Part 3: Blood on Her Hands

The sun sinking behind the mountains let out one final burst of golden glory and turned the clouds a fiery pink. These eruptions of evening colors used to soothe me but now they make my heart sink.

Oh, god…

Does that count as a prayer? If it did, it wasn’t working. The nightmares still came every time the sun went down and I had barely slept in two weeks. I turned to take another look at this beautiful scene, hoping that this lingering glance might console me the way it once did.

I nodded off for a second and jerking awake I accidentally banged the keyboard and made the sunset disappear. Google’s blaring white homepage replaced it.

I rubbed my eyes, shut my laptop and stared at the empty wall behind it.

I resisted sleep for as long as I could because I knew they were waiting for me in my dreams. Lately though, they were escaping the bounds of my sleeping head and began to play around my apartment in the night. There was a tapping on my walls which may have been nothing, but lately there seemed to be a demon lurking behind everything out of the ordinary.

The next morning, I awoke with my room in a mess. Again, it may have been nothing-my room is always a mess-but this was a different mess. My dirty clothes pile was definitely on the other side of the room last night.

I sat up and set my feet on the floor. I sunk my face into my hands and sighed.

Another day another dollar.

Well, technically, that wasn’t true anymore. I lost my job the second time they caught me sleeping. I tried to look at the bright side of things: that left me plenty of time during the day to dread the coming night. Also, I had plenty of time to read Jackie’s book.

There was a cross on its worn cover. I thought it was an old Bible but when I opened it up all the print was upside down, either that or the cover was upside down. Anyways, it wasn’t a Bible. Not the Bible, although it was filled with very old sounding prose and the words felt heavy with age and secret wisdom.  I’d been reading it faithfully and attending the meetings for almost a week now. Jackie was right. Things were getting worse, if for no other reason than my lack of sleep due to the nightmares.

 I grabbed my fake Bible from off the nightstand and walked out the door.

 I didn’t bother to change my clothes, shave or even brush my teeth. I had begun sleeping in my clothes and as for brushing my teeth and shaving… why bother? I didn’t have the energy to spare and who was I going to see today that cared anyways? The rest of the people at Possessed Anonymous were just as sloppy as I was.

I trudged to my car and collapsed in the seat. My fingers stumbled around for the handle on the glove compartment. I heard the happy click which revealed my stash of candy bars. Breakfast.

 I chewed, stared out the windshield and figured. The sugar high should last long enough to get me to the highway. The city streets required reading signs, braking quickly and avoiding pedestrians but the highway needed me only to follow its gentle curves leading me right to the heart of the downtown area.

I only nodded off a few times on the way. Off the exit I took the first parking spot I could and got some coffee to stay awake. Caffeine wasn’t lighting up my brain the way it used to. Oh well, it would do for now. I settled into a park bench and fingered the pages to find today’s reading.

 I really hoped there was a chapter on how to get rid of nightmares, but if there was, I hadn’t gotten there yet and Jackie gave me strict instructions NOT to read ahead. Instead, he said that when I finish the required reading for the day I was to read it again and then as many times as I could until the meeting that night. He started having me come in early to the meetings so we could talk about the book and the progress I was making. According to him, I was making great progress. I wanted to know what he meant because I didn’t see it. My nightmares were still tormenting me and I had lost my job and maybe soon my apartment. He said it would become clear the deeper I studied. So I kept on studying, every day. Several hours a day. The script was tiny and the language was dense, like the King James Bible. Reading it was like gnawing on really chewy meat. By the time you wore it down, you were almost too exhausted to swallow it.

I made it through a page or two before my body revolted against my will and fell asleep. I must have been on that bench for an hour or two with people staring at me asleep, unshaven and drooling on myself. I hope they at least saw my book. Then they would know at least I fell asleep reading, instead of passing out drunk. Like they cared anyways.

I woke up when a police officer poked my shoulder with his nightstick. I wouldn’t have touched me either.

“Sir? Excuse me sir.”

 It took me a second to realize where I was.

“Son, you’re welcome stay on he bench but you can’t sleep there.”

“Oh, uhh…Sorry. I’m not homeless-not yet anyways, haha.”

I looked up to his face but it was stoic. He probably didn’t like having to tell homeless people they weren’t allowed to be seen sleeping in public. That’s what I assumed he thought I was.

“No, really, I’m not homeless. See, I got this book I’m supposed to read but it’s almost impossible to read when you’re sleep deprived, y’know, it’s like, as soon as you open the page you start nodding off but I have to read if I want to start sleeping again because I can’t now because of the nightmares I’ve been getting since I was possessed.”

A look of fatherly concern softened his hard features. He seemed to finally understand my situation.

“Repossessed? Your home got repossessed?”

He pulled out a business card from his shirt pocket and started writing something on the back of it.

“Keep your head up son, you’ll be on your feet soon enough. I’m going to give you the number for a resource agency in town that helps folks in financial distress, especially when it comes to forclosures and repossessions, I bet they could help you-“

 “No, not repossessed ” I   interrupted, “ possessed, like, by the Devil. It explains it all in the book.”

