The Devil Crept In Read online

  Mr. Greenwood looked less than convinced at Stevie’s answer, but he didn’t push it. He turned away, gravel popping beneath the gum soles of his brown loafers. He stood motionless as he listened to the birds, a whole cacophony of them singing a hundred songs at once. Stevie’s gaze fixed onto Mr. G.’s knobby fingers. They hung gnarled and lumpy at his sides. Old twigs.

  “And have you seen something out there?” Mr. Greenwood asked.

  Stevie opened his mouth, though he wasn’t sure whether it was to confess or to question—had Mr. Greenwood been to that house? Had he seen something? Was that why he was asking, to compare stories? But before Stevie could form the words, his attention shifted to subtle movement just along the forest edge. That’s what Mr. Greenwood was looking at. Suddenly, Stevie was sure that the shadow figure had followed him into town. He imagined the thing creeping out from behind the trees, leering like a lipless, sharp-toothed vampire, sinking its fangs into Mr. Greenwood’s neck. All the while, Stevie would watch, frozen, gulping air, trying to yell.

  Something moved around in the underbrush. Yes, he was positive. The brambly branches of a wild blackberry bush shuddered. His heart thud-umped and he took an instinctive backward step, opened and closed his mouth, ready to yell. It’s here. It’s here! Run, run, RUN! But before he could stammer out a single syllable of warning, he found himself staring at a rough-looking tabby cat rather than at some unspeakable monster—one that his mother would have insisted only existed in his mind.

  It didn’t take a genius to see that this cat—like all the rest—was sick. Its fur was patchy, having completely fallen out in certain spots, leaving it looking bare and mangy, like it had fought a thousand battles and had somehow won. It paused upon seeing both Stevie and Mr. G., then stepped out of the shade to approach the store. Stevie hadn’t noticed them before, but there were two small bowls beside the back door—one for water, the other for food.

  “You can’t hold on to them around here, you know,” Mr. Greenwood said. He was watching the tabby, too, though his expression seemed strained as the orange cat paused to rub against his khaki-covered leg. “You’ve probably never had a cat before, have you?”

  “No,” Stevie said. “But Dunk— Um, I mean Duncan, Dunk, Duncan Donut, my brother, he did once, he did, yeah.”

  “Oh?”

  “He had a dog when he was little, I think, maybe. I guess my dad, my dad . . .” Stevie looked away from the old man, focused his attention on the cat that was now casually lapping water. Every so often, he’d slip up and mention his dad as though the man was back at home, still very much a part of Stevie’s life. Every time it happened, he felt like an idiot. Now was no different. His chest got tight. His face flushed hot. He cleared his throat and tried to shrug off the sensation. “He got it at the doghouse place. The pound.” He couldn’t help knitting his eyebrows together, not sure how they had gone from talking about that spooky old house to pets, to his ghost of a father. “I—I—I don’t think he had it for very long,” he added. “Dunk, I mean. Doughnut. Had the dog. I think it ran away, which isn’t that surprising, I guess.” Tell him. Confess.

  “And why’s that?” Mr. Greenwood asked.

  “Have you met my brother?” Stevie asked, and nearly jumped when a loud guffaw burst from Mr. G.’s throat. After the initial shock, Stevie couldn’t help but smile as well. Mr. Greenwood wasn’t half bad. He smelled kind of funny, and all those liver spots were pretty gross, but something about him made Stevie feel comfortable. Relaxed his brain. Helped his thoughts come out smoother, the way they were supposed to.

  The old man continued to chuckle to himself as he watched the tabby finish up its water and meander back toward the trees. It paused only once to scratch behind its ear, and by the time it reached the tree line, Mr. Greenwood looked somber again.

  “You see that?” he asked, motioning to the retreating animal. “She always goes back. I’ve tried to keep her. I bought her a little cat bed and one of those scratching posts, thinking maybe that would do the trick; got her into an old carrier I had lying around by putting a can of tuna fish in the back of it. Took her home. Thought a warm place to sleep and plenty of food would fix her up. I even picked up one of those feather-duster-looking doodads. You know, the kind you shake with the bells attached? She seemed to like it for a while. She even sat on the couch with me when I watched TV once or twice.”

