The Devil's Demeanor (8 page)

“You cheating
son of a bitch!” he shouted.

“Clark!”
Barbara scolded, setting her knitting down on her lap. “Watch your language.”

“Shut up, you
stupid bitch!”

From her
shocked expression, it was obvious she had never seen him this angry. He
rounded on Nick and Don again.

“Get out of my
fucking house!”

“Gladly,” Nick
said calmly and stood up.

“I’m sorry
about him,” Barbara said as she walked them to the front door. She seemed
embarrassed by the event that had just taken place.

Clark stormed
up the stairs to his room, swearing out loud. Once Nick and Don walked up to
the street, Clark started screaming at them again from his window.

“You’re a
cheating sack of shit!”

“Whatever!”
Nick shouted back, but not angrily. Then he said to Don, “Home-schooled kids
are the craziest.”

Don nodded,
figuring Clark could give Ethan a run for his money. As they walked away, Don
noticed the strange feeling was fading. He wasn’t sure why it occurred in the
first place, but he was glad it was over.

*
 
*
 
*

In an
unseasonably chilly May, Mrs. Harris told Mom that Don could come over after
school to play with Monica. Mom said that would be fine. Don had had a nasty
run-in with the grumpy bus driver again one day when he failed to get off the
bus quickly enough. It hadn’t been Don’s fault, though. He had been sitting in
the back, and when the bus stopped at his street, he got up immediately but
couldn’t make it past the kids who had been standing in the aisle.

When he finally
did get to the front, the driver had closed the door and started driving off.
Don asked him to stop, prompting the old man to go into a tirade, angrily
telling Don to be faster next time, asking him if he was too stupid to
recognize his own stop.

Don walked down
the street to the Harris’ home in tears. Along the way, Monica tried to console
him. When he got to the house, he sat in front of the fireplace, staring at the
flames. He thought about how some people were so mean. What caused them to go
into such terrible moods? Were they cursed, too? First Clark, then the bus
driver. Don’s skin had tingled again just before the bus driver started
yelling.

Don didn’t know
what was normal behavior anymore. Should he be mean, too? It seemed only fair
to yell at people who yelled at him.

He was so lost
in his thoughts and the flickering flames of the fireplace he didn’t realize
his mom was at the front door.

“He’s been
sitting in front of the fireplace for hours,” he heard Mrs. Harris tell her.
“He hasn’t said a word or moved since he got here.”

She sounded
more amused than worried.

“He likes
staring at bright things,” Mom replied. Don didn’t believe that to be true, but
didn’t argue. He was lost in the flickering flames again.

He liked
looking at
fire
. The flames looked like they were reaching out toward
him.

*
 
*
 
*

Mom and Adrian
drove the kids to Uncle Roland’s house during the first week of June, where
they were to spend the whole month. Dad was going to pick them up in July,
where they would spend the rest of the summer in Connecticut. Don should have
known the visit would be bad.

The first bad
thing to happen occurred when he, Adrian, Ryan and Uncle Roland were playing
Frisbee in the backyard. Adrian accidentally hit Don in the nose with the
Frisbee, causing a massive nosebleed.

The next thing
happened a day later when Don was feeding his uncle’s Saint Bernard, Belvedere.
Some of the food had spilled onto the floor of the garage, next to the bowl,
and when Don tried to scoop it back in, Belvedere turned and nipped the boy’s
right cheek with his teeth.

Don stood there
for a moment in stunned disbelief, and then started crying. Uncle Roland came
running into the garage to see the boy’s face bleeding. The dog had gone back
to eating as if nothing had happened. During both incidents, Don was certain
Ethan had been nearby.

The curse.

Did Ethan have
some ability to make bad things happen? The boy was fast approaching four years
of age. There was no telling what he would be capable of as he matured.

Don was
grateful when Dad showed up to take them to Connecticut, but their time up
there hadn’t been very eventful. The boys spent half of their days alone while
Dad and Yvonne worked. All there was to do for the whole month was watch TV.

Don wanted to
go home.

*
 
*
 
*

Fall of ’91
would be the Scott family’s last in Don’s childhood home. Don spent it playing
with fire.

