1 Straight to Hell (23 page)

But then my buddy from down the street came into the room, dragging his enormous backpack behind him.  He wore an expression of such weariness that he looked like a little, old man.  But when he saw me, his face lit up like a Christmas tree and he shed sixty years.  “Hey!  Are you my teacher?”

“I am.  You’re DuShawn, right?”

He nodded.  “Right.”  He glanced around the room, making sure no one was listening in on our conversation.  “You see any more demons lately?”

“No.”  I crouched down next to him.  “What about you?”

He shrugged.  “Maybe.” 

I had an idea.  “Do you think you could draw a picture of that demon for me?  You know, so I could see what it looks like?”

His worried expression returned.  “It’s pretty scary.  I try not to think about it during the day.”

“I know, but I really would like to see it.”  I still wasn’t sure if DuShawn’s monster was real, or if he was making it up.  But if it
was
real, then I wanted to do something about it.   Knowing what it looked like would be a big help.

He looked dubious.  “Well, okay.  But it’s pretty big, too.”

“Then use two pieces of paper,” I suggested.  He bit his lower lip as he thought, then agreed and went off to draw his monster.

 That morning, the kids practiced writing the alphabet.  Then I read them a story, and as I read, I watched one of the girls sneak a long booger from her nose and show it to the boy sitting next to her who promptly ate it.  Elementary school is all about extremes, you see.  One minute it’s a snooze fest, the next it’s Cirque du Snotty.

At least I had a capable paraprofessional to help me out.  Kate Poppinjay was older than me by about a dozen years and heavier than me by about fifty pounds, and she wore a hideous sweater embellished with snowmen that all the kids seemed to need to touch.  She was great at crowd control, and let me lead the class activities without butting in.  By ten o’clock, I considered her my best friend.

Before the class left to go to the library, Kate beckoned me to the back of the classroom to where DuShawn still drew his picture.  “DuShawn, why don’t you show Ms. Straight what you’re drawing.”

DuShawn’s picture spanned four papers which had been taped together to form a large square.  The fearsome creature filled most of the paper.  Its hooked hands ended in pointed talons, and its distorted face had disturbingly human features: a piggish nose, sneering mouth, wide-set, heavy-lidded eyes.  The monster dominated so much of the page that I almost missed the tiny drawing of a little boy in a bed down in the far right-hand corner.  But while the monster had been drawn with great care, the child cowering in the bed had no face.

“That’s me,” DuShawn said, pointing.  “And that’s the devil that comes in my room every night.”

“Is this something you dream?” Kate asked him.  But I knew it wasn’t.  As detailed as he’d drawn it, I knew that this thing was real.

He vehemently shook his head.  “Sometimes, it pulls the covers off my bed so I can’t hide from it.  Once, it poked the bottom of my feet with its nails.”  A tear fell from his eye onto the picture and, furious, he wiped it away.  “I hate that thing,” he whispered.  “I want to kill it.”

 I had to struggle to keep my voice neutral.  “Wow.  That’s some picture.  But why don’t you have a face?”  Next to me, Kate tensed.  I actually wanted to hold her hand.

DuShawn looked away and mumbled, “Because the demon tells me if I scream, he’ll eat my guts.  And so I wish I didn’t have a mouth, so I wouldn’t want to scream.”

Ten minutes later, when DuShawn had joined the other kids in the library, Kate and I were crying in the faculty bathroom.  “My God,” she finally said.  “That poor kid.  He’s been falling asleep in class, you know.”

I wiped my eyes with a bit of toilet paper.  I would find that demon, and once I did, I’d become
its
worst nightmare.

At lunch, I offered to do playground duty.  It’s not that I have a love of standing in the icy air watching children try to push each other into the snow, but I wanted to spy on Ariel and make sure that the fight club thing was really over.

Grace found me right away and ran up to hug me before running off again with her friends.  But as hard as I searched, I could not find my niece.  I wandered through groups of kids, ordering them to zip up their coats and put on their hats, all the while keeping a look out.  Rounding the first set of swings, I finally spotted Ari near a row of bushes that stood between the playground and the backyards of the neighboring houses.  But before I could reach her, she cast a furtive look in each direction, then pushed her way into the hedge.

I ran over.  Behind the bushes was a very narrow gap in the chain-link fence, and Ari had managed to squeeze through it.  I could spot the back of her coat as she crossed the yard and then disappeared behind the house.  Damn!

Since there were five other adults on playground duty, I didn’t feel guilty leaving my post.  Knowing that it would be far too slow to go around the fence and try to catch up with her, I ran to the parking lot and got into my car.

It didn’t surprise me that her absence had gone unnoticed.  After all, Ari had been practicing stealth since she was a baby.  For her, it was a matter of survival.  But as I turned out of the parking lot and into the street, I swore in frustration.  I would have thought that
someone
was keeping an eye on her.

I finally had her in my sights and was tailing her from a half a block away when Mr. Clerk appeared in my passenger seat.  “Miss Spry has another task for you,” he said.

 “When?”  Ahead of me, Ariel turned a corner and went left.  All at once, another car, an old, blue wreck with a sheet of plastic taped up where the back window should have been, turned down that street as well, cutting off my view.

