A Good and Happy Child (26 page)

But before I could respond, all our attention was drawn to the figure on the bed. Grace turned to face the room full of people, kneeling and swaying back and forth. Bobby still followed her, trying to rein her back. But she turned quickly backward to face him, her movements so sharp and attack-fast that he reared back as you might from a cornered animal. Grace had come fully awake, and whatever was in her—possessing her, you could see why the word fit, now—had, too.

“I command you,” Reval said, “to obey me to the letter, I who am a minister of God despite my unworthiness.”

Grace, in her pajamas and bare feet, stretched her spine with a yogalike movement—hands on the mattress, fists clenched, back arching—but the movement took on a strange, languorous quality. As we watched, she extended herself to an unnatural length, as if she were suddenly capable of adding inches of space between her vertebrae. We stared transfixed, even Reval silenced by the unnaturalness of what we saw, as Grace’s back and neck coiled into an S shape. Her face slack, her eyes unfocused, her physiognomy seemed entirely bent on the
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transformation at hand, until her torso hovered in the air at a seemingly impossible forty-degree angle, scarcely supported by her knees resting on the bed. Her head then swiveled menacingly. Her eyes refocused. They beamed at us, fiercely. Cold and hateful. I recognized what I was looking at and felt a trickle of urine warm my underpants. It was a thirty-year-old woman in the shape of a snake.

“I command you, unclean spirit,” Reval began. But before the last word left his lips, Grace shot her body forward. She extended her frame in a straight line, like an arrow. Reval ducked to one side. I heard her jaw snap shut with a hard
chak
on empty air, and she wriggled, twisted, in that ugly, instinctual, break-the-victim’s-neck twist, her teeth bared and clenched in fierce pleasure on Reval’s imagined flesh. Denise crawled away in terror on hands and knees. But Bobby, determined and unfazed—an owner controlling a wild dog—grasped Grace by the waist and hauled her back onto the bed. Now Grace thrashed wildly. She shook him with an inhuman speed and ferocity, a lizard or snake slapping and wriggling for life. But Bobby held. After a few moments of this, Grace gave up, exhausted, her chest heaving. To my astonishment, Reval approached the bed. He made a sign of the cross. He stood over Grace—so close to that dangerous creature I almost called out,
Don’t!
—and placed a hand on her head with perfect calm.

“See the cross of the Lord; begone, you hostile powers!”

She sat up with a jolt. Reval stepped back. Grace appeared human again; she wore an expression of annoyance.

“I was
asleep,
” she complained.

The sudden normalcy of her tone struck me as comical, and I found myself giving an involuntary giggle. Grace’s head snapped in my direction. I felt Tom Harris move toward me protectively. But rather than pounce, or make any other violent motion, Grace, instead, grinned at me. I felt relief flood through my body. She wasn’t angry—

she was happy to see some humor in the room, someone who could cut through all this sickroom silliness and see her charm, her strength, the fact that she didn’t need all these men to nudge her around the room a g o o d a n d h a p p y c h i l d

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like a cow . . . these thoughts flitted through my mind until my eyes, as it were, woke up to what they were seeing. Her smile was more terrifying than a pointed gun. Toothsome, warm, ingratiating, it seemed to charm and welcome, but glinted with a chilly knowingness. Then one eye closed in a wink. Conspiratorial—that was the only word for it. I felt the others staring at me.

I fell backward onto the carpet and raised my hands to cover my face so I could no longer see her.
She can see it,
I said to myself.
She can
see the demon in me.

“Tom,” I whimpered. “She knows.”

“Quiet.” Tom Harris spoke fiercely.

Reval stepped to his left, blocking the visual connection between Grace and myself, and pointed his finger accusingly. “Strike terror, Lord, into the beast now laying waste your vineyard,” he declaimed.

“Fill your servants with courage to fight the dragon.”

“Stop it,” said Grace, again in that
quit-it-you-guys
tone of impatience.

Denise sat up and responded. “Grace?”

“That’s not your sister speaking,” warned Tom Harris. “Let Reval continue.”

Denise made a sour face. “Sounded like her,” she grumbled.

“Comin’ out of her mouth.”

“Professor Expert is here,” taunted Grace, her voice suddenly light and airy. She sounded like a flirt at a party. “But you came all alone. Where’s your friend? Not
this
guy. The one you
usually
come with.”

