The Indestructible Man (8 page)

“I’m okay.” The man walked away from the scene, ignoring the notepad-toting reporter who chased him. His face and hair were caked with soot, and he coughed up a puff of blue smoke. He made no move toward Bobby, but as he passed their eyes locked. This was not the same gangly, smirking boy Bobby had despised, nor the smiling head who filled the TV screen. He seemed transformed, his eyes full of confidence and vindication. He had done something real, and good, erasing his dishonor. Romulus Wayne had won again.

Bobby’s legs betrayed his instinct to run, and he sunk back in his wheelchair, sure he would shortly be hurled to the asphalt. But Romulus went on his way, disappearing behind the hedges bordering the parking lot.

Bystanders bumped into him from all sides, so close he could not maneuver his chair to get free. Eventually he found the space to turn and wheel away from the scene, stopping outside a coffee shop until his heartbeat settled and he could breathe again.

       
The van was not due
for another half-hour, so he slowly rolled down the sidewalk. It took him over an hour to reach his parents’ street. He looked down the row of yards and houses, watching young children ride their bicycles and jump rope in the driveways without fear of cracking their bones on the pavement. He wished he could leave his chair and join them, feel concrete under his feet, run and leap recklessly. His eyes fell on the his parents’ yard, just a few blocks down; he wondered if they would miss him if he never came back, or if it was too late for that. He thought of Abigail Wheat—Abigail
Wayne
now—dancing in the sprinkler eleven years before, on the day he first fell in love, then watched a nod and a wink crumble it.

       
He spun his wheels and headed for the dock.

       
He sat at the river’s edge and stared into the clear, burbling water for a long time. He wondered if Romulus had stood in the same spot, if he’d heard the same sounds, if he thought he might exceed his limits and drown—washed out to the Mississippi and beyond, hopelessly lost in the deep, roiling water. And he wondered if Romulus had thought of Abigail, pictured himself emerging from the river and burying his nose in her soft hair. Maybe that had been enough to save him.

       
Bobby searched his memory for a similar thought to preserve him. When he had it he shut his eyes tight and refused to let it go—a round face with short-cropped blond hair, a laugh without scorn or sarcasm, purple-tinted lips pressed against his. He would do better by her next time.

       
He could almost see her face as his wheels reached the edge of the dock and lost contact with the dry, graying wood. The cold-water shock pierced his clothes and he felt the current pull him from his wheelchair, as if he were flying on a moist, icy wind. He had no fear of drowning; the cold river had already begun transforming him. His constant pain was gone, and his legs seemed to move freely again, as if there had been no leap, no fall, no shattered bone. As the chill water carried him along he kept his eyes shut tight, wondering what kind of man would emerge from the dark river once he finally washed onto shore.

       
When news gets round
that Joe
Deavers
has got the devil in him, our first thoughts turn to his wife Minnie. Word is, Joe’s shouting curses in an unearthly voice, talking backwards to himself, hanging by his ankles in the bedroom doorway at night. With all that happening we figure poor Minnie’s probably scared out of her wits. At first it looks hopeless. But when Tom Ross, the mailman, says he’s seen Brother Stewart up there trying to cast the demon out, we gather up baseball bats and ax handles and anything else we can swing, pile in Sam’s old pickup, and drive up to Joe’s to offer what aid we can.

       
When we get there I’m almost afraid to look at the house, expecting shattered windows, the awning fallen onto the front porch, the siding scorched. But the place looks about the same as always—there’s some dust caked on the windows, the white paint is a little chipped, and the yard has a few dandelions, but all the walls are still up. The quiet is eerie, and it takes us a minute to work up the nerve to go to the door.

       
Looking in through the dusty screen I see no sign of heavenly struggle; either the devil’s been driven away or the battle’s hit a lull. Brother Stewart is sitting with Minnie on the old plaid couch, his arm around her, running his hand through her hair. Her face is buried in his black jacket, but she seems unafraid.

Sam rings the doorbell; Brother Stewart sits up in surprise, lets go of Minnie, and rises to his full height, a good five inches taller than any of us. He looms in the doorway, a great black specter, his long jacket hanging off his shoulders like a cloak. He stares at us for a minute, trying to guess our intentions. We stare back, afraid he might turn his righteous power on us.

I finally speak up. “We heard about Joe. We want to help.”

After that he seems to loosen up. An exorcism is a pretty serious affair, I suppose, and not an easy thing to do alone. He smiles and opens the screen door. “Good of you to come, boys,” he says, his face still pale and somber.

“Anything for Joe,” I say.

