The Devil's End Read online

  Seized with panic, she fumbled with the keys dangling from the ignition to start the engine. When it roared to life, the hooded creature began to run—or fly, it seemed —straight for the car. Marla mashed on the accelerator before throwing the transmission into reverse, and in doing so flooded the carburetor, the engine sputtered, then died. She immediately began to wail, her typical reaction in the face of impending doom. She couldn’t breathe. The thing was almost upon her now.

  She twisted the key again, fiercely, but the Cutlass wouldn’t start. The only other thing Marla could think of was lay on the horn. The instant the brash sound pierced the outer stillness, the figure raced to the passenger window and drew back its hood. Nancy stood there laughing like a hyena, her face pressed obscenely against the glass. Marla released the horn, her fear turning into boiling rage. She screamed through the glass, “You damn bitch!”

  Nancy was far too pleased with herself for the prank she had pulled off to be offended in the least; she continued to screech with laughter.

  Marla, gripping the steering wheel, brayed from inside the car: “You think that was funny! I’ll show you how damn funny I thought it was—you can just walk back home!”

  This sobered Nancy quickly; her face was magically wiped clean of its nasty exultation. “Hey, what are you getting so bent out of shape about? For crying out loud, it was just a joke. Let me in the car. Please?”

  It took Marla several moments to decide which was stronger—her friendship with Nancy or her thirst for revenge. Making Nancy walk four miles back to her house would certainly teach her a lesson and even the score, but chances were that even such a well-deserved penalty would permanently terminate their comradery. She finally forced herself to lean over and unlock the passenger door, determined to at least stay mad about the incident for a long, long time.

  Nancy got in the car smelling like death warmed over; Marla grimaced and asked scornfully, “My God, did you get that out of the tomb? Off one of the bodies?” She tried the ignition again, this time, naturally, with success.

  Nancy smiled secretively, her eyes sparkling with a green hue from the electronic gauges on the dashboard. “Yes, I took it right off Myrantha’s skeleton. Isn’t it neat?”

  Marla was horrified. “Jesus Christ, how disgusting! I can’t believe you did that. You actually touched…her? It?”

  “Sure, why not? Haven’t you ever wanted to touch a real skeleton before?”

  “If you keep talking about it, I think I’ll throw up.” Marla turned on the headlights and put the transmission in reverse. As she backed up to position the car in the right direction, Nancy began to giggle.

  “Hey, I was just kidding about that. Seriously, the coffins were empty…looks like some asshole got in there before we did. Not today, but pretty recently. The dust on the floor was disturbed, and also on the coffin lids. Nothing was in there but this old thing, crumpled up in the corner in front of Myrantha’s coffin. That’s why the door opened like it did; whoever broke in screwed up the lock, I guess. Wonder who it was?”

  Marla’s arms and shoulders became gooseflesh. “The bodies were gone? Shit, Nan, remember what Gramma said…”

  Nancy was staring absently out the window. “Yeah, I know. There were also weird symbols painted on the back wall around an inverted cross. Your gramma did know something, but she’s only guessing about what it all means. I don’t think the Obers actually walked out of that place on their own two feet. That’s a little too far out, don’t you think?”

  Marla’s face had turned pasty white. “But why would someone have taken their remains? What would you do with something like that—put it up on the mantel as a conversation piece? This is just too fucking weird, Nancy. Something’s going on.”

  “Yeah, it’s called grave robbing,” Nancy said, her tone unaccountably thick with sarcasm. “Don’t ask me why someone would want the Obers’ nasty old bones…why did Michael Jackson want to pay umpteen millions for the Elephant Man’s? Go ask a shrink about it.”

  “It still scares the shit out of me,” Marla returned defensively, remembering she was still mad at her friend for the fiendish prank she had pulled. She turned on the radio to an offensive level and erected an invisible wall between the front bucket seats.