In August Mom
told the boys she was selling the house. Don didn’t know what to say to that,
but he knew he wasn’t happy. In September, he discovered the gas can in the
shed in the backyard; the can they used to fill the lawnmower.

He started
simple, filling a plastic garbage-can lid with gasoline and lighting it on
fire. This was done behind a sloping four-foot brick wall that connected to the
front porch. There was a tiny court between this wall and the front of the
house, where he did his experiments, and soon Nick and Monica started coming
over to watch.

Don eventually
got bored with the lid and started burning his toys, including his Batman
action figures, and even Ethan’s tricycle, which Don had the good sense to dig
a pit for before lighting it up.

His “fire
phase” came to an abrupt halt when, one day, Adrian came over unexpectedly and
caught the children playing with what they shouldn’t be playing with. Instead
of getting mad, Adrian simply spoke with Don, telling him fire was dangerous
and he shouldn’t be playing with it. Don agreed to stop. He liked Adrian.

He did not,
however, care for Yvonne, who had been a total bitch to him and Ethan during
their stay in Connecticut that July. She’d constantly yelled at them, telling
them to do this and that.

No, Don Scott
didn’t care for her one bit, and his skin hadn’t tingled before her tirades.
She seemed naturally angry.

*
 
*
 
*

Don tried to
get as much out of his current house as he could before the family moved by
having get-togethers in the bright, happy playroom. It was depressing knowing
he was going to be leaving all of this behind soon, but Mom assured him they
wouldn’t be moving far.

She had been
looking for a cheaper house in the area and promised Don he and Nick would
still be able to hang out every week. Don was grateful, and decided one day in
October to tell Nick about Ethan.

They were
hanging out in Nick’s room, reading comic books.

“I think my
brother is evil,” Don admitted. “I mean
really
evil.”

He waited for
Nick to respond. Nick only looked at him over the top of his Superman comic.

“While my mom
was still pregnant with Ethan, she was bitten by a dog at my grandparents’
house. Grandpa said the dog was probably possessed by an evil spirit, and the
spirit could have been passed on to her...and Ethan.”

Nick only
stared at him, not saying anything. Then, finally, he said, “That’s weird,” and
then went back to his comic book.

“You don’t
believe me?”

Nick sighed
before setting the comic down on his bed. “I think I do. Your brother gives me
the creeps. I feel weird whenever he’s around.”

Don nodded; he
completely understood what his friend was talking about.

“You know,”
Nick went on, “he told me he remembers his own birth. Did he ever tell you
that?”

Don’s eyes grew
wide. “No. Did he really say that?”

“Yep. Nobody
remembers being born. Right?”

“Right.” But
Don didn’t doubt Ethan remembered. “He didn’t cry when he was born,” he told
Nick. “And he always seems like he’s older than he is.”

“Maybe it’s the
evil spirit,” Nick offered. He almost sounded bored with the conversation now.

Don told him
about the tingling skin.

“Do you think
you can sense when someone gets mad?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know,”
Don admitted. “I almost feel like I’m the one causing them to get mad. I mean,
really mad.”

“What are you
going to do about it?”

Don didn’t know
if there was anything he could do. At least, not actively.

*
 
*
 
*

Don also played
with Monica as much as he could before the move because he wasn’t sure how
often he would see afterward. The two had grown to like each other very much,
often building Lego hospitals in the playroom after school.

The following
year was definitely going to be one of change.

Unlike Nick,
Monica was allowed to play during the week. One day, while hanging on the
Harris’ porch, a freak thunderstorm materialized, working its way from the end
of the street to the other. Don couldn’t believe his eyes as he watched the
rain racing toward them.

It literally
slammed them against the front of the house. The children screamed in half
terror, half delight, until Mrs. Harris came out and angrily shouted at them to
get into the house. Clearly, screaming like you’re being murdered was not
something she wanted to hear.

On days when
the weather wasn’t awful, all of the kids on the street played Steal the Bacon
in the court. One time, Don got kicked in the mouth after tripping as he tried
to tag Monica, who had “stolen the bacon.” Though it hurt, and his lip had
bled, he didn’t cry or complain. It took every ounce of his endurance to keep
it together; he wanted to look tough in front of her.

