101 Mystery Stories

79 The Devil Behind You Richard A. Moore

He sat under the tree in the dark and stared at the illuminated stained-glass windows of the church. A few late arrivals were hurrying from the parking lot. A pair of high heels clicked up the sidewalk, the last of the faithful sounding off the final seconds. The door swung open, letting a shaft of light pierce the darkness, and then pneumatically hissed shut. The night service was beginning.

“Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” the chant began, with the choir leading the way.

He watched all this from the edge of the woods, in his usual Sunday-night seat. He stood and automatically wiped the pants of his new blue suit. It would be an hour now before the service would end and his mother would be back to pick him up.

It was much darker under the trees and the pine-needle carpet muffled his footsteps. He could hear the whir of traffic on the highway beyond the church and a dog barking among the houses across the highway. The only nearby sounds were the twigs sharply protesting his steps.

He moved deeper into the woods toward a small stream where he liked to pass the time. It wasn’t a great pleasure, sitting on the cool bank listening to the many sounds of the brook, but it was so much better than the inside of the glaringly lighted church.

Going to church was the only social activity in the dreary village, and the main service in the morning was enough contact for most of the congregation. Many made their living from the poor soil and the rest worked at the nearby state prison. It was a simple hard life, and most preferred to contemplate it in solitude.

The eight-year-old boy dreaded the lonely Sunday ordeal, but he had stopped questioning his mother’s absense. He was shunned by the other church members and he knew it concerned his mother’s past and the father he never had. At times he sat through the sermon, but the fear and tension that traveled through the crowd as they listened to the red-faced preacher frightened him. He dimly grasped the teaching of an ever-present danger of hell and damnation, but his young mind sometimes rebelled and he sought the quiet forest.

He could hear the breeze rustling the few remaining stubborn leaves. An occasional chill reminded him of the winter to come.

“Are you lost?”

The sudden voice shattered the quiet darkness and pricked the boy’s heart into a racing flutter. He turned quickly and stared upward at the looming silhouette. The figure knelt, seeming to telescope back to normal size after its early exaggerated hugeness.

A round face, impossibly round, with eyes yielding space enough for several noses, although one was not immediately apparent in that vast area, leaned toward him. A mouth, large beyond belief as if it served double duty because of the minute nose, curved across the face like the world’s last river after all else has eroded to pale desert.

“I say, are you lost, boy?”

Clenching bits of twigs and crushed leaves in his fists, the boy attempted to answer, but for the moment could only stammer. The gibbous face nodded with lips stretching another inch in smile.

“Where do you belong?”

The boy found his voice at last but it sounded awkward. “The church. I was at church.” He pointed back over the hill from where the distant rumble of the preacher could still be heard working steadily toward the meat of the sermon.

Heavy deliberate laughter came slowly from the crouched figure, as if much more was imprisoned in the barrel chest but only a carefully measured portion was allowed to escape through those awful lips.

“Slipped away from church, eh? Slipped away to the woods.” The man gazed about the dark forest. “Couldn’t stand to be cooped up. I’ll bet. I can understand that. You’d rather visit with me than listen to the preacher go at it. Well, you found a kindred soul. I can’t stand those Bible thumpers or close quarters either.”

The man’s huge face seemed to blot out the small amount of night light that filtered through the trees. The boy tried to stand, but the man put a thick hand on his shoulder and held him firmly to earth.

“Now where do you think you’re going?”

The boy stared at the bulging forearm inches from his face. For a moment he seemed to be counting the coarse black hairs that with the movement of the breeze appeared to be crawling along the arm.

“I have to go back now. They’ll be missing me.”

The man laughed again. “No, son, you’ve made your choice. They wanted you and instead you came here to me and here you’ll stay. I can’t let you go now. We haven’t got to know each other. I didn’t ask for you, but maybe you can be of help.” He tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder. “I hope so, boy, I really hope so.”

All of the boy’s suspicions were aroused. A terrible possibility occurred to him. When he spoke, his voice was tiny, made small by fear.

“Who are you? What can I do?”

The man settled himself, facing the boy, and moved his hand to grip a leg just above the ankle. “You tell me, boy. Who do you think you’ve found here in the woods?”

