The Devil's Due

by TJ Vargo

  "He's getting closer son. Just wait right here and let him come for you. You'll like where he takes you. A place where you can swim to your heart's content. Burn baby burn."

  He tried to pull away. Sam's cackle rang in his ears, a clawed hand still holding him in the darkness. "Where you running boy? Don't you want to sit on my knee again and listen to me read from the good book?"

  The thing was coming toward him fast now. The sound of its two-legged clop brought every hair up on his body. Sam Lewis's fingers sank deep into his forearm, his cackling unrelenting. Curling his free hand into a fist, Jackson drove it toward the unseen cackling with all he had. A surprised "hhmph" was followed by a slight let up on the grip holding him. He yanked his arm free and ran, his feet pounding almost as fast as his booming heart. A light pierced the darkness to his left and he swerved toward it. The sound of Sam Lewis's footsteps intermingled with the clopping of hooves behind him. Sam's voice screeched at him.

  "Run rabbit run. Daddy's got a gun."

  Nearer to the light, Jackson could see that it was a closed door, the light leaking from around its frame. He slammed into it, fumbling at the doorknob. It slipped and turned uselessly in his hand, the sound of his pursuers almost upon him. Damn! Damn! Holding the doorknob in both hands, he pulled on it with all his weight and muscle. The door bowed then flew open. Falling inside, he turned and kicked at the door, trying to close it. In the dim light that fell into the outside darkness, he saw the walleyed gaze of Sam Lewis rushing toward him. The man was dead. Dead and rotten. Nothing but lips curled back from long yellow teeth and parchment skin wrapped over a skull that was broken and bloodied at the spot where Jackson had smashed Sam’s head in. And behind Sam, Jackson caught a brief, indistinct glance at the thing that ran behind him. Impossibly long limbs and a flash of red eyes. That was all before the door slammed shut and Jackson found himself in his own room. Sitting up in his own bed, the sweat pouring down, he heard the faint sound of something (something real) that clopped away down the hall outside his door.

  Later that night, Jackson welcomed the dream of Frida Commons, lifting up her dress and showing him her goods, trying her best to seduce him. He held that dream hard. Sunk his teeth in and played right along. Even going so far as to let her touch him where he didn't want to be touched. Sacrifices had to be made. Some bad things were better than others. Even if they were just dreams.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There were no more dreams. The drugs saw to that. Even though she had at times prayed for the day when they would be gone, she now wished she had them back. In her room, a cheery sunlit place with her own bed and lamp and dresser and everything else that screamed, "See, this place is normal!", she sat and tried to make her sluggish mind work. It wasn't an easy task. Sleep was what the drugs made her want. But she had to try.

  She pinched herself on both earlobes until her eyes watered, and then slapped herself, a hard one for each cheek. It helped, and she sat still for a moment on her frilly bed, hoping no one heard those slaps, then got to her feet and began pacing the length of her room, staring down at her bare feet that moved seemingly of their own accord.

  There was no way out of here. It wasn't even a possibility. Outside her room was a hall that led to a common area, where all the other misfortunates gathered throughout the day to stare at the television (all animal shows and good wholesome programming, isn't that nice?) or pace back and forth like mindless lions. Beyond the common area was the door that led to the doctors' offices. And beyond that was another locked door before you got to the stairway down to the real world. No way could she get that far.

  She stopped and looked out her window. The real world. Where that man, the one she shared those dreams with, was in trouble. She felt her attention begin to fade and she slapped herself again. Her ears rang, but it got her mind back into gear. He needed her help. But how could she get to him? She started pacing again.

  The problem was the drugs. Every morning. Every afternoon. And a nice dose before bedtime, not to mention the needle before her sessions. As much as she wanted to keep her mouth shut and just play normal when the psychiatrist first came to her, her mind wouldn't let her. It was the injection - a dose of something extra special at the hospital. Something that greased her tongue good and proper before the doctor came in to talk to her.