She gave a ringing laugh. “Professor Expert and Mr. Mystic. Professor Expert and Mr. Mystic.”

I looked up and saw Tom Harris go white.

“What did you say?” Tom Harris asked.

“Where’s your friend? The
real
deal?” she said, maintaining the light tone.

“Who are you talking about?” demanded Tom Harris.

“You know who I mean,” she said.

“I don’t. If you have the courage, say his name.”

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“Tom,” said Reval warningly.

“I said it already. Mr. Mystic. And you’re Professor Expert. The one, the only, vainglorious second fiddle.” Then, cold and dismissive:

“You’re nothing on that guy.”

“Who do you mean?” Tom Harris seemed to have lost all sense of where he was. Reval’s printed prayers hung at his side, forgotten; he had taken a half step forward; he was about to put weight on his cast.

“Boo hoo, now he’s gone, big deal,” continued Grace in that same, familiar, sarcastic tone, so evocative that, in hearing it, I could have believed she was just an old friend, an old gal pal; maybe she and Tom Harris had dated once upon a time; but now she was beyond being impressed, and in fact, felt it was her role to keep him honest, to remind big, intimidating Tom Harris that he shouldn’t get too big for his britches.

“How did you know that?” said Tom Harris. “What do you know?”

“We didn’t hurt him, if that’s what you mean,” she answered. “He came to us . . . and we took him.”

“What did you do to him?”

Reval’s voice rose. “Tom, we’re here to pray.”

“I want to hear this,” he said, taking a step toward Grace. “Tell me: Who are you speaking about?”

“Tom,
get out of here,
” said Reval. He crossed over to Tom and gripped his shoulder. “Come on.”

Grace made a funny face, then spoke in a mockingly deep voice, as if she were doing an imitation. “I . . . buried . . . Paul,” she said, then smiled—an open, self-deprecating laugh—a lady at a party sharing in the fun of her own goofy impersonation.

Meanwhile Reval had shoved Tom Harris’s crutches into his hands and was ushering him from the room. With a crooked finger he summoned me as well. “Come on,” he commanded, his pudgy, pink face distorted with anger. He shoved us through the living room. Tom Harris hobbled along quickly. Reval, with his comparatively tiny frame, boxed him against the front door angrily.

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“You know better than to enter into . . .
conversation
with it, Tom,”

Reval sputtered.

But Tom Harris had gone white again and seemed to hear nothing.

“
Taaaam.
” That flat midwestern timbre stripped Tom Harris of his reverie. His eyes snapped back into focus. “I want you to get outside and get some air. It’s cold, but you need it. Go on. Both of you,” he added to me, eyes flashing.

And before we knew it, we found ourselves standing on Bobby and Grace’s porch. I stumbled over the Big Wheel’s big wheel. The dusk was silent and ice-blue.

Tom Harris paced the porch, agitated, walking on only one crutch.

“Should we go back in?” I shivered.

The curving road, white with frost; the neighbors’ houses; the trees; the patches of grass, thin as worn carpet, all faded rapidly as one last corner of the sky glowed weakly. I did not want to be left outside in the dark. After what I had seen, every shadow seemed to hide a threat. I reached under my coat and touched my trousers front. The urine had soaked a patch into one thigh on my pants. My coat would cover it, but it felt icy.

“No,” murmured Tom Harris. “We’re finished.”

“What happened?”

“I made a mistake,” said Tom Harris. “Reval was right to throw us out. Or me, anyway.” He gave a rueful chuckle. “My first time being expelled.” His voice teased, but his eyes searched the floorboards, agitated; and he didn’t meet my gaze. “You shouldn’t talk with it. It draws you in.” He hunched up his shoulders, moved to the porch railing.

“Caught me by surprise.”

I plunged my hands into my pockets to stop them from trembling from shock and cold. My teeth began chattering instead.

“What was she talking about?” I said, unable to assume the practitioner’s use of “it.” “Did—did she say my dad’s name?”

“You caught that?” said Tom Harris quickly.

“Yeah. She made that funny voice.”

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“It’s from a Beatles’ song,” said Tom Harris. “‘I buried Paul.’ Part of the nonsense talk in one of their records. Which song was it?” His voice trailed off, then he muttered, almost to himself: “Means nothing.”

