SAVING GRANNY FROM THE DEVIL

I remember when Granny had her first stroke. I was there with her, and I thought she was going to die. She didn’t, though. Granny was from strong stock, and it was going to take more than one stroke to keep her down. She had physical therapy for several months before a bigger stroke partially paralyzed the left side of her body. Even then, she slowed but did not stop. Four strokes couldn’t hold her back, and I think that if age hadn’t been a factor, she would’ve kept on going.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I want to tell you about Granny, first.

I don’t even remember why I called her “Granny,” she was just Granny to me. Granny Mildred. She was my dad’s grandmother, but after my parents divorced, she gave my mom and I a place to live. She didn’t care about how awkward the situation was—she just cared about me having a roof over my head. That’s what I remember most about my early childhood: growing up at Granny’s house. Her home was my world, and she was one of the only constants I had in my life.

While Mom worked during the day and went to school at night, Granny took care of me. Mom was around when she could be, but most days belonged to Granny and me. She took me shopping or out to run other errands, showing me off to all her friends.

On Friday mornings I accompanied her to Arlene’s Beauty Shop, where she sat underneath a hair dryer for an hour before having her head meticulously sculpted into a pristine, silver bouffant right out of the 1960s. Afterward, we’d get drive-through for lunch, and then I’d spend the rest of my afternoon crashed out in front of the TV with a pad of paper, doodling whatever spilled from my imagination.

This was my early life. Just Granny and I versus the world. She was my best friend before I understood the importance of such a title. Before the strokes got the best of her. Before the Devil paid us a visit.

I was eight years old when I first met the Devil, although I didn’t recognize him at the time. I thought he was my friend back then, but that’s not quite true.

He was just a messenger.

***

“Kiss it.”

Gerald presented his mud-covered sneaker. I tried to squirm away, but Brent’s weight was too much. He held me down in the grass and twisted my arm behind my back. Pain burst before my eyes like phantom fireworks.

“We’ll let you go if you kiss his shoe.”

“No,” I groaned. I didn’t want to cry, but the tears were there, waiting. Brent bore down on me, pushing the air out of my chest. He was big for an eight-year-old—easily the biggest kid in our class—and I felt every pound of him compressing my insides. When he shifted his full weight against me, I squealed in pain.

“Hey, I think this fag’s gonna cry.”

That did it. The comment wasn’t even the catalyst—I was still too young to know what that word even meant. No, what made me cry was the fact that they knew I couldn’t help myself. Every kid has their limit, and they’d just pushed me to mine. I started sobbing like the baby I really was.

Struggling, taking big panic breaths, I searched the road for someone—anyone—who might help me, but there was no one around on that Saturday morning. Mom was at work, and Granny was back at home cleaning up after breakfast. I’d told her I wouldn’t venture too far, but that was just an innocent white lie.

Gerald shoved his shoe against my chin. The acrid stench turned my stomach. There was more than mud on his sneaker.

“Kiss it, or else.”

These two inseparable bullies were always picking on the quiet kids. I’d kept my distance—even eight-year-olds understand a pecking order—but this morning I was careless. I wasn’t allowed across the street, but I’d explored every inch of my granny’s yard long ago, and there was only so much in that plot of land to occupy my imagination.

Fancying myself an explorer, I’d waited until Granny was finished in the kitchen before wandering around the corner and beyond the row of trees marking the edge of Mr. Fuson’s yard. I’d overheard my mom talking to Granny about the neighbor’s plan to tear down the old dog kennel at the edge of his property just a few days before.

After exploring most of the neighborhood, my curiosity was working overtime, an itch in the back of my brain that I couldn’t quite scratch. If I didn’t explore the kennel soon, I’d never get the chance—and now I regretted that decision.

I happened upon Gerald throwing stones at the windows of the old building, and like the idiot I was back then, I yelled for him to quit it. Gerald wasn’t much bigger than me, and in a pinch, I figured I could outrun him. When Brent emerged from the old kennel with a rotted piece of wood in his hands, I knew I’d stepped into a hornet’s nest.

“Now he’s crying!” Gerald’s shrill voice whined in my ears. “Look at the little baby cry!”

“Kiss the damn shoe,” Brent grunted. “Do it, or we’ll lock you in there.”

I knew where he was talking about, and I wanted to protest but all my words came out in pained sobs. Hot needles stabbed into my arm as Brent held me there, and I had to fight the urge to vomit. I remember thinking how perfect this would be if I threw up all over Gerald’s shoe, but knowing those boys, I think that would’ve made things worse.

“Screw that,” Gerald squealed. “Let’s put him in there anyway. With the dead dog!”

My eyes grew wide when I heard that. I immediately regretted not kissing Gerald’s shoe. Before I could protest, Brent pulled back on my arm, yanking me to my feet. Dark spots burst in my vision as the bullies shoved me into the decrepit kennel. I stumbled to the dirt floor, gasping for air and fighting the rising desire to retch. Turning back, I saw the door close behind me and heard my captors cackle in triumph.

***

Banners of light filtered through the broken windows like pale, crooked arms. Motes of dust wandered lazily in the musty air. I wiped tears and snot on my sleeve, climbed to my feet, and pushed against the door. The sturdy wooden frame wouldn’t budge. I imagined Brent pressed against the door, bracing his hulking mass against my puny resistance. I kicked at the door and beat my fists against it. I was angry and humiliated, afraid of what they’d say at school the following week. Even at eight, I knew how vicious rumors were—especially the true ones.

“Let me out!”

Brent and Gerald chuckled at my distress.

“What do you think, Brent? Should we let him out?”

“No, let him sit in there. He’s got company anyway.”

The dead dog. In that moment I became aware of the stench, and this time I couldn’t hold back. I turned away from the door, doubled over, and threw up. Outside, Brent’s baritone chuckle punctuated the gaps between Gerald’s gasping, shrieking laughter. Wiping my mouth, I realized I hated them, even though I didn’t fully understand that hate.

“Shut up,” I rasped, grimacing at the raw sensation at the back of my throat. I spat bile on the ground and reached out into the shadows to brace myself against the wall. The branches of sunlight only lit up the old kennel so much, leaving the rest bathed in a dim haze.

“Shut up,” Gerald whined. “Shut up, guys. I’m scared. What a stupid baby.”

Brent grunted. “A stupid fag-baby.”

They erupted into new fits of laughter, rising and falling in waves that accented my shame. I’m such a chicken shit, I thought. I should’ve stood up to them. I should’ve—

“You should have, child, and you didn’t. Why not let me?”

I held my breath. That was a grown man’s voice. Deep and confident, the voice spoke with authority. I became aware of a different smell in the kennel: a pungent stench of eggs overpowered the rotting dog.

“It’s quite all right,” spoke the man. “I’m not here to hurt you, child. I’m not like them.”

My heart thumped in my throat, and the burning fire in my lungs reminded me to breathe again. I exhaled slowly, listening to the pounding in my ears, feeling lightheaded and hoping that I’d imagined everything. Outside, the bullies continued their incessant banter, rapping against the door, calling me “fag-baby.” The smell filled the room, thickening the air, and I felt it clinging to my skin like a slim film. I wanted to throw up again.

Movement stirred at the far end of the kennel. My head thumped to the beat of my heart as I searched the shadows, trying my best to seek out the shape of the man. I saw nothing but empty stalls and rusted wire fencing. The dull, rapid tapping of knuckles against the wooden door echoed in the empty chamber, providing a chorus to the pounding in my ears.

“H-Hello?” I wanted to cover my mouth, but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. I stood there in the dark, petrified by what I could not see.

Something shifted at the far end. Closer now. Heavy steps moved slowly toward me, and when the bulldog stepped out of the shadows, my vocal cords finally woke up. I uttered a scream not out of fear, but of shock and disgust. The dog’s stomach was bloated, its fur coated in a dark ooze that dribbled down its side. The creature’s paws were covered in the stuff, and when the dog shook its head maggots flew out of its ears.

Something lurched in my gut and I heaved, but nothing came up.

“I detest that reaction.”

I looked down at the rotting canine. Thick strings of blackened goo oozed out of its nostrils and limp jaw. A maggot writhed across its snout. Part of its front leg was stripped bare of fur, revealing raw, swollen flesh. What captured my attention, however, was the piercing blue glow emanating from the dog’s sunken eyes. They resonated with life inside the dead creature’s husk.

“Do you want out of here?”

The man’s voice echoed under the kennel’s tin roof, and the dog stared at me, waiting for a reply. The bullies kept up with their mockery. I looked away from the dog toward the door.

“Don’t worry about them,” spoke the dead dog. “Just tell me, child: do you want my help?”

Confused, my heart booming in my chest, I lowered my eyes to the dead animal. I stared into those unsettling sapphire orbs and nodded. My cheeks flushed, filling up with the shame of not being able to fight my own battles. I really was a chicken shit.