  Stevie shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was a nice story, he guessed, but he didn’t see what it had to do with anything. Then again, Mr. Greenwood was old, probably older than Stevie thought. Perhaps Mr. G. was just lonely and needed someone to talk to. That, or there was that old-timers’ disease.

  But there was something to the way Mr. Greenwood was telling his story that suggested dementia wasn’t at play—that, somehow, the stray cat had far more to do with Jude than Stevie knew.

  “So,” Stevie said, “you take your cat to work?”

  Mr. Greenwood smiled at the thought. “I wish that were the case, Mr. Clark. No matter what I do, that little missus doesn’t want to stay put. Every time I open the door or crack a window, she’s off to the races. I find her back here the next day, prowling. I feed her. Water her. Sometimes I lure her back into the crate, take her home again. But no matter how much she likes the food I have in my kitchen or the catnip I have next to the couch, she always leaves me behind.”

  “That’s sad.” Stevie spoke the words before thinking them through. It was only after he said them that he realized they could have been construed as unsympathetic and rude. But it was sad. He pictured Mr. G. trying everything to make that cat love him, happily sitting on his couch with the tabby on his lap, no matter how scraggly it looked. And the next day: gone. Kind of like Stevie’s dad. Or Jude.

  “Yes, it’s sad.” Mr. Greenwood gave the woods a thoughtful nod. “But it’s probably what happened to your brother’s dog, too. As a matter of fact . . .” He turned to face Stevie once again, looking as though he’d made up his mind about something that hadn’t been previously decided. “I’d like you to ask him about it.”

  “Ask Dunk . . . about his dog?” Stevie blinked.

  “Find out what happened, and then come tell me the story. I’d like to hear it.”

  “But, but, but—”

  Mr. Greenwood held up his hand. “Get the story, and I’ll tell you what I know. A trade is a trade.” He began to shuffle toward the back door, his brown loafers kicking up gravel dust, but he paused in passing and caught Stevie by the shoulder. “Until then, you stay out of those woods, Mr. Clark. And you stay far away from that house. You understand?”

  Stevie nodded as eagerly as a bobblehead figure on a dashboard, startled by Mr. Greenwood’s sudden shift in demeanor. The old man pulled his twisted hand away and continued onward. It was only when he’d nearly reached the door that something clicked in Stevie’s brain.

  “But, sir . . . ?”

  Mr. G. paused, turned to look back.

  “W-what about Jude?” Stevie’s tone was softer now.

  The mention of Jude’s name caused Mr. Greenwood’s face to elongate with a deep sort of sorrow. He frowned. “I’m sorry about your friend, Mr. Clark,” he said. No declaration that everything would be okay. Just an apology, which hung heavy with the promise that things would never be the same, no matter how hard Stevie wished them to be.

  9

  * * *

  STEVIE WAS EAGER to ask Dunk about his dog, but his brother still wasn’t home. Stevie used his mom’s cell to send a text, but of course Dunk didn’t reply.

  At dinner, Stevie sat at the kitchen table, picking at cheesy bread that had gone dry, staring at Duncan’s empty seat. His mom tried to make conversation with Terry—Did you have a good day? How was work?—but The Tyrant wasn’t much of a talker. Kind of like Dunk, who could have at least called for two seconds to see what was up. Maybe Terry was finally on a rampage, chasing Stevie through the house with a butcher’s knife. It wasn’t impossible to imagine. By the time Dunk
came home, both Stevie and their mother could have been slaughtered by their psychotic stepdad. But Dunk never worried about stuff like that.

  Stevie stayed up long past his bedtime, reading comic books and eating mini chocolate bars while waiting for his brother’s headlights to slash across the side yard. The idea of not talking to him until tomorrow made Stevie nervous. He had to get back to Mr. G. first thing in the morning. But by eleven P.M., Stevie was starting to fade. He packed a cherry Laffy Taffy between his cheek and gum and chewed, fighting off drowsiness; grabbed a nearly empty can of soda and threw his head back, tossing the last warm dregs to the back of his throat. Nothing helped. His plan of waiting for Dunk to arrive was doomed to fail.

  He slid off his bed and walked over to his desk, pulled open his drawer and searched for his field book, only to remember it was lost, probably soaked through with mud and dew, completely ruined even if he somehow managed to find it again. He grabbed a sheet of loose-leaf paper instead, uncapped a Crayola marker, and carefully printed his note:

  Dunk,

  I tryd to wait up but am real tired so I went to sleep.