  Her heartbeat picked up tempo, clearing her mind a little more as she thought about it. How the doctor (just call me John - I'm here to help you) had eased her down the road to the psycho ward. He'd seemed nice enough. Who wouldn't have with the way she was drugged? So she let it out. About the dreams. How the fallen one had found her brother. And how he was now after her. It made for quite an elaborate tale and she hissed a curse under her breath, knowing that Doctor John was in heaven over all of it. She'd heard him talking to the other doctor outside her room. How he believed her case was one of the most interesting ones he'd ever run across. Good old Doctor John had himself a first class delusionary psycho with "one of the most complex make-believe worlds" he'd ever had the delight of hearing. And he was following up on it with a fervor that frightened her to the core. There were the shots before he interviewed her. Today's interview was going to be extra special and she sat down on her bed, thinking over her options.

  The good doctor had told her he had a friend he wanted her to meet. Someone with a theological background that wanted to ask her questions about the fallen one. Where he came from. How he got here. Why he was after her. And with another one of those shots she was sure she would tell, keeping the cycle of shots and interviews and more shots going and going...

  She surprised herself with a quiet scream of desperation and immediately looked at her door, expecting someone to pop through with a smile and a syringe. The brass doorknob stared back at her, unmoving and shining. She let out an exhale. This couldn't go on. The man, her soul brother or whatever he was, was in trouble - beyond her reach as long as she kept Doctor John and his fellow curiosity seekers entertained. Without her dreams she had no way of helping him or of finding out what the fallen one wanted. Frustrated and feeling trapped, she pushed off the bed and walked over to the window.

  There was a steel grid frame outside the window to keep the crazy people (like me!) from jumping, but the window itself still opened and she lifted it as high as it would go to get some fresh air. A piece of metal on the inside of the window frame came loose as she jammed the window up and pain flared in her hand. She jerked her hand back, sucking at the ragged cut across the webbing between her thumb and index finger. The afternoon sun was falling and she knew what that meant - injection time. Which would be followed by another round of questions (which she would answer most willingly) that would confirm Doctor John's diagnosis of her very unstable, very psychotic, religious-tinged delusions. She looked at the cut on her hand. It was a deep one, caused by that thin piece of metal now hanging from the inside of the window frame. The cycle would go on and on while she sat here, unable to help the man in her dreams.

  She reached out with her bleeding hand and pulled on the loose strip of metal. A single screw held it in place.

  All because no one would believe her. Who in their right mind saw a fallen angel that walked the earth in their dreams?

  The screw was loose and she loosened it further, tugging on the metal strip while she turned the screw between her fingers.

  More importantly, who wouldn't believe a fallen angel walked the earth if they had dreamed of him all their life?

  The screw popped out, rattling to the floor and she held the metal strip, testing her thumb on its sharp edge.

  Most importantly of all, who wouldn't help the one person who shared the terror of those dreams with you? Who, tell me who would abandon that person after the fallen one had found him and taken him?

  Blood welled from her thumb where the razor sharp edge of metal cut into her. She looked at the sun. It warmed her and she closed her eyes, feeling a breeze on her face. You had to at least try, somehow try to keep from tal
king. Not talking would stop the injections, which would allow her to dream again and at least try for God's sake to help the man she shared her dreams with. And even if the doctor was right, even if she was crazy, it was still all real to her. Even as a child she knew it was real. How long could a person see something and live with it in their head and not believe it? Isn't that what made the saints special? Their visions - and their belief in them?

  She walked over to the dresser in her room. Above the dresser, which had flower petals painted around the knobs on its drawers, was a mirror. The mirror was bolted into the wall, no doubt to keep the room's occupant from pulling it down and smashing it to get their hands on a nice sharp piece of glass. She touched her reflection. Her dark hair. Her black eyes. Eyes that she'd never seen on anyone else but the man in her dreams. She closed her eyes, letting her mind float back down into the haze the drugs gave her. At least the drugs were good for something.

