The Devil's End Read online

  But Lana seemed to be fantasy becoming reality, or at least closer to it than he’d ever imagined possible. She apparently didn’t mind the fact that he was ugly and simpleminded. He drifted into a daydream in which he was holding her small hand in his massive one as they walked together down the halls at school, seeing the looks of jealousy on the faces of other boys. They wouldn’t call him Tardo if a pretty girl like Lana were holding his hand. They would respect him if he had such a beautiful girlfriend, a girl who looked like an angel. Was there even one other more beautiful than she? Spiro didn’t think so.

  They would wonder what she saw in an ugly lump like himself; perhaps they would assume it had something to do with sex. He would definitely enjoy getting teased about that, being accused of fucking beautiful Lana, sticking his thing between her legs and up inside her, filling her with countless explosions of sticky cream. He would encourage that, all right, with a sly smile and no attempt to deny. That would drive them crazy. And maybe Lana really would let him do things, let him touch her in private places. After all, she’d let him see her panties. And hadn’t she asked him if he’d like to touch her…?

  Yes, he seemed to remember her saying something like that.

  Thinking about such things began to produce the normal physical reaction, and Spiro became increasingly uncomfortable sitting in his chair. He was well aware of what was happening to him, but equally so the unfortunate timing for it. His mother was in the living room watching television, and at any moment she might decide to get up and see what he was doing in his bedroom. Like she wanted to catch him doing something bad so she could punish him, but he knew, deep within his heart, how much she really loved him. She only wanted him to be good. But he couldn’t help this…it happened sometimes even if he consciously did nothing to cause it.

  He looked down at the palms of his hands; the scars he’d received from the hot stove coils were still visible. He didn’t want to ever suffer that again. He momentarily considered going to the bathroom to take care of his problem, but that would mean he would have to walk through the living room and expose himself to the scrutiny of his mother’s knowing eyes, and he had no doubt whatsoever that she would be able to take one look at him and know exactly what he was up to.

  He got up from his chair and began to pace back and forth near the foot of his rumpled bed, on which the stinking, crusty yellowed sheets twisted during the previous night’s torrid dreams lured him to come, come and lie down…but he had to stop; the rising flame had to be put out before he got himself in trouble. He tried to force his mind on something else. Sam, his puppy. His fluffy, sweet, loving pet…but he couldn’t think about Sam without picturing him there between Lana’s legs.

  He thought about school. The hardest part about it was not having any friends, having to eat lunch alone in the cafeteria, knowing that others were talking about him, laughing at him behind his back—or right in front of his face; it hardly mattered to them. Once, a senior named Steve Shadduck had walked up to him while he was eating spaghetti, and had picked up his plate and ground it into his face. The other kids had howled with laughter. Even Mr. Jenkins, who was monitoring the cafeteria that day, thought it was funny and gave Steve only the lightest reprimand. Maybe if Lana would eat lunch with him, things like that wouldn’t happen anymore.

  Here he was, thinking about her again. And thinking about her made him think about his problem, which only served to make it worse. He kept a small cloudy mirror in the top drawer of his scarred dresser. He took it out and reluctantly gazed into it. This is what she sees, he silently told himself. She sees a Halloween mask that will never come off.

  That was another thing he heard fairly often: “Why don’t you take your mask off, Tardo? Halloween’s over.” He’d come very close one day to taking a straight razor and doing exactly that. He’d imagined that beneath the hideous exterior of his skin he would find a handsome face, with intelligent eyes and perfect teeth, a slender nose set in the midst of artistic bone structure. He’d held the blade between his fingers for a long time while he looked in the bathroom mirror and visualized the new face emerging. He became certain it was there. He finally took the blade and cut a deep gash in front of his left ear, and was very surprised to see a considerable amount of blood begin to flow from the wound. The pain was immediate and intense; the razor fell unnoticed into the sink as he cried out, watching in horror as the blood ran down his neck and onto his shirt, and then his mama had pounded on the door, demanding to know what in tarnation was going on in there. When he didn’t answer, she came in, and when she saw what he had done, she began to scream. She was angry. After cleaning him up and putting a bandage on his face, cursing all the while, she’d taken him to his room and whipped him endlessly with a wooden hanger. She didn’t like for him to hurt himself. She loved him too much.

