Devil Himself Page 2

  Then he heard her shriek and took off at two o’clock.

  Maya tripped on a rotted log and fell. On hands and knees she clamored forward into some greenbrier vines. The thorny spines clung to her, piercing her arms and neck. She cried out, her pant legs ensnared by the vines. With a frantic kick she freed herself and emerged on the other side of the thicket.

  At the sound of footfalls, she looked back and saw William’s lumbering form, the flashlight wanding through the dark. Maya climbed down into a gulley and slid behind a sweet gum. Gasped when her foot came down on the spiky balls of fruit littering the base of the tree. She peered around the trunk, looking up at the ridgeline, disoriented, no bearing or knowledge of where she was or how to get out of these woods. She tried to catch her breath, and then began chewing at the tape around her wrists.

  “It’s okay, baby girl. I’m not going to hurt you no more,” William said, hoofing it along the ridge. He clucked his tongue a few times. After a few minutes he looked down into a draw where he saw a meandering creek.

  “I got a message from Lucio,” he said. “Called the whole thing off. It’s all a big mistake. We’re going back home now. Just come to me, and we can forget all this shit. You hear me, Maya? I know you’re out there listening.”

  William stopped. Heard running water and passed the flashlight across a few birch trees down near the banks of the creek. Fifty yards away, he thought he glimpsed a shoulder peeking out from behind a tree trunk and allowed the light to linger.

  Maya glimpsed him then, a shadow in the moonwash creeping closer. In her panic she was too eager to believe him.

  “You mean that?” she said.

  William stopped and stared in her direction, like a cat hearing a random noise and of a mind to investigate.

  “Yeah, baby girl. Look here.”

  He pulled out a flip phone. The display screen glowed an icy blue in the darkness. He waved it slowly back and forth a couple of times. With her cheek pressed against the scaly furrows of the sweet gum’s bark, Maya took a quick look and then ducked behind the tree again.

  “We use a code,” he said. “Numbers here mean Lucio is callin’ it all off. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Maya bit her lip, biting back a surge of tears.

  When she could talk without her voice breaking she said, “What about Jason?”

  William didn’t answer. She heard him take a few steps, the crunch of leaves underfoot. He was still about fifty yards away and Maya saw his flashlight sweeping across the trees on either side of the creek. Slow, steady progress cut the distance to her by a third before he answered.

  “Don’t worry about Jason,” he finally said.

  He let that sink in for a few seconds. “Lucio will make things right. No need to worry, baby girl.”

  She sensed that he was edging closer. Off in the distance a coyote yipped and a nearby den erupted in song. Startled, William let out a little gasp.

  His talk of codes reminded Maya of the fact that Lucio didn’t like phones. Never trusted them for business, and business had brought her to this moment. She knew if William could get a hand on her he would kill her right where she stood.

  Maya got up and ran deeper into the murky creek bottom, the mud sucking at her feet. She heard William in pursuit and turned east, climbing upslope through leafy marl until she hit a barbwire fence along the ridge top. She followed it for a time. Glimpsed a small woodlot ahead, a clear-cut beyond it, what looked like a field thick with goldenrod glimmering in the moonlight. At a low spot in the wire Maya hopped the fence but tripped. A barb opened a gash on her ankle. She choked on a scream and continued haltingly toward the field.

  She turned and saw the flashlight near the fence, William hustling along trying to find a spot to climb over. That’s when he stopped, pointed a Beretta nine-millimeter at her, and started shooting.

  Maya took cover behind a red oak, and a moment later a bullet missed her head by inches. Her body felt heavy and uncoordinated.

  She heard two voices coming from the creek bottom now. Looking back, she saw William in pursuit, wriggling under the barbwire, a shiny nickel-plated pistol in his hand. Jason appeared behind him with an obvious limp, cursing her. Maya left the cover of the oak and ran toward a logging road that skirted the clear-cut. On the other side was a field. A few hundred yards beyond that, she saw some sort of homestead—she wasn’t sure if she was seeing the roof of a house or of a barn.

