The Devil Crept In Read online

  “Did you really come here to play that dumb game?” Jude asked.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought it would be fun, son. Sun.” Sunburn. Every time he caught a glimpse of his cousin’s sizzled face, a shiver skittered up his arms and to the top of his head, nesting in his hair like a wolf spider waiting to bite.

  “Yeah, well, your idea of fun isn’t so fun, Sack.” Jude grabbed one of his BMX magazines off his bedside table and flipped to a dog-eared page. A moment later, he was scratching at the bandage stuck to the crook of his elbow. Stevie bet Aunt Mandy’s church would be pretty excited to hear about that modern-day miracle. Supernatural healing. Strange metamorphosis.

  Still hugging the Monopoly box to his chest, he swallowed, his throat feeling particularly parched. He watched Jude’s tongue roll across chapped lips like a dry slug dragging itself across a cracked and dusty badland, then frowned down at the game box. Monopoly didn’t appear to be in the cards. “You wanna go to the backyard and dig through Terry’s crap?” he asked. “The jerk’s at work, so it’s safe.” Jude liked snooping through The Tyrant’s worthless treasures. It’s how they had found the hammer, which they’d used to build their once-esteemed fort. And today, Stevie would like snooping around, too, because being closed up in Jude’s room was suddenly making him claustrophobic. Every time Jude licked his lips, Stevie’s guts clenched up. The inside of Aunt Mandy’s house felt awfully hot, as though the air conditioner hadn’t been run for a while. Jude, however, didn’t seem to notice the spike in temperature. He just shrugged at the suggestion of Terry’s shit pile and flipped a magazine page.

  “Um, hey.” Stevie glanced up from his hands, spurred on by a question. “W-what, what were you doing last night at night?”

  “Huh?” Jude raised an eyebrow, not getting it.

  “I woke up because . . .” Of nightmares, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. His eyes flicked back to the Band-Aid stuck to the inside of Jude’s arm. It was way too small, totally pointless. The redness had crept beyond the bandage’s edge, though he supposed even a larger one wouldn’t do the trick. Jude didn’t need a Band-Aid—he needed a straitjacket. “You were standing at the window there, just standing . . . statue standing like a museum thing with the Cheetos glowing in your head.” He looked away from Jude’s irritated arm and nodded to the window just shy of his cousin’s left shoulder. “I waved, but you just stood there, frozen, like Mr. Frosty. Staring, staring, stair ring a round the—”

  “Um, no?” Jude gave Stevie a dubious look.

  “Yuh-huh.” This wasn’t Aunt Mandy, it wasn’t his mom. Stevie wasn’t going to let Jude lie to him, not when he knew what he’d seen. “You were. I waved, Jude, but you didn’t see.”

  “You imagined it,” Jude concluded, unimpressed. “You were probably sleepwalking. Dreaming or something. Another freak-out.”

  “No, Jude, I—”

  “Anyway, I don’t feel like playing, Mob rules or not,” Jude said, changing the subject entirely. “Let’s do something else.”

  Stevie chewed on his bottom lip as he slid the Monopoly box onto Jude’s desk chair. Fine. They’d do something else. He’d talked himself into coming over here, and no matter how hard Jude was to look at right then, Stevie refused to bail.

  Jude got off his bed and pulled open his door. “Where’s my mom?”

  “Taking a nap, she said.”

  “You sure?”

  Stevie lifted his shoulders up to his ears. How was he supposed to know? “I’m n-not a psychic.”

  Jude shot Stevie a smile, one that looked positively lecherous; like a serpent had crawled into the body of a boy. “Yeah, not a psychic,” he said. “Anyway, let’s go.” Dashing across the room with light feet—not acting sick despite how terrible he looked—he grabbed his sneakers off the floor and, still barefoot, rushed down the hall toward the kitchen.

  Stevie was left blinking into Aunt Mandy’s silent house. Were they going to pick through The Tyrant’s junk after all? He had no choice but to follow. When he finally got moving, he found Jude outside on the back steps. He was cramming his feet into his worn-out sneakers, double-knotting the laces in big, sloppy loops.

