Running With The Demon

CHAPTER 19

Gran did a strange thing then. She rose without another word, went down the hall to her bedroom, and closed the door behind her. Nest sat at the kitchen table and waited. The minutes ticked by, but Gran did not return. She had left her drink and her cigarettes behind. Nest could not remember the last time Gran had left the kitchen table in the middle of the day like this. She kept thinking the old woman would reappear. She sat alone in the kitchen, bathed in the hot July sunlight. Gran stayed in her bedroom.

Finally Nest stood up and walked to the doorway and looked down the hall. The corridor was silent and empty. Nest nudged the wooden floor with the tip of her tennis shoe. A demon, a demon, a demon! Her mind spun with the possibilities. Was the demon Gran had known the same demon that was here now? She remembered John Ross saying he didn't know why the demon was interested in her, and she wondered if it was because of Gran. Perhaps the demon was trying to get to Gran through her, rather than to John Ross. Maybe that was its intention.

She looked down at her feet, down her tanned legs and narrow body, and she wished that someone would just tell her the truth and be done with it. Because she was pretty certain no one was doing that now.

After a few more moments of waiting unsuccessfully for Gran to emerge, she went back into the kitchen and picked up the phone to call Cass. The house felt oppressive and secretive to her, even in the brightness of midday. She listened to its silence over the ringing of the telephone. Cass Minter's mother picked up on the third ring and advised Nest that Cass and Bri–anna had already left and would meet her in the park by the toboggan slide. Nest thanked Mrs. Minter and hung up. She looked around the kitchen as if she might find someone watching, haunted by what Gran had told her. A demon. She closed her eyes, but the demon was there waiting for her, bland features smiling, pale eyes steady.

She glanced at the clock and went down the hall and out the back door. The picnic with John Ross was not until three. She had a little less than two hours to spend with Cass and the others before getting back. She stepped out into the heat and squinted up at the brilliant, sunlit sky. The air was thick with the rich smells of dry earth and grasses and leaves. Robins sang in the trees and cars drove down Sinnissippi Road, their tires whining on the hot asphalt. She wet her lips and looked around. Her grandfather came up the drive, returning from carrying up the yard waste. He slowed as he approached, and an uncertain smile creased his weathered face.

"Everything all right?" he asked. His big hands hung limp at his sides, and there was sweat on his brow.

Nest nodded. "Sure. I'm on my way to meet Cass and the others in the park."

Her grandfather glanced toward the house hesitantly, then back at her. "John will be here at three for the picnic."

"Don't worry, I'll be back." She gave him a reassuring smile. How much did he know about Gran and the feeders? "Bye, Grandpa."

She stepped around a sleeping Mr. Scratch and crossed the yard quickly, eyes determinedly forward so she would not look back. She felt as if her grandfather had read everything she was thinking in her eyes, and she did not want that. She felt as if everything was kept secret from her, while she had no secrets of her own. But there was John Ross, of course. She was the only one who knew the truth about him. Well, some of the truth, anyway. Maybe. She sighed helplessly.

She was pushing her way through the gap in the bushes when Pick dropped onto her shoulder.

" 'Bout time," he grumbled, settling himself into place. "Some of us have been up since daybreak, you know."

She gave him an angry look. "Good for you. Some of us have been trying to figure out why others of us aren't a little more truthful about things."

The wooden brow furrowed and the black–pool eyes crinkled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She stopped abruptly beside the service road and looked off into the park. There were families laying out blankets and picnic baskets on the grassy lawn farther east where the shade trees began. There were baseball games under way, softball pickup contests. Two boys were throwing a Frisbee back and forth and a dog was running hopefully between them, giving chase. It was all familiar to her, but it felt quite alien, too.

"It means you were awfully quick to disappear last night after the spirits of the Sinnissippi appeared." She glared at him. "Why was that?"

The sylvan glared back. "Bunch of mumbo jumbo, that's why. I got bored."

"Don't you lie to me!" she hissed. She snatched him off her shoulder by the nape of his twiggy neck and held him kicking and squirming before her. "You saw the vision, too, didn't you? You saw the same thing I did, and you don't want to admit it! Well, it's too late for that, Pick!"

"Put me down!" he raged.

