The Devil Crept In Read online

  “It was so weird, Mom. The grossest thing ever.” He kept his voice down, not wanting either Jude or Aunt Mandy to hear. “I thought, I thought, thought he was gonna gobble chew his whole entire arm off.”

  “It doesn’t even hurt,” Jude said coolly. “I just scraped it climbing down from the fort. It’s no big deal.”

  “You did not! Why are you lying?” Stevie was stunned by his own outburst. If he wanted to wreck their friendship, he was on the right track. But this—the fact that Jude had injured himself—it seemed important, something that would possibly convince Aunt Mandy to take him to the hospital. Stevie didn’t have much room to talk, especially after the garbage disposal incident, but he knew: autocannibalism wasn’t what normal kids tended to do.

  “Why are you such a nutsack?” Jude asked.

  “Boys.” Aunt Mandy.

  “It’s, it’s, it’s . . .” If he said it, there’d be no turning back.

  “Stevie.” His mom.

  “. . . because of the monster.” He spit it out. “The thing!” There. Now Jude couldn’t lie. The adults were in on it. Now things had to get fixed.

  “It’s because you’re a whack job,” Jude said.

  “Jude.” Aunt Mandy again.

  “Well, look at him!” Jude retorted.

  “A monster, Mom.” Stevie gave his mother an imploring look, ignoring Jude’s jab. “Monster, mom. Monster mom. My mom is a momster mom—”

  “Stevie . . .” His mother’s hand landed in its usual spot on his shoulder. She gave it a squeeze. Take a second. Regroup your thoughts.

  Aunt Amanda gingerly patted Jude’s arm with a washcloth. Stevie looked over at her, waited for her to recoil from the sight of Jude’s teeth marks, to stare wide-eyed and openmouthed in horror at the wound he had left behind. Those impressions would bring about another demand for answers. What had they been doing out in the woods? Where had Jude gone while he had been missing? What the hell had happened? No more silence, she’d yell, shaking Jude by his shoulders. Talk, goddamnit! I need to know what’s going on! But instead, she only turned off the faucet.

  “Well, it definitely looked worse than it is. Just a scratch,” she said, relieved. “Lots of blood for a little nothing. Just a scrape, like he said.”

  Stevie opened his mouth, ready to protest. No, that was impossible. He’d seen the bite marks on Jude’s arm with his own eyes. Pulling away from his mother’s touch, he moved to the sink and peered down at the crook of Jude’s arm. But it was true. The gash was now nothing more than a faint scrape, as though a branch had caught him during his leaping descent; as though he’d never stuck his mouth to that part of his arm at all. It had all been in Stevie’s head.

  “But I saw it,” Stevie said softly. “I saw . . .” He looked up to catch his mother’s reflection in the mirror. Her disbelief was replaced not only with worry, but also with distress. And not fear for Jude, either, but fear for him.

  Only then did he notice Jude staring into the mirror as well, his gaze fixed on Stevie’s confusion, on his disbelief. Their eyes met, and Jude gave Stevie a ghost of a smile. Stevie knew it well. Like a kid smirking after telling a particularly dirty joke; the same smile Jude always wore when he knew he was getting away with something bad.

  · · ·

  That night, Stevie kept seeing Jude chewing on his arm in his dreams, and each replay just got worse: Jude jumping down from the tree-house ladder, scratching at his arm, and finally raising the crook of his elbow to his mouth. Jude, jumping from the tippy-top branches of the tallest tree. Scratching harder, tearing at the chapped skin on his arms. Taking bigger bites, giant hunks of flesh separating from bone. Tendons snapping. Gore dripping down his chin. There was, however, one constant in every intensified version of that nightmare: the fort. There, up inside, was the crouching demon thing, watching Stevie’s face twist up in horror as Jude consumed himself; its wicked smile a grim reminder of what was coming to get them, waiting out there in the dark.

  He couldn’t sleep. Closing his eyes while simultaneously trying to keep his imagination in check was a form of brain gymnastics that Stevie hadn’t trained for. And those teeth marks, the fact that they had vanished as though they’d never existed? It was only making things worse. Stevie knew what he saw. He had watched Jude bite down. Except, hadn’t his shirt been half over his head when he’d first noticed the blood? What if, when Jude had climbed the tree, he had . . .