He wanted her
to remember him as a stud.

He knew he
would miss her.

In truth, he
was very fond of her.

Mom had told
him he may have to change schools because of “zoning,” and that they wouldn’t
move until fall of 1992, when the school year began.

Don was
devastated by that news.

He didn’t want
to switch schools.

He didn’t want
to move.

He didn’t want
anything to change.

But we can’t
always get what we want.

Don discovered
what it was like to be envious of someone when he met Robbie Patterson. Robbie
had blue eyes and short blond hair, and he reminded Don of a Hollywood star. He
was good-looking and athletic. Don always felt insignificant whenever he was
around him.

Shockingly, the
two became friends.

Robbie lived
with his mom in a townhouse across the street from Windsor Meadow, so he always
walked to school. As ’92 rolled around, Don found himself hanging out at
Robbie’s often. He had been impressed by his new friend’s collection of
baseball cards as well as a pair of boxing gloves. When Don revealed he took
karate lessons, Robbie said he too had learned it, though at a much earlier
age.

“What belt are
you?” Robbie asked.

“Yellow, second
degree.”

“Oh,” said
Robbie. “I’m a black belt.”

Though Robbie
seemed nice, Don slowly started to hate the fact the boy was better at most
things. He often insisted he and Don have a foot race, even though Don was
heavier and slower. Don tried not to think his friend was trying to humiliate
him intentionally, but it was difficult to think otherwise and, eventually, Don
snapped. The reason for his meltdown had been so ridiculous, it was almost not
worth mentioning.

A pencil. That
was all it took.

Don had let
Robbie borrow one of his pencils for class and Robbie had refused to give it
back.

As school let
out, Don went to the teacher about it but the teacher replied, “It’s just a
pencil. Stop being a baby and get it back yourself or get over it.”

Don certainly
didn’t get over it.

He followed
Robbie past the line of buses. “Robbie!” he called over the noise of the many
students separating them.

Robbie turned
but did not stop. Then he held the pencil up into the air and grinned. Don
couldn’t believe the audacity of it. Robbie was taunting him. Don stopped right
in front of his bus and watched his new enemy walk away.

“Get on the
bus, damn it!” the cranky old bus driver yelled, angering Don further.

He climbed onto
the bus and took his seat four rows back. He couldn’t let Robbie’s act go. The
fact Robbie thought he could do anything to Don and get away with it was more
than Don could stand. Why did Robbie change so much in such a short time?

He would’ve
walked to Robbie’s house to retrieve the pencil if he didn’t have to worry
about transportation, but he came up with a better idea. He waited for Mom to
get home from work. He then asked her to drive him to Robbie’s home. When they
got there, Don rang the doorbell. Robbie’s mom answered.

“May I speak to
Robbie?” Don asked her. He could see the boy in the living room, sitting on a
couch and writing on a piece of paper. With Don’s pencil.

“Robbie’s doing
his homework now,” she replied.

Don’s mom
watched from the car, which was facing toward hilly Windsor Meadow Street, as
if preparing for a quick getaway.

“I know,” Don
said. “I came to pick up something of mine he
accidentally
took.”

Robbie’s mom
eyed Don for a second, then went back to the living room. A moment later,
Robbie walked up to the front door, pencil in hand.

“What?” he
asked, no longer the nice Robbie from months ago but the arrogant bully he
would probably grow up to be.

“Give me my
pencil back,” Don demanded quietly. Robbie’s mom had gone to the kitchen and
was nowhere in sight.

As soon as
Robbie handed over the pencil, Don punched him in the throat. Robbie gasped and
clutched his throat as he collapsed to the floor. Don leaned toward him and
whispered in his ear, “If you take any of my things again, I’ll kill you.”

And then Don
ran back to the car and hopped into the passenger’s seat. His mother didn’t say
a word as she drove away.

*
 
*
 
*

Don waited
nervously in his room, staring at his creepy wallpaper with the boathouse and
sailboat. He was waiting for his mom to get a call from Robbie’s mom. It had
been an hour since Don’s attack, plenty of time for her to find out what had
happened to her son.

But no call
came.

