The Devil's Demeanor (3 page)

“Maybe some day, after the
baby is born and he sees it’s not evil.”

She lay down. “I’m so tired,
and don’t want to go back to campus on Monday.”

“Neither do I.”

“Let’s just quit school and
run away together.”

He laughed. “Are you serious?”

“No.”

She didn’t sound so certain,
though.

*
 
*
 
*

Stephen and Lucy talked
nearly every day and got together every weekend for the next two months. She
told him that everyone at school stared at her and shook their heads once the
bump started showing. A teenaged, unwed mother? For shame!

“We should get married,”
Stephen said one day. They had talked about this more than once, but hadn’t
taken any steps toward making it reality.

“I’m waiting for to ask
properly,” she said with a smile.

They were on their special
bench in the park. Stephen got down on one knee, and though he didn’t have a
ring, he took her left hand, kissed it, and said, “Will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

They kissed. They told
Lucy’s parents, but not Stephen’s dad, and set a date in December.

Lucy and the baby died before any wedding
could take place.

School was over for Stephen. He refused to
return after Lucy’s death. He didn’t do much of anything, in fact. Well, he
cried almost every day in his room. He couldn’t understand what happened to
her. She had been driving from a doctor’s appointment when she lost control of
the car and drove off the road. She had been crossing a bridge at the time, and
the fall had been...

Stephen shivered as he thought of the terror
she must have felt as her car fell fifty feet to the river. How had it
happened? Had she been distracted by something in or out of the car? Lucy had
been a safe driver, always attentive of everything around her. He couldn’t
imagine her being distracted for a second.

What if it hadn’t been an accident? The
thought suddenly popped into his head unbidden. What if Lucy was murdered? Who
would do such a thing?

What
would?

He hadn’t dreamed about the creature or its
world for quite some time. Had it found out about the baby and decided to get
rid of it? Why would it do that? The thought made him so angry he screamed,
right there, in his room. He screamed until his throat was raw. The bedroom
door swung open and Dad stood there.

“What’s happening?” he asked his son.

Stephen didn’t answer.

“I know you’re hurting, son, and I’m sorry
about what happened to Lucy and the baby. I truly am.”

Stephen got the sense he wanted to say more,
but instead he backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Stephen
closed his eyes, feeling the cold tears between his lids, and thought of the
place with the throne and history book. He wanted to return there to look
through that book again. If there was a clue to the creatures’ weaknesses, it
would be in there.

He took a moment to think about what he was
about to do. What if the creature had nothing to do with Lucy’s death? What if
it had been an accident?

He realized he didn’t care if the monster was
responsible or not. He hated it for the nightmares it had given him. He hated
it for turning his own father against him. Stephen wanted to hurt it for
hurting him.

When he opened his eyes he was there, in the
grand hall. He saw the throne up ahead, with the statues lining the path to it.

The book was there.

He ran up to it and held it to his chest. He
tried to will himself awake, hoping the book would come with him. Nothing
happened. His heart raced. Could he wake up at all if he needed to? He tried
again and woke up in his bed. The book was not there. He closed his eyes again,
and when he opened them he was back in the hall. The book was on the floor.

“Shit!”

He picked it up and hid behind the throne. He
went through the book, still unable to read the language in which it was
written. He understood the illustrations enough, though. He got past the last
page the creature had shown him, with the beings made of light.

On the following page was a drawing of a
figure that was not made of light. It looked like it was falling from the sky,
though. Stephen didn’t understand. He flipped back to the previous page, and
then back to the dim figure. On the page adjacent was what looked like the
previous two illustrations combined. Whoever drew it must have been angry
because the drawing was very dark and jagged. Stephen flipped the page and saw
the dim figure was now as bright as the gods.

Something clicked in Stephen. The drawings
made a strange kind of sense.

Suddenly, he heard grunts coming from the
entrance to the hall behind him, followed by the sound of movement. A couple of
somethings had come in and were walking toward him.