"Or what? What will you do?" She felt like tossing him out on the grass and leaving him there. "I know who it was! It was Gran! I knew it from a picture on the fireplace mantel! I thought it was Mom at first, but it was Gran! You knew, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"Yes!" He lashed out.

He stopped squirming and stared balefully at her. Nest stared back. After a moment, she placed him in the palm of her hand and squatted down in the grass next to the service road, holding him up to her face. Pick righted himself indignantly, brushing at his arms and legs as if he had been dumped in a pile of dirt.

"Don't you ever do that again!" he warned, so furious he refused even to look at her.

"You stop lying to me and maybe I won't!" she snapped back, just as angry as he was.

His mouth worked inside his mossy beard. "I haven't lied to you. But it isn't my place to tell you things about your family! It isn't right for me to do that!"

"Well, what kind of a friend are you, then?" she demanded. "A real friend doesn't keep secrets!"

Pick snorted. "Everyone keeps secrets. That's part of life. i None of us tells the other everything. We can't. Then there f wouldn't be any part of us that didn't belong to someone else!" He tugged on his beard in frustration. "All right, so I didn't tell you about your grandmother and the feeders. But she didn't tell you either, did she? So maybe there's a reason for that, and maybe it's up to her to decide if she wants you to know that reason and maybe it's not up to me!"

"Maybe this, maybe that! Maybe it doesn't matter, now! She told me when I asked her, even though she didn't want to! She told me, but it would have been easier if it had come from you!" Nest shook her head, and her voice quieted. "She told me about the demon, too. Is it the same one that's here now?"

Pick threw up his hands. "How am I supposed to answer that when I haven't even seen him?"

Nest studied him doubtfully for a moment. "He probably wouldn't look the same anyway, would he?"

"Hard to say. Demons don't change much once they're demons." He blinked. "Wait a minute. You haven't seen him, have you?"

Nest told him then about the encounter in church, about the appearance of the feeders and Wraith, about poor Mrs. Browning, and about John Ross. When she was done, Pick sat down heavily hi her palm and shook his head.

"What's going on here?" he asked softly, not so much of her as of himself.

She looked off into the park again, thinking it over, searching for an answer that refused to be found. Then she stood up, put him back on her shoulder, and began to walk once more along the edge of the service road toward the east end of the park. "Tell me about my grandmother," she asked him after a moment.

Pick looked at her. "Don't start with me. I've said all I have to say about that."

"Just tell me what she was doing with the feeders, running with them, being part of them." Nest felt her voice catch as the ugly vision played itself through again in her mind.

Pick shrugged. "I don't know what she was doing. She was young and wild, your grandmother, and she did a lot of things I didn't much agree with. Running with the feeders was one of them. She did it because she felt like it, I guess. She was different from you."

Nest looked at him. "Different how?"

"She was the first to have the magic in your family when there was no one to guide her in its use," he replied. "She didn't know what to do with it. There wasn't any balance in her life like there is in yours. Not then, at least. She's given you that balance, you know. She's been there to warn you about the magic right from the first. No one was there for her. Opal, the last before her, was dead by the time she was eight. So there was only me, and she didn't want to listen to me. She thought I was out for myself, that what I said didn't mean anything." He pursed his lips. "Like I said, she was headstrong."

"She said she was in love with the demon."

"She was, for a time."

"Until she found out the truth about him."

"Yep, until then."

"What did she do to keep him away from her?"

Pick looked at her. "Didn't she tell you?"

Nest shook her head. "Will you?"

Pick sighed. "Here we go again."

"All right, forget it."

They walked on in silence, passing the east ball diamond and turning up toward the parking lot that fronted the toboggan slide. Ahead, the trees shimmered hotly in the midday sun and the river reflected silver and gold. In the backyards of the houses bordering the park, people were working in their flower beds and mowing the grass. The smell of hamburgers cooking on an open grill wafted heavily on the humid air.

"I shouldn't tell you," Pick insisted quietly.

"Then don't."

"I shouldn't."

"All right."

