He just seemed determined.
On the third morning, warm sun in her face woke her. She stretched in the chair, yawning, and realized she’d slept soundly. The room was silent. Mark was not in the bed. She had a sudden premonition that her front door would be hanging open, Mark long gone. Then she had another that she would find him, dead, on her bathroom floor.
She struggled out from under the light blanket she’d pulled over herself the night before and trotted barefoot to the front door. Closed and locked. She could see the bathroom from here. The door was open and sun lit the white tile to sparkling. And no one was in there.
There was a clink and she turned back down the hall into the kitchen. Mark was sitting at the little linoleum topped kitchen table, drinking coffee. Coffee grounds had spilled all around the coffee maker and onto the floor. He looked up when she came in. She stood and watched him, waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing, only tilted the cup to his lips and swallowed.
Anger and annoyance pulsed through her.
“Good?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips. Her kitchen was white and normally spotless. The cascade of grounds looked like crumbling offal.
He glanced at her again over the rim of the mug.
“It’s nice here,” he said. “Quiet. Warm but not hot. Not what I expected.” His voice was raspy but calm.
She blinked. Had he lost his mind? Had the fever cooked his brain?
“Mark, what’s wrong with you? You don’t sound–”
“I’m hungry,” he said, as though that would explain his oddness. But it only reinforced her feeling that he was acting strangely. Mark never asked for food. For him, food was beside the point.
She brought her fingertips to her forehead and rubbed lightly in small circles and closed her eyes.
“You’re annoyed when you do that,” he said.
She looked up and caught the puzzlement that flashed across his face. Almost as though he didn’t know why he’d said what he said.
“Yes, Mark, I’m annoyed. It looks like a gorilla made coffee. Or, no! Not even a gorilla, they’re really smart–something that doesn’t have thumbs…a dog or a bear, maybe! It’s the only thing that could explain coffee grounds spread over every inch of my kitchen.”
He turned and looked behind him then back to her.
He said nothing and sipped from his mug again.
She sighed and pulled out the chair opposite him, letting her hand rest on the reassuringly cool tabletop. If he was going to be exasperating then she’d just have to ignore it.
“How do you feel?” she asked, making her way to the coffee pot, stepping gingerly across the mess. She pulled her hair back with a tie she’d pulled from her pocket.
“There is some clarity now, to my thinking. This brain functions well enough.” He watched her and noted her plain face, her capable hands, and a series of purple scars that began at the base of her skull and ran down below the line of her shirt.
She raised her eyebrows and glanced back at him as she poured coffee into a mug.
“Oooookaaaaay,” she said, coming to the table. “Whatever that means.”
“You have scars,” he said.
“Um…yeah. From the accident, Mark, you know that,” Embarrassed anger flitted quickly over her features. Anger at him, embarrassment for him.
He turned his head to stare out the window over the sink. The trees in the back yard had a light green haze–the buds of new leaves. The sky was light blue and cloudless. It would get darker blue as the season changed to summer and then to fall.
The Devil had never occupied a human body and was surprised to realize he’d somehow retained a bit of ‘Markness’, a hint of his memories. But they were hazy. Well buried. Mostly inconsequential.
He could find nothing of the accident of which she spoke.
“So, tell me something, Mark,” Kelly said, looking into her mug. “What happened? Why did you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked, turning back to her.
She sighed and set her mug down.
“This coffee is terrible. You used to be able to make coffee,” she said and shook her head. Then she looked into his eyes. “Why did you jump off that building? Why did you try to kill yourself?”
He turned to gaze out the window and she considered him. He wasn’t nervous, he wasn’t manic but also he wasn’t depressed. He just seemed calm. And sure. And she’d never have associated those words with her brother, even during his ‘clean’ times.
“Mark, what happened to you?” she asked and he turned back to her.
His eyes, green like her own, were full of a deep sadness that took her aback. There was nothing self-pitying or victimish in the sadness, there was only something she recognized from her own face in the mirror: resignation.
