The Devil You Know

by Richard Levesque

  Whenever she was with Taylor in her dreams, he always gave her the same white light she had when he really came into her apartment. Sometimes, the dreams were so vivid and the feelings so intense that she later wondered if he wasn’t visiting her while she slept, having her without waking her and letting her drift into the strange, blissful limbo that she had come to crave. If that was the case, Laura was unperturbed by it. Let him come, she thought. Let him have her whenever he wanted—asleep or awake. All that mattered was that he kept coming back. From what she could recall, he had come at least once a day since they had first met; time was hazy, though, and for all she knew, he may have come more often.

  She had called in sick again on Friday and had let Saturday pass in a daze. At about nine o’clock that night, though, she awoke, feeling more alert than she had in days. She sat up in bed, pulled the loose sheets up around herself, and listened to the sounds of the city outside the window. In the distance, she thought she heard the sound of a loudspeaker. A movie premiere, probably at the Pantages, she thought as she pulled herself out of bed and went to her window. Her view of the alley outside offered nothing about what was going on, but when she cracked the window open, she could hear more distinctly the sounds from a few blocks over. The boulevard would be blocked, she thought, and she pictured the crowd in the street, a thousand people all craning to see the red carpet. At the edges of the crowd would be police, reporters, and photographers from the newsreels and papers, and throughout the throng there would be a hum of voices with people barely able to hear anyone who wasn’t yelling into their ears. Laura shuddered at the thought, glad she’d stayed in tonight. It would be a madhouse, where only a handful of people would get to see the movie stars. Instead, there’d be pickpockets and gropers to worry about.

  As soon as the thought came into her mind, her body went rigid. It was as though someone had just touched her in the small of the back with a very sharp knife; one wrong move, and it would be in her kidney. Taylor would be in the crowd. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name. He could move anonymously through the throng, rubbing up against woman after woman, his hands finding their way across their dresses, maybe even under the hems. Some would scream, but they’d be so tightly packed in among the rest of the crowd that it would do no good; Taylor would flash that innocent smile and move on to another one—who wouldn’t scream. There would be plenty who’d welcome it, plenty who’d rub back once they got a good look at those eyes. Before long, the amusement would wear thin, and one of the willing would follow him out of the crowd and into a car or an alley or another theater, and he’d have her there.

  With clenched fists and tight jaw, Laura spun around and crossed the room. When she turned on the light, it hurt her eyes for a moment, but she ignored it and looked among her scattered clothes for something she could put on. It didn’t matter what. She just had to get outside and down the street as fast as she could.

  In her haste, she forgot about a coat, so when she got outside her building, the cool night air helped bring her to her senses. She felt less certain that Taylor was in the crowd, and the thought that she would be able to find him in such a mass of people now struck her as absurd. She could still hear the noise from down on Hollywood Boulevard, and now could see the searchlights cutting swaths through the dark sky, but as she stood there on the sidewalk, heading down the hill and into the chaos of the movie premiere was the last thing she wanted to do.

  Frustrated, disoriented, and bothered by how certain she had been of Taylor’s unfaithfulness to her, she wished for nothing more than to have him with her. More than that, she wanted to have him stay for once. She wanted to keep him—past the point of white light, past the deep and trancelike sleep he left her in. She wanted to wake and find him there, waiting for her, ready for her. He would tell her things then—all the things she wanted to know—and he would protect her if the Doyle woman came back again.

  But there was something about him that would not stand for it. She knew it now as she wrapped her arms around herself and tried to warm the goose bumps away. Taylor did not just leave when he was done with her because he had a wife or a job or anything else to get back to. He left her because he had to, was compelled to, in just the same way that he had to come back to her and that she had to let him in. It was a force of nature, something not to be cajoled into changing. The only way to keep him with her was to force him, and she knew it would take quite an effort to force the man to do anything.

  She began walking down the hill, aimlessly at first, her thoughts taking her away. Again, the image of Marie Doyle came into her head, and she smirked at how foolish the woman must be to think that there was anything dangerous about Taylor. That she should want Laura to stop seeing him and run away instead—it was preposterous. But Laura knew the woman wouldn’t give up; nosy meddlers never did, not when they had gotten it into their heads that they were superior, that it was their job to save others from dangers no one else could see. But if Marie Doyle could just see, really see and know what Laura had with Taylor, then she’d change her tune.

  Without thinking about it, Laura had turned east at the first corner she came to, wandering a bit closer to the commotion of the movie premiere, while staying a block away from the boulevard. Here, the street was quiet with no one around, but there was movement in the shadows that Laura was oblivious to. When she stopped at the next corner and just stood there in her reverie, a woman stepped out of a doorway, saying, “I hope you’re not thinkin’ of settin’ up shop here, kid. This block’s mine.”

  Taken aback, Laura regarded the stranger. It took her only a moment to realize what the woman was doing here and why she stood in the shadows while so much activity went on in the bright lights a block away. “No,” she said nervously. “I’m not…I was just…” Her voice trailed off as she realized that she did not know why she was here.

  “Lost?” the woman asked with a smirk.

