The Devil Crept In Page 29

Rosie shut her eyes tight and whispered, “I deserve it.”

  And then she felt it.

  The anguish of the end.

  There, in the darkness of the basement, Otto began to free himself of his mother’s bond. And as she wailed in pain, a single thought pushed past the agony:

  He will be free. Without me, he will be free.

  30

  * * *

  STEVIE COULD HEAR Jude hot on his heels the entire way home. With the hammer still firmly in his hand, he tossed it over the back fence, then launched himself at the wood planks, struggling to scramble over as fast as he could. Fingers clamped around his ankle. He yelped and kicked, trying to throw off Jude’s grasp. Flinging himself forward, inertia negotiated his release, and he flew headfirst onto the ground. His hip landed on the hammer, and a zing of pain bloomed outward from the point of impact. It veined through his body, traveling down his arms and legs as fast as a hairline crack on a lake of ice. As he writhed there, a whimper slithered from his throat, but he wasn’t afforded more than a few moments to recover. Jude leapt over the fence after him, his Converse sneakers landing hard next to Stevie’s head. Stevie exhaled a cry, scuttling backward to put distance between them. Jude crouched there, gargoylesque, staring down at his cousin, his face pulled into a mask of wrath. His hands, pressed flush to the ground. His right one landed directly on top of the hammer Stevie had dropped.

  “J-Jude, d-d-d-don’t . . .” Stevie’s plea came out as little more than a stuttering squeak. Puny. Weak. The vocalization of a kid who was raising an arm up to shield himself from oncoming malice. A cowering kid—the same one who ducked his head and waited to be pummeled by an angry stepfather. Except that now, the punishment would be doled out by the one person Stevie thought he could trust.

  Jude’s rage shifted toward a scoff. Chicken shit. Always were, always will be. When his chapped and cracking lips curled, Stevie could see a flash of spotty gray gums. Jude leaned in, close enough for Stevie to get a whiff of him—something sweet but rank, like raw hamburger that had gone bad; something dead and rotting, because there were bits of Mother on Jude’s hands.

  “That lady,” Stevie whispered past his fear. “What happened to that lady?” Jude’s leer curled up at the corners, as if satisfied with the sudden flash of memory. Stevie struggled to swallow against the lump in his throat, his eyes darting from Jude’s twisted face to the hammer beneath his hand. He was waiting for it to happen, waiting for his once–best friend to grab that weapon, raise his arm, and club him across his skull. But Jude snatched up Stevie’s hands instead, the lady’s blood sticky between both their palms. Stevie jerked his hands away only to feel something hard—like a pebble or a piece of seashell—scrape across his skin. He looked down, gaped at the long strands of hair that now clung to his fingers, nearly screamed when he realized what that small red-tinged shard against his palm must have been. Bone.

  Not knowing where to look or what to do, he turned desperate eyes back toward Jude. Jude was no longer snarling. In the time it took Stevie to realize what was smeared on his hands, Jude’s expression had gone from monstrous to a reflection that made Stevie’s heart ache. It was his old friend. Hey . . .

  “Jude?”

  Stevie watched his lost friend come up from the depths of darkness like a diver breaking the water’s dark surface. Jude’s baleful expression was shot through with self-realization and dismay. He was staring at his gored hands, straightening from his stooped position, and for a second—standing tall, with his face full of confused trepidation—Stevie was sure that Jude was back. Finally remembering. Finally pushing through whatever evil had been holding him down.

  “Jude . . . ,” Stevie whispered the name, drawing his friend’s attention down to where he sat on the ground. “Jude, are you . . . ?” Are you you? On the verge of tears, he was almost certain he was about to bawl out of fear and sadness, out of relief and disgust. The stress of the past few days rushed over him all at once, leaving him nauseated, nearly heaving. Because, of course, Jude wasn’t okay. Nobody was okay. They were covered in a dead woman’s blood. There were bits of bone stuck against Stevie’s palm. That creature thing was still out there. Stevie hadn’t killed it, that was for sure.

  “What . . .” Jude’s voice, tumultuous, bewildered. “What was that? What was that?”

  Stevie shook his head, not understanding what Jude meant. What was the monster, the lady, the past nightmarish few days? Jude shot a look over his shoulder toward the back fence, as if dreading that man-thing’s return. A second later, he was giving Stevie an urgent glance. He, too, was coming unglued. “Go tell your mom,” he said. “Go tell her, quick.”

