The Calling

by Robert Swartwood

  I started up the drive. As I passed my grandmother’s I noticed a note taped to her door that in big curved letters read

  Christopher,

  The girls and I went to Alice’s for breakfast. We should be back around ten.

  Love, Grandma

  but I ignored it and kept walking. Moments later I stood in front of Mrs. Robert’s trailer. I figured she was one of “the girls” and was gone, but something told me that wasn’t the case. The flies were even louder now, their low buzzing drone coming from within.

  I took a step forward to knock on the door—why I did this I don’t know, logic said nobody was home—when I noticed the curtains.

  The curtains were moving.

  Closing my eyes, I saw my dream and pictured exactly what was happening inside, and before I knew it I had pulled open the door.

  I stood there then, my body tense and ready, waiting for something to happen.

  For a single instant nothing did.

  Then at once the low drone erupted into a chorus of chaos, as thousands of flies escaped from inside, and I couldn’t help myself, I threw up.

  • • •

  I DON’T KNOW who called 911, but by the time the police arrived already a dozen elderly folk had scattered themselves along the drive to watch. Even Henry Porter, who hadn’t gone into work today, made his way across Half Creek Road to see what had happened. Everyone stayed far enough back so they wouldn’t be forced to smell the stench of the old woman’s decayed body that had been cooking for days in her trailer, but still the breeze occasionally tossed it from one direction to another.

  After the police came the fire department. It took them awhile to navigate the bright yellow truck down the drive, but once it was parked the men inside weren’t quite sure how to get rid of all the flies that hadn’t already flown away.

  I watched with Moses beside Grandma’s trailer. Neither of us said a word. I’d already spoken with a deputy and explained how I’d been walking toward the Rec House when I heard the buzzing. I was worried about Mrs. Roberts, as she was one of my grandmother’s closest friends. So after knocking with no answer I got nervous and tried the door. The rest was pretty much evident.

  “I just saw her yesterday, too,” Moses said softly. “She asked me how I was holding up after what happened to Joey. She was such a nice lady, it’s a shame this had to happen. I just hope she knew the Lord well enough.”

  Up at Mrs. Robert’s, a fireman decked out in his gear entered the trailer. Two deputies had attempted already but hadn’t made it more than a few seconds before running back outside coughing and cursing the flies. One had even dry-heaved. Standing there watching, my arms crossed, I heard Moses’s words but at first they meant nothing. Then, as a fly flew into my face and I knocked it away, I began to play with another piece of the puzzle.

  I frowned and looked at him. I’d brushed my teeth after vomiting, gargled Listerine three times; my mouth still tingled of cool mint. I said, “You saw her yesterday?”

  He nodded, still staring ahead. “She stopped by the RV for a couple of minutes. Said she couldn’t stay long but wanted to see how I was doing.”

  I stared at him, my mouth slightly open, as I tried processing the last half hour. I glanced at the trailer once more, the propped open screen door scattered with flies, before looking back at Moses.

  “But that’s impossible. The stench alone proves she’s been dead more than a few days. There’s no way you—”

  It hit both of us then. Our eyes widened just a little as we stared at each other. At the same time we looked back at the trailer and realized the truth.

  Staring at nothing in particular up the drive, I said, “Moses, do you have your keys handy?”

  He told me he did.

  “Can I have them?”

  He brought them out of his jeans pocket and placed them in my hand. At first I wasn’t sure why he had done so, I wasn’t even sure why I’d asked for them to begin with. But then the note taped to my grandmother’s door caught my attention again and everything fell into place.

  “Let’s go,” I said, already walking.

  Moses followed. “Where are we going?”

  I grabbed the note off the door and handed it to him, as we started around the trailer toward Moses’s Metro. The car’s key was out and ready, and I wondered just how long we had. Grandma said she would be back around ten. Already it was nine-thirty and I didn’t know how long it’d take to get to Alice’s.

