The door to 215 was opening.
The Devil walked out, looking back, holding the door for someone behind him.
Kelly walked through the door.
She was smiling.
She was beautiful.
Thomas shot out into traffic.
He drove eight panicked miles before calming slightly and pulling over for gas. While the attendant filled his tank his mind began to work the bits of information he had, categorizing, arranging, analyzing and discarding.
Kelly was not dead. That was the most important piece of the puzzle right now: Kelly was not dead. Briefly his mind tried to sidetrack as he recalled how beautiful she’d looked…Kelly had never been beautiful or even pretty. She was a plain woman. He knew that, but now…how had that happened? He shook his head. That didn’t matter, his mind told him with calm authority, it only matters that she is alive.
Without you, she’d be dead.
You saved her life.
It was true, he decided, he had saved her life. Pride grew within him. He was a hero. A savior. He deserved everything the Devil had promised him, and more.
He drove to his office first. He had some files he wanted to shred and some more he wanted to delete from his hard drive. When he became President, he’d be scrutinized very closely. He also needed to flush his coke. He’d get something better, something prescription, once he was the President. He’d never be denied anything, ever again.
He was riffling through old files, pulling them out and stacking them on the floor next to him, looking for one case in particular: it was one he’d really screwed the pooch on. He laughed, remembering. He’d missed a key piece of evidence and his client had–
The Carrie Walsh folder was at the top of the hastily stacked files. It popped open, seemingly of its own accord, and two photographs slid out and seesawed to the floor landing one on the other. They were both face down.
Thomas froze, his frantic searching coming to an abrupt halt. He stared at the blank backs of the two pictures, his blood running cold. He reached out and grasped them by their corners and turned them over. He looked like a poker player scrutinizing the two cards that would make or break him in the game.
The one on top was the photo of baby Brian alive, in a friendly dinosaur tank top. He was caught mid-stride, toddling toward the camera, one pudgy baby arm reaching for the photographer. His smile was wide and gap-toothed. His blond hair bounced joyously on his cowlick.
In his mind, Thomas heard ghostly laughter, a baby’s happy giggle pulled through time.
The photo beneath was smaller and the edges were rough. It was one of the coroner’s photos, taken right before they began the autopsy. The only recognizable things were the fluff of blond hair and the dinosaur tank-top–the rest of Brian was a broken, bloody ruin.
Thomas ran them through the shredder, shuddering. He turned away as they were chewed down into the machine. He heard another ripple of laughter but just before it faded away, it dissolved into tears.
He leaned on his desk, catching his breath. His heart felt as though it were dragging through his chest, deflated and heavy. He couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. The thought that had occurred to him the day that Carrie was acquitted occurred to him again: he had offended.
He had offended.
Stop it, his mind commanded. You’re a hero. You’re a savior. You’ve nothing to feel remorseful over. You did everything you had to do. Everything. And it’s all going to come to fruition. All you have to do is go and get it.
He straightened and absently brushed away the tears that had slid, unnoticed, down his face. Hot in here, he thought distractedly, I’m sweating like a pig. Gotta get that air checked out.
Then he remembered that he didn’t have to get the air or anything else checked out. He was going to be President. He was going to be rich with a beautiful, stupid wife, he was going to be handsome forever, he would never age…
Yes, his mind told him, it’s time to claim your prize.
He finished in his office and then drove to Kelly’s house. He assumed the Devil would be where Kelly was. He didn’t admit to himself that he also wanted another glimpse of her…of her mysterious new beauty.
It occurred to him that he could tell her how he’d saved her life. He could woo her with the info. She was bound to be grateful. She was maybe too smart to be his wife, but she could be his mistress, he decided.
He’d forgotten completely that he’d been the one to put her in danger in the first place.
He parked his car in the street and sauntered to her door, his spirits lifting as he considered everything he would soon have. I’ll have everything I deserve, he thought, and no less.
He knocked on the door.
* * *
The Devil opened the door to find Thomas Evigan standing on the small porch. Thomas’ grin was wide: idiotically so. His eyes sparkled with chilly pinpricks of light: he had snorted a bit of his coke before flushing the rest of it down the toilet.
