The Devil Stood Up (8 page)

“Guess I’ll see you in Hell, huh?” Amon said, and glanced to the back of the truck.

The Devil followed his glance and saw the body Amon had occupied, torn almost in two, innards strewn across the road. He looked back at Amon.

“Yeah, sure, Amon,” the Devil said and now he, too, sat, resting his back against the side of the pickup, facing the specter on the shoulder. “Want me to wait with you?” the Devil said, knowing the shift could be a lonely business. Even a demon felt lost during the Transition between two states.

Amon shook his head, black feathers glimmering, but faintly, faintly.

“I’ll see you down there soon enough,” he said.

The Devil shook his head. “Not if I see you first, asshole.”

Amon laughed, fading more, his laugh barely audible. His lips moved again, but the Devil couldn’t hear what he said. He shook his head at Amon and a look of discomfort–almost fear–washed over Amon’s borrowed features. He waved his arm in a ‘go on, get out of here’ gesture and turned away, huddling closer over himself.

The Devil gazed at Amon’s transparent back for a moment more and then pushed this body to stand. He bent and fished into the cab, drawing forth his now battered backpack. Grimacing, he slipped it over his shoulders and let it come to rest on his back.

His mission was not well-begun.

As he walked away, his feet kicked up the black feathers that had fluttered to the road. They floated up and as they did, they, too, began to disappear. The Devil snapped his fingers at the puddle of gas seeping from the pickup and it burst into flames that ran hungrily toward the ruined truck. The cartoonish, painted flames on the hood and sides meshed and became one with the real flames until everything began to blacken indistinguishably. Then the truck, too, began to fade away into nothing.

The Devil was aware that Amon had turned to stare at the blackening truck, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Amon again.

He didn’t want to see the despair on that demon’s face.

* * *

He walked. He fished in his front pant pocket and pulled out a battered flip phone–it had been Mark’s, the junkie. The Devil considered the phone in his hand and Kelly passed through his mind, her head bent over her folded hands, her mind a swirl of grief and a deep, soul-shaking unease. Unease that he had caused. He put the phone away.

This body ached with each step and blood had dried on his chin like a reddish-brown haze of beard stubble. Not much chance of getting a ride when he looked as though he’d quite possibly just eaten someone. He considered his feet, which ached, and wished he wasn’t bound so much by the confines of this human form. He couldn’t even relocate himself–say, to Philadelphia–without the possibility of dropping straight back to Hell if there wasn’t a dying sinner available in the precise time and place he’d need it to be there. Without access to The Litany, it was a crapshoot.

He thought more about the trial that had taken place four years ago.

The prosecution had hammered the jury with expert testimony relating to what the last hour of Brian’s life must have been like. The sickness he’d had from being poisoned, the terrible pain and stomach cramps. The nausea a dislocated shoulder could cause, taxing his already overtaxed stomach.  The blinding, grinding pain of a dislocated shoulder. The brutality of a car bumper first hitting his shoulder and head and then bending his body back against the big-wheel seat, crushing and smothering. Then breaking his back and the car’s tires rolling over first his left leg then his left arm. She must have checked then, the defendant, to see if he was dead but he wasn’t, not yet. She must have then turned his body, jerking it into place under the tire, callously disregarding the blood, his shattered spine and flattened limbs, because then the car had gone forward, crushing his little mid-body, ruining everything inside him.

The members of the jury had paled and then gone paler still at each 20 by 24 photo the prosecutor erected on easels facing the jury box. By the time the coroner was finished testifying, there were no less than seventeen easels bearing up under their weight of photographic horror.

Seeing those sour cream faces, the prosecutor had been sure, had been certain, that Carrie would receive a guilty verdict and then the sentencing would begin. And the state would ask for death.

But it hadn’t happened that way. The defense lawyer, Thomas Evigan, had somehow pulled a rabbit from his ass and gotten her acquitted. The rabbit–a shocking piece of testimony from a transient who said he’d seen the defendant’s mom behind the wheel of the defendant’s car that morning–was disgusting. It was covered in shit and half dead from suffocation, but there it was, and it cast just enough doubt among the jury–who knew the death penalty would be asked for–to set Carrie free.