We hear some rustling and moaning from the master bedroom, like somebody trying to move a bed or a heavy dresser across the floor. Sam’s whole body quivers when he hears it. Brother Stewart glances at the closed door, then back at us. “That’d be Joe,” he says. The floorboards are vibrating under my feet, and I start to get nervous, because I’m not sure what we’ve stepped into.

We head for the bedroom, but Brother Stewart stops us; he says none of us have ever seen someone with the devil in him, and we need to know what to expect. He warns us that the creature in there looks and talks just like Joe, and it might beg us to let it go. But that’s just the demon playing on our friendship with Joe to set it loose, a cruel and underhanded thing to do.

Brother Stewart tells Sam to comfort Minnie while we go in. Sam, always the ladies’ man, holds her hand and tells her not to look. “It’ll be all right, Minnie,” he says.

The door groans as Brother Stewart opens it. Even before we file in, the smell of piss and puke hits—not so different from Diamond Mike’s around happy hour, but in Joe’s house it seems wrong. The blinds are closed, and we have to step over piles of dirty, ripped clothes when we go through the door.

Joe is spread-eagled on the bed in old jeans stained with what looks like motor oil and grape jelly—I don’t want to get close enough to see for sure. He’s breathing heavy, looks like he hasn’t shaved in about a week, and his left eye and part of his forehead are covered with a big yellow bruise; Brother Stewart must’ve had to put him down hard. He lifts his head an inch or two off the pillow, and when he sees us his eyes open wide. At first I hardly recognize him—he looks more like a horror-film zombie than the Joe I know. He moans and tries to talk, but he’s gagged with one of Minnie’s scarves. Brother Stewart says it’s just a precaution; the devil has a silver tongue and can talk himself out of just about any bind. Not only that, but Joe’s been speaking in strange tongues all morning. None of us are curious enough to hear that.

Brother Stewart was right about the devil being a deceiver; Joe stares at me like he knows me, nodding for me to untie him. He looks around at everyone else and starts jerking his arms, trying to break his ties. I’m not scared of much, but I jump back in a hurry. Brother Stewart does too, even faster than me; I guess he’s still edgy from the morning’s struggle.

“That’s a sign if ever I’ve seen one,” he says, wiping his brow. “Superhuman strength, wrath, eyes bugging out of his head—it’s the devil all right. We better stop him before Joe gets hurt.”

Before Joe can pull his arms free we’re all on top of him, holding his arms down and tightening the ties around his wrists. I’m not thrilled about getting that close, but it’s better than having that demon loose. Even tied down Joe is stronger than any one of us, but after thrashing around with him a few minutes, we finally get him settled. He rests his head on the pillow, closes his eyes tight, and whimpers.

“All right, that’s enough,” Brother Stewart says. He takes me by the arm and herds us out. “I told you he wasn’t pretty. Take that gag off him for even a minute and he starts trying to get into your head.”

We step outside and huddle in the living room to plot our next move; we’re in dangerous territory, and somebody might get hurt, or worse, the demon might enter one of
us
next. Nobody is ready for that. So we agree that anybody who wants to can go home and the rest won’t think any less of him. We all bow our heads and think about it; getting out while we can isn’t a bad idea. But we’re already in it; Joe is our friend, and if he’s suffering we owe it to him to set things right.

Once we’re all agreed we pledge our aid to Brother Stewart, and ask what we can do. At first he seems a little surprised and agitated—he must think it’s too dangerous for laymen like us—but then a smile crosses his face. He takes a notebook from the coffee table and draws up a long list of tools he could use: a rosary (a white plastic one from the dollar store would do fine); votive candles in glass holders with etchings of Jesus, John the Baptist, and the Virgin Mary, in melon or vanilla scent (the smell will drive the devil crazy); crosses, or sticks we could make into crosses; a bottle of burgundy, to help ease Minnie’s nerves; and about a pound of deli ham and sliced pumpernickel. The ham and bread seemed a strange thing to ask for, but when Brother Stewart says it’s to help restore our strength for the battle, it makes sense. But the most important thing, he says, is holy water. If we could find him just a little, a few drops on Joe’s face would make that demon desperate to get out. List in hand, we run out to the truck, leaving Brother Stewart behind to comfort poor Minnie and prepare for the showdown to come.