He clicked the pen and slipped it back in his pocket. He looked really concerned now.

God, I sound crazy.

“Look, I know, it sounds crazy. I thought the contract was a joke at first but I had to sign it in blood and the other people at Possessed Anonymous all had the same thing happen to them. It’s uhhh…”

The more I talked the less I made sense. The warmth in the officers eyes disappeared as he put on his is hardboiled cop face again. For a second, he must have thought I was just some poor kid down on his luck, one of the few he could still reach. After my babbling insistence on being possessed he saw that I was just another one of the crazies. In a few years I’d have a beard and walk the streets all day talking loud and angry to invisible people.

He told me to move along and so I bent over to grab the book from the concrete where I dropped it and stumbled away.

I kept my eyes on the ground as I walked down the sidewalk. I didn’t want to talk to any of the faces walking by and I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to talk to me either. They looked at me like I was a beggar. I probably did look like a beggar by then. If only they knew I was engaged in a war, a war for my soul. If only they knew there were deeper layers of the world than they saw in their little jobs and their little commutes and their families and happiness. Ordinaries, I called them.

A voice from behind interrupted my reverie.

“Juan!”

I perked up. It was a girl’s voice. Calling my name.

Maybe I should have brushed my teeth.

I turned around like a dog expecting a treat. Then my stomach dropped. It was Lucy. I turned back around and doubled my pace, head down and hands in my pockets. My heart started pumping hard and I felt the same rush of adrenaline that I felt when we first met. I kept walking and tried not to fall from off my wobbly knees. I hoped she didn’t bring a knife this time.

Jackie’s warning echoed in my head.

“Not a word Juan.”

No, no! I promise.

Not a word, not a word, not a word…

“Juan!” I heard the click of heels behind me speed up.

Not a word, not a word, not a word...

She finally reached me but I kept looking down and walking. I saw her sharp red high heels beside me.

“She’s from the Devil, okay!”

“Juan! Look at me.”

I resisted, but her sweet scent caught my nose like a hook and began pulling my face to her.

No, Juan! No! Remember what Jackie said.

 For a few moments, we walked together in silence, except for the clicks of her heels.

“What did Jackie tell you?” She demanded.

“How do you know Jackie?!”

Dammit!

“God! You’re easy.”

She laughed for a second and I mentally slapped myself for letting her pick my lock so quickly.

“Jackie and I go way back. It seems like way back anyways, forty souls ago.”

She paused and stooped her head playfully to meet my eyes.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I mean?”

Actually, I was. I hated that she knew.

She continued on.

“Almost two years ago, I met a great guy. I had dated too many ‘bad boys’and was just done with men-then I met Jackie. He was the first guy I met who didn’t talk all over me, like I was the grateful audience of his massive ego’s stories. He actually listened to me. Just…very sweet. Kind of like you.”

She smiled at me. If she picked my lock before, she completely melted it then. I hated that her words felt so good. I hated that I was so defenseless against her.

She let the words seep in and continued on.

“When you’re in love, you can endure things you would never imagine and follow your love anywhere, even to hell. I don’t know when they turned Jackie. It might have been even before we met. That would hurt the most, because then I would have been nothing but another soul to him. Things started getting strange about nine months in.  He started asking me if I believed in the Devil and what happens after we die. One night we were at my place and he seemed super depressed. I didn’t want to let him go home alone because I was afraid he’d kill himself so we just stayed on couch talking. He kept saying how life is pointless. My heart was breaking for him but he just wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. Finally he asked me if I loved him. I told him that of course I loved him.”

“I loved him more than the whole world, Juan.”

She wiped here eyes.

“He asked if I would do anything for him. I said yes and I really would have. And I did. He pulled out piece of paper from his pocket and said, ‘let’s be together forever’. He laid it on my knee. I was scared, but like I said, I would have done anything for him. He cradled my hand kissed it. He pulled it close and grabbed a small razor from his shirt and pressed it into my finger until it bled. The pain was nothing to me because I thought it meant he would suffer less. He brought my finger to the paper on my knee and smeared the blood on it.”

She took a long breath. It seemed like she was telling the story to herself more than anyone else. She turned to me again.

“Sound familiar?”

My breathe gave out. Jackie was my strong tower, but she blew just a few words on it and it nearly fell over

“No...”

“ ‘No’ it doesn’t sound familiar? ‘No’, you don’t believe Jackie’s actually the one ensnaring people?”

Once again I had no words for her.

“I tried to call him after that night, but his phone had been disconnected. I was having these insane nightmares too. I was deathly afraid for him. I thought he did kill himself.  I wanted to look for him but in the nine months we were together we never went to his place so I had no idea where to start. He was always kind of secretive. I guess that’s why I was drawn to him. I wanted to help him stop hiding. I thought he was sort of a wounded puppy afraid to share himself, but now I know he was keeping things from me on purpose. After a week of torture not knowing what happened to him, I saw him.