Maybe Robbie
never told her what happened. Maybe he was planning his revenge. But what about
Don’s mom? She had been parked in front of Robbie’s townhouse when it went
down. Had she seen what her son had done? If so, she’d never mentioned it. She
had glanced at Don sidelong on the drive back home, but never said a word.

Mom and Ethan
were in the living room, watching TV. Don had gone straight to his room to
await the call that would never come. His heart was racing in anticipation; he
almost felt remorse for what he’d done to his former friend. What had possessed
him to do such a thing to Robbie? Don still didn’t know.

After the
incident with his cousin Candice, and now this, Don was starting to think he
was no better than his supposedly evil brother. What if Don himself was evil?

A knock on his
closed door startled him out of his thoughts. Mom walked in a second later and
sat on the bed next to him. “I saw what you did,” she told him.

“Am I in
trouble?”

“No, baby. In
fact, I came to tell you I’m proud of you.”

“You are?”

“Yes.” She
patted him on his head. “I give you permission to hit someone if they hit you
first. Never run away from a fight. And if the school ever calls, I’ll tell
them just what I told you.”

He looked up at
her. “He never hit me; he just stole my pencil.”

Mom sat in
silence for a moment. Then she smiled and said, “Well, that’s okay, too. He did
you a personal wrong, and you punished him. Robbie learned an important lesson
today: What goes around comes around.”

Don sat there,
speechless. Was he really hearing what he thought he was hearing? Was his mom
giving him permission to beat up people for little crimes like stealing
pencils? It looked that way, but he decided he would keep his anger in check from
now on. If he could.

*
 
*
 
*

That night, he
dreamed he was walking through a dark forest. He wore his Ninja Turtles pajamas
and a pair of socks, and he could feel the grass and rocks under his feet.
Everything seemed so real.

But it couldn’t
be real.

Don continued
to walk, but to where he did not know. The moon loomed overhead in the black
sky, and he could barely see where he was going. Though he couldn’t stop his
feet from moving, he could turn his head and look around. He saw something
white behind the trees to his right.

It was his
grandparents’ house.

Oh, no,
he thought as he realized where he was going.

The cave.

The one grandpa
had told him about. The one where the evil spirit resided. His feet sped up
suddenly, carrying him down a hill. There was a stream running down this hill,
and the sound it made was almost soothing. He couldn’t calm down though,
because at the bottom of the hill was a large hole in what looked like a rock
formation.

It was the
cave.

He stood in
front of the cave at the bottom of the hill. He could still hear the stream,
but the sound of it was drowned out by the furious beating of his heart. His
insides burned like acid and his whole body was paralyzed with fear.

Shiny eyes
stared out at him from the dark cave. He wanted to scream for help, for Dad.
The eyes came closer, but Don could not see who—or what—they belonged to.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting closer. Soon it would have him.

“You’re one of
us,” a voice said from the darkness of the cave. “Soon you will join your
mother and brother.”

“No,” Don
managed to say.

“Oh, yes, you
will. It’s only a matter of time.”

And then Don
woke up.

*
 
*
 
*

When school let
out in May, Mom showed Don and Ethan where they would all be moving. It was one
story, like their current home, but smaller and with no fence. The house was
less brick and more white panel, with a black front door. It was completely
symmetrical and kind of bland; Don wasn’t enthused. But they had to move
because Mom said she couldn’t afford the other house anymore.

Don told Nick
about the house and how it was only five minutes away, across the intersection
in fact. They would still be able to frequent the arcade at the laundromat.

Dad showed up
the first week of June to take the kids to Connecticut. Don almost dreaded
summers with him because he was not a fan of Yvonne waking him up in the
morning by pouring her bowl of cereal in the kitchen. Don desperately wished
for his own room, seeing as sleeping in the living room was such a hassle for
everyone. Plus, he hated sharing the couch-bed with Ethan.

Don
was also not a fan of Yvonne turning on the TV in the morning on the weekends
and telling the kids they had to wake up. When would Dad get a house of his
own? Don knew it was difficult for his father to settle down because his job
moved him around a lot.

The trip to
Connecticut was as pleasant as always. Don lounged on the backseat and stared
out the window the whole time. Dad promised the kids this summer would be more
fun. He told them about a park that had just been built down the street, and
about how Yvonne quit her job and would take them shopping or to the movies
whenever they wanted.