The dog shook its head again, flinging a clump of maggots to the dirt. A string of congealed blood dripped from the animal’s left ear, pooling just beside its paw. “This will only take a moment.”

The dog lowered its head, baring its fangs for the first time. Blood oozed between yellowing teeth, dribbling out of its mouth in thick clumps. For a moment I feared the animal was going to attack me, but when I heard the door creak I realized the dog was not growling at me.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Gerald said. “What’s happening to the—”

The kennel door swung open, flooding the dingy chamber with morning light.

“What the hell?” Brent stuck his head inside the doorway. “I don’t know how you did that, fag-baby, but we didn’t say you could leave—oh shit.”

The dead dog snapped at the air, uttering a growl so fierce that I had to step away for fear it might turn on me. Brent’s startled face went pale, his eyes wide and mouth frozen in shock. His lips moved but no words left them, and for the first time, he was absent of witty remarks.

The bulldog took a step forward, and then another, leaving behind a bloody trail of writhing maggots. The creature snapped again, letting loose a bark that was neither canine nor human. The sound was akin to crackling fire and wind, like kindling crumbling to ash in a bonfire. And those eyes—God, even now, I can’t get that look out of my head. Those piercing blue eyes shimmered with life like a newborn baby, cutting through the gloom of the kennel and reflecting back on Brent’s terrified face. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“What is it?” Gerald’s voice carried from beyond the doorway. “What’s wr—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. The dead dog snapped once more, and this time Brent reacted, pulling back from the doorway just in time. The animal bounded after them, and in the moments that followed all I heard were the sounds of fire and wind punctuated with the screams of two bad kids. I stood in the shadows with my hands to my ears, shivering in the warm morning air.

***

“Come on, child. Out you go.”

I opened my eyes to find a dark figure standing in the doorway. He offered his hand to me, but I hesitated. The screams of the bullies had faded away mere minutes before, but I feared they might still be out there, lurking, waiting for me to emerge. I pictured Brent and Gerald dragging me back here and locking me away again. The thought gave me a chill.

“Don’t worry,” spoke the man. “You have nothing to fear from them. I chased them off.”

Timid, I walked to the entrance, squinting at the sunlight. As I neared the man, I could smell that same overwhelming stench as before: eggs. The stranger was pale with dark hair cropped closely to his ears. A thin, dark goatee accented his smile, and his bright blue eyes shimmered even in the light. His slender figure filled out the contours of a black suit. I’d never seen clothes so fancy. There was nary a speck of dust or lint on the fabric. He even had shiny gold cufflinks shaped like goat heads.

The dark man looked down at me, grinning. I stared up at him in awe.

“Did you chase away Brent and Gerald?”

“I sure did, kiddo. I’ve not much use for bullies. Parasites, they are.”

The logical question of “Are you a talking dog?” hung on my lips, but I was too embarrassed to ask. I didn’t want to be rude.

“Oh, please,” the man said, waving his hand through the air. “That isn’t a rude question to ask. In fact, it’s the right question to ask. Yes, I was the dog. I heard you needed help, and I happened to be wandering by. Now here we are.”

I suddenly felt dizzy, the morning air thickening in my lungs.

“Thank you,” I whispered. He waved my gratitude away, producing a cigarette from his pocket. He held it to his lips and snapped his fingers, making a spark that set the cigarette ablaze. I was so entranced by his display that I almost didn’t notice his long, black fingernails. They looked like claws.

“Are you a magician?”

He took a drag from the cigarette, exhaling a plume of smoke that stank of tobacco and cloves. The aroma did little to cover the smell of eggs. My stomach had settled itself over that smell, but I’d hardly grown used to it. I never did, either.

“A magician?” He shook his head. “No, Toddy. Magicians use magic. I just use what comes naturally.”

He flashed a smile as his words sank in. Toddy. No one called me that. Well, no one except for Granny and my mom.

“How do you know my name?”

The dark man grinned. “I know a lot of names, kiddo. I speak a language of them, but right now, yours is my only tongue.” He produced a small, black notebook from his back pocket and flipped through its pages. “Says it right here, as a matter of fact. Toddy. Don’t you go by that?”

Frowning, I stood on my toes, trying to get a glimpse of the page’s contents, but he was just out of reach. “No one calls me Toddy—”

“Except for your mother and your great-grandmother.”

“Right.”

“Right then. I’ll amend that.” He pulled a pencil out of his other pocket and scribbled a note on the page. When he was finished, he shut the book and looked down at me with an odd, light smile that made me want to laugh. Thinking back on it, I shouldn’t have laughed. No, I should’ve run away, following in the footsteps of those bullies. But I didn’t. The curiosity of an eight-year-old knows no bounds and no fears; it only knows wonder, and mine was about to get me into a lot of trouble.

“Now, let’s get down to business,” he said, extending a pale hand. “Pleased to meet you. Can you guess my name?”

I shrugged. Harvey came to mind. He looked like a Harvey. That was a city name. He spoke with a city accent, enunciating all his words properly, and he carried himself with a “city” demeanor I’d seen all too often on the TV. A name formed in the back of my mind, crawling out of the shadows like an animal on the hunt.

“Harvey J. Winterbell?”

The man blinked, seemingly amused. “That’s a new one. Harvey J. Winterbell? That will take some getting used to, child, but if that’s my name, that’s my name.” He stuck out his hand again. “Harvey J. Winterbell, at your service.”

I reached out—but hesitated, suddenly remembering what I’d learned about talking to strangers. But what if a stranger came to my rescue? Surely he was a good guy, right? I mean, he was a professional, what with his fancy suit and speech.

“I won’t bite,” he said, smiling. “And we’re not exactly strangers, are we? In fact, I have a feeling we could be best friends.”

I reached out, took his cold hand, and shook. “Nice to meet you, Harvey.”

Harvey J. Winterbell licked his thin lips, smiled, and spoke in a hushed tone. “No, child, the pleasure is all mine.”

***

My new friend accompanied me on the walk back to Granny’s house. I babbled on about school, about the neighborhood, and about that time I found a dead bird next to a nest of smashed eggs.

“They were bloody,” I told him.

“I’m sure they were,” he said, nodding politely. I realize now he was rather gracious, listening to a kid trail on about nonsensical childish things. I suppose that was part of his ruse to win me over, and to his credit, it worked.

Granny’s house fell into view as we turned the corner. Her home was a humble two-story with white siding. Two red storage sheds stood adjacent to the driveway, obscuring the bottom portion of a tall oak. Dew glistened in the morning grass as we walked. Harvey J. Winterbell slowed as we neared the driveway. I turned and looked up at him, smiling ear to ear.

“Will you come in? I want you to meet Granny. When she hears what you did for me, she’ll pour you some cereal. We have Raisin Bran and Cheerios, but I ate most of the raisins.”

Harvey smiled softly. “I would love to join you. Lead the way, young sir.” He held out his hand in an advancing gesture, but paused for a moment, regarding me with those curious blue eyes. “You don’t know me, do you?”

“Sure I do,” I said. “You’re my friend Harvey.”

He nodded. “I suppose I am. Well, let’s go tell your granny hello, shall we?”

***

Granny sat at the kitchen table, sipping from a cup of coffee while reading the Saturday newspaper. I held open the screen door for my friend, walked to the table, and pulled out a chair.

“Here you go, Harvey.”

Granny lowered the paper and smiled. “Who’s Harvey?”

“He’s my friend, Granny. Say hello!”

She smiled and shook her hand up and down. “Pleasure to meet you, Harvey. Any friend of my Toddy is a friend of mine.”

“He’s over here, Granny.” I laughed, moving her hand. Harvey sat upright in his seat, grinning.

“It’s quite all right, child. She can’t see me.”

I turned back to him, my brow furrowing in confusion. “She can’t?”

Harvey shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I only appear to special people in their time of need, and she’s not ready to see me yet. Let’s just pretend I’m imaginary. It’ll be our little secret.”

I nodded, listening intently. Everything he said made sense, and I spied Granny from the corner of my eye. She watched in amusement. I turned back to her and shrugged.

“Harvey says you can’t see him yet, but that’s okay. He’s just my imaginary friend anyway.”

“I’ll declare, your imagination is something else.” Granny brushed her hand through my hair. “So what did you and Harvey do this morning?”

“We met just a little while ago, and he helped keep those bullies—”

I paused, my cheeks flushed with heat. I’d forgotten that my encounter with Gerald and Brent had taken place in an area of the neighborhood that was strictly off limits. Granny’s eyes narrowed, a funny, knowing smirk hanging low on her face.

“Toddy, I told you not to play with those boys. They’re pure meanness.” She looked down at my jeans. “I see you managed to get your new clothes dirty, too.”

