The Devil's Demeanor (44 page)

But he couldn’t condemn his family to this
life either.

Lightning flashed outside, thunder rumbled.
He looked to the broken bay window below, the curtains flapping in the wind. He
made his decision.

“I’ll give myself to you.”

Monica and the kids laughed in an alien way:
a mix of human and monster.

Though he meant his words, Don didn’t know
how to let them into his mind, his body. Monica’s love had saved him from being
taken over all those years ago, and though Ivy’s love had done the same for
Ethan, Don had seen a trace of the taint in his brother’s eyes the night he
killed him.

He was about to ask the creatures how to go
about letting them in when he suddenly felt a jab in his mind. His instinct
told him to fight the invasion, but he forced himself to allow it in. He had
to, for the sake of his family.

“For the sake of your family?” Monica asked.
“How can you save your family by letting us in?”

She was reading his mind. Now that she was
in, she could do that. Don had to guard his thoughts. “I was afraid you would
harm them if I refused,” he said.

“We wouldn’t have done that. Do you really
think that terribly of us? We would have hurt the reporter, but not your
family.”

Don didn’t care for her words so he merely
nodded. The intrusion spread from his brain and down his spine, infecting the
rest of his body. He grew so cold he started shivering. He could smell ammonia
and decay, the smell that had been with him ever since childhood.

He could hear voices in his ears. They were
the voices that told him to do awful things when he was younger. He regretted
the fact he couldn’t blame the voices for
every
bad thing.

Don had many regrets, his biggest being how
he couldn’t undo those other regrets. He was an angry man, not unlike any other
human being, but there were decisions he’d made that poisoned his soul. He
deserved this punishment, but his family did not.

Don started toward Monica and the kids.
Monica opened her arms, and he let her embrace him. Into her ear he whispered,
“Let them go and take me.”

“We’ve missed you, Donovan,” she whispered
back. She let him go and stared into his eyes. “We don’t want your family; just
you. We can start over with just you.” She sounded like a mother soothing her
child.

At that moment, Monica, Jordan and Conner
collapsed to the floor. Don stared at the three of them for a whole minute
before walking down the stairs into the living room. Once he got there, he
looked to his left and saw Diedre sitting up on the couch. She looked
frightened and excited at the same time.

“Your face....” she muttered.

“I know you’re going to write about this,”
he said to her, ignoring her words. He knew what his face looked like—that
jackal grin. “Leave my family out of it. Write what you want about me, but
leave my family out of it.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m sorry I laughed at you when you
tripped on that tree root in high school.”

He could tell she had no idea what he was
talking about. He nodded and headed for the front door. He pushed the dining
table out of the way and reached for the door knob. Before he could, something
stopped him.

What are you doing?
a voice asked in his ears.

“Going outside,” he answered out loud.

Wait for the storm to pass.

“No.”

The sky demons are still about.

“They’re called gods, and I know they’re
still out there.”

Don twisted the knob and opened the door.
The street was flooded with rain, now that the storm had started up again.
Lightning laced the sky. He stepped onto the porch, though his steps felt
sluggish. It was like walking in a pool.

Stop!

“You don’t have a cab to protect you from
them now, do you, Carutha?” He addressed the leader of those creatures, the one
who’d controlled Monica. “What will happen if I stand in the middle of the
street and invite the gods to take me?”

Don’t!

He felt the invaders try to flee his body,
but they could not. He held them inside. He walked off the porch, letting the
rain fall on his face. His body was already cold, and the rain made him feel
warm. He stood by his car and saw Erin slumped over the driver’s- and
passenger’s seats, unconscious. She twitched every few seconds, the visions no
doubt terrifying her.

He looked up into the dark sky, the rain
falling on his eyes. But he didn’t care about them.

We’ll kill your family!

“You can’t hurt them anymore,” he whispered.
To the sky, he said, “I’m here. I have them. Strike me down and kill them all.”

Don was prepared to die and feared no pain.
Lightning came from the sky, striking him, and he was blessed with not even
feeling it.

*
 
*
 
*

When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded
by white. The brightness didn’t hurt his eyes, however, so he looked around
himself. He saw nothing, and could not get his bearings. “Where am I?”

He got a response.

“Am I dead?”

He listened to the reply.

“A choice?” he asked the voice, though it
was not really a voice at all. It was a sense, an understanding. “What kind of
choice?”

He waited and listened.

“Yes, I was connected to them. I don’t know
if I am anymore. What does that have to do with anything?”

He listened.

“I can take you there, with me?”

He smiled when he understood the response.
He closed his eyes....

*
 
*
 
*

....and when he opened them again, he was
somewhere else. He recognized the place, not just by sight but by smell. He was
in the home of the demons who had ruined his life. The cavern was in chaos;
creatures flew about like crazy birds.

They were afraid, afraid of Don himself.

He knew he was doing something no one had
ever done before: He brought the power of the gods directly to their home. All
these years they had been safe below ground, relying on the bodies of animals
and humans to go about aboveground, but now they had nowhere to run. Don could
feel the power of the gods coursing through him, and though he still didn’t
understand who or what they really were, he knew they could destroy these
creatures once and for all.

But how?

“Mr. Scott!” a female voice screamed.

Don looked up and saw one of the bats
holding Erin over the large drop. Another held Travis. “Hang on!” he shouted up
to the teens. “I’ll get you out of here.”

Just then, one of the giant bats landed in
front of him, at the edge of the cliff. He knew it was Carutha. It stared at
him, calmer than the others flying around.

“So you’ve come to kill us,” it said.

“I won’t let you hurt my family or anyone
else’s ever again.”