“I know you think I’m your brother,” he said, his words slow and deliberate like someone stepping carefully through dangerous territory, considering the wisdom of each step before it’s made. “But I am not. Your brother is dead.”
Kelly’s first, startling thought was yes, I thought so but she pushed that aside. What the heck did that mean? Mark was right here in front of her, not dead. Of course he wasn’t dead. He was just being…Mark.
She nodded and sipped her coffee.
“Whatever, have it your way, you’re not my brother, okay?” she said and raised her eyebrows at him. “So, Mister Complete Stranger, why did you toss yourself off that building?”
“No, you misunderstand,” he said. “Your brother did jump from that building and he did kill himself. But I am not your brother.” His face was calm, his voice patient. It shook her that he was so still. Mark was normally a mass of twitches, jokes, sarcastic remarks, finger-snapping, arm-waving–everything about him kinetic.
But now he sat immobile and considered her with composed green eyes, his hands calm on his mug. It was scaring her.
“Okay, I get it,” she said. “You don’t want to talk about it right now. Fine, fine! Whatever. We can talk about it later.”
He gazed at her a moment longer and she felt heat creeping into her cheeks. Then he turned back to the window. Without looking at her he said: “I’m very hungry.”
* * *
She cooked for him and he ate. He ate eggs, bacon, and toast and wasn’t satisfied, so she made him potatoes, too, fresh grated and fried with a little chopped onion, and he ate them too and wasn’t satisfied so she cut up a chicken she’d been saving for the weekend and she fried the chicken and he ate that, too, and finally seemed satisfied. His stomach stuck out from his bony frame.
They had talked very little.
Kelly was confused. She couldn’t shake the feeling–every time her back was to him–that it wasn’t her brother sitting at the table. It looked like him, but didn’t sound like him, didn’t act like him. It isn’t him her mind insisted that’s not your brother and she told herself she was crazy, that it was just the power of suggestion, that she just hadn’t seen him in a very long time…but nothing could convince that voice of doubt in her mind.
She turned from the sink where she’d piled the dishes as she’d cooked. He was rubbing his stomach and staring out the window again. He looked a bit uncomfortable. No wonder, she thought, half my kitchen is in his stomach!
“Are you staying here tonight?”
The Devil wondered at this woman’s love for her brother even after two days of him vomiting and pissing the bed. Even after tearing himself so violently from the face of the Earth. Was there nothing that would stop her loving her adopted sibling?
“Is it just because you are siblings?” he asked. “Is that the reason? Or is it something in you specifically?” He tilted his head inquiringly as he considered her. She was plain of feature, only her eyes elevated to the realm of beauty. And she was very alone; the Devil knew that. He knew it from this too-silent house so carefully and meticulously maintained.
She was shaking her head, arms folded over her chest.
“Mark, I don’t know what you want from me, I really don’t. Of course it’s because you’re my brother. I’ll always love you. Even when you are acting the jackass. As you are now.”
He blinked and then a slow smile spread across his lips. He nodded.
“I think it is more about you; something in you. The ones that come to me…they are weak. Weak in their minds and weaker still in their wills. But not you,” he said. He considered her again, head tilted in an oddly un-Mark-like way. “You are very strong. Very determined. Very strong-willed.”
Pleasure slipped through her like balm, soothing her tired nerves. How long had she waited for some acknowledgement from him? But she only shook her head again. The feeling that this was not Mark was still clamoring in the back of her mind, but getting louder, coming to the fore.
“Mark, listen…”
“I am not Mark. I am not your brother,” the Devil said, his voice calm but very, very firm.
“Okay, fine, you’re not Mark, even though you look just like him and we’ve been together since you…fell or jumped or whatever from that building two days ago. Fine. You’re not my brother,” she said, arms tightening at her chest. Her body had tensed, as if readying itself for a blow. She couldn’t get her fingers to unclench. She felt like stone. “Who are you, then?”
“Kelly,” he said, “I am the Devil.”