Since the situation is so urgent we split up to save time. Byron and Charlie head into town in Byron’s Mustang to get the candles and rosaries, while Sam and I get a jelly jar from Minnie’s pantry and head off to find holy water, a tall order at best. There hasn’t been a Catholic church in town for about thirty years, not since some town boys got drunk and burned St. Anthony’s down. Sam thinks we can just fill the jar from the hose and have Brother Stewart bless it to make it holy, but I say no, if Joe is counting on us we have do it right. I remember somebody mentioning a Catholic church near
Petersville
, about twenty miles up the river in Illinois, so we set off to find it.

Luck is with us, and we find it along the highway a couple of minutes outside
Petersville
. It’s smaller than I expected, no spires or steeples, just a small black triangle-shaped building in the middle of a gravel lot. When we pull in, Sam hides the jar in his jacket; we might be doing the Lord’s work, he says, but we’d best do it quietly.

Inside is a narrow lobby with dark orange carpeting, kids’ crayon drawings of Jesus taped to the windows. I look around for the holy water; for some reason, I always thought Catholic churches had big barrels out front for anybody to dip a cup into. But there aren’t any barrels, just a little white basin in the wall between the two chapel doors. Two old ladies with their hair tied in pink scarves are chatting on either side of the basin, so Sam and I stand around for a minute waiting for them to finish.

After a couple minutes I start to get nervous, and Sam shoves his hands in his pockets, whistling and swaying on his heels. Neither of us want to shove past them—it would cause a scene and hold us up, and Joe can’t wait. But Sam shoots me a look that said if they don’t move in a hurry, we’ll do just that.

One of the old ladies notices Sam’s whistling. “Oh, are you boys waiting?” she said. “We’ll get out of your way.” She smiles at me, then they both dip their fingers into the basin, cross themselves, and go inside.

The basin is about half-full, with a blue sponge in the middle to soak up the water. I thank Providence for our luck, and while I keep a lookout Sam dips the jar in. I tell him not to spill; it seems wrong to let any go to waste after the priest went to the trouble of blessing it.

I’m so busy watching the front door that I don’t notice the priest come out of the chapel. “Afternoon, gentlemen,” he says. He’s tall and broad like a linebacker, and if either Sam or I think we can rush him to get out of there, we forget it pretty quick.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks us, and Sam hides the jelly jar behind his back. The priest is mean-looking, with a huge bald head and big arms, and I get the impression that we’d better answer in a hurry.

“Uh, sorry, sir,” I say. “We got thirsty.”
 

He looks at me like I’m from another planet, and rolls his eyes. “Drinking fountain’s by the men’s room, boys. This water’s for services.” Then he sees the jelly jar; his forehead crinkles up and he sighs. “Now what in the world are you doing with that?”

I figure he might let us go if I tell him the truth. So I tell him about Joe and Brother Stewart, and that in our way we’re doing the Lord’s work too. I just hope he doesn’t keep us by calling the police or having divine retribution fall on us.

He shakes his head. “I never heard such a story. Just put the water back and be on your way, and there’ll be no trouble.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir,” I say. Sam hands me the jar with the lid screwed back on and gives me a shove. “Go.”

I take off running, but the priest is right behind me and I feel his big arm swipe at me. I’m almost out the door when his hand clamps tight around my arm and stops me cold, jerking me back so hard I almost drop the jar. “Not so fast,” he says.

Before he can pull me back in Sam is on him piggyback. They spin around for a few seconds while I run for the truck, until the priest tosses Sam to the floor like a wet sandbag and sets after me. The keys are still in the ignition, so I start it up. I drive in circles around the church a couple times, kicking up dust and gravel, waiting for Sam to come out. After the second pass I see Sam running out the back. I open the passenger-side door and he jumps in, and we get out of there as fast as that old truck can go. The priest is right on our tail, and for a minute it looks like he might catch up, but as we speed up his reflection in the rear-view shrinks to a little black dot against the asphalt.

On the way home I pray for a little extra speed to get to the state line. It’s about twenty minutes back to Joe’s, and all that way I keep looking back until I’m sure no one’s followed us. I feel a little guilty about giving the priest so much trouble, but we didn’t do any harm, and if the holy water can help Joe it’ll be worth it.

We pull up to Joe’s right behind Byron and Charlie. Sam notices Joe’s old black Nova running in the yard, engine humming away, tailpipe coughing up bluish-gray smoke. We knock to let Brother Stewart know we’re back, hoping we don’t interrupt his concentration if he’s hard at work on Joe. For a second I see his face poke out from between the curtains, then disappear back inside. After a while he comes to the door, sweaty like he’s just tried to wrestle the evil thing alone. We give him the holy water and the other tools he asked for. In the corner of my eye I see Minnie come out of the bathroom, adjusting her skirt, but out of respect I try not to look.