The Gift of the Demons, Page 3

  There was a choked sound on the other end of the phone. “What channel was that on?” asked Mr. Barry.

  I told him the channel.

  “I’ll look that up on-line and see what I can find out,” he said. He sounded upset. I’d never heard him like this before.

  “Mr. Barry? Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mr. Barry?”

  “Fallin, do you remember the story of Faust? The man who sought for more and more knowledge and made a deal with the devil?”

  “He sold his soul for more knowledge. And in the end, he dies and the devil takes him to hell,” I said. I’d read parts of it. Mr. Barry had a wide variety of German materials, everything from Castor and Pollux comics in German to Das Boot and all the German classics. We had free reading time and were supposed to use his extensive collection of books or other materials to “enrich our cultural understanding.” Sometimes it turned into a kind of jam session where we’d all read bits and pieces of what we’d found and try to make it into a song together.

  “I believe that Carter may have found his way into some unintended information. And perhaps passed it along to others. Or—it could have gone another way around. I’m not sure.”

  “Mr. Barry—are you saying that the woman I saw is the devil?” I wasn’t sure if that was going to make me believe he’d gone crazy or that I had.

  “No, Fallin. I’m saying that she was a demon from hell, sent to collect on a bargain made a long time ago.”

  I was stunned into silence. Mr. Barry was one of those few people I’d always thought of as rock solid, in terms of empirical proof. He didn’t take things for granted. He was always asking questions, always poking holes in other people’s theories. I’d always had a hard time figuring out his politics, because he tore both the Democratic and Republic party platforms to shreds. He was meticulously logical and even when a scientific study came out, he’d go and find the real information and look through it to decide if he thought the results reported in the news were real.

  “Fallin, I know it’s hard to swallow something like this when you haven’t been prepared. I haven’t really wanted to prepare you because I wanted to protect you. All of you.” He sounded like he was crying. I’d never heard Mr. Barry cry before.

  “Mr. Barry, what can I do to help?”

  “Help? No, Fallin. You can’t help with this. You need to stay away from anyone who might have made a bargain with a demon. Please, Fallin. The less you know about this, the better.” I could hear noises going on in the background, doors slamming, things thumping to the ground. If Mr. Barry was making those noises, he was suddenly awfully busy.

  “Please tell me what’s going on. Are these people dead? Isn’t there anything to be done for them?”

  “No, nothing. If they have the bargaining poem—Fallin, you must not read that poem. No one should read that poem.”

  “It’s too late for that, Mr. Barry. The police have the poem. They’re reading it, and so are the reporters.” They hadn’t read it over the air, so that was fortunate, I guess. If it was as big a deal as Mr. Barry seemed to think it was.

  “It’s my fault,” muttered Mr. Barry. “All my fault. Fallin, excuse me, please. I have to go now. I wish you the best. I didn’t mean for this to happen, believe me. I never—I only wanted to make sure that the knowledge was preserved. But I should have destroyed it. I should have made sure that no one else could get at it and give it to others. This has happened too many times before, and I was too proud to think it could happen to me.”

  “Mr. Barry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. It was quiet in the background now, and I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

  “Goodbye, Fallin,” he said, and then he hung up.

  I tried to call back, but he wouldn’t answer. It just rang and rang, then went to voice mail.

  Mr. Barry was in trouble, I thought. How could I help him?

  I went on-line and googled him to find his address. That was one thing he hadn’t given us, but I figured he had just given up the right to privacy. He lived about 3 miles from my house. The only question in my mind was—did I dare take the car out or not?

  I had a bike that I rode sometimes, but it was dark outside and it was getting cold. It didn’t seem the safest choice. I could have woken Dad to ask him for permission, but then he would have tried to talk me out of it. He’d want to call the police or someone else, and I didn’t trust someone else to make sure that Mr. Barry was OK.

  I opened the garage door and then slid the car out as quietly as I could. No Dad coming running after me, shouting for me to stop. So, good news. I guess Dad had gotten used to hearing cars coming in and out of the garage and sleeping through it, with Mom always working so late.

