by Bob Bannon
He was in the exact same position Jonah had been in, his arms stretched wide, but his head was down. When he raised it, Eric saw the deep black eyes. Eric thought for a moment that the Devil had a mischievous smile on his face, but with the black eyes and the red skin, it looked more scary than playful. And then the devil hissed through his gleaming white teeth.
Eric’s body finally allowed him to register what was going on. He barked out a small scream of surprise and backed up, but fell over the camping hammock. He didn’t seem to care, as his eyes were locked on the Red Devil. He crab-walked in terror all the way to the back wall, and tried to back up more.
The Red Devil dropped his arms, rounded his shoulders a few times, and then cracked his neck. He looked directly down at Eric.
A zzzip cracked the air. And, all of a sudden, the Devil was no longer standing in the middle of the room, but right in front of Eric, its face almost nose to nose with him.
It looked Eric’s head over, his face bobbing from right to left. Then it stopped. Once again they were practically nose to nose. “Boo!” The Red Devil said quietly.
Eric screamed again and tried to climb over the generator which was just to his left, but from his seated position, he just managed to bang his shoulder into it.
The Red Devil stood up and literally howled with laughter. A booming sound that filled the entire tree-house. Then it bent over double clapping his hands and still laughing.
“Ow!” He yelled and grabbed his left hand, then shook it out like he was trying to shake the pain away. “That hurts! We’re gonna have to work on that!” He flexed it open and closed a few times.
“You’re…You…You’re,” Eric sat in the corner by the generator stumbling for words.
“You…You’re..You’re”, the Red Devil said mockingly. “Yeah, dude. Deviln. We’ve met.” Then he rethought. “Oh, I guess not officially. Manners.” He straightened his coat and then made a broad stride toward Eric with his hand out. He took Eric’s hand and then helped him to a standing position and then shook Eric’s hand in both of his hands. “Devlin. At your service. Darn nice to meet you, Danger Boy.”
“Danger Man,” Eric said distantly, not really believing he was defending the position.
Devlin let his hand go and then belted out another stream of laughter as he headed for the heavy punching bag hanging in the corner of the room by the television. “I’ll be the judge of that, Danger Boy.” He turned back and looked Eric up and down. “And, um, no.” Then he began hitting the bag with quick rabbit punches.
“Wait,” Eric said. “How do you even know…?”
“What? The whole code-name thing?” Deviln cut him off. “You’re friends with the boss. I know a lot of stuff. If you’re friends with the chief, I get the important stuff.”
Eric’s brain asked him if ‘Kat Skratch’ ranked as ‘important stuff’, and he side-stepped the issue.
“So you know Jonah?” Eric asked.
“The chief?” Devlin asked, he stopped and turned toward Eric, but that tail that seemed to have a mind of its own took over and started slapping at the bag, the arrowhead point sometimes spiking into it without creating holes. “Sure I do. How could I not. He’s the boss, the big man, Mister Big-Stuff.”
Devlin had walked too close to Grouchy’s pet carrier. The raccoon banged its head against the caged front and hissed and barked. Devlin turned and hissed right back through his teeth with an ugly sneer on his face. The raccoon immediately retreated back into the shredded newspaper and went silent.
“I hate that little rat so much,” Deviln said. “If Adam hadn’t…”
“Wait,” Eric interjected. “You know Adam?”
“The big ape?” Devlin asked. “Sure. I mean, kind of,” he corrected himself. “Kind of like knowing someone from leaving messages on an old answering machine.” He pointed towards his brain. “Kind of like a little back and forth. Does that make any sense? You should ask the Professor about that. The egg-head is better with all that stuff. You wanna take a stab?” He asked turning back towards to punching bag.
“No,” Eric said a little too adamantly, as if Devlin was interrupting the conversation with trivialities. It was weird enough that Devlin knew his own name, but the fact that he was dropping the others’ names like they had always existed was a little too much.
“Alright, Danger Boy, suit yourself,” Devlin said.