I lowered my head, ashamed. “I’m sorry, Granny.”

Harvey leaned forward in his seat, his blue eyes shimmering even in the bright kitchen light.

“Tell her you won’t do it again. Tell her you’ll pray for forgiveness. She’ll eat that right up.”

I spoke Harvey’s words, turning on the charm as best I could, giving her the pouting doe-eyed face that she fell for every single time. She pulled me close and kissed me on the forehead.

“You’re such a good boy. I know you won’t do it again. Why don’t you run on into the living room so I can finish the paper? I bet your cartoons are still on.”

“Oh, right!” My chubby face beamed. I took Harvey’s hand. “Come on, Harvey. Let’s go watch cartoons!”

Harvey rose from his seat, but he did not follow me to watch cartoons. Instead, he walked toward the door, peering outside for a moment before turning back to me. “I’m afraid I need to get going, kiddo. But don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

“No fair,” I said. “The day was just getting fun.”

“No pouting, child.” He knelt before me, just behind Granny’s chair. “Tell you what. I’ll give you this. You won’t be able to see it, but it will follow you wherever you go, and wherever you go, there I’ll be—even when I’m not. Give me your hand.”

I did as he asked. He took my hand and traced one black claw in a star pattern along the backside. The long talon burned a little, but I bit my lip to keep from crying out. The pattern itself didn’t leave any mark, but I felt it there even after he was done. My hand was hot to the touch.

“There. Now we’ll never be apart.”

“Okay,” I said, rubbing the back of my hand. “Thanks, Harvey. Will I see you later? Maybe tomorrow?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe the day after. Say, what’s that?”

He pointed toward the dining room, and I turned but didn’t see anything. When I spun back around, Harvey was gone. Granny finished her coffee, set down her cup, and sniffed the air.

“I think the eggs are starting to go bad,” she mumbled. “I only just bought them, too.”

***

I don’t remember much else about that Saturday, except that when I slept that night, I had terrible dreams. I remember being chased by dark, monstrous things lurking in the shadows of a tunnel that stretched on forever. There were creatures hanging above me, watching, laughing as I struggled to get away.

One creature was a dead dog the size of a school bus, its maggot-filled ears flopping in the air as it bounded after me. Black ooze gushed from its snout in thick, bubbling strings. Large stars burned in its dead blue eyes, and a voice echoed from the shadows: I know a lot of names, kiddo. I speak a language of them, but right now, yours is my only tongue.

I woke with a start, my heart racing in my tiny chest. I heard my mom stir in her bed, and after a moment, she flicked on her bedside lamp. Dim light filled the room we shared.

“Are you okay, honey?”

I looked over. Mom sat up in bed with the blankets bunched around her. She looked worried.

“I’m okay, Mommy.”

“Go back to sleep, sweetie. Church tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said, rolling over. I pulled the blanket up to my chin, absently rubbing at the back of my hand where Harvey had traced his mark. My skin felt sunburned in that invisible pattern, and I nodded off while tracing its outline along the back of my hand. Harvey’s words followed me back down into my dreams, but the dog was gone, left to rot back in Mr. Fuson’s old kennel, food for a new generation of flies.

***

Woodbine Baptist Church seemed like a million miles away from home, and the ride there was dreadful if only because of the anticipation of boredom. The church itself was picturesque in some ways, like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting—a white, medium-sized building standing alone atop a hill, its steeple painted black and poking the sky.

I remember the pastor as an older man wearing wire-framed glasses, his balding head adorned with strange brown spots and a permanent glow of reflection from the lights above. I once asked Granny why his head glowed like that.

She smiled at my innocence. “That’s his halo, honey. He’s a good man.”

I remember thinking I didn’t want my head to glow like that when I got older.

We shook hands. The pastor—I think his name was Thurmond—bent down and smiled at me.

“And how are we this morning, Mister Todd?”

“Sleepy.”

“Sleepy?” He laughed and tousled my hair. “We’ll have to wake you up with the Spirit!”

I didn’t understand what he meant, so I just smiled and moved on after Granny into the church. We took our seats in a pew, Mom gave me a piece of peppermint candy, and several minutes later the service began. Once the singing was over, Pastor Thurmond took his place behind the lectern and called for a prayer. Everyone bowed their heads except me, and Mom tugged on my sleeve.

“It’s time to pray.”

“I don’t know how,” I told her.

“Just bow your head, close your eyes, and think about God.”

So I closed my eyes and bowed my head and thought about God, but all that really came to mind was the darkness behind my eyelids, and for the next two minutes while the pastor asked the Lord to give everyone a fruitful day, I watched as colors swirled and danced in the dark.

They moved in odd, erratic patterns, blinking and streaking across that black expanse behind my eyes. Soon, strange shapes began to take form, and at first, I didn’t think anything of them, but then I saw a dog limping across the darkness, with a weird red swirl pouring out of its ear. Behind the maimed animal was a tall man, vacant but for a thin, red outline and two sapphire eyes.

You don’t really know me, he said, grinning with red swirling teeth. But you will, kiddo. You will, and when we meet again, you’ll understand what I am.

“Amen.”

My eyes snapped open, startled by the abrupt movement stirring within the congregation while my heart raced a marathon. Granny looked down at me, frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. “I think I had a nightmare.”

“You’re okay now. Come on, honey,” Granny said. “It’s time for Sunday School.”

***

Granny and I took our seats at the back of a small classroom, and after the other kids found their way into the room, class began. We learned about the Devil’s temptation of Christ in the desert. Something about the scenario depicted in one of the Bible’s more famous scenes piqued my curiosity, if only because the Devil just seemed like he wanted to help.

I ruminated on that dilemma for the duration of the class, and when we went back upstairs for the morning service I took the problem with me. While Pastor Thurmond worked his way up into a holy crescendo, decrying the wages of sin and warning of eternal damnation wrought in hellfire, I rolled the conundrum over in my head. The Devil was the bad guy, but he was trying to help Jesus in the desert, right? Wouldn’t that make him a good guy instead?

Pastor Thurmond gave his cue for the choir to start singing “Just As I Am” while he called for sinners to repent at the pulpit, but I didn’t pay him much attention. I was too busy trying to unravel the conundrum that had knotted itself in my brain. I carried that dilemma through the remainder of the service and back to Granny’s car. My mom had some errands to run and agreed to meet us back at Granny’s house for lunch. I was okay with that.

We were on our way home when I asked Granny about the Devil and Jesus.

“Granny,” I began, “you know lots about the Bible, don’t you?”

She brought the car to a stop at a red light and glanced at me, smiling. “I guess so. I guess I should—I’ve been reading it for most of my life, and I still read it, in fact.” She did, too. Just about every evening before going to bed.

“So . . . what we learned in Sunday School today, about the Devil suggesting Jesus turn the rocks to bread so he wouldn’t starve, I don’t get why that’s bad.”

“Because the Devil tempts, honey. He tries to make men lose their way. Jesus went into the desert to pray and understand his purpose, and the Devil tried to tempt him away from his purpose.”

I thought about that for a while, staring out the window as the countryside gave way to Corbin’s Main Street storefronts. At the next stop light, Granny looked over at me, watching as I worked everything out in my head.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Still thinking about the Devil.”

“He’s a bad thing to think about, honey. Why not think about Jesus instead?”

“Because Jesus was dumb.”

“Now Toddy,” she scolded, “that’s blasphemy. Jesus is our Lord and Savior. He died for your sins because He loves you. You can’t talk about Him like that.”

I looked at her, smiling to hide the shame burning away at my cheeks. “He went into the desert and starved himself on purpose. The Devil tried to help him, but he turned it down.”

“You don’t understand,” Granny said. She pushed down on the gas and we sped through the intersection. “The spirit of God led Jesus into the desert to fast for forty days, and the Devil was trying to tempt Him and stop Him from doing that. He even offered to give Jesus dominion over the world if He’d only bow down to worship him.”

“But . . . why?”

“Why what, honey?”

“Why would the Devil do that?”

Granny opened her mouth to speak, stopped, started to speak again and then paused once more. She was frustrated—more so with herself than at me for not understanding the lesson. Finally, after a moment of silence, she tapped the steering wheel and spoke with pursed lips, “Because he’s the Devil. He’s a tempter, a snake, the enemy of God. Everything he does is meant to hurt mankind, even if it doesn’t seem like it. He’s evil. That’s just what he does.”

“Okay, Granny.” I let the subject drop. I could tell I’d agitated her, and I spent the rest of the car ride staring out the window, watching the small town of Corbin drift by. I didn’t stop thinking about the Devil, though. Not for the next twenty-two years.

***

A couple of fading events defined my early childhood when I still lived at Granny’s house. This was in the year following my first meeting with Harvey J. Winterbell, after he gave me his mark. The first event wasn’t really a specific happening, but an ongoing phenomenon that occurred throughout most of my young life.

