The Stuff of Nightmares

by Malorie Blackman

  Until Jeanette spoiled it all.

  Jeanette. Even her name was glamorous. Five feet eight inches in her bare feet, raven-black hair, brown, sultry eyes and boobs that would keep the rain off a small child standing in front of her. She arrived at the wine bar late, then made a beeline for Tod. Tod’s attention wandered immediately. Rosa was bitterly disappointed but not at all surprised. Within five minutes she was more miserable than she’d ever thought possible. She had been forgotten. It took only a few more minutes for her to back away and leave. At the wine-bar door she turned to look back at Tod. He hadn’t even registered her departure. Jeanette had his full attention.

  When Rosa got home she threw herself on her bed.

  ‘I’m just tired!’ she tried to tell herself. But as soon as her head hit the pillow, her tears flowed. She beat her fists into her bed linen. She could feel her heart straining and cracking beneath her breast.

  ‘I wish … I wish … Oh, I would sell my soul to the Devil if Tod would love me. Oh, I would, I would, I w—’

  ‘Would you? Would you really?’

  Rosa froze momentarily before she spun round and struggled to sit up. She said furiously, ‘Who the hell …?’

  ‘Who the hell indeed!’

  Rosa stared, stricken and terrified, at the thing in the room with her. It was a deep boiled red, as if its top layer of skin had been peeled away and salt rubbed into the raw, sensitive flesh underneath. It was a man – of sorts. His voice, like his stance, was arrogant and sneering. The stench of the rotten and the dead and the dying assailed Rosa’s nostrils. But what made her shrink back in mindless terror were the thing’s eyes. His … its … his eyes were as red as his skin. The irises and pupils were blood red surrounded by intense white.

  The Devil.

  Rosa recognized him immediately. She’d read enough of her Bible to know him.

  ‘Go away,’ she croaked.

  The Devil was annoyed. ‘You’re the one who called me – remember? I’ve got better things to do than pop up here, there and everywhere uninvited.’

  ‘I never invited you – I never.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said the Devil, in high dudgeon, ‘but you said – and I quote – “I would sell my soul to the Devil if Tod would love me.”’

  ‘But I … I didn’t mean it.’ Rosa’s whispered protest set the Devil frowning.

  ‘So you don’t want Tod to love you?’ he asked patiently.

  ‘No, that’s not true. I do. I do with all my heart,’ Rosa replied. ‘But …’

  ‘But what?’ the Devil prompted when she fell silent.

  Still she said nothing.

  ‘Rosa, do you want my help or don’t you?’ The Devil’s neck suddenly stretched until it was two metres long, dipping and coiling in Rosa’s direction until his face was only inches away from her own. Rosa shrank back, terrified. She felt as if her whole body was being swallowed up by her eyes, which stared at the Devil, too petrified to even blink.

  ‘Do you want my help or don’t you?’ the Devil boomed.

  Rosa struggled desperately to think of Tod, her love. Once she had Tod’s smiling image in her mind, she clung to it. It felt like clinging to her sanity. Tod … She loved him desperately, passionately, hopelessly. Rosa nodded at the Devil. The Devil’s neck shrank back down to its normal length with a sudden snap.

  ‘That’s all right then,’ he replied. ‘Sign here please.’

  A long scroll suddenly appeared in Rosa’s lap. She picked it up and started to read.

  ‘No need to do that,’ the Devil cajoled. ‘It’s my standard boilerplate contract. I give you your heart’s desire. You give me your soul. It’s all very straightforward.’

  ‘I’d still like to read it,’ Rosa replied diffidently.

  She didn’t want to offend him but she’d read enough stories to know the Devil always tried to include a catch in his contracts. She turned her attention to the contract and read aloud.

  ‘“I, Rosa Maxine Wells, do hereby state that I do of my own free will and without coercion agree to give up my soul upon my death to the Devil in exchange for marriage to Tod Powell. Signed—” Hang on. It doesn’t say anything here about him loving me.’ Rosa frowned.

  ‘That’s your department. I can arrange for him to be with you, but that’s all,’ the Devil replied.

  ‘But I want him to love me.’