  Inverted cross, weird symbols…sure evidence of witchcraft, all right. But Nancy was right about one thing. It was ridiculous to even imagine that seventy-year-old corpses had suddenly reanimated and hopped out of their coffins, strolled out of their place of interment, finger bones interlinked, their skull faces grinning like dumbstruck tourists’. There was a limit to what even the Devil himself could do. Wasn’t there?

  The smell of the garment Nancy was wearing, and the strong supposition that it had once been worn by Myrantha Ober, was beginning to make Marla feel extremely nauseated. She rolled down her window to let in some fresh air, her mind spinning with unanswered questions. Who did take the bodies, and why? If they had been after souvenirs, why had they left the cape behind?

  And what else might they have left behind?

  She glanced suspiciously at the cape and turned the radio off. “That…cape was the only thing you found in there?”

  Nancy, seemingly offended, lifted her chin with indignance and met Marla’s probing stare head-on. “I’m really sure I’d hold out on you, Marla. I thought we were best friends.”

  Marla, holding fast to her anger, didn’t rush to verify the statement. “I was just wondering why that cape would have been left, if someone was after some kinky souvenirs.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want it; who knows? But this is all that was in there besides a lot of dust. And that cross. I know why they didn’t take that, though…I tried to get it off myself. Impossible.”

  They rode for a while in silence. Marla, steeped in black mystery, began to have the feeling that another presence was in the car, riding back with them into town. She searched the rearview mirror, half expecting to see a pallid, ghoulish face reflected in it. She couldn’t shake off the worry that had sunk poisonous tentacles deep into her peace of mind. She saw again that horrible door begin to creak open all by itself…

  “Are you sure those marks in the dust weren’t made today? I mean, how could you tell?”

  Nancy tossed her head back against the headrest and expelled a loud breath, knowing what Marla was hinting at, wanting the subject to be dropped. “I could just tell, okay? More dust had collected over the smudges. Probably a month’s worth, maybe more. If you want to believe the Obers made them, go ahead, but you can rest assured that they’re long gone by now.”

  Marla wondered what her gramma would say if she knew about the missing bodies. Unless she died of fright right there on the spot, she would most likely begin to rage: I told you so! I told you that business wasn’t over with yet! The Obers have returned from Hell!

  It would serve no purpose for the pitiful, shriveled creature in the Pinedale Nursing Center to be told. “That business” was over with. Someone in Sharon Valley was up to something suspicious, but the Obers were still undeniably, irreversibly, and eternally dead. Jasmine Colter should die in peace, believing that instead.

  Marla’s mind drifted back to when she was little, and Gramma was her best friend and favorite playmate; they would bake cookies and make paper dolls together, and clothes—Gramma would make the most beautiful little girl clothes, dresses finer than any store in Sharon Valley had—and other days she would read stories to her with the dramatic flare of an actress, pacing about the floor gesturing with her arms and face as if she were on stage, her wide-eyed audience of one sitting timidly amid the cushions of her great puffy old couch, sucking a lollipop, bursting into frequent high trills of laughter whenever she would make a funny face. Sometimes Gramma would make the stories up, tell tales Marla had never heard before, but always they were just as entertaining, and always had a moral at the end. Then one day she told the story about the witc
h. Not the witch who kept trying to kill Snow White, nor the one who kept Rapunzel high up in a tower, nor the one who fattened up Hansel and Gretel. This was the one who lived in Sharon Valley when Gramma was a little girl. The moral to this story was that the Devil always kept his end of a bargain, so beware of ever making one.

  Marla had suffered waking nightmares and sleepwalking after hearing that story, and her mother had finally gotten out of her what the matter was. Pamela had been so angry about it she called Gramma Colter right then, at three o’clock in the morning, to bawl her out about it. How dare she tell Marla such a story! What was she trying to do, scare the poor child out of her wits?

  Gramma never told the story nor mentioned the witch again, except to tell her granddaughter that it had only been a made-up story and that she shouldn’t be afraid. Never, that is, until four years ago, after she’d had the stroke. For several months afterward she would talk of nothing else.