  Spiro put the mirror back in his drawer; it had served its purpose. He went back to his desk to work on his model airplane.

  Four

  The peace was suddenly shattered by a loud crash. Wilma Edwards jumped, the prescription bottle she was holding slipping from her fingers, sending tiny blue and white capsules all over the tray in front of her.

  “Colter again,” she muttered.

  Jane Bellows, the auburn-haired aide who had been chatting with Wilma while she set up the medicine cups, turned and hurried down the empty corridor. When she stepped into Room 128, she just missed getting hit by a flying juice glass, which smashed into the wall inches to her right and exploded glass in every direction.

  “Jasmine, just what the hell do you think you’re doing!” Jane’s sea-green eyes narrowed into slits of anger, accentuating the lines around them.

  The old woman clutched her covers up around her chin. “That witch was in here again, Miss Janey! I told you and told you to keep all the doors locked, but you wouldn’t listen, and now it’s too late! The door’s open, you damn little fool. The door’s open!”

  “Of course it’s open,” Jane snapped. “We don’t like your door to be shut because we might not be able to hear you if you need something. Now just look at the mess you’ve made. I’ve got to clean this up, you know. And you’d better watch who you’re calling a damn little fool. You hear me? The only witch that’s ever been in this room is you. Now I’m going to go get a broom and dustpan, so don’t you even think about throwing anything else, or we’ll put you in a straitjacket. You wanna be put in a straitjacket?”

  Jasmine Colter’s thin white lips quivered. “No, please…don’t put me in a jacket, Miss Janey. Take me to the church, please. I’ll be safe in the church, on holy ground. I got to go an’ pray for my baby and my grandbabies. I got to throw myself on God’s altar, Miss Janey, the door…”

  Jane whirled around and left; she had no inclination to stand there and listen to foolish dribble falling from an old hag’s lips. She wished it were possible to make Jasmine Colter get out of bed and clean up her own damn mess. Pinedale Nursing Center didn’t really have a supply of straitjackets on hand, but Jane knew there were plenty of other things with which Colter’s hands could be tied to her bedrails. The thought of the old troublemaker being tightly bound had a slightly sadistic though satisfying appeal, but Jane knew she would be fired in an instant for actually doing such a thing. Unfortunately, keeping her job was more important than teaching a much-needed lesson.

  Wilma, the RN supervisor for the evening shift, was a middle-aged, overly plump woman of short stature and humorless personality. She was ready to make her medicine rounds by the time Jane stalked by the front desk on her way to the janitor’s supply closet.

  “What did she break this time?” she asked Jane tersely, her brow creased with irritation.

  Jane paused with her hands on her slightly over padded hips. “A juice glass, and she came damn close to hitting me with it. The first crash we heard was just her tray.”

  Wilma picked up a pen and jotted a note for herself about the juice
glass; the cost of replacing it would be added to Mrs. Colter’s monthly bill. She’d been breaking a lot of things lately.

  Jane went on to the supply closet and returned with a broom in one hand, a dustpan in the other. “What are we going to do about her? She’s going to hurt somebody one of these days, and I for one don’t get paid enough to put up with that kind of nonsense. It’s bad enough that she’s incontinent and fights like a bobcat when we go in to clean her up. Can’t you give her a sedative or something?”

  Wilma tapped her fingers thoughtfully against the pill tray. “Well, I should consult with her doctor first, but I don’t suppose it would hurt to give her a little something tonight. The other patients on that wing would probably appreciate getting a good night’s sleep for once.”

