The Devil's Demeanor (16 page)

Mom-thing
seemed to lose itself in its thoughts. Don took this time to grieve over the
mother he’d lost—the mother who would spend hours doing the homework he
“forgot” to do himself; the mother who would have breakfast and a smile ready
in the morning before school. He loved his mother...but she was gone now.

Sirens sounded
far up the hill behind him, and Don guessed the emergency vehicles were headed
to his house. Was someone still alive there? Uncle Johnny? Dad?

“Boys!” a
familiar voice called from far away. “Where are you?”

Don knew that voice.
He turned around and shouted, “Dad, we’re down here!” When he turned back, the
mom-thing was right in his face. He screamed just as lightning rent the sky.

Mom-thing
screamed as well, and it was not a human sound but an animal one. Don could
hear the fear in it. The thing looked up to the stormy sky with wide animal
eyes. It clutched Don’s shoulder painfully without looking at him, continuing
to squeal as if paralyzed with terror.

“Dad!” Don
screamed again.

And then Dad
was there, in the clearing. He held a gun in his hand, pointed straight at Don
and the thing. “Get away from my son,” he said fiercely.

The thing had
stopped squealing the moment Dad appeared and was now backing away, still on
all fours. More lightning streaked across the sky and the mom-thing screamed
again. And then it ran circles around Ethan, who continued to stand in place.
He hadn’t moved an inch since Don found him.

“Stop it!” Dad
yelled, and the thing did just that. It stared at him with hateful eyes. He
reached out and took Don’s hand, pulling him away.

Don stood
behind his dad, staring at his little brother. The mom-thing was almost
directly in front of Ethan, guarding him.

“Ethan, come
here,” Dad said.

Ethan looked
from him to the monster. Don could tell his brother wasn’t trying to figure out
if he could get safely away; he was deciding if he wanted to go at all.

“Ethan,” Don
called. “That’s not Mom anymore. You have to come with us.”

The young boy
simply asked, “Why?”

“Son,” Dad said
soothingly to Ethan, “she’s not your mother anymore.”

“What is she?”

“A monster?”
the mom-thing asked Dad in that witch’s voice. “Is that what you would call the
woman you once loved?”

“You’re not
her,” he said simply.

Lightning and
thunder again; the monster screamed.

Dad used the
distraction to run toward the thing. It suddenly looked directly at him. He
raised the gun and pulled the trigger. Don flinched at the shot. The thing flew
backward to the ground as the bullet struck its left shoulder. Dad had wanted
to get as close as possible to avoid hitting Ethan.

Ethan!

Don suddenly
remembered his little brother. Ethan wasn’t standing in the spot where he’d
been earlier. Don searched around and found him a few feet away, his hands
covering his ears. Whether he was trying to block out the gunfire or the
constant thunder was unclear.

The storm was
picking up now. More lightning, more thunder, and now a lot of wind. Don ran
over to Ethan and held him close as they watched their parents fight. The
mom-thing had managed to get back to its feet again and was swiping and lunging
at Dad’s gun hand.

Dad tried to
point the gun to fire off another shot but the thing kept slinging dirt into
his face. At one point, Dad accidentally fired a stray shot that came
dangerously close to the boys.

Don thought
about taking Ethan back up the hill to the cul-de-sac and finding the police,
but he found himself unable to move. He didn’t want to leave until he knew how
this ended.

Mom or Dad?

If the
mom-thing won, would Don go with it? Would he have a choice?

Just then, a
lightning bolt struck directly in front of the thing, knocking it back a few
feet. Don was temporarily blinded and only saw an afterimage of the two
fighting figures. His ears rang for a moment, and then everything returned to
normal.

Well,
almost
normal.

Only one parent
remained standing, and he held a gun in front of him. Dad breathed heavily, his
black clothes stuck to him with sweat. The mom-thing lay on the ground, dead.
Don looked back and forth between the two of them. The thing had several bullet
holes in its chest. Don left Ethan and ran over to Dad.

Dad hugged him,
never taking his eyes off the dead figure on the ground. Don looked over his
shoulder at it. The eyes were still wide open, still shiny, though they seemed
to be dimming now.

