Thomas Evigan tried to control his temper. He had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t care whether he actually won the case or not. He knew this little cunt had killed her kid and in a really disgusting way, too. She deserved jail time and most likely, she’d get it. So he didn’t mind if he lost, just as long as the trial lasted a good long while. Just as long as his name got out there. You couldn’t buy that kind of advertising.
“Carrie, that doesn’t make any sense. Don’t you understand? Brian would have been sick, his shoulder dislocated; he wouldn’t then run outside to Goddamn play. Can’t you see that? He was in horrible fucking pain. The iodine was eating him from the inside out and I can’t even imagine how the dislocated shoulder must have felt. Christ, it probably took his mind off his nausea and burning guts. At least, until you crushed his skull with your Stratus,” he was shaking his head in disgust–disgust that she could be this dense. “We can’t show that you had any involvement. We can only say that they forced you to cover for them. For their monstrousness. And listen, you have to get the crying thing worked out. Because I’m putting you on the stand.”
Carrie liked the sound of that. She could picture it. She’d have to make sure she had a real handkerchief, she’d seen that somewhere. Or, wait, maybe Thomas Evigan should hand her his as she cried–he could take it from his pocket and hand it to her, his fingers lightly brushing hers–everyone would see that as the beginning of the two of them falling in love. He’d be her protector, her champion!
Thomas Evigan watched the little psychopath’s face and could practically read word for word her thought process. Many of his female (and some of his male) clients had fallen in love with him. He thought he could use it.
“Hey, Carrie,” he softened his voice and laid his hand over hers. “I’m here for you. Don’t forget that, okay? Everything I am doing is to make sure you do not go to jail. I don’t want you in jail. You understand that, right?”
He squeezed her hand.
* * *
The Devil cried more, the leaking tears making his head heavier, not lighter, as Thomas Evigan’s thread in The Litany showed his manipulations: steering Carrie in his direction, getting enlargements of the pictures of Brian happy and alive and contrasting them with enlargements of the barely recognizable corpse, relishing the collapse of the cunt’s parents as the trial went on and on, clipping each article from each paper, enjoying lunches with people he’d not otherwise have met so soon in his career, putting his foot firmly on this trial, his stepping stone, his leg up, his shoe grinding the tragic death of one small boy into nothingness. Crushing it into oblivion as he turned the attention away from the dead boy, turned the attention away from the heinousness of the crime, and threw enough mud and muck at the parents, the school system, the police, to mix up the jury.
Then something happened even he could not have expected–Carrie was acquitted.
When he heard the verdict from the Jury Foreman, it flashed across his mind that he had made a terrible mistake. That he’d given this psychopath free reign to go on and terrorize, even kill, another child. Maybe several children. He felt an instant of self-disgust so strong his face suffused with hot blood and bile rose to the back of his throat. A thought trailed over and over in his mind–a pronouncement, a damnation: he had offended. He had offended.
He had offended.
Tears rose to his eyes and it was foreign, so foreign, he’d not cried since he was, oh, three, maybe. Maybe four or five, but not as an adult. Never as an adult. He thought quickly, turned and swept Carrie into his arms, laying his face on her shoulder, making sure he was faced out, eyes closed and tears visible, and he knew the picture it would make. Knew how they’d run it front page, the only one who’d believed in her, the champion that had saved this innocent girl, a man so compassionate that he could not hold back his own overwhelming emotion at having, quite possibly, saved her life.
The Devil’s head hung almost between his knees, overcome, worn down, done in, beaten. He remembered his life before as the Angel Lucifer: compassionate, understanding, loving, beautiful…but afraid. Afraid of Free Will and what humans would do with it, even as he felt the stirring of his own Free Will as it began to whisper of a place greater than that of God, Himself–and who should occupy that place.
And so he had become Satan: the Devil, Himself, monstrously ugly and stoic, and he’d punished and punished and punished, all according to what God, Himself wanted. But only after–after death, after the person had quite possibly gone on to wreak more havoc, after they’d stolen again and again, stolen property, or innocence, or even lives, after, always after.