  “I’m sure they would.” Jane’s shift ended at eleven, but she’d heard about the two, three, and four a.m. disturbances in Room 128, most of the complaints from other patients with rooms in the same vicinity, but the workers on the graveyard shift were none too happy about the situation either, and had nicknamed Jasmine “Spazmine.” Jane suspected that if something wasn’t done about the inane fits pretty soon, some morning an aide would go in to deliver Jasmine’s breakfast and find the old woman beaten to death with a bedpan or walking stick.

  When she cautiously stepped back into 128, she found Jasmine sitting straight up with her King James Bible held in front of her like a talisman.

  “That gonna keep the witch away?” Jane chuckled, her anger diffused by the comical scene.

  The old woman, her long fuzzy white hair flowing over bowed, bony shoulders, lowered the book slightly and peeked over the top. “You won’t take me to holy ground, and this is the only holy thing I got. Maybe you would get me some holy water from the Catholic church, Miss Janey? I never been Catholic, but seems I heard once that the holy water will burn a witch.”

  Jane wondered if her senile ward wasn’t just remembering a scene from the Wizard of Oz. “Sure, I could get you some holy water.” She smiled, knowing full well she would bring nothing but tap water from the kitchen or drinking fountain in the lobby. Maybe the janitor would bless it; the old bag wouldn’t know the difference. And as for the reason she was wanting it, it wouldn’t matter if it was a cup of urine. Witches!

  “My Pammie won’t listen to me,” Jasmine went on mournfully, resting the Bible on her lap. Jane’s promise to bring holy water hadn’t offered much comfort. It wasn’t enough. Closing her eyes, she saw Morganna laughing down at her, her blood red lips pulled obscenely back on the white face floating near the ceiling, a translucent black cape writhing about the witch’s body like a giant stingray. Above the devilish leer, black eyes danced with malefic triumph. The evil was not afraid, and it would make her pay. Jasmine’s eyes sprang open, banishing the horrifying vision. She tightened her grip on the Bible.

  “Pammie thinks I’m just a doddering old fool. She don’t believe I know what I’m talking about, but I do, I sure do, Miss Janey, God help me I do. I weren’t there that night, but my daddy was. He told me what they done to that Kennedy baby. Sacrificed it to the Devil they did, and I think I know why. You believe in the Devil, Miss Janey?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m married to him,” Jane answered flippantly, but she was suddenly uncomfortable. “Now, what are you talking about? Who sacrificed a baby to the Devil?” This was something she hadn’t heard before—or perhaps this was the first time Jasmine had said it when she was paying attention—and undoubtedly it was just another facet of the old woman’s dementia, but the words nonetheless piqued Jane’s curiosity.

  Jasmine’s beady eyes narrowed within their wrinkled pockets of flesh. Her old heart fluttered with excitement; someone was finally going to listen.

  After all the dinner trays had been gathered and returned to the kitchen, the three nurses aides on duty went into the break room for coffee, nicotine, or an update on current gossip. Jane had laughingly recounted Jasmine’s story to her coworkers, and had been subsequently shocked to learn from one of them, Cora Yarbrough, that as far as she knew, every word of it was true.

  “Yes, that’s pretty much what my mom’s aunt put down in her diary. All that about the Kennedy baby…gruesome. It wasn’t just an ordinary murder, for sure— they were doing some kind of ritual, all right. Had a stone slab laid out with weird symbols painted on it, and candles burning all around. They killed the baby on that, stabbed him right in the heart with some kind of dagger. But look, Jane, don’t let it get to you. That day is long past. Nothing to worry about nowadays. I don’t know what the Obers thought they were doing, but all I know is they did kill an innocent little boy, and if they did that for the Devil, I guess he didn’t appreciate it much. But all that’s ancient history now. Colter just needs something to rail about. This week it’s witches, next week it’ll be something else…werewolves, maybe. Don’t give it another thought.”

