That’s it. I can make people see things, ever since I hit fourteen, and I don’t know why. All I know is that I’m not evil.” He hesitated. “I don’t know if I’m all that good, either. I’m just me. And using the glow on people makes me happy. It’s kind of a . . . drug.”

  River looked away from me, back toward the sea again. “A drug I might be addicted to,” he said quietly, almost as if he didn’t want me to hear. Almost. He turned back to me. “Violet. Put your hand on my heart again.”

  River walked forward until he reached me. He took my shaking hand, and put it back on his warm chest. “Keep your hand there for a second.”

  River put his other arm out and pulled me to him. He kissed me. My neck, my cheeks, my lips. Beneath my hand, his heart sped up, and his skin went warm.

  “See?” River whispered in my ear. “Kissing you stirs me, just like the glow. My heart goes fast and my skin goes hot.” He paused. “And so it looks like I’ve found another thing I can’t give up.”

  He leaned back, so I could read his face, and find the truth written there. But he wasn’t giving anything away. His eyes seemed genuine and sincere, but his mouth was curled and tricksy-looking and I ended up with nothing.

  “How does it work?” I asked him. “You just think of a monster and make someone see it?”

  River shrugged. “Something like that.”

  I took that in for a second. “But why? Why would you do that?”

  “Because I can.” He paused again, and his face was blank, blank like the sea after a storm. “And because I have to.”

  “So you . . . you scared all those kids in the cemetery, my whole town—Jack, Isobel, Sunshine, everyone—just because you can? Just because the glow feels good, like kissing? Or do you do it because you really can’t stop, like a drug? Like smoking and opium and gin? Which is it?”

  He shrugged. “Both. I don’t know. It’s complicated.” He grinned at me, and suddenly his face was alive again. Mischievous and carefree as a kid with a secret lying in a field of flowers under a blue sky. “I’m not going to bore you with the details. Not yet anyway. I’m too full and happy and sleepy and, damn it, turned on. Come to bed with me, Vi.”