  “I think I’ll wear this to the prom,” Nancy said with a short laugh, breaking the heavy silence.

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” Marla responded sourly. “Maybe you could get Jay to dress up like Dracula. One thing for sure, you’d have plenty of room on the dance floor. That thing smells like it should be crawling with maggots.”

  “I’ll wash it in Woolite, like I do all my fine washables,” Nancy quipped with a shrug. “You know, Jay’s always said I was a witchy woman.”

  Marla refused to be wheedled out of her grudge. She responded unsmilingly, “You know what the Bible says shalt be done to a witch.”

  “You preaching to me now?” Nancy snorted. “Don’t make me laugh.”

  They rounded a curve on the south side of the hill; the lights of the valley below sparkled like stars on a blanket of black velvet. Seventy years ago they would only have seen the dim glow of scattered oil lanterns hanging in windows, the activities within the humble dwellings limited by the undiscovered wonders of modem technology. Instead of watching MTV on their color television sets, the kids might have been playing a game of cards, or making paper dolls and toy boats. On this night seventy years ago the people of Sharon Valley would have gone to bed free of worry and slept peacefully through the night, blissfully unaware of the evil that slept with them. Eight days later they would find out, but then it would be too late.

  Marla forced herself to think instead of the phone call she was planning to make. She needed to anticipate all of Montgomery’s possible reactions, so she would be prepared to respond appropriately to anything he said. In one scenario he gasped and pleaded with her to please, please not publicly accuse him of sexual misconduct, that it would end his career, ruin his entire life, etc., etc. But just as clearly she could hear him say: We’ll see how your little story holds up under a voice stress test, Miss Mingee. Do you know the penalty for falsely accusing someone of that? For beginners, Miss Mingee, I can sue you in civil court for libel and slander; so in other words, your father would probably lose his shirt because of your little indiscretion. I’ll see you in the principal’s office tomorrow morning—or even worse—and by the way, did you know I have a tape recorder on my telephone? Then there was the ultimate: Yes, I have recorded this entire conversation, Miss Mingee, and I believe that you will be dropping by to see me at home about twice a week until after graduation…?

  She turned the radio back on as they approached the bottom of the hill, and said without apology in her voice, “I’ve changed my mind about calling Doom…that could backfire too. We don’t need any more trouble than we already have.”

  Nancy shrugged. “I’m not worried about it.”

  As soon as Marla dropped her off, Nancy peeled out of the smelly cape and wrapped it in a tight bundle around the other thing she’d taken from Myrantha’s coffin. Marla’s suspicion that she was holding something back had been right on the money, and Nancy had come close to confessing, but ultimately decided that Marla wasn’t worthy of sharing such a terrible secret. She only flirted with danger and darkness; having an intimate affair with them was out of the question. So it would do no good for her to know.

  Hoping that her parents were settled down in the den, allowing her to get to her bedroom without being seen or questioned about the mysterious bundle in her hands, Nancy opened the front door of her house and stepped in, unconsciously cringing as she closed it behind her.

  Her mother’s voice called out from the den. “Nancy, is that you?”

  “Yes,” she called back, and holding her new possessions to one side, quickly ducked into the hallway leading to the bedrooms. She’d told her parents that she and Marla were going out for a Coke, and apparently they didn’t require a report on the excursion; she continued unhindered to the privacy of her own room.

  First she turned on the light and closed the door, then she very reverently unrolled the thin, rough material on her bed. The cape seemed to smell a lot worse indoors, but Nancy didn’t think too much about it. She was too excited about what was inside. Her fingers trembled as she exposed the hood and again feasted her eyes on the sinister treasure, an ancient ledger which contained not only the last Will and Testament of Myrantha Ober, addressed to her daughter Morganna, but also the key to her evil power.

  Nancy had every intention of utilizing that power, and she knew exactly what she would use it for first.

  She picked up the ledger as if it were the most priceless object on earth, a wicked smile creeping to her lips.