  Wake me up when u get home ok I need to ask u somthing.

  ITS IMPORTANT.

  Ur brother Stevie

  P.S. Dont forget

  Folding the letter into fourths, he wrote DUNK on the front flap in all-capital letters, then quietly opened his bedroom door. The house had settled down for the night, though he could hear the low tones of the TV playing in the living room. Terry was still up, and if he caught sight of Stevie sneaking around, hellfire would rain down. Rather than walking, he crawled across the hallway and slid the note beneath Dunk’s door.

  Back in his room, Stevie retook his post at his window, folded his arms across the sill, and rested his chin on his forearms. He watched, waited, hoped for something to happen. But what jolted him awake wasn’t the grumble of Dunk’s old engine. It was a familiar clamor: Terry’s stacks of junk being jostled by someone who didn’t know where to step.

  Stevie tensed up. His pulse thudded against his tonsils, accompanied by a nauseating rush of sugar-spiked adrenaline. All of that soda flooded the wrinkles of his brain. He squinted, tried to see into the darkness that shrouded the side yard without having to open his window, without needing to stick out his neck and possibly getting decapitated by swiping claws. But if it was the monster, now was his chance. If his suspicions were correct, that thing would lead him straight to Jude.

  Clamping his teeth against the irregular palpitations of his heart, he pressed the palms of his hands to his windowpane, ready to shove it open. But Aunt Mandy’s front-porch light brought him pause. Motion-activated, the sensitivity on that thing was turned up way too high. All it took was a tree bending in the wind or one of those strays wandering across the lawn, and the entire yard went as bright as Wrigley Field. Yet there was no breeze tonight, no cat or wandering dog he could immediately pinpoint. But there was something.

  An impossible something.

  A figure standing on Aunt Mandy’s porch. Not hunched. Not hiding. Not a monster.

  “Jude . . .” The name whispered past Stevie’s lips. He was dreaming. Imagining it. Because how could it be? “Jude!” It came out as a yell, so loud that he started at his own voice. He leapt off his bed, tore open his door, barreled down the hallway and into the now dark and empty living room. “JUDE!” There was sound behind his mom’s bedroom door, likely her shoving away the sheets and tumbling out of bed. Stevie was too busy flying around the couch to look behind him, to check whether or not The Tyrant was in hot pursuit.

  His palms hit the front door with a hard slap. He struggled with the lock, the stupid dead bolt suddenly not wanting to turn. He’d never had trouble with it before, but the damn thing was determined to stay locked. The universe was plotting against him, trapping him inside. Intent on making Jude vanish again, disappear within the few seconds it would take Stevie to get to his cousin’s front door from his own.

  “Jude!”

  “Stevie?” The sound of his mom’s bare feet moving fast across the scuffed-up hardwood. “Honey, what’s wrong? What’s happ—”

  Her question was cut off by the sound of Stevie’s panting half-screams. The bolt finally gave, turning in his sweaty hands. He whipped open the door, flew across the porch. Stray bits of gravel bit into the pads of his feet as he rushed down the walkway, but he ignored the pain, Jude’s name tumbling out of his throat like a bout of Tourettes, terror riding along the fringes of that single syllable.

  Because he wouldn’t be there.

  He wouldn’t be there.

  Gone again. Just a figment. His imagination, hellbent on doing him in.

  Stevie could hardly breathe as he charged up Aunt Mandy’s broken footpath; tripped over the first porch step, his hands hitting the planks of the patio beside a pair of unmoving, muddied All-Stars. He craned his neck, looked up at the boy who was looming above him now, scrambled up the last few steps and, without saying anything at all, threw his arms around his best friend’s neck.

  He was screaming, jumping and screaming. His mother yelling joyous harmonies as she ran toward Aunt Mandy’s house. And in their overwhelming excitement, neither one of them stopped to notice that Jude wasn’t moving.

  He just stood there, rigid, while they celebrated.

  Like a corpse brought back from the dead.