  ‘Perhaps you haven’t heard, but I don’t deal in love,’ the Devil pointed out.

  ‘But it’s all pointless if he doesn’t love me.’

  The Devil scratched his head. ‘I’ll tell you what – I’ll make it so that he’ll never want to leave your side. He’ll want to be with you for all eternity. How’s that?’

  Rosa smiled for the first time since the Devil’s arrival. ‘Sounds like heaven,’ she breathed.

  The Devil flinched. ‘There’s no need for bad language.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Rosa quickly. But then a frown visited her face and made itself at home there. ‘Hang on. How do I … how do I know that you won’t try something funny when I sign this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the Devil asked indignantly.

  ‘How do I know you won’t … er … do something to dispatch me before my time is up?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I mean, how do I know you won’t claim me the moment Tod and I get together for good. I’m not saying you would but—’

  Slowly the Devil’s head swelled up, expanding widthways until the sides of his face were touching opposite walls. His body remained the same size but his face was now an obscene, grotesque mask. His eyes narrowed, he asked, ‘Would you like a guarantee written into your contract?’

  ‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind …’ Rosa answered.

  ‘It is done.’

  Rosa glanced down at the contract in her hand. After Tod’s name, a new section had been added:

  ‘“The Devil hereby guarantees that he will not claim the aforementioned soul until Rosa Maxine Wells takes her own life,”’ Rosa read. ‘You mean you won’t claim my soul unless I commit suicide?’

  Rosa was amazed at the generosity of the new clause. The Devil’s head shrank down to its normal size.

  ‘I mean, you won’t die unless you commit suicide,’ the Devil replied.

  ‘Does that mean that if my head gets run over by a bus, I’ll have to live as a vegetable for all eternity?’ Rosa asked warily.

  The Devil began to tap his foot. ‘Those damned fantasy books! They’ve made everyone so suspicious of the most innocent clauses,’ he raged. ‘It means that your soul will be mine when you commit suicide. It means no more or less than that.’

  ‘But I won’t commit suicide. It’s against everything I believe,’ Rosa replied.

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’

  ‘And what happens if I’m badly injured. Will I have to live for ever even if I’m brain dead?’

  ‘Would you like a clause in the contract about that as well?’ asked the Devil.

  ‘If you’d be so kind.’

  ‘It is done,’ said the Devil. ‘No matter what life throws at you, you will never suffer anything more serious than a cold. Happy now?’

  Rosa examined the new clause very carefully indeed. It seemed to be OK, but the Devil was a trickster – and not a benign one either.

  ‘All right, I’ll sign,’ she said slowly.

  ‘At last!’ The Devil grinned.

  ‘Wait a minute though.’ Rosa glowered at the Devil. ‘You just said I wouldn’t die unless I commit suicide.’

  ‘Oh give me strength!’ The Devil lowered his eyes hellwards. ‘So?’

  ‘So does that mean that if I don’t commit suicide I’ll live for ever?’

  ‘Work it out for yourself.’

  ‘Wait a minute … I get it now. I’ll live for ever and Tod won’t. I’ll be alone and kill myself. That’s your plan, isn’t it? I’m not signing this …’

  The Devil sighed deeply. ‘You and Tod will
be together for always. He’ll exist for as long as you do. And your soul is eternal. Now that’s it. I’m not wasting any more time with you. Either you sign the contract or I’ll take my business elsewhere.’

  ‘If you put in that bit about Tod living for as long as I do then I’ll sign,’ Rosa said.

  ‘Done! Now get on with it.’

  ‘I don’t have a pen.’

  ‘Hold out your left hand,’ the Devil ordered.

  Rosa did as instructed. Immediately she felt a sharp stabbing pain at the tip of her ring finger. Drawing back her hand, she was surprised, then not surprised, to see her fingertip covered in blood.

  ‘Now you can sign the contract,’ the Devil said.

  Though it was awkward to sign with her ring finger, Rosa proceeded to do so, thinking it was lucky she was at least left-handed.

  ‘Why that finger, as a matter of interest?’ she asked.

  ‘Heart blood,’ the Devil replied, satisfied.