“Where is the history?” he heard one of them
say.

“I left it on the throne, Great One,” said
another, and Stephen recognized that seductive voice. It was
his
creature.

“No matter. There is something we need to
discuss.” The other voice was deeper, sickly, but sounded a lot like the
other’s.

“Of course, Master.”

Something sat down on the throne, nudging it
against Stephen’s back. He almost yelped in surprise but managed to keep
himself under control. Though he could leave whenever he wanted, he chose to
stay and listen.

“You are not like your siblings,” Master said.
“You are much more ambitious than any of them, which is why, when I leave this
realm, I want you to take my place.”

“I am greatly honored, Master, but are you
sure you want me? I don’t doubt your great wisdom, but sure Carutha would be a
better fit.”

“Carutha is a fool I wouldn’t trust to wipe my
ass. You are the only one who is aware of our potential. The others are too
comfortable living in the bowels of the earth. I confess that I too have grown
accustomed to our living arrangement over the millenia.

“But you, Machiska, were brave enough to
venture out and make contact with the Above Dwellers. What have you learned?”

“Sometimes, I can see through the boy’s eyes,”
Machiska said. “Lately I have seen nothing. Some great force is blocking my
perception. I believe it’s his father. He communes with a god. At first I
thought it was the ones that keep us below ground, but I have found it to be
another altogether.”

“Try to regain your connection with the boy.
If he is who I believe he is, then he will be very useful to us. After what you
told me about him appearing here, there is little doubt.”

“A link to the gods?” Machiska asked.

“Indeed.” Master coughed violently, rocking
the throne. Stephen didn’t move. “If he is the link, we can use him to destroy
the gods. Then we can walk the heavens
and
the earth without
fear of death.”

“But, Master, if he is a link to them, could
he possibly be a link to us?”

“I feared as much, too. A god was sent to earth
to act as this link. He was sent to destroy us.”

“I remember the story, Master.”

“Yes, but I have never told you all of this
story, and I trust you will keep it to yourself. This god was like the Trojan
Horse from the humans’ history. He was to penetrate our lair and blow us all
up.”

“Wouldn’t that have killed him, Master? His
human host, I mean.”

“Yes, which is precisely why he didn’t go
through with it. He and his host would have perished. Instead, he ran away from
the gods and lived among the humans. He mated with them, passing along this
dangerous link to different bloodlines, throughout generations.”

“My boy may be the decendant of this runaway
god?” Machiska asked.

“Yes. There may be others, as well, depending
on how robust the bloodline is. This boy and his father may be.”

“Lucky I managed to find him, then.”

“Lucky indeed.” Master coughed again. “I fear
my time is drawing near. Share this information with no one. Let none of them
find out what you are doing until you are sure you can succeed.”

“I promise, Master.”

“Hide the book. I don’t want that boy coming
along again.”

That was Stephen’s cue to leave. He willed
himself awake, once again without the book. He didn’t care; he learned all he
needed to know.

*
 
*
 
*

When Stephen saw his dad again, he gave him a
hug. He even promised to go to church with him. Dad was, of course, shocked by
this, but not unpleasantly so. The two went to church the following Sunday
without incident.

Over the next few weeks, things seemed to be
getting better for father and son. Until the nightmares started up again.

These weren’t about rape and murder. Instead
they were about light and pain. He had been struck by lightning and the pain
had lasted for only a moment. Then he felt nothing but warmth. He could see
nothing but light and didn’t know where he was. He heard voices surrounding
him, though.

And then he was driving his father’s car down
a highway. At least, he was behind the wheel. He didn’t feel like he was in
control of himself. He tried to look around but couldn’t. He could feel his
foot press harder on the gas pedal but hadn’t told the foot to do so.

Someone was in control of his body.

But this was a dream. Dreams were supposed to
be weird.