The Devil controlled his features, just barely able to keep his mouth from gaping open. He tilted his head and closed his eyes briefly.
“Thank you,” he said, almost whispering, reverential with gratitude. He felt a weight lift away and float off into the clear afternoon sky. He smiled.
“You’re welcome!” Thomas rejoined jauntily, stepping past him and into the house. He gazed around with fevered interest. He’d never given any thought to Kelly before, much less to how she lived. “Nice. Small, but nice,” he said, tossing the words carelessly.
Thomas turned back to the Devil but his eyes skated over him and away. He took a breath.
“So, anyway,” Thomas said and he sidled past the Devil toward the kitchen, his curiosity a wild thing in him fueled by the coke. “How do we work this? Will I be President all at once? Or do you, like, fix the elections or something?”
He turned into the kitchen doorway and beheld Carrie, sitting at the table, a cup of coffee before her. Carrie blinked at him in shock. Then a large grin overtook her face.
“Thomas!” she said. “I am very surprised to see you here!” She laughed.
Thomas began to smile, happy to see a familiar face.
“I could say the same! I mean…” his smile faded as he looked over his shoulder at the Devil who’d moved into the kitchen doorway. The Devil stood silent, arms crossed on his chest. Thomas turned back to Carrie. “You…you tried to kill Kelly. Why are you…” he turned back to the Devil. “Why is she here?” he demanded. He was suddenly afraid that she had also made some deal with the Devil. Perhaps one that would interfere with his own. “She tried to kill Kelly, I saved Kelly, don’t forget that. Don’t forget our deal!”
Still Carrie laughed, infuriating Thomas and now he stood three feet from the Devil staring a shaky challenge into his eyes. The Devil only smiled.
“Don’t worry,” the Devil said, laying one hot and heavy hand on Thomas’ shoulder. “That’s not actually Carrie. Carrie is finally getting what she deserves. And more besides.”
Thomas looked at Carrie, suspicion dragging his features together. Carrie grinned and mouthed something to him. It looked like ‘meow’. Crazy bitch. Thomas’ reply to her was a vicious sneer.
“Whatever, let’s get the show on the road here.” Thomas shook off the Devil’s hand and pulled out a chair. He sat, his legs a wide v, arms crossed over his chest. He glanced at Carrie, at her insolent grin, and felt a distinct ripple of unease whose source he couldn’t identify. Go figure, he thought sarcastically, that crazy bitch is making me feel crazy.
He turned his gaze back to the Devil and raised his eyebrows. It occurred to his coke-addled mind that for being the Devil, this guy was kind of a pussy. He laughed.
Then the Devil stepped toward him and Thomas’ laugh was cut off as if on a switch. Another ripple of unease, stronger, poured through him.
He scrambled to sit straighter in his chair.
“Hold on now…we had a deal, remember?”
The Devil inclined his head slightly. Then he pulled out a chair and turned it around, the back toward Thomas and he sat, straddling it. Facing Thomas.
“Please continue,” the Devil said.
Thomas swallowed and tried to relax. This place was getting hot. Felt hotter in here than it had outside. Maybe the stove was on.
He tried to gather his thoughts before they could go galloping off in different directions. He found he was too flustered. He decided to cut directly to the chase.
“I want it all, everything you promised me,” he said, finally.
The Devil smiled again, it played over his lips tugging first one corner of his mouth up and then the other. Then he laughed. Then he shook his head, once left, once right.
“No,” the Devil said. He was still smiling.
Carrie laughed.
Thomas’ head rocked back on his neck. He stared at the Devil with growing incredulity, but a part of him, the deep brain, the caveman, cried out for him to say fine, fine! accept it and leave before something terrible could happen.
Thomas heard that weak and mewling part of himself and quashed it once and for all. He stood abruptly and his chair clattered to the kitchen floor. He leaned over the Devil, his face was going red with adrenalin. Anger and fear smashed around inside him like colliding protons exciting his already volatile insides.
“You’ll do it!” he yelled. He’d intended for his voice to come out deep and strong, authoritative, but it was reedy and thin instead. He continued on anyway, his face growing redder. “You’ll give me everything I asked for: the Presidency, the wife, the money; all of it! You hear me! ALL OF IT! ALL OF IT!”