  Barely had Rosa added the usual self-conscious flourish under her name than the contract disappeared. With a grin of the purest evil, the Devil sat at the end of Rosa’s bed. Inwardly Rosa trembled at the sight of him. She’d been trying not to take too many long, drawn-out looks in his direction. He really was the ugliest, most grotesque entity she’d ever seen. Even now his foetid smell assaulted her nostrils and burned the back of her throat. Rosa’s stomach clenched in revulsion.

  ‘You must love’ – at this word the Devil spat with distaste on Rosa’s short-pile carpet – ‘this Tod very much to give up your soul to be with him.’

  ‘I do,’ Rosa said simply. She peered over the side of the bed. Where the Devil had spat, the carpet was now singed.

  ‘So what’s your plan then?’ asked the Devil.

  ‘Plan?’

  ‘For the future?’

  ‘Tod and I will finish our MBAs. And once we’ve both graduated, I’ll give up my teaching job and we’ll maybe travel for a year, then get married and have a child right away, followed by another after three years. Tod will get a fantastic job that makes us lots of money before he sets up his own successful financial consultancy. That’s where the money is. And we’ll buy a house in the suburbs and have two cars and I’ll stay home to look after the children until they’re old enough to go to school. Then I’ll return to teaching part-time and—’

  ‘Dear, oh dear,’ laughed the Devil. ‘This is going to be even easier than I thought.’

  Rosa snapped back to the present with a vengeance. Lost in her own world, she’d almost forgotten about him.

  The Devil looked directly into Rosa’s eyes. ‘You know there’s no way out of this contract now?’

  ‘I don’t want a way out. I love Tod. I want to be with him always.’

  The Devil laughed. ‘Corrupting your sort always gives me the most satisfaction. When the sweet, the innocent fall, they’re the most fun to torture.’

  ‘You won’t get me. I’m not going to commit suicide,’ Rosa said confidently.

  ‘We’ll see,’ the Devil said thoughtfully. ‘You know, there’s a moment between life and the afterlife when there is nothing. A kind of limbo state where Death lives. Those who believe in something more then Death pass through that state and into something else. Those who believe in nothing after life move into an eternity of nothingness. When it’s your turn to die, the door to that state of nothing will not be open to you. You do realize that, don’t you?’

  ‘I believe in life after death. I always have,’ said Rosa slowly. ‘So why would I want to exist in nothingness?’

  ‘I’m just making sure you know that you no longer have the choice of believing in anything else,’ said the Devil, his red eyes flashing like celebratory fireworks.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing,’ the Devil dismissed with a smirk. ‘Just covering myself, that’s all. Why are you in such a hurry to get married anyway? Most of the souls I have in Hell belong to those who committed their crimes as a direct result of being married.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand. It has to do with love and commitment – words that mean nothing to you.’

  The Devil blew his nose into his hand and flicked it off onto Rosa’s wall. The paint sizzled and blistered.

  ‘Then why make a deal with me?’ the Devil asked with a malicious smile. ‘You know, I’ve done a lot of things during the millennia but I’ve never got married. I’ve been thinking for a few centuries now that maybe I need a companion. Someone I can personally torment, instead of the usual souls that I leave to the pleasure of my demon minions. And I need a son, or maybe a daughter would be better … If’ – here the Devil pointed at the ceiling – ‘can do it, then so can I. Maybe a boy and a girl would be best. Then, between the three of us, there would be three times the wars, three times the horrors, three times the disease …’

  Rosa’s blood turned to Antarctic whispers in her veins. ‘I have Tod,’ she whispered. ‘You promised me.’

  The Devil smiled as he stood up. ‘I know … but can you trust me?’

  And so saying – peouff! – he vanished. Rosa crept under her duvet and pulled it up over her head, shivering until she fell asleep, exhausted.

  The next day Rosa woke up with a splitting headache and a memory of the most vivid dream she’d ever had. Imagine dreaming about signing a contract with the Devil! But then she saw her wall and her carpet and her heart missed a beat.

  ‘I must have done that – somehow – and then dreamed about the Devil doing it,’ Rosa whispered to herself. She could think of no other explanation. It was the only explanation that fitted the facts.