  No, you know what you saw him do.

  After Jude’s wound had vanished like invisible ink and Stevie’s mom had dragged Stevie home, she kept her eye on him the way someone keeps their attention rapt on a puppy about to pee on the carpet. Hawk eyes, always peeking around corners, forever on high alert. She was waiting for him to start pounding the crap out of couch pillows because there were bugs inside, waiting for him to give a repeat performance of the garbage disposal trick. Maybe this time he’d lose his whole hand.

  It would be tomorrow or the day after, but eventually Aunt Mandy would tell Stevie not to come over anymore. Jude would tell her to do it. That nutsack is creeping me out. That’s all it would take for Jude to start wandering into the forest alone. Meanwhile, Stevie would be trapped inside the house. An animal in a cage. A butterfly in a bell jar. A bedbug behind a mattress spring.

  Stevie kicked his sheets off his legs. “Get offa offa offa me, awful me,” he murmured at his blanket, suddenly sure it was teeming with ticks. His feet hit the rug in front of his bed—just another place nasty things could hide. His toes curled at the thought, and he jumped sideways onto the bare planks of the floor, ready to march across the room and flip on the light, get those roaches to scatter back into the walls from which they had come. But he froze instead. Because there, in the house next door, was Jude, silhouetted by the pale and bubbling glow of his fish tank. Standing at his window, he was staring out the glass and into Stevie’s room.

  Both boys stared across the side yard at each other, and all Stevie could think was That’s not Jude he isn’t he himself anymore. He was glad that there was a physical barrier between them. Not like that afternoon, together in the woods, Stevie wondering if Jude would turn on him, if either of them would ever make it home again.

  And yet, as soon as Stevie felt that relief—Thank God I’m here and he’s not here but over there where it’s not here, I don’t want to be there where he is—that comfort was speared through by self-reproach. Because no matter who the boy across the way was now, he used to be Stevie’s best friend. And if Jude couldn’t count on Stevie to not give up on him, who did he have left?

  Stevie swallowed his trepidation and pulled his window open, ready to have a whispered conversation across the yard; something they’d done a million times before. Unable to sleep himself, it could have been that Jude was finally ready to talk.

  But rather than opening his own window, Jude slowly canted his head to the side—an animal with its curiosity piqued. And while Stevie couldn’t see his expression through the darkness, Jude’s stillness made it clear.

  The doppelgänger was laughing at him.

  A sharp-toothed bogeyman, grinning from ear to ear.

  22

  * * *

  JUDE HAD HIT Stevie in earnest for the first time the day his dad had died.

  The two had gotten into punching wars a million times in the past, all of them friendly slug-bug games. But that day, Stevie asked why Aunt Mandy was crying so much, why Jude was acting so weird, why everyone was looking like they’d seen a ghost, and Jude laid into his arm with a newfound sense of ferocity. Stevie wasn’t yet eight, and nobody had told him about what had happened to Uncle Scott. Being a pain in the ass came naturally, involuntarily; something Jude couldn’t handle that afternoon.

  Stevie ended up running home in tears, his arm throbbing beneath the thin veil of his Oregon Ducks T-shirt sleeve. Hours later, when his mom made it home from next door, he heard the news. “He’s dead” was all his mother could muster. “Your uncle Scott is dead.” Not gone. Not p
assed away. Dead. She stepped into the master bedroom and shut the door behind her while Stevie sat alone on the couch, whispering “Dead, dead, dead” for God only knew how long.

  Stevie had spent the last two years watching Jude’s anger grow in much the way one observes a tumor enlarge: little by little, year after year, slow enough to not be obvious, but eventually impossible to ignore. It would have been easy to write Jude off as nothing but a bully, but Stevie knew better. Jude had been happy once. It was true that he had always had his share of behavioral problems—issues with authority, getting in trouble at school—but that had been small stuff. Back then, Jude had been a regular kid. Now he was broken; no longer himself.

