The Devil Crept In Read online

  It took a second, but instinct finally overrode disgust. She lunged forward, grabbed Otto by his arm, and wrenched the half-eaten vermin away from his grasp. “Otto, no! No, that’s bad!” She threw the mouse into the bushes, cried out when it left a smear of gore across her palm. “Oh God, that’s revolting. Otto, that’s revolting!”

  She was about to dry-heave, but that, too, was stalled when Otto sprang for where the mouse had been tossed. He screamed when she yanked him back, thrashing against her as though she were leading him to the gallows—death for mouse murder; death for thoroughly grossing her out. But Rosie couldn’t care less about Otto’s protests. She was far too busy spinning worst-case scenarios inside her head.

  “What if you get sick?” she yelled at him, then yanked on his arm again, trying to put an end to his fit. “What if that thing had a disease? What if it was full of worms?” Of course, Otto didn’t understand. Sometimes she wondered if he ever would, if he had the capacity for language at all. He didn’t babble. Not Goo-goo or Gaga or the Mama she had tried so hard to teach him; just high-pitched wailing whenever he was unhappy, which was almost all the time.

  But Rosie understood the implications of her worries more than enough for them both, and the more she thought about it, the more her panic grew. Did mice have rabies? Parasites? Surely they had to be the carriers of something foul. And it wasn’t just Otto’s health she had to worry about. Its guts were smeared across her own hand. It had taken her months to feel better after her initial affliction. She still got vertigo when she stood up too fast. What if she got sick again? What if, this time, her illness lasted longer? What if she didn’t recover at all?

  Otto yowled as she dragged him up the porch steps and inside the house, probably a little too roughly, but she was too worried about possible pandemics to be gentle. “Stop it!” she demanded. “Stop it right now! This is serious, Otto!”

  Otto knew it was serious. His mom had confiscated his mouse. And to add insult to injury, she had chucked it out of sight. All he wanted to do was go back out there and find it, and he made yet another attempt as soon as his mother let him go, scurrying for the door so much faster than he should have been able. But Rosie was prepared. She grabbed him by the seat of his ill-fitting pants—lumpy from the diaper he wore underneath, from the tail that was tucked inside—and pulled him back. He hissed at her the way Sasha had when she tried to introduce the cat to his now-best friend. Surprised by Otto’s response, Rosie nearly let him go, but this time refused to relent.

  “Oh no you don’t.” She seethed right back at him. “I’m your mother!” No matter what Otto looked like or what afflictions he had, she’d be damned before allowing him to show her such disrespect. She hadn’t given up her life to be mistreated, especially by the likes of him.

  Otto continued to thrash. His mangled hands reached for her, ready to shred her arms with fingernails he never let her cut. He snapped his teeth as if to bite, the sound of their gnashing pushing her over the edge. She clenched her own teeth and marched him to the door beneath the stairs, yanked it open. There, on the far wall in what looked to be an ordinary coat closet, was the door to Ansel’s secret vault. It was camouflaged by damask wallpaper and dark shadows, nothing but a finger pull at the top edge, hardly visible unless you knew where to look.

  She struggled for a moment, trying to keep Otto from tearing up her arm while she opened the concealed door. When she finally got it to swing open, she shoved Otto inside with a bit more force than she intended. The boy stumbled on his twisted legs and hit the inside wall.

  She immediately felt terrible for being so harsh with him. He was just a baby. A child. But she slammed the door shut before he could get out. And then, after taking a moment to compose herself, she shuddered at the drying gore on her palm and rushed to the bathroom to scrub her hands.

  Wiping her hands on her skirt, she made a beeline across the house to Ansel’s study, untouched since his death. She thumbed through books she’d read the spines of a thousand times, searching for one in particular: The Encyclopedia of Diseases. It was an antique, outdated by at least fifty years, but that made no difference. Flipping through the pages in a rush, she found the section on rodents and gasped.

  Meningitis.

  Hemorrhagic fever.

  Leptospirosis.

  Plague.

