Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  “Yes, and I can make it bigger as she grows.”

  “What if it’s a boy?” Leah asked Whitney.

  Whitney waved a hand airily. “I’ll turn it into a tie tack.”

  Jenny put her hand over her stomach with a small exclamation. “Oh my goodness, she didn’t like that,” she said with a smile. “I’m sure it’s a girl. See here.” Much to the other woman’s surprise and consternation, Jenny took Leah’s hand and guided it along her stomach, pressing down. Greer and Whitney exchanged a look of guarded amusement at Leah’s scandalized face. Leah was alarmed by familiarity in general, and her mouth had gone tight with discomfiture at having her hand pressed against another woman’s abdomen. “See,” Jenny was saying as she guided Leah’s hand along, “there’s her tiara, and over here, that must be a high heel.”

  “It’s a pointy little thing,” Leah agreed, smiling fixedly. Greer wondered if, after the trauma Leah had been through, she would ever be able to enjoy even the most innocent physical contact without a repulsive knee-jerk reaction. When her hand was released, Leah pulled it back and straightened her blouse before entwining her fingers tightly in her lap as though to keep anyone else from snatching up one of her hands again. Greer was pleased to see Jenny note this, and she watched as Jenny placed a hand momentarily on Leah’s knee for a casual pat—not too long, just a short firm pat and a distinct removal—to break the barrier once more, to keep the wall of separation from strengthening. Leah’s grip on her own hands relaxed, as Greer had known it would.

  “I think we should ask Greer if it’s a boy or a girl,” Whitney said with a sly smile.

  “Oh, that’s right—you’re psychic!” Mindy gushed.

  Greer squirmed. Her ability to sometimes perceive future events had never sat very comfortably on her, so she had always kept it to herself, but several months ago, when she’d first moved into Shadow Hills, premonitions had assailed her, and when Whitney’s daughter, Joy, had disappeared, she’d made the choice to use her gift openly to try to find the teenager. Surprisingly, her son, Joshua, had begun to have visions at the same time, and it was his talent, and perhaps his special connection to Joy, that had located her in the end. But Joshua had been afraid of what was happening to him, and he and his mother had kept his abilities secret from all but a few of their closest friends, pretending that it had been Greer’s skill alone that had saved Joy. After that harrowing and very public incident, Greer had been swamped with requests and offers, some of them quite lucrative, to do readings, but Greer had never taken money for her unbidden talent. It was something that she had grown up with, come to accept, but it was interpretive at best, and she was not comfortable with being paid to make predictions—even if the images were clear—when it was still only her best guess as to what they might mean.

  “I told you before,” Greer said, “I’ve never done that and, please, I don’t want you painting the nursery pink or blue based on a feeling I might get. . . .”

  “Oh, please,” Jenny pleaded, cutting her off. She had asked before, but Greer had flatly refused. Now Jenny had a room full of enthusiastic women on her side.

  “All right,” Greer agreed reluctantly. “But only if everyone in the room makes a guess. We can write them all down and see who was right later. You cannot take my impression as final.” Greer had some feelings that were vague and some that were undeniably distinct. Then there were the visions, which were as clear as watching a moving picture, but once again open to interpretation. She had no idea what she might see today.

  “You said you knew Joshua was going to be a boy,” Whitney challenged.

  “That was my own son! Every woman has a feeling about their own child.”

  “And fifty percent of the time,” Mindy chimed in, “they’re one hundred percent right!”

  “Okay, Greer goes last. Everyone else make a line.” Leah, always the efficient manager, stood up and took control. “Mindy, can you get me a pad of paper and a pencil? I’ll keep the list. I’ll start with me, because I already went, and I say, ‘girl.’ ”

  The ladies all lined up and took their time rubbing Jenny’s surrendered belly like a crystal ball, doing different bad impressions of stereotypical fortune-tellers. Greer pursed her full lips into a puffy moue so her mouth resembled a round, overstuffed, pink satin cushion; this was exactly why she had never advertised her ability, though she knew this was all meant in fun.