“Ethan!” Dad
suddenly called. “Where’s Ethan?”

They both
looked to where Don had left his little brother. Ethan was no longer standing
there. Dad looked back at the woods, Don at the rock wall at the end of the
clearing. Just at the top of the wall he thought he saw a figure. It was small,
like a boy’s.

Lightning
flashed and Don saw him clearly for an instant. And then he was gone.

“Dad!” Don
yelled, still looking up. Dad looked as well but, of course, saw nothing. Ethan
was gone.

*
 
*
 
*

Don’s house was
surrounded by emergency vehicles when he and Dad returned. An ambulance was
just pulling away, and Dad told him Uncle Johnny was alive and was going to be
okay. Don sat in his uncle’s car while Dad talked to the police. After a few
minutes, Dad walked up to the car and said, “We have to go the police station
for a little while. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry I
lost Ethan,” Don said before he could stop himself.

Dad stared at
him, his head tilted. The police lights flashed across his face—red, blue, red,
blue. Finally, he said, “You didn’t lose him, son. He was taken from us.” His
tone was pained, but it seemed like a different kind of pain than what Don
expected.

“The police can
find him,” Don said helpfully, but Dad’s expression didn’t lighten.

“I hope so,” he
told Don. “For everyone’s sake.”

Then he walked
away, toward a couple of waiting officers. Another cop escorted Don to a squad
car. Don knew he and Dad were going to the same place, yet at that moment he
felt completely alone.

*
 
*
 
*

Understandably,
Don didn’t return to school for nearly two weeks. He refused anyone’s questions
about what happened the night his mother died and his brother disappeared.
Well, everyone besides the police. Don’s friends could easily go without any
information, but withholding from the cops would’ve been bad for Dad.

Don didn’t
doubt the authorities believed Dad had killed Mom that night. It was
self-defense, plain and simple. Still, no one could explain Ethan’s
disappearance. Not even Dad. Don had told him about how he had seen Ethan atop
the rock wall, looking down at them, but Dad had said to keep that to himself.

Where is
Ethan?
Don asked himself every day.
Where is my brother?

He could only
imagine terrible things when he thought of Ethan and the creature together. Was
that monster corrupting Ethan, feeding him virgin blood and teaching him to
kill?

The FBI was
conducting a nationwide search for the boy, but Don didn’t think they would
find Ethan until he wanted to be found.

But why did
Ethan leave in the first place? Don didn’t believe his brother had been
abducted; Ethan had gone willingly. Don missed him, feared for him. But the
monster hadn’t taken Ethan to harm him. At least, not physically. That didn’t
comfort Don, however.

He was allowed
to make up the final exams he’d missed during his absence. He would be spending
his junior year in Texas and wanted to pass all of his subjects. He tried to
distract himself with school, and for the most part he succeeded. He wanted to
move as quickly as possible, and Dad was currently wrapping up all loose ends.
He constantly assured his son there was nothing to worry about, everything was
under control. Don tried to remember that every night when he cried himself to
sleep. He tried not to think of the way he’d been at Mom’s funeral, emotionless
and blank-faced.

He and Dad
stayed at Uncle Johnny’s house while Uncle Johnny was in the hospital. As it
turned out, Mom had only bitten Don’s uncle on the neck, and the wound wasn’t
life-threatening.

In the last
week of May 1998, Don stood on the landing between floors in the tower of
Augusta High, staring out a large window. There was a playground next door to
the school, and he watched from afar the kids playing and having fun. Suddenly,
he remembered his own childhood: building snowmen in his front yard with Nick;
playing Nintendo with his friends in the playroom of his childhood home. Don
remembered clearly the wide windows and white-tile floor, and how the Christmas
trees always shed on that floor. And how he, Ethan and Mom (and sometimes
Adrian) would sweep up all the needles together.

Don quickly
wiped the tears from his cheeks when he heard footsteps behind him. When he
turned, he saw Monica standing on the landing with him. She had been coming
from downstairs.

“Hey,” she
said.

“Hey,” he
replied. “What are you doing here?”

“I heard you
were taking your geometry final today; I wanted to see you.” She paused for a
moment. “You never returned my calls.”