  She pressed her hands over her mouth, then jerked them away, rubbing her palms against her hips despite her fingers still smelling of soap. What would she do if . . . ? What if . . . ? “Oh no, please, no.” Because despite the nightmare that had become her life, Rosie couldn’t imagine losing her child. Not to something like this. Suddenly, she found herself reconsidering her stance on doctors, but Otto was as good as feral. They’d institutionalize him. They’d arrest her. She had let him grow wild. They’d call it abuse.

  No, she couldn’t. Diseases were a possibility, but Otto being taken away from her was a guarantee.

  She had to risk it. Wait it out.

  Sliding Ansel’s medical text back into its rightful spot, Rosie exhaled a slow and deliberate breath—Calm down—then ventured back across the house to retrieve the boy. He’d been in Ansel’s safe only a few minutes, but what she found in the foyer left her just as wide-eyed as the ailments she’d read about.

  In her rush to get Otto into the house, she had left the front door wide open, an unconcerning detail, seeing as to how she frequently left it open on warmer days. The draft was refreshing, bringing in the scent of moist earth and pine. But today, Sasha had taken advantage of that open door, not to go in and out as he pleased but to make a special delivery instead. There, upon the door’s threshold, was a neat little pile of dead mice, left like an offering to a Hindu god. A sickly-looking Sasha sat beside his alms, scratching behind an ear and staring at the door that kept his best friend captive. His tail flicked back and forth. Patient. Obedient. Loyal in a way that cats were never meant to be.

  · · ·

  The next morning, Rosie pulled Otto to her for breakfast, but for the first time in his short life, he wasn’t hungry. She went down to the basement—the best solution she could manage when it came to keeping her now mostly nocturnal child out of the sun—to change his sheets. That was when she discovered it: another rodent hidden in folds of linen, all but torn to shreds.

  Sasha had brought him another gift, and Otto had devoured it, no longer hungry for his mother’s milk.

  17

  * * *

  THE MICE BECAME ROUTINE.

  Rosie tried to keep Sasha from bringing them inside, and she tried to prevent Otto from hunting them when he was in the yard. But save for locking the cat outside and keeping Otto a prisoner indoors, her efforts accounted for little. There was always another one—its small gray body lying lifeless in a corner of a room or near the edge of the fence. She thought about separating boy and cat, but Sasha was looking weaker by the day, and Otto was, after all, happier with Sasha at his side. That, and it had been a week since Otto had ravaged the first mouse; the same amount of time that he hadn’t fed from Rosie. It would take months for the wounds to heal, and there was no doubt there would be scars. But even after such a short amount of time, she was starting to feel more like herself again. Though the itching never quite relented, no matter how much Bactine she smeared onto her skin.

  Otto seemed healthier, too. Stronger. Seven days, and he had hardly screamed. So she let him keep eating those foul things because, by God, she couldn’t very well continue to let him feed from her. The mice had the potential to make him sick, even kill him. But what about Rosie’s well-being? If she was too weak to take care of him, healthy or not, Otto would die.

  It took less than a month for the first cat to appear, orange-striped with a black collar. Its tags glinted in the slow-setting sun as it prowled along the fence perimeter. Rosie assumed it was stalking Sasha. Perhaps he had come across the newcomer during one of his outings, or he could have ventured into Deer Valley with the sole intent of sparking a cat’s intere
st. Sasha, the poor dear, wasting away, hardly ever eating his dinner anymore. Rosie swore he’d caught fleas, or had wandered into a patch of poison oak. His once-beautiful, spangled coat was nothing but a collection of bald spots. His back right leg was the worst—hairless, sallow skin hanging off the bone.

  The visitor continued to linger near the fence, unsure of itself, as an anemic Sasha meandered through the front yard. Rosie watched from her regular perch on the porch. It seemed to her that Sasha was luring the thing, as if wanting to introduce this new visitor to Otto the Great.