“Then why did you get so upset?”

I wondered whether Tom Harris heard me. He stared up the road, his long, black back to me.

“Was she talking about my father?” I persisted. “That Mr. Mystic stuff?”

“It would certainly seem so,” he answered, his voice thick.

“What did she mean when she said they didn’t hurt him?”

“I don’t know, George.” Then, after a moment: “That’s not true. Guess I’m through with all the polite and appropriate cover stories for you, George. I do know.”

I waited. “So?”

“Your father’s letters from Honduras made it sound like his sickness was a kind of losing struggle. A spiritual struggle for his own life. I confess I didn’t really believe it before.”

My mind, only two days clear of Thorazine, fused two points together. “Now you think my dad was telling the truth,” I said, suddenly not feeling the cold. “You think the demons killed him.”

“Killed him,” Tom Harris repeated. “Killed Paul.” He drew a ragged sigh, a sob in reverse. “My God,” he said. His long black back convulsed once, twice. He bent his head, pressing his eyes with thumb and forefinger. Then he exhaled a cone of frost.

“I, er . . .” he cleared his throat again. “Didn’t know I had that in me,” he said. “No wonder it came after me. Sitting target. They smell it on you.” He sighed. “We must get you to Finley Balcomb immediately.”

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s clear now, at last,” he murmured to himself. He turned to me and spoke in a clear voice. “Demons possess, George. But they also kill when they can. Like any enemy, they first target the real threats. Priests are often injured. Here I am, ‘Professor Expert,’ with a broken leg. Paul, it now seems likely, was murdered. Next on their list . . .”

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He did not say the name, but I knew what it was.

“You think they want to kill me.”

“As you said—for revenge,” he replied. “Your mother may be in danger as well.”

I felt a sudden yearning to be home again—in our warm kitchen with the smells of potatoes frying in oil, and of baking chicken—to hug my mother and pretend I was a little boy again, to be given a glass of milk and be told what to do. Instead I shivered. The night sky deepened. Other than the bedroom light that spilled in a trapezoid onto the lawn, the dell lay in inky black.

I saw one ray of hope. “Can Reval help us?”

“If you haven’t noticed, he has his hands full.” Tom Harris sounded dubious.

“Before he leaves?”

“With you not properly ‘diagnosed’? Without any visible signs?

Even if I gave Reval my word, he would still need to satisfy himself. Perform the tests.” He shook his head. “There isn’t time, George. His plane leaves this evening.”

We pulled our coats more tightly around us. I fought an urge to burst into frustrated tears.

“Let’s wait in the car,” he said at length. “Before my testicles shatter in this cold.”

r r r

I sat brooding in the backseat. Tom Harris had finished speaking for the night, it seemed, and I contented myself with watching his cowlicks silhouetted against the house lights. My father had died, a victim of demons. His best friend remained miserable and impotent over his death. My mother believed none of it. And I was alone. I wished to dissolve right then into the cheap upholstery of the Pontiac. I was ready to let go: surrender to the drugs, the treatment facility, the psychiatrists, the creeping horror of my Friend, whichever would have me first. The porch light flicked on. Reval Dumas’s unprepossessing figure
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appeared in the doorframe. He pulled up his collar and trudged to the car. Tucked under his arm was the plastic Ziploc bag.

“So?” asked Tom Harris, when Reval got behind the wheel and slammed the car door behind him.

Reval said nothing. His head hung a few inches lower than it had just a few hours earlier on our drive here. Weariness and the stale odors of the house rose off him. He sat for a moment in silence, hunched over. Then he drew himself up and turned to give Tom Harris a fierce squint.

“Sorry ta kick you out, Tom,” he said. “You understand.”

“I do,” said Tom Harris quietly. “Thank you, Reval.”

Reval shoved the key in the ignition and started to turn it—then hesitated. He looked at both of us, seeming to read us and our dejection for the first time. His pudgy lips broadened into a grin, revealing crooked front teeth—and a glimmer of something I would not have expected from such an odd, yet holy fellow: self-satisfaction. The cockiness of an athlete who has just trounced an opponent—and at an away game, too. He enjoyed the moment, and played it out, holding the key in the ignition while we waited to learn the outcome.