The Devil's Demeanor (43 page)

“He’s already been outside.”

“Just around the house. I don’t want him
going out and attacking the neighbors. He wants us, so he’ll stay in the house
as long as we do.”

“Why does he want to hurt us?”

“I don’t know.” Jordan sat on the bed,
nursing his shoulder.

“We have to do something about your
shoulder. That’s why I left you in the first place. You’re going to bleed to
death.”

Jordan considered that for a moment, and
then crossed over to his dresser. He pulled out a shirt and wrapped it around
his shoulder wound to reinforce the shirt already there. He then put another
shirt on to cover his naked, bloody torso. “The phone doesn’t work, does it?”

“I think one of them is off the hook, and he
has my cell.”

Jordan looked at the alarm clock on the side
of the bed. “It’s almost eleven. Mom and Dad should be home soon.”

“What if Conner attacks them when they get
here? We won’t be able to warn them.”

Jordan looked from her to the window and
then to the bedroom door. He climbed on to his hands and knees and looked
through the crack between door and floor.

He saw Conner looking back at him.

Jordan jumped to his feet and fell on the
bed. The sudden movement made him dizzy and caused him to break out in more
sweat. He waved Erin over to him.

“He’s right outside,” he whispered. “If I
can keep him here, do you think you could go out the window and run for help?”

She considered it for a moment and then
said, “Yes.”

Jordan cocked his head a second later,
looking toward the window. Something was coming but he wasn’t sure what. He
could just feel it building. And then it came.

Thunder.

A storm.

*
 
*
 
*

Don saw lightning race across the night sky
as he drove down the highway. There were no other cars on the road except the
one behind him, and it had been behind him since downtown.

He was being followed. He just knew it.

Only one person would follow him now, and
that was Diedre Marshall. She must have been downtown as well. Don couldn’t
fathom the idea of her following him all night. She must have already been
there and merely noticed him by chance. Of course, that didn’t stop him from
being insanely pissed off about it.

He couldn’t let her follow him all the way
home. If Conner had changed, had killed Jordan, the last thing Don wanted to
worry about was that reporter finding out. Though, he would be overcome with
grief to care about much else. He had to save his son and nephew.

With that thought, Don slammed on the
brakes, bringing the car to a sliding stop. The tires screeched on the asphalt,
spewing foul-smelling burnt-rubber smoke. He heard the car behind him also come
to a halt. He waited for an impact that never came. At least she hadn’t been
tailgating.

He got out of his car and ran to hers. He
saw her shocked expression and inwardly relished it before pulling her door
open, grabbing the car keys, and then flinging them into the woods on the
right.

He ran back to his car and took off again.

Rain had just started to fall on the
windshield.

*
 
*
 
*

Thomas stood at the counter of the Raisa
Hotel, looking out the entrance as the people milled about downtown. He loathed
them for their freedom; they could go anywhere they pleased and he could go
nowhere. It should be a crime for a nineteen-year-old boy to be stuck at work
on a Friday night.

Just as a couple of blond cuties passed by
the hotel, a woman appeared directly in front of him, scaring the life out of
him.

“Ah, Mrs. Scott,” he said, gathering his
wits once again, “what can I do for you?”

Something wasn’t right with her. Her hair
was a mess, and her skin was too tight on her face. And her eyes....

“Have you seen my husband?” she asked, her
voice surprisingly deep.

“Yes, ma’am, he came running through here
twenty minutes ago. Looked like he was in a big hurry.”

Mrs. Scott grinned, and there was something
wrong with that grin. And did he smell something terrible? Ammonia and rotting
meat?

“Thank you, little boy,” she said in a harsh
whisper as she turned to leave.

“Ma’am,” Thomas called after her.

She stopped walking and turned on her heel.

“Will you be returning?” he asked, hoping
the answer was no. He got a bad feeling from her he had not received when the
couple checked in earlier.

“We will not be returning,” she replied.

“I’ll...need you to check out, then.” He
regretted saying the words. He just wanted her to leave now. Something about
her made his heart race and his stomach twist into knots. Some evil aura.

She returned to the counter and reached into
the right pocket of her dark trench coat. Why was Thomas so nervous? It wasn’t
like she was going to pull out a gun or anything.

She drew her hand out quickly.

In it was the hotel key card.

She placed it on the desk in front of him,
still grinning that horrible grin. “Have a nice night, little boy.”