“I’ve been
staying at my uncle’s house,” he said simply.

“Oh.” Another
pause. “How do you think you did on your finals?”

“I’m pretty
sure I failed geometry.”

She laughed,
and so did he.

“I’m not going
to ask what happened,” she said after a while. “I
am
going to say I wish
it didn’t happen.”

It was all Don
could do not to cry in front of her; her words were very touching. “Thank you,”
he said as best as he could.

“So, uh....”
Monica suddenly seemed at a loss for words. “Will I ever see you again? After
you move, I mean.”

Now he was the
one at a loss. It was really hitting him now, what he was leaving behind.
Finally, he said, “I think you will.”

Monica smiled.
“I do, too.”

Together they
stood at the large window on the landing in the tower of Augusta High. It would
be a long time before they saw each other again.

The man
approached the mall, not knowing why. He was just drawn to it, to the people
inside. Something was going on in this place and the man wanted to find out
what. It was night, and no one noticed him as he walked into one of the four
entrances. This one was near the movie theater, which was now closed for good.
The grilles were nearly all the way down, the inside lobby pitch black.

At this late
hour, the mall was not very busy. It wasn’t busy during the day, either. This
place was on its last legs, it seemed. The building was long and narrow, shops
on either side. On each end was a department store, both also closed. The man
could see a Macy’s or Sears or something to his right. Down at that end was
some kind of light show: green lasers and fog billowing up from a particular
store on the right.

The man now
realized what had drawn him here. It was a horror-movie convention of some
kind. Local, with no celebrities or anyone else who mattered. Just displays and
merchandise and fans.

A group of
teens passed him, made up of two boys and one girl. The girl was locking arms
with one of the guys, and she was dragging him to the horror store. The man
followed the group, as if he belonged with the kids.

The man watched
the group stand outside the store, a dark arch serving as the entrance, draped
with black curtains. They ducked into the store and, a moment later, the man
followed.

Inside, there
were displays set up next to each other. There were more lasers, not just green
but red and blue as well. And even more fog. The man looked at one display in
particular. It was for a movie he enjoyed as a kid—a long time ago. A TV was
set up for the display, showing footage from the horror flick. There was
merchandise scattered in front, toys and masks and fake knives.

The man looked
over to the group he had followed, saw them make their way to the rear of the
dark store.

An hour passed,
and the mall closed for the night. The shoppers were gone...except for the trio
of teens, who finally left the store room where they had hidden.

The man watched
from behind a curtain by one of the displays as they approached the glass door
of the store.

“We’re locked
in!” one of the guys said, worried.

“No, we’re
not,” said the girl. “I used to work here. The lock is broken. See?”

She pushed on
the door and a loud click followed. The man watched them walk into the main
area of the mall, but the door didn’t close behind them. He made to follow
them, not knowing why. He just wanted to be near them.

The door
clicked after him, echoing down the long stretch of mall. The man leapt behind
a fountain just as one of the boys said, “What was that?”

“The door
probably didn’t close all the way when we left,” said the girl.

They continued
on their way—the man could hear their footsteps—and he stood to follow once
again. The lights were as dim as they were when he arrived at the mall, but now
there were no lasers or fog. The entire building was so quiet.

“What about
security?” the girl’s boyfriend asked.

“Rosie barely
gets her fat ass out of the office over there.” The girl pointed to the right,
behind the food court. “She usually starts her rounds after two, so we have at
least four hours to ourselves. The guy who’s on now already did his last
rounds, and Rosie will be here at midnight.”

“They should
have never fired you,” one of the guys said. This was the first thing he’d said
since leaving the horror store. He seemed like the third wheel, shy and out of
place.

The trio passed
the food court, heading toward the department store at the other end. The man
could see it from where he was, a large, black opening. There were no security
gates or doors; it was open to anyone from inside the mall. The man could see
an escalator as he drew closer.

He tried to
catch up to the trio. He was tired of being alone. Though he was a little older
than them, he figured they would invite him along. He was, like them, someone
looking for a little fun in an empty building. He just wanted to greet them, to
be friendly to them.