Drawing was my favorite hobby next to playing with Legos, and in fact, some of my first publications were stories I’d written and illustrated. One story, about two boys going fishing, was published by the Corbin Times-Tribune and hung from Granny’s refrigerator door for years. She also had a copy framed and hung on her living room wall.

I drew my pictures and made up stories for them. Somewhere along the way, however, Harvey J. Winterbell began appearing in those drawings. He was subtle at first—an extra shadow here, a faint outline there—but soon enough, Mom and Granny began taking notice. So did my teacher at school, and one day Mrs. Leigh sent home a note with my latest artistic endeavors. I gave it to Mom, who read it with growing concern before perusing my most recent creations. We sat at the dinner table, my artwork spread out before us. Across all of them was a tall man in a black coat, with black claws and bright, blue eyes.

“Who’s this person here?”

Mom pointed to the tall, dark man standing behind a tree in the background. I’d drawn a picture of Granny, Mom, and I in front of Granny’s house. Behind the oak tree was Harvey, and I told her so.

“Who’s Harvey?” Mom asked, her brow furrowed, seemingly concerned.

“That’s his ‘friend,’” Granny said. She gave Mom a wink. I just smiled, not catching the significance.

“I see,” Mom said, nodding. She stared at the dark figure lurking in the background. “What about your friends at school, honey? Why aren’t they in this picture?”

“Because it’s just us, Mommy. Us and Harvey.”

“I don’t know how I feel about you drawing pictures of this Harvey character. You’ve been having bad nightmares as it is, and he doesn’t seem like a very nice guy here.”

“Oh no, Mommy. He’s a good guy. He protects me.”

“If you say so, sweetie.” She leaned down, kissed my forehead, and affixed the drawing to Granny’s refrigerator. “I’ll give Mrs. Leigh a call and have a talk with her.”

So I drew my pictures, and Harvey would show up somewhere in them, always watching from the background, always standing and smiling with those big blue eyes. Sometimes I couldn’t remember drawing him, but there he’d be, watching me from beyond the page. Over time I came to use the drawings as a way of predicting my nightmares, because whenever Harvey didn’t appear on the page, he would show up after I went to sleep. I dreaded those nights, throwing tantrums when Mom tried to put me to bed.

The dreams were usually the same: the dead bulldog with glowing blue eyes always gave chase, and Harvey’s voice called out to me from the shadows. I’d usually awaken in a cold sweat, my blankets twisted up at the foot of the bed, my heart threatening to burst, and the back of my hand aching like a bad sunburn. The nightmares led me to question Harvey’s intentions. If he was my friend, why was he haunting me? Surely he didn’t mean me any harm, right? After all, he’d saved me from those bullies all those months ago.

I kept on drawing my creepy pictures during the day and running from that rotting dog at night. Soon the terrors began to manifest in other ways.

One particular weekday night, while Mom was at one of her night classes, I was alone upstairs watching a movie on TV. Granny was downstairs reading her Bible, and I was supposed to be asleep already, but with the nightmares and the fact that Mom wasn’t home yet, I begged Granny to let me stay up.

“Granny, I’m afraid if I go to sleep that dog will get me. Please let me watch another movie. Please please please.”

“Sweetie, you need to rest. Your mommy will be home soon, I promise. You won’t even miss her.”

I wrapped my arms around Granny’s waist and closed my eyes. “Please, Granny. Don’t make me run from that dog again.”

She ran her fingers through my hair and sighed. “One more movie, and then you need to sleep. Yell for me when it’s over and I’ll come tuck you in. Okay?”

“Thank you, Granny.” I kissed her cheek.

“You’re spoiled rotten, you know that?”

I nodded, grinning. She walked over to the VCR and put in my favorite Disney cassette, Bedknobs & Broomsticks. She stayed with me for a while—the film was one of her favorites, too—but soon left to return to her Bible study. I curled up on Mom’s bed, watching as Ms. Eglantine Price tried to conceal her interests in witchcraft from three orphans, transfixed by the mixture of magic and realism, and I was so absorbed in the movie that I didn’t notice the movement to my right.

Back then, we had a three-tiered Pepsi display used to hold 2-liter bottles of soda. This display shelving stood to the right of my mom’s bed and had been repurposed as a shrine to my favorite stuffed animals. Sitting in the middle of the top shelf was my favorite out of them all: a beige monkey with dark brown paws and black marble eyes.

When I was younger, I carried this monkey with me everywhere. I slept with it and ate with it. The poor thing had permanent stains around its snout where I’d tried to feed it. The top tier of that shelf was reserved for the monkey and nothing else. He sat in the middle like a king. I hadn’t played with him in at least a year.

When the movement finally caught my attention, I turned to find the beige monkey crawling toward the edge of the display shelf.

“I’m comin’ for your Granny, kiddo. Coming to get her and there’s nothin’ you can do about it.”

I screamed, trying to scramble my way out of the nest of blankets—but my foot was caught, and I fell to the floor with a startling thump. I screamed again, this time accompanied by a stream of tears from the ache in my arm from my landing.

“GRANNY!” I shrieked, clamoring to regain my footing. She met me at the bottom of the stairs, almost as panicked as I was. I wrapped my arms around her, sobbing into her nightgown.

“Shhh, it’s okay, I’m here.” She gave me a squeeze, knelt down before me, and wiped the tears from my cheeks. “What happened, honey? What’s wrong?”

“My monkey,” I choked out. “It was coming after me.”

She tried to keep from laughing. “Oh, sweetie. You were just dreaming.”

I shook my head. “I wasn’t dreaming. It was moving, Granny. I promise you it was.”

“Well, let’s just go have a look.”

But I held her hand. I couldn’t let her go back up there. Not after what the monkey had said. I’m comin’ for your Granny, kiddo. I shivered, trying to hold her in place, but she resisted.

“Come on,” she said. “Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

More tears gushed as my heart continued to race. I followed her up the stairs, panicked that something terrible would be waiting for her at the top. I waited on the landing, still crying, fearful that the monkey would attack—but all that followed her ascent was quiet laughter. She emerged from the room, standing at the top of the doorway holding the monkey in her hand.

“Honey, look. You had a bad dream. That’s all.” She held it out to me. “It’s just your monkey.”

I recoiled from that stuffed abomination, its dead eyes burning a hole right through me. I shook my head, crawling backward against the banister.

“It’s a monster,” I sobbed. “I don’t want it anymore.”

She gave me a puzzled look, then stared at the monkey for a moment. “If you say so, honey.” She tucked the animal under her arm. “Scoot on up to bed and I’ll tuck you in.”

Reluctant, my heart still racing, I retreated back to Mom’s bed. I made Granny leave the lamp on and the bedroom door open. I stared at the top shelf of the Pepsi stand, wondering if any of my other toys were going to spring to life and attack me. The monkey’s words crawled through my mind.

I drifted off to sleep and dreamed I was running from the monkey while it swung from invisible branches. Harvey’s voice echoed in that dark dream chamber: Comin’ for your Granny, kiddo.

And when he finally did, I thought I would be ready for him.

***

We didn’t tell Mom about the monkey incident. She was worried enough, what with my drawings and strange dreams. The word “doctor” got tossed around a lot in those days, usually accompanied by furrowed brows and concerned glances when they thought I wasn’t looking. At first, I pretended not to notice their attempts at secrecy, but one day while playing with my toys I overheard Mom and Granny discussing the dark man in my drawings.

“—who do you think that’s supposed to be?”

I turned away from my Legos. Granny stood at the edge of the kitchen table with her back to me. Mom was sitting down, around the corner where I couldn’t see her. Granny had one of my drawings in her hand.

“He says it’s his friend Harvey,” Granny said. “It’s not uncommon for kids to have imaginary friends.”

“I know that, Granny, but this is a little scary, don’t you think? I mean just look at this guy. Is he supposed to be a ghost? Or the Devil?”

I turned away, suddenly very interested in the red Lego brick in my palm. The sound of shuffling papers trailed down the hallway. The Devil? No way. Harvey wasn’t the Devil. He was—

He’s a tempter, a snake, the enemy of God. Everything he does is meant to hurt mankind, even if it doesn’t seem like it. He’s evil. That’s just what he does.

The red Lego brick fell from my hand, clattering against the pile of multi-colored bricks spread out before me. Granny’s words echoed in my head, and I was startled when Mom called out to me.

“You okay in there, honey?”

“I’m fine, Mommy.”

A silence followed my words, and for a moment I was alone with just my thoughts. Was Harvey the Devil? No, he couldn’t be. He just couldn’t. The Devil was a big red guy with a tail and horns. He carried a pitchfork and poked people in their butts to make them fall into a big flaming hole in the ground.