He stamped a foot for emphasis on both ‘all’s. He put his hands out to grab the Devil by the shoulders, to shake him into agreement, but in the end, found he couldn’t do it. The cowering caveman part of his brain was too strong and his hands merely hovered in the air and then snapped back as he crossed his arms again.
“Well?” Thomas demanded, feeling jittery adrenalin whipping dizzily through his system, setting his nerves on hair-trigger alertness.
The Devil shook his head, once left, once right…and smiled.
Now Thomas’ rage overflowed its banks washing reason and sanity away. He grabbed the Devil on either side of his face, his fingers digging in behind his jaw. He thrust his face into the Devil’s.
“YOU PROMISED ME YOU PROMISED YOU BASTARD YOU PROMISED ME–”
His voice was cut off as the Devil stood and Thomas saw the fire that was kindling in his eyes. Black fire, red fire, black smoke, and souls…oh, the suffering of those souls…
He tried to pull his hands away from the fuming, grinning, burning face and found that he could not. His hands were welded in place. The Devil leaned in and now Thomas felt the heat from his eyes–from his entire body–and it seemed he felt himself warm in a solid sheet from forehead to toes.
It was like standing too close to a bonfire suddenly doused with accelerant.
“Thomas,” the Devil whispered in his ear, and now Thomas felt the heat on that side of his face, felt the small hairs singe and he smelled the burning…his hair was beginning to burn where the Devil’s face brushed against it. “I lied.”
Thomas began to shake, teeth gritted, his eyes wide and dry. He felt his fingertips begin to burn, his toes and his ankles and the pain whipped into him and he could not move. He tried to close his eyes but they had dried open, his eyeballs beginning to bubble and he felt the agonizing growth of each small blister. His upper thighs and crotch heated up until it seemed a blowtorch had been turned on them. Finally his organs, the rich and meaty center of him, were bubbling like a stew. He opened his mouth to scream and his throat crisped at the first inrush of air and then the Devil’s face was before him.
“You’ll not have the life you desired for yourself; it offends me and is an affront to all mankind.” The Devil’s voice was low but Thomas heard every word, even though his ears had melted back into his head. “I will set you among the rest: the murderers and liars and thieves and you will burn for your sins and that burning will not end until God, Himself decrees it.”
Thomas’ clothes began to smoke and then fine curls of flame licked along the seams, blue and eager. The skin under his clothing first fused to the fibers and then his skin, too, was burning. He burned inside and out and his mind wanted him to faint, to die, but still he stood, shaking and aware.
There was no end to this burning.
No end to this torment.
He finally understood.
But it was too late.
“This is My Judgment,” the Devil said, and Thomas burst into a pillar of flame.
* * *
The Devil stood at Kelly’s bedside, Sitri next to him. The kitchen they had so recently deserted was clean and shining white–no trace of the raging inferno that had consumed Thomas Evigan and shepherded him to Hell.
The Devil gazed at Kelly’s sleeping face, drawing comfort from the sweet calm he found there. An early evening breeze blew the curtains and they fluttered into and through the Devil but he didn’t notice.
He was fading.
“Tell her…” he whispered. “Tell her that…” He shook his head.
Sitri waited patiently. He knew what it meant to Transition. He did not envy Lucifer the journey.
“Tell her that she makes it bearable,” the Devil said, his voice breaking over the last word.
Sitri nodded as a tear slipped from his eye. He wiped it away.
“What do you think she’s meant to do?” Sitri asked.
The Devil shook his head and faded a bit more.
“God only knows,” he said. He wouldn’t take his eyes from Kelly.
Sitri smiled and wiped another tear from his cheek. He turned and started from the room but paused in the doorway, his back to the Devil.
“I have to get going. I’m taking this body to the police and turning it in.”
The Devil glanced at his friend.
“How long will you stay in it, Sitri?”
Sitri turned and grinned.
“In women’s prison? As long as it’s fun, my friend. As long as it’s fun.” He winked.
The Devil summoned the ghost of a smile and then turned back to Kelly. He was almost completely transparent, now. Sitri stared for a moment longer, his features falling into sorrow, and then he turned back out the doorway.