The Indestructible Man (9 page)

Brother Stewart herds us into the kitchen and has us hook some emery boards into little crosses with baggie ties, to protect us in case the demon tries to leave Joe and jump into one of us. It takes me a minute to hook them together, so when Brother Stewart goes back out to comfort Minnie I follow him, just to make sure I’m doing it right—no sense taking chances. In the living room Minnie is busy stuffing a few shirts into an old black canvas suitcase, having a hard time trying to make it all fit.

Brother Stewart seems surprised when I tap him on the shoulder, but he takes my cross and looks it over for me. “Looks good, Jimmy,” he says.

Minnie still hasn’t gotten the suitcase closed, so I push down on the top so she can latch it shut. “Here you go, Minnie,” I say. “Going somewhere?”

“She’s getting out of here,” Brother Stewart says. He looks at her and she nods. “To her mother’s house in Louisville. She shouldn’t be here for this.”

“Seems like a good idea,” I say.
 
If Joe is as bad off as he seems, I’d feel a lot better if Minnie wasn’t there. I could swear Joe once said Minnie’s mother was dead, but my memory’s never been that sharp and it isn’t the best time to ask.

Brother Stewart makes himself a sandwich and sends Minnie off to the car with the wine, bread, and deli meat. He leads us toward the bedroom but stops at the door. He looks on us with pride and steels himself with a deep breath. “Whatever happens,” he says, “I want to thank you boys.” We nod; this will be hard, but we know it has to be done. We hold up our emery board crosses and follow him in.

When Brother Stewart opens the door I try to keep my eyes off Joe because I can’t stand to see him like that. The dresser drawers are wide open and clothes are hanging out, like the room’s been ransacked.

Joe looks up at us weakly, pleading with his eyes, then lays his head back on the pillow, moaning. It might not be Joe, just some evil thing, but it sure sounds like him. I try not to pay attention to him as we light the votive candles and put them in every corner, casting the walls in soft pink and orange light. Brother Stewart says the candlelight will keep the demon from escaping and infecting someone else. It has to be stopped right here, no matter what.

“Okay,” Brother Stewart says, inspecting our preparations. “You boys ready?”

We nod and hold the crosses to our hearts.

Brother Stewart twists open the jar of holy water and climbs up on the bed, kneeling on the mattress over Joe, one foot still on the floor. For the first time, Joe—or the thing in him—looks scared.

Brother Stewart clears his throat and looks each of us in the eye, borrowing our strength, then leans over Joe, right up close to him, his long nose not six inches from Joe’s face. “I think it’s time you and I had it out, devil.” He straightens up, towering over Joe, and tilts the jelly jar. “Demon, leave this poor wretched servant of the Lord alone.” He drizzles the holy water over Joe’s face, a few drops at a time; it drips onto his nose and mouth, soaking into his collar and the pillow.

That really seems to kick something off with the demon, because Joe starts to cough and cry out through the gag. His arms flail and pull at the ties around his wrists, so hard it looks like the bedposts are about to give. Brother Stewart jumps back just in time to keep from being snatched. Joe’s face is twisted into a grimace of rage and hate like I’ve never seen from him. If he were loose he’d tear Brother Stewart into little pieces and stomp all over them. But before he can get his hands free we’re on him, each of us lying across an arm or leg. His scary wide eyes glare at us as he curses and calls us “fuckers” through the gag. He tries to say something else, but we can’t understand and we aren’t about to take the gag off so the devil can charm us.

“That’s it, boys,” Brother Stewart says. “Hold him tight. Old bastard almost got free before.” He rips off more strips of bed sheet and ties Joe’s wrists down tighter. “We can’t have him running around loose. Somebody’s liable to get hurt.”

After a few minutes Joe stops fighting and we get off him. Brother Stewart pours the last few drops of holy water on Joe’s forehead. This time Joe just lies there, not even struggling, his eyes watering and looking up at the headboard.

 
Brother Stewart leans over Joe again and starts to say the Lord’s Prayer, but after the first few words the old Nova’s horn cuts him off. He looks up, irritated. “
Dammit
,” he says. “I thought I told Minnie to get going. Keep him still till I come back.” He heads out the door; Joe cranes his neck to watch him go and spits curses through the gag. He thrashes his arms again, and one of the ties around his left wrist comes loose and falls to the floor.

Sam stumbles over the dirty clothes to the bedside table to get it. “Wait a minute,” he says as he bends down. “What’s this?” He comes up holding Minnie’s jewelry box, empty except for a string of purple beads hanging out.

From the driveway outside we hear footsteps; then a car door slamming, and the old Nova spinning its tires in the gravel. I open the blinds but all I can see is a cloud of dust where the car had been. Sam and Charlie push me aside to look. “That son of a bitch,” Sam says. He hands me the ax handle we’d brought in case we had to get rough. “Stay with him a minute,” he says, and he and Charlie and Byron go outside to look.

Joe lets out a howl that makes me want to hide under the bed and starts pulling at his bonds with ungodly strength, so hard that the ties dig into the wooden bedpost, and into his arms too, leaving dark red tracks in his skin. He gives one last, hard jerk and the ties finally snap. Then he rips the gag off his mouth, and I know I have to do something, so I run to the bed, try to grab his wrists and pin him down.