His leg felt like a small rope in the man’s grip, but the boy spoke his heart. “I think you’re the Devil.” He trembled again. “I skipped church and you got me.”

The last words were drowned in the man’s laughter, louder this time. “The Devil!” He chuckled again. “I like that. You figured that out all by yourself in a minute of seeing me when it’s taken others quite some time before they called me by that name.”

He shook the boy’s leg. “What do you think of this outfit?”

The boy stared closely at the man’s clothing for the first time. He could see a loosely fitting white shirt and pants with a faded blue stripe along the legs. The dark shape of a pistol butt protruded from the waistline. “That’s like what they wear at the state prison.”

The man shook the leg in congratulation. “Right again. You are a wonder, boy. I’ve been in there visiting friends.” The laughter returned. “Yes, sir, I was just visiting with some good old buddies of mine who followed in my steps. Just visiting.”

He leaned closer to the tiny figure. “But there comes a time to leave and my time came. As enjoyable as the company was to me, you can’t expect me to stay there a lifetime. Sure you can’t, but others might have different ideas. So here I am moving along at night and running into you.

“Now as to your help, boy. Well, I don’t know right offhand but it will come. It will come. You keep real quiet and let’s look at this church you left to find me.”

The man retained a tight clasp on one arm, but he let the boy lead him to the edge of the forest. The stared across the lake of asphalt that surrounded the church. The light from the stained-glass windows revealed only a few dozen cars huddled close to the building. Sunday evening services were attended only by the elderly, the newly converted, and a handful of the always faithful.

It was hard for the boy to believe that minutes earlier he had purposely left such a safe warm place. He wanted to cry, but his fright was beyond tears. His small brow wrinkled with effort as he sought to radiate promises of everlasting goodness in the future for a bit of help in the present.

The man squatted beside him while the strangely emotional voice from inside the church washed over them unheard. Even when the man spoke an inch from his ear, the boy could not look at him.

“A pretty little church. Pretty. Not too large, but large enough for the faithful in a town this size. And large enough for me to find what I need to leave this place forever. I see some stairs there in the back, my boy. Do you know where they lead?”

The boy thought for a moment. “It’s a little room for the singers, the choir. That’s where they put on their robes.”

The man tightened his grip on the boy’s arm. “Perfect. Exactly as I thought, but it needed you to be sure. A nice little choir room where they ready themselves to sing thanksgiving. Do you remember seeing ladies’ pocketbooks there? Purses, boy, where they keep their money and car keys?”

When the boy nodded, the man embraced him quickly before turning the child to face him directly. Inches apart, the boy could not see both the man’s eyes without turning his head. The breath from the wormlike lips was overpowering. He quivered in the man’s arms ready to faint, but the man shook him to attention.

“Now listen carefully boy, for your life depends on you hearing and obeying what I’m about to ask of you.” He turned his head slightly toward the church, as if to keep one eye there while the other remained tightly on the boy’s white features. “Think of a lady in that choir, sitting just now behind the preacher, her hands in her lap waiting for the next hymn to be sung. Think of one in particular for me, boy, one who drives a nice big car you couldn’t help but remember.”

The man turned the boy back to face the knot of cars. “Maybe she drives that green one there or the black one next to it. Just pick out one that belongs to some nice lady you’re certain is in the choir.”

The boy thought for a moment before answering. “The black one. The big one. It belongs to the lady who plays the organ. But she dresses with the singers too.”

“That will do nicely, boy. She doesn’t have to sing. I’ll sing for both of us for miles and miles. Now you, my little friend, must slip across to the church, up those stairs, and find the organ-lady’s purse. Don’t try to bring it all back. All I need are the keys. Her little fold of money would be a nice present, but that’s just a suggestion. The keys are the thing.”

The boy could not think. His mind swam with indecision while his body ached to curl on the ground and rest.

The man shook him with impatience. “You’ve got to do it! If you don’t, I’ll send you to Hell in a minute and you’ll never see your dear mother again. Ah, what we do to little boys when we get them there! But I don’t want to frighten you with that. Do this for me and I’ll let you go back. You’re a tough little one, I could see that right off, and smart. A little girl I wouldn’t trust with this job. But you can do it and live to tell about it. The time you helped the Devil himself.”