The girl was
pretty. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her jeans tight, showing
off her wonderful curves. The tail swished from side to side as she bounced
down the mall. She kept her boyfriend’s arm around her shoulders, laughing at
something he said. The other boy looked around at their dim surroundings. He
seemed nervous.

“By the way,”
the girl said, “I wasn’t fired; I was laid off. This whole building is getting
bulldozed in a year or so.”

“Whatever,
Trish,” said Third Wheel, almost looking back at the man following them. “I
really don’t think we should be in here.”

“Jesus, Danny,
if you didn’t want to come, you should have stayed home. You’re an
embarrassment of a brother,” Boyfriend said.

Danny fell back
from the group a little.

“You’re an
asshole, Marcus,” Trish said to her boyfriend. She looked back to Danny,
probably to see if he was okay.

That was when
she noticed something behind them. She gasped and broke from her boyfriend’s
embrace. The boys turned. The man turned as well, though he wasn’t sure what
they were looking at. He thought he heard something from near the food court,
but it was dim down there.

Laughter.
That’s what he heard. Something was coming from the darkness of the food court.

“Run!” Trish
yelled. Everyone, including the man, ran.

The man could
hear the laughter echoing throughout the mall. It sounded so close. He was too
afraid to look back, to see what was following them. “Wait for me!” he yelled
to the group. Trish screamed as they ran into the large department store. Danny
fell flat on his face. Marcus turned back to help his brother, but when he
looked up, he yelled and ran the other way. Whatever was chasing them must have
been terrifying to look at if Marcus abandoned his brother to get away from it.

Danny didn’t
look up, nor did he even try to stand. He covered his head with his arms. The
man wanted to help the boy up but found he couldn’t stop. He continued on,
seeing Marcus and Trish try to get out through the exit doors.

“He’s coming!”
Trish screamed at her boyfriend. “He’s going to kill us!”

The person—or
thing—chasing them must have passed Danny and kept on going as well. It must be
right behind the man, but he couldn’t turn to look.

“Not if I kill
his ass first!” Marcus pushed himself off the doors and raced toward the man.
He was a big teenager, probably played football. The man trusted the boy to
take care of their pursuer. He tried to get out of the boy’s way, but found
himself going forward, never slowing.

Marcus was
going to run into him if he didn’t move.

The teen
punched the man right in the face. For a moment, the man was stunned. Why was
Marcus attacking him?

The man tackled
the teen before he could stop himself and wrapped a hand around his throat,
holding him down. Why was he attacking Marcus? The man could hear Trish scream
from up ahead, so he looked up. She had her hands over her mouth, her eyes
wide. The man heard choking noises but didn’t know where they were coming from.
He looked behind him, expecting to see their pursuer, but he only saw Danny,
still lying in his protective position.

The man looked
back to Trish, who was now running up the escalator to the man’s right. The man
looked down at Marcus, wanting to apologize. He noticed his fingers were
digging into the boy’s throat so deeply. The neck looked like a toothpaste tube
squeezed from the middle. Marcus’s face was dark, his tongue sticking out.

He was dead.

The man was on
his feet—and hands, he noticed—as he raced up the escalator. He realized with
horrible acuity the kids hadn’t been running
with
him; they had been
running
from
him. As he reached the top floor, he remembered this wasn’t
the first time someone had run from him.

He had
forgotten entirely, but it all came rushing back now. It always came rushing
back.

The man didn’t
see Trish among the abandoned display cases and clothes racks, but he knew she
was close. He could hear her breathing. He headed straight ahead, hearing
someone shuffle away from him.

He saw Trish’s
rear end behind a counter. The man wanted to apologize about killing her
boyfriend. He hadn’t meant to. He just didn’t want to be alone anymore. He just
wanted friends.

He tried to
approach her, reaching out to her with his hands—the hands that killed her
boyfriend. Trish screamed. He saw her standing behind the counter, staring at
him with even wider eyes than before. “Please don’t kill me,” she pleaded.

“I don’t want
to kill you,” he replied, and he meant it. “I only want to greet you.”

He made his way
to her. She screamed again, for the final time.