  Laura nodded. “I think so. I need…” The image of Taylor’s face popped into her mind at the mention of need, and again she felt the overwhelming desire to keep him to herself. “I need,” she repeated and saw that the woman was about to turn away from her. “I need something to help me sleep,” she finally said. “Do you…know anybody? Who could get something?”

  The woman’s expression changed to one of puzzled amusement. Then she gave Laura a knowing smile. “There’s a drugstore down on the corner,” she said.

  “That’s not what I need,” Laura said quietly.

  “Yeah,” the woman nodded. “I can see that, sister. What you need can’t be bought in no store. You lose your connection or somethin’?”

  Laura nodded. “I think so.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marie awoke on Sunday morning with the sunlight streaming into her room and got out of bed with the best of intentions. She would wash, eat, and go to Mass at St. Lucy’s. After, she would drive to Jasper’s to pick up Tom, and the two were going to head north to Camarillo. Elise had been in the hospital for almost a week now, and Marie felt overdue for a visit; the hospital extended visiting hours throughout most of the day on Sundays. The night before, Tom had kindly agreed to accompany her on the drive, and even though she had protested at first on the grounds that it might upset him, she had agreed quickly enough, pleased at the thought of being able to spend the day with him even on such an unpleasant errand.

  After she had made herself a cup of coffee and a piece of toast folded in two with strawberry jam in the middle, she found herself thinking about the Lovecraft manuscript that Jasper had loaned her. When she had come home from Jasper’s the night before, a few more goodnight kisses from Tom still making her tingle, she had set the folder containing the story on top of her bookcase beside the framed photo of Ryan that she kept there. For the first time in a while she found the picture upsetting, quickly cycling through many of the feelings she had undergone since his death: grief, anger, abandonment, depression, and, finally, resignation. For a moment, she had considered
putting the picture in a drawer, but had finally decided to let it stay before making herself get ready for bed.

  Now finishing her coffee, she did not think at all about Ryan or the picture. Instead, she wrestled with a dilemma—whether to read the Lovecraft story or get ready for Mass. Father Joe would be expecting her face in the congregation; he always managed to single her out for a friendly wink in the middle of his sermon. And the sermon this week, she knew, would be a good one. She had listened to him deliver three versions of it in the office and had typed the final revision on Friday. If she opted for Lovecraft now, she knew it could mean getting just a taste of the story—the first page only—if she still wanted to be ready in time for Mass.

  A few minutes later, still in her robe, she sat in her chair, carefully rubbed her fingers against each other in case any breadcrumbs lingered on them, and opened the folder. She picked up the manuscript and held it lightly between her fingers, afraid that she might crease or tear the paper if she handled it too roughly. Just the first page, she told herself, and then get dressed. But two pages later, she had not moved. A glance at her watch told her she might still make it, but after another two pages had been carefully lifted back over the staple that held the manuscript together, she knew she would not be going to St. Lucy’s this morning. There were other churches, and though Father Joe might look at her questioningly on Monday morning, he probably wouldn’t be so forward as to ask where she had been. She could always tell him that she had needed to get up to Camarillo to visit Elise and had been to Mass there—which might actually be the truth, she told herself as she continued reading.

  The first thing that struck her about the story was that its narrator was not a typical Lovecraft hero—usually a man doomed or driven mad by forbidden knowledge he had inadvertently uncovered. Instead, the protagonist was a young woman named Celia Bainbridge, and she was trying to find her father, a professor of antiquities who had gone missing while conducting research in a small New England town. In the course of her investigation, Celia discovered his papers, including a bizarre phrase in an unknown language that the professor had unearthed. The heroine eventually found herself in the caves underneath the fictional town, where she discovered that the townspeople secretly worshipped an ancient god who sometimes made himself manifest and demanded a sacrifice. The girl’s father had been killed upon making the same discovery, and now she was about to be given over to the dark god. But while strapped to an altar far underground, Celia remembered the phrase from her father’s papers and spoke it in a panic. Marie let herself linger over the words, Lovecraftian in every syllable: namon dagoreth ashtakar sa. The heroine spoke the words three times and then heard a howling sound from deep in the cavern. The townspeople were driven mad by the vanquishing of their god, and in the confusion, the altar table was overturned, the ropes snapped, and Celia Bainbridge lived to tell her tale.

  It was a good story, and parts of it gave Marie chills as she read. When she was done, she sat and just held the manuscript for a few minutes, wondering at its rarity and telling herself how lucky she’d been to read it. “Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa,” she said to Murphy, who had begun rubbing against her legs halfway through the story. The cat gave her a curious, superior look, and then walked away with his tail in the air. Marie watched him go and then slipped the manuscript back into Jasper’s folder before looking at her watch. Mass at St. Lucy’s was half over, and Father Joe was likely in the middle of the sermon she had typed. She smiled to herself, a bit guiltily, and then got up to get dressed. Tom would not mind her coming early, she told herself, and she smiled more broadly now at the thought of spending the entire day with him, the true nature of their trip currently pushed to the back of her mind.