  Maya ran blindly into the pasture and then shrieked at the sight of a seven-foot scarecrow, one of several she quickly realized, the stuffed bodies hanging from X-shaped crosses and draped with twisted vine. The scarecrow’s head was cocked to one side, as if it were asleep on a train, mouth fashioned into a crinkled grin. Its round unblinking eyes seemed starkly real.

  “Listen. Hear that?”

  She looked back and saw William’s flashlight. He took another shot at her as she dodged away from the malign scarecrow.

  “Hold still, baby girl!” William called across the field.

  Maya had obeyed similar orders from every man who paid for her, their right of possession. She hesitated for a moment, the scarecrows a new kind of fright to deal with, unaware that Jason had diverged from William and was circling to her right, bent over in tall grass, even more eager than William to kill her. When she heard a gunshot from another direction, Maya vaulted over the scarecrow and made for the house at the end of the field, where kerosene lamps burned in two windows. Flickers of light where there hadn’t been light seconds ago.

  At least a dozen crucified scarecrows haunted the pasture, threadbare robes swaying in a breeze. What they were all about Maya didn’t know, but dodging through and around the scarecrows made it more difficult for either William or Jason to draw a bead on her.

  Gasping, she emerged from the field and followed a dirt path to a barn. There was a low windmill beside it, the house not much farther away. Maya ran toward the house, her heart thumping like a flat tire. She was thirty yards from the front door when Jason lumbered out from behind a shed, blindside, and drove Maya to the ground.

  “How you like that?”

  As she squirmed under him, he punched her in the gut. Maya pulled her knees up, deflecting more blows while Jason raged at her.

  Jason suddenly shoved a revolver in her face, chipping a tooth. Maya grimaced, looking at Jason’s face as he cocked the pistol. She had no more fight in her. Her breathing slowed. She felt a welcome sense of calm.

  “Do it,” she said. “Get it over, then.”

  “I aim to,” Jason said.

  She heard another man’s voice answer him.

  “Don’t think so, son. I do all the wrecking in this here joint.”

  Maya saw the pistol fly off as Jason’s head was turned violently around by a blow from a rifle stock. She heard the snap of a jawbone and blood sprayed into her eyes as Jason fell off her.

  TWO

  SHE DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS called lucid dreaming, but that’s what Maya was doing. She was a bird dog tracking a succession of scents, nose to the ground, the odors not gamey but pleasant, and all from her childhood, a bag of movie theater popcorn, gummy candy, Mary Sue chocolates. She lingered in places, burrowing her snout into earth as soft as baking flour. But something called to her in the dream, whistling, like a melody from her subconscious, reminding her of a task to complete. There was a sack that hung from her neck requiring delivery.

  But what was it? And who was it for?

  She came to a trail and followed it into an alluvial forest. Could feel the soft thud as her paws struck the duff. Her tongue hung loose in a heavy, healthy pant. There was a stream ahead and she stopped at the bank to drink. I am home, she thought, controlling the twitch of her tail by simply thinking about it.

  I am home.

  Maya woke up.

  She was in a bedroom, sunlight filtering through nicotine-stained curtains. The linens were clean, but musty with age, as if they had been unearthed from storage and put on the be
d without first being aired. She touched a hand to her sore dry lips and winced. A bandage covered her left eye. She felt a large spot on the pillowcase where she had drooled in her sleep. She worked her sore jaw and then pulled the sheet down and stretched.

  Her feet hurt like hell, too. Maya looked down at them and was surprised to find the wound on her ankle had been cleaned and dressed. Her eyes glazed over, remembering her escape, the faces of William and Jason, and the question as to who had all but knocked Jason’s brains out of his head with a gunstock.

  Where was Jason now, she thought, looking around? And William?

  More important, where was she?

  There was a solid pine nightstand next to the bed, its surfaces chipped, the legs poorly repaired, as if the stand had been relocated through the years by being thrown out of windows. On the table someone had left a jelly jar of water, some aspirin, tissue, and cotton cloths that smelled of rubbing alcohol and were stained with dried blood. Maya grimaced, feeling a burning in her abdomen, an ache in her lower back. She pressed down on her gut until the cramp passed. She reached for the jar and took a sip, then tapped two aspirin from the bottle into her palm.