Her body fell
to the first floor. Her scream was cut off abruptly when she hit. The man went
back downstairs and found Danny still huddled on the floor, at the border of
the mall and department store. He was shaking like a leaf in the wind. The man
stared down at him.

“I’m sorry
about your brother,” the man told Danny. “I had a brother too, once.”

Danny didn’t
have a chance to scream.

*
 
*
 
*

It was in the
year 2007 Don Scott turned twenty-five. It had been nine years since the death
of his mother and the “abduction” of his little brother by the monster. Not a
day went by Don didn’t think of that terrible night, but he learned not to let
those events ruin his life.

His first two
years in Texas were rough. Besides the nightmares, unpredictable crying, ulcer
flare-ups and occasional dizzy spells, his relationship with Yvonne came to the
breaking point. They just didn’t like each other, plain and simple. Dad
attributed his son’s health problems to the stressful events years before and
turned a blind eye to the arguments between son and wife. Yvonne used to yell
at Don for every little thing, from doing the dishes properly to watching
movies with the volume “too loud.”

At the time,
Don had his TV set up in the lounge on the second floor of Dad’s spacious
two-story house, which he had bought in early ’98. The house had four bedrooms
and a nice kitchen, with cream-colored carpet throughout. Don had been
surprised by the house when he finally moved there that summer.

After way too
many complaints from the stepmom about the volume, Don moved his TV into his
room. It was this very room Don and his friend Craig stepped into one night
when a familiar, irritating voice called from the foyer. “Don!”

He sighed and
looked over the railing to his stepmom. “Yes?” he said in a sugar-sweet voice.

“You have some
nerve bringing company over when you still have yet to take care of this
kitchen.”

“I’ll get it in
a minute,” he replied. He looked back at Craig, who was setting up a videogame
and pretending not to hear.

“Next time, you
better take care of the dishes
before
you go out,” said Yvonne, her eyes
bugging out.

“Okay,” said
Don. He then walked back into his room, closed the door, and said, “What a
fucking bitch.”

Craig laughed.
“You don’t get along with her, do you?”

“I don’t see
why I should. She’s a whore.”

Craig handed
him one of the gaming controllers and they began playing a shooting game. They
had only known each other for a few months, having met in junior college. They
both loved movies, though Craig was more into independent films where as Don
enjoyed big Hollywood blockbusters. When it came to cinema, they got along like
sand and water.

They were still
in their spring semester, Don taking a plethora of classes along with
filmmaking (the class in which he’d met Craig); Craig was taking only
filmmaking...for the third time. When Don asked him why he chose to take the
same class so many times, Craig said it was his favorite, and it was
practically free—he was good friends with the teacher.

“I’m surprised
she’s not nicer to you,” said Craig. “Considering what happened to you.”

Don continued
shooting the onscreen aliens; he didn’t want to talk about
that
. “I
should have never told you,” he said quietly.

“You
practically told everyone in class with that script you wrote.
 
I was just the only one to figure out it was
about you.”

“Yeah, but I
should have never confirmed it.”

One of the
assignments had been to write an unsigned twenty-page script about anything.
The teacher then gathered all of them and passed them to random classmates. Don
didn’t even realize what he had written until Craig read the words to the class.

The script
centered around the confrontation between Mom and Dad. Don had transcribed the
events exactly as he remembered them. Luckily Craig had thought the most
incredible parts to be fiction.

“You ever think
about moving out on your own?” Craig asked him after a moment.

“All the time,
but I can’t afford it.”

“I would think
you make pretty sweet money working security at that mall.”

“You would
think,” Don echoed.

“Do you ever
get scared, working there at night?”

Every night,
Don thought. “No,” he said.

He didn’t want
to tell Craig he feared Ethan would creep into the mall one night. Don had only
started the job two months ago, and so far he’d had no strange encounters.
Supposedly, homeless people would sneak into the closed-down movie theater
inside the mall, but Don hadn’t caught any. Yet.

“Hey, uh....”
Craig seemed nervous all of a sudden. “My roommates are dating and they’ve been
fighting a lot; I think they’re going to break up pretty soon. If they do, and
Corey’s girlfriend moves out, Corey and I will need a new roommate.” He paused.
“Would you be interested?”