  Stevie opened his mouth, ready to insist that she’d never listen; about to ask what made Jude think adults would help when he didn’t trust them, when he never had.

  “S-she won’t believe,” Stevie stammered.

  “Yes she will.”

  “Aunt Mandy,” Stevie said. If any of the parents would take notice, it would be her. “Your mom.”

  Jude shook his head. No, he wanted Stevie to go home.

  “I want to come with you.” Stevie started to get to his feet, to insist with action rather than words. But Jude was quick, pivoting away and hopping the short side fence.

  “Go!” he yelled, and ran across his yard to his back door. He took the hammer with him, just in case that thing came back.

  Stevie sat unmoving for a moment, as stunned now as he’d been when he’d found his cousin standing on the front porch days before. Was it possible that it could all be over; had seeing that thing up close knocked something loose inside Jude’s head, forcing him back into his old self? All at once, Stevie found himself jumping to his feet. A spark of pain flared out from his hip, but he paid no attention as he limped toward his bedroom window. Jude had run off to warn his mom. Stevie had to do the same.

  Squeezing beneath the pane, he left a bloody handprint on the sill. He careened down the hall. Rainwater flew from his clothes, wet drops blooming on the carpet beside the master bedroom door. Stevie barged into his mother’s room, hit the lights, a gruesome handprint left in his wake. Both his mom and Terry immediately shielded their eyes against the glare. His mom sat up stick-straight, shocked into alertness. The Tyrant spoke first.

  “What the fucking hell?”

  “Mom!” Stevie weep-yelled into the room. He’d been too terrified to cry, but now that he was standing there, catching his breath, the hysterics were kicking in. What the hell had just happened? What had he seen? What was on his hands? “Th-there’s a m-m-monster thing that took Jude is back and I went and it was there and I saw it, I saw it, I saw it, I saw—”

  “What?” Stevie’s mom went stiff. Every muscle in her body seemed to go stony with alarm. “Stevie, slow down. What are you talking about? Where’s Jude? Oh my God, what is that, Stevie? What is that?” She threw the sheets aside, ready to race into the rain, to knock on Aunt Mandy’s door. Surely Jude couldn’t be missing again. But rather than rushing out of the house in nothing but her nightgown, she grabbed Stevie by the shoulders, her eyes wide as she stared at his dirty palms. Her hands retreated just as fast, the contact revealing the drenched state of his clothes, as if just as shocked by the wetness of his T-shirt as she was by the blood that crawled up past his wrists. “Why are you . . . what is . . .”

  “I f-f-f-f-followed him to the blood. There’s blood on the floor and the door, so much more underground, and he was just sitting there, and the lady . . . was eating . . .” Stevie was weeping full-on now, sure he’d never get that awful image out of his head. “N-no, not eating. Not eating,” he cried. “Eaten. I knew he’d sneak out, I knew it. And that lady, mother, she was hurt, call 911—”

  “What—a lady?” She didn’t understand. “You hurt a lady?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Nicole . . .” Terry. “I’ve fucking had it. I’m calling the cops.”

  Stevie’s eyes darted to the bed. To The Tyrant.

  “What? T
he cops? Why? Terry, don’t . . .” Stevie’s mom gave Terry a wide-eyed stare, a look that implored him to hold off.

  “Call the cops,” Stevie whispered, echoing his stepdad to soothe himself as much as to encourage Terry to go through with his threat. “Call the cops.” Because the lady needed help. Jude needed help. They were all in danger. That thing he’d clobbered with the hammer would be angry. It would come out of those woods tonight. It would kill them all.

  “This has gone way too fucking far,” Terry insisted. “Look at him. He’s out of his goddamn mind. If he hurt someone . . .”

  Stevie couldn’t stop crying. It was true then, he was the reason his father had left. And now it was Terry’s turn.

