I. A beautiful girl who occasionally seemed to float in a delusional cloud, Misty Reynolds should have known better than to walk to the corner store after midnight. Especially on a full-moon night in October.
It was on full-moon nights, the metropolitan police department reported a year ago, that crazies crawled out of every nook and cranny. This was when children disappeared, carried away by the unrelenting tide of evil, their faces appearing on the back of milk cartons months later. This was when bodies filled with bullets were found in the desert of southern Nevada.
Crime had washed through the city for as long as Misty could remember. Born twenty-four years ago, Misty had attended the city's schools, was elected prom queen her senior year, played youth soccer in the inner-city leagues, and even won a starting position on the community college's team. Yet, always, even in the safety of her parents' home, she sensed something or someone dark awaiting her in the bushes along her street or in her dreams at night, and occasionally sensed death's dark wings brush her before she woke.
II. Hours before her walk to the corner store, she told her boy friend Jason that, contrary to what many claimed, evil was tangible, real as molten lava. She wondered what she would do face-to-face with darkness. "I think I'd run," she speculated aloud, throwing herself onto her bed next to Jason, who was lying on his back and glumly staring at the ceiling. "Then, who knows? Maybe I'd fight? What would you do, boyfriend?"
"Hell if I know," muttered Jason, attempting nonchalance. Jesus, thought Jason, still studying the ceiling; here we go again. It was not the first time he had listened to Misty's inanely incoherent ramblings. A Bible college dropout with a cross tattooed on his upper left arm, Jason locked his fingers behind his head as he lay on the bed, cigarette dangling from his mouth, squinting and blowing smoke that eventually carried out the open window into the cold night. He tried to listen to the Beethoven CD he'd inserted in Misty's player. A young man with a shaved head who generally carried a hand gun, Jason didn't want to believe in much of anything right now except Misty, who sat against him, wondering where the passion of their relationship had gone.
"You been filling your brain with idle thoughts again?" asked Jason, glancing sideways at his girl. Tonight, as every night, Jason wore a black T-shirt with no printing. "And where the fuck does this question-'What would I do if the devil came calling?'--come from? Where does it come from?" At twenty-eight, Jason had had his fill of superstitions, knew he didn't want to marry and have children with this woman, even wondered if she were doing crack. "And who the hell cares anyway? Evil belongs in Star Wars," he added, taking the cigarette from his mouth, sitting up and looking at Misty. A man capable of deep thinking, Jason knew Misty's views would be classified by current intellectuals as medieval or psychotic.
"No, boyfriend, I'm not making anything up. I believe this stuff. My grandma says she believes in devils, ghosts, vampires, witches, and horrible things like that, so I do, too, " Misty replied, jumping up from the bed and walking to the window, suddenly feeling chilled. She had just remembered that her grandmother had died in her sleep just last month.
Jason took the cigarette from his mouth, examined the tip, smiled, thought about forcing a laugh and then decided not to. "Misty, my best advice to you is to try not to think about this crap. Don't fucking think, okay? At least don't fill your mind with that rubbish better confined to the junk heap with Augustine, Aquinas, and Abelard. When you think," Jason added, looking down at Misty, who huddled in the blanket up against him, "when anyone thinks twisted thoughts, they often get in some kind of trouble. Now come one over here with me on the bed."
Misty had heard of Augustine, Aquinas, and Abelard, all brilliant theologians, but said nothing. She was used to men who insulted her intelligence, thinking she was stupid; teachers and coaches had done it for years, probably because of her good looks. She had learned that, to get along, she had to get over the insults. So she sighed, turned from the window and look at Jason, smiled, and said nothing.
Dragging deeply on his cigarette, Jason went on, his eyes focused on an invisible spot on the floor. "Next thing you know, you'll be having visions, a regular St. Teresa of Avila. You'll wake up claiming to have seen the Virgin Mary, the Prince of Darkness, or the many rooms in the Kingdom of Heaven. You know what I mean?" Jason figured the best way to handle Misty's fancies was through obscure allusions and mild humiliation. His father, a professor at a local university, had used it on him and his mother many times. Besides, since leaving Bible college, Jason didn't want to have a discussion touching upon theology.