“You do realize you won’t survive this
either? If you go through with this, you will never see your family again.”

Don had already accepted that fact, but the
words still twisted his guts. “I’m ready to die for them. It will be worth it.”

“And I for mine.”

Carutha took flight, jamming its claws into
Don’s chest. The two went shooting back into the tunnel. Don could feel the
crushing pain in his chest as they darted through the air. He tried grabbing
the sides of the tunnel but couldn’t reach. He realized, in his last moments of
life, the creature was trying to get Don as far away from its home as possible.
Don had to finish them off before it was too late.

The power of the gods was a bomb inside of
him. It made his skin glow brighter. All he had to do was open the flood gates,
but he didn’t know how. He wanted to release the energy right then. As he
looked down at the creature driving him back, he felt all the anger and pain
this race of monsters had caused him over the decades. The things his own
father and grandfather had gone through. Grandpa died taking his son’s curse
away, and Stephen abandoned Don because he was too afraid to make the same
sacrifice.

These monsters destroyed more lives than Don
cared to count—Don’s family’s, and those of all the people Don and Ethan had
killed.

The light of Don’s skin grew even brighter.
He could feel it, like sitting naked under the sun. It was pleasantly warm and
real. Don wanted to hold on to it, but knew he couldn’t. He had to let it free.

And so he did.

The light struck Carutha, burning the
monster to cinders. Now that it was gone, Don floated in place in the tunnel.
The light and heat continued forward, toward the cavern. He could hear the
other creatures squeal in fear. The flapping of their wings became thunderous.
Don didn’t care, however. He had done what he came here to do. It was up to the
gods to do the rest.

And that they did.

Don heard the stalactites collapse, saw
electric bolts sizzle against anything and everything in the area. Don floated
back into the cavern and saw hundreds of creatures drop from the air like dead
birds. It was as grotesque as it was beautiful. Travis and Erin suddenly
vanished as the bats holding them exploded.

After untold minutes, the bolts died
altogether. The cavern was still collapsing, but Don didn’t fear for his
safety. He had been at the point of no return ever since the lightning struck
him outside the house. In his last act before moving on he had done what his
father and grandfather had not: He saved his family.

At that realization, he began to fade. It
didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt like being outside on a warm summer day. His
fear, regret and grief faded along with him.

Jordan stood in his father’s office, running
his fingers along the desk where Dad had written most of his books. Jordan
couldn’t accept the fact his father would never write anything again.

It had been three days since his father’s
death. They had found him in the street, struck down by lightning. Erin was
found in his car, her eyes red from crying, but otherwise unhurt. Jordan had
expected her to be afraid of him, but instead she hugged him tight and told him
how sorry she was for what happened. She told him she saw Dad in the demons’
world, that he glowed like an angel and killed all the creatures.

She and Jordan had gone back inside the
house to help Mom and Conner to his and her feet. They had been unharmed as
well. Mom called the police to report Dad’s death. Instead of cleaning the
house up they’d left everything as it was. Erin offered to stay with Jordan
while they spoke with the authorities, and for that he was eternally grateful.

Erin didn’t tell the cops of the attacks she
suffered from Conner. Conner didn’t seem to remember anything he’d done to her,
but he remembered attacking Travis just as Mom remembered attacking Erin in the
car. Erin had called the hospital to check on Travis and was relieved to hear
he had recovered from whatever had afflicted him. He claimed not to remember
what happened to him, but Jordan could tell he was lying. And for that he was
eternally grateful once again.

Mom planned to take Conner to visit his mom
in Augusta in a few days. She had called the facility to check on Aunt Ivy and
was told she too was much better. “Different,” the doctor said. Perhaps soon
she would be well enough to be discharged.

Jordan’s life was changing, though it was
too early to tell whether it was for the better. He had never lived a truly
normal life and didn’t know what to expect. He would forever mourn the loss of
his father and grandfather, and the memory of the things he had done would
haunt him until the end of his days. Despite all the things that had happened
to him, he still didn’t truly understand what had caused them.

That was when he heard something come
unlatched. One of the drawers in the desk had popped open. Jordan pulled it all
the way and looked inside. He saw a manuscript sitting solely in the large
drawer. The title page read
The
Devil’s Demeanor
.

Why had the drawer popped open by itself?
Jordan wondered if it had anything to do with being manhandled that night when
he dropped it against the door. Or maybe something else was behind its
malfunctioning latch.

Jordan pulled the manuscript out, sat in his
father’s chair, and began reading. By the end he would fully understand his
father’s curse. And his life.

*
 
*
 
*

Diedre sat at her desk, reviewing what she
had written. Her story on Donovan Scott was, in her opinion, very well written
and extremely revealing. It was the most interesting story she’d ever been
involved with.

And yet, she felt wrong for writing it.

Though she understood, for the most part,
what she had witnessed with the Scott family, she knew she couldn’t write
everything and expect anyone to believe her. She’d had to change a few details
to make them more digestible. Those alterations didn’t spoil the integrity of
the story entirely, but they couldn’t be helped; she couldn’t write that the
Scotts had been possessed by demons, now could she?

She had worked hard on this story. All the
spying and questioning. Why did she feel so wrong, though?

Perhaps it was because of what Don had asked
of her:
Leave my family out of it.
Write what you want about me, but leave my family out of it.

Unfortunately, there was no way to write
this without mentioning the Scott family. Though Don was the focus, his loved
ones played crucial roles. The only way to write this story and respect the
late Donovan Scott’s wishes was to not write it at all.

She deleted the file.

“Rest in peace,
Mr. Scott.”