  Now, outside the bedroom windows, purple martins were in full song. Maya looked out at the yard and saw the birds flying around a hanging city of gourds. Elsewhere, chickens scratched and pecked at the ground. After a few moments she got out of bed and limped to the door. Cocked her head and heard the clatter of pots and pans. Smelled bacon frying.

  Maya looked around the room again and walked over to an antique dresser. Took a long look at herself in the mirror. Then she opened a drawer to find more than a dozen men’s wallets arranged neatly in two rows. She picked one up, opened it and pulled out a long-expired driver’s license. So old there was no photograph of the operator.

  Maya discovered IDs in each, the licenses issued in a different name for almost every state east of the Mississippi, the brown leather dry and creased like the knuckles of old people. Whether they had been stolen or forged, she didn’t know.

  She closed the drawer. Her attention was drawn to a crack in the door and the cat that had slunk into the bedroom. It regarded her coolly before hopping onto the windowsill.

  Maya left the room and walked the length of a short hallway, putting as little weight on her sore right heel as possible. A kitten appeared and ran down the staircase, disappeared around the corner. Maya gripped the handrail, the polished wood creaking loudly. She wondered if someone in the kitchen had heard.

  There was a small foyer at the bottom of the stairs. A pump-action shotgun was propped beside the front door.

  Yet another cat showed itself, this one an adult, its slender black body reminding Maya of a painting The Mayor had in his private study. “An original Steinlen,” he had boasted. The cat in the painting had unruly whiskers and big yellow eyes, an inscription in French but The Mayor never offered to explain its meaning as she was being taken to a waiting car, still smarting from their session that evening.

  In the kitchen the man had his back to Maya. Something sizzled in a cast-iron skillet. The air was rich with the aroma of breakfast meats. Maya took a couple steps toward a table, and then stopped at the sight of a mannequin dressed in Sunday best, seated before a spread of baskets, platters, and cutlery as if she had every intention of dining. There was an unlit cigarette in an ashtray.

  The man looked around at Maya, although she hadn’t made a sound. His mouth pulled to one side in a smile.

  “Morning,” he said.

  Maya nodded. The man had a lanky body. His face was narrow, clean-shaven, with a beaked nose perfectly suited for the wire-frame spectacles he wore. Looked to Maya as if he cut his thinning gray hair himself. He was older from her perspective and experience with men, but looked physically fit, with the aura only intelligent men generated. Occasionally she’d had one like him, but for the most part her clients had been vulnerable and pathetic in their needs.

  Maya glanced from the man to the mannequin at the kitchen table, and then back to the pistol he wore on his hip in a leather holster with a buttoned flap.

  He said, “When you got no friends like me, it’s advisable to carry a gun.”

  Maya’s eyes fell to her bare feet. They were filthy enough to have tracked dirt on his floor. She began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sorry for being hungry, I hope. Sit you down.”

  When Maya hesitated, he gestured curtly at the table, then pointed to a chair to the right of the mannequin.

  “My name’s Leonard.”

  She took her seat. He brought plates of food to the table.

  “Hope you like hoecakes, cracklin’ bread, bacon, sausage, and eggs,” Leonard said. “Peppermint sticks for after should you fancy. Marjean loves her peppermint, don’t you, darling?”

  Maya looked over at the mannequin, thinking if she were dead and this Hell, you couldn’t fault the devil for having a sense of humor.

  “Go on now,” Leonard insisted. “I’m not the best cook, but I ain’t going to poison you, either.”

  Leonard poured coffee from an old tin pot, then stopped to kiss the mannequin’s cheek. He filled Maya’s glass with orange juice, then got up and retrieved from the refrigerator a pitcher of milk, cream thick as a finger floating on the surface. Leonard sat down again. Looked around as if he had forgotten something. Maya didn’t move, her expression of weary acceptance not unlike that of an animal unexpectedly rescued and sheltered.

  He tilted his head back as if to see her better through his spectacles.