"No, I don't know what you mean, Jason. And, anyway, I've been having visions, if that's what you wanna call them," Misty insisted, walking over to the bed, sitting next to Jason, and pulling the top blanket around her. "I've read about them in class at college. I bought this book on Western Mysticism last week at the college bookstore. Evelyn Underhill is the author. Creepy, creepy shit, but real. You know what I mean?" At that moment, an extraordinarily cold wind blew through the window, touching both, and Jason wondered if he had passed into an old Twilight Zone rerun.
"Get that nonsense out of your mind, Misty," Jason responded, not wanting to venture into the territory of dreams and the supernatural, having come to believe nonetheless that dreams were often supernatural manifestations. He looked at Misty, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her closer to him. "No one believes that superstitious horse shit anymore. I sure don't."
"Well, I do believe in that horse shit," Misty replied, pulling away, looking at Jason, flinging her head back. "I do. I have to. I don't care if you or anyone else thinks I'm nuts."
"OK, babe," muttered Jason, reaching his arm out and pulling her closer again, "you're not crazy. You're all right. Sane as a jackrabbit. So go ahead and tell me about it. Your dream or your vision. Whatever. Tell me about it. I wanna hear it, as a former theology student gone wild. I really do. And then, I'm gonna jump your bones." He began stroking her hair.
Misty paused for a moment, aware that she was being patronized, thought of hitting Jason in the mouth, then closed her eyes, let the smile drop from her face, and thought. As she did so, she seemed to Jason to withdraw, something she had done in the past and something that always made Jason nervous. He remembered that she'd withdrawn in restaurants, in movie theaters, at drive-ins, and even at the mall, that when she did she stopped communicating for hours, that it happened only when he wasn't listening to her ramble about vampires, witches, and warlocks.
"Just tell me about it," said Jason, kissing Misty on the forehead, then leaning over her and the foot of the bed and dropping his cigarette in a Pepsi can on the floor. On his way back he reached inside the blanket and under Misty's sweater. "C'mon, I'm listening." Sometimes, Jason's father told him some time ago, you gotta play along with the women before you get what you want. Jason at the time knew exactly what his father had meant, and now the advice came back to him and he decided that he would wait this one out.
"It's happened several times," Misty began, growing colder, "always at a certain time during the month, and it always scares the piss outa me." Misty shivered, glanced to the door, and Jason, knowing she couldn't see it, rolled his eyes in mock credulity.
"The first time," she continued, looking straight ahead at the open window, "was about six months ago. I remember the moon was full and bloody, and a silvery blimp hung suspended over our bright city. When I began to drift off to sleep, I heard the whisper of a breeze, felt the touch of the wind upon my face, then saw a vivid blue light-like a star--glowing at the foot of my bead and filling my room, and in the light I could see the figure of a man."
Jason did not want to hear this, would rather have been down on the Strip with his buddies, but gently squeezing one of her breasts he let Misty continue. "Wasn't me in the vision, was it?" he asked, hopeful, knowing full well Who it was that stood in the center of the vision. Feeling the mysterious hand of judgment move over the bed, Jason trembled and wondered if he should leave.
Caught up in vivid recollection, Misty turned and looked in to Jason's eyes, gave Jason the look he would have died a thousand times for, and said, "No, Jason, it wasn't you. Some man. Older than you. Bleeding and hanging from the wooden cross. It was Jesus, I think. Suffering, weeping, he looked up and spoke to me, told me not to be afraid, that He would be with me until the end of the age. Or something like that. Didn't make sense. I thought I was gonna die. I'm sure it was Jesus."
Jason knew then that Misty, starting to exude warmth, was telling a truth-at least as far as she was capable--and possibly, though an occasional bimbo, had the mystic capacity to apprehend what lay beyond David Hume's natural world in which everything could and must be explained in terms of natural cause and effects. At least, he recognized, she had seen something-or thought she had seen something.
Misty continued, now putting her head on Jason's shoulder, both moving back on the bed to lean against the wall. "Every month, about the same time, I have a similar vision, just when I drift off. This blue light, like a small sun blazing at the foot of my bed, and always the man inside the blue. A first I screamed my head off-Goddamn, did I scream--and that brought both mom and dad running into my room, who told me that I had just had a bad dream and not to worry, to go back to sleep. 'It's the full moon,' my mom said, and I tried to believe her but couldn't. It was my grandmother told me the next week that the dream was real, maybe from God, maybe the spirit world. Said it meant something bad might happen. Or something good. I dunno."
Exasperated, Jason thought: this really is getting too weird; it was like what he had read in the textbooks about crazed medieval Christian mystics. It was giving him the creeps. He wondered if his girl friend had gone too far over the deep end and hoped she wouldn't soon start speaking in tongues.