Eric’s hand flew out and pointed right at Devlin. “A. That’s enough of that,” He was clearly getting annoyed with it, he was used to being the snarkiest one in the room.
He shot out a second finger in Devlin’s direction, “B. So you all know each other and you all know Jonah?” It was a question and a statement at once.
Devlin turned. His tail snaked out and grabbed the hammock that Eric had knocked over making his way toward the wall. It righted that hammock and pulled it in Devlin’s direction. “Look at Danger Boy, putting on the big-boy pants,” he said as he sat down. Eric frowned.
“Okay, sorry,” Devlin said putting his hands up defensively. He sat up straight and slapped his hands on his knees. He was going to be an attentive, good boy from now on. “Yes. We are all kind of aware of each other, but we all kind of know the boss more. It’s like, the boss made us, so we all know why and what he wants, but the others are like friends-of-friends-of-friends.”
“So why didn’t Jonah know any of you, or anything about this?” Eric asked.
“Well,” Devlin started, “the Professor was the first, or, he thinks he was, I don’t even know if he knows for sure. And that was about a year ago. The professor didn’t even manifest until about a few month ago, but he says he was aware before that.”
“Manifest?” Eric asked.
“Manifest,” Devlin answered. “It’s the Professor’s word. It’s like, we’re kind of aware all the time, like watching a fuzzy television, but then we can ‘manifest’. Like, we can come on out.” He swept his hands up and down in a ‘here I am’ presentation.
“And the Professor said you only came out when Jonah really needs you.” Eric chimed in.
“Sure. I mean, sort of. I was around for awhile. I mean, aware. But I didn’t manifest until the boss met this incredibly hot girl named Jenna. The chief thought she was really pretty and he wanted to be all impressive and show her he wasn’t just some homeless urchin. He’s really worried about what people think of him.” Devlin stopped and put his hand over his mouth like he was telling a secret. “You didn’t hear it from me,” he whispered.
Eric rolled his eyes.
“Anyway. I wanted to help the boss out, so, bam! Here I am! I go looking for the girl, run into a little gas station robbery…Dude that was timing! She so wanted me after that.”
Eric almost wanted to remind him that the girl in that robbery was still probably completely freaked out by him, but, again, his smart mouth fought the impulse.
“But you guys are just pieces of Jonah, right? You can’t just like, come out and take him over forever right? Or is that wrong?” Eric asked.
“No. We can’t take the big man over forever,” Devlin said, as if this were something any of them would ever consider. “First of all, the chief is pretty tough, so I don’t think any of us could get away with that.”
“But he was here for two days…” Eric began.
“Special circumstances,” Devlin said, putting his hands up in a guilty-as-charged way. “The big guy got quite a shock back there in Clapton. The big ape ran him back here through the woods and then the Professor made his little speech on the camcorder, and Angelo wanted the place to be totally done. Besides, the Professor thought the chief could use a little downtime to process everything and, even though the boss wasn’t conscious of it, he wasn’t up for fighting it either.”
“But the chief has shut us down before, whether he knew it or not,” Devlin continued. “I mean, I really wanted to punch Logan’s face into the floor at the mall, before the chief gave me the smackdown.”
“So that w
as you trying to get out. The headache that time?” Eric asked.
“Yeah. The only reason I got to the playground was because the boss really was pretty concerned about what that toolbag might do to you, so he really didn’t have the concentration to fight me on it.”
“But you know you can’t really just bust out in public, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, “Devlin answered. “The Professor set up two rules; one is that we could only manifest if the chief was asleep, so he wouldn’t know, and two, only if he was alone. I kind of broke rule one that day, but I at least aimed the chief into an alley, so I felt good about rule two.”
“Is the Professor in charge of everybody else?” Eric asked.
“Kind of, but not really. He’s more like a kind of gatekeeper guy. It’s like he’s been around longer and he seems to know more stuff than the rest of us, so it’s better if we kind of touch base with him and ask his opinion.”