  Opening the driver’s door, I noticed Moses hesitate. “What’s wrong?”

  “Christopher, I don’t know about this. Do you realize just what you’re planning to do?”

  Actually no, I didn’t have a plan, but I at least had an idea and it was enough. We had to stop Samael somehow, and confronting him face to face seemed like the most obvious choice.

  “Christopher? Did you hear what I said?”

  I blinked and looked up at him, saw the concern and worry in his face. He’d been doing this much longer than me, and the fact that he was scared should have made me reevaluate the situation.

  “I heard you. But if Samael really has been posing as Mrs. Roberts all this time and he’s at Alice’s with my grandmother and her friends, then he doesn’t know what’s just happened here. Which means we’ve got the element of surprise on our side.”

  “That’s not all we’ve got on our side,” Moses said. “We also have God.”

  Chapter 25

  Down Half Creek Road, through Bridgton, onto 13 toward Horseheads, then down 14, the Metro’s speedometer climbing to forty to forty-five to fifty, making all the traffic lights, not encountering any cops, maybe Moses was right—maybe we did have God on our side.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Moses asked as we sped through a yellow light and I pressed my foot down on the gas.

  “I just do.”

  The fact was after touching my grandmother’s note I’d felt another pang of ice shoot through my soul and I knew exactly where Alice’s Family Restaurant was located, and at 9:44 according to the Metro’s dashboard clock I pulled into the parking lot, spotted an open space in the front row and didn’t hesitate at all in taking it.

  Putting the car in park, I undid my seatbelt and went to open my door when Moses grabbed my arm. I glared back at him, my body already shaking, my heart pounding in my ears. He stared back at me with his son’s trademark: dark solemn eyes.

  “Be careful,” he whispered.

  I got out and headed for the front entrance. I balled my hands into fists to keep them from shaking so much. I took long slow breaths to make sure I wouldn’t hyperventilate. Last night I’d felt a kind of exhilaration in saving Denise Rowe’s life and for a time convinced myself I was unstoppable. I’d thought the same all this morning and on the drive over, but now that I was out of the car and almost inside I realized I was scared shitless. Just what the hell did I think I was doing? Joey had already confronted Samael and had been put in the hospital for his efforts.

  The angel of death ... he wanted to kill me.

  When I made it to the door I almost turned around, almost headed back to the safety of Moses’s Metro. But in my mind I pictured everyone who had suffered because of this demon—my parents and grandfather, Devin Beckett and all the children, Joey and Mrs. Roberts—and I knew I couldn’t back out.

  I opened the door and stepped into the air-conditioned foyer, realized a second too late that I didn’t have the knife Joey had given me, that it was still in the glove box of my Cavalier where I’d stashed it Tuesday night.

  “Christopher?”

  Grandma stood leaning on her wooden cane, staring back at me with surprise. Two other ladies stood with her, one with glasses and a pinched face, the other with dyed curly hair and what looked like a red bowler hat.

  I couldn’t see Mrs. Roberts anywhere.

  “Christopher, what are you doing here?”

  I opened my mouth to reply when the curly-haired woman said, “So this is your grandson, L
ily?”

  She nodded, still staring at me. “Yes, it is. Visiting from Pennsylvania. But Christopher, what are you doing here?”

  I smiled and nodded at both women, then said, “We were driving past and I remembered you were here having breakfast. Thought I’d stop in and say hi.”

  “We?”

  Dean said she already knew about me hanging out with Moses, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to tell the truth. “Me and Mr. Cunningham.”

  “Oh,” she said tonelessly. “I see.”

  “Christopher, it’s very nice to meet you finally.”

  This was from the woman in the glasses. Her hand was thin and light, and as I shook it I instantly knew her name was Carol and that she only had eight more months to live before she died in a hospital bed without seeing her daughter who was halfway across the country. The sudden revelation made me hesitate but I managed to smile and told her it was nice to meet her too.