Now, the Devil was going to pull another rabbit from Thomas Evigan’s ass. And this rabbit would be in the form of his spinal cord and everything that God, Himself had packed so neatly into his ribcage. Then he’d let the shit fall where it may.

He considered what Amon had asked him. Why was he doing this? Why–after everything, after all the evil he’d been privy to? What made this lawyer different?

The Devil continued to walk. The morning sun was becoming the mid-morning sun and it warmed his shoulders. It was true that he’d seen worse evils, evils treacherous enough to break the most stouthearted of humans. And it was true that he’d been impassive and punished each with the same measure, doing the bidding of God, Himself–doing what God, Himself had decreed he must do for eternity or until God, Himself wiped him out completely or carried him back to Heaven.

The Devil swung his arms and clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the muscles knitting busily back together, the tendons reattaching themselves to the bones. The ache was a constant torment, but bearable.

It was the willfulness, he decided. The sheer willfulness of Thomas Evigan to look at that dead baby boy and see in that little corpse a career boost. Not even a life-changing career boost, but a mere stepping-stone.

The willfulness.

That was what was so…

A car was coming up behind him.

This time, he did not turn. He felt none of the itching recognition of his own kind, his own kin. He continued his musings and as the car drew closer he wondered if following this path of thought might not lead him to a thicket impossible to tear himself free of. Let the humans examine and equivocate, searching their souls (more often to find an excuse for their misdeeds rather than perform the actions that would land them surely at salvation’s gate) and morbidly pouring over and over their motivations.

He, the Devil, would punish this man now, on Earth, and then send Thomas Evigan where he belonged without the benefit of the sixty-odd intervening years he might otherwise enjoy…because it would please the Devil to do so.

It would please Him greatly and that was enough.

The car pulled to the shoulder behind him.

The Devil turned and at first he could not see the driver but then she leaned forward, her face coming into the light and it was Kelly.

Her face was set and pale, almost grim. She opened her door and stood, keeping the door between herself and the Devil. Her fear came off her waves.

“I…I’m glad I found you…I wanted to ask, to offer, I mean, I wanted to offer…” she swallowed and the Devil heard the dry, uncomfortable click even from ten feet away. He said nothing.

She lowered her head and her shoulders rounded as she took a deep breath. Then she looked up and into the Devil’s (her brother’s) eyes.

“I wanted to offer you a deal,” she said, nodding slightly as if to say, yes, that’s right, you heard me.

The Devil was familiar with the term ‘deal with the Devil’ because it was a constant undercurrent in The Litany. He did not take it lightly, especially from this woman who had never even once gotten herself tangled in The Litany. He considered her with impassive eyes.

“What deal would that be?”

Fresh fear flashed in Kelly’s eyes and then she firmed her lips and lifted her chin.

“I want him back. My brother, Mark. I’ll help you with your…mission or quest…or whatever it is…if you let him come back when you’re done. When I’ve done enough.”

He inclined his head toward her, considering her from beneath half lowered lashes. His voice softened almost to a whisper.

“Have you never heard that the Devil is the father of lies, Kelly?”

She blinked rapidly but then nodded.

“I have heard it, of course I have. But not…you’re not…I mean, this is going to sound insane, but…” She blushed a bright pink that warmed her features, softening the rigid lines of fear. Her words wound down in confusion.

“Continue,” the Devil said.

“Okay, it’s just that…” she said and gathered her wildly pinging thoughts, gripping the top of the driver’s side door. “I don’t think you’re a liar. I don’t think you’re like we were taught. I don’t think you’re…evil.”

The Devil nodded, considering. Then he said:

“I’m here to kill someone,” he said and smiled. “Did you want to help me with that?”

* * *

He sat across from her at a diner. He had eaten a lot of food. Kelly is a little awed by how much he was able to put down. Mark had never been a good eater, at least not since drugs had become his main sustenance. It was unnerving to watch Him (she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as ‘The Devil’ even though she knew it was true) occupying her brother’s body but behaving in such an un-Mark-like way.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked, eyeing the four decimated plates in front of the dark-haired man. She hoped these people were twenty-percenters. It would make her lunch shift.