And yet the nightmares hadn’t started until I met him. The strange burning sensation in the back of my hand hadn’t started until he left his mark on me. What if Harvey wasn’t my friend? What if he just said that so he could come inside Granny’s house?

“Doesn’t look like the Devil to me. You know Toddy’s got a big imagination. You’ve seen the other things he draws, sweetie. He could’ve picked this up from something he saw on TV somewhere. Why’s this one any different?”

Mom sighed. “I don’t know, Granny. I just—I’m just worried about him, that’s all. Between his nightmares and this dark man he keeps drawing, I’m just scared. For no damn reason, I guess. Maybe I’m crazy.”

“You’re not crazy. You’re just tired. Stressed. You’ve been working too hard, and . . . ”

She trailed off, stopping mid-sentence as that last word lingered in the air. I turned around, eager to hear what else Granny had to say, but she never finished. She slowly bent forward, her arms pressed against the edge of the table, and I heard her say something that sent a chill crawling across my skin.

“It’s dark,” she groaned. “Oh Lord, it’s all gone dark.”

Granny’s voice was all wrong. She sounded like she was in pain and maybe a little scared, too. I stared at her, unable to move.

“Granny?” I heard Mom’s chair scrape the floor as she rose from the table. It clattered backward, and in a moment she was at Granny’s side. “What’s wrong?”

“All gone dark,” she said, “‘cept for those blue eyes.” Her head rolled to the side, turning to stare at me. “It’s going to be okay, honey. I just need to go rest . . . ”

Her knees buckled and her arms went limp as her eyes rolled back into her head. Her mouth hung open in a confused gape, and had my mom not been fast enough, Granny would’ve hit the floor hard enough to crack her head open. Mom caught her, bracing herself against the dead weight.

“Granny!” Mom was crying now. She knelt and let Granny slide to the dining room floor. I broke free of my trance and went to her.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with her?” Jaw quivering, I tried hard to hold back tears. I wanted to be brave for Granny, for my mom. “Is she dying?”

“Baby, I hope not. Stay with her. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

So I stayed with Granny, watching beads of sweat form on her forehead and roll backward into her signature bouffant. For the first time I recognized the signs of her age, noting the wrinkles and spots in her skin and the slight sag of her cheeks. Until that moment, Granny had been just a big kid in my eyes, far removed from the other adults in my life, capable of a kindness and love rivaled only by my mother. She’d been there for as long as I could remember, and until I watched her sink to the floor, I was certain she would always be there.

Now I wasn’t so sure, and that epiphany shook me to my core. I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer.

“Don’t go,” I whispered. “I’m still not done building a robot with my Legos, and you promised we’d go for a milkshake later, so you can’t go. I won’t let you.”

Mom’s voice carried from the living room. She was panicked but trying to remain calm. I heard her giving someone on the phone our address.

Granny slowly opened her eyes, her lips twitching and the muscles in her face tightening. I didn’t understand it at the time, but she was trying to speak. The stroke had taken that privilege from her temporarily, and all she could do was stare up at me, at the ceiling. After a moment her face relaxed, and she held my gaze, watching me cry over her.

“Don’t go,” I said. “Please don’t go. Don’t.”

***

The effects of Granny’s stroke were immediate and invasive. Although she regained the ability to speak several hours after being admitted to the hospital, the left side of her face remained oddly paralyzed, slowing her speech to a collection of slurred, agonizing syllables. When she spoke, she seemed to do so with a mouth full of rocks.

She also had trouble with her hands. Maintaining a consistent grip on anything was laborious, and for the first few weeks she had to test her strength with a handheld device that looked like it had been ripped from one of those arcade machines at the supermarket, except this one didn’t take quarters.

Mom and I spent our evenings with Granny in her hospital room, watching game shows and then the nightly news. We stayed until visiting hours ended, and then we’d say our goodbyes until the next day. This was our routine for a week before she was discharged from the hospital. Her doctor said he expected full recovery within six months, provided her physical therapy went well.

Three times a week, a nurse came to our house to help Granny with her hand and speech exercises and little by little she regained her strength. More importantly, she got her voice back. Toward the end of her rehab sessions, Granny was her old self again, that spark in her eye burning brighter than ever. When she received her doctor’s approval to drive again, the first thing she did was head off to Arlene’s Beauty Shop. Her hair hadn’t been touched since the stroke and was long overdue for that signature 1960s styling.

Life slowly crawled back to its normal pace. Mom went to work and I went to school. I drew a portfolio’s worth of pictures for Granny’s refrigerator door. She cooked for us and laughed with us. We watched movies together and played together. My friend was back. Everything was perfect.

Mom eventually remarried, and we moved out of Granny’s upstairs bedroom to go live with my new stepdad. Those days, I didn’t get to see Granny much, but I always called her in the afternoon when I got home from school. We’d talk about what I was learning, what games I was playing, if I’d drawn her any new pictures for her refrigerator, and how Mom was doing.

I missed Granny so much sometimes that I’d ask to spend my weekends with her, and that’s how time passed for a while: me living at home during the week, going to school, counting down the days until I could spend the weekend with Granny. Then Friday would come around and Granny would pick me up from school. We were like a dynamic duo, me and Granny, making an escape from Corbin Elementary like a pair of wild bandits riding off into the early afternoon sunshine in her forest green Cadillac.

Several months later, just a few days before the fourth of July, a second stroke tore our return to normalcy out from underneath all of us.

I was there with her when the stroke happened. She was lying on the couch, and I remember her saying those same three words.

“All gone dark,” she said. “All gone dark.”

***

“Honey, don’t do that.”

I looked up from my pad of paper. Granny sat in her armchair, a small stack of newspapers and magazines on one side and a beige ottoman on the other. She was staring at the window to her left, frowning.

“What, Granny?”

She glanced at me for a moment and shook her head. “Not you, sweetie. The little girl in the rocking chair right here. She’s rocking too fast.”

Smiling and trying to hide my confusion, I climbed off the couch and walked over to the window where she was staring.

“Granny,” I said, “it’s just us here. There’s no little girl. You don’t even have a rocking chair.”

I’ll never forget that look of surprise on her face as if I’d slapped her across her cheek. She was absolutely dumbfounded, stunned into silence, and for a few minutes afterward, whenever she looked at me, she did so out of spite. My face flushed with heat, bearing a shame I didn’t quite understand. Had I done something wrong? Why was Granny mad at me?

Except she wasn’t. Minutes later, she asked if I’d refill her water glass. She had a grin on her face like she was the keeper of a big secret. I did as she asked, and when I gave her the glass I walked over to the telephone and called my mom’s work number.

“Is something wrong? Is Granny okay? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mommy,” I whispered. I didn’t want to rouse Granny’s attention. “But Granny’s starting to scare me.”

“Oh, honey, you remember what we talked about? Remember what I said about how strokes can affect the way you think?”

“I do, but this is different. She’s seeing things again, and when I told her so she kinda got mad at me.”

Mom sighed. “Honey, you need to remember that when she does those things, it’s because she’s confused. You know Granny loves you and that she wouldn’t do anything to upset you.”

“But what if she stays mad at me?”

“Toddy, don’t be silly. I’ll be home in just a few hours, okay? Promise me you’ll be patient with her?”

“I promise, Mommy.”

“I love you, sweetie. See you soon.”

I hung up the phone and looked back at Granny. She was slumped back in the chair with her head to the side. Her chest rose and fell in slow, measured swells. Granny napped a lot—something she never liked to do before the strokes happened. “They’re a waste of the day,” she always said, rising early to make the most of her time.

And yet as I stood there, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this person had replaced my Granny. This woman was old and confusing and scary. She looked at me with anger sometimes, and other times she was too happy, seemingly in a perpetual state of giddiness. Sometimes she said things that didn’t make sense, and sometimes she saw things that weren’t there.

This doppelgänger had taken my friend away from me and replaced her with a hollowed-out husk of a human being. I wanted Granny back.

I’ll give anything, I thought. Even all my Legos.

Defeated, I wandered across the living room toward the couch—but something caught my eye halfway there. I stopped in the middle of the room and turned toward the window. The back of my hand began to itch, and I scratched at it idly as I approached the glass pane. Outside and across the street, just beyond a row of trees in Granny’s front yard, I saw a man in a black suit standing with his hands in his pockets. He had a black goatee and black hair cropped close to his head. I could see his glowing blue eyes even from across the street.

My hand stopped itching and started burning.

For the second time, almost a year to the day, Harvey J. Winterbell had decided to pay me a visit. This time we weren’t friends.

***

“Are you the Devil?”

A thin smile spread across Harvey’s face. “Do you want me to be?”

“Are you?” I stood at the edge of the grass, mere feet from him. The warm afternoon air was thick with the stench of rotten eggs. “Is your name even Harvey?”

“You gave me this name, child. I have many. Harvey is just one of them.”

