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  THE DEVIL’S END

  D.A. FOWLER

  Copyright © 1992 by Debra Fowler

  This edition published 2019 by Capricorn Literary

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

  For Susan Scott

  Acknowledgments

  Many well deserved thanks to my editor,

  John Scognamiglio, and to Dr. Stan Howard

  for the priceless opportunity to pursue my dreams,

  however demented they may be.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Prologue

  A blustery September wind swept through the surrounding trees, filling the night air with the sound of countless hissing snakes. A storm was coming in from the north, announcing its approach with an occasional roll of thunder and forked streak of lightning.

  Down a narrow path carpeted with pine needles, two elderly women followed the impotent beam of a flashlight. The one holding the flashlight kept glancing around nervously, as if expecting at any moment for an attacker to jump from the dark foliage. Her companion, white-haired and bent with age, trudged fearlessly behind the flashlight’s beam, mouth set in a grim line.

  “Where the devil is it?” she said, wheezing. “Are you certain we’re on the right path?”

  The other angled up the flashlight with a slightly trembling hand, eyes straining to penetrate the gloom ahead. “It’s just a little further. I think I can see one of the markers.” The wind whipped errant strands of her gray hair about her withered face, and a nearby clap of thunder brought her heart up into her throat. She could hardly believe the old woman hadn’t read her guilty mind, discerned the real reason for bringing her up here in the dead of night. But maybe she had, and just wasn’t saying anything, wouldn’t say a word until the truth was manifested, guilt confirmed, and then…

  She shuddered to think what would happen then, and cast a furtive glance over her shoulder. Her fear was taking large, ominous shapes around her, stalking her with all-knowing eyes and a smile that guaranteed she wouldn’t get away with this. For the hundredth time since they’d left the house she reconsidered her plan, but concluded, as always, that it had to be executed. Or at least attempted.

  They finally reached the end of the path and entered a clearing where the wind buffeted them with a vengeance. Before them lay a small cemetery, its leaning headstones testifying to abandonment, but a scattering of litter— crumpled paper cups, beer cans, cigarette butts, and used condoms—indicated that it was still visited, though obviously for reasons other than mourning the dead. In the unyielding darkness these irreverently discarded objects were unseen by the two women as they carefully made their way through the stones toward the single crypt.

  Approaching its shadowed door, the older woman came to a sudden halt, snowy head cocked to the right. “I’ll hold the flashlight. You go in.”

  Her companion’s heart fluttered with fear. There had been suspicion in those words, and no attempt had been made to disguise it. She thought of the serrated steak knife hidden up the left sleeve of her jacket, and wondered in a moment of panic if she should pull it out and use it right now. But she meekly handed over the flashlight instead, avoiding the old woman’s piercing black eyes, then stepped in front of her to the crypt’s door and from one of her jacket pockets pulled a large silver ring holding one key.

  “This isn’t how it was to have happened,” the old woman said, her feeble voice quickly carried away by the violent wind threatening to tumble her over. She muttered something else, but it was drowned out by the frantic rustling of leaves.

  Having inserted and twisted the key, her companion reluctantly faced her, wincing in the upturned glare of the flashlight’s beam. “How else would you explain it?”

  “You still haven’t explained why you came to look in the first place,” the old woman countered, fighting to keep her balance.

  “I told you, I was just curious.”

  “Curious.” A skeptical smile touched the old woman’s puckered mouth. “Well go on, open the door before this goddamn wind blows me away.”

  If only it would, the other woman thought. Pushing on the crypt’s creaking metal door, the tip of the concealed steak knife pricked her wrist. With the sharp pain flashed a vision of blood—bright crimson soaking into dark, dank earth. The grave she’d dug two hours earlier, shortly after sundown, was waiting less than a dozen yards from where they stood.

  “Give me the key,” the old woman suddenly demanded, holding out a bony hand.

  The other quickly turned, eyes filled with alarm. “What for?” she asked in a tremulous voice, but she already knew the answer; the old woman intended to lock her inside the crypt and leave her to slowly die. So she did know; there was no question about it now. Odd that she would resort to something like this, considering what she could do. But that was hardly important. All that mattered at the moment was the knife hidden in her jacket sleeve and its purpose for being there. She began working it into her left palm as inconspicuously as possible.

  The old woman thrust her hand out farther. “The key,” she repeated, her words punctuated by another jolting thunderclap. A split second later the sky above them was momentarily brightened by a long, jagged spear of lightning that revealed the vengeful intent written in her expression.

  “No.” The other woman clutched the wooden handle of the steak knife and summoned all the courage she possessed, which had never been very much or she would have done this long ago. “I can’t let you do it. Not this.”