  The haze of the drugs helped. That was for sure, because the first cut into her tongue (the pain was excruciating) nearly dropped her to the floor. But, the drugs took enough of the edge off to allow her to keep going, and cutting, until she was finished and her legs dropped out from under her, the floor coming up to meet her face. Doctor John or any other doctor would never be able to get her to talk again.

  It was a big day for Doctor Jonathan Embry when he opened the door to her room five minutes later. A big bad horse turd in his cheerios kind of day. There would be no article with his name prominently displayed under the title published in the Journal of Psychiatric Science. No consultations with peers on his ground breaking work in the study of psychotic religious delirium. The keynote speeches, interviews, and most importantly, the injections of sodium pentathol before he interviewed the patient (a new part of his interview regimen) - all of it gone. He moved slowly (in shock he said later when asked why he didn't help the patient) while the orderly ran to get the nurse. He picked up the metal strip with care from the top of the dresser. Blood dripped from the end of the piece of metal onto her tongue, lying neatly on the dresser in a pool of blood that ran down to the floor where she lay face first, breathing in labored gasps while the blood gathered around her black hair.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sunlight shone in Jackson's eyes. He kicked his feet, trying to disengage himself from the sheets he had wound around himself in his sleep. Hell of a peaceful night's rest, he thought sarcastically, noting that he had managed to wrap the sheets around himself like a mummy. He threw his covers off and lay on his back, arms and legs spread eagle. There was a tightness in his eyes and head. Sliding a hand over his eyes, shielding them from the sunlight, he thought back to last night. Hadn't drunk enough to feel this off. In fact, he'd barely had any alcohol last night, except for a couple glasses of wine. Lifting his hand off his eyes, he held it above his face. The same hand he'd always had with the same twist of blue serpent veins under his smooth-as-marble skin. And his same long, strong fingers. Difference was, there was a slight shake in that hand. Just enough to let him know why he felt hung over.

  He'd felt like this before, when he was a little kid. Sam Lewis's sudden sprees of drinking had always set him on edge. He grew eyes in the back of his head during those times, hiding from Sam whenever the old coot was on a bender. But that didn't save him. The anxiety of being on constant guard always took its toll, making him shaky and giving him a cloudy hurt in his head after a couple of days. And sometimes, when it went on for a week or more, he'd feel like he was ready to ball up and die. Right now he had the beginnings of the same feeling. Anxiety had pried his head wide open last night and dumped a pile of snakes in. He didn't like the feeling one bit.

  He crossed the room, closed the drapes and stood tiredly on his feet, the urge to get a drink popping into his head. Maybe a Bloody Mary. Yeah, that sounded good, a Bloody Goddam Mary. Moving stiffly, he made his way to the bathroom.

  After cleaning himself up he was feeling a little more awake, but that Bloody Mary was still calling his name. He grabbed his belt buckle off the night stand and went over to his closet and pulled on a new pair of jeans and a button down white shirt, put on a pair of new leather boots (how did Nathaniel get new clothes in this closet every day?), and slipped the belt buckle into his pocket before heading down to the kitchen. I'm coming Mary. And I'm coming for blood, he thought, smiling to himself.

  The sun's rays that had awoken Jackson were the first of the day, so he found himself alone, rattling around in the kitchen. A clock over the stainless steel stove read 6:38. Hell of a time to start drinking, he thought, rummaging through the kitchen, trying to find the alcohol. Finally he found a stash of bottles lined up in an overhead cabinet. He fingered the label of a fifth of Absolut vodka. What were all those ads they had? Absolut Warhol. Absolut Picasso. His eyes glazed as he thought about it and he smiled. Those ads were cool. He'd always liked them. Taking the bottle down off the shelf, he walked over to a butcher block wooden table and set the bottle of vodka down with a clunk. Time to get Absolut drunk and numb the Absolut tremors out of his hands.