Pick hunched his shoulders. "Your grandmother," he said wearily, staring straight ahead. For a minute he didn't say anything else. "The demon underestimated her, too bad for him. See, she understood him better than he thought. She'd learned a few things running with him, being part of his life, those nights in the park. She knew it was her magic that attracted him to her. She knew the magic was everything to him. He wanted her because she had it. She was very powerful in those days, Nest. Maybe as powerful as he was. So she told him that if he stayed in the park, if he kept after her, she'd use it against him. She'd use it up, every last bit of it. She'd kill him or herself or both of them. She didn't care which."

He paused. "She would have done it, too. She was very determined, very tough–minded, your grandmother." He scratched his mossy beard. "Anyway, the demon was convinced. He backed down from her. He hated her for that afterward. Hated himself, too. By the time she was finished with him, he didn't want anything to do with her anymore."

Nest tried to imagine Gran confronting the demon, threatening to kill him if he refused to leave her alone. Frail, weary old Gran.

"Now, that's all I'm saying on the subject," Pick interjected heatedly. "If you want to know anything more, ask your grandmother. But I'd think twice about it, if I were you. Just my opinion. Some things are better left alone, and this is one of them. Take my word for it. Let it be."

"The Beatles, 1969?"

"What?"

"Never mind." Nest was sick of the whole subject. Nothing she had heard was making her feel any better. Pick was just irritating her with his refusal to talk about it, but she guessed that he was right, that it should come from Gran. Maybe it was time to ask about her father, too. Maybe it was time to insist on an answer. There were too many secrets in her family, and some of them needed revealing. Didn't she have a right to know?

"I have to be going," Pick announced, rising to his knees on her shoulder. She stopped and looked at his narrow face. His fierce eyes stared back at her. "Just make sure you bring John Ross to the maentwrog's tree so he can have a look for himself at what's happening."

Nest nodded. "I'll bring him up after the picnic."

She lowered Pick to the ground, and he disappeared without a word, vanishing into the grass as if he were an ant. " 'Bye," she murmured at the space he left behind.

She walked on across the grass into the parking lot that fronted the toboggan slide, kicking at rocks and staring at the ground as it passed beneath her feet. Her skin was hot and sticky already. She brushed at her curly damp hair, moving it off her forehead and away from her eyes. She felt awkward and stupid. She hated who she was. She wondered what she could do to change things.

Someone yelled at her from the ball field, and she glanced over. A group of boys was standing by home plate looking at her; she thought it was one of them who had called to her. Worse, she thought it was Danny Abbott. She looked away and kept on walking.

She crossed the parking lot to the toboggan slide and saw Cass and the others grouped at a picnic table under one of the big oaks. Behind them, down the hill, the river flowed with sluggish indifference beyond the levy. A few boats bobbed gently on its surface, their occupants hunched over fishing poles and cans of bait. She strolled over to her friends, trying to appear casual, trying to make herself believe that nothing was different. They were all there‑Cass, Brianna, Robert, and Jared. They looked up as she approached, and she had the feeling they had been talking about her.

"Hey," she said.

"Pete and Repeat are out walking," said Robert, straight–faced. "Pete goes home. Who's left?"

"Elvis?" she asked, squeezing in between Cass and Brianna.

"Nice try. Two guys walk into a bar. One's got a Doberman, the other a terrier. Bartender says …"

"Robert!" snapped Brianna, cutting him short. "Geez!"

"Enough with the jokes," Cass agreed. "They weren't funny the first time, back when Washington was president."

"Oh, big yuck." Robert looked annoyed. "All right, so what are we going to do, then? And don't tell me we're going to spend the day trying to heal any more sick trees." He gave Nest a pointed look. "Especially since we didn't do so well with the last one."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, it looks terrible." He pushed up his glasses on his nose and brushed back his blond hair. "We walked by it on the way over, and it looks like it's a goner. Whatever we did, it didn't help."

"We could go swimming," Brianna suggested brightly, ignoring him.

Nest shook her head. "I can't. I have to be back by two. How bad is it, Robert?"

"The bark's all split open and oozing something green and there's dead leaves everywhere." He saw the look on Nest's face and stopped. "What's going on? What's this sick–tree business all about?"

Nest took a deep breath and bit her lower lip. "Someone is poisoning the trees in the park," she said, giving a slight edge of truth to what was otherwise an outright lie.

They stared at her. "Why would anyone do that?" Cass asked.

"Because…" She shrugged. "Because they're nuts, I guess."

Robert frowned. "How do you know this?"