  I followed the googlemaps directions to Mr. Barry’s house. He lived in an older section of town, where the houses were really small and built with Jayden instead of the stucco and stone up where we lived. His house sat on a big piece of land, though I didn’t see much green on it. It was mostly rock and woodchips.

  I knocked on the front door and got no answer. What did I expect? I opened the screen and tried the doorknob. It was locked.

  “Mr. Barry?” I called out, and knocked again. “It’s me, Fallin.”

  I could see a light inside, but I couldn’t see him. I knocked again, but I didn’t dare call out more loudly. His neighbors would hear and wonder what was going on.

  So I went around to the back of the house and knocked on the door there. No answer, but the back door wasn’t locked, so I opened it and went in.

  “It’s me, Mr. Barry. Fallin,” I said again, to make sure he didn’t think I was a burglar. Or a demon from hell sent to steal his soul. I thought of the knife that Carter had picked up. I’d left it at home, and now I wished I’d brought it. On the other hand, maybe it was better I hadn’t. I didn’t want to take the chance of hurting Mr. Barry accidentally with it, if he surprised me.

  I found Mr. Barry sitting on the floor in his bathroom. He looked terrible. He had always been old and a little overweight, with wrinkles along his eyes and mouth—because he smiled so much. But now he looked gray under his white skin and his eyes were bloodshot. He had a nosebleed and was holding some tissue to his face. His whole body was shaking as if he were freezing to death.

  Shock, I thought. He needed a blanket or something. I found a couple of towels and put those over him. “Mr. Barry, are you all right?” I asked.

  He was holding a piece of paper in his hands. When he saw me, he stared at the paper wild-eyed. “No, Fallin. You can’t see this.”

  “Is that the poem?” I asked.

  He tried to rip it into pieces and I let him. He dropped them into the bathroom garbage can by the toilet.

  “This is the last one. The last one in my possession. Or is it? I should remember. I should know how many copies of this I made. And where it was reproduced in other books. Fallin, I should have made that part of my bargain.”

  “Mr. Barry, calm down. Do you hurt anywhere?” It looked like he must hurt everywhere.

  He laughed, a snorting, cut-off sound that did not reassure me. “Fallin, go home and don’t think about any of this. Don’t tell anyone what you saw. Don’t ask questions. Just go on with your life. You’ll be fine.”

  Now he was starting to freak me out. “I should call an ambulance,” I said. Had he had a heart attack? Did he need some medication? He was talking about dying, I knew he was. I didn’t want him to die.

  “I’ll be fine. Truly, Fallin.”

  “Let me help you get into bed, at least,” I said. “You need to rest.”

  “Yes, bed. That’s what I need. And a nice glass of water,” said Mr. Barry.

  I put an arm underneath him, and even though he outweighed me by probably fifty pounds, I was strong enough to practically carry him to his bedroom. He directed me down the hall and even told me where the light switch was. When I had him tucked in, I wen
t back to the bathroom and got him a glass of water.

  That was when I looked down and saw the ripped pieces of paper in the garbage.

  He didn’t want me to see those, I thought. I shouldn’t be thinking about picking them out and piecing them back together. He was trying to protect me.

  I managed to leave the bathroom without bending over to pick up the papers, and went back to give Mr. Barry his water. It was weird, how I felt so much better as soon as I couldn’t see the papers anymore. It was like they had some kind of power over me, calling me to them. But when I was out of sight, I had no desire to have them.

  “Thank you so much, Fallin,” said Mr. Barry cheerfully. “Now you can go home and I’ll go to sleep.”

  There was something very false about the way he was speaking. He had put on plays with us, little mini sketches of scenes we read in German. He was doing the same voice now, his acting voice that was very precise, even when it was in English.

  “I’d rather stay for a little while and make sure you’re all right.”

  “Oh, I’m fine, just fine, Fallin. I’d rather you didn’t stay, though. I don’t sleep as well when other people are in the house with me. It’s been too long that I’ve lived alone.”