The Devil waited until they died and then punished them equally, whether thief or murderer, blasphemer or zealot, and not minded until now. But there was something about Thomas Evigan, about his ambition, the trail of destruction he had wrought and would continue to wring into the future–and the Devil saw the pictures of the small body as Thomas Evigan saw them: exciting, publicity, a golden ticket–and the Devil was sickened. Would no one stand up for that little boy? Would no one stand up for right and punish those that had done wrong?
Would no one stand up?
Surely Thomas Evigan would be punished for his sins, but only after he had died, and that was the part the Devil could no longer abide. The Devil decided to mete out punishment in the here and now, not after Thomas Evigan had enjoyed fifty or sixty years of good dinners, expensive clothes, even more expensive whores, adulation, respect, and even love from a woman who would not see the monster in him and would bear his children and he would gaze upon his own children and never once would his mind go back to Brian, the unfortunate whose death he’d left unavenged.
The Devil knew he needed a body, a willing soul, so that he could walk the skin of the Earth and mete out a new punishment, according to his own judgment. He would do it just this one time and then come back to Hell. And he’d bring Thomas Evigan with him.
But what soul would be willing to allow the Devil entrance? No thief, murderer, adulterer, molester, greed monger, would ever be that self-sacrificing…they fought against possession even as they passed over. No, he needed someone who was choosing to pass. A person that gave up their life willingly would have no qualms about another being stepping into their place.
He closed his eyes, heavy-lidded and burning and searched The Litany, looking for a special circumstance, a certain set of criteria–his eyes rolled under his bulging eyelids like a dreamer caught in a nightmare of unimaginable horror. His lips pulled back from the double row of knife-sharp teeth so unruly they cut the inside of his mouth with each movement. Blood continued to pour from every inch of him, puddling on the damned, igniting, burning as they howled their chorus of eternal pain. Then he saw it: small and almost non-existent, barely causing a ripple on the line much less a spark; the meekest, most subdued of all the sins that make up The Litany: a suicide.
BOOK THREE
The Devil Stood Up
Mark Anders was played out.
At thirty-one, it had been sixteen years since he’d consumed his first drug and it had been six years since he’d gone more than a day without using. He was used up. Used. Mark had done everything imaginable to get the drugs his system had come to depend on. He’d stolen from family, friends and the occasional employer. He’d tricked himself out although that had become a lot less profitable as he’d gotten older and harder-looking. He’d even tricked out younger friends with the promise that he’d get them a fix.
A fix–it’s the only thing there was. He didn’t think about food except when he was falling-down faint with hunger, and he didn’t think about the family that had adopted him, except for his little ‘sister’ Kelly who he still missed.
He for sure didn’t think about the state of his soul and whether he’d damned himself to everlasting hell.
Just a fix. Always that.
He’d ended up here, on this dark, cold roof in Old City in Philadelphia. It was late and the breeze ruffled the trees, making the streetlights appear to sparkle–a nice area, but Mark didn’t see nice. Mark saw only the fix that he couldn’t get. Mark saw only the things he’d lost or given away willingly. Mark saw everything he didn’t have. Mark saw it all in terms of anti, negatives, in the red, overdrawn, busted, used up, worn out, done.
“Mark?”
He turned from the low brick wall he’d been leaning against, looking out over the semi-dark parking lot of a theater. The people coming and going. The lives.
He turned and there was Kelly. Was it Kelly? He squinted and rubbed his arm over his eyes. It made him dizzy and a moment of vertigo tilted him back against the half-wall. He rounded his arms and tipped forward, stumbling.
“Mark!”
His gaze cleared and he saw that it was Kelly coming to him across the rooftop; she was eight and in her favorite cotton pjs with the ladybugs on them, then she was eleven and in bare feet and pigtails, and then she was seventeen with tears in her eyes as he left, bag packed, dad screaming at him; and then she was just Kelly, and he thinks she must be twenty-eight or -nine–was he thirty-one? Thirty-two? He couldn’t remember for sure.
“Kell…” he said and swayed forward again. “Stop. Don’t come any closer.” He put his hand up, palm toward her. He shuffled backward and pulled himself onto the ledge of the half wall and crouched there, swaying.