"It's just a damned dream," he said, trying to assure himself as well as his girl that the vision could not be true but knowing better and desperately wanting to move on. He pulled Misty over onto him. "Or," he added jokingly, "a dream of the damned."
"I think it's God in that dream," said Misty, allowing Jason to lightly kiss her on the mouth. Smelling of smoke, Jason always kissed gently at first.
Holding her head in her hands, kissing him on the mouth and allowing him to run his hands over her body, she grew warm under Jason's touch and purred, "Yes, Jason, I think it's God."
"I think you're right, girl," Jason whispered, now fully aroused, feeling Beethoven fill him, loosening Misty's pants and sliding his hands down onto her bare ass.
III. After Jason left around ten, walking down the stairs and saying good night to her sickly parents(Her father was recovering from a heart attack, following his mother's death), Misty stayed in her room, turned on the television, and thought about the wonderful time she had just had. Making love, she had decided, was like going to heaven. She had heard of St. Teresa of Avila, about the vision God had given her of the crystal castle with infinite rooms, and wondered if as a nun Teresa had ever known human passion. Misty was thankful she had.
Sleepily, she reached over to the table next to her bed, saw Jason's gun, realized he had accidentally left it behind and would therefore likely return for it, reached out, and held and caressed the small pocket-sized weapon. Always, when making love with her, Jason would take the gun from his jacket and place it where he could see it. This time, he had forgotten it. On the cable station, an old Lana Turner movie was playing, and as she relaxed and let herself drift off she wondered what it would have been like to be Lana Turner.
IV. When she awoke, it was after one. The television was still on, and she recognized Robert Mitchum in the 1950's film version of the Raymond Chandler classic Fair Well, My Lovely. It was a good movie, almost better than the book, which Misty had read several years ago. She wondered, for an instant, if she could kill a man like Philip Marlow, the detective-hero of Chandler's novels.
Sitting up in bed, she felt empty and hungry and knew that she wouldn't go back to sleep for at least an hour, and, since tomorrow was Friday and she had only one class early in the afternoon, she decided to get dressed and walk down to the corner convenience store to buy some soda and anything else that looked appetizing. She arose, put on her jeans, her blue sweater with an LA Lakers logo on the front, and then her black leather jacket that had her name written across the back in bold red letters.
Finally, to feel what it was like, just once, she decided to take the gun, which she put into one of the deep pockets of the jacket. Although she had gone with Jason to target practice and had reeled off a few rounds herself(never missing her target), Misty had not carried a gun with her before. Then she turned off her TV.
Stepping softly down the carpeted stairs, she knew her parents, now in their early sixties had probably been in bed for three hours at least and so she gently opened the door to let herself out into the cool October night, softly shutting the door behind her. Outside, she felt strangely different, even more alive. She felt in her pocket for the cold barrel and knew the surge of power that she had heard often comes from carrying a weapon.
As she walked down the short sidewalk towards the street, thinking about Jason's gun, she looked overhead at the enormous full moon, beautifully illuminating the night sky, and felt thankful that she had worn her leather jacket. Fingering the gun, she felt good as she walked the empty street, conscious of all the lives in the houses lining the block, glad she was Misty Reynolds and not the dentist's daughter who lived on the corner, and thought about her class the next day. Taught by Dr. Wilbur Frost, Introduction to Western Religions had become her favorite class, Frost's lectures frequently touching upon rituals, customs, and belief that she wished were still part of a society that seemed more intent on monitoring the sales of drugs and the spread of violent crime than upon providing for itself a framework that could, possibly, give meaning to her own confusing life.
She walked two more blocks. It was just as she was walking across the parking lot toward the store entrance, the sign shining brightly above her, the full moon beyond bathing the night in nocturnal splendor, that she saw the primer gray Oldsmobile parked in front of the store. Instinctively, she tensed. The body of the car was dented from bumper to bumper, and she noticed a spider-web crack in the passenger window on the driver's side and a black pentagram on the door below. She observed that no one was inside the car and that the driver's window was rolled down or missing.
When she pushed open the glass door and stepped inside the store, she was struck by total silence. Usually, at all hours of the day and night in the store, a radio or a television was blaring, filling the air with music or the sound of people talking. But the TV situated behind the counter to her left was not on; the radio, where ever it was kept, was also silent. Glancing around the store, she could not see Miguel, the old clerk who generally took the night shift. Looking up and down the aisles, she suddenly saw in her mind's eye the image of Miguel being shot in the forehead. The revelation hit her like a crow bar.