  “So, young lady, what do I call you?”

  “My name’s Maya,” she said softly.

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  He looked at the mannequin and smiled as if it had spoke. He turned to Maya.

  “Are you hungry, Maya?”

  She nodded, but the worry in her face was raw as a wound.

  “Are you thinking about them men from last night?”

  Lips trembling, Maya nodded. Under the table, a cat rubbed up leisurely against her shin.

  “Do you see those men around here now?”

  Maya wiped her eyes and shook her head. Leonard smiled, an air of satisfaction coming into his face.

  “I’m always ravenous,” he said, “after I deliver an Old Testament ass-whooping.”

  He loaded up her plate with hoecakes and syrup, sausage links, grits soaked in a bath of runny egg yolk. He put the plate in front of Maya, and then took one of the mannequin’s hands in his and closed his eyes. After the brief prayer, he lit the cigarette in the ashtray and let it smolder while they ate.

  “Marjean likes to smoke with every meal,” he said by way of explanation.

  Maya looked from Leonard to the mannequin. Marjean wore a long blue gingham farm dress. There was an ill-fitting wig on her head. Someone had applied makeup in a crude attempt to conceal a divot in the nose, faded paint on her cheeks, a few scratches and cosmetic imperfections on the chin and neck. But the plaster head was far from lifelike. The mannequin seemed to stare at Maya with an expression indifferent as a dirt dauber’s.

  Her appetite overwhelmed whatever worries Maya felt. It had been two days since she had last eaten. She drained the glass of milk, and then gulped juice and coffee between forkfuls of food. She took the sausage apart with her fingers and dipped pieces of it in the grits and syrup. Leonard watched her eat with a bemused expression.

  “Somebody have you on a strict diet?”

  Thinking of Lucio cost her what was left of her appetite. But her plate was nearly empty. Maya nodded without looking up.

  “My—my boyfriend used to weigh me,” she said.

  Leonard arched an eyebrow.

  “That so?”

  “Yeah.”

  He offered Maya a cigarette from the pack by the ashtray. Wasn’t a menthol like she preferred, but she accepted it gratefully. Her hands trembled, so Leonard took the box of matches from her, lit her cigarette before lighting his own.
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  “I would have called the law but I don’t believe in ’em,” he said. “Or trust ’em.”

  Maya looked at him. She blinked away smoke from her own cigarette.

  “You scare those men away?”

  Leonard crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, glancing at Marjean as if she were about to interrupt.

  “Something like that.”

  “They wanted to kill me.”

  “Why?”

  Maya didn’t answer. Leonard studied her with a hint of sympathy.

  “How old are you?”

  “I turned eighteen last week.”

  “Lord have mercy,” Leonard said, as if he wasn’t quite sure he believed her.

  Maya hunched her shoulders, not looking at him.

  “You got any family? Someone you can call? I don’t keep a telephone out here, but there’s quite a few in town.”

  “No family,” Maya said, keeping her head down, noting the unmistakable scorn in his voice. She was trembling again.

  “Why did those men want to kill you, Maya?”

  She bit her lip. What had he said about trust and the police?

  Maya glanced at the mannequin again and then closed her eyes, thinking how she had seen abnormal in all of its manifestations. Kinky, depraved behavior, perverted passions, men on all fours in full rut, their privates long and wrinkled at the end like an anteater’s snout or stubby as mushrooms. By fifteen Maya was certain nothing in life could shock her again.

  But the unease she felt after a half hour with Leonard was a warning.

  After a few minutes, she got up from the table with a nod of thanks. Leonard watched her, smoking his cigarette. She lingered by the kitchen door for a moment. Looked at her feet again.

  “Don’t suppose you got any shoes?”

  “Reckon none that will fit. Marjean got whoppers, don’t you, dear?”

  “Okay. I should be going.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Got to keep moving. That’s all.”

  “Okay then. Take the road a ways out. It’s a quite a trek. Just follow the tire tracks and watch them brush piles. Killed a copperhead the other day and the babies are out this time of year. When you get to the first firebreak you make a right.”