“You too, Mrs. Scott.”

“Call me Carutha,” she said as she left
through the luxurious exit doors.

Carutha?
Thomas asked himself. Maybe it was her maiden name. Maybe it wasn’t.

Thunder rumbled in the air, and a piercing
squeal followed a second later, outside the hotel. Thomas lowered himself
behind the counter and cried.

*
 
*
 
*

Jordan and Erin listened as the rain fell on
the house. Jordan went back to the bedroom door and looked beneath it. Conner
was gone, just as he knew he would be.

“What’s going on?” Erin asked.

“Conner’s always been afraid of storms. Me
too, a little, but not nearly as much as him. I think now’s our best chance of
leaving the house. He won’t follow.”

“Are we still going out the window?”

“No. We can get to the front doors. He won’t
bother us.”

“How do you know?”

Jordan suddenly wondered that same thing.
Conner could easily be waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab them as they
passed. But he wouldn’t be. Conner always went somewhere safe during storms.
Somewhere the lightning could never reach him.

Once, he had found Conner hiding in a hole
he had dug in Jordan’s closet, one Jordan had never told Dad about—

“Oh, Jesus!” Jordan said as he turned.

“What?” Erin asked just as the closet door
banged open.

A snarling creature rushed out of it and
toward them. Jordan had just enough time to grab the chair from the door and
slam it against Conner. Jordan opened the door, grabbed Erin’s hand, and raced
out of the room, slamming the door behind them. They ran down the long hall, to
the stairs. Jordan could hear the bedroom door opening again, the hands and
feet—the
claws—
on the hard non-carpeted floor. By then,
however, the two teens were already moving the dining table away from the front
door. Jordan looked up and saw Conner hopping down the stairs on all fours. The
table moved at an unbelievably slow pace, but it was enough to crack the door
open.

“Go!” He shoved Erin through the crack. That
was all he had enough time to do before he was yanked away. He saw Erin lying
on the porch just before the door slammed shut between them.

Erin jumped to her feet, only vaguely aware
of the torrent of rain falling behind her. She tried to open the front door but
found it locked. She ran to the bay window next to it but could see nothing of
the inside of the house because of the thick curtains. “Jordan!”

She looked around for something to break the
window with when she saw a car driving up the street toward her. The rain was
thick, and she could only see the car’s headlights. She felt a ray of hope for
some reason, though she had no idea who was driving the car.

It was coming toward her, however.

She ran into the street, waving her arms to
get the driver’s attention. The car stopped in front of her, directly in the
center of the circle, and the driver’s-side door opened. The streetlamps seemed
dim because of the rain, so she still could not tell who was standing there.

“Erin?” the driver called.

It was Mr. Scott, Jordan’s father.

She ran to him, gripping him tightly around
the waist. She was so relieved, she couldn’t speak. Finally, she regained her
voice and said, “Conner tried to kill us. Jordan is trapped inside.”

She looked up at his face and saw him
staring directly at the house, as if she wasn’t even there. She let him go and
he immediately ran toward his house, first trying the front door and finding it
locked, same as she. He then grabbed a potted plant hanging from the porch
canopy and hurled it into the bay window.

Mr. Scott turned to her and said, “Stay in
the car!”

She barely heard him because of the
rainfall, but she heard enough. She jumped into his car and locked the doors.

*
 
*
 
*

Don stepped into the house and immediately
smelled the rotten odor of decay. It was the same smell he noticed at the
hotel, and in the cave of the beasts. He breathed through his mouth as he
stepped through the living room, the broken glass crunching beneath his feet. That
sound was like fireworks in the quiet house. He waited for someone to come
barreling toward him.

No one came.

“Jordan? Conner?” No response. He took a few
steps toward the den below. He thought he saw a shadow walking away.

He took the few steps down into the den and
looked right, toward his office. His door was open, so he made his way toward
it. Inside, he saw his file cabinet standing in the middle of the office. The
fireplace partition was open and covered with blood. What in the hell happened
here?

“Jordan!” he screamed into the seemingly
empty house. He greatly feared for his son’s safety and not finding him—only
his blood—made his heart hammer in his chest.

He heard something just then. It sounded
like air coming from the vent in his office. It was as soft as a...whisper. It
was a whisper. He ran to the vent, leaned down, pressed his ear to it.