  The other aide, Darlene Lanham, shook her head. “What a terrible shame, though. That poor baby. And his parents…imagine what that must have done to them. The evil that men do…by the way, did I tell you two what that damn brother-in-law of mine has gone and done now…?”

  Jane tuned out, the Ober subject sticking to her mind like an algae-eater to the side of an aquarium. This was something she wouldn’t be able to forget so easily, even if Jasmine hadn’t shared her hypothesis on the reason for the ritual, and the fact that only one end of the “bargain” had been fulfilled. What Jane wanted to do now—no, what she had to do now, for reasons she didn’t care to explain to Cora or Darlene—was to read that diary; see for herself in black and white an original account of the Obers’ atrocity. She allowed Darlene to finish her story about what an absolute criminal her sister was married to, gave an appropriate disgusted response, then turned and smiled apologetically at Cora.

  “I know this is probably a really nervy thing to ask, but…would it be possible for me to borrow that diary?”

  Cora grunted. “What’s the matter with you, Jane? You still thinking about that? I told you, all that’s over and done, and thank God it is.”

  “I’m just curious,” Jane said unconvincingly, her eyes pleading. “I know it’s all over and done, like you say, but it’s a pretty bizarre piece of history, and it happened right here. I’d just like to read what your mom’s aunt said about it, in her own words. Obviously you’ve read it, so you must have found it interesting.”

  “I found it pretty revolting,” Cora said dryly, wrinkling her wide, flat nose. “But if you want to read it that bad, I guess it’s all right with me. I’d rather you didn’t take it home, though. You can read it here. There’s not really that much in it about that business, anyway. I’ll bring it with me tomorrow, if I can find it. I think it’s still buried in that cedar chest in my bedroom, unless one of the brats got to it.”

  Jane squeezed her hand. “Thanks…that would be great. God, I thought Jasmine was just pulling all that stuff out of never-never land.”

  Darlene laughed. “So you really think Morganna Ober’s been paying her visits?”

  Jane scowled. “Come on, give me a break. What kind of fool do you think I am?”

  Five

  Bang, you’re dead!” Luke squealed for the six hundredth time, according to Lana’s estimate. His sentence to solitary confinement had been suspended, and he was “shooting” Spiro’s puppy with a finger gun and toppling him over on his back, as a cocker spaniel named Mop they’d once owned had learned to do.

  “Would you leave that dog alone?” Lana hissed between clenched teeth. “He’s too young to learn tricks, you diphead.”

  “He ain’t neither, donkey face.”

  “Luke, if I hear you yell bang one more time, you’re the one who’ll be playin’ dead,” his mother said irritably, reinforcing her threat with a level stare. “And that’s enough of the name callin’, both y’all. Put the dog out in the garage, and spread out some papers for him…not that he�
��ll know what they’re for. I oughta have my head examined for lettin’ him stay.”

  Lana picked up the squirming bundle of fur and nestled him against her bosom. “Oh Mom, you wouldn’t say that if you’d seen the look on Spiro’s face when I offered to keep Sam. It was gonna break his heart to lose him.

  “Boo hoo,” Luke blubbered facetiously, wiping nonexistent tears from his eyes.

  Carol shot him another warning look. “Cut it out, now, boy, you hear me? All right, let’s get a move on. I don’t know about you two, but I’m starving. Hamburgers sound okay?”

  “Could you just bring me one back?” Lana asked, allowing Sam to bathe her chin. “I don’t really feel like goin’ out. And I need to write some letters.” She was already beginning to miss the best friend she’d left behind in Tyler, and especially her boyfriend, Greg Abbott. When she’d found out that the insurance company her mother worked for was transferring her to another state, clear across the country, she’d started going all the way with him, and that had made leaving him much more difficult. They’d promised each other to always write, but she doubted she would ever see him again. Greg would find a new girlfriend before too long, and she supposed she would meet someone else as well, but she assumed it would be a while before she could put her heart into a new relationship.