  “Where are we going?” Stevie asked. Jude didn’t answer. He simply got up, crossed the yard, and scrambled up the back fence, dropping to the opposite side without so much as a glance in Stevie’s direction. If Stevie didn’t hurry, he’d lose him in the trees.

  And yet, despite the growing distance between them, he found himself standing motionless in Jude’s backyard, suddenly needing to pee worse than ever, pretty sure he wouldn’t make it over that fence without wetting himself. He was scared, but this time it wasn’t for his own safety. Seeing Jude retreat into the forest, a memory came flooding back; one that he wasn’t sure was actually real. Jude lumbering into the woods more than a week ago, wearing the black sweatshirt the cops had found. Jude pausing, turning, his eyes nothing but black. Grinning with jagged, broken teeth. Something dark oozing from between his lips. Oil, or squid ink. Dead blood. Scratching at that arm.

  He shot a look back through Aunt Mandy’s kitchen, considered running inside and throwing open her bedroom door. Jude’s running away! Yes, running away like all the Deer Valley folks had said. Running away again, because they had been right all along. Something bad had happened to his cousin, something beyond whatever had occurred in the woods. A screw was loose. Jude’s mind was gone.

  Which is why, rather than turning him in for flying the coop, Stevie found himself yelling “Jude, wait!” instead.

  He dashed across the dead grass, tried to scale the fence. His shorts snagging on the jagged and splintering wood. So did the skin of his knees. They burned like fire, already bleeding by the time his feet hit the ground on the other side. By then, Jude was a good distance away, but still close enough for Stevie to notice him clawing at the Band-Aid stuck to his arm. If he had wanted, he could have been down the trail and out of sight, but Jude was waiting. He was trying to act like he wasn’t, but Stevie knew his cousin was stalling, letting Stevie catch up.

  He hesitated, glanced over his shoulder, this time toward his own home. Then fell into a run away from safety, away from Aunt Mandy and his mom. Stevie had already given the adults their chance to help, and they hadn’t. Now it was up to him.

  23

  * * *

  THE BOYS ENDED up on the gravel delivery road behind the shops of Main Street, but Jude ignored the wooden pallets stacked against the back of the hardware store. And yet, Stevie couldn’t help but feel optimistic. After all, Jude hadn’t snapped at him for the moment, and they were here, their usual fort supply spot. This time, they’d drag a bunch of stuff into the forest with them, like they always did. Because things were getting back to normal. Soon, everything would be okay.

  But rather than approaching the pallets stacked against one of the shop’s back walls, Jude remained in the shade of the trees, near the row of shrubs. When he stuck his arm inside the fourth juniper, well past his elbow, Stevie’s positive attitude was replaced by a sour taste in his mouth. The thought of the hammer hidden there made him tense, but being scared was stupid, right? Jude didn’t want to hurt him. Not a chance.

  You’re being a dumb no-fun son of a gun, he told himself. They couldn’t work on the fort without supplies, and they couldn’t use the supplies without the hammer. That’s why Jude was retrieving it from the bush. Except, Jude didn’t seem the least bit interested in those pallets. When he began to retreat into the trees rather than approach the back of the hardware store, Stevie finally found his voice.

  “Hey, what about the wood? It’s good. Would be good to transport to the fort.”

  “Don’t need it,” Jude said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we don’t need it. Now, are you coming or what?” Jude gave Stevie an irritated look. Stevie was right, he was being a no-fun son of a gun. But he found himself scanning the forest’s perimeter anyway, only pausing whe
n it fell onto Mr. Greenwood’s cat. The tabby was sitting in the shade of a tree, watching them as it lazily scratched behind an ear. Mangy, his mom would have said. He couldn’t imagine why Mr. G. would ever want that thing inside his house. At best, it had fleas. At worst, it was creepy enough to suck Mr. G.’s breath right out of his chest while he slept.

  “I’m coming.” Stevie moved his feet despite the thudding of his heart. “Coming,” he whispered, as if to punctuate each step. “Coming, coming.” The repetition was comforting. It took his mind off the things he didn’t want to consider, kept him from hearing his pulse whooshing in his ears.