  But when Rosa next got to college, Tod had eyes for no one but her. He was even oblivious to Jeanette’s more obvious charms. Almost six months of dinner dates and hand-in-hand walks in the park and deep, meaningful kisses followed. There was only one small fly in Rosa’s anti-wrinkle face cream. Why had Tod never, ever tried to make love to her? One late afternoon in St James’s Park, while embarrassed almost to the point of self-combustion, Rosa had stuttered her way through the question. Tod turned to her and smiled, saying, ‘I can wait.’ But Rosa didn’t want to wait any longer. She’d never had sex before but she loved Tod so much and knew she always would, so for the first time she wanted to share her body. In fact, she longed to. Rosa decided that on their very next date, she would tell him so. She smiled at how surprised and thrilled Tod would be. But Tod’s surprise came first.

  That night, in Rosa’s local Italian restaurant, Tod said, ‘Rosa, will you marry me?’

  When Rosa’s jaw fell inelegantly open, Tod rushed on, ‘Just hear me out. I know we’ve only been going out for less than a year, but I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. We were meant to be together. I can’t imagine my life without you. I don’t want to imagine my life without you. So please, please say yes.’

  Rosa could hardly speak – but somehow she managed. ‘Yes, yes, a million, trillion times yes.’

  Their kiss after that lasted at least a minute. Tod’s lips on hers were so soft and his tongue against hers felt so hot. It was magical. Lost in that kiss, Rosa only slowly became aware of the applause echoing all around her from the other diners. She pulled away, her face hot enough for the chef in the kitchen to cook upon. Tod grinned at her, not the slightest bit bothered by their audience.

  ‘Tod, d’you … would you like to spend the night at my flat?’ Rosa whispered.

  Tod shook his head. ‘I want our wedding night to be … unforgettable. I can wait.’

  ‘Then I wish we could get married right now,’ Rosa admitted.

  Tod smiled and took one of Rosa’s hands in both of his. Raising it to his lips, he kissed it, never taking his eyes off her. ‘I can wait,’ he repeated. ‘And believe me, it’ll be worth it.’

  It was only when Rosa got home that night and lay in bed, hugging her arms around her, that she realized that not once, not one single time had Tod told her he loved her.

  Men find it hard to say these
things, she told herself. Besides, he must love me, otherwise why would he want to marry me?

  The strange dream about the Devil and his contract was forgotten.

  Three months later Tod and Rosa were married. Tod simply didn’t want to wait any longer. Tod’s parents were both dead and had left him a not inconsiderable amount of money, plus a house which he decided to sell. Not that Rosa cared about that. Tod was enough for her. But the rest was a wonderful bonus. Rosa couldn’t imagine how she could possibly be happier.

  The wedding was a small affair. Close family and a few friends from school and the MBA course only. There was to be no honeymoon.

  ‘Neither of us can afford the time away from work,’ Tod pointed out. ‘But soon, I promise.’

  Tod had just started a new job, plus he was just beginning to be active in local politics, so he was very busy, and Rosa couldn’t go away in the middle of a school term. Besides, Tod was ambitious. He told anyone who cared to listen that he’d be Prime Minister one day. So no honeymoon – but Rosa didn’t mind. Tod was hers now. What else did she need? After the wedding Tod took Rosa back to their new home, a large, detached house in suburbia.

  ‘What d’you think?’ asked Tod as they got out of his car and stood in front of it.

  Rosa didn’t know what to say, or think. The house was amazing – incredibly spacious and double-fronted with a separate double garage. It was perfect, as if Tod had reached into her head and plucked out her dream house. A perfect house for the start of her perfect life.

  ‘I know you wanted to see it before I bought it but I wanted it to be a wedding present.’ Tod smiled. ‘D’you like it?’

  ‘Tod, I … I love it.’ Rosa sprang at Tod and hugged him, tears in her eyes.

  ‘You’re halfway there, but hop into my arms and I’ll carry you over the threshold,’ he teased.

  Rosa happily did as directed, gazing into Tod’s eyes, her arm around his shoulders. No one in the world could be happier, or luckier. The front door had barely shut behind them when the smell hit Rosa like a body blow. It made her gag and put her hand to her mouth. She recognized the smell at once.

  It was the smell of the Devil.