"Grandpa told me. He heard it from the park people. I guess it's happened in some other places, too." She was rolling now, sounding very sure of herself. "It's one guy that's doing it. He was seen in another park, so they got a description. Everyone's been looking for him."

Robert frowned some more. "This is the first I've heard of it. My dad never said anything about anyone poisoning trees in the parks. You sure about this?"

Nest gave him a disgusted look. "Of course I'm sure. Why would I say it if I wasn't?"

"So they know what this guy looks like?" Jared asked quietly. He looked tired, as if he hadn't been sleeping well.

"Yep." She glanced at them conspiratorially. "I'll tell you something else, too. Grandpa thinks he might be in the park this weekend. See, sometimes he dresses like a park maintenance man in order not to be noticed. That's how he gets away with poisoning the trees."

"He might be in the park this weekend?" Brianna parroted, her porcelain features horror–struck.

"Maybe," Nest advised. "So we have to watch for him, keep an eye out. This is what he looks like." She provided a careful description of the demon, from his pale eyes to his bland face. "But if you see him, don't try to go near him. And don't let him know he's been seen. Just come get me."

"Come get you?" Robert repeated suspiciously.

"So I can tell Grandpa, because he knows what to do."

Everyone nodded soberly. Nest held her breath and waited for more questions, but there weren't any. Way to go, she thought, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at her subterfuge. You can lie with the best of them, can't you? You can lie even to your friends.

They walked through the park for a while afterward, killing time. Nest watched her friends surreptitiously checking faces as" if they might really find the tree poisoner, and she pondered if she had done the right thing. She needed any help she could get, and this would give her friends something to do besides wonder why she was acting odd, but it made her feel ashamed of herself anyway. She didn't believe any of them would find the demon. She thought only John Ross could do that, and she wasn't sure of him. What persuaded her that she should even try to do something was her memory of the morning's encounter in the church kitchen, of the murder, of the pale eyes studying her, of the calm, even voice talking to her about the way the world would end. She could rationalize what had happened from now until Christmas, but she still felt desperate, almost hopeless.

The park was beginning to fill with families come to picnic and participate in the games the Jaycees were running prior to this evening's community dance. There would be softball, badminton, horseshoes, and footraces of various sorts for adults and children both. Members of the club were already preparing for the events. Food and drink stands were being set up. The smells of hot dogs and hamburgers wafted in the thick July air, and smoke curled lazily from the brick chimneys of the cook centers in the pavilion. Bushy–tailed red squirrels scampered along the limbs of the big oaks, and a few dogs chased after balls. Laughter and shouts rose from all about.

A slight breeze wafted off the river, causing Nest to glance skyward. A thin lacework of clouds drifted across the blue. She had heard her grandfather say there was a chance of rain for the Fourth.

She left the others then, promising to meet up with them later on in the afternoon when family obligations were satisfied. Robert was having a cookout in his backyard with his parents and some cousins. Cass and Brianna were going to a church picnic. Jared had to go home to watch the younger kids while his mother and George Paulsen came over to the park so that George could compete in the horseshoe tournament.

Jared and Nest walked back across the park, neither of them saying anything. Jared seemed preoccupied, but she liked being with him no matter what his mood. She liked the way he was always thinking things over, giving careful consideration to what he was going to say.

"You going to the dance tonight, Nest?" he asked suddenly, not looking at her.

She glanced over in surprise. "Sure. Are you?"

"Mom says I can go for a while. The kids are staying at Mrs. Pinkley's for the night, except Bennett is going to Alice Workman's. You know, the social worker. George and Mom are going out somewhere, then coming back to watch TV."

They walked on, the silence awkward. "You want to go to the dance with me?" he asked after a minute.

Nest felt a warm flush run down her neck. "Sure."

"Cool. I'll meet you about seven." He was so serious. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets.

"You don't think this is weird or anything, do you?"

She smiled in spite of herself. "Why would I think that?" "Because it would be you and me, and not all of us. Robert and Cass and Brianna might think it's weird, us not including them."

She glanced quickly at him. "I don't care what they think." He thought about it a moment, then nodded solemnly.

"Good. Neither do I."

She left him on the service road and slipped through the gap in the bushes at the edge of her backyard, feeling light–headed from more than just the heat.