“Daddy.”

Jordan. Upstairs. In Conner’s room.

Don raced out of the office and headed
upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

*
 
*
 
*

Erin grew colder the longer she waited in
Mr. Scott’s car. The rain slowed, the lightning pretty much ceased, and all the
windows fogged up. She shivered, but not from the cold. She would never forget
the events of tonight. Though Jordan had told her his family secrets, she still
couldn’t believe what she’d seen. She couldn’t make sense of any of it.

As much as she cared for Jordan, she also
cared about Travis. Conner did something to him and only he could undo it. No
matter what happened to her tonight, she would make sure Travis was cured. Even
if it meant hurting Conner.

She wished she had her cell phone, but she
didn’t want to go back in that house just to look for it. The car’s headlights
shone on the front of the house, on the broken bay window, but she couldn’t see
anything inside because of the fog and the curtains. The windshield wipers were
on but did nothing for the fog, so she turned on the vents. The fog slowly
lifted, but not fast enough, so she wiped the windshield with her sleeve.

That was when she noticed something standing
just outside the driver’s-side door. She screamed and then cut it short by
covering her mouth. Someone was staring back at her, but she couldn’t tell who.
She didn’t want to wipe the window to see, so she waited.

The figure began walking away, toward the
house. Once it got to the front of the car, she saw it in the headlights.

“Oh, my god,” Erin whispered. She wanted to
honk the horn to warn Mr. Scott. Instead, she simply waited.

*
 
*
 
*

Don made his way up the stairs to the second
floor. That long hallway seemed more imposing than ever before. He passed his
room, on his way to his son’s and nephew’s rooms. Conner’s was on the right,
just above Don’s office. Jordan’s, which was across the hall, had the door wide
open.

Don heard a voice coming from that room.

He peeked into the room and saw his son
facing away from him, crying and mumbling. Jordan rocked back and forth. Conner
was lying on his back just in front of his cousin, his eyes closed.

“Boys?” Don called.

They didn’t respond. Not at first, anyway.

“Why, Daddy?” Jordan said between sobs. “Why
didn’t you tell me what was wrong with us?”

Don felt like his heart was breaking. “I
didn’t want to scare you. I tried to fix it. I thought I had. I’m sorry.”

Conner’s eyes were still closed. Don
couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or...dead.

“I know what you did to your brother,”
Jordan said. “I know you killed him because you thought there was still
something wrong with him. Even though he said he was all right. You still
killed him.” Just then, a large kitchen knife appeared in Jordan’s hand. He
placed it just above Conner’s heart. “I need to kill Conner so he can’t hurt us
anymore.”

Don’s breath caught in his throat and he
couldn’t speak. His eyes grew so wide they almost popped out of his head. “No!”
he barely managed to say. He couldn’t move.

Jordan turned his head slightly so that Don
could see his face in profile. “But you did it to Uncle Ethan. Conner tried to
kill Erin and me. You can’t save him.”

Don couldn’t believe it was his son
speaking, didn’t believe it. These weren’t his words. That wasn’t his face.
Those weren’t his eyes. “Which one are you?” he asked the thing in front of
him. The thing controlling his son.

The right side of the boy’s lips lifted up.
“Does it matter? I have your son, and there’s only one reason why.”

Don knew that reason. “He killed someone.”

The boy’s head nodded. “Your neighbor Mr.
Leper.”

That hit Don hard. “Mr. Leper was a
murderer,” he whispered.

“Really? Your son didn’t know that. But he
still killed him. Because we whispered in his ear that he should. The rest was
up to him.”

Don didn’t want to hear this confession, but
he also couldn’t stop himself from listening.

A noise behind caught his attention from
this horrible scene. He turned his head and saw someone standing there.

The woman actually had a recording device
held in front of her. Diedre Marshall had heard everything, and she had proof.
Don felt rage suddenly come to life in his gut. He was about to reach out to
her, to hurt her, to do something to her, but Jordan blurred past him, ramming
the reporter over the railing.

She fell out of sight.

“No!” Don shouted as he raced to the rail
and looked down.

Diedre had fallen onto one of the couches.
Her eyes were closed, and she wasn’t moving. But she was breathing.

He turned back to the room and just saw the
closet door closing. He raced to it, jerked the door open.

The closet was empty.