  Mr. Greenwood’s cat tailed them, keeping its distance, shaking sword ferns like isolated earthquakes; the world’s worst ninja. When it was out in the open, it froze stiff as soon as Stevie gave it a look, shocked that it could be seen at all. I’m invisible! Or maybe it was surprised by how gross Jude looked, clawing at an already scratched-up arm, chewing the skin off his chapped bottom lip, wielding the old Stanley hammer in a fist covered in peeling skin.

  And what made it worse was that they weren’t going toward the fort, but in the direction of that defunct logging road and the house that sat alongside it, the very place Stevie had sworn—both to his mother and to himself—that he’d never, ever go near again.

  But he swallowed his objections and reminded himself of his goal. This was about helping his cousin get back to his old self again, about making sure he didn’t wander into the woods alone. Because, unlike Stevie, it seemed that Jude really didn’t know what danger lurked just shy of town.

  Except that . . . what if he did?

  The realization dawned on him less than two minutes from that washboard road. Jude had retrieved the hammer with zero intent on pounding any nails, so why did he need it? Protection. It was a weapon.

  Stevie’s heart tripped over itself.

  Jude needed armament because what Stevie had seen had been real. That thing . . . it had taken Jude hostage, and now Jude was determined to get his revenge. He was going to smash that shadow thing’s head in, and he was going to let Stevie watch.

  “Jude?” This was crazy. “Hey, Jude?”

  “What?” Jude kept moving, determined. He didn’t look back. Stevie watched that old Stanley bob in his hand with each step, as though his cousin were testing its heft, weighing his options, considering his plan of attack.

  “Jude, can you stop, m-maybe stop, okay? Stop walking so we can talk, talking . . .” Stevie slowed his steps despite Jude’s refusal to do the same. “Hey, come on, come on, come on . . . I know where we’re going and I don’t wanna go there. Stop going where we’re going because I don’t wanna go, okay?” All at once, he felt better for making the admission. Ten was way too young to die.

  Jude stopped. Looked over his shoulder. The rawness of his nose, those chapped and tattered lips, the bags beneath his eyes—all of it made Stevie shrink back. When their eyes met, he could swear Jude’s gaze looked weird. More vibrant somehow. Like a movie villain’s eyes.

  “Just come on,” Jude said. No insult of how Stevie was being a stupid baby. No suggestion that he was a no-good momma’s boy chicken-shit loser. “You said yourself, remember? As long as we’re together . . .”

  “The hammer . . . ,” Stevie said. “What do you need that for?”

  “For hammering. Now come on.”

  “What do you need it for?” Stevie repeated. He watched Jude’s grip tighten around the Stanley, his patience wearing thin.

  “For hammering your head if you don’t stop asking so many stupid questions. Now are you coming or what?”

  “And wh-why are you so damn mean?” Was Jude even aware of the threats that were coming out of his mouth? “Why’s it always gotta be that if you don’t like what I say, you’re gonna rock ’em sock me in the face or knock ’em sock out my teeth or bust in my stupid head or cut off my arm or break my leg or pop out my eyes or—” Stop. “Pull out my hair or—” Stop. “Or . . . or . . . or something?”

  Jude stared at Stevie for a long while, as if not understanding the question.

  “I thought we were friends,” Stevie told him. “Best friends. But ever since you came back you don’t like me anymore. Something happened while you were gone. You changed. Stranged. Every time I ask you, will you answer? Every time. Can you answer? No. You just act like I’m some sort of, sort of, sort of friggin’ idiot. And you look like crap, Jude. You look like zombie crap. M-maybe wherever you were, they did something to your brain, like those old-timey doctors where they aren’t supposed to do that anymore but they still do because they’re old and spiders are there, and nobody knows where, and the hospital is covered in webs, and maybe it’s on the same road, the scary road where that house is, and there’s a big chain. Maybe they did something to your brain and you don’t even know it, Jude. You don’t even know it. But I know it.” Stevie hadn’t expected to say so much or to be so earnest, but it poured out of him like water overtaking a levee, regardless of the verbal ticks that dotted his soliloquy.

  Jude just stared. Stevie couldn’t tell if he was processing his monologue, or if he was zoning out again.

  Try again, he told himself. Ask him one more, two more, three more times.

  “W-what’s the hammer for, Jude?”

