Tim Pratt: Sympathy for the Devil

“Not so fast, Monsieur. Who’s going to pay for this meal, Bill? The bill, Bill. When you eat at my table, you pay for my cooking.”

The Devil wore a chef’s cap. One of those stupid high white ones that look like something put on the end of a lamb chop at a ritzy restaurant. He wore that white hat and all the rest of his clothes were white too. His face was nothing special-just a face surrounded by lots of white. No, that’s not true-there was one strange-looking thing about him-he had two moustaches. Slim little things, they sat one right under the other like lines on paper.

“I see by your admiring eye that you’re looking at my moustaches. Is this going to be the new trend or what?”

“It looks stupid if you ask me. Plus people can’t grow two moustaches.”

He shrugged and played with both of them. Top one, then the bottom. “But they can grow one really thick one and cut a space in the middle, making levels.”

“It’s still stupid.”

“Every fool’s entitled to his opinion. But let’s get back to the facts-how do you plan on paying for this meal? P.S. I don’t take Visa or Mastercard.” He laughed and it sounded like someone unscrewing a tight plastic-on-plastic cap. I squinted at the sound but didn’t look away. I guess my face said I was confused, so he took my arm. I tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let me.

“You chose to come here, Bill boy, and now you want to leave, which, however, is a human no-no. Any person who sees this and wants to go back has to pay.”

“Pay with what?”

“Something you love. I’ll let you go back but the price for this meal, this little view you just had, is something you love in life. If you stay here you get to keep all this. But if you go back you’ve got to give me something from your life you never thought you could live without.”

“Mr. Beeflow, are you there? Is this true?”

“Forget it, he can’t help you. Anyway you saw what he looked like.”

“You made Beeflow do this too?”

“Yup. He gave up his body. He was a handsome man. A very vain one too. Nothing he liked more than looking at himself in a mirror and admiring the view. I never thought he would do it but sometimes people surprise me.”

Suddenly I remembered Cyrus and looked down at the hand he had been holding. No Cyrus-nothing was there. Only the ground. The ground in that beautiful Hell. Gathering myself together, gathering words in my mouth to make a sentence I never thought I would say in a million years, I took a deep breath and said, “Rae, take my love for Rae.”

He didn’t react immediately. He looked at me hard, like I was trying to trick him. But we both knew there was no way I could trick him.

“I thought you’d say something like that but it’s not enough, Bill. Try again.”

“I don’t know anything else. That’s about as bad as I can imagine. Not loving my wife anymore? What could be worse than not loving Rae?”

I climbed through the window of Eric Dickey’s house back out into my world and my life. The first thing I smelled there was big thick smoke. It took only a second to remember I’d gone in there in the first place to save Eric and his wife from burning up in the caveman’s fire. Jumping off the porch, I ran around to the back of the house. There was a high pile of wood and other things burning in the middle of their yard. Firemen had a hose turned on it, trying to get it under control. Both of the Dickeys were off to one side on their knees, taking oxygen. There was so much tussle and turmoil out there-people running around, fire being fought, police, firemen and the like. No one noticed me standing there. I couldn’t help thinking that there had been absolutely no reason for me to go into that house because the fire had all been out here. But then if I hadn’t gone in-

“Brother Bill?”

Brooks came up on one side of me, Zin Zan on the other. Neither of them was smiling and neither was I.

“Are you all right?”

A fireman rushed by us and knocked into me hard as he passed but I didn’t react.

“Now I’m your Brother? Is that what you call me from now on? Brother Bill?”

“We don’t have to call you anything if that’s what you’d prefer. Are you all right?”

“You know where I just was, don’t you?”

They both nodded.

“And you both went there once and saw the Devil?”

Again, slow nods.

In the smoke and the fire and the confusion and the running around and the noise that was a hundred kinds of noise, I saw something I hadn’t seen all afternoon although it had been right in front of me the whole time.

“My God, you’re Brooks Collins!”

Half a smile crossed Brother Brooks’s face and then died. He nodded again.

“I have all your albums.”

“Better take care of them-there won’t be any more.”

“You gave that up?” A few beats passed until I understood. “That’s what you gave the Devil? Your talent?

“And the fame. He wasn’t going to let me go just giving up the one. The world today is full of people who have no talent but are famous. No one recognizes me anymore. Only you, but that’s because you’ve been to Hell. You perceive things other people don’t.”

“I guess we’d better get going.”

It was not a far walk to my place but long enough to look around and appreciate things like I never had before. Now and then we’d pass a house and from just a glimpse, we knew if it had been taken over or not. But once I wasn’t sure and crept to a window to look. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see a normal family inside watching TV and eating popcorn.

“How come Mel Shaveetz and his dog were on fire when they left their house, but the caveman wasn’t? All of them were dead.”

“Because the Devil keeps changing the rules all the time. That’s the reason why so many people are unhappy in life-the rules keep changing. There’s really no way of knowing what will happen from one day to the next with this. That’s why it’s so hard for us to convince people of what’s going on. And because it’s happening so much faster now, that’s why Beeflow has become more directly involved.”

“Why doesn’t the Devil stop him?”

“Arrogance. He doesn’t see Beeflow or us as a threat. There’s your house. Do you know what you’re gonna do?”

“Stay here. I’ve got to see something.”

They stood by a light pole while I went and opened the front door. Closing it quietly behind me as if someone nearby was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake them, I just stood in the hallway a minute, being home, breathing home. My mother used to say after we’d come back from a trip, “At home, even the walls heal you.” And that’s just how I felt standing there, smelling my life in those near rooms, my eyes running over our possessions and photos on the walls that I knew the whole history of. Lucky me-all of them showed in different ways what a very good time I’d had right up until that day. Lucky me. But the Brothers had earlier said a moving van had been in front of my house. That’s why I’d come back in here-to see who had taken over our house and how they had changed things. I needed to see what was different so I could prepare my wife and somehow protect her from what was happening. But why then was nothing different in here?

Then I heard it-the zhunk of furniture being shoved hard across a floor. Someone else was in my house. Someone upstairs from the sound of it. The back of my neck prickled and my eyes opened wide of their own doing. I wore sneakers so I was able to cross the floor and climb the stairs with very little sound. While climbing I heard that same sound a few more times, sometimes louder and longer, sometimes short and sharp. Zhunk-silence-zhuuunk. Like that. I couldn’t figure out what it was but it was definitely real and I needed to find out about it.