Don pushed clothes around and saw a large
hole in the wall. He heard scuttling inside. Jordan was inside the walls. Don
closed the closet door and pushed a chair against the knob. If Jordan came
back, he wouldn’t be able to escape this way. Hopefully.

Don looked around the room. With the layout
of the house in his mind, he knew it would be difficult to get downstairs from
this side of the house; the den was directly below this room. The only real
place his son could go was...up. Into the attic.

Don looked at his unconscious nephew. He
didn’t know what had happened to him, but he prayed the boy stayed asleep. He
then raced out of the room, closing the door behind him. He reached up to the
chain to bring down the attic steps, which dropped down between Jordan’s and
Conner’s rooms.

He climbed the ladder, his heart hammering
in his chest.

There were a few lightbulbs set up
throughout the long attic. Since he was at one end and saw nothing in that
corner, he looked to the other end. He saw no one and wondered if he
underestimated his son’s ability to move throughout the walls. But then he saw
a hole to his right, over where Jordan’s room was. Don walked on the rafters to
get to it, saw it was empty.

When he looked back to the other end of the
attic, he saw his son standing there, staring at him.

“Please let my son go,” Don said.

“Why should I? He forfeited his life when he
took someone else’s. I’ve earned this.”

“Time means nothing to you. Why can’t you
just stay in your world? We’re not allowed in yours, and you aren’t allowed in
ours.”

“We don’t truly believe that. Otherwise, we
wouldn’t have been provided this lovely way out. We wouldn’t have been given a
chance to live other lives. Am I right?”

“You can’t have my son’s life,” Don said
flatly. It was just a statement of fact.

“Well, if you want it,” said Jordan, taking
a few steps back, “come and get it.”

Something took over Don at that moment. He
darted toward his son. The boy simply stood there, waiting. They collided and
fell backward, through the floor. Don closed his eyes and only heard the
crashing around him. As they fell, he twisted in midair and landed with his
back to the floor. He felt a body on top of him, and when he opened his eyes he
saw his son there.

He held Jordan close to him, expecting a
fight. There was none. The boy was unconscious. Don held him anyway, but not as
tightly.

“You have your boy back,” said a harsh voice
near the stairs. “For now, anyway.”

Don looked upside down at the figure
standing at the end of the hall. He turned right-side up when he realized who
it was.

His wife stood there, that jackal grin on
her face. He got to his feet, leaving his son on the floor. “You’re leaving my
family?” he asked, looking to his right, into Jordan’s room where Conner still
lay out cold.

“No,” said Monica. “I told the others to
depart so I could talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Things have gone very badly for you
tonight, Donovan. We’re partly to blame, but there have been things done over
the decades that had nothing to do with us. You know what I mean.”

And Don did, though he didn’t want to admit
it. He’d always had a temper as a kid and had hurt people. He was not a good
man, though he tried to be. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Your life can’t go on the way it used to,
not after tonight. Lives have been ruined.”

“Whose? Who else’s, I mean?”

“The friends of your children. Travis and
Erin.”

“Erin is safe.” Wasn’t she?

“Not after what I did to her on the way
here.” The jackal grin left Monica’s face. “I sent her to our world the way
Conner did to Travis. She’ll never recover.” She shook her head slowly.

“That was you, not Monica.”

“The cops won’t see it that way, Donovan.”
The grin returned. “Your only chance is to take your family and start over. But
you can’t do that without us.”

At that moment, Conner and Jordan appeared
behind Don. They stared at him, grinning.

“What do you want?” Don asked Monica.

“We want you back,” she said. “We can’t grab
hold of you like Machiska used to when he started this whole thing. Conner
hasn’t killed yet. He started to kill his mother’s boyfriend but didn’t finish,
so Ivy took over. We’ve been trying to get him ever since. Him and you. You have
to give yourself up willingly.”

Don was overcome with relief at that
revelation. He’d been wrong about his nephew all these years. But he couldn’t
think about that now. “And then what?” he asked the demon in front of him.

“We start over. As a family.”

Don looked over the railing, down at Diedre.
Her eyes were still closed, but he felt as if she was listening to the entire
conversation. “What about the reporter?” he asked.

“If you come with us, she’ll live. If you
don’t...well, she won’t.

Don saw Diedre’s head tilt slightly when Don
mentioned her. She was indeed listening. As much as he hated her, he couldn’t
let her die.