“I thought you were my friend, but ever since we met I’ve had nothing but terrible dreams about you and that dead dog in the kennel, and one night when I was trying to go to sleep my favorite monkey attacked me and . . . ”

I gasped for breath, the words coming faster than I could breathe. I was so angry my hands were shaking, and the smile on Harvey’s face just made me even madder still.

“Side effects of the mark I gave you, kiddo. Dreams, delusions, drawings—I manifest in many different ways, from person to person, especially with young ones like you. It’ll go away when you get older, though. You’ll be haunted by different demons by then.” He paused, frowning. “Don’t look at me like that, Toddy. I can be your friend when I have to be. You needed me that day when those two boys locked you up in that dog kennel. Who else would’ve let you out?”

He waited. I wanted to say something, but no words came. I just stood there, shaking and glaring at him as if that might make a difference. “See? You needed me, and I was there for you. And now I’m here again, but not for you.”

“What do you mean?”

He took out a cigarette and lit the tip with a snap of his fingers. He took a long drag and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“I think you know,” he said. “You’re a bright one. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

My heart sank. He’d warned me months ago. The monkey’s silent words were forever etched in my brain. How could I forget? Comin’ for your Granny, kiddo. Coming to get her and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Bingo,” he said.

“But you can’t!” I took three steps forward and glared up at him. Tears lingered in the corners of my eyes, but I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I had to be strong for Granny. “I won’t let you, Harvey.”

“Come on, kiddo.” He reached down and tousled my hair, just like Pastor Thurmond used to do. “You think that’s your Granny in there? She’s a shell of a person. Whatever years she has left will be spent in a wheelchair, in a nursing home. I’m doing her a favor by taking her now. You think she wants to spend the rest of her life as a vegetable?”

His words made sense. I didn’t want to grow up watching Granny grow older and slowly lose her identity. I didn’t want to watch the embers in her eyes die one day at a time until there was no light left to shine. But I remembered what Granny told me about the Devil that Sunday morning, and I did the only thing I felt I could do: I pushed him.

My palms burned when I pushed against his stomach. I cried out in pain, freeing the tears in my eyes. I looked down at my hands. Blisters formed on the tips of my fingers.

“You should put some ice on that,” he said. “Looks painful.”

“Shut up,” I grunted. “You’re not taking Granny, and that’s that. Now go away!”

Harvey J. Winterbell leaned back and let loose a wild cackle that shook the world. The air stirred in a warm, bitter wind that flattened the grass and swayed the trees. Branches tore from their trunks and clattered to the ground. When he spoke again, he did not sound like the man I knew. His voice was gruff and guttural, a voice of inhuman nature loosed from the heavens and given dominion over the kingdom of man.

Harvey’s eyes bled thin trickles of blue down his cheeks, and when he opened his mouth to speak, I glimpsed crackling flames of hellfire in his throat.

“I will take what I wish, child. Now be gone.”

Only I didn’t listen. The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and at the time they seemed like the only words worth speaking. The only words that mattered. Sometimes words are all a kid really has, and if I’d ever said anything worthwhile in my life up to that point, this was it.

I looked Harvey in the eye and said, “I’ll do anything to keep you from taking her.”

And then, like a switch, Harvey’s demeanor changed. He was his old, magically jovial self again. He’d heard exactly what he wanted to hear.

“Anything?”

I nodded, feeling a sudden weight in my stomach. My Sunday School lessons came racing back to me. The Devil made deals all the time, and his only currency was human souls.

Reluctant, yet scared for Granny’s life, I looked the Devil in the eye and nodded.

“Anything,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Harvey said, rubbing absently at his goatee. “What could you possibly have that I would want?”

I shrugged. “My soul?”

“Oh, there’s that, but what’s the soul of a child worth these days?” He clapped his hands. “I’ve got it. Instead of your soul, I think I’d rather have your life.”

I took a step backward in fear. “You’re going to kill me?”

“No, no, no. In exchange for not taking your Granny, your life will belong to me until the day she dies. From now until then, you are mine.”

“You mean I won’t go to Hell?”

“That’s not for me to say. That’s up to you. But you will be bound to me from this day forth until she leaves this earth. This is my price. Pay it, and I will leave your Granny be.”

He stuck out his hand. I’d like to say I hesitated, maybe contemplated just what I was agreeing to, but being only nine at the time, I didn’t do anything like that. I did what Granny would’ve told me not to. I did what I felt I had to do, what my heart told me was right.

I looked him in the eye, reached out, and shook the Devil’s hand.

***

I’d like to say Granny recovered after that, but I can’t, and she didn’t. Granny’s condition grew increasingly worse. The day I saved Granny from the Devil, I lost a piece of myself that I knew I would never get back, and for a long time I lived in fear that I was damned to spend my afterlife in eternal agony, burning forever in the fires of Hell. Even if my heart was in the right place, even if I’d sold my most prized spiritual possession to God’s greatest enemy to keep Granny alive, I knew I would suffer for it. Even the purest act of love couldn’t outweigh the laws of a cruel, jealous god.

I paid for my sin by watching Granny lose herself one day at a time. She deteriorated to a point that she couldn’t take care of herself, and without Mom and I there, my dad’s family decided to have Granny put in a rest home. She spent the rest of her days there, in a hospital-like building with lifeless white walls and a stench of ammonia, bleach, and urine.

Visiting her was always awkward. There were other old people there, forgotten and left to rot by families who either didn’t care or simply couldn’t handle the stress. Most of them sat in a commons area, dressed in sweat suits and gowns, their hair unkempt, lethargically staring at a TV tuned to a channel of never-ending game shows. I hated the smells and the sounds. I hated the apathy of the nurses and doctors.

I tried to visit her as often as I could, but as I grew older my life took on its own schedule. I was busy with school and friends, busy with other things. I realize now I told myself these things to justify not going to see her. Because I was afraid. Because looking at her was a reminder of the price I’d paid. Even then I knew how selfish I was.

My nightmares continued, but instead of being chased by a dead dog or a silent monkey, I always found myself in an observation room of some kind, with a pane of one-way glass separating me from the cell beyond. In the middle of that blank room was a chair, and sitting in that chair was Granny, her wrists and ankles tied down. She was always struggling, always trying to free herself, crying out to God to save her. “Water,” she’d rasp, and I’d bang on the glass, screaming for someone to please, please give my granny some water.

No one ever came, and I’d wake up shivering and covered in sweat, Granny’s cries still echoing in my head.

I was twelve when I stopped going to see her at the nursing home. Mom and I rode the elevator up to her floor, wandered our way through a series of hallways filled with the lost souls of generations past, and found Granny sitting up in her bed, staring vacantly at the television.

“Hey there,” Mom said, pulling up a chair beside the bed. “How are you today?”

Granny didn’t respond. I shuffled my weight from one foot to the other and sighed. Mom knew I didn’t want to be there, knew how uncomfortable I was in that place, but she’d mandated I come along. I hadn’t seen Granny in several months, and the last time Mom visited she said Granny had asked about me.

Except when Granny took her eyes off the TV and looked at me, she didn’t react like she used to. Her eyes didn’t beam like they used to. She didn’t smile. Instead, she looked at me with that same accusing stare from years before. Her eyes narrowed, and she drove her gaze away from me, focusing on my mother.

“He wanted to come see you,” Mom lied. “He sure is growing, isn’t he?”

But Granny shook her head. “I don’t know this boy. Who is he?”

Those words pierced me like bullets. My breath caught in my throat, and even though I’d built myself up to believe that I resented her, I still felt as though I’d been cut down on a distant battlefield. I stepped backward, blinked away my tears, and walked out of the room. I never returned.

***

My teenage years were a tumultuous time, and although I don’t think I was a bad kid by any stretch, I had my share of transgressions. High school brought its own troubles to accompany the storm raging inside me, fueling the anger in my heart that had been threatening to bubble up and explode since that day I shook the Devil’s hand.

The longer I spent away from Granny, the longer I resented her for everything that had happened. After all, I never would’ve had to make my deal if she hadn’t had her strokes. Everything had been fine until she collapsed into Mom’s arms. My resentment was fueled by a deeper loathing that I didn’t understand at the time, but that I now know was my own selfishness. I wanted to keep her around and was willing to sell my soul to do it, but all I got in return was a husk of a great-grandmother, her spark faded, dimming, dying—and a lingering shadow that followed me everywhere.

I had friends in school, but none of them were as close to me as Granny had been, and the innocent eyes through which I’d once viewed that sacred pact of friendship were tarnished by the harsh realities of adolescence. Children may be cruel, but teenagers are sadistic.

I was quiet. I wore black T-shirts. I carried with me a persona of mystery, and as I blossomed into a young man I began to grow a goatee just like Harvey. I figured that if I were damned, I might as well fit the part and walk that walk. My teenage arrogance was palpable. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I accumulated a rogues’ gallery of enemies within the walls of Corbin High.