  The gate-crasher took its time as it crept closer, eventually confident enough to slither through the fence slats. Sasha continued to ply it with the promise of something unspoken: food, shelter, good company, perhaps all three. Otto, who was seated on the porch close to Rosie’s feet, watched the animals from behind the rails of the balustrade like a boy at the zoo. It was only when the cats continued to move closer that Rosie heard a low rumble emitting from her son’s throat—a dangerous, predatory growl.

  Rosie stared at him. What she was hearing couldn’t have been real. Was this an ambush set up by the two? Impossible. No matter how smart Sasha was, there was only so much intelligence a cat could possess. Maliciousness was a human trait. There was no such thing as one animal leading another to purposeful harm . . . was there?

  Before she could answer her own question, Otto’s muscles coiled up, tight as springs. He leapt off the front steps. The orange cat was quick to respond, but not fast enough to avoid Sasha’s simultaneous lunge. The blind-sided cat yowled in surprise, reared back, and stumbled upon the grass. Sasha forced it onto its side and pinned it down among the weeds, but the visitor scrambled back to its feet in a flash. Sasha’s diversion, however, was all it took for Otto to clear the distance between the porch and both felines.

  Rosie jumped from Ansel’s rocker and threw herself forward—an observer to an inevitable tragedy. Otto had the orange cat pinned to the ground before Rosie’s hands hit the rail.

  “Otto, no!” The words left her in an involuntary rush, but her plea came too late. By the time her voice reached his ears, he was sinking his teeth into the caller’s throat. When he finally backed away, the cat lay limp among the dandelions, unmoving, almost certainly dead.

  And Otto couldn’t have looked more satisfied—like a child having its fill of cake and ice cream. Like a vampire with a stomach full of blood.

  · · ·

  It was just the first of many.

  Sasha became a pied piper, leading both strays and collared cats to their doom. Some managed to run away after being attacked; most, Rosie had to bury behind the house in shallow graves. Inexplicably, those that did escape returned looking worse for wear. She recognized them by the smears of blood dried onto their fur. And yet, despite their previous waylay, they came bearing gifts.

  By the time Otto’s second year lingered on the horizon, Rosie avoided the backyard like a spooked child skirting a haunted tomb. Dozens of carcasses were buried there. And it wasn’t just cats. There were birds, squirrels, a fox. Otto didn’t discriminate, and Rosamund was hardly surprised when, finally, she found a dog in the yard.

  It was a small thing—one of those yappy Chihuahuas that women carried around in their arms; something Rosie assumed this particular canine had become accustomed to, judging by its pink rhinestone collar and heart-shaped tag. Fifi had more than likely been a good girl. Shaky and nervous, but loyal just the same. It was easy enough to put the story together. Fifi’s owner had let her out before locking up for the night. Fifi had gone into the yard to do her business, as per the routine. Except that something lingered in the shadows beyond the garden’s gate. Perhaps Otto had scoped out the dog, but Rosie doubted he had that much restraint. It had more than likely been nothing but bad luck on Fifi’s part. The wrong place, the wrong time. Poor Fifi, vanished like a magic trick.

  Rosie felt terrible for the animals Otto left behind, but this time was particularly hard. She sobbed as she removed Fifi’s collar and dumped her body in the small hole she’d dug, reminded of her own childhood dog—a cocker spaniel named Trudy, found in a heap along the side of the road, having been hit by a car. Rosie had saved Trudy’s collar then, and she saved Fifi’s collar now. It was her way of paying tribute; an apology for not knowing how to stop all this, for not knowing how to keep Otto happy without allowing him to rage.

  She covered Fifi with earth and stepped back inside the house, that glittering collar catching the hazy light of the living room lamp. It joined the others in a drawer of Ansel’s rolltop desk—collars and tags of all sizes, many of them dappled with stains the color of rust.

  After Fifi, she locked Otto up. But it only resulted in a night of screaming and banging so loud that Rosie could hear it upstairs. It broke her heart to think that they were both prisoners in the home Ansel had so lovingly built, a place he had hoped would bring their family comfort and peace. And despite her own revived heartache for poor Trudy, she had to remind herself that those cats, they were just animals. Fifi had been heartbreaking, but wasn’t it even worse to take away a child’s unrestraint?

