The Devil's Demeanor (27 page)

“You just
couldn’t stop for one fucking day,” she chastised.

“I write for a
living, Monica. And I’m on a roll. I don’t see anything wrong with that. And
the more I write, the faster I’ll finish. I would think that would be a good
thing.”

“I don’t like
the way you get when you’re writing. I don’t think you even realize where you
are when you’re ‘on a roll.’ ”

“How do I get?”
he asked, though he already knew.

“You’re not
yourself.”

“Who am I,
then?” He was raising his voice but didn’t care.

“I don’t know
who you are, and that’s the fucking problem.” Monica wasn’t raising her voice,
but her words still had power.

“Honey,” he
soothed, “I love writing, and I get paid to do it. I’m trying to finish as fast
as I can so I can spend all my time with you and the kids.”

He leaned over
and tried to kiss her, but she backed away. “I’ve read some of what you wrote,”
she said.

Don’s heart
sped up. “You did?” His voice was choked. He didn’t even know what he was
writing anymore and his wife had read it behind his back.

“Yes, I did. I
don’t like it, Don. It’s dark and scary.”

“It’s supposed
to be dark and scary.”

“You wrote the
kids into the story. You’re putting them into horrible situations.”

Don sighed.
“Those are just characters in a book.”

“Who are you
trying to fool? The whole story is about your life. The characters are based on
people you know. Even I recognize them.”

“That’s not
true,” he said quietly.

“Yes it is.”
Monica sounded angry again. “I’m learning more about you from your writing than
I am from you.”

“The books
aren’t about me.”

“Yes, they are.
I know they are.”

“How do you
know?”

“Because you
wrote our recent vacation into it. You wrote the incident at your aunt’s house
into it. You even wrote your brother’s death into it, except in the book, it
was cold-blooded murder.”

Don didn’t
remember killing off the main character’s little brother. Christ, he really
should have read what he’d written.

“Don, look at
me.” He did. “Did you murder Ethan, or was it self-defense, like you said?”

Don couldn’t
answer or she would leave him. She would pack her bags and demand a divorce and
leave him alone with his terrible curse.

“It was
murder,” he whispered.

Instead of
replying with words, Monica got up and left the room.

*
 
*
 
*

For the next
two days, she didn’t speak to or look at Don whenever they crossed paths. She
took on more shifts at the hospital so she wouldn’t have to spend as much time
at home. As much as that hurt Don, he felt it was more unfair to the kids.

Don eventually
migrated to the couch at night without Monica asking him to. Since she wasn’t
speaking to him, he continued to work on the manuscript. He still didn’t bother
to read it and simply let his fingers do the typing. He was getting to a point
where he didn’t care what he wrote, just as long as he
was
writing. If
he didn’t write, he ended up sleeping poorly at night, or his mind would race
during the day and he wouldn’t be able to concentrate.

A month after
the argument with Monica, Don’s agent called. Don had been sitting at his
computer, winding down from a few hours of continuous writing. He wasn’t sure,
but it felt like he’d finished the manuscript. He told his agent that much and
they planned to meet for lunch that week.

He printed out
all seven hundred pages of the manuscript but didn’t read any of it. Truth be
told, he was terrified of it. Monica had said it was dark and scary, and Don’s
agent loved that stuff. Let Stan read it and share his thoughts. Don just hoped
the grammatical errors were kept to a minimum.

Stan McCloskey
flew in from New York days later and Don met him at the nicest restaurant
around. Monica seemed fine staying with the kids as long as Don wasn’t there,
apparently.

He felt a
little self-conscious carrying the large manuscript box into the restaurant,
but it couldn’t be helped. Stan, a short man with a brown perm, noticed his
client as well as the box. His jaw dropped.

“My god,
Donovan!” he said as Don joined him at the table. “How many pages?”

“Seven
hundred.”

“How many
words?”

“Two hundred
thousand. Give or take a few hundred words.”