  And maybe it had been the stress of Stevie losing his uncle, or the fact that he had to witness his aunt and best friend struggle with their emotions, relentlessly suppressing their grief . . . but after the funeral, the night terrors got worse. The verbal ticks became unmanageable. His mom pulled him out of school for a few weeks when he was unable to keep his outbursts under control. The principal gently suggested a visit to a counselor. Stevie’s mom had looked scared, then, but by the time they crossed the school parking lot and climbed into the car, she was pissed off. “A counselor,” she scoffed. “Of course he’s having problems. His uncle just died. He’s just a boy. He’s just . . .” She looked over to the passenger seat, Stevie struggling with his safety belt. And then she sighed and gave his arm a squeeze. “It’s going to be fine, sweetheart. I promise. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Except things just kept getting worse.

  And now, standing on Aunt Mandy’s front porch with a Monopoly box pressed against his chest, Stevie gave his aunt his own lying, optimistic smile, despite the tremor at the pit of his guts. She eyed the board game the way a wary housewife would inspect a traveling salesman’s briefcase: with equal parts dubiety and interest. Behold, Tupperware in a variety of pleasing colors! Watch in wonder as our latest vacuum sucks your carpet clean in ten minutes flat! “Hi, Stevie . . . ,” she said, a little more forlorn than he would have liked. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I th-thought maybe Jude and I could play a game with Jude if it’s okay,” he said. “He’s got that bad burn that’s bad, so it’s probably better to stay inside and hide inside from the sun.” Such feigned thoughtfulness. It made him feel like a phony. He’d just brought that Monopoly game over to get his foot in the door because, just like his mother, Aunt Mandy seemed reluctant to let the boys hang out ever since Jude had come home. And to be honest, Stevie wasn’t sure he really wanted to go inside. It was his duty, yes, but soldiers didn’t exactly clamor into battle. This was simply something he had to do for his friend.

  “Well, that’s very sweet,” she said. But? He was waiting for it. Jude is resting.

  “He said he missed playing, Miss Mandy. We were talking about it yesterday, so I thought, hey, maybe it would be fun out of the sun since he’s so red he’s peeling.”

  Aunt Mandy’s expression opened up—like a gloomy room made sunny when a window curtain was pulled aside. “He did?”

  He didn’t.

  “Uh-huh.” Stevie nodded, a little too enthusiastic. “Yep, yes, yessir, yep.”

  If a genie had come down and granted Stevie three wishes, they would have been as follows: Stop talking the way he was talking, because it made him feel like a blubbering idiot; win the lottery so he and Jude could go to Star Wars Land and live there for at least a year—longer if they could manage it—and become an adult so he would have the guts to ask his aunt all the questions that were scratching at the interior of his skull. Like: Had Jude said anything about what happened to him while he had been gone? Did she know he had been standing at his bedroom window in the middle of the night, just staring across the yard into Stevie’s room like some sort of creeper? And wasn’t she worried that Jude was shedding his skin like a just-boiled shrimp; didn’t she know about sun cancer and melon nomas? He considered mentioning the wound on Jude’s arm, telling her that it had been so much worse before they finally reached home. But no. She’d just get upset all over again and tell him to scram.

  Standing in the doorway, Aunt Mandy looked dazed despite her smile, as though she’d just been roused from a dreamlike state. For a moment, Stevie wasn’t sure she saw him there anymore. “So, um . . . can I, can I come in now maybe?” he asked, giving the Monopoly box a little shake.

  “Oh, sorry honey, sure . . .” She stepped aside. “I guess I’m pretty tired this morning.”

  “Maybe you should take a snappy nap,” he suggested, stepping inside.

  Aunt Amanda’s expression glazed over again, as though the idea of a nap was the most luxurious suggestion she’d ever heard. “That does sound nice,” she mused to herself. “Okay.” Sighing, she touched the top of Stevie’s head with her hand, as if to thank him for the recommendation. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine,” Stevie said. “Good, great, thanks, yeah.”

  “You sure?” she asked. “You were pretty upset yesterday.” When he’d gone on about monsters nobody believed existed. When the gash on Jude’s arm had somehow magically healed itself, but not all the way. When his mom had ushered him home.

  “Yeah, I’m okay today.”

  “All right.” She gave him a wary smile. “If you boys need anything, come wake me. I’ll be right in my room.”

  Stevie watched her drift into her bedroom and softly shut the door behind her. As soon as that door closed, he was suddenly nervous. If Jude told him to go home, that was one thing. But if Stevie knocked on his cousin’s door only to have some leering loup-garou yank it open, if he was jerked forward by the front of his shirt with a claw and taken hostage . . .