“Why not ask Jonah?”
“Well, the big guy didn’t know anything. The Professor said that’s the way it should be until the chief knew what was going on. I mean, the chief almost had a heart attack just now, and he was freaking out about us leaving him notes. Can you imagine if we started itching at the back of his mind? He really would have gone over the edge.”
Devlin stood up and clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Speaking of, the big guy’s kind of itching for me to let go.”
“So you can feel him?” Eric asked.
“Like I said, he’s a hard dude. That’s how we know it’s time to give it up.” Devlin held out his fist. “Next time we’ll go a couple rounds on the bag?”
Eric was reluctant to punch Devlin’s fist, but he didn’t necessarily want to offend him either, so he did it. “Alright,” he agreed.
“So, he’ll know it was me this time, but he won’t know all the details.” Devlin said. “You’ll fill him in?”
“Defintely. Yeah.” Eric said, because that’s what the entire interview was for anyway.
“Cool,” Devlin said, as he sat down in the hammock again. “Later, Danger Boy.” And then he laughed again, but the laugh was stifled by a choke and then a cough, and then he froze. The process repeated itself, although this time there was no partial change – his hand did not become like Jonah’s. Instead, Devlin’s body just folded in on itself and dissolved into the dark wet sand.
Since he was sitting, the large mass of sand expanded into the hammock. Eric could see that it roiled and moved both above and underneath, like something reorganizing just under the surface.
Once again, as fast as it started, it was finished again. Where Devlin sat just moments ago, Jonah now sat, wearing the same clothes he had on when he dissolved. He looked exactly the same as when he had left. Eric instinctively thought that there would be at least some sort of change in him, but there wasn’t. He was put back together exactly.
Just as it was with Devlin, it took Jonah a moment to move, but the first thing Jonah did when he moved was yell “Ow!” followed by “Ow! Ow! Ow!”
He grabbed his left hand in his right and squeezed it, then shook it out, then flexed it open and closed.
“Yeah,” Eric said. “Devlin said you’re going to have to work on that.”
“So you met him?!” Jonah said, rubbing his hand. “The Red Devil?”
“Yeah,” Eric answered. “But his name’s Devlin now. They all know they’re names now, apparently. How much do you remember?”
“I knew it was going to be him, even before I saw my hand? Did you see it?”
“Yeah, that was freaky. Then what?” Eric agreed.
“Then nothing. What happened after that?” Jonah asked.
Eric looked up and saw that the afternoon light had left the window. He already knew he was more than an hour from home. He took his phone out and saw that it was after six. “I’ll have to tell you on the ride back. Do you want to stay over?”
“Yeah, sure. If we can get away with it.” Jonah said.
Jonah unplugged the electric blanket, once again out of habit, and then thought about the lights. He didn’t know which plug went where in the generator and decided now was not the time to experiment. He had left everything on when he went to find Eric, so he thought it was probably safe overnight. He had no idea how long everything had been safely plugged in anyway.
“Then I guess we could tell your mom you’re staying at my place for the weekend?” Jonah said with a laugh as they headed for the door.
“That’s such a cool idea, dude.” Eric laughed along. “Except we’re totally bringing food. I don’t think they’ll deliver a pizza out here. Maybe we can have the Professor call and ask my mom.”
“Like my dad suddenly developed an accent?” Jonah scoffed, as Eric headed down the rope ladder.
“We could have Devlin do it. He’d totally do it.” Eric said.
“You’d know better than me,” Jonah mumbled, as he waited his turn.
XVIII
It was dark under the canopy of trees. Jonah wondered if they would be able to find their way out of the forest. As it turned out, now that he had made the journey out and back, he found it quite easy to follow the creek all the way back to the road.
Once they were back to the road, they discovered that the sun was still up, but it was setting low in the sky. Eric’s mobile phone beeped in his pocket. When he checked it, he saw that there were three missed calls from his mother. The phone reception in the woods must have been incredibly low and the calls had just come through now. He checked the messages his mother left, each one a little more angry than the last.