  “Well, all right,” I said. “I’ll check on you in the morning.”

  “In the morning, yes,” said Mr. Barry. “That would be fine. Call me first and we’ll arrange a time you can come over and chat. I’ll explain everything then. You’ll be amused, Fallin, where you hear what all this mess is about. It’s nonsense, really, all nonsense that has been made into too much.”

  “OK,” I said, and slipped out the back door. After I closed it behind me (locked this time), I felt relieved. Mr. Barry would explain it all later.

  I drove home and went back to bed. I slept like a baby and in the morning ate a big breakfast and got dressed before I called Mr. Barry. I expected him to pick up and sound like his regular self again.

  Chapter 4

  Mr. Barry didn’t pick up. Not when I called him at 10, either. Or at noon. Or at 2 in the afternoon.

  “What’s up? You look upset,” said Mom, who was running on about 4 hours of sleep, but looked pretty good, considering.

  “I’m worried about Mr. Barry, my German teacher,” I said.

  “Did something happen at school on Friday?” asked Mom.

  Yes, something had happened at school on Friday. I didn’t want to tell her about Carter, which still sounded crazy. I also didn’t want to tell her I’d gone to his house without telling Dad where I was going in the middle of the night. “He seemed sick,” I said. “Really sick.”

  “You don’t think he’s capable of choosing medical care for himself?” asked Mom. Sometimes Mom had to deal with people who couldn’t make decisions about their own lives anymore, the homeless or people who were mentally ill. She had to try to contact next of kin, but if there wasn’t anyone, she had to make the decisions on her own, no matter how much they screamed. It wasn’t one of Mom’s favorite parts of the job.

  “It’s not like that,” I said. Not exactly. “But he’s the kind of person who’d wait until he was about to collapse before he’d call. And then it might be too late.”

  “Do you know his address? I could go over and check on him, if it would make you feel better,” said Mom. She was serious, too. Mr. Barry would hate me if he was fine and she insisted on checking him out as a nurse.

  But on the other hand, it could save his life.

  If only I knew what was wrong with him. All that talk last night about bargains and demons seemed really distant now. I hadn’t smelled alcohol on him, but had he been partly asleep? Had he been rambling about something from his dreams? I wasn’t sure anymore, and if I sent Mom over to his house, he might be mad at me. It could embarrass him, and then how would I deal with that? I didn’t want to make things hard on Monday.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, it’s up to you. If you think it’s life and death, you should do something about it. If not, you should probably let him make his own choices.”

  “Maybe I can wait until tomorrow and see if he shows up at school.”

  Mom put a hand on my shoulder. “I think that’s probably wise, Fallin. Was he complaining of chest pain? Or of pain radiating from his chest out to his arms and hands?”

  “No,” I said. Mom had drilled me practically since birth on the signs of a heart attack.

  “You didn’t notice that one side of his body had frozen? Or that he stopped being able to talk?” she went on. Signs of a stroke.

  “No,” I said.

  “Did he have dry mouth or unexplained sweat dripping down his face?”

  “Not that I noticed,” I said.

  “Then he’ll probably be fine. I love it that you care so much about your teacher and other people in general, Fallin. I know that you say you don’t want to be a nurse, but you’d make a good one. You’re smart enough and—”

  I put up a hand. “Mom, I know there’s a nursing crisis right now, but don’t recruit me to help solve it.”

  “Just checking,” said Mom with a shrug. “But you haven’t decided what you want to study in college yet and you’re so capable. I’d hate to think that I’ve turned you off something you might have done otherwise. You know, you don’t have to work the same hours that I do.”

  Maybe or maybe not. But I didn’t want to be a nurse. I didn’t know what I wanted to be yet. Maybe a personal trainer or something physical. Maybe something to do with German. I just wasn’t sure yet. And I didn’t want Mom to help me. I had to find my own way.