  Jude glanced down at the Stanley in his right hand, his fingers tightening around the rubberized grip.

  “You used to tell me everything, remember?”

  Still focused on the tool in his hand, Jude didn’t move, didn’t speak. He only stood there, thinking. He could have been trying to remember those times—how excited they had been when they had installed that rickety fort ladder and climbed into the tree for the first time; how much fun they had walking in the freezing-cold creek with their sneakers on; how, during the summers, the whole house smelled like Doritos because it was almost all they ate while playing hours of Xbox—as long as Terry wasn’t home to chase them off; or how they used to cut the crap out of the corners of their mouths on those Otter Pops Aunt Mandy bought, but they kept eating them because they were so dang good.

  Mr. G.’s cat continued to watch them through fern fronds, as though it wanted to hear Jude’s answer as much as Stevie did.

  Stevie swallowed. Waiting. Hoping. His fingers were crossed that Jude wouldn’t come back at him with another caveat. Yeah, I remember. Remember telling you I was gonna hammer your head if . . .

  “She’s down there,” Jude said.

  Stevie blinked. “What?”

  “Down there . . . ,” Jude murmured, a bit clearer this time.

  “Who?” Stevie asked.

  “The lady,” Jude said.

  “What lady?” His pulse was banging so hard against his ears he felt light-headed, disoriented, like he should crouch down and wait for the vertigo to pass or risk toppling over like a drunk guy tumbling out of a bar.

  That was when he saw it, when he truly saw the change that had taken over his friend. Rather than softening at the memories of their friendship the way he had hoped, Jude’s face twisted into a scowl. His shoulders slouched forward, as though the backbreaking tension coiled within them was finally too much to bear. Jude stared back at Stevie with a look that could only be born of nightmares. His brittle mouth pulled up at the corners; lips cracking, beads of blood springing up between seams of dead skin.

  Stevie watched all of this happen, and he felt something within his own reality snap like a rubber band. The ground beneath his feet sloped like a carnival tilt-house floor. The spiders came crawling out of the trees, ready to pour down on his head. The ferns shivered, as if preparing their bladelike fronds for attack. The pines seemed to creek as they leaned in, blocking out the dappling sun, leaving both boys in a chasm of darkness that smelled of moist earth and decay.

  Jude exhaled a hiss through his teeth, the sight of which made Stevie’s heart pound like the bass drum in the annual Olympia High School Thanksgiving Day parade. Because Jude’s teeth were glistening like the inside of an oyster s
hell, as though he’d used his back molars to grind pearls into dust.

  But his eyes were the worst. The color of his irises hadn’t changed, but the sclera wasn’t white anymore. The whites of his eyes were icebergs; the palest shade of blue.

  “W-what lady?” Stevie whispered those fear-choked words, simultaneously terrified to know the answer and to not know what Jude meant. His mind floundered for purchase, looking for a handhold, for some semblance of reality to keep from completely losing touch.

  It’s just a fusion illusion, it screamed. Find something real to feel. Wake up, up and away. Run away. Far away.

  But the longer Stevie fought to regain his footing, the more awful Jude appeared.

  Until, finally, his smile was a leering grin—identical to what Stevie had seen in his dream—and his answer rolled out of him in a sinister purr.

  “Mother,” he snarled.

  And with that single word, a trail of warmth bloomed down the inside of Stevie’s leg.

  24

  * * *

  THE SEARCH PARTY wandered the woods for longer than two weeks, and in that time, Maxwell Larsen’s remains underwent a significant change. Now when Rosie opened the door to the secret room beneath the stairs, the smell was overwhelming—the type of stink that crawled up your throat and stuck there for days. She covered her mouth and nose with the crook of her elbow, but quickly graduated to a kitchen towel, which she had wetted down and sprayed with old perfume. Still, the stench made her eyes burn. Otto, however, wasn’t bothered by it. He seemed peaceful. Content.

  She told herself to be thankful; the steel-lined box of a room had walls thick enough to block out most of the stench, at least when the door was closed. But every evening, after the sun set and the search party packed up and left, the door remained open. Otto wandered the house, unbathed, sometimes rolling around on the rug, rubbing the stink onto the corners of furniture while she slept.