  As she waited her turn, Greer’s grass green eyes floated around the handsome room. The rough pine beams of the ceiling and the comfortable mission-style furniture all pleased her aesthetically. Her gaze landed on a lovely landscape painting over the stone fireplace, a peaceful mountainous view; it looked vaguely familiar.

  “Mindy,” Greer asked the smaller woman, who had just proclaimed Jenny’s child a bucking-bronco-riding cowboy and come to sit near her, “is that a painting of one of the canyons near here?”

  Mindy’s eyes followed Greer’s gaze. “Oh yeah, that’s one of R. J. River’s paintings. I’m surprised you haven’t met him. He’s a friend of Whitney’s, a local Native American artist. Very active in the conservation scene. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” Greer agreed. “Which canyon is it?”

  “It’s a view from up above the dam. I don’t know the name of it, but I just love his work. I own three of his paintings.” She smiled proudly.

  Greer left the group to their fun and went to stand in front of the painting. She imagined that she did know the spot. The artist had captured that luminous quality of the light just before dusk that makes it so easy to fall into the feeling of the place. Greer relaxed her eyes and let her mind wander over the sensation of the picture rather than observe the paint and the artist’s technique.

  It happened before she could even sense it was coming. Without warning, the picture before her became real, the greens and golds leapt to life, and then, in a flash that Greer could actually feel on her face, they burst into flames. She stepped back suddenly from the painting, raising one hand protectively to block the heat, but the image had cooled to green again and only the canvas hung on the wall in front of her. Or, no, there was something else: Even with her eyes open, something lingered, an image, like a ring from a flashbulb.

  Trying to steady her breathing, Greer leaned against the back of an armchair and closed her eyes. There was imprinted, as though burned on her retina, a distinct object, an old-fashioned key, blackened by fire.

  Greer searched through her body for a feeling connected to that image to give her a clue what it meant. But before she could locate anything, Jenny’s voice called out from behind her, “Greer, your turn!” and the image faded as suddenly as it had come.

  Greer spun around; she had forgotten that she was in a room filled with women who saw only the objects struck by light in the field of their vision. She tried to smile, to recover quickly, but she saw Whitney’s face tighten in concern at her own expression.

  “You okay?” Jenny asked.

  All the women were looking at her quizzically. Greer took a deep breath and smiled. “Oh sure. It’s just the heat—I felt a little light-headed for a minute,” she lied.

  Whitney frowned. She had not bought it.

  Throwing Whitney a glance that she hoped would read as I’ll tell you later, Greer crossed over to the sofa where Jenny was lying with her tummy exposed like the back of a baby whale cresting the sea. Greer sat down on the coffee table facing her and took three deep, cleansing breaths, willing the shock that she had felt at the vision of fire to calm and leave her body so that she could get a clear reading, if one came.

  Greer rubbed her hands together to make sure they were warm, placed them flat on Jenny’s belly, and closed her eyes.

  Immediately an image came to mind. A girl, definitely a girl, with dark hair and shining eyes, was walking toward her with sunlight glinting off her thick, long hair. The picture was so stunning and charming that Greer laughed out loud. “She’s going to be a beauty,” said Greer, and most
of the women clapped their hands and cheered. Only Mindy and another woman who had guessed male booed. “It’s funny,” Greer went on when they quieted. “I see her grown up, about fourteen. I think . . .”

  But Greer forgot entirely what she was about to say. Over the image that she held in her mind, so beautiful and blissful, had come another. It was Jenny’s face that leapt into Greer’s mind, and her expression was as far from happy and sunny as was possible. In Greer’s vision Jenny’s face held a look of sheer terror, her eyes darted everywhere as though looking for some way of escape, and over her, blotting out all else, hovered crow black wings.

  Greer had seen those wings before, she was sure of it. What did they mean to her? Where had she seen them? She forced herself to focus on the feeling they gave her and remember it. Yes! She had seen them before in another work of art, been struck by their perfection as a metaphor. They had been on an angel. Huge black wings on an angel of terrible and final beauty.

