He looked over at her, eyebrows up and earnest, looking more like Mark than ever.
She shook her head.
“It’s not what we’re taught. I always thought that the Devil, that you, spent all your time making people do bad things. Encouraging it, at least.”
“No. People have free will. That makes them more than capable of talking themselves into whatever they want to talk themselves into doing. It’s one of the things God, Himself and I differed over…one of the reasons I ended up as Hell’s attendant.”
The car had been getting warmer as the afternoon sun streamed through the windows. Kelly put the key in the ignition, her hands perfectly calm now, and powered down the windows. The fresh breezed felt good on her face. Cool and calming.
The Devil, too, appreciated the breeze. The scents it brought were of food, new buds, and the occasional human that walked by. He could smell exhaust, too, and though it brought with it an inkling of Hell, it was far from the sulfurous stink that was normally his constant.
“So, you know God?” The concept is huge to her, somewhere beyond her comprehension.
“I was an Angel…you were taught that?” he looked at her quizzically.
She nodded assent and for him to go on. But he doesn’t. He closed his eyes again but not before she saw the grief cloud his (her brother’s) features.
She turned, too, and looked at her hands in her lap. She’d been on the verge of reaching over to him, but had stopped herself. It was only because at certain times he seemed so much Mark…that was the only reason she’d been about to reach out. The thought sparks another.
“How much of him is still in you? Anything?” she asked, not looking up.
He could have thought she meant God. Someone else might have thought it, but the Devil knew who she meant.
“I’m not sure. It would seem an occupied body retains a little bit of ‘itself’ as far as memories, habits. Especially the really ingrained ones, like cigarettes or drugs,” She glanced at him at the mention of drugs, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was looking through his window, face lifted to the breeze. “Amon, one of the demons, said it is a ‘taste’ of the former occupant, and I think I see what he meant. I have some of your brother’s memories, but for rote things, like tying my shoes and knowing what bathrooms are all about,” he glanced at her. “We don’t have bathrooms in Hell.”
She almost smiled, but didn’t.
“But how much of Mark is…how much is he aware of?”
The Devil looked at her for a long while, gauging. He laid a hand on hers and in her growing distress, she let him.
“He has no awareness of this, Kelly. His consciousness, his soul, isn’t here at all.” His hand tightened on hers. “He’s in Hell and that’s all he knows, now and forever, until God, Himself decrees it otherwise.”
Tears slid down her cheeks. She had known this, of course she had. She’d seen him there, after all. But even though she’d seen and even though the Devil had told her this morning when she came after him that there would be no deals, she had still somehow thought…
“What happens when he…when God…decrees otherwise?” Her voice was almost a whisper. “What will happen to Mark then?”
The Devil squeezed her hand again but then let it go.
“Then his soul–all the souls in Hell–will cease to exist.” He said it matter-of-factly. Nothing he could say to her would assuage her grief at this.
Kelly bent over the steering wheel and cried. The fear and strangeness of the last four days coupled with the exhaustion she was feeling all bore down at once and broke over her like a wave seeded with lead. She sobbed until her sides and stomach ached, until her throat was raw. She sobbed until the mucous from her nose ran red with blood and the tissues she pulled from her center console were soaked and unusable. She sobbed and a couple walking past behind her car heard but kept walking, the woman thinking how odd it was that the man in the car did nothing to comfort the woman.
Eventually she tapered off and calmed. Her eyes were burning with the salt from her tears and her throat ached and her head…but she felt saner than she’d felt since finding Mark on that rooftop. Since watching him jump.
“I’ll take you into Philadelphia, wherever you want to go, but then I’m done,” she said. She didn’t look at the Devil, didn’t see the sorrow in his eyes. “I don’t know who you’re after and I don’t care. I’m sure you have a reason. But I can’t be a party to it. Not if it won’t help me with my brother.”
From the corner of her eye she saw him nod his assent and then movement in her driver’s side mirror caught her attention. Something odd. Instinctively, she shifts her gaze to the rearview mirror and she sees a man walking past the back of her car; she could only see from his shoulders down to just below his waist. He was in a plaid flannel and dark blue jeans.