“That’s twice
as long as the last book. Inspiration struck?”

“I couldn’t
stop writing,” he replied. The meaning was lost on his agent, however.

“Gimme,” said
Stan as he reached over the table like a child wanting his favorite toy.

Don handed the
box to him. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as his agent. Instead, he was tired and
depressed.

Stan seemed to
notice. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Monica and I
are fighting.”

“Uh-oh. I know
what that’s like. Just ask my four ex-wives.”

“So, I guess it
wouldn’t be a good idea to ask you for advice.”

“It wouldn’t be
prudent, no.” Stan glanced from the box atop the table to Don. “It doesn’t have
anything to do with
that
, does it?”

“It has almost
everything to do with that, Stan.”

“Did she read
it?”

“Some of it.
She said it was too dark and scary.”

“Sounds perfect
to me,” Stan said as he took a sip of his beer. “Is that all you’re fighting
about?”

“No.”

“Neither one of
you has been unfaithful?”

“No. I wish
that’s all it was. It would be simpler.”

Stan smiled.
“Do you still love her?”

Don looked at
him. “With all my heart.”

“Then tell her
that. Whatever is wrong, you can work through it if you have love in your
hearts.”

“Then why you
do you have four ex-wives?”

“Leave it to me
to meet the only four women in the world without hearts.”

*
 
*
 
*

Stan called a
few days later. “Hey, Don, I just finished reading the manuscript. Where’s the
rest of it?”

“What do you
mean?”

“I mean, it
just trickles down near the end, but it doesn’t have an ending.”

Don felt
ashamed for not properly editing his work. He should’ve known it was
incomplete, but he had been too afraid to see what he had created. “I’m pulling
up the document now,” he told his agent as he opened the file.

He quickly read
the last paragraph. It involved the main character, along with his son and
nephew. He read the last sentence out loud: “ ‘He killed the boys.’ ”

“Pretty grim,
don’t you think?” Stan asked.

“I thought you
liked grim,” Don said absently, still staring at the screen.

“Not simply for
the sake of being grim. Is this really how you want to end it?”

“No,” Don
replied honestly, though his subconscious had written the story. “I’ll fix it
and get back to you in a day or two.”

*
 
*
 
*

Unfortunately,
Don found it impossible to change or even elaborate on the ending. He hadn’t
told Stan about Conner—if he had, the agent might have connected the dots and
worried about his client’s sanity. Don wouldn’t be able to blame him; he
murdered his “son” and “nephew” in the story. If Monica read that ending, there
was no telling how she’d react. He had to change it.

But how? He
didn’t even know the context. He would have to read the whole manuscript. He
read straight from the monitor, not changing a thing. He skipped lunch and even
dinner.

He read well
into the night, when Monica watched him from their bed. He read until morning.
His eyes hurt, but he barely noticed. He was haunted by the story he just
finished. It contained events that recently happened to him (discovering his
birth father was still alive) as well as events that had never occurred.

He now
understood the context of the ending. The main character’s son and nephew had
become consumed by the curse and had gone on a killing spree together. There
had been no other choice but to kill them. The wonderful “cure” from the first
book hadn’t worked on them.

It couldn’t end
that way.

Stephen had
found a cure, and it didn’t involve death. The boys in the story hadn’t started
killing until well into their teenage years. Did Don predict the future in this
novel? Would the curse take hold of his boys soon? They were almost six—the
boys in the story changed when they were sixteen.

Don decided to
worry about that later and work on the ending now.

*
 
*
 
*

Stan loved the
new ending, though Don couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. In the first
book, a serum had cured the characters of the curse. In the sequel, Don found
that he had written that that very serum proved merely a temporary fix,
resulting in one of the characters (the younger brother) reverting to his
monstrous state.

Unable to come
up with anything new, Don simply concocted another, better serum for the
younger boys. Everyone was curse-free and happy. Except for Don. The new ending
just felt so false to him. He actually liked the original better...even if it
resulted in the death of the boys. It was just more honest, if not more
horrific.