A rumor began floating around during my freshman year that I was a Satanist. A fitting rumor, to be honest, but at the time I was troubled with my convictions and struggling to find a place in the greater Christian scheme. I was anything but a Satanist, but trying to explain that to a group of teenage boys who hated my guts was out of the question. I weathered that storm for a while, ignoring their snide comments in class and the notes they passed around school. I tried to ignore the pentagrams I’d find drawn on my locker—and I did, for the most part, until one day I reached my limit.

I’d never been in trouble at school before. Teachers always had good things to say about me and my work. But one day, while standing in line at the cafeteria, one of the boys who perpetrated that rumor of Satanism made one smartass quip too many. I was suddenly eight years old again, locked away in that dog kennel by two bullies who were bigger than me, stronger than me.

This time I had the Devil on my side.

I was a tall kid for my age, and this punk who’d spent weeks sniping at me was a little on the heavy side. I spun on my heels, planted my foot behind his, took him by the throat, and shifted my entire weight against him. He teetered backward, falling flat on his back, and I went with him, a victim of my own gravity. I held him by the throat as students called out for a teacher. He stared at me, stunned, afraid, and I remember feeling alive with electricity, a powerful surge of vindication. I felt his fear.

“You will leave me alone or I’ll tear out your goddamn throat.” I squeezed his neck, digging my fingers into his reddening flesh. Two teachers had to pull me off him, dragging me out of the cafeteria toward the principal’s office while the kid curled up on the floor, gasping for air. He never bothered me again.

The principal called my mom, and she came down to the school to get me. This was before the days of shootings and bomb threats. I faced in-school suspension—the first reprimand I’d ever had, for that matter—and during the entire car ride home, Mom alternated between yelling at me and crying. I remember feeling remorse to an extent. Not for the kid, of course—he deserved what I’d done—but remorse for how I made my mother feel.

I stormed off to my room when we got home, wanting nothing more than to be alone from the world to shut out everything I’d done. Mom wasn’t having any of that, and she followed after me.

“We’re not finished here, young man.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But you’re going to talk about it,” she said. “I don’t know what to do with you anymore. You never talk to me. You come home and shut us out of your life. You never go to church with us anymore. And now you’re wearing these dark clothes and the music you’re listening to honestly scares me. Is it any wonder those kids think you’re a Satanist?”

“I don’t care what they think.”

“That’s bullshit. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have nearly choked a boy to death.”

Mom sat down at my desk, planted her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed for a few minutes, and I just stared at her, not really feeling anything. How could I expect her to understand? I could barely communicate what I felt with my drawings. Giving voice to what was going on inside my heart was beyond my ability. Instead, I sat there with a ball of cotton in my throat, watching my mother cry with the same grief she had when Granny collapsed that day.

After a few awkward minutes, Mom wiped her eyes and stared at me. She shook her head.

“What happened to you? You aren’t the same child I raised.”

The Devil happened to me. The words were on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t bring myself to speak them. I might have said the Devil made me do it. Except he didn’t. He didn’t make me do any of it. All of this was my own doing—the regret, the anger, the resentment. Everything I felt, everything that happened to me, including the Devil’s shadow that followed me every step of the way and the dreams that haunted my sleep, was all a result of my own behavior.

I had chosen my path by shaking the Devil’s hand. My actions were my own, pieces of a greater whole. Sitting there, looking at my mom’s mascara-streaked face, I realized the picture I was drawing of myself was bleak: a sketch of scratchy lines and incomplete shadows.

I still couldn’t bring myself to answer her, though. She grounded me for a month from TV and video games. All I had left were books and my drawings. I didn’t understand it at the time, but Mom grounding me was one of the best things she ever did.

***

Harvey J. Winterbell was right: the mark went away as I got older, and I was haunted by different demons. Harvey was still with me, of course—not in physical appearance, mind you, but in the metaphysical sense. The creative sense. He was always there in my drawings, somewhere, even if I didn’t give him shape or form. His demons were now mine, and I took to the page with my pencils and pens, scribbling away, trying to free myself of them. But they were still there—dark shapes lurking in the background, between the lines, always watching. Accusing me. Mocking me.

My drawings became more erratic in that month-long purgatory. Every face looked evil. Every eye was blue, every chin covered in a closely-groomed goatee. Any outsider would’ve assumed these drawings were a series of self-portraits—after all, I had fashioned myself to look just like my tormentor in a sick form of Stockholm Syndrome. No matter how hard I tried to break free of that cycle, every time I put pencil to paper, Harvey and his demons were there.

Frustrated to the point of tears, I ripped up that last drawing and threw the pieces into the air. I’d hit a wall, questioning my sanity in the process. Was it normal for a teenager to lose his mind? I can’t say. I heard my mother discussing the possibility of taking me to see a “professional,” much in the same way as she’d done with Granny when I was a child.

My therapy came in a different form. I’m not sure if the books or the writing came first, but halfway through that month of confinement to my room, I started using a pencil to draw letters instead of pictures. I had a small library of books, mostly leftovers from my younger years—books by R.L. Stine and Ray Bradbury and John Bellairs—but my mom also had a cache of grown-up novels by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. I procured a copy of Intensity from her bookshelf one afternoon after school when she wasn’t home and hid it in my room.

I read the story at night, long after my parents expected me to be asleep, devouring its pages and living through the author’s words. I found a strange sort of peace within my own head while reading that book. More importantly, the demons weren’t there. The nagging, mocking weight that sat upon my shoulders was lifted for a brief time, leaving me with nothing more than the magic of mere words. I’d found a way to escape my demons. To run from them.

But to chase them? That was something infinitely more difficult—yet I had to try.

So late one night after my parents went to bed, I crept out from under the blankets, turned on my desk lamp, and began writing a story. Harvey wasn’t in it, and neither were our demons, and for the first time since I’d given myself to him in order to save Granny, I found some semblance of peace within myself.

I kept writing. I kept chasing my demons. And Harvey didn’t follow.

***

Life went on for me even after serving my month-long sentence. I grew up. I finished high school and enrolled in college. I wrote stories about bad things happening to even worse people. I became defiant, determined to go against my family’s wishes. We argued and we fought. We turned our backs on one another, and by the time I finished college, I’d had enough of the small town in which I’d spent most of my life.

I packed up my things and moved almost a thousand miles: far enough to get away from my past so it couldn’t haunt me anymore. Far enough that no one could touch me. I left everyone behind, including my granny.

Granny, the woman who had raised me, who was my best friend, the woman who had died to me the day I gave my life for hers. I’d finally found a way to escape the mess I’d made for myself, carving my thoughts into empty white paper one word at a time. I shirked my responsibility in exchange for what I thought was self-fulfillment. Once again, I thought I was doing something right, but in reality, I was being just as selfish as ever.

I moved away, leaving behind someone who I thought didn’t mean anything to me anymore.

Six months had passed when I got a call from my cousin. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in my family since I’d left, and even then our words had been sour, tainted. I was visiting a fellow writer at her home, hanging out and listening to music, talking about our current works in progress and exchanging the woes of a writer’s life. Agents and publishers. Editors and being edited. I was far away and living in my element, exorcising those demons one by one, and meeting others who were doing the same thing. For the first time in my life, I felt like my own person. A new person, removed from his past. Free.

My phone rang, and I excused myself from the room. I walked outside into the dark, sucking in the crisp autumn air, and examined my cell phone. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it was my cousin. We’d not talked all that much after I’d gone to college. My curiosity got the better of me, and I answered. The world dropped out from beneath me.

“Listen,” my cousin said, “you need to come home. Granny passed away tonight.”

***

I’ve made some long drives in my life. The drive from Pennsylvania to Kentucky is anything but short, and the time of day is a determining factor of its length. The day I left for Kentucky, I had to work first shift at my crappy retail job. My wife Erica (she was my girlfriend at the time) picked me up from work because we only had one car. We left from there, driving through the night across the mountains of Maryland and West Virginia. Erica slept, and I had a lot of time to myself to think about everything.

I hadn’t seen Granny since that day in the nursing home when she didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t bring myself to face her after that. Now here I was, returning home to pay my respects to the woman I had shunned during my teenage years. I’d left her behind like the detritus of my past, scraps of paper crumpled in a wastebasket, filled with the lines of incomplete drawings.

We’d just crossed the Kentucky state line when I realized the pact was complete. Although I’d spent the last several years ignoring the nightmare of our agreement, chasing away Harvey’s demons with every single written word, I had failed to recognize Harvey’s absence. To be fair, I hadn’t drawn anything in years, so if he was still with me in the form of his looming shadow, I didn’t know—or maybe I refused to see him. Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I’d grown blind to him like any other child does to an imaginary friend.

