The Devil’s Walk

  By Brian Harmon

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Copyright 2011 by Brian Harmon

  Published by Brian Harmon

  Cover Image and Design by Brian Harmon

  This is a work of fiction. All persons, places and events are the invention of the author and any resemblance to actual persons, places and events are coincidental.

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  The Devil’s Walk

  by Brian Harmon

  Carl Delsh lay in his lonesome, queen-size bed, the sheets pulled up to his chest, listening to the silence of his empty house and pondering the inevitability of his rapidly approaching death.

  The doctors could do nothing for him but make him comfortable, and Dr. Lonesey granted him the final wish of spending his last moments in his own home instead of the depressing atmosphere of that damnable hospital room.

  He was not afraid of death. Nor was he afraid of whatever pain might accompany death as it came to claim him. He was no stranger to pain. And after countless years of incessant insomnia, broken only by his frequent nightmares, death itself meant only a chance to finally slumber peacefully.

  Outside, a car door slammed, interrupting for just a moment the tranquil sound of the birds and the whispering of the wind through the trees. It was late May and the weather was perfect. He’d spent the entire day with all the windows open, enjoying the wonderful smell that wafted in on the breeze. It was one of his favorite sensations, right up there with the soft caress of his wife’s fair skin against his own.

  Except that it had been nearly two decades since he touched her gentle hand for the last time and let her go into the ground.

  He was not yet sure whether death would reunite him with her or merely sink him into permanent nothingness, but either way he would soon finally be at peace.

  He could hear the soft rumble of a vehicle and the distinct whisper of tires on gravel. That was his son, Rick, driving home to get a few hours of much needed sleep in his own bed. With the exception of some fitful dozing in the old armchair near the foot of Carl’s bed, he had been keeping constant vigil since leaving the hospital the previous afternoon.

  The storm door creaked in the living room as someone eased it closed, careful not to let it slam, and whispered voices drifted across the quiet house. That was Rick’s daughter, Amanda. Carl’s granddaughter. She was taking over the watch until her father’s return. And with her was her daughter, little Emma. His great granddaughter. Sometimes he forgot how old he had become.

  The voices floated toward the back of the house and grew quiet again. Once more, he found himself listening to the birds and the breeze and soon the gentle sounds ushered him to sleep.

  The nightmare came again.

  After all these years, he’d grown used to it. It no longer made him scream out in his sleep. It passed like any other dream and he never gave any indication of the terror that gripped his poor heart but for a soundless sigh that passed from his lips and vanished unnoticed into the breeze from the window.

  When he awoke, the peaceful chorus of birds had been replaced by the livelier chatter of crickets and tree frogs and the whispers of the wind in the leaves were lost beneath the nocturnal melody. Gone was the fresh smell of early summer days, replaced by the lovely fragrance of cool, clean, Missouri night.

  Beside him, in the old wooden rocker, sat Amanda with her nose in a book. She was a lovely young woman. Sitting there with her long, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, it was impossible not to see the little girl who grew up so quickly between visits. It seemed like only a few short months ago that she was just a little thing running around the house at everyone’s feet.

  Speaking of which… He glanced around the room and quickly spied Emma curled up in the soft arm chair, asleep. He gave a hushed huff of a laugh at the sight. “All tuckered out,” he said softly.

  Amanda lifted her face from the book she was reading and smiled. “She goes right down every night around nine, no matter where she’s at. Like clockwork.”

  “I wonder where she got that from. Certainly wasn’t your father. He used to scream bloody murder when we tried to put him to bed.”

  “Me too, apparently. Or so Mom tells me every chance she gets. I’m so lucky she’s not the unbearable burden I was.”

  Carl shook his head. Amanda’s mother was something of a bitch, and that was putting a little sugar on it. He’d never been able to understand the woman, not from the moment Rick first brought her home. She was bossy, opinionated, abrasive and utterly self-absorbed. She constantly reminded her husband and daughter of all their faults and how she was forever burdened by their shortcomings, as if she were some self-sacrificing saint whose only flaw was that she loved too much… It was astounding that he’d managed not to say anything rude after all these years and that he hadn’t bitten his tongue clean off in the process. “Don’t listen to anything that woman says. You were a wonderful little girl and now you’re a wonderful mother.”

  Amanda smiled shyly, and it was impossible not to see the little girl she used to be. “Thanks, Grandpa.”

  Carl stared at Emma. She looked just like Amanda when she was that age. She had the same blonde hair, the same little nose and the same dimpled cheeks. He couldn’t imagine how difficult it was being a single mother, much less one trapped beneath the burdensome gaze of such a selfish parent.

  And why else would Emma even be here, except that her saintly, self-sacrificing grandmother refused to watch her for the night? Carl didn’t need to ask. He already knew. His impending death was merely another inconvenience in his daughter-in-law’s already tragic life. She’d never cared for him. She hated everything about the quiet farmhouse from the moment she first laid eyes on it, including its meager residents. She couldn’t see the beauty of the nature that surrounded his home. She saw only dirt and bugs and an appalling lack of shopping venues.