  * * * * * * * *

  “Would you like to find something on the radio?” Marie asked not long after she had turned her car off Sunset and onto the Pacific Coast Highway. She had picked Tom up at Jasper’s almost an hour before, and had then made the rather tedious drive across Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Marie had stopped the car at the end of Jasper’s street to lean over and kiss Tom passionately for a few minutes after they had waved their goodbyes to the old man. She had wanted to giggle upon starting the car, but had managed to hold it in.

  “No, this is fine,” Tom said now as the Chevrolet rolled north, the beach and blue ocean to their left and the rugged hills of Malibu to their right. “Unless you want something.”

  “No, no. You’re right. This is fine.” She turned her head to smile at Tom and was glad when he reached for her hand, holding it for a while until she needed to let go to work the car’s controls. She was not used to driving such far distances, but Marie knew Tom did not yet trust himself behind the wheel, given his condition. Since the first night they had kissed in the gazebo, though, Tom had made no mention of his illness, nor had either of them once mentioned the war.

  But as they followed the ocean road north, Tom surprised her by saying, “From here, you wouldn’t think Pearl Harbor and everything else is part of the same ocean.”

  Marie was silent for a moment. “No, that’s true,” she finally said.

  “And Iwo Jima, Midway, all those islands. It’s like another world away.”

  “It seems like another world. The whole war and everything that came before it, too.” She looked out at the water spreading out endlessly past the line of breakers. “Now that it’s over, it seems like it could have just been a dream.”

  “A bad dream.”

  “Is that how it seems to you?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. And sometimes it’s right here.” He raised his hand up in front of his face, so close that he was almost touching his eyes. “It’s like I may as well have never come home.”

  “You must have seen such awful things.”

  “That’s part of it,” he said. “But it’s not just the memories. Or, I guess if it were just memories I could put up with a few bad dreams and a few blue days. A few drinks could chase those away for a while. Or a day at the beach.”

  Marie waited for him to continue and hesitated to say anything when he did not. She glanced over to make sure he was all right, and she saw that he had a far away look in his eyes. Nervous, she said, “If not the memories, then...”

  He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Then,” he said, sighing, “it’s just the feeling. It’s sort of hard to explain, but…See, it’s like I can be here with you, completely safe, happy, not a care in the world. And for no goddamn reason I know I’m gonna die. Right now, I mean. The adrenaline kicks in, the sweats. It’s like my brain’s telling me there’s a German tank over the next rise or a unit tucked up in a stand of trees with their guns trained on me…When you’re over there…there’s a thousand ways you could die….even stupid things like getting run over by one of your own Jeeps or…or shot in the head while your buddy’s cleaning his rifle. And you know it all the time. You can’t ever really calm down. Always on alert, you know?”

  Marie took her eyes off the road a second to glance at him and nod.

  Tom shrugged and said, “But you can’t just turn it off when the Nazis surrender and you’re back in the land of palm trees and pretty girls.”

  He was trying to make light of it, so she smiled for him, still knowing there had to be more pain than she could imagine just below the surface. “I think I understand,” she said.

  “I’m glad. A lot of people think guys like me are just lazy, or cowards.” He paused. “It’s getting better, though, slowly. Sometimes I think I could maybe go back to work soon, or start looking at least. But I still have…you know, episodes every so often. I can’t imagine having to explain that to a boss.” He turned so he was looking more directly at Marie, his arm up on the seatback. “If I ever just…sort of go away from you, if I don’t say anything when you talk, don’t be scared, okay?”

  Marie nodded. “All right,” she said.

  “Just wait it out. It eases up after a few minutes.”

  “Okay.”
r />   “Does it scare you?”

  “No.”

  Tom smiled. “I didn’t think it would. You’re a pretty tough character.” He slid his hand onto her shoulder as she drove and twirled the ends of her hair in his fingers. “A pretty tough character,” he repeated with a smile.

  “Stop it,” she said with a laugh and brushed his hand away. He smiled with her and turned back to face the front again, and she reached for his hand once more.

  Soon the hills of Malibu gave way to more rugged coastline, and Marie followed the highway past Point Magu before cutting inland, heading in the direction of the small town of Camarillo and the hospital grounds. Marie had never been to an asylum before, and what she saw before her seemed out of step with what she had been expecting. Opened not quite ten years earlier, the hospital was actually a huge complex of buildings, most of them two stories tall and all built to look like the old Spanish missions with tiled roofs, archways, long arcades and a tall, ornate bell tower atop the main building fronting the parking lot where Marie and Tom left her car. Trees dominated the landscaping around the hospital buildings—palms, sycamores, pepper trees and jacarandas. The latter were starting to bloom, their delicate, purple flowers standing out in contrast to the white walls of the hospital buildings.

  In the lobby of the main building, they gave their names, and Marie filled out a form detailing her request to visit Elise. The clerk behind the desk directed them toward a waiting area while he made a call. It had been several days since Marie had tried to find out about Elise’s condition or her progress, and she tried listening now as the clerk spoke on the phone, but his voice was muffled, and the echo produced by the high ceiling made every noise in the room blend together indistinguishably. A few minutes later, a tall man in a hospital uniform entered the lobby, checked in at the desk, and then approached Marie and Tom. He handed them paper “Visitor” badges, and led them out of the lobby and onto the hospital grounds.