“Mark, no!” she said and took a short step forward, clutching her hands under her breasts, light jacket belling out behind her from the wind. Her dark hair rose and snapped into her eyes and she put her hand up to hold it back.
“Stay back, stay right there,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to see you and tell you to tell mom and dad that I’m sorry. And to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Mark, please,” she said, tears coursing down her cheeks. “You don’t have to do this. I forgive you, they forgive you. I know they do. Mark, they love you, we love you. We only want you to come home.”
“It’s too late, too late for me. I’m worn out. Sick of all of it,” he stood and the wind buffeted him, molding his loose clothes to his stick-thin legs and arms.
A swell of pity ran through Kelly to see how wasted her brother’s body had become. He looked as though he hadn’t eaten in a month and he was dirty, so dirty. She could smell him from fifteen feet away.
“Mark, we can get you help, mom and dad want to help you. They’ll pay to get you good treatment. It will work this time, I know it will. This is what they mean by rock bottom, isn’t it? When they say you have to reach rock bottom before you can start–”
He cut her off with one quick shake of his head.
“I am so far past rock bottom that I can’t even see it,” he said, his voice was flat, quiet, but she had no trouble hearing him. The wind must have blown his words to her.
“Mark, please,” she said, making her own voice calm, taking a step forward. “We can help you, it doesn’t have to…”
He smiled, his teeth a jumble of yellow, crooked tombstones.
“Love you, Kell,” he said.
He tipped on his heels, arms flung out like a kid falling into a pile of leaves, and dove backward from the ledge.
- - -
Tied into Mark’s consciousness in The Litany, the Devil felt the lift and drop of his stomach as he tilted back, heels grinding against the grit of the ledge, and as Mark’s body fell, the Devil rose to meet him.
They joined briefly at the moment of impact and Mark’s last, startled thought: hey who are you? echoed over and over as his consciousness continued its descent into Hell.
The Devil felt Mark’s body around him like a too tight suit. Used to his own bulk, the frail, featherweight limbs came as a shock. This body’s chest was a band of tightness that refused to ease and the Devil struggled for breath, not knowing how, not knowing the key to make a human body run. Then Mark’s body, seemingly of its own accord, unlocked its diaphragm and the Devil took his first, gasping breath as a human.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
He opened his eyes.
He rolled onto his side, gasping, then onto his stomach. Vertigo rushed through him and he felt the street tilt and he closed his eyes. He breathed. When the dizziness passed, he pushed himself onto his hands and knees and rested again. Then he brought one knee up, foot on the ground. He braced his hand on his knee and took another deep breath, head hanging. He pushed his hand against his leg and dragged his other leg up, getting that foot, too, on the ground.
Groaning, sweating, and nauseous, the Devil stood up.
* * *
Kelly had stood frozen after her brother disappeared from sight. Her mind reiterated the same sentiment over and over: it can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be. She shook her head to dislodge the useless thought, unstuck her feet from the gravelly rooftop and ran to the ledge.
Too panicked to scream or to remember the phone in her pocket, she bent over the ledge and out into the night, looking down. She saw Mark, twelve stories down, laying half on the sidewalk and half on the street, arms flung wide.
She was filled again with pity and a terrible, grinding sadness that she associated with interactions concerning her brother. A part of her, very small but there, felt only resignation that he’d come to this kind of end. That part had known all along, it seemed, that this is where the track of Mark’s life ended.
Then he stirred and she gasped, squinting down. Had she seen that? Was it just a trick of the dark and the wind blowing shadows over his corpse? But no, he shifted again, arms contracting in slightly, legs twitching, and she turned and flew to the stairs, still forgetting the phone in her pocket, thinking only to get to him as quickly as possible.
She pounded down the dark, piss-smelling stairwell, her hand gripping the railing, contracting and releasing with each bounding step. Her breath tore through her lungs. She finally reached the ground floor and banged through an emergency exit into the alley, a tired old alarm burring into life. She ignored the alarm and looked left and right, panting, trying to get her bearings.