  “We’re actually leaving,” my grandmother said. “Just waiting for Emma and Nancy. They needed to use the restroom.”

  “Yes,” Carol said. “Emma’s our driver or else we wouldn’t be here taking up this waiting space.”

  Actually, besides the three women and myself, there was nobody else in the foyer. Beyond a dry-erase board with today’s specials written up in colored markers and a sign asking patrons to wait to be seated, a young hostess appeared. She went to grab a menu but then realized I was with the ladies and just stood there, crossing something off on her stand.

  “You know,” I said, glancing past the hostess and over the tables and people to the back, where a red neon sign announced RESTROOMS in cursive script, “I might as well use the men’s room while I’m here.”

  The thought to tell my grandmother’s friends it was nice meeting them came to me a second too late, because by then I was already walking past the hostess, to whom I gave a forced smile, then down the aisle of tables. Past families and friends and strangers all enjoying their breakfasts, completely unaware of the possible confrontation which might soon occur. There was even one family at a large round table, two parents and their three sons. All three of the boys were eating pancakes, and I wanted to tell them to leave right now, to go as far as possible before it was too late. Then before I knew it I’d stepped under the buzzing neon sign and stared at the two doors, both marked accordingly, wondering just how long I’d have to wait until I met the demon head on.

  I turned and took four steps so I could see back out across the restaurant. Amid the murmuring din of Friday morning conversations, of silverware clinking against plates and dishes, I realized there was faint muzak playing from invisible speakers above. It was something contemporary, something I couldn’t name off the top of my head, and I hated the fact that the soundtrack to my life right now was so peaceful, so calm, while at the moment I was anything but.

  I glanced out one of the large plate-glass windows into the parking lot. Spotted the blue Geo Metro in the front row. Moses was still inside, still in the passenger seat. I wondered if he was still praying. I hoped that he was and that he wasn’t lying when he said God was on our side, and I even began to think I might be able to pray myself, when the women’s restroom door opened behind me.

  “Um, young man?”

  Her voice was soft and frail, and when I turned around to stare into her eyes I knew that she was Emma and that she wouldn’t die of natural causes like Carol, but would instead be suffocated from a pillow stuffed in her face by her own son-in-law. He was the one she’d never wanted her daughter to marry in the first place, the one who she just could never trust, and the one who would need the inheritance he and his wife would be left so he could pay off most of his gambling debts.

  I saw it all in an instant and managed to cut the connection by forcing myself to blink the images away. When I did I noticed the woman was staring at me curiously. She opened her mouth to ask me if I was okay but I quickly smiled and shook my head.

  “Sorry about that,” I told her. “Just felt a little lightheaded there for a second.”

  This answer seemed to satisfy her somewhat, and with a forced smile of her own she started past me. I watched her as she headed back down the aisle toward the entrance—she was a short woman and actually waddled like a penguin. The hostess had just seated a new family who’d come in: a father and mother with a three-year-old daughter, bright pink ribbons keeping her hair in pigtails. The idea of shouting and telling everyone to leave entered my mind again, but before I could even seriously begin to consider the thought I felt the darkness.

  It clouded my mind and chilled my soul and without any conscious effort I turned to face the sweet old lady who lived just two trailers up from my grandmother.

  Her hair was thin and gray, her skin pale. Her dark glasses rested comfortably on her small face. She only stood there for a moment, before grinning—and in the grin I saw her yellowed crooked teeth and sensed a maliciousness that wasn’t natural.

  “I felt you and the black man coming.”

  The voice sounded the same as it did the first day I met her, only I knew it had been the real Mrs. Roberts then, that I had shaken the hand of a living and breathing human being.

  I stared at the dark glasses, as if looking into Samael’s eyes, but all I could see was my own reflection. I realized he was waiting for me to speak next, and while I knew it was best to not give in and allow this creature to direct the progress of our interaction, I opened my mouth. But nothing came out, even when I tried.

