by E A Comiskey
She looked away but didn’t leave. After a little while, she curled up next to him and he held her just the way he’d held her mother when she was a little girl. Together, they slept, each chasing away the nightmares of the other.
***
Saturday, they remained hidden, cooped up in the tiny hotel room, picking and fussing at each other all day. The only time they’d gone out was to get the box made of bone and the bag of graveyard dirt. In those moments, they’d been quiet and jumpy. Back in the hotel, they found reasons to bicker. It was better to argue than to sit in silence. Silence left too much space for thinking.
Richard wanted to go into Sunday mass with Burke.
“Seriously, if I’m going to do this, I need to know that you’re outside with the engine running,” Burke said. “I can’t rob an old lady of her chance to partake of the Body of Christ and then get stuck with no escape.”
“I’ll come out and start the car the second communion starts.”
She sighed. “Why do you want to come in so bad?”
“I ain’t never needed to pray the way I need to pray right now.”
“Fine,” she relented. “But you sit right next to the door and you scoot at the beginning of the hymn before communion.”
He agreed to her terms, and on Sunday morning they entered the tiny sanctuary where three old women and a single man sat waiting for mass to begin. Richard slipped into the very back pew and watched Burke head toward the woman nearest the pulpit. She murmured a few words that he couldn’t quite make out and the woman nodded and slid over to make room.
A handful of parishioners trickled in.
He hadn’t entered a church since Barbara’s funeral. That day, he’d sat in the front pew and stared at the closed lid of the cherrywood coffin and hardened his heart against God. Any being who could create and then put their creation through unspeakable pain didn’t deserve his worship. He’d always been agnostic at best. Sitting through his wife’s funeral, he believed in God with all his heart, and his belief seethed with festering black hatred. For more than forty years, he’d let that loathing infect every part of his life.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the figure hanging on the cross in the front. “I was a fool.”
It felt good to admit it. Well, not good maybe, but healthy. It was true, apparently, that confession was good for the soul. Is that why these people came here so faithfully, week after week? Did they understand something the rest of the world had forgotten in all its silly busyness?
The worshippers listened in silence as the priest began the service.
Old people. Not a kid in the place. They were strangers, their faces unknown to him.
Faces that could be masks.
They could be exactly who they appeared to be, or they could be the monster stalking him, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’d known that before, but the true magnitude of that truth only now struck him. Cold horror raced through his veins, pushed forward by the frantic beating of his heart.
He couldn’t trust anyone.
The monster could be a pretty little sprite of a girl, his own sweet Barbara, an old lady in church. It could be Burke.
Burke peeked over her shoulder at him.
Madness waited at the end of the tracks this train of thought ran on. He had to trust someone. He had to trust Burke.
Didn’t he?
It was the kid. Out of nowhere, the thought slammed into him with all the force of a Mack Truck. She’d taken that kid in like he was her own. Fed him after school. Poured over his schoolbooks with him. Let him sleep in their home when he told her his mom had left him all alone. The kid had been at the hospital every day and then, when she was gone, so was the kid.
All this time, he’d assumed the boy disappeared after she died because he couldn’t handle the grief. Richard had made no attempt to find him. He’d had enough on his hands with his own child, who’d cried all night, every night, and couldn’t yet do even the simplest of tasks for herself.
He glanced around the room again. Grey-haired worshippers. Burke. The priest.
It could be anybody.
Silent as a shadow, he slipped out of the sanctuary and climbed into the driver’s seat of the SUV. With the doors locked and the sun baking him through the closed windows, he sat shivering and prayed, “Dear God, help me defeat this evil. Give me eyes to see and the strength to fight. Once it’s dead, you can do whatever you want with me, but for just another day or two, help me fight this evil.”
Ten minutes later, Burke came racing toward the car and launched herself into the passenger seat. He peeled out of the parking place, sending a plume of dust and gravel into the air. The car wove a little toward center. He over corrected, hit the shoulder, and pulled it back into the lane. It had been a long time since he’d driven. Had the steering in older cars been so sensitive? Didn’t seem likely.