He had a shotgun gripped in one fist.
“Oh my God,” she said and twisted to her right to track the man’s progress. From the back she can see he has gray hair, slightly bushy, and tan work boots. She couldn’t see his face, but the determined set of his shoulders seemed to scream his intent. He was heading to the diner.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Kelly said, fumbling the phone from her purse. Dead. She pushed the button a few more times, mashing it. “No, oh no, oh my God, oh my God…” She realized she hadn’t thought to charge her phone in days.
She looked for the man with the shotgun and saw him just disappearing through the diner’s glass front door.
She looked at the Devil. His head was still tilted back against the headrest and his mouth was open. He snored.
She reached out and shook his shoulder. He snorted and snapped awake, looking at her blearily.
“A man just went in the diner with a gun!” she said, her hands gripping themselves at her chest.
He looked over his shoulder at the diner then back at her. He shrugged his shoulders and started to lay his head back against the seat.
“We have to do something! We have to help them!” Her hands ground into each other.
“Do? What do you want to do?”
“He’s going to kill someone if we don’t do something. My phone is dead, I can’t call the police plus it would take too long for them to–” she broke off, mid-sentence, mouth open and staring at the Devil. “You have to do something! You can stop him!”
“Me?” the Devil’s eyes widened in surprise. “What would I do? You said he has a gun!”
She stared at him, completely nonplussed.
“Well…you’re the Devil, can’t you, I don’t know…throw a fireball at him or something? Or wait! I know! Show him Hell! Like you showed me. Show him where he’s headed! Then he won’t do it!”
“No, absolutely not. I’d have to grab onto him to do that and he’d shoot me long before I got the chance to straighten him out.” He was shaking his head. “This isn’t any of my business. I can’t interfere. Let’s just get on with–”
“Of course it’s your business! That’s one of yours that just went in that diner with a shotgun! Maybe a demon coerced him into this…that makes you responsible!”
The Devil shook his head, eyes closed, his face smooth and unconcerned.
“No. Out of the question. I’m not the boss down there, you know. They don’t do my bidding or anything. It’s not like the stories they tell up here; how many times do I have to tell you?”
In his crossed arm, closed eye posture she saw every selfishness that her brother used to indulge in. The petty, infantile determination to only do what he wanted; when he wanted.
“Well, I’m going in there,” she said, opening her door. “You can wait for me or find another way to Philly; that’s up to you.”
She slammed the door behind her. The Devil opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the car in exasperation. She was being stupid; let her. Let her be as stupid as she wanted. What did he care? He didn’t.
He slammed open his car door.
“Kelly! Wait!”
She was crouched behind a car parked in front of the diner. She looked back at him and made an angry shushing gesture. Then she waved her hand for him to come over, but stay low.
“Ridiculous,” he said to himself, muttering under his breath as he crouched-walked awkwardly to where she was. Kelly was staring fixedly into the diner, eyes round with frustrated panic. He followed her gaze.
The diner was a small one consisting of booths across the front right under the plate glass windows, and across from the booths, a counter ran the length of the diner with stools bolted to the floor all along it. The kitchen was behind the counter, accessible through two swinging doors.
The man with the gun was standing just to the right of the front door, shotgun at his shoulder and pointing at the waitress who’d just served them. She was standing with her hands fisted together and shoved against her mouth. The man’s jaw worked as he talked but Kelly and the Devil couldn’t hear him from where they crouched. The man motioned toward the kitchen with the shotgun. The waitress shook her head and pulled her hands away from her mouth, pleading with the man. The gun jerked and he yelled out…something like “you’re into it” or “you’re trying it”…Kelly couldn’t quite make it out. The waitress shook her head and her hands flew apart and fluttered frantically near her shoulders. It was an obvious ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ gesture.
The man waved the gun again and the waitress screamed but took a step closer to the kitchen. The gun waved again and she screamed again. This time, Kelly could hear her. She’d screamed “No! No Roger!” before taking another sideways step toward the kitchen. The waitress stood just outside the swinging door and when Roger menaced her with the shotgun, she pushed through with a wail they heard in the parking lot.