He dialed his house.
“Where have you been?” Mrs. MacIntyre boomed loud enough for Jonah to hear it.
“Sorry. We were at Jonah’s all afternoon,” Eric explained.
“And why haven’t you answered you phone, or even bothered to call your mother to tell her where you are?”
“Sorry, mom,” Eric said. “I didn’t even hear it.” That wasn’t necessarily a lie.
“Eric Michael MacIntyre, you know better than that!” Well, that meant she didn’t believe him.
“I’m really sorry, mom. We’re on our way back now.”
“We?” She asked.
“Jonah and me,” Eric answered. “Jonah’s going to stay over. I mean, if that’s okay?” Eric figured the statement was somewhere between asking for permission and forcing her into a position where the decision had already been made.
His mother made an exasperated hiss on the other side of the phone. “Just get home now,” she said, resigning the conversation.
“Can Jonah come?” Eric asked.
“Yes, but we’re going to have a talk when you get home,” she said. “This might be it for a while young man.”
“Alright, jeez,” he answered. “I’ll be home in a few. Bye.”
He hung up the phone without waiting for a response.
“Are you in trouble?” Jonah asked.
“Nothing a good talking to won’t fix,” Eric shrugged. “We should get there as fast as possible though.”
As fast as possible wasn’t going to be easy though.
Eric was planning on talking the whole way back and filling Jonah in on everything that happened, but the boys were so intent on getting Eric home, nothing at all was said save for a few recommendations on short cuts.
They rode at top speed, took alleys where they could, and ignored too many stoplights in Jonah’s opinion. In all, it still took them just over fifty minutes to get back. Mrs. MacIntyre was waiting on the porch and didn’t look too happy.
“Hi,” Eric said innocently as they leaned their bikes up against the picket fence.
“Dinner is on the table,” she said, and then opened the screen door to usher them into the house.
Dinner was meatloaf and green beans with butter. There were two plates already served waiting for them. Mrs. MacIntyre didn’t come into the kitchen, instead she went into the family room. Eric heard the rustle of the newspaper
.
“She must be really mad,” Eric said quietly.
There wasn’t a lot of talking during dinner. Jonah figured Mrs. MacIntyre might overhear their conversation, but Eric looked a little lost in thought over just how much trouble he might be in.
The boys washed the dishes and cleared the table. Mrs. MacIntyre must have heard that dinner was over because she came into the kitchen just as the last plate was dried and put away.
“Jonah, can you go up to Eric’s room and give us a minute, please?” She asked, although it wasn’t much of a question.
He put his towel down on the counter and walked up to Eric’s room. He sat down at the computer and looked up the ‘Kat Skratch’ boards on the web, but he was more occupied with what might be going on downstairs.
It was his fault he had dragged Eric into all this and it was his fault he took Eric back to the tree-house. Eric really shouldn’t be in any trouble for it. He couldn’t exactly explain any of that to Mrs. MacIntyre without revealing the whole story. And he might make it worse. What if he did come to Eric’s defense and say it was his fault for keeping Eric out? Did that make him a bad influence? Would Mrs. MacIntyre decide it was a bad idea that they were hanging out together? Jonah had started to rely on telling Eric everything that was going on. Once he got all of it off his chest, it made him feel not so alone and freaked out. Could he go back to dealing with all of this on his own?
Eric appeared at the door ten minutes later.
“So?” Jonah said, spinning the desk chair to face the door.
Eric walked in and threw himself on the bed like an exhausted soldier coming back from interrogation.
“It wasn’t too bad. She just went on and on about rules and homework and responsibilities. Blah, blah, blah.”
“So should I leave?” Jonah asked.
“No. It’s not about you. It’s about ‘behaving responsibly’ and ‘asking permission”, he said in an annoyed high pitch. “But, I am actually grounded for three days, which is new. I’ve never been grounded before.”
“Which is weird, cuz I’ve kind of always been grounded.”