Things with
Monica only grew worse. Now that he’d finished writing, he’d hoped to spend
more time with her and repair their marriage. She only seemed to grow more
distant the harder he tried.

He considered
himself truly lucky that Monica hadn’t gone to the police about Ethan’s death.
Don wouldn’t have blamed her had she turned him in. He didn’t deserve her.

*
 
*
 
*

He was
blindsided when Conner came up to him one day. Don had been sitting at the
dining table, thinking about the best way to locate Stephen, when the boy
asked, “What happened to my daddy?”

Don stared at
him with wide eyes and said, “Your daddy went to heaven.”

“Who sent him
there?”

Don’s mouth
went completely dry. He just remembered who he was talking to—his brother’s
son. “I did,” he finally replied.

“Why?”

“Because he was
bad.”

“How was he
bad?”

Not
why
was he bad;
how
. Conner knew more than he was letting on. Had Monica
told him?

“Why are you
asking me?”

“I wanna know
why Daddy had to go to heaven.”

So cute. So
angelic. So manipulative.

“He tried to
hurt me,” Don found himself saying.

Conner said
nothing after that. He just stood there by the table. After a moment, he said,
“If I try to hurt you, will you send me to heaven too?”

Don had no
response. He should have expected the little bastard to ask such a bold
question, but he simply hadn’t seen it coming. He chose not to reply. That
seemed to suit Conner just fine; he turned on his heel and walked away,
smiling.

*
 
*
 
*

Don was
starting to realize how Monica felt when he had been distant during his
writing. Even when they were in the same house, it felt like they were in
different states. Whenever he spoke to her, she gave the bare minimum of a
reply.

One day, while
the kids were asleep in their rooms, Don and Monica sat at opposite ends of the
couch, looking at the TV. Neither were
watching
it. Don reached for the
remote and turned it off. Monica looked at him a moment before he started
kissing her.

She let him for
a while, but then she pushed him away. “I can’t do this anymore,” she said
quietly, wiping her lips dry.

“Can’t do
what?”

“I can’t keep
pretending everything is normal between us when it isn’t. I can’t, Donovan.”
She sounded on the verge of tears.

“What isn’t
okay?” he asked. “I’m done writing. You have me all to yourself.”

She shook her
head. “It’s not about the writing. It’s about what you did to your brother.”

Don felt like
he’d been slapped in the face. “Did you tell Conner what happened?”

Now it was her
turn to look scandalized. “Of course not. I would never tell him.”

“Well, he came
to me asking about it recently. He knows.”

“He probably
overheard you telling me at the hotel,” she said.

“What do you
want me to do?” he asked. “You want me to turn myself in to the police?”

“No. I...want
out.”

“What?”

“I want a
divorce.” The words came out strained, as if she couldn’t bare to say them.

“Why?” Don
asked, just as strained.

She looked at
him, her eyes red and watery. “I still love you, but I’m afraid of you. I’m
afraid of my own child.”

“Jordan? Why
are you afraid of him?” Don could barely hear his own words; they came out in a
whisper now.

“I’m afraid
he’ll turn into a...monster.”

“That’s
ridiculous.”

“I read your
manuscript, remember? I read the horrible things those kids did. Will Conner
and Jordan turn into them?”

How much of it
had she read? Did she read the original ending? Let the answer be no. If there
was a God, the answer would be no.

“I still have
nightmares about the night you came to me,” Monica went on. “Those nightmares
have been getting worse.”

“They’re just
nightmares, honey. You can’t let them ruin your life, our marriage.”

“I’ve been
having them every night for a month.”

That caught Don
off-guard. “What happens in the nightmares?”

Monica took a deep
breath. “I find you crouched at the end of the driveway. I go to you.” So far,
she hadn’t described anything that hadn’t happened. “And then you kill me and
the baby.”

Well,
that
was different.