Just what Don
needed: more Yvonne.

But Dad had
been right—this summer was more fun than any of the previous ones. The new park
was very nice, with swings and jungle gyms and slides. Whenever she could,
Yvonne would drive them there, but oftentimes Don and Ethan would have to walk.
It was a thirty-minute journey, but also scenic, with hills and trees and
beautiful houses to be seen along the way.

Yvonne had
taken to exercising more often and took strolls to the boardwalk every other
night. Don hadn’t even known there was a beach nearby until that summer, and he
and Ethan would join her sometimes.

The summer of
’92 had been the best one in Connecticut. Don came to like his dad’s girlfriend
more; she had a Nintendo and taught him and Ethan how to play
Centipede
.
She even taught them how to play jacks on the kitchen floor since that was the
only place without carpeting.

Don even became
more comfortable around Ethan. The boys built forts out of the couch cushions
after pulling the bed out.

When Don wasn’t
going to the park, he was watching making-of featurettes of summer movies. He
loved watching Danny Devito transform into the Penguin in that new Batman
movie.

Directly
outside the apartment loomed the rock wall. Don still hadn’t climbed it, but
hoped to do so before returning to Georgia. All he had to do was convince Dad
to help.

For most of the
summer, Ethan had been well behaved, but that changed one day. He and Don
enjoyed their walk to the park as usual. They had even made a few friends at
the park over the summer and looked forward to playing with them. On that day,
however, the usual crowd wasn’t there, so the Scotts sat on the swings and
watched some guys building a chain-link fence around the park. There was a
white-haired man standing just past the fence, staring in Don’s direction.

“That’s my
swing,” a voice behind Don said. He looked back and saw a kid his age standing
only a few feet away. “Get up.”

Don only
stared. The kid looked mean, with short brown hair and a sleeveless white
t-shirt to show off his pale, skinny arms. “I don’t see your name on it,” Don
retorted as he swung back around to watch the fence builders.

A moment later,
something struck the back of Don’s head. It wasn’t big enough to hurt, whatever
it was, but it caught his attention. He looked back to see the boy holding a
few small white rocks that made up the park’s landscape.

“Get up!” the
boy ordered. None of the other kids seemed to notice what was going on.

“Stop it!” Don
said as the kid threw another rock at him. It missed, but only because Don
ducked. He thought about throwing a rock back at the bully, but was afraid of
getting into trouble.

“Zeke, let’s
go,” a man called from his car, which was parked on the street a few feet from
the swings.

“Okay, Dad,”
Zeke replied. “Next time I see you,” he said to Don, “I’m going to kick your
ass.”

Zeke turned and
started making his way to his car. Don sat motionless on the swing, growing
angrier by the second. The anger boiled, making his vision red. He started
shaking.

A moment later,
a rock went straight for Zeke’s head. The boy dropped like a puppet with its
strings cut.

Don suddenly
cooled as he watched Zeke’s dad come running toward his son. The man kneeled
over the boy, trying to wake him. “What happened?” he asked everyone. The
people around him looked at the unconscious boy, his and her jaws dropped. No
one had seen what happened.

Later that
night, the Scott family was gathered in the living room, watching TV. Yvonne
was sitting in a recliner, a bowl of buttered popcorn in her lap. She promised
to walk the snack off the next day. Don didn’t know what that meant.

He and Ethan
shared their own bowl. Don usually enjoyed this semi-nightly ritual of popcorn
and movies, but tonight his thoughts were on what happened at the park. Zeke
the bully had only been knocked out by the rock, but he could have easily been
killed.

Don looked over
at Ethan, who was reaching into the bowl as he kept his eyes on the TV. Don
couldn’t explain why, but he felt as if his brother was actually watching
him
instead.

Dad was in the
kitchen, getting himself a bowl of butter pecan ice cream. Don wanted to talk
to him about what happened at the park. Dad turned off the kitchen light and
sat down next to Don on the couch. They were all watching an Indiana Jones
movie. HBO played it every day, and Don watched it each time. He’d probably
seen it sixteen times this summer alone.