He drove as far as the Circle K at the edge of town and pulled into the wide lot.
Burke held out her trembling hand and showed him the little wafer.
“I guess it’s time to call The Devil,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “Maybe we should wait until after we take care of the monster.”
Richard thought of the wide-eyed kid sitting at his wife’s side and suppressed a shiver. “No. We can’t do that today, right? But we can do this. We can get Stan back and we’ll be three on one. We’re gonna kill that thing deader than a lobster in butter sauce, but first we do this.”
“Okay.” She slipped the wafer into the ash tray. “But first, I need a soda and then you need to let me drive. Good Lord, Grandpa. I thought you said driving was like riding a bike.”
“You ain’t dead or crashed, are you?”
She gave him a sidelong look and climbed out without saying anything else.
“Smart aleck kid,” he mumbled, then opened his door. His feet hit the ground harder than he expected and the jolt shot through his hip. The pain rattled his already shaky nerves.
“Okay?” Burke asked. She’d stopped at his grunt.
“Fine as frog’s hair,” he answered.
She rolled her eyes and kept walking. He followed, trying very hard not to shuffle his feet.
***
Burke pointed the car toward Sheep’s Head Mountain and drove until they came to a crossroads so disused that a tenacious little cholla cactus had decided to try making its home in the middle of the lane. Burke edged the SUV to the side of the road.
“Grandpa, I’m just really not sure that—”
“We should do this,” he said.
His nerves were shot. His hip still ached—worse now, after an hour of being bounced around like fart in a mitten on these shoddy mountain roads. There was a terrible ringing in his ears. His stomach was a misery. He craved a glass of ice-cold prune juice. Sitting on his hands since their encounter with the monster on Friday was making him crazy. He needed to take action. Any action. Even wrong action was better than more waiting.
“If you don’t want a part of it, I won’t hold it against you.” A rush of oven-hot air pushed into the car when he opened the door. “I gotta do this.”
She didn’t agree or disagree, but in a moment, she stood beside him at the center of the crossroads, holding the long, wooden handle of a pickaxe and a box of Morton Salt.
Richard had assembled the little summoning kit as they drove. The photograph of the two of them was laid in the bottom of the box. The stolen wafer had been placed over their faces, the vial of blood poured over the wafer, the bag of graveyard dirt emptied to cover it all, and then he closed it and wrapped it in Sam’s stole. He held the package tightly, hoping to still the tremor in his hands.
“Better do this first.” Burke laid down the pick-axe, walked to the front of the car and began meticulously drawing the octagon on the dirt with the salt. On each side, she drew the symbols, and when she was done, she started the SUV once more and carefully rolled it forward so the entire drawing lay under the carriage of the ve
hicle.
She did the physical work of digging a hole in the rocky, sun-baked earth, and Richard bent to place the box in it, both knees popping loudly on his way down and again on his way back up.
In the distance, an engine roared.
They both glanced toward the source of the noise—a car so far in the distance, it appeared as a flash of light under the bright sun.
Moving quickly, Burke pushed dirt over the box.
Richard picked up the pickaxe and tossed it in the back of the SUV.
The car they could hear in the distance was a streak of red flying through the wilderness.
“Can’t be,” he whispered, more to himself than her.
Burke scanned the landscape. “When does she come? How? Like, in a puff of smoke or something?”
“I’ll be a suck-egg mule,” Richard muttered. “I think that’s her coming now.”
“What?” Burke looked toward the car, a mint condition 1959 Cadillac Convertible. “Oh my God,” she gasped. Despite the sweat dripping down her face, her teeth began to chatter.
Richard was struck by a wave of gratitude that he’d not been able to find a glass of prune juice that morning, certain he wouldn’t have been able to hold his bowels if he had.