  And so she let him wander.

  She let him hunt.

  She buried the bodies.

  And if, every now and again, the victim belonged to someone, well . . . that was something she’d have to get over. Because her child was more important than someone’s rhinestone-adorned lapdog. She refused to lock up her son for the good of someone’s wandering cat.

  · · ·

  A year passed. Then two. All of Rosie’s attempts to civilize her child were failures.

  At five years old, Otto still didn’t understand the mechanics of using a toilet. By six, baths became a thing of the past. She did her best, but for the most part she let him do what he liked. They began to lead separate lives—she, awake during the day; he, prowling the forest at night. She told herself it was better this way, natural; a boy and his mother, slowly growing apart. She convinced herself of these things while digging small, square holes in the backyard with calloused hands. It was little more than muscle memory now. She did the work with a blank mind.

  Sasha’s was the only marked grave in Rosie’s potter’s field, set back a way from the rest of the dead. She’d bought a small metal cross in McMinnville after he’d died. Flowers bloomed at the head of Sasha’s plot. He had lived far longer than Rosie had ever expected, especially after looking so ill. After he passed, she had caught Otto sitting near Sasha’s grave, gazing upon the cross as it glowed in the moonlight, illuminating her boy’s asymmetrical face. It was the first time she had seen any humanity in him. And yet, she couldn’t help but think that his torment was a result of something far different from her own. Rosie missed her cat because he had become the only living creature she’d known since before Ansel’s death, because Sasha had been a friend. Otto missed him for his servitude. Life was harder without a slave.

  After Sasha died, collars became more frequent. Otto quickly learned that it was easier to steal than to lure.

  But even in her worst nightmares, she never believed Otto to be capable of what came next.

  With eight-year-old Otto asleep—still having never spoken a word—Rosie stepped onto the front porch and breathed in the fresh morning air. It had rained nonstop for days and the sun was a welcome change. It lit up the dew-dappled leaves like diamonds—like poor Fifi’s rhinestone collar, still tucked away in Ansel’s desk after all these years. With the weather having trapped her inside for nearly a week and Otto in the basement, she couldn’t resist a long-needed walk.

  She dressed herself, threw on a pair of mud boots, and started out. As she moved into the woods, she again considered an attempt at independence. With Otto hunting the way he was, he was self-sufficient now. He’d never been interested in her company. She was little more than a digger of his graves. He would have been just as happy if she let him go. With the wolves, she thought, is where he was always meant to be.

  But the fantasy was d
erailed by a blip of red.

  There, just shy of the muddy trail, was a child’s sneaker, crimson, with dirty laces that had once been white.

  Her breath caught in her throat as she stared at that shoe, waiting for it to move on its own, to crawl into the underbrush and wipe itself from view. But it wasn’t the sneaker that had her mind reeling. It was the fact that nobody ever ventured in this direction. The trails were overgrown, wretched for hiking. The three-mile span between the house and Deer Valley proper was distance enough for Rosie to feel comfortable in knowing that, by the time Otto was out and about, the town’s children were inside their homes, not outside in the dark. And yet, here she was, facing a nightmare she hadn’t once considered an actual possibility.

  She pressed her hands over her heart, as if the touch of her palms could sequester her thudding pulse. Took a single backward step. Considered another escape. If she returned to the house now, she could pack up her things and go. She’d be hundreds of miles away by sunset. Otto would wake to an empty house. He’d have to face the consequences of his actions alone.

  And yet, that very thought stopped her.

  Otto.

  Alone.

  Abandoned.

  Not understanding his crime because he didn’t understand right from wrong.

  “Whatever this is,” she whispered to herself, “it isn’t his fault.”

  It couldn’t be, because fault could only be placed on those with reason. Guilt was reserved for those who could comprehend misdeeds.

  Rosie forced herself forward, propelled by a single disturbing thought. The sun had risen two hours ago, which meant Otto had been home for at least three. That shoe had been lying just shy of the overgrown path all night. Whoever its owner may have been had been missing since the previous evening. People would come looking, and they’d come soon.