“Now, of course.”

I ground my teeth.  Of course it had to be now.  “I can’t right this minute.”

I sped up and turned down the same street Ariel had.  The car that had made the turn first was now parallel to her.  And to my horror, it had slowed down in order to keep pace.  A man with white hair leaned out of the driver’s-side window to talk to her.

White hair.  Like the voodoo doll’s.

Mr. Clerk tapped his wristwatch.  “Let’s go, Lilith.”

“I can’t.”  I pulled alongside the curb and threw the car into park.  My eyes were fixed on the man ahead of me.  I didn’t know what he was saying, but from the way Ariel’s head hunched down between her shoulders, I knew it wasn’t good.  I struggled to open the door and call Ari’s name at the same time, but Mr. Clerk jerked me back into my seat by grabbing the sleeve of my coat.

“Miss Spry made it very clear that you are to come immediately.  No excuses.”

I was certain the old hag had picked this very moment on purpose just to test my loyalty, but I didn’t care.  I wasn’t about to leave my niece alone with that predator.  “Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can.  This won’t take long.”

Mr. Clerk refused to let go.  And, unfortunately, my demon was kicking up a fuss as well.  She’d learned some new tricks since we last battled in the restaurant, and her control was much stronger than before.   When I tried to open the car door, she flung my hand to the side.  I reached for the horn, but she shoved me sideways so that I ended up falling into Mr. Clerk’s lap.  I did my best to wrestle her down and make her obey me, but it was like trying to control a headstrong mastiff.

Now, Ari was nearly a full block away from me, and still the other car kept pace.  I was terrified that, at any moment, the man would reach out and pull her in with him.  Then it would be all over.

“Let me go!”  Finally, I managed to open the door and tumble out onto the sidewalk.  “Ari!  Ariel!”

Ari turned around, saw me, and began running.  In the
opposite
direction.  The man in the car up ahead also heard me and took off, his exhaust belching black smoke as he sped away.  When the smoke cleared, Ariel was nowhere to be seen.

“I’ve got to find my niece,” I said, getting back into the car.  “Tell Miss Spry that I will be there as soon as I can.”

Mr. Clerk looked at his watch.  “I’ll tell her, but it’s already too late.  The time for your assignment has already passed.”

I could almost hear the hanging judge’s gavel fall.  “I was right, wasn’t I?  This was a test.  That’s why you didn’t give me an advanced warning.”

“I’m sorry, Lilith.  I really am.  I’ll do what I can to try and pacify her, but I don’t think it will work.  She’s far too angry.”

My stomach twisted.  “What will she do to me?”

“I’m not sure.  But whatever it is, it won’t be pleasant.”  He gave me a final, sorrowful look before disappearing.

I returned to school as the final bell was ringing.  To my relief, Ariel stood in line with the other fifth-graders.  She saw me, too, but pretended that she didn’t.

I would have dragged her home right then, but my own class was assembling down the hall, waiting for me to escort them into the classroom.  So instead, I walked over to Ari, forked two fingers at my eyes, then jabbed them back at her. 
I’m watching you
, I mouthed.

“Oooh, you’re in trouble,” said a girl next to Ari.

Ariel folded her arms over her chest.  “I don’t care.”  But she looked ready to cry.

The afternoon passed excruciatingly slow.  Every sudden noise (and there are a lot of sudden noises in a first-grade classroom), made me jump.  I kept expecting Miss Spry to leap out from under my desk or behind the closet door.  My t-shirt was soaked with sweat.

“You don’t look so good,” Kate told me.  “You want to go home?”

“No,” I said.  “I’m fine.”  I wanted to stay at school not only because if I went home, I knew I’d do nothing but worry, but also because I was closer to the girls this way in case Miss Spry decided to go after them.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted.  I was also confused.  Nothing had happened.  I couldn’t imagine that Miss Spry had let me off the hook, but over three hours had passed, and I hadn’t been dragged to Hell or gotten a message that one of the girls had been hurt.  Maybe Mr. Clerk had been able to pacify her after all.

When the final bell rang, and I was packing up to leave, DuShawn tugged on my slacks.  “Ms. Straight?”  The classroom had emptied, and we were alone.  “You believe me, right?  About that devil?”

“Yes.”  I smiled at him.  I even had a plan on how to deal with it.  If I could find an otherworld door that opened into DuShawn’s bedroom, I could come in at night, grab the demon out of the closet, and toss him back into Hell.  On second thought, since the monster was so large, I’d ask William to provide backup.  I wondered if that would count as a date.

“Can you make it go away?”

“I’ll certainly try.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible,” I promised.

The shadow that had been haunting his face all day suddenly went away, and he hugged me.

As I watched him leave the room, I felt a little bit better.  Maybe having my own personal demon wasn’t such a bad thing after all.  I looked inside myself to see how she was responding to the prospect of taking out another demon.

That’s when it hit me.  My succubus was gone.

I did another mental check, rooting around in my conscious to try and find her.  The few times before when the succubus had been off sulking or even passively relaxing, I could still feel her presence.  But right now, my head was half as crowded as it had been over the past few weeks.  Only Lilith Straight was inside of me now.  No one else.  The demon had completely vanished.