Kelly raised her eyebrows at the Devil, but he merely stared out the window into the parking lot and rubbed his stomach.

“No, I think we’re good,” she said to the waitress, the barest hint of a smile crossing her features.

“You all right, honey?” the waitress asked. She would not normally have been so forward, especially when she was this close to getting the customer up and out, but there is a deep shadow of grief in this plain woman’s eyes. She senses that it has something to do with the man that sits across from her, now staring unconcernedly out the window.

The waitress has served hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, and she’s usually quick to sort out who is who, but she isn’t sure of these two. No wedding rings. They didn’t speak much while they ate (well, while he ate, the lady only had coffee and a Danish) but that could just as easily be an indicator of marriage as not. There is a bit of a resemblance, they could quite possibly be related, siblings or maybe cousins. But the waitress had observed that the lady could barely meet the man’s eyes but if she had, she might have seen what the waitress saw there: an odd mixture of curiosity, tenderness, and sorrow.

If she had to guess, she would have said that the man loved the lady but that the lady was longing for someone else.

“I’m fine,” Kelly said. “Thank you.”

The waitress nodded and put the check down between them and started to gather the plates. She did so in silence. As she turned to go, dishes stacked on her tray, she glanced at the man and he was staring at the lady again, but she has her eyes on her purse as she digs for her wallet and never looks up.

Wish someone would stare at me like that, she thought, and smiled a little. Her husband Roger would give a piece of his mind to anyone staring at her, although after twenty-six years of marriage, he was long past staring at her himself. He was still jealous, though, and not even tempered at all. She had the bruises to prove it.

Kelly got into the driver’s seat and keyed the ignition as the Devil let himself in next to her. He groaned, sinking into the seat. Not really sure why, she finds herself getting angry. Maybe it is the misuse of her brother’s body or the callous way he’d taken it over, but the flood of her anger overflows its banks.

“What are you groaning about? Why are you even in this car? Can’t you just…I don’t know…fly or blink yourself to your destination or something? You’re the Devil, aren’t you?” She was so angry she turned the ignition key again, forgetting that the car was already running. It grinded shrewishly at her and then stalled and the check engine light glowed into being. “Darn it!” she said and hit the steering wheel.

His head was back against the seat, his eyes closed. He continued to rub his visibly distended stomach.

“Doesn’t work like that. I wish it did,” he said without opening his eyes.

“Well, I don’t get it, I really don’t,” she said. Her voice was peevish and she twisted the key from the ignition. She would give it a second and then try again. “I mean, you should be able to do anything. Anything you want. Shouldn’t you?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Not from what I’ve heard, anyway,” he said.

She looked at him and saw her brother’s face, her brother’s body. His eyes were still closed and his voice is slightly muffled as if he might fall asleep.

“What does that mean?” she asked. “What you’ve heard? Heard from who? None of this makes any sense at all…” her voice was rising, ignited by her anger. Beside her, the Devil opened his eyes. His brows drew together and she backpedaled in alarm. “Not that…I mean…never mind, just, forget I asked…” her voice trailed away and with a shaking hand, she tried the key again. She jabbed and jabbed at the ignition, unable to sink it.

He reached across and put his hand over hers. She drew back sharply, not wanting another vision like yesterday’s. Never wanting to see that again.

“I mean, I’ve never been here before, on the earth,” he says. “I’ve only ever heard about it.”

Kelly shook her head. “How can that be? Aren’t you always here, influencing and possessing people or whatever?”

To her surprise, he laughed. His laugh is completely unlike Mark’s donkey bray…it is more of a chuckle, throaty and…private is the word that comes strangely to her mind.

“No. That’s a big misconception up here. I only punish, I don’t make the decisions. There are demons that spend a good deal of time with you–with humans, I mean–influencing people to go wrong…but as far as possession goes…well. In this day and age, I doubt it would even go over at all. They’d probably just be locked up and given thorazine. In the old days, a possession would really throw a scare into people. They just believed more.”