  The flashlight beam wavered as the older woman suddenly began to laugh, a chilling sound coming from her, as always. “You ignorant fool! There’s nothing you can do to stop it. Haven’t you heard, where there’s a will there’s a way? Or that necessity is the mother of invention?” More laughter spilled from her lips, but her mirth was abruptly terminated by the knife blade’s swift and deep introduction to her throat. The flashlight fell to the ground and she stumbled backward, mouth opening wide to issue a scream that came out as a strangled gurgle. The next moment the sky seemed to split in two as a deafening crack of thunder ripped through it, the accompanying flash of lightning illuminating her panicked attempt to pull out the knife. When she succeeded, a thick stream of blood spouted from the hole, spraying the face of her advancing attacker. Grimacing at the unappreciated taste of salty-sweet copper, the other woman grabbed the knife away from her and shoved her to the ground, falling upon her to plunge it again, this time deep into her left eye socket, assuming the wou
nd would be instantly mortal, an end to both the will and the way. Blood surged to fill the sunken cavity, but the old woman continued to struggle, reaching up to claw whatever flesh her long yellowed fingernails could find.

  “Die, damn you!” the other screamed, hammering the knife’s end with the palm of her hand, driving it in up to the hilt. She began to fear that the old woman would survive no matter what she did, a fear that was reinforced by the inexplicable burst of strength in the bony, withered arms that fought to throw her off. With the fallen flashlight’s beam aimed in their direction, she could see steam rising from the bloody throat wound that rhythmically opened and closed like a fish’s gill, systematically vomiting another gout of blood with each expelled steamy breath. Another nerve-jarring crack of thunder tore across the sky, and seconds later a punishing rain began to fall. Soon afterward the old woman’s body finally went limp, and the hole in her throat closed for the last time.

  Weeping with relief, the other slowly rose to her feet and began dragging the body toward the grave she’d prepared, glancing back several times at the crypt’s open door. Where there’s a will there’s a way. God forbid it in this case.

  She rolled the corpse into the narrow three-foot grave, hearing the rattle of bones, then reluctantly returned through the driving rain to the crypt for the shovel she’d hidden inside it. She picked up the flashlight before going in, shining it around the decrepit graveyard with renewed apprehension. The beam cast long shadows behind the upright markers, and suddenly she thought she saw one of the shadows move in a way that couldn’t be explained by her handling of the flashlight. Stopping abruptly in her tracks, she stood with her eyes glued to the spot, heart thudding with dread, until a raccoon emerged from behind the stone and scurried into the nearest trees. Releasing the breath she was holding, she proceeded to the crypt and quickly retrieved the shovel, then closed and locked the door. A part of her felt triumphant, but a dark inner voice reminded her that a celebration tonight would be premature. She couldn’t be sure for several days yet, and those days were certain to be the longest of her life.

  Soaked to the skin, she put the flashlight down near the mouth of the grave and bent to fill the shovel with dirt when she again heard the rattle of bones. She froze, terror raising gooseflesh over her entire body in spite of her silent insistence that the sound had been produced by nothing more than muscle reflex. But in the beam of light directed toward the grave, she saw a muddy hand appear, groping at the edge. For a moment she thought she was going to faint, and came very close to doing so when the old woman’s body sat up, white hair pasted to her scalp, rain mixed with blood coursing down the crevices in her hollow left cheek. Her right eye was open and focused accusingly on the woman standing above her, whose automatic reaction was to dump her load of dirt and swing the shovel at the old woman’s face. The impact knocked her back into the grave with a loud crunch of cartilage, and before she could get up again, the blade of the shovel was frantically positioned under her wattled chin.

  Gritting her teeth, her mind filled with an unvented scream, the other woman placed her right foot on the back of the blade and thrust downward. The thin flesh parted easily enough, but she had to use all of her weight to break through the spine. With a final jump the metal tip burrowed into dirt on the other side, and the head rolled forward into the shovel. She quickly tossed it out, noting with horror when it landed faceup that the lips were curved in a hideous smile.

  Shivering uncontrollably, working like a madwoman with much more energy than she normally possessed, she filled the grave, deciding just before she left to say a few words over it.

  “Go to Hell, Mother.”

  One

  Spiro Guenther ambled down the sidewalk in his typical leaning gait, eyes focused on the ground, arms pressed tightly to his sides. In one hand he carried a canvas bag weighted with school books; the other was clenched into a meaningless fist. The sharp curvature of his spine near the base of his skull robbed him of three inches in height, but Spiro didn’t need to be any taller; even with his physical defect, he measured six feet, four inches, and at 265 pounds outsized most of the men in Sharon Valley.

  He had turned seventeen the previous July. He was labeled a freak, monster, moron, dumb ox, and dozens of other derogatory titles, and he accepted them all bitterly. He’d seen himself in mirrors, in storefront windows, in the shocked stares of other human beings. So much for his outer qualities; his inner ones were just as defective. No matter how hard he’d tried in school, he’d always gotten low scores, so as he grew older his mind tended to navigate toward other, “inappropriate” subjects while lectures were being given. Seventeen years old and he was still a sophomore in high school. Still, mournfully, a virgin. Still and always the outsider.

