The Devil's Demeanor (26 page)

The three women
were dressed attractively, leaving Don to feel like a fool in his jeans and
yellow T-shirt. He wasn’t used to going out. The drinks arrived a moment later,
and he made quick work of his beer. Only one of them needed to be drunk for him
to spill his secrets.

Monica drank
only one alcoholic beverage while Don had four. He noticed the way she stared
at him every now and then. She was onto him, somehow. Don wasn’t sure what he’d
done to tip his hand, but he was committed. He wanted to tell his wife
everything at that very moment, in the bar, but had the presence of mind to
realize where he was. Four beers on an empty stomach was usually all it took to
get him drunk.

“When’s your
next book coming out?” Nina asked him.

“As soon as I
get my lazy ass in gear. Writer’s block.” He grinned.

“I really
enjoyed your first one,” she said. “The characters were very, um,
relatable
.”

Don looked at
Nina as she smiled knowingly. He laughed and said, “None of the characters are
based on my family.”

“Really?” she
asked.

“Really,” he
replied.

“Are you sure?”

Don laughed
again. “Okay, maybe they were
loosely
based on people I know.”

“Is that so?”
Monica asked in a significant tone.

“Yes, dear.”

After a while,
the discussion switched to Conner. Nina and Candice, being twins, gushed over
how adorable he was and how much of a handful raising two boys of the same age
would be. Don noticed Monica’s mood changing the more they talked about it. Not
for the first time, he wondered if she was ready to raise a child who wasn’t
hers.

A heated
argument began directly behind him and Monica between two young men. A minute
later, the two started throwing punches and one of the men backed into Monica’s
chair. Don leapt to his feet, grabbed the offending man and threw him away from
the table.

Rage boiled
inside of Don as he stood there, staring at the men who had been fighting each
other. They were now watching him with wary eyes.

A hand fell on
Don’s shoulder. He turned and saw his wife standing there, looking worried.
Nina and Candice got to their feet as well, and paid for the drinks. As they
left, Don heard the two guys ask each other why they had started fighting in
the first place.

Don knew why.
It was because of him.

*
 
*
 
*

After returning
to the hotel, Don retrieved the sleeping boys and put them on their bed. Monica
had changed into her nightgown and sat on her bed, watching. Don changed into
his pajama bottoms and sat next to her. His head was spinning from the drinks,
but he felt good. Confident. He was ready to talk.

“What was
that?” Monica suddenly asked, disarming him. “At the bar, I mean.”

“That guy
backed into you,” he said, as if it was obvious. “I was defending your honor.”

She shook her
head. “I saw your face; there’s more to it.”

There was
indeed more to it. Somehow, Don had the ability to arouse the anger of those
around him, and he still didn’t know how he did it. The effects always came at
random times.

“Honey,” he
said quietly, “there’s something I need to tell you. It’s about my brother.”

“I’m
listening.”

Don checked on
the children, who were both fast asleep.
 
“Christ, this is so hard.” He had been about to tell her, but his chest
suddenly hurt. “You love me, right?”

She chuckled.
“Of course I do. No matter what.”

“Even if I did
something evil?”

Monica’s mirth
quickly vanished. “Donovan Scott, tell me what happened.”

“I would die if
I lost you,” he said through gritted teeth. This was not going as well as he’d
hoped. At that moment, he suddenly felt like he would lose his wife if he said
any more.

“Do you really
think you can back out now?” Monica asked. “I’ve known you since we were kids,
Don. I’ve loved you nearly as long. Nothing you’ve done will change the way I
feel about you.”

Don shook his
head and took a breath. And then he said, “I killed my brother.”

A long silence
followed. At first, he didn’t know if she had heard, but when he looked at her,
he saw the expression on her face: confusion, horror. Not only did she
hear
him, she
believed
him.

“Why?” she
asked.
 
“Why did you kill him?”

“Self defense,”
he said. “I found him that night, with the help of the P.I. When I went to
Ethan’s house, he tried to attack me.” Don was lying but didn’t know why at
first.

And then it
came to him.

He needed to
justify his actions. He had killed Ethan because he was afraid of him. There
was no other reason.

“Where did the
gun come from?” Monica asked. She knew Ethan had been shot, same as everyone
else knew.

“It was his,”
he answered without thinking. He’d forgotten about that little plot hole. The
gun had actually been his father’s, and he had taken it with him to confront
Ethan.

“Why did he
attack you?” Monica asked next. She seemed genuinely curious, not suspicious.
She clearly wanted to believe her husband had a good reason for his actions.