The car roared into the intersection and screeched to a stop directly over the freshly turned earth. The door opened, and The Devil got out. She was bare, tanned, muscular legs from her canvas-clad feet all the way up to her tiny denim shorts. The tails of a man’s red and white checkered shirt were tied over her breasts. A straw cowboy hat cast a shadow over her face. Her smile was sweeter than a sugar boat sailing on a honey sea.
“Well, howdy, Dick. What can I do for you?”
Burke guffawed. “That’s it?”
The Devil turned her attention to Burke. “Excuse me?”
“The Devil Herself? Really? I’ve been half out of my mind, having nightmares about how scary you were going to be, and here you are, Jessica Simpson, straight out of 2005. You might be the least scary thing I’ve seen in the past week.”
The Devil laughed with her. “Well, thanks dear. I never understood what all the fuss was about. I’m not such a bad girl. Or…well…” She giggled and cocked a curvy hip. “I am bad, but in all the best ways.”
Richard was not amused. Aroused, but not amused. “Where’s Stanley?”
“Is that why you called me? To ask about Stanley?”
“I called to get him back from you.”
“How do you know he wants to be taken from me?” She stepped away from the car and pushed the door shut behind her. The metallic thud echoed through the empty land. Gravel crunched under her bright white sneakers. She ran a single long red fingernail gently down Richard’s arm. “It could be that he’s never had more fun in his whole life than he’s had since he came with me.”
“He didn’t go with you. You took him,” Burke said.
The Devil stepped back and arched one perfect brow at her. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I know.”
“Based on what?” she asked. “It’s not like you’ve got any kind of relationship with Stanley. You barely know anything about the man. How do you know he wouldn’t brave Hell for one spectacular roll in the hay?”
Burke gritted her teeth.
“Stanley loathed you,” Richard said.
“Loathed. That’s a strong word, Dick, but, since you brought it up, didn’t you once wile away your hours thinking about how much you loathed Stanley? There wasn’t a single thing about him that you loved. Really, Dick, aren’t you better off without all his drama in your life? When you were in Everest, did you ever hurt the way you are hurting now? Hurting in body, hurting in spirit. It’s kind of Stanley’s fault.”
A snake slithered out of the shrubby grass toward the girl and she crouched to stroke it as lovingly as if it were a newborn puppy.
“He would have died in Everest if it weren’t for Stanley,” Burke said. With her feet planted wide and her fists at her sides, she looked to be a warrior from mythology.
The serpent lifted its head from the earth and The Devil leaned forward so that it’s darting tongue could brush her lips in an obscene kiss before she stretched up to her full height once more. She was taller than Richard, as tall as Burke. “Death is part of life on this ball of dust,” she said. Her wide eyes held pity for the whole, doomed planet. “God made it that way. Blame him,” she said, bringing her heel down to crush the snake’s skull. “Your grandfather is going to die, even now that he’s out of Everest. And so will you. And so will Stanley. In fact, Stanley is overdue. He had a good run.”
Burke took a step forward. “He will, but he hasn’t yet? Is that what you’re telling us?”
The Devil shrugged. “Any time now. Actually, the longer we talk, the more likely it is it will be sooner rather than later, so if you want to help him, you should tell me why you’ve summoned me here.”
Richard leaned back hard against the SUV. “Sorry,” he muttered. “This heat…”
“Grandpa, why don’t we sit in the truck? I’ll run the air and we can talk out of the sun.”
She turned toward The Devil standing in the road next to the body of the snake, flecks of blood on her white sneaker. “Please,” she said. “You said it yourself. He’s hurting.”
The Devil hesitated, then shrugged. “Okey-doke, but just so you know, that little bit of hoodoo under the car isn’t going to hold me for more than a few minutes. The name of the Nazarene has power, but belief is the wire that power runs through and yours is tentative at best.” She strode past Burke and slipped into the backseat with the grace of a mountain cat.