  “Don’t be a stupid Chicken Little,” he whispered. “That’s not gonna happen. Not gonna happen.” Not with Aunt Mandy in her room and his mom next door, Dunk sleeping away the hot afternoon, and the mailman making his rounds. All of Deer Valley was awake. Everyone knew bad stuff didn’t happen in the middle of the day, especially not on one as clear and sunny as this.

  Narrowing his eyes, he forced himself to step across Aunt Mandy’s rose-filigreed rug and around her doily-covered coffee table. He moved into the hall and, not giving himself time to think or an opportunity to back out, knocked on Jude’s door. And then he waited, clutching that game box to his chest like a cardboard shield.

  It took a while, but Jude eventually opened up.

  Stevie found himself staring, his mouth slack. If Aunt Mandy had appeared tired, Jude looked absolutely fried. Stevie shrunk back at the sight of the bags beneath Jude’s eyes. No, not bags; big overstuffed suitcases, steamer trunks plump and dark from lack of sleep. Jude’s nose was red, as though he’d spent the entire night and all of that morning rubbing it raw with sandpaper. And his mouth . . . Stevie tried not to wince as Jude slid his tongue across his bottom lip, so chapped it was cracked in the middle. “Jeez, Jude.” The words escaped him before he could stop himself. “You look . . .” Like what? A plague victim? A zombie off The Walking Dead? Stevie used to think the undead were awesome, but not anymore. Not after this. “. . . really, really, really sick.”

  “And you’re really, really, really stupid,” Jude croaked. “What’s with the game?” He lifted his hand to take a broad swipe at his nose. As far as Stevie was concerned, Jude shouldn’t have been home sleeping off whatever it was that he’d caught; he shouldn’t have been standing at his window at night or staring at the back fence with strays scrambling around his feet. He should have been in an ICU, hooked up to machines to make sure he didn’t keel over and die.

  “I th-thought we could play, if you wanna,” Stevie suggested, unable to look Jude in the eyes. “Mob rules.” When Jude didn’t reply, Stevie forced himself to look upward, waiting to see his cousin’s eyes glaze over, for him to ask what the hell Mob rules were anyway. He’d cant his head sideways the way he had last night, his chapped mouth curling up into a terrifying smile. If that happened, Stevie wasn’t sure
what he would do. Run home, probably. Tell his mom Jude was an alien parading around in his cousin’s skin. It was like that whole thing with the cows and the farmer. What if aliens really did exist? Maybe he wasn’t Jude because he wasn’t Jude.

  “. . . maybe he wasn’t . . . ,” Stevie whispered. “He wasn’t because he wasn’t . . . Isn’t because he—”

  “Mob rules,” Jude said, snapping Stevie out of his loop. “What the hell other rules would we use, the idiot ones that came with the game?”

  Stevie breathed a small sigh. His arms relaxed around the box, if only a little. Jude remembered. That was good.

  Jude retreated into his room, and Stevie followed. Though he made sure to leave the door open behind him, just in case. But less than two seconds later, he was met with a command. “Close the door.”

  “Uh . . .” Stevie glanced over his shoulder to the door behind him, as if not having realized he had left it open. He didn’t want to close it. Not with how weird Jude was being. Not with the way he looked. “Y-your mom said to leave it open, she said. Leave it open.”

  “So what? Close the stupid door, Sack.”

  Stevie swallowed and did as he was told, allowing his gaze to roam the walls, hesitating to go farther inside. He’d always thought Jude’s room was the coolest; a perfect reflection of what his cousin considered the most important things in life. His walls were covered in BMX pics and superhero posters. Batman was his favorite—the Dark Knight era, not that weird rubber-nipple stuff from way back whenever. Iron Man was second on that list, not so much for the armor as for how impressive of a smart-ass Tony Stark could be. Jude liked the guys who didn’t fit in. Clark Kent? Just a wuss in a cape.

  Jude took a seat on his mattress, the bed frame creaking beneath him, and stared at the perpetually glowing fish tank against the far wall. Inside: Jude’s goldfish, Cheeto; a bubbling skull wearing a pirate hat; a tiny empty bottle of Grey Goose vodka they had found along their walking path. Jude had put it in the tank as a joke. It’s like Cedar Creek now, he had said. Totally booby-trapped.