To my surprise, I felt nothing. No sorrow, no fear, no relief. I was going back home exactly how I wanted to be: a clean slate.

We arrived at my mom’s house around five in the morning. The funeral visitation wasn’t until that evening, so we had time to catch up on our sleep, but I tossed and turned in my old bed. Everything was smaller than I remembered. To be back in my room felt like a dream in which everything is familiar and somehow foreign at the same time, slightly off, with memory and reality colliding. I spent most of the dawn trying to justify my actions of the last ten years, worried that the peace I’d worked so hard to find would suddenly leave me.

When I finally slept, I did so deeply and without dreams. After I woke, I spent the hours leading up to the visitation composing my thoughts, preparing for an onslaught of nasty looks and remarks. As the black sheep of the family, I suppose that was to be expected, but it didn’t stop me from asking if I could say a few words. I felt that was appropriate—even if they didn’t—and nothing they could do would stop me. I only asked to be polite.

Truth is, though, I had no idea what I’d say. Not until I put pen to paper. How arrogant I felt, composing something for a woman who I had all but abandoned—but that was all the more reason to do it. I owed her. She didn’t have to be a Granny to me but did so anyway.

I felt ashamed, scribbling my words onto paper. Memories of all I’d felt, done, and said over the last ten years washed over me. A tsunami raged in my head, and I expected Harvey to resurface, but he didn’t. I was alone with my thoughts. Just as I’d always been.

***

I stepped outside the funeral home for some air. Members of my family lingered inside, shaking hands, thanking longtime friends for showing up to pay their respects. I hadn’t yet read what I had to say, struggling with the right time, struggling with the fear that what I had to say would be taken out of context. Everyone was civil to me that night, leaving me to wonder if the scorn I expected was nothing more than a projection of how I felt about myself.

Standing under the awning, watching cars drive by on Master Street, I fell into my own thoughts. My heart was racing and my hands shook. Had I grown into the man she always wanted me to be? Had I made her proud? That was a laugh—there’s no way I possibly could have. I wasn’t worthy of her love. I was a selfish child. I wanted her for myself, even if it meant her suffering through the last of her days. I condemned her to that nursing home, and for that, I was damned.

“Not necessarily.”

I looked to my left. Standing in the shadows was the figure of a man. The cherry ember of a cigarette glowed in the darkness.

“Can I help you?”

“You already have, kiddo.”

My heart climbed into my throat as I recognized that familiar voice. The lingering stench of sulfur rose with the breeze, causing my stomach to tumble into itself.

“Harvey?”

He stepped out of the shadows and gave a shallow bow. “In the flesh, child. I would have it no other way.”

“Why are you here?”

“To honor our agreement. I told you I would own your life until the day your Granny passed on. That day has come, and here we are. Your life is now your own—just as it always was.”

“What do you mean?” I stared hard into his glowing blue eyes. “It was never my own. I ruined my life the day I gave it to you. And I ruined hers.”

“But she never stopped loving you, kiddo. You may have stopped loving yourself, but she never did. She never gave up on you.”

I wiped tears from my eyes. I wouldn’t let him see me cry. Standing there in the dark, I suddenly felt empty, a husk of a man, drained of everything. There was nothing left.

“She always told me you were a tempter, a liar. That you were the enemy of man.”

“Perhaps,” he said, puffing on his cigarette, “but I’m more of a mirror than an enemy. I’m here to show you who the real enemy is.”

I thought about that for a moment, twisting his metaphor around in my head. I was about to respond when he held out his hand and looked at his watch.

“I need to be going. Enjoy your life, kiddo. Keep writing those stories, too. They might take you somewhere someday.”

“You didn’t come for her, did you?”

“Hmm?”

I took a step forward, so close I could smell his burning breath. “This was never about her, was it?”

Harvey J. Winterbell, the Devil of my life, tilted his head back and laughed. “You’re just now figuring this out? Of course, it wasn’t about her. This was about you. It always has been. I was there for you, child. To measure you. To teach you and test you.”

I scoffed at that. All he’d taught me was anger and resentment.

“Don’t look at me like that, kiddo. You know I’m right. You were given a choice, and you chose. But it wasn’t about the choice so much as what you did with it.” He paused for a moment, snuffing out his black cigarette beneath the sole of his shoe. “You once asked your granny why I tempted Jesus in the desert. You remember that, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Right,” he went on, “and the answer is quite simple. I tempted Him because I had to, because that’s what I was made to do. I am what I am because I have to be, because sometimes the Old Man Upstairs needs a measuring stick. I measured Jesus just as I measured you, and sometimes I have to cut people down to do that. I separated Jesus from His human pride, measuring His resolve against His own nature. He could’ve had food anytime He wanted. He could’ve flexed the power that was gifted to Him by His Father—but He didn’t. I tested Him to teach Him that He could stand on His own, that He had the guts to become what He had to. And like Him, I gave you a choice to teach you the one thing you needed to learn.”

His words vibrated in my head, filling me with confusion and turmoil. I didn’t understand him then. It would be years before I could. He didn’t wait for me to acknowledge him. He continued:

“You had to learn that, in life, separation is the greatest teacher. Nothing else will teach you more. You made some bad choices, kiddo. I won’t lie to you about that. But they were your choices, and they led you exactly where you were supposed to go. You couldn’t have made those choices if we hadn’t met.”

“Then they weren’t actually choices, were they?”

“That depends on how you want to look at it. How you choose to look at it, even. You see a life wasted in regret and resentment, afraid of your own shadow, running from demons you chose to see. I see a life enabled to its full capacity, tempered with those sour emotions, lifting you up where you need to be. Whether or not you dissect my words, you will still reach the conclusion that you are who you are, for better or worse. You are who you chose to be. Where you go from here is up to you.”

He turned his back to me and took a couple of steps toward the corner of the building. I watched him go with tears clinging to my eyes. He paused for a moment, cocked his head to the side, and smiled.

“She loved you something fierce, kiddo. Jesus didn’t have the luxury of a Granny, but you did. Be thankful for that.”

And then he was gone, leaving me standing in the dark, taking deep panic breaths. I leaned back against the brick wall of the funeral home, buried my face in my hands, and cried.

***

Memories are a funny thing. Sometimes the ones you try to keep afloat in your mind sink into the murk, lost forever in a sea of consciousness; other times, what you try to keep submerged has a habit of popping up to the surface when you least suspect it. I realize now that those things I left behind have come to define certain pieces of me, like vital corners of a jigsaw puzzle. Without them, the frame of a whole picture is lost, and the more integral pieces are harder to place.

Not long after Erica and I were married we returned to Corbin to visit family and found ourselves standing in Granny’s dilapidated home. The property was in its final stages of being sold, and my family was there to clean out what was left of Granny’s belongings. The old house had fallen into disrepair, its roof caving in, water stains on the plaster and mold growing along the walls.

I stood in the living room, smiling at old memories that hadn’t surfaced in years. One piece here, a piece there, all part of a greater whole that defined the man I’d become.

Affixed to the adjacent wall was a framed newspaper cutout. The drawing was something I’d done in Kindergarten, accompanied by a story of two boys going fishing. Somehow, some way, that story ended up in the local paper, becoming my first publication. Staring at it, I suppose I should’ve known the path I was meant to take, but memories, well, they’re a funny thing.

At the far end of the room was Granny’s old writing desk. I remember her sitting in her armchair, reading a newspaper while I sat at the desk, pecking away at her old typewriter, its keys occasionally sticking, double-printing letters on the page. I’d typed a story of gibberish, letters without any meaning, tearing the page from the roller and handing it to her with a big stupid grin on my face.

“Do you like it, Granny?”

She smiled. “I do, honey.” She handed me another blank piece of paper. “Now write me another one.”

I saw this in my head through the transparent haze of a memory tucked away for almost two decades. I walked over to the desk and lifted its rolling cover. The typewriter sat alone, covered in a thin sheet of dust. A piece of paper was stuck in its roller, waiting for me, as if it knew I’d come back some day.

Smiling, I reached out and typed three words: ALL GONE DARK.

The last key stuck, and I closed the desk with a sigh. Turning back, watching my wife walk through the house I grew up in, watching the rest of my family pick its rooms clean of any last remaining artifacts, I reached into the past for something to remind me of what Granny and I once had. Something to reassure me and settle my fears that I’d done the right thing.

I found that something, sitting in a jumble of memories, coated in dust just like the typewriter. Me as a child, barely able to walk, sitting on Granny’s knee while she sang a lullaby. She looked down at me, smiling that big heartwarming smile of hers, and told me, “You’re my boy, Toddy. I’ll always love you and nothing will ever change that.”

I closed my eyes and took a breath. I waited, holding that picture in my mind, until everything else—the fear, the doubts, the demons—were silenced and left to drown in the shadows of the past until they, too, had all gone dark.