  Carl turned his head and gazed upon his lovely granddaughter. She’d grown so well, in spite of her mother’s put-downs. She was an adult now. Mature. Responsible.

  Brave.

  She was the one. Of all those who had remained beside him these past few weeks, he was sure she was the one he should tell. She had the most imagination, for starters. And she had the most precious of things to protect.

  “I want to tell you about Lonnie,” he said softly.

  “Lonnie?” Amanda asked, curious. She didn’t know anyone by that name. “Who’s Lonnie?”

  “My best friend.”

  Amanda closed her book and rested it on her lap. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about him before.”

  “I doubt I ever have. Not in your lifetime. Probably not in your dad’s lifetime. We didn’t talk about him much after…well…that’s exactly the story. It happened when I was just eighteen.” He rolled his frail head on his pillow and stared up at the ceiling. So many nights he’d spent staring at this same ceiling, mournfully remembering all the things in his life that were gone. “Lonnie grew up just down the road from me. He was a little younger than me. And a lot bolder. He used to get me into all kinds of trouble.”

  He smiled as a treasure trove of memories welled up from the depths of his mind, memories about his childhood, about schemes and misadventures and boyhood mischief.

  God, how did he get to be so old?

  “We were close, is the point. Like brothers, almost. We did everything we could together. It was just the two of us…” He paused, reflecting on the memories. It had been so long since he let himself think about these things. It was amazing how clear his old friend’s face was even after all these years. “And then, after we were old enough to drive, it became just the three of us. Her name was Eileen. She was so beautiful. And I was so in love with her. I can’t ever describe how it made me feel whenever she was near me.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Amanda said, smiling at him.

  “It was terrible.”

  “Oh!” With a few rapid blinks, her blue eyes flashed from dreamy interest to rapt, startled attention.

  “Pure torture.” Carl smiled and turned to meet her eyes. “You see, she wasn’t my girlfriend.”

  “She was Lonnie’s,” Amanda realized.

  Carl tapped the side of his nose with one crooked finger.

  “That…sucks.”

  He chuckled and turned his head back to the ceiling. “That it did. She was in love with him and he was in love with her. And I loved them both too much to say anything about it. But, lord, I was so miserable. They did everything together. And me and Lonnie still did everything together. So there we were. Eileen and me. Doing everything together…”

  These memories came bubbling up as freely as the others. He could even feel the endless aching in his heart that he had suffered back then. He yearned for her so badly for so long… It was agony.

  “Two years,” he sighed. “I loved her hopelessly and silently for two long years.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Carl was silent for a moment as he stared up at the ceiling. I t was all coming back to him. All of it. In excruciating detail. He couldn’t make it stop. “Something terrible,” he said at last, and Amanda watched as a tear rolled down his weathered cheek.

  “I was eighteen that summer. He was seventeen. So was she. It was a Saturday night. August. Hot.” He took a long, labored breath and released it. “We were out on the bluff, overlooking the creek and the Wernsens’ back field. It was our favorite spot. Had been since we were kids. Quiet. Peaceful. Beautiful. There was a nice breeze that cut through the humidity every now and then. I remember all of it. Every detail. How the tree branches swayed. How the moon lit up the clearing. How the water sounded as it trickled past the base of the bluff below us. I can still almost count the cows that grazed in the field. They were just shadows. Silhouettes in the moonlight. Silent. Like ghosts.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, as if in pain. “And I remember what they looked like. Sitting there together right beside me, her body pressed against his.”

  He opened his eyes again and looked at Amanda. “I’ll bet you think I hated him.”

  “I don’t know,” she confessed. She honestly had no idea how she might feel if she were in such a position, hopelessly in love with a dear friend’s lover. It must have been painful. “Did you?”

  “No. Not a bit. He was Lonnie. He was my best friend. If anything, I hated myself for feeling that way.” He rolled his head away and stared up at the ceiling again. “I never hated him, no matter how much pain I felt when I saw him with her.” Then he said it again, as if she might question his conviction: “I didn’t hate him.” Again he closed his eyes. “I certainly never wanted him to die.”

  “He died?”

  Carl nodded. “He did. That very night.”

  “How?”

  “He was murdered.”

  Amanda leaned forward, surprised. “Murdered? Really?” This was new and utterly unexpected information. Her family, like most, had a great many stories, but none of them had ever included anything as thrilling as murder. “By who?”

  “Nobody,” Carl replied without opening his eyes. “There was never an arrest. No one was convicted. Doctors said it was natural causes. A brain aneurysm. But they were wrong. There was nothing natural about it. Lonnie was murdered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw it. I stood right there and watched it all.”

  This was all so confusing. She couldn’t wrap her head around any of this. “Then who did it?”

  Now he opened his eyes and turned his face toward her again. “This is where it gets terrible.”

  Amanda shivered a little at the gravity of his words.