  In a few minutes he had assembled the ingredients of his liquid breakfast on the table. He admired them, putting his hands in his pockets to stop their shaking. Beautiful, just beautiful. The vodka, tomato, and clam juice bottles stood shoulder to shoulder like soldiers (the bottle of clam juice was a lucky find in the back of the refrigerator). Sliding a chair back, he sat down and grabbed a lime. The short bladed knife left thin nicks in the surface of the table next to the thick cuts made by a chef's cleaver. Biting down on a wedge of lime, its juice jangling his salivary glands with tartness, he calmly mixed his drink. The crushed ice went in last, along with a bit more Tabasco and a shot more vodka. Extra cold and extra spicy. That's just what he needed.

  It went down fast. The next two disappeared even quicker.

  Leaning back on the legs of his chair, rocking back and forth, Jackson's eyes felt heavy. The vodka had slipped through him and wrapped its fingers around his brain. He ran his hand through his hair, holding it in a little black ponytail at the base of his skull. It felt damn good to be numb. He left his glass and the scatter of bottles, lime wedges, a shot glass, a bottle of Tabasco and a pepper shaker sitting in a thin pool of liquid he'd spilled on the table top.

  Walking out of the kitchen, he made his way through the dining room, then back to the great room where Nathaniel had held his coming home party. Sunlight flooded through a French door that opened out to the back courtyard. He stepped into the sunlight streaming through the door and looked outside. A pair of robins hopped along the flagstone courtyard, stopping occasionally to jab at the crevices of earth between the stones. Opening the door, he stepped outside.

  Something tickled at him, making him stop for a moment to look back into the house. The sounds of bird songs, the early morning breeze and chattering squirrels filled the outside. Inside the house it was a different story. It was deathly quiet. Not a sound to be heard. He shook his head. Of course it was quiet. Probably not even 7:00 yet. Everyone was sleeping off last night's party.

  He walked up the staircase that led out of the courtyard, his boots rustling through the grass of the pasture as he made his way toward the horse enclosure. Many people didn't have lodgings as nice as the thick-walled, grey-stoned home the horses lived in. Coming over a rise in the pasture the medieval-looking structure came into view. Breathing in the smell of grass and the fertile dirt beneath him, Jackson started jogging. An early-morning ride around the grounds of the castle was calling out to him and he didn't want to waste any time.

  The horse snorted and shook its head, breathing hard. Jackson leaned over to coo in its ear while smoothing a hand down its neck. "You'll be fine, I won't run you any more, I promise," he said, letting it walk into the shade of a patch of huge spruce trees. He dismounted and tied the horse's tether to a tree limb. Walking under the canopy of the spruce trees, he let his mind wander. Even with the alcohol still coursing through him, he could feel the unrest sunk de
ep in him. He ran his hand over the bark of a spruce, feeling the sticky tack of sap in his palm. This place was bad for him. No doubt about it. Nightmares of Sam Lewis in some kind of hell. The hoofed thing in the dark. The skeletal Dr. Kirtland. Nathaniel, lord of the weird. It all made him feel so shaky. So unprotected. The only thing that came close were some particularly violent memories of when he was still Sam Lewis's son.

  He pushed through some low-lying branches in the grove of spruce trees and walked out onto hardscrabble earth dotted with clumps of grass that ended on the bare edge of a cliff. Walking to the cliff's edge, he kicked a stone out into space, toward the town of Clear Creek far below. His time as Sam Lewis's son wasn't something to cherish, that was for sure. He tried to lock in on the town, let it invade his thoughts, but it was useless. Another part of his mind was working too hard, starting the picture show of a Sam Lewis memory when the drunken lunatic was masquerading as his father. It was a nasty image of how the crazy drunk rode his bottle of whiskey hard one night. Rode it until it opened the gates of hell in his narrow mind.

  Jackson tried to bring up some spit, distract himself from the images he was conjuring. Damn cotton mouth. Probably the early morning Bloody Marys, he thought to himself unconvincingly. He tried licking his lips which were dry as leather. The memory of Sam's voice rang in his head.