  “That’s okay,” Samael said, and now behind the light feminine voice I heard something darker. “You needn’t say anything. Even the black boy did not say much. He simply screamed ... and screamed ... and screamed.”

  The grin widened with each emphasis on the word, and before I knew it I opened my mouth again and blurted the stupidest, most unoriginal thing that came to mind.

  “You won’t get away with this.”

  The grin—though impossible—grew even wider. “So it speaks. Tell me, just what to you and the black man hope to accomplish? The boy was gifted and without him you both are nothing. Neither of you have what it takes to stop me.”

  “Maybe,” I said, amazed that I could even find a voice to speak at all. “But you’ve already slipped up. Who’s to say you won’t do it again?”

  “Slipped up?”

  “Mrs. Roberts’s body. They already found it. They know she’s dead so your cover’s blown.”

  “You certainly speak bold for a young man who is aware of neither his past nor his future.”

  “I know my past. I know what my great-grandfather and his friends did. And I know someday as revenge you’ll try to give me a choice.”

  The grin morphed into a sneer. “Is that so? Perhaps then I should give you that choice now.”

  “Like the choice you gave Joey?”

  “You think you know everything, do you? Then tell me this—who murdered your parents?”

  I forced myself to stare back into the dark glasses. “You did.”

  The grin returned. “Interesting you think that. But perhaps you put too much trust in what the black man and boy tell you. It’s clear now they believe you were sent here for a reason. Perhaps they believed this so strongly they did whatever it took to get you here.”

  Even now I can’t say what made me do it. Besides his words all I heard was my heart beating (even the faint calm muzak was gone) and I kept thinking that at any moment I could die. Then, before I realized it, I reached up and snatched off the dark glasses.

  Two black eyes stared back at me.

  “It’s true what they say,” Samael said. “The eyes are the windows to the soul. But for creatures such as myself who have no souls, when we possess a body or create our own shell, what stares through those windows is our true essence. Now let me ask you one question. Do you wish to die?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. I simply shook my head and whispered no.

  The grin grew again but I hardly noticed this as I stared back into t
he pitch black eyes. I couldn’t look away. And it wasn’t until Samael spoke again that I realized I no longer heard my heart pounding in my ears—and wondered briefly if it had stopped.

  The demon said, “That is very good to know, Christopher Myers,” and someone cleared their throat behind me, and when I turned I saw it was a little girl, no more than eight or nine, staring up at me.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “I need to get through.”

  But I couldn’t let her pass. I couldn’t let her see the darkness in Samael’s eyes. I couldn’t risk the chance of something terrible happening to her like what happened to Joey.

  And suddenly I understood my purpose in this entire puzzle. I realized why I’d been given this gift or curse or whatever it was Joey had given me. I realized it was now my job to stop Samael once and for all.

  I turned back then, uncertain whether I would be alive in the next minute but not caring anyway.

  Samael was gone, the space empty.

  For one wild second I wondered if it had all been my imagination and nothing more.

  But the weight of the dark glasses in my hand was proof enough, so I let the girl pass and started back toward the entrance.

  • • •

  A MAROON BUICK Park Avenue sat idling just outside the restaurant. All four ladies waited inside, my grandmother in the passenger seat. The window was down and her arm rested on the door.

  The glasses were still in my hand. I dropped them in the trashcan outside the entrance and walked up to the car.

  “We’re just waiting for Nancy,” Grandma said.

  I didn’t say anything at first. They were all waiting for a woman who’d been dead for at least two days, and I wasn’t quite sure how to tell them the truth. How could they possibly understand, especially when they just had breakfast with the deceased?

  “Nancy’s not coming,” I said. I stared into my grandmother’s eyes, then into Emma’s, then the two women’s in the back. And as I spoke I forced myself to believe what I was saying, so that somehow these women would believe it too. “Only the four of you had breakfast this morning. In fact, you haven’t seen Nancy since Wednesday. And even then she wasn’t doing well.”