  “No, I didn’t, I didn’t! You can’t just leave! You can’t do it again!” Stevie stammered through his sobs. He hated The Tyrant, but he didn’t want to be responsible for his mother’s misery. Terry had to go, but not because of something Stevie had done. “I’m not t-trying at lying!” He shot his mom a beseeching look. She had to believe him. Wasn’t it some sort of maternal code? But the panic on his mother’s face had shifted into something different. Something darker. It wasn’t worry. It was suspicion. “I swear. I saw, saw, saw, saw—” But it didn’t matter what he said. Doubt had done a slow crawl across her face, blotting out all signs of faith in his claim; of faith in him. “He’s been going since he’s come back, going back, going coming back and forth, and I wanted to see . . .” He stopped, tried to calm himself, tried to gather his thoughts. “See w-what he . . . what he . . . what he . . .” His bawling was growing more frantic by the second, but the words wouldn’t stop trickling past his lips. “Was doing,” he wept.

  Terry started to climb out of bed, preparing to snatch his charging cell phone off the nightstand and dial the police.

  “Oh God . . .” His mom whispered the words to herself, her hand pressing to her mouth.

  “It’s gone too far,” Terry said, shoving the sheets away.

  “What?” She spun around to face her second husband. “No!” Her arms flew out, her hands dancing across his chest, trying to keep him in bed. “No, just give him a minute,” she implored. “He just needs to calm down, you know how he gets.”

  “Give him a minute? Give him a minute for what? He’s done. This whole goddamn thing is done. You want him to hurt himself . . . or anyone else, if he hasn’t already?” Terry’s feet hit the ground.

  Stevie didn’t look at them. He couldn’t. He was too busy trying to get it together, the words coming in a deluge of rhyme. “Mother,” he whispered. “Blood brother.” Was that why Jude had grabbed his hands, was that why he’d smeared that lady’s blood across his skin, to eternally connect them somehow?

  “Let him calm down!” Stevie’s mom insisted. She was crying now, too. “Let him explain!”

  But The Tyrant’s footfalls were hard, impatient. His block of a hand fell onto Stevie’s shoulder, his fingers squeezing the bones beneath Stevie’s skin hard enough to make them creak.

  “Ow!” Stevie wailed, not caring how big of a baby it made him.

  “Just give him a minute!” Stevie’s mom raised her voice. “Goddamnit, Terry, can’t you see he’s sick?!”

  Stevie started at his mother’s yell, and so did Terry. That viselike grip dropped away from his shoulder, and while Stevie didn’t look up at either of them, he could tell Terry was looking at his wife like he’d just been slapped in the face.

  “He’s sick,” she repeated, softer now. “He’s been sick. It’s just getting worse. I don’t know what to do.”

  Stevie swallowed, a fresh bout of dismay worming its way into his sinus cavity. Yes, his brain was broken, but that didn’t mean what he’d seen wasn’t real.

  “Stevie . . .” His mother’s voice was abruptly calm, like a woman talking a crazy person off a ledge. “Sweetheart, baby, I need you to focus. Tell me what happened, okay?”

  But how could he calm down? A lady was dead, torn up like how they said Max Larsen had been. And the thing that had done it was still out there . . . Wasn’t it? He looked down at the blood on his hands, the stringy hair that clung to his mangled fingers. It was why Jude had caught him by the hands in the first place. He knew they wouldn’t listen, so he gave Stevie proof.

  “Take a breath,” his mom advised, her coolheadedness so thin a veil he could hear the hysteria behind each and every syllable that left her. “Whose blood is this?”

  “Th-th-the lady’s.” Stevie wept the words. “The basement. Mother.” He held his hands up to his mom’s face. Look, look, look! “Mother!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Terry muttered. “I’m calling—”

  “Stevie!” Mom again, no longer levelheaded. “Calm down, okay?” Yelling. Trying to push her son’s gore-smeared hands out of her face. “Calm down. Explain it to me!” But before Stevie could gather enough breath to try to describe what had happened for what felt like the hundred-thousandth time, his words were stalled by a guttural wail.

  Aunt Mandy.

  She was screaming the way she had when the cops had shown up, when they had told her about the sweatshirt, about how Jude was probably dead.

  Stevie’s eyes bugged at the sound.

  “It’s back!” He tore away from his mom’s grip. “I gotta get him! Gotta get him! Gotta go get him before he goes invisible again!”

  He tore into the hall, his mom nipping at his heels, yelling a panicky “Stevie, Stevie, STEVIE, WAIT!” But Stevie wasn’t going to. Not this time.