  “Eileen saw him first,” he continued, turning his eyes to the ceiling again. “She sat up and pointed down toward the creek, where a tall man was walking in the water. She wondered who it was, but we couldn’t tell her. It was like he just appeared out of the shadows. He wasn’t making a sound. His footsteps were utterly silent. His head was bowed and he had long, white hair that hung almost to his waist. I couldn’t see his face from my angle, and the rest of his features were hidden beneath a long, dark coat. He might have been any wandering soul walking in the moonlight, except that it was private property. No one had any business being there except family and neighbors, and we certainly didn’t know anyone with hair like that.

  “We should have fled right then and there. The moment we saw the stranger, we should have turned and ran as fast and as far as we could. But we had no idea what was about to happen. Before that night, I don’t think any of us were capable of imagining anything so awful. So we just sat there, staring down over the edge of the bluff and watching him.”

  Amanda sat leaning forward, listening intently.

  “I remember thinking that there must be some kind of queer trick of light, because even though the stranger was walking right down the middle of the stream, he didn’t disturb the water in the least. It just…trickled on as if he wasn’t there…

  “And the crickets… The frogs. They never stopped singing as he walked by. It was like they weren’t even aware of him.

  “There was something horribly wrong about that man. I knew it from the moment I saw him, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away. I watched as this…man...though even then I knew it wasn’t a man…walked directly below us. And there, deep in the shadows, I swear he lifted his head and looked right at us. Right at me.”

  Amanda felt a soft tingle rising up her spine. This was creepy. Such things couldn’t be real, could they? She’d never known her grandfather to lie. Every word he said was gospel, as far as she was concerned. But this was…crazy. Wasn’t it? This had to be the cancer talking. It must have finally taken hold in his brain, scrambling his thoughts, inventing this outlandish story and convincing him it was some long-kept secret he desperately needed to tell someone before he died.

  But he didn’t sound crazy. He sounded perfectly clear-minded.

  “I was so scared, standing there. And I wasn’t the only one. We were all terrified. Eileen started to back away from the bluff, like she’d seen something unthinkable in the shadows when the stranger looked up at us like that. ‘Let’s go, you guys,’ she kept saying. ‘Let’s get out of here. Please.’ But I couldn’t move. I was fascinated by the man at the bottom of the bluff. And so was Lonnie. He stood there just like I did, watching that old man as he strolled on downstream, his back to us now. She even rushed forward and took his arm, pulling at him, begging him to go. But he wouldn’t move. Maybe couldn’t move. Any more than I could. And after a little bit, she started to cry. She pleaded with him. Begged him to go. But he only stood there, watching, oblivious.”

  Carl shook his head. “I should have done something, but I just stood there, too, staring after that strange old man. I was aware of what Eileen was doing, but it was like having a television on in the background. Even when she finally let go of his arm and began to sob, for some reason I just couldn’t tear myself away from the eerie sight of the old man walking in the creek.”

  He smiled a little then. “You know, it’s funny. I always knew I wasn’t invisible to Eileen. She knew me. She cared about me. She considered me her friend. She just wasn’t in love with me. And I can’t help but think that if I hadn’t been so completely in love with her…I never would’ve survived that night either. Because when she finally let go of Lonnie’s arm and backed away from him, sobbing, she turned to me. She took my hand. Squeezed it. In a pitiful voice, I heard her say, ‘Please, Carl…’ And just like that I was staring at her. It was like I’d been pulled out of a nightmare and into a wonderful dream. I looked her right in the eye. I saw the tears streaming down her pretty face. I held both her hands in mine and promised her she’d be okay. She was so relieved that I came back to her that she threw herself into my arms, crying. I could feel her warm body. I could smell her perfume. Her shampoo. I could feel her hair tickling my face. I’ll never forget the rush of holding her that way.”

  He paused for a moment, remembering those few seconds that he held her there in the moonlight, then his smile faded and he went on: “I said Lonnie’s name. I said it like I was pissed, like I was about to punch him square in the nose. He knew the tone. I’d used it before. Right before I’d punched him in the nose.” He glanced at Amanda, a crooked, almost sad smile upon his lips. “Those weren’t the finest moments of our friendship, I won’t lie, but everyone has their ups and downs and at that particular junction in time, it served me well because Lonnie snapped out of it and turned to look at me. We must’ve looked very strange to him as he came out of that fog, standing there in the clearing, holding each other right in front of him. In the same tone I said, ‘She’s scared, Lonnie. She needs to go home.’ And Lonnie sort of nodded. He looked confused and embarrassed.

  “I turned back to Eileen and I looked into her eyes, as intently as I could manage. Our noses almost touching, I told her again it would be all right. I knew then that things would never be the same. But I never could have imagined how so.

  “Without looking away, I said to Lonnie, ‘Are you coming?’ And that was when Eileen’s eyes twitched away from mine to look at him. In the same instant, they flashed wide with fear and she screamed his name.

 

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