He turned the boy to face him again and that wide mouth folded into a line of determination. “You see this pistol, don’t you, boy? Yes, I knew you had. As sure as I’m the Devil himself, I can pop your little skull with this gun and send you to Hell right now.”

Tears blurred the boy’s vision but he wiped them on his sleeve. “I’ll do it. Just let me do it and go away. I won’t ever skip church—”

The man interrupted. “Now that’s all right. You do this little thing for me and you’ll have the Devil behind you. Just don’t bang about and get yourself caught. No excuses. If you don’t come back, I’ll carry you away to where the sun never shines and little boys cry for all eternity.”

After one final look at that terrible smile the boy lunged from the forest toward the church. He could hear the low laughter over the soft padding of his feet and the quick gasps of his lungs. The wind cut through his thin clothing to damp skin, chilling him thoroughly. He felt no relief as the distance from the strange awful man increased. The terrible, lonely responsibility was worse than the grip of certain death.

He hesitated a second at the bottom of the steps, listening under the preacher’s loud exhortations for the sounds of other adults. Hearing none, he climbed quickly and slipped into the small room. Coats, sweaters, and hats dotted a score of folding metal chairs. He found the purses grouped together in a corner. It took just a moment to find the one he sought, a green leather one large enough to hold a small dog. A frantic digging uncovered the keys and he was quickly out the door and down the stairs.

He stopped at the edge of the woods, unable to see the man in the darkness. After a few tentative steps he listened carefully, but could hear only the night sounds of the forest. Relief was a moment from flooding his mind when he turned slightly and his eyes focused on the man sitting just to one side of the path. The boy was more shaken by the silent discovery than he would have been from a sudden gesture or noise. For an eternity of seconds they stared at each other without movement. The boy raised an arm, unclasped a fist, and displayed the keys.

A long even row of teeth appeared in the dark face. “Ah, the keys. Well done, my boy, well done. Now we must give them a try. And quickly, for this silence no doubt means the prayer at the end of the sermon. That leaves a verse or two of hymn, a benediction, and then swift sure discovery of your little theft.”

He rose and stepped to the boy’s side. “Perhaps we’ll be lucky and a few lost ones will choose this moment to step down the aisle and prompt another verse or two.”

“I can’t go with you. You said if I—”

The man grabbed the boy by both arms. “No, now. I know what I said. Just come with me to the edge of town. If I free you now, your hallelujahs might embarrass me in front of the congregation.”

The man tucked the boy under his arm and his free hand kept all screams and cries from escaping. As they crossed the parking lot, the boy, half choked and dazed with fear, ceased to struggle.

The car started easily and the man edged it slowly away from the church toward the highway. In a few moments the town was behind them and the man sighed with noise and apparent relish.

He watched the edges of the highway carefully. “Need a little road — a nice quiet road for us to conclude our deal.”

The boy stirred in the front seat as the car left the highway and bounced in the ruts of a dirt road. His eye fell on the black grip of the pistol peeking out from the loose clothing, and a desperate hope was born. The man did not stop until the road ended at the ruins of a burned homestead. A bleached chimney tottered over the weeds.

The man turned toward the boy and sighed again. “You know, I make a pretty poor Devil. Up till now I’ve done my best with the role.” He shook his head. “But I have to admit temptation came my way at last. I mean, boy, I was actually tempted for a moment to let you go.”

The boy crouched in a corner as far from the massive figure as possible. His fright was bottled up and put away. His body tingled with alertness. One small hand slipped from a jacket pocket and crawled along the seat.

When he spoke, the boy didn’t recognize his own voice. “You promised.”

The man suppressed a laugh. “Sometimes I promise too much, boy. I did threaten to send you to Hell.” The dark figure moved across the seat. “But since you were such a good little fellow, I’ll send you to Heaven instead.”

At the moment the boy deftly snatched the pistol and pointed it at the massive head. He saw the startled look on that hideous face as his finger searched for the trigger that was not there. Not understanding, he jerked back against the window, and in the moonlight stared with horror at the crudely carved piece of wood, covered with black shoe polish. The same moonlight gave him one final glimpse of that wide awful smile.