  He flew through the living room, his bloodied palms slapping against the front door as he fumbled with the dead bolt.

  “What the—” Dunk. Muffled. In the hallway somewhere. “What’s . . . Is that Aunt Amanda?”

  “Who’s it fucking sound like?” Terry actually sounded freaked-out for once. “Hello? Hello? I need officers down here . . .”

  “What’s going on?” Dunk, losing his composure. “Sack, what the . . .”

  “Mandy?!” Stevie’s mom. Torn between her concern for Stevie and her fear as to why her sister was shrieking in horror, she reached over Stevie’s shoulder, threw the dead bolt herself, and pulled open the door, releasing him onto the front porch. Stevie leapt down the stairs and into the rain, howling Jude’s name as he sprinted for Aunt Mandy’s place. His mom followed as fast as she could, cycling from one panicky name to another: Stevie, Mandy, Jude.

  His mom was bolting for the front door, but Stevie knew better. He ran for the back of the house, sure the kitchen door would be open. Jude had gone in that way, and it was probably how the man-thing had gotten inside.

  He could hear his mother yelling over Aunt Mandy’s screams. “Call the police! Duncan, call the police!”

  Clamoring up the back steps, Stevie was just about to grab for the knob of the back door when it flew open of its own accord, and he was left gawking at what he saw. There was blood on Aunt Mandy’s pajamas. A thick swatch of the stuff was smeared across her left temple, half-hidden behind snarled blond loops.

  “Aunt Mandy?”

  She exhaled a cry, yanked backward like a yo-yo at the end of its string, staggering into an upturned kitchen that was usually neat as a pin. She hit the ground, her legs kicking out in search of purchase, her bare feet shoving the small kitchen rug across the floor. Stevie couldn’t look away from her face—wide-eyed and twisted up in horror, exactly the way he’d pictured it inside his head. Except, there was no monster. Above her, his fingers tangled in her hair, was Jude, the Stanley gripped tight in his free hand.

  Jude paused, standing in the space between the table and the back kitchen door. He stared at the interloper—at Stevie’s O of a mouth and his giant owl eyes. Aunt Mandy wept, and with teeth that looked blacker than Stevie remembered, Jude canted his head at Stevie and snarled.

  “Stevie . . . !” Aunt Mandy reached out a frantic hand. Help, help, help me, please! But she was given a fierce backward tug. Somehow, that leer became all the more malicious. As if it would be that easy for her to get awa
y . . . as if things could possibly go back to normal now.

  “Jude, what are, are, are, are . . .” Stevie’s brain got stuck on the word, struggling to muscle past it. “. . . areyoudoing?” He managed to spit out the inquiry, hoping that somehow such a simple question would bring Jude back around. But Jude hadn’t been himself for a while now. It seemed that he’d come back, but maybe not. It could have been a trick, a way to get Stevie to go right while Jude had gone left, leaving him to attack his mother while Stevie fought through his stuttering ticks.

  The person who stood in front of Stevie now—his fist full of Aunt Mandy’s hair—was the same person who had chased him through the trees. The Not-Jude, eyes little more than bruised hollows, glinting cold blue from the depths of those darkened pits; skin as thin as a rice-paper wrapper, peeling away from the apples of his cheeks in flesh-toned curls. That putrid basement smell filled Aunt Mandy’s kitchen with the scent of warm garbage. And Jude’s lips . . . they were no longer chapped as much as they were gone, corroded away to reveal those gruesome teeth, like a gaping hole in his head. In the short time Stevie had spent in his mother’s bedroom, screaming at her in an attempt to make her understand, something terrible had taken hold of Jude for good. As though evil had been patiently waiting, finally allowed to crawl beneath his skin and breathe.

  Aunt Mandy reached for Stevie again, stretching her fingers outward, trying to catch hold of salvation. Jude didn’t like that. He’d told her no once before, and now she was defying him out of spite. He gave her another backward jerk, reeled up, and brought the Stanley down against her outstretched wrist. The sound of Aunt Mandy’s agonized howl shot Stevie through with a frightened rage so all-encompassing, he felt like screaming right along with her, screaming loud enough to rupture his own ears.

  “Let her go!” His voice wavered, but he was determined to stand his ground. Finally, he’d take the advice Jude had given him time and time again: Don’t be a chicken shit. Grow some balls.