  The angel of death.

  Chapter 2

  The gusting wind on Joshua’s face made him feel as if he were halfway through the cycle in a clothes dryer and it was set on high. As he pushed up the new trail, he thought, “Mental note to self: Only hike before the sun is up.”

  Greer’s son, Joshua Sands, was a tall, strong eighteen-year-old with a love of nature he had inherited from both his parents, but mostly from his father. To hike willingly in this weather seemed like an act of insanity to most people, but for Joshua, a day without time alone in the outdoors was the crazy maker. He paused and finished off the first of two large water bottles that he carried in his small backpack. He supposed he was sweating as fast as he was drinking, but the air was so dry it left no evidence of perspiration on his skin.

  The trail switchbacked and then passed mercifully under a large grove of shady oaks. Joshua took off his hat to let the wind into his hair. Hot as it was, it relieved him somewhat. As he walked, he watched the trail under his feet with interest. There were many dusty footprints in the few places where the ground was loose enough to show an imprint. Work boots, it looked like, various sizes; a group had passed by here not long ago.

  He also looked for signs of wildlife. He knew that the animals would be driven lower this time of year, looking for any water they could find. He saw the dried scat of coyote, bobcat, and deer, but none of the animals showed themselves in this heat.

  After fifteen minutes of gentle but steady incline, he emerged on the lip of the canyon into the glaring sunlight. From here he could see almost all the way back down into the valley. Pausing to get his bearings, he noted that the national forest area was behind him, and the populated Los Angeles suburbs of Shadow Hills and Sunland lay stretched out before him, just beyond the ridge that blocked his view of the Two-ten freeway a few miles away. To his right, the hills rose, steep and greenish brown, covered with the natural brush and scrubby oaks that made this place so beautiful. To his left was a sight that sobered him: The entire top of a gently sloping mountain ridge had been sheered off and was nothing but a dusty, lifeless swath of dirt. From this viewpoint Joshua could see the gigantic land movers mowing down more living earth, five of them spewing black smoke, moving in a line, remorselessly leveling out the peaks and curves of nature’s hand. To the far right of this gaping wound stood the frames of a hundred houses, built with mere feet between them like huge boxes shelved in neat little rows; the space between the rows was barren and brown, ready to be paved with shiny black asphalt, leaving the ground nowhere to breathe.

  Along that tight grid of streets, spaced maybe fifty feet apart, there stood the tall, naked arms of streetlights. There would be thousands of them by the time the gigantic development was finished, and each home—spurred by its owner’s fear of the dark—would have its own exterior lighting. The overall effect, here on the edge of a national forest, would be an inverted bowl of light that never dimmed, shrouding the night sky from view. Joshua had seen it before, this side effect of civilization: They were stealing the stars.

  A sadness that was all too familiar gripped Joshua. Trying to focus on the positive, on the people who would fill those houses with laughter, who would plant new trees and hopefully teach their children to love the natural world the way his father had taught him, Joshua turned away and went on.

  According to his trail map, in about a half a mile this path should meet the fire road, which would take him back down where he had parked his car on Osborne Avenue. He was a good bit west of his own neighborhood, but he’d been curious to explore this section of the county as it was all connected by high trails back into the canyon where his own home sat nestled in a copse of pines at the end of a short dirt road. That would be too far to hike on a day like today, so his goal was to reach the fire road near the top and get an overview of the lay of the land on the far side before doubling back.

  Another twenty minutes and half a bottle of water brought him to that perch. He had expected to meet no one in this heat, one reason he had decided to risk it, so he was surprised to hear voices and the scrape of tools as he crested the trail onto the wide dirt road.

  It was a work team clearing underbrush back from the edge of the firebreak, composed of a senior fireman and about ten young men, all in their teens from the look of them. They were a mix—Hispanic, black, white—but they all had a similar look, the expression that came from fear heavily disguised as indifference and spite. Joshua recognized the group immediately as detainees from the probation fire camp just down the road from his home, a juvenile detention center where young males convicted of everything from misdemeanors to felonies spent time working off part of their sentences. He’d run into them before, maintaining trails or clearing brush by the side of the roads, and he’d always received that same blank, soulless stare when he’d tried to look friendly.