“There was
something wrong with him.” Now for some truth.

“What?”

“Remember that
night you found me in your front yard?” he asked. “I was on all fours and
acting...weird.” Monica nodded. “Well, there was something wrong with me that
night, too. Ethan and I had a complicated past that involved our parents.”

Don noticed his
wife holding her breath, waiting for him to continue.
 
So he did.

“I don’t know
how else to explain it except to say we had some mental-health issues.”

Monica resumed
breathing. “How serious are these issues?”

Don could see
on her face that she was remembering the night they reunited. He had looked
like a crazed animal but had not acted dangerous toward her. At most, she had
been merely confused rather than afraid. Don had explained it away easily
enough before by saying he’d been in a car accident and was disoriented.

“There was no
car accident, was there?” she asked, as if reading his mind. “I should have
known since you wouldn’t let me drive you to the hospital.”

He shrugged.
“How do you feel about what I just told you?”

“Not great,”
she replied quickly. Then she looked to the other bed. “Will this affect
Jordan?”

Don looked as well.
“I hope not. I haven’t seen any signs of the illness like I did with Ethan.”

“And what about
Conner?”

Don sighed and
said, “I’ve definitely seen signs in him.”

“I don’t know
what to say to all of this,” Monica murmured. “I still love you, and I’m not
afraid. You’ve never hurt me, and I know you never will.

“But I’m afraid
of Conner now. Are we ready to take care of someone with his...problems?”

“I’ve thought
that myself a few times,” Don replied. “If there’s anyone who can help him,
it’s me.”

Monica nodded
and relaxed next to Don. She then cuddled closer to him, as if showing she was
not afraid. He hoped she didn’t see him differently. He couldn’t lose her. For
the sake of his own sanity.

Don felt bad
getting Aunt Cynthia to watch the boys. It was difficult working on the
manuscript with Conner and Jordan running around the house, making so much
noise. And Don really needed to finish his novel.

There were
times when he felt guilty about profiting off his tragic life story, though
fictionalizing it helped a little. Giving the first book a happy ending seemed
like therapy for him; the way things should have been. Don liked writing, no
matter how difficult it proved to be at times.

He was fifty
thousand words in, having tapped into a creative well that allowed him to write
without much interruption. Having the boys around had proven a hindrance, but
Cynthia had taken care of that. Don hoped Conner didn’t do anything unusual
while under her watch.

More than that,
though, he hoped Conner didn’t hurt the other children. The boy had killed a
grown man—there was no telling what he could do to someone his size.

Don suddenly
stopped typing when he realized he’d written down the very thoughts he’d just
had.

The boy had
killed a grown man,
the page read.
There was no telling what he could do
to someone his size.

The story
wasn’t even about the boys; it was about the brothers from the first book, and
they didn’t have children. Don scrolled through the manuscript to see if he’d
mentioned any kids before now.

He had.

Two boys, Casey
and Trevor, were featured in at least fifty pages. Don found their rough
introduction, laughing at himself for his lack of subtlety. The boys had just
appeared out of nowhere. Don briefly read those fifty pages and found that the story
had taken on an intriguing life of its own. He went to work, polishing the
rough edges. This had become an entirely different story.

An hour later,
he got a call from a hysterical Cynthia about an incident that had just
occurred at her house. Don rushed right over. When he got there, he found her
in her living room with four kids, one of them Jordan. Conner was not among
them.

“What
happened?” Don asked, slightly out of breath from the stairs he had to climb.

Cynthia took
him to the kitchen and said quietly, “Conner got into my liquor stash
downstairs.”

“Is he all
right?” he asked.

She nodded. “He
tried to give some vodka to the other kids, including your son.”

Don looked out
at Jordan, who seemed unharmed.

“It’s a good
thing I caught them in time,” Cynthia continued. “Conner had poured them all
shots.”

“I’m so sorry
about this,” said Don, mortified. “Where is Conner?”

Don found his
nephew in the room across from the master bedroom. Conner was sitting on the
bed, facing the window.

Don closed the
door behind him and simply stood there. He was angry with Conner, even though
he knew it wasn’t the boy’s fault. “Why did you do it?” he asked his nephew.

“Because I
wanted to,” came the simple reply.

“That’s not
good enough.”

“That’s too
bad.”

Curse or not,
Don was pissed. He quickly stepped in front of Conner. “You listen to me! What
you did was wrong, and if you do anything like it again, I’m going to send you
off to a place where they’ll study you like a fucking lab rat. Do you
understand me?”