As soon as Roger had followed the waitress into the kitchen, Kelly broke for the diner’s front door. The Devil shook his head and followed her.
Several people lay on the floor, hands over their heads, unaware the shotgun man had gone into the kitchen. Kelly tapped one customer with her foot and he looked up, fear filling his eyes.
“He’s gone into the kitchen,” she said, more or less mouthing the words, barely audible. “Go outside, call the police.”
The man tapped the man next to him and mouthed the same thing and the man tapped the girl nearest him and through this method, the message was passed to every patron. They got up by ones and twos and shuffled quietly to the diner’s front door and out, their faces shocked and terrified but also filling with relief.
“Okay, good, you did good,” the Devil whispered to Kelly, “Now let’s get out of here.”
She glanced at him and then back at the kitchen, her lip caught between her teeth. Roger was yelling and the waitress was sobbing and undercutting both of them was another voice; a man’s voice, low and conciliatory.
Kelly looked back at the Devil, her green eyes blazing with fear.
“There must be something you can do,” she said, breathing the words in a frustrated sigh.
“This isn’t any of my business. I’m not going to interfere with the things that go on up here! I’m in enough trouble already, can’t you see that?”
“Oh, come on! This isn’t part of any divine plan! It’s just a loony with a gun! You can do something about it…you’re the Devil!” They’d been crouched together behind the counter and now she shoved at his shoulders, urging him up. “Go! Do something!”
He shook his head, but let himself be propelled up. He didn’t know why he was letting himself get talked into this. He had to get on with his original mission. Time would run out sooner rather than later, but something about her just compelled him.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, you in there.”
There was a sudden silence from the kitchen as if his words had reached in and slapped them all simultaneously.
“Hello?” the Devil said. “Come out, come out, where–”
“Fuck you! Is that the police? Fuck the police!” A rough voice called from the kitchen. The words were muddled and unstable. The Devil could guess who said them. He smiled.
“No, not the police. Just pop on out here and let’s get this settled, shall we? I have to be somewhere.”
Now the silence from the kitchen had an almost palpable quality of disbelief and it stretched out longer than the first time. Then the same drunken voice called out:
“Uh, hey, Faggot? You might want to get gone. I’m busy right now but I’ll be out there in just a second. Hang around if you want your ass handed to you.”
The Devil dropped his head and raised his shoulders at Kelly.
“I tried, okay?”
She tilted her head.
“Okay? No it’s not okay. Do something.”
She made a shooing gesture with her hands.
The Devil sighed and looked up again, addressing the swinging doors:
“Ready or not, here I–”
The doors burst open towards him and the man with the shotgun flew out between them, yelling:
“Okay you asked for it Faggot and now you’re–”
The Devil sidestepped and put his foot out and the man went crashing to the floor, landing awkwardly on the gun, breaking his thumb. The waitress and another man were visible through the swinging doors, their mouths open and shocked. Kelly got quick, abbreviated glances of them as the doors swung in smaller and smaller arcs, finally closing on them with a sigh.
The man with the shotgun lay on his stomach, moaning. Kelly started to stand, thinking this was the end of it when the Devil–without looking at her–put his hand near her face, palm up: stay there, don’t move. The casual, almost bantering quality he’d had up till now was gone entirely. There was a feeling in the air like that after a lightning strike, ozone and static that makes your stomach tighten in nervousness, and suddenly she wished she hadn’t brought him in here. Suddenly he seemed like an extremely dangerous dog that had just slipped his collar.
“Are you all right, darling?” the Devil addressed Roger as he lay moaning on the floor and his voice was low, just on the verge of insinuation and the word that insisted on coursing through Kelly’s mind was ‘deadly, deadly, deadly’ like an unholy mantra. She realized she was not as afraid of the man with the gun on the floor as she was of the man that looked like her brother.
Roger rolled over, intending to surprise the man who’d tripped him, his left hand going to the trigger of the shotgun.