  Nonetheless, Joshua smiled at the closest boy in acknowledgment as he passed him. The young man leaned on his shovel and did not register any sign of response. It was as though Joshua were invisible.

  As he drew level with the guard, Joshua nodded his head and paused. “Hello. Bitch of day to be working with a shovel.”

  “Could be worse.” The fireman, who was lanky and weathered, smiled with movie-star white teeth at Joshua.

  “Can’t really see how.” Joshua grimaced as a blast of air toasted his skin, making his lips feel like jerky.

  The fireman laughed. “It could be this hot and the hills could be on fire.”

  “Good point.” Joshua extended a hand. “I’m Joshua Sands. I live up the road from the camp, off Silver Line Creek.”

  “Bob Pariche. You’ve got one of those cabins tucked in that canyon? Nice,” he commented after Joshua’s nod. The hand that took Joshua’s was calloused and rough with work. His eyes flicked back to his young laborers. He called out to the boy Joshua had passed, “Simon, good job with that section. You can take a five-minute break, rehydrate, and then, since you finished first, you can use the weed whacker on that section over there. Take the fire extinguisher and watch out for sparks. Okay?” As he addressed the boy, his voice was both firm and polite. There were assorted calls of “No way” and “That sucks” from the other boys. Apparently, using the gas-powered tool was a reward of some kind. Joshua ventured a guess that the supervisor was one of those rare people who—even faced with the reality of seemingly unbeatable odds—really try to make a difference. From the way Simon reacted, surly, but with his gratitude sneaking out in a suppressed twitch of a smile, it apparently pleased the boy that he had garnered a fractional recognition.

  Joshua watched the boy named Simon settle down on the dirt and pull out his water bottle. He appeared to be looking out over the view, but Joshua could see Simon watching him from the corner of his eye.

  And then, before Joshua looked away, the boy was no longer alone. At least, he was still sitting alone, but he had a visitor that only Joshua could see. Just over his left shoulder, the figure of a man had appeared, dark gray and hunched menacingly toward Simon.
Joshua, who was getting used to the sudden appearance of images that were unseen to everyone else around him, was taken aback by the aggressiveness of the figure. He had seen, in the few months since his gift had begun to develop, many such visions. Sometimes they came when he looked for them, but mostly they appeared to him at random moments, over friends and strangers alike, but they had all seemed passive or protective. This was something altogether new. The male figure glared hate-fully down at Simon.

  “Damn it,” Joshua muttered under his breath as he was overwhelmed by the sensation of being knocked down by a crashing wave. The instinct that he must somehow protect this boy was all-consuming and unwanted. It was bad enough that he saw these images, but it felt cruelly unfair when he sensed that he was expected to do something about them. He knew that he was the only one who could see the danger literally hovering over Simon, which left him trapped into making a decision. At eighteen and headed for college, Joshua felt he had more than enough to get on with just figuring out what to do with his life; adding on feeling responsible for helping people he didn’t even know really sucked. “Damn it,” he sighed again, but with resignation.

  Joshua walked several yards in Simon’s direction and came to a stop a few feet away from the teenager, who was sitting on the ground, his shoulders slumped forward in a petulant slouch. He said nothing to the boy, just scanned the hills, half looking for the trails that would lead over the next range into his own, more familiar extended backyard.

  Joshua didn’t look at Simon directly, but he could see the figure, fading now but still present over the boy’s left shoulder. And then Joshua almost jumped as he saw something he had never visualized before.

  Another figure had revealed itself to him, an animal. This was a first for Joshua, and he had to turn and look directly at it to make out what it was. When he did, he almost laughed. It was a small dog, of indeterminate heritage, which was barking with silent fury almost comically at the fading threatening figure.