  He’d learned to live with the taunting; it had started back in the second grade. Had he been a bully, or possessed of the slightest bit of a temper, his size might have earned him respect, but it didn’t take kids very long to figure out Spiro could quite easily be pushed around. Therefore his size only made him a bigger and better target, for rocks, spitballs, pennies; whatever was available for his tormentors to throw. They in turn suffered only in his mind.

  Spiro’s straight, sandy-blond hair was kept extremely short by his middle-aged mother, the one person on earth who might have loved him but never did, and despised him, perhaps, even more than the rest because of his reflection on her. Her husband, a policeman who had died in the line of duty—he’d stepped out to issue a speeding citation and was struck from behind by a passing truck—did so before learning the terrible truth about his infant son. The terrible truth: the German measles his wife had contracted during her pregnancy had caused encephalitis in the spinal cord and brain of her unborn child, and although the resulting retardation was not as severe as it might have been, Spiro was undeniably damaged. Being unable to accept responsibility for the tragedy, Bertha externalized her guilt, transformed it into anger and eventually hatred, which she directed at the living reminder of fate’s abject cruelty.

  Retarded. Tardo. Spiro wondered how many times those scorching words had been applied to him. Once for each star in the sky, he decided on his eleventh birthday. And he’d heard them a million more times since then.

  But today was a special day, and he lumbered along a little faster than usual. Sam Weaver, the mail carrier and only person in Sharon Valley besides Spiro’s English teacher, Ellen Callahan, who treated him like a human being, had promised a surprise would be waiting when he got home from school that day. Spiro had thought of little else since his waking moment, and his daydreaming in history class had earned him a half hour detention with the vice-principal. But Spiro hadn’t really minded the extension of his wait; he’d been saved from his usual dose of after-school abuse.

  As he turned onto his block he looked up, his attention captured by a large orange and white truck parked in the drive next door to his house. The new neighbors had been expected for over a week; the For Sale sign in the front yard had been removed Tuesday before last. This was Thursday, meaning, for Spiro, only one more day before the weekend—two days of cherished, isolated freedom. On the weekends, he would lock himself away in his small dusty bedroom, where he would intermittently work on his model airplane and draw dirty pictures.

  He avoided looking at the people who were carrying items from the moving van to the house. People didn’t like to make eye contact with him anyway; it seemed to make them extremely uncomfortable, for it was hard for them to conceal all the revulsion they felt, assuming they were polite enough to even try. Any smiles ever offered Spiro were brief and wavering, a thin mask of friendliness pulled over a gape of horror. Oh yes, he was an ugly one too. Hideously ugly, so that his classmates could say things like, “Your mother’s doctors should have tossed you away and kept the afterbirth,” and Spiro knew as well as they that he had no room to argue. Nature had cheated him out of everything but strength, and the power of imagination w
ith which he constructed a tolerable fantasy world. Wary, silent passersby were unaware of the compliments he could quite clearly hear them say to him. His enemies begged for forgiveness. His mother sang sweet lullabies to him in the dead of night.

  A real voice was calling to him now, saying “Hi there” with a Texan accent; the greeting came out as “Hah thair.” Spiro continued up his sidewalk and paid no attention to it; his mind was again centered on the surprise promised by Sam. Besides, greetings were usually followed by scathing insults, and unless cornered, Spiro didn’t hang around to hear them out. No reason he should stop to hear them begin.

  “Hey, you stuck up or somethin’?”

  He paused on the bottom porch step and tried to see who was talking without turning his head. He could tell it was a girl; she was standing in front of the truck next door, near the edge of the driveway, a blue and yellow blur with hands placed challengingly on her hips. Spiro was tempted to turn and get a better look even though it would cost him, he was sure, another ounce of his muddy pool of self-esteem, but a scratching noise on his right caused him to turn the other way. There was a large cardboard box on the ground beside the porch. His heart leapt with excitement; Sam’s surprise was in the box. Spiro dropped the canvas bag and scrambled around the peeling support pillar supporting the eave, forgetting about the girl next door. He knelt beside the box and eagerly opened the flaps.

  Inside was exactly what he had fervently hoped for. His thick, moist lips pulled back into a huge grin, Spiro reached into the box and lifted out the squirming brown and black puppy. As he cradled it to his chest, accepting the puppy’s affectionate licks on his chin, the girl’s voice spoke again, this time directly behind him: “Hey, what’cha got there? A puppy?”

  Spiro clumsily turned around and gaped openly at the fair-complected face upon which a smile, seemingly void of fraudulence, was planted around a row of perfect white teeth. She squatted down and said, “He’s so cute! May I hold him?”