BOOK FOUR
The Devil Set Out
The Devil stood in the driveway of Kelly’s Cape Cod and raised his head to the cool, almost cold, morning breeze. He checked the pockets of his jacket. The jacket was of jean material and so worn it had turned white at the stitching. It was comfortable if a little too big; the sleeves hung to the backs of his hands. It was old and the barely legible tag said GAP. Kelly had bought this jacket for Mark for Christmas, 1998. Too long ago, now.
A thin wallet with his ID and one debit card were in his left hand breast pocket. The wallet was new. Kelly had given it to him in her kitchen that morning.
She’d driven to Mark’s apartment (which she paid the rent on) the night before to retrieve some clothes and found the jacket hanging forlornly in the front hall closet. The only jacket Mark had, even through the winter months. She’d grieved, standing in the apartment, holding his jacket to her chest.
She’d grieved his passing.
She’d been standing at the sink, arms crossed and getting pissed when he’d made his claim that he was the Devil. She’d felt the straw that would break her camel’s back fluttering inches away. She couldn’t figure out if he was being self-pitying or what the deal was but he sure hadn’t had Mark’s signature ‘why do bad things always happen to me?’ look.
And then he’d motioned for her hand.
She’d shaken her head, no way, even as her arms unclenched and she stepped one step and then two, her mind screaming at her body to stop, stop, what the hell are you doing? Don’t go near him, he’s the Devil! The God damned Devil!
Foolishness, the rational part of her brain insisted, total foolishness. It’s just Mark being Mark. If you take his hand, he’ll just do something dumb like pull his hand away at the last second and slap yours, so don’t, whatever you do, take his hand. It’s not a good idea. Not a good idea at all.
She realized the rational and irrational parts of her mind may have been at odds over the why of it, but neither side wanted her to touch that hand that hung so calmly, five feet away.
And she told herself that she wouldn’t take his hand.
She would refuse.
She took another step. And another. And then her hand was in his.
She stared into his green eyes, almost a mirror to her own but older and more worn, and she felt her hand growing warm. Not as though he was transferring heat to her, his hand did not feel hot at all; in fact, his hand seemed to get cooler the hotter hers became. She looked at their linked hands, searching for the source of the heat and there was none and then she looked back into his face. His eyes were gone and where they had been was a jumble of flame and blackened husks turning and turning on the heat waves, never completely out of contact with the nimble fire.
Her body was so hot, sweat began to form at her hairline and one small drop slipped loose and slid into the corner of her eye, stinging. Her mouth hung open and was going dry as though she were breathing scorched dessert air.
She couldn’t turn her gaze from those husks. They looked dense and heavy but somehow they floated, buffeted and turned and then she saw agony on one even though it was faceless, nameless, a mass of heavy, writhing something but nothing. She heard agony from another and then another, fading in and getting louder. Moans of pain. Cries of torment. She felt it as a sound deep in her mind, mid-brain or deeper, almost as though these tormented souls were in her.
Her head was getting hotter. She felt her brain was beginning to boil in the bowl of her cranium and she became afraid. She did not want to burn.
For the husks, or souls, or whatever they were, she felt a pity so deep that it was beyond tears, beyond grief. It was a stern, unbending emotion that said it is not good…but it is right.
Then one of the husks turned slowly, buffeted to the fore of her sight, and she had recognized her brother. She didn’t know how she had recognized him; all the husks were heavy, burning replicas of each other. But somehow, she knew. She knew that one in particular was Mark. And he was burning.
The Devil dropped her hand and instantly her body returned to normal except for the sweat that had formed under her hair. No heat, no flames in his eyes, no souls crying in her mind. She stood staring in shock at what had been Mark.
Then she’d believed.
Oh yes, she’d believed all of it.
And then she’d fainted.
The Devil had carried her to her room and laid her in the bed. He’d retrieved the thin blanket from the guest room and bloused it out and over her. He was pleased at the way the fine material floated, weightless and fluttering at its edges, like white wings.
Then he had studied her still, pale face. She had found pity in herself for the sea of the damned. Not understanding, not agreement or disagreement with the punishment–just pity. Her pity was not born of weakness, either; the Devil had understood that at once as he’d traveled with her to hell. Her pity was a product of her strength. Of her will.