Conner didn’t reply
right away, and Don actually saw a flicker of fear on his face. But then Conner
said, “Jordan is just like me, you know. Would you send him away too?”

Those words
from that tiny, innocent voice, chilled Don to the core. This was not something
a child would say. “He’s nothing like you.”

“Keep telling
yourself that, Uncle Don.”

*
 
*
 
*

Monica was
furious when she got the news later that day. She made Conner go to his room
and stay there until she said otherwise. Then she and Don proceeded to have an
extremely heated argument in the kitchen.

“He put our
child in danger, Donovan!” she shouted. “We’re not prepared to handle a child
like Conner, one with his needs.”

“He’s not a
special-needs kid,” Don replied half-heartedly. He was still thinking about
what Conner had said about Jordan.

“Whatever you
want to call him, we still aren’t qualified. He could have killed those kids.”

“Conner’s a
five-year-old boy,” Don found himself saying. “Kids get into things they’re not
supposed to all the time. He just made a mistake.”

“Cynthia told
me that liquor cabinet was locked. This was deliberate, Don. Something’s wrong
with that boy.”

Don sighed,
defeated. “You’re right, honey. But I don’t know what to do.” He sat at the
dining table.

Monica sat
across from him and took his hand. “How did you handle it when you were his
age?”

“The...mental
stuff didn’t affect me as much as it did Ethan. When it finally caught up to me
later in life, I found love. I found you.” He gently squeezed her hand. “And it
all went away.”

“So,” said
Monica, “all we have to do is find a five-year-old boy a girlfriend.”

They laughed,
and the tension slowly melted away.

*
 
*
 
*

Don kept the
boys at home with him the next day, though he continued work on the manuscript.
He even included the liquor incident in the story.

A curious thing
happened midway into the manuscript: Don introduced an important character
without meaning to. The character turned out to be the protagonist’s birth
father. Don supposed he’d been thinking of his own birth father, whom he’d
never met. But why write him into the story?

He reread the
introduction and found the character on a beach in Florida. Don thought back to
the man he’d seen that one day weeks ago, watching from the shore while Don
swam with the kids. Though he had never seen his true father before, he had
dreamt about a man without a face. The man had said he was Don’s father.

But that man on
the beach couldn’t be his birth father. Mom had found out that he’d killed
himself long ago to escape the curse. Don had believed her—mainly because
she
had believed it—but something inside him said that his real father was alive
and well.

Unfortunately,
Don knew of no one who could help him find the man. He didn’t want to risk
hiring another private investigator after the incident with Ethan. He thought
of Cynthia and wondered if she had ever met his father. Being Mom’s sister, it
was a possibility.

*
 
*
 
*

During Monica’s
day off, she agreed to watch the boys while Don visited his aunt. Monica had
been a tad reluctant to take on the task, though Don didn’t blame her. He
promised he wouldn’t be gone long.

As he drove
down that scenic highway to Cynthia’s place, he told himself he wouldn’t leave
without answers. Cynthia had to know something about her sister’s boyfriends;
sisters told each other things.

He pulled up to
his aunt’s house and climbed those annoying brick stairs to the front door. She
had told him to just come in when he arrived, but before he entered, he glanced
across the street, to the little cemetery. Zombie Ethan, thankfully, was
nowhere to be seen.

Cynthia was
sitting on the floor in front of her couch, changing the diaper of one of her
youngest charges. The baby was no older than two and was giggling. “Who’s a
stinky baby?” she asked the boy. “You are.” She looked up. “Hey, Don. I didn’t
hear you come in.”

He hadn’t told
his aunt why he wanted to talk to her; he wanted to catch her off-guard. He sat
on the love seat and waited for her to finish.

After returning
the baby to the others, who were all napping, she sat on the couch. “So, what’s
on your mind?”

Don decided to
cut to the chase. “I know Patrick Scott wasn’t my biological father.”

Whatever
Cynthia had been expecting him to say, it certainly wasn’t that. “Of course he
was your father. Why would you say that?”

She sounded
like she was telling the truth, and it disheartened Don. Maybe she didn’t know
anything.

“Aunt Cynthia,
Mom and Dad both told me about it, so you don’t have to pretend. I know Mom was
pregnant with me before she met Patrick.”

His aunt simply
sat there. Had he just dropped a bombshell on her? But then she asked, “Why do
you want to know about
him
?”

Don took a
moment to process her question. She did know. “Who was he?”

She sighed.
“His name is Stephen.”

“Is? I thought
he was dead.” Don instantly thought back to the man on the beach.

“He’s very much
alive.”

