The Devil's Demeanor (17 page)

Don paused the
game and looked at Craig. The boy had curly brown hair and a hound-dog face
that made him look older than his twenty-six years. “I’ve never lived on my own
before,” he said to Craig. “And I’ve only known you for a few months.”

“Yeah,” Craig
said doubtfully. “It was a dumb idea. Forget I said anything.”

“No, man,” Don
said hastily. “I like the idea. I’ll move in if Corey’s girlfriend moves out.”

Craig smiled.
“Awesome.”

*
 
*
 
*

Don thought
about the conversation he’d had with Craig as he headed to work the next night.
The Northchase Mall was a small, ancient place on its last legs. Most of the
stores inside had closed up, and the few that remained were merely waiting
until their leases were up. It was a very depressing place to work.

It was also
mildly unsettling.

Don parked his
truck just outside the loading dock that served as the entrance for security.
Another car was in this little parking area—the officer Don was relieving. It
was ten to midnight when Don walked into the mall, dressed in his crisp black
uniform.

The security
office was located just inside, in a bunker-type area that probably would have
survived a nuclear blast. There were no windows and cell-phone reception was
pitiful. But Don never had anyone to call at midnight anyway.

“Hey,” said
Rosie, a redhead twenty years older than him. She sat at a computer, playing
Solitaire.

“Hey. Anything
special happen while I was away?” He’d been away for two days.

“An alarm keeps
going off, but it’s always a false.” She glanced at the control panel next to
the computer. “Just hit ‘silence’ if it does it again. Be ready for it to go
off; the thing is loud as hell and will scare the shit out of you.”

“Will do.”

“Oh, and all
the doors are closed. Just finished checking them.”

Rosie hefted
herself from her seat, gathered her belongings and exited the office, leaving
Don alone. He sat in the vacant chair, still warm from her big butt, and pulled
out a few videogame magazines.

He also pulled
out a soda and a bottle of energy supplements. The supplements were originally
used to assist in his daily workouts at the gym; now they were used to help him
stay awake during his graveyard shifts. He knew he wasn’t supposed to mix the
pills with other sources of caffeine, but taking them with the soda gave him an
incredible boost.

Unfortunately,
once that boost wore off four hours later, he was left extremely tired.
Therefore, he took advantage of it while it lasted.

A week after
getting the job, Don started to walk circuits around the entire mall after his
first set of perimeter checks. There were three sets of checks in all, and they
consisted of making sure all doors were secured and all fire extinguishers were
up to code. It was tedious work, but it was easy.

Around one a.m.
he grabbed a flashlight, a set of keys and the work cell phone and left the
office. He first checked the dock door he had entered. Rosie had left it ajar
moments before he’d arrived, just as Don would do for his relief in the morning.
That door was completely closed now, as it should be.

He then checked
another door located down the same hall as the security office, though that
door led to a path that ran past some gated generators. The door was
not
closed. Don stared at it for a moment with nothing but long, empty hallway
behind him. Rosie had told him
all
the doors were closed before she
left, hadn’t she? Had she missed one? Suddenly, the empty hall didn’t feel so
empty. Was someone—something—breathing on the back of his neck?

He spun around
and found...nothing.

“Jesus Christ!”
he yelled, his heart racing. He could have sworn someone had been right behind
him. His mind playing tricks, perhaps?

He pulled on
the push bar until the door caught, and then he ventured into the main area of
the mall. It was long, but not very big—only one floor. Don could hear the
working fountain that resided at one end of the building. Sound carried very
well when the mall was this empty.

It took him
only forty-five minutes to complete his checks, and he usually saved the
outside doors for last. For some reason, he dreaded going outside tonight.
Perhaps it was the open door he’d found. Had Rosie simply missed it, even
though it was the closest one to the office? Had someone snuck in? Don hoped he
was alone in this building.

He liked not
having to deal with people, a luxury the day guard didn’t have. Don didn’t know
how much longer the building would last; it was scheduled for demolition in the
foreseeable future, but no one knew when exactly. He hoped to have finished
school by then.

Surprisingly,
he felt better when thinking about his uncertain future.
 
It took his mind off that open door.

Once he
finished with the inside checks, he prepared himself for the outside. He stood
at a door, getting ready. He couldn’t explain why he was so nervous tonight, of
all nights. During the two months he’d worked there, nothing had happened. And
nothing would happen tonight, he told himself.

He pushed on
the bar and stepped out into the humid May night. He made sure to push the door
completely closed, the key ready in his hand for quick re-entry. He was
standing on a path hidden by huge bushes. There were several doors along one
wall and one door at the end of the path. Much to Don’s dismay, that path
angled drastically to the right, and he couldn’t see around it until he got to
the curve. Even worse, the lights around that corner had burned out long ago.
If not for his flashlight, he would be blind.

His heart began
to race once again when he started down that long dark path around the corner.
He shined the flashlight’s beam down. Three of the doors on his left seemed
fine, and he contemplated leaving them alone.

Then he saw the
one door at the end, the storage closet. It was
open
.

“Son of a
bitch,” Don whispered as he slowly made his way to it. He kept a close eye on
the bushes to his right, hoping nothing would jump out at him. He also hoped he
wouldn’t get bitten by a spider or any deadly insects. Rosie had told him a
story about being bitten by a spider on this very path one day. That story had
a disgusting ending Don wished he could forget.

After an
eternity, he reached the open door. It was painted cyan, like all the outside
doors, and it faced him directly. If not for the angle of shadow on the door
from the overhead moon, Don wouldn’t have known it was open at all. He wanted
to push it closed but he knew he had to actually check inside. He just didn’t
want to. He placed a hand on the doorknob, did a quick check to make sure no
one was behind him, and then yanked the door open.