“Jimmy,” he says, wheezing and panting. “It’s me!”

I turn my head away and try not to listen.

“Jimmy! I’m no demon. And Brother Stewart’s no preacher. Him and Minnie—”

“No—shut up,” I say, wishing my hands were free so I could plug my ears. “Don’t you talk to me.”

“
Dammit
, are you that stupid?” Joe wrenches his arms free and grabs me by the shoulders. I try to keep him down, but on my best day I’m nowhere near as strong as him, with or without the devil. We wrestle until he flips me off the side of the bed, and I land hard on the floor. He unties his feet and starts limping toward the door, still slow from being tied up so long. I crawl after him and hold onto his ankles until he falls to the floor. He kicks at my head two or three times, hard enough to make me see stars, but I grab him round the legs so he can’t crawl away without dragging me.

“I
ain’t
letting you out this door,” I say.

Joe turns over in my arms, reaches up, and takes my head in his hands—not hard, just enough to hold me still, but he could twist it right off if he wanted to. “Listen to me,” he says, slow and quiet. “There’s no devil in me. Brother Stewart’s been playing games with you, and he just ran off with Minnie and all our valuables. This is
me
talking. If you let me up now, I can still catch ’
em
.”

I look into his eyes and for a minute it seems like he’s telling the truth, and I start to loosen my grip on him.

“That’s it,” he says. “Just let me go so I can get that bastard.”

For a second my hands relax, and he starts to slink through the doorway. Then I remember what Brother Stewart said about the devil being silver-tongued and sounding like Joe when it really wasn’t, and I know I have to stop him. I reach for the ax handle, and before he can get up I swing it hard as I can. Joe is on his belly, calling my name and trying to crawl away, but I bring it down on him again and again, until he’s quiet and still and I’m sure the evil has finally left him.

Dirt and Shit

It’s Saturday night and I’m following Jeff home from Yukon Eric’s on a two-lane road just outside of town. I’ve had a little more than I should’ve, but it’s a clear night and I’m not that bad off. I’m a few car lengths behind him but keeping up, then up ahead I see this cloud of dust covering the road, so thick it blocks out everything past it. I honk for Jeff to watch it, and slow way down—out here somebody could come barreling through and plow right into you, or a deer might run out of the cornfield. But Jeff keeps gunning it until the dust swallows him up, pickup and all.

I head in slow, not knowing what I’ll see—maybe Jeff’s truck flipped over in the ditch, maybe aliens for all I know. But just when I’m about to barrel in, it disintegrates, and I only catch a few furls against my windshield. The next thing I see is Jeff’s truck, sitting on the shoulder near the cornfield, headlights on and hazards blinking.

I get out to check on him, figuring he’s just had a little close call. His truck’s caked in thick brown dirt, the window’s wide open and he’s holding the steering wheel like he’s about to rip it out of the dash. I ask if he’s okay but he just sits there, gripping the wheel and looking off into nothing.

“Hey.” I grab his shoulder and give him a little shake. “You okay?”

His face is covered with dirt, and he wipes one cheek clean with the palm of his hand. He stares at the grime for a minute, then looks up at me real slow, scared like he’s just looked into the face of God. Before I can even pull my arm out of the truck, he floors it and takes off at a good hundred miles an hour, kicking up a trail of dust behind him. I jump in my car to chase after him, but he’s already two miles up the road and I know I’ll never catch him.

Next morning
I call to see if he made it home all right, but there’s no answer. On the fourth or fifth try the phone’s busy. It stays busy for the rest of the afternoon, so I take the hint.

 
Monday morning he’s not at work. Roger, the foreman, says he called in sick, only Jeff doesn’t call in sick unless he’s about to drop dead. He’s supposed to help me load a bunch of heavy steel beams onto the truck, but since he isn’t there Mike, one of the new kids, has to help me, and not five minutes in he accidentally drops a beam on my foot. It takes everything I’ve got not to blow my stack, but I keep it to myself. Mike’s a nice kid, a couple of years younger than Jeff and me, and we’ve sort of taken him under our wing. The nurse checks me out later and says I’ll be okay, so Mike’s off the hook. But not Jeff.

When I get home I’m sweaty and tired and my foot still hurts, so when I call Jeff I’m in a shitty mood. After about a dozen rings he finally picks up.

“Yeah?”

“Hey,” I say. “What’s the deal? Roger said you called in sick.”

“I know,” he says. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Everything all right?” I ask him. “You were pretty shaken up.”

“No kidding.”

“So what happened? Abducted by aliens or something?”

“No,” he says, and sounds disappointed in me for thinking it. “I’m not sure what happened. After I went into the dust it was like I could see something I couldn’t before. You follow?”

“No.”

“I don’t know how else to explain it.”

“You showing up for work tomorrow?” I ask him, trying to change the subject because I’ve never heard Jeff talk like that before.

“I don’t know yet,” Jeff says. “I need a little more time to think.”