  As usual, Marla pulled up in front of Nancy’s house at 7:45AM the next morning and honked the horn. Several moments later Nancy bounded from her house wearing a black sweater and navy-blue slacks, her hair pulled back in a ponytail with a blue ribbon. Marla, too fretful about what was going to happen when they got to school to remember she was supposed to still be mad at her, smiled when Nancy got in the car. But the smile fell flat when she saw Nancy’s face.

  “Crap, Nan, what’s wrong with your eyes? Didn’t you get any sleep?”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Nancy snarled, flipping down the visor mirror in front of her. She studied her reflection. “I don’t know what you’re talking about…there’s nothing wrong with my eyes. But I guess I didn’t get that much sleep last night. I had some pretty bizarre dreams.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” The Cutlass moved forward through the residential street, between identical rows of cigar-box houses, most of them shamelessly unadorned, paint cracked and peeling, yards veritable weed gardens, the poor hillbilly cousins of the plush showcase estates of Cameron where Marla lived. The two girls’ friendship would have been unlikely if their mothers had not been best friends. Pamela and Beth still carried on ingrained traditions, but the bond between them had grown lukewarm, which might not have happened if they had married men of equal income and status.

  “I dreamed Montgomery was chasing me all night,” Marla elaborated, “with a big, gigantic piece of chalk, if you know what I mean. What did you dream about? The tomb?”

  Nancy hesitated. “Well…oh, never mind. I had several dreams, and they were all just weird. I can’t really remember any details.” She looked away, concealing the lie. She remembered the dreams quite vividly. They had both terrified and awed her. They’d seemed so real. She’d come face to face with the Devil. And he had been so indescribably beautiful…

  When they pulled into the student parking lot, they saw Dennis getting out of his car near the west fence. He noticed Marla’s Cutlass at about the same time, and pointedly looked the other way, then disappeared into a huddle of fellow smokers.

  “That bastard,” Marla growled. “I can see he’s wanting to play games. Well, we’ll see who winds up crawling back on whose knees to make up.”

  “Yeah, probably you,” Nancy remarked idly, obviously preoccupied with other thoughts.

  “I can be just as stubborn as Dennis,” Marla insisted. “Honestly, Nan, I’m not giving in this time. He was the one acting like a jerk. He has
to apologize to me.”

  “Sure, Marla.”

  They went on into the school building behind a clique of giggling freshman girls smelling like a chemical floral arrangement. Marla and Nancy turned to each other and did the “Aren’t they simply deplorable” eye roll while holding their noses. On the surface it might just have been another Friday morning, but there was a strong undercurrent of tension running beneath the outer jovial layer. As they weaved through the throng of noisy students, Marla brought it to the surface.

  “I don’t suppose we’d be lucky enough for Doom to forget about telling us to meet him in Mr. G’s office this morning. You know, maybe it was just an idle threat, intended to scare us into shaping up…or at least making us lose some sleep. Maybe he wasn’t really serious.”

  Nancy rolled her eyes again and shook her head. “He was serious as a heart attack, Marla. That guy’s got it in for us. We could act real sweet and smile real pretty and promise him we’d never give him any more trouble if he’d let us off the hook this time, and he’d turn right around and burn our butts.” She smiled and nodded at the kids popular enough to merit her attention—the fact that she’d achieved socialite status riding along on Marla’s coattails didn’t humble her a bit. Her expression revealed nothing of the fearful turbulence churning behind it. What if what if what if…

  She suddenly halted, her face etching into a mask of surprise. “Oh, shit.”

  Marla followed her friend’s gaze. “Yeah, shit is right; make that with a capital S.”

  They were approximately fifteen feet from the offices, and Albert Montgomery could clearly be seen through the glass walls. He was talking to the principal’s secretary.

  Nancy muttered something under her breath, but Marla didn’t catch it.

  Assuming it had only been more profanity, she said, “Maybe we should just ditch.” She pulled Nancy against the wall behind a water fountain. “We can go to a pay phone and call ourselves in sick, pretend we’re our mothers.”