  10

  * * *

  NICKI CLARK DISAPPEARED into her sister’s house. There was yelling inside. Aunt Mandy started screaming before she ever made it out the front door. When her bare feet hit the porch, it was as if she’d stepped on burning coals. She stopped short, caught herself against the jamb of the door, and let out a gut-wrenching sob. Her reaction was so odd, so completely baffling, that her boy may as well have been lying in a pine box with a note pinned to the top. Here’s your dead son, it would have said. Since you miss him so much.

  Aunt Mandy fell to her knees, her hands frantically searching Jude for broken bones or missing limbs, for some horrible injury that surely must have existed.

  Jude was dirty; wild-looking, as though he’d slept in some hollowed-out divot of earth or the vacant space in a rotten log. His face and arms were smeared with swaths of grime; a feral boy covered in all things forest. But other than the filth and a few rough-looking scrapes, he looked completely fine.

  “Thank God.” Aunt Mandy was crying so hard she could barely speak. “Where have you been?!” When Jude didn’t answer, she shook him by the shoulders, but her effort was short-lived. Sometimes, Stevie remembered her saying, good news just needs to be good news. Sometimes, asking questions only dulls the shine.

  Stevie’s mom called the police. They showed up a few minutes later. A news crew accompanied them, hungry for a sound bite for their morning broadcast. This would bring in ratings. By the time they arrived, Aunt Mandy had stopped weeping. Terry had hovered on the front porch, but stayed back at the house while everyone else moved inside Aunt Mandy’s living room—tidy and sweet with doilies strewn about. She had a penchant for peach, pink, and cream. Jude lived in a house that featured armchairs upholstered in floral prints. He sometimes ate grilled cheese sandwiches off mismatched gold-trimmed plates. Stevie would have been happy to exist in that odd, Anglophile world himself, having decided days after Uncle Scott’s accident that a dead dad would have been better than being abandoned by his own.

  “Jude?” One of the two visiting officers stepped to the couch where Jude was sitting with his mom. “Can we ask you a few questions?”

  “Oh, no.” Aunt Amanda was quick to cut in. “No, not tonight. He’s so tired. He needs to sleep.”

  Jude did look exhausted. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t said a word to anyone since he’d returned. Or he could have said nothing because he didn’t want to sound nuts. Stevie had been too overwhelmed by Jude’s return to think about the creature that had leapt the fence, about the warnings Mr. Greenwood had given; but now, with the shock wearing off, the memory of that man-t
hing was back. It was impossible to think that Jude hadn’t seen it, unfeasible that he hadn’t encountered such a creature after being out there so long. But Jude just stared off into the distance, spaced out, only moving to scratch at one of his arms. It looked like there was a rash there. Probably poison oak.

  “We understand he’s tired,” said the cop. “But we need some answers. This is a matter of public safety. If this was just a stunt—”

  “A stunt?” Aunt Mandy gave the officer a disgusted look, appalled at the suggestion. “You mean like running away? Like the stories you’ve been feeding the press?”

  “Jude?” The cop ignored Aunt Mandy’s animus. His partner continued to hang back, scribbling notes on a legal pad attached to a metal clipboard. Stevie had thought about getting one of those—it was more professional than a spiral-bound notebook—but it looked clunky and cumbersome. Not nearly as convenient as sticking a notepad in the back pocket of your pants. “You want to tell us what happened?” the officer asked. “How did you get out there? Did someone take you? How did you get back home? Did they let you go?”

  “This is insane,” Aunt Mandy hissed, her attention now turned to her sister, imploring her for help.

  “We really should let him sleep,” Stevie’s mom told the cops, offering them a placating smile. “I’m sure the department has a million questions for everyone, especially for Jude, but those can be delayed until tomorrow morning, can’t they?”

  “No.” The lead officer, humorless, insistent. “The report has to be filled out now. We’ve put a lot of resources into looking for him. A lot of people gave up a lot of their time . . .”

  Stevie wanted to snort at that. Yeah, right. But he held his tongue, only looking back and forth from the cops to Aunt Mandy to Jude to his mother. These guys didn’t know the first thing about his mom. When she wasn’t under the influence of The Tyrant, she had a knack for sweet-talking people and getting her way. Once, they’d gotten pulled over on the highway by a motorcycle cop, one who had looked like he meant business. But by the time the whole thing was over, his mom had the officer joking around. She got off with a warning, like it was some sort of weird Jedi mind trick.