There was
nothing inside but junk. The storage closet was fairly small, most of the space
taken up by boxes. Once he was satisfied, he closed the door and locked it.

*
 
*
 
*

After
completing his checks, he did an hour of cardio (which consisted of walking
really fast down the length of the mall) and then returned to the office. Once
he sat at the desk, he pulled out a notebook from his backpack. He didn’t have
to worry about homework tonight. Now he focused on
other
work.

Don graduated
from high school in 2000 and foolishly decided to take a break before starting
college. He’d started up during the 2001 spring semester at a community college
to get his basics out of the way before transferring to a university.

Cut to six
years later, and he was still at that community college. He blamed it all on
his lack of focus. He never could decide on what he wanted to major in, and was
constantly skipping classes and taking semesters off. Back then, his decisions
seemed harmless. Now they were catching up to him.

As for the
notebook, he needed it for something that had nothing to do with school.

He connected to
the Internet on the computer in front of him and began a search for strange and
unexplained deaths in Georgia. He’d started doing this a year ago, hoping it
would somehow help him find Ethan.

Whenever he
chose to look Ethan up directly, he always got the newspaper articles reporting
his disappearance. There was never anything in the articles Don didn’t already
know. In fact, he knew much more.

He looked at a
list of articles and clues he’d compiled in the notebook over the past year.
There was a series of unsolved murders in the state: strangulations,
decapitations, disembowelments. All gruesome, but nothing completely out of the
ordinary.

That was, until
Don discovered another series of murders in which words had been written on the
victims’ foreheads.

Don had written
down all of the words he’d found so far:
Dog, Cave, Destin, Mom,
and
Texas
.
He found each of them significant.

He knew in his
heart Ethan was committing these terrible murders, and he wanted Don to know
it. The words would mean nothing to an outsider....

Don suddenly
realized he was crying, and not with silent tears. He was absolutely bawling.

*
 
*
 
*

Don slowly woke
up, not sure where he was at first. He was sitting on one chair with his feet
propped up on another. He was still at work, in the office. He had fallen
asleep with his head back and his arms across his chest. His neck hurt from
sleeping in that awkward position.

He looked at a
wall-mounted clock and saw it was 7:30 in the morning. His relief would be
there any minute. Don slowly rose from the chair, feeling decades older, and
made his way to the dock door to prop it open.

The moment he
pressed the push-bar, he saw a face on the other side of the door. Don nearly
jumped out of his skin before realizing it was only his relief, Wally.

“I was just
about to call you,” said Wally, grinning.

“Sorry,” Don
said. “I was doing one last round and forgot.”

Wally chuckled
as he stepped into the hall. He was in his late forties, a little on the stocky
side, and very friendly. He was also the supervisor. Don liked him; Wally was
pleasant to be around. The two men walked to the office, Wally carrying a small
lunch box and a newspaper. Don retrieved his own belongings as the supervisor
settled in.

“Anything go on
last night?” he asked Don.

“Nope. Rosie
told me about how a false alarm went off on the control panel, but I didn’t
have any problems with it.”

Wally studied
the panel on the wall carefully, cycling through the past codes. “These aren’t
false alarms. They’re alerts to pressure changes in the Pump Rooms. Did you
check the gauges?”

“Yes,” said
Don, though he really just glanced at those gauges in the three Pump Rooms.
He’d been very distracted last night.

“Well,” Wally
went on, “these all happened during Rosie’s shift, so they must’ve leveled out
before you got here.”

“What would
cause the pressure to change?”

“A person. If
someone went into the rooms and turned the knobs....”

“But you can
only get into those rooms with a key, right?”

Wally nodded.
“Rosie has a reputation of leaving doors open, though.”

Don remembered
the doors he’d found open last night. He felt better thinking she had been
behind them. But what about the water pressure? Had somebody tampered with
those during the day? If so, why?

And then Don
saw something that made his blood run cold. There was a story on the front page
of Wally’s newspaper about a man, found dead in a lake not far from the mall.

*
 
*
 
*

Don couldn’t
sleep when he finally got home shortly after eight that morning. It had nothing
to do with the hustle and bustle of the house (Liz was up and running around
outside his room, and Yvonne was blasting her stereo downstairs while she did
housework); it was the article he’d read at work.

Had Ethan
migrated to Texas.

Don was certain
the Georgia killer was his brother, and either a copycat just so happened to
begin his killing spree near Don’s workplace, or...Ethan was here and taunting
him. If the latter was the case, had that been Ethan inside the mall last
night? Had he been breathing on Don’s neck when he was closing that first open
door?

All these
questions raced through Don’s mind as he lay on his Queen-sized bed (a
hand-down from Dad and Yvonne). The sun was up and the room was warm. He had
curtains and blinds to filter the light, but it still distracted him. He wasn’t
used to sleeping during the day.

As he lay
there, he entertained the thought that perhaps Ethan wasn’t in Texas. What if
there was indeed a copycat?

What if Don
himself was that copycat?

He hated to
think that, and the possibility of him committing murder was frightening. He
was cursed, just like Ethan, but nothing had manifested over the years. Or so
Don thought. What if he had started killing and just couldn’t remember? The
news of the murders in Georgia could have ignited something in his
subconscious. If only he knew who his birth father was, and if he too was
cursed.

He jumped out
of bed and booted up his computer. He found the story about the recent body and
read it again and again.

The victim had
been a homeless man, supposedly killed three days ago. Don had worked that
night and had fallen asleep at the desk. He’d had nightmares of the dog-monster
that had taken Ethan. Don didn’t often dream of the creature, and when he did,
he considered it a bad sign.

There was no
picture of the victim, thankfully, but it was believed he’d been killed
somewhere else before being thrown in the lake where he was found. The word
soon
was carved in his forehead postmortem.