 No, it was more like he ambushed me. He was standing in the doorway of a dumpy building.  I ran to him and tried to hug him but he grabbed me and jerked me into the building. It was dark and it smelled bad and Jackie was totally different.

The first thing he said to me was ‘sit down’ and I did. I tried to ask him what happened but he cut me off by pulling out the paper from that night. ‘This is a contract. The terms are eternal. Your soul is mine.’

This guy was not like Jackie at all. I mean, he looked like Jackie and everything, but it’s like the personality he used with me was a mask and he wasn’t wearing it anymore.

Even though the paper was the same one from that night, it didn’t make sense. I started to think he was going to kidnap me so jumped up from the chair and tried to run out the door but a hand came from nowhere and grabbed my ankle and I fell to the ground. I started kicking with my other leg but more hands just grabbed my leg and they started dragging me back. I thought it was Jackie but there were way too many hands. When I looked over my shoulder he was still standing there and these dark little monsters were dragging me to the back of the rom. The wall they were dragging me to opened up like a secret door to hell. That’s what it was Juan, Hell. I was never so scared in my life. I felt like a rabbit caught in a trap, like whatever was dragging me back was going to eat me alive. I screamed and I heard a million people scream back from that place. I tried clawing the ground but it was like hot coals and I only scrambled them up and couldn’t get a grip on anything.

I don’t know how I knew, but I knew there was a cliff coming they were about to drag me over it and that would be it, forever. My knees slipped off first and when I reached my shoulders I finally managed to stop but they were still pulling at my feet. I wasn’t going to be able to hold on long.

 I saw Jackie looking at me and I begged him or whatever he was to help me. He ambled over to me and squatted just out of reach of my finger tips. He stroked them.

He said ‘You’re  mine…unless you’d be willing to do something for me.’

I gasped out a yes. Of course I was going to say yes to whatever he said. He grabbed my arm and as he pulled me up from the brink he whispered in my ear ‘bring me forty more.’

When he let go I was face down in the doorway of the building, blinded by sunlight, like I just fell out of a nightmare. There were some papers sticking out of my purse that weren’t there earlier. I sat up, curled against the wall and took a look. They were forty contracts, waiting for blood.

I learned the system in a few months. It’s really simple, Juan, but there are always simpletons to feed the bottom of the pyramid. It changed the way I saw the world. It’s just a big machine and most people are riding the conveyor belt towards wherever the operators want them to go. One, two, three four, ten, twenty, thirty. I didn’t like sending people into the conveyor belt but better them than me right?”

The silence that followed made it seem like it was a real question. “Better them than me, right?” It was like she wanted me to reassure her she wasn’t a bad person.

“You were number forty, Juan, and you were by far the easiest.”

She laughed again and I shrank.

“Don’t feel too bad,” She reached out and rubbed my back, soothing my stung ego. God, why was I so easy to manipulate?

“I was very good at it by then.”

“Here’s the thing, I got my forty and Jackie hasn’t let me go. When he told me he wanted a hundred now I realized that this is never going to end. Juan, it is never going to end with you either. You think you’re in some kind of twelve step program? I know the system Juan. That place is a trap. It’s the bottom of the pyramid. Jackie’s operators ensnare people and in desperation they go to St. Anthony’s. They come practically gift-wrapped for him, desperate people at their weakest, willing to be vulnerable to just get some help. He holds onto the promising ones for a while, the ones who can get him more souls. The others he just adds to the count.”

I interjected, “What do you mean?”

“I mean he has their soul under contract and they have no more use for him alive. He kills them Juan.”

I swallowed involuntarily. A few weeks ago, my whole life changed when I found out there was more to this world than my shallow existence. There was a whole layer beneath that I had never seen. Now, the little I’d managed to reconstruct was being shattered by Lucy.

I remembered Jackie’s words

She works for Satan, Juan, the Father of Lies. 

She seemed to sense my internal conflict.

“I’m not lying Juan. I’ve lived in this world for months now and I know how it works. I know right where you are. The fatigue, the confusion. The betrayal.

“ I’m sorry I did what I did to you. Really, I am. Please Juan. Look at me.”

She touched my elbow and I turned my tired eyes to meet hers. They were sad and I wanted to believe them. Her brow was knit in a way that said I’m so sorry it had to be this way.

“That’s why I found you. I’m trying to make things right. We can make it out of here.”

Not again I thought.

“Think about it. Here’s my number”

She pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled her number on it and handed it to me. She saw me hesitate for a second.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to cut you this time.”

I grabbed it sheepishly.

“When you decide your soul is worth saving, give me a call.”

She turned to leave but my hand shot out and jerked her back by the arm. I think I stunned us both.

“Wait! Why did you say that?”

 “Why did I say what?”

“Say something about my soul being worth saving?”

“I can tell you think your soul is worthless. It’s why I got you Juan. Call me when you change your mind.”

She turned and I watched her walk away, my arms hanging limply at my side.