Burke reached out to help Richard, but he turned away from her grasp and walked under his own power to the passenger-side door. This wasn’t going at all the way he’d pictured. He had imagined a thousand scenarios. None of them involved her knowing their every move before they did.
The Devil stretched her legs and propped her feet on the center console of the front seat, her slim, pretty ankles crossed between Burke and Richard. She folded her hands across her flat midsection. Her hat lay on the seat next to her. “So, kids, clock’s ticking. You summoned me and you”—she made quotation marks in the air with her fingers—“trapped me. Now what?”
“Give us Stanley,” Burke said.
“No,” The Devil answered, holding out her nails to inspect them. “Anything else you’d like to talk about?”
“We’ll make a deal to get Stanley back,” Richard said.
Her hand hung in the air for a moment and then she lowered it. “You’re willing to deal? Well, now. That’s a whole different ball of wax. What are you willing to offer?”
“We…uhm…” Richard hesitated.
He was studiously avoiding Burke’s eye. The book had told him they’d have to deal with The Devil. She didn’t do anything for free. But Burke had been so opposed to the idea anyway that he hadn’t wanted to give her any further reason to object. For days, he’d been trying to figure out what to offer her in trade. Only one thing came to mind, but now that the moment was upon him, he was having trouble finding the wherewithal to spit it out.
The Devil laughed, a sound as pretty as well-tuned wind chimes on a perfect summer day. “You aren’t actually considering offering yourself in trade for Stanley, are you?”
Hot blood rushed to his face.
“Stanley is a powerful hunter, Dick. He’s desirable and clever and strong. Poor Dick. You are so tired. You should find a safe place and rest. Don’t you worry about Stanley anymore. You just take care of yourself, sweetheart. Surely you’ve got a few golden years left.”
The pain in his legs flared up and he winced as though her words were a physical assault.
Burke jumped to his defense. “My grandfather is a good man.”
“Is he?” The Devil asked, sounding genuinely curious. “I thought he was a mean-spirited old codger, the most unpleasant human being you’d ever been forced to share Thanksgiving dinner
with.” She pulled her legs back and planted her feet on the floor of the car. “I know the thoughts of your heart, Burke, and all I want is for you to be happy. Are you happy traipsing across the country with a man who looks down on you for something so ridiculously biological as the color of your skin?”
“I don’t!” Richard erupted.
Both women jumped at the exclamation.
“I’m learning,” he said. “I’m not perfect, but I’m learning how to be better and, yes, if you’ll take me, I’ll trade places with Stanley. The world needs him more than it needs me.”
The Devil flinched, a movement so imperceptible he might have missed it if he hadn’t been staring straight into those crystal blue eyes.
“No,” she said again. “I won’t release Stanley. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Richard, but you’re going to have to manage a while longer in this life. I know it’s hard, honey, but, gosh. You’ve made it this far. It’s all downhill from here.” She reached for the door handle, but her arm stopped in mid-air as though she’d smacked into a piece of glass. “Huh,” she said, sounding far more curious than upset. “I guess you still have a few more minutes.” She picked at a piece of lint on the seat. “I hope Stanley still has a few more minutes. Otherwise, he’ll be lost to us all and that would be a sad day for us now, wouldn’t it?”
“We won’t kill the skinwalker,” Burke said.
The Devil’s head snapped up, her eyes wide.
“Burke!” His fear and uncertainty died in an instant under the onslaught of pure panic.
She reached out and took his trembling hand in hers. Her palm was warm and dry, her touch as strong and certain as a mother’s calming caress. “It’s okay, Grandpa. We have a chance to save Stanley. Revenge won’t bring Grandma back. The thing is about to go to sleep for another decade or so, anyway. O’Doyle is as good as gone. You saw him. He looks like a walking corpse. Let’s just get Stanley and go home. You don’t have to go to Everest. You can stay with me.”
“We can’t just…” He lacked the capacity to go any further, to express the tangle of thought and emotion in his mind.