  Mom kissed me on the top of my head and then put hand up to feel the soft, relaxed curls. “You are so beautiful, Fallin. Do you know that? Beautiful inside and out.”

  The cheese was a little over the top, but Mom meant it sincerely.

  “I never expected you would be a carbon copy of me, you know. And it’s not because you were adopted, either. I want you to be yourself.” She was still playing with the hair and something about it made me think she was remembering when I was little and she had my hair done in long braids at a beauty salon every few months. She loved it that way, loved how different it looked, and wasn’t so sure when I changed it in fifth grade, when I got tired of being the only black kid at school. I didn’t feel like that anymore. I liked being different, in a way. But I still hadn’t gone back to braids.

  “Mom, I wanted to relax my hair. I still want to relax it. It’s easier to deal with that way. There are more styles I can do with it.” Not that I did much with it, other than put it in a pony tail.

  “It’s up to you. Your hair. Your life,” said Mom. I thought she was saying it out loud for her own sake, rather than mine, so I didn’t say anything.

  She took a breath and changed the subject completely. “So what should we do today? Go out to the park? Have a picnic up at the reservoir? Spend all day eating chocolate and watching weepy movies?”

  “I vote for the picnic,” I said. It would get me away from thoughts of Mr. Barry and Carter—and the other kid. Nick or Rick, whatever it was.

  It would also give me a chance to see Georgia, because her parents spent every Sunday afternoon at the reservoir. I could bump into her and see what she’d thought of since what happened Friday night.

  Mom and Dad and I went to the reservoir. I felt self-conscious in my swim suit. Mom says everyone feels self-conscious in a swim suit, but she doesn’t look even more black with less clothes on. And even though I’m proud of how muscular I am, it feels wrong somehow in a swim suit. I don’t have the curves in the right places and I have curves in the wrong places. I have muscles in my ab area, where it is supposed to be flat. My shoulders bulge out and my arms are pretty buff. My butt isn’t a cute little bump on my backside. It’s not fat, but you notice it. And my thighs are huge. All muscle, but still.

  I used to always try to find a one piece suit with as much coverage as possible, and then I’d wear a boy’s pair of swim shorts on
top of that. But as soon as I got wet, you could see everything anyway. So now I wear either a tankini or a bikini, not because I want to show off, but because they fit better when I don’t have to worry about getting something that will go all the way across my chest and not be too big around the middle. Also, I don’t care what I show. If you don’t like it, that’s not my problem.

  Georgia wears the standard one piece black. I think she does that because it makes her hair and skin color stand out even more. I’ve never seen her wear anything floral or in bright colors. I have to work hard when I’m standing next to her in a bikini not to start making comparisons, because she will always come out ahead on the normal girl end of things. She has the right shape, the right curves. She looks small and feminine and her stomach is perfectly flat. I know it’s stupid that I compare myself to my friend when I know she’s not trying to compete with me, but there it is. I do it, and I tell myself it’s stupid and then I feel even worse.

  “Hey!” I say and wave to her. We’re on the south side of the reservoir, at this tiny little beach area. It’s not exactly sandy, because it’s a man-made reservoir. There used to be houses under the water before the government bought them and flooded the area. The “beach” is all dirt and rocks, and there are trees still trying to grow underneath the shore line. You have to get out a ways before they stop trying to grab you if you’re swimming.

  Georgia called something out to her parents and then made her way through the big Cottonwood tree on the shoreline, stepping over fallen branch and over the big rock. “I was hoping you would come up here today. I’ve been waiting for two hours. I’m going to get horribly sunburned.” She waved at her legs.

  She did look a little more pink than she normally was. “Sunscreen?” I said.

  “There is a limit to the SPF you can buy. My mom says that when she was my age, she could get sunburned through a long-sleeved shirt if she was out too long.”

  “You want to talk in the shade, then?” I suggest. We scooted my beach towel over a bit, until we’re on the edge of the muddy cliff that looks out on this section of the reservoir. There are a lot of boats out in it, mostly power boats that are loud and annoying. But it’s cool here.