Stephen saw a blue car ahead, one that looked
very familiar. His car sped up even more until it was right behind the other.
They were coming up on a bridge—

Stephen woke with a start, muffling his
scream. It had become a reflex by this point. He waited for his dad to come
running, but he didn’t. He hadn’t heard his son, then. Good.

Stephen sat in his bed, covered in sweat,
trying to remember what he’d dreamt about this time. For some reason, he
couldn’t remember. It was clearly a bad dream, though, if he woke up like this.

A few weeks after Lucy’s death, Stephen
finally returned to school. He spent four years there, making new friends and
just barely passing his classes. After losing Lucy, he hadn’t cared about
anything else, but the creatures helped him realize he couldn’t dwell on the
bad his whole life. He had to keep himself distracted. School and friends were
the best distractions of all.

In school he met a girl named Hilda. She was a
cute brunette who reminded him so much of Lucy, but he never allowed himself to
fall in love with her. They stayed friends all throughout school. When they
graduated in 1970, she moved to Georgia to take care of her father.

Stephen returned to his father’s house until
he could find a job with his shiny new degree. He stayed there for five years,
saving as much money as he could before moving out for good.

A year later, in 1976, Dad told him about his
cancer.

Dad refused Stephen’s offer to move back. He
claimed he didn’t need taking care of, but Stephen visited often anyway. Willem
White successfully battled his cancer for years, never complaining or showing
his pain.

In all this time, Stephen never dreamed of the
creatures or returned to their world. He never forgot about them, either.

In 1981, he got a call from Hilda asking him
to visit. They had been in touch ever since graduation, but hadn’t seen each
other much. They kept each other up-to-date about their ailing fathers,
Stephen’s doing much better than Hilda’s.

Tragedy struck shortly after he arrived.
Hilda’s father passed in his sleep. Hilda was so distraught she cried for days.
Stephen, along with her brother Roland and sister Cynthia, never left her side.

When he returned to Pensacola, he found his
dad wasn’t fairing too well either. His cancer had taken a turn for the worse.
Stephen knew he was on his deathbed. He refused to be taken to a hospital, and
wanted to die in his home.

“How have you been, son?” he asked through the
pain.

“Good, Dad. Really good.”

“No more nightmares?”

“No. My dreams have been really nice.”

“That’s good. Mine have been really bad
lately.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes, I see this...monster. I don’t know
what else to call it. I don’t know if it’s real, but it told me that once I
died, it would come after you. I could swear it was in the room with me, right
where you are now.”

Stephen looked down and saw a putrid stain directly
beneath him. Something had been here.

He couldn’t stop the tears at that moment. He
told his father about the dreams, that the “monster” was real and that he’d
been bitten by it in Destin. Willem cried as well.

“Oh, son, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know how. They weren’t hurting me. I
just tried to ignore them.” He also told his father what he’d heard about being
the descendant of a runaway god sent to destroy the monsters. He wasn’t sure if
his dad would believe him, but he’d been holding in all these secrets for so
long and knew he had little time left to let them out.

“I wish I could take away this link you have
with these monsters,” Dad said. “I want to take it away from you. If that gods
stuff is true, I would sacrifice myself so you would never have to. I don’t
want those things controlling you.”

“They can’t control me, Dad.”

“Yes they can, son. Not for long, but they
can.”

“What, Dad? What are you talking about?”

Dad looked at him through the tears. “It said
it made you kill Lucy, so that her child couldn’t be born. I thought it was
just a dream....”

Stephen stopped listening. He could no longer
hear over his racing heart. He suddenly saw himself driving Dad’s car behind a
familiar blue one. He didn’t remember actually doing this, but this vision felt
real, like a memory.

“Oh, god,” he whispered. “I killed Lucy.”

“No, son. It wasn’t you. It was that creature.
It claimed I was the only thing protecting you from it now, but I won’t be here
for much longer. After I’m gone, you’ll be vulnerable to it again. I can only
think of one way to protect you.” He took Stephen’s hands in his weak ones. “I
take on your curse, son.”