“How do you
know? Do you keep in touch with him?”

“I guess you
can say that, yes.”

Don rubbed his
sweaty palms against his lap. “Why does everyone think he’s dead, then?”

She looked
about her living room, at her baubles and trinkets. “He
did
die,” she
said. “And then he came back.”

“Excuse me?”
Don couldn’t have heard correctly.

Cynthia looked
at him. “He faked his death.”

“Why?”

“To hide from
something.”

Don stared at
his aunt in disbelief. How much did she know about the curse? “Did he tell you
what he was hiding from?”

“No, but it
must’ve been important enough to start a new life.”

“And you kept
in touch with him after his...resurrection?”

She nodded. “He
actually contacted me. He wanted to know how you were doing. I was his proxy, I
guess you can say.”

Don couldn’t
believe what he was hearing. His birth father was indeed alive and curse-free.
“Where is he?” he asked.

“I don’t know
if I can tell you that,” said Cynthia. “I shouldn’t have even told you this
much.”

“I have to
know. I have to talk to him. My family might be in danger.”

“What do you
mean?”

“I think
Stephen passed something on to me, some kind of mental illness. I need to talk
to him.” It wasn’t a lie.

Cynthia bit her
lip. “I don’t know exactly where he lives. All I know is that he’s in Florida.”

Don sighed with
relief. “I think I saw him on the beach when we were down there.”

She tilted her
head. “How could you possibly know what he looks like?”

Don smiled. “I
just know.”

“Stephen often
worried about you as a kid. I figured there was more to it than just regular
parental duty. You said something about mental illness?”

Don didn’t want
to talk to his aunt about the curse. It had taken Cynthia’s sister; she had a
right to know
something
.

“I don’t know
what else to call it,” he began. “Something is wrong with my family. I thought
it began with Mom and Ethan, but it seems to have been before that. Mom was
infected by a dog.”

“Like rabies?”
Cynthia asked.

“The worst case
of rabies, if that’s it. Stephen passed it to me, Mom to Ethan.”

Cynthia nodded,
taking in his words. “And you think you and Ethan passed it to your kids?”

“Yes.”

“And how can
your dad help with this?” she asked, and Don tried to ignore the familial term
she used for Stephen. “Can’t doctors help?”

“Doctors can’t
even detect it. I’d gone to the hospital dozens of times as a kid and they
never found anything wrong with me.”

“So,
this...illness that affected my sister. Is that what made her go crazy and try
to kill Patrick?”

“If Dad hadn’t
stopped her, she might have killed us both.”

Cynthia thought
on that, unable to say another word. She clearly missed her sister very much,
and Don wished he could undo the harm the curse had inflicted. All he could
hope to do now was prevent future tragedy.

“How did you
stay in contact with Stephen?” he asked his aunt.

“Phone calls. I
can definitely tell you he lives in Florida; he told me so a few years ago,
when I last spoke to him.” She grabbed Don’s shoulder. “Good luck, Donovan. I
hope you find what you’re looking for.”

*
 
*
 
*

A week passed
since Don had spoken with his aunt. He still couldn’t believe she’d been in
contact with his father all these years. Why? Aunt Cynthia said it was because
Stephen had wanted to know how Don was doing, but Don couldn’t help feeling
that there was more to it than that.

Were the two
adults seeing each other? Cynthia had said they’d only talked on the phone, but
perhaps they rendezvoused every now and then. Don didn’t know how to find
Stephen other than to hire another P.I. He thought about hiring the same one
who’d found Ethan, but doing so would be risky after Ethan’s death.

Feeling
helpless, Don buried himself in his writing. He was more than halfway done with
the manuscript, yet he had no idea what it was about anymore. He just let his
fingers do the typing. He decided he would read it once he was finished with
the current chapter. He was almost afraid of what he would discover this time.

*
 
*
 
*

He and Monica
grew distant the more he worked on his writing. He barely paid attention to his
surroundings anymore. He could feel the distance between him and his wife, but
when it came to actually acknowledging it, he simply couldn’t find the
willpower. It felt like a mental block that he just couldn’t get past, and it was
frustrating.

Everything
was frustrating.

Monica begged
him to stop writing for one whole day. He said okay but regretted it later on.
His fingers itched for the keyboard. He felt compelled to get the story out,
and that he would die if he held it in any longer.

Whenever Monica
wasn’t looking, Don wrote in a notebook so he could transcribe later. He was
cheating, but what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And what he didn’t know
was that she’d seen him writing that day. She didn’t tell him until they went
to bed that night.