Sick to her soul, she froze in the middle of the store, no longer interested in buying something to eat or drink, knowing something was wrong, trying to reassure herself that Miguel had simply gone to the restroom, felt in her gut that she must get out of the store. Then she remembered that she was armed, and stood her ground.
Buried in the deadly silence, muffled voices came from the back. It was like listening to people talk under water. "Anyone here?" she asked, apprehensive, her stomach tightening. As she awaited a reply, she could no longer hear the muffled voices, so she called again, this time more loudly, "Is anyone here? Anyone back there?" She felt herself going numb as she heard a muffled shout coming from the back followed by two popping sounds. She thought first of fireworks and knew Miguel had been shot.
Frightened, now moving to the door, she heard someone coming from the back, the sound of heavy footsteps running to the front. It was just as she pushed open the door that she looked back, saw a heavy-set man wearing a beard and a hunting cap come out of the back and yell at her to stop. She noticed the man was missing his front teeth and carried a handgun. Misty knew there would be another man as well and so ran out of the store, sprinting in the direction of her house as the two men pushed through the glass door and yelled at her to stop.
Unable to help herself, she stopped just at the corner, turned, and looked. "Hey, little girl; hey, Misty," one of them bellowed; Misty could see him clear as day as she stopped and looked back, saw that the speaker was taller than the other man, bald like Jason, and had a silver tooth in the front of his mouth. As the tall man smiled and nodded at his grinning heavy-set companion, Misty knew, somehow, that she was possibly facing her last night; certainly, this was the end of something. She turned and began running as the men jumped in the car, started it noisily, backed up screeching, and pulled out of the store parking lot after her.
Misty ran for her life, moving like the wind up the sidewalk that led to her house three blocks away, but she was no match for the car. The two men caught her within seconds, the car pulling into the driveway immediately in front of her and blocking her way and the two men jumping out and pursuing her, the tall one immediately on her, grabbing her by the shoulder, throwing an arm around her neck, telling her "Relax, Misty baby," bearing her to the pavement under the weight of his body. Wondering if she were dreaming, she screamed wildly, asking herself why no one responded, crying out finally to Jesus, feeling a blow to the back of her head and closing her eyes and yelling "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" as she sensed herself engulfed in swirling, muddy darkness.
Then, she saw in her mind's eye a blue phosphorescent glow, the man from the visions in the center, watching her, his eyes sorrowful, reaching out to her and touching her, filling her with strength to endure, as suddenly full consciousness returned and she felt herself being dragged along the street, someone holding one of her arms, felt herself dropped, and opened her eyes.
The short, heavy-set man stood over her, pointing a shot gun at her face. She was going to end her life in the middle of her own street, late at night. "Say your last, Misty, you little bitch," the man growled, as Misty heard the tall man shuffling up and saw him too staring down at her. Both men laughed and paused, and the stocky man lowered the shotgun.
Something is wrong with their eyes, Misty thought to herself, and looking more closely saw that the irises of the men's eyes looked like fragments of broken glass, each piece reflecting darkness. She watched the short man turn his head for an instant and grin wickedly at his taller companion. She knew then she had just met the Devil.
As if given a second chance, Misty remembered Jason's gun, slipped her hand into her pocket, felt cold steel, felt for and released the safety(as Jason had told her to do when, weeks ago, at the firing range, he had explained the workings of the gun), withdrew the piece, pointed it at the chest of the bearded man just as he turned back towards her.
It was like a freeze-frame, all three figures immobilized at the point of action, beautiful background music provided. Somewhere in the distance, in her mind's eye, she could hear Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata." Not blinking, suddenly realizing that she was not afraid to take the life of another, not afraid to die, she pulled the trigger.
Blood banging furiously in her brain, numbed by rage and fright, she did not hear the weapon's explosion, did feel the gun nearly leap out of her hand, and searching for the bullet hole in the bearded man's chest turned Jason's gun on the taller man and without looking directly fired once, twice, three times. As the larger man fell backwards, the crack of the gun now audible, she smiled at the bearded man, who stood dazed before her, holding the shotgun to his side; without giving it a second thought, she pointed Jason's weapon at the man's head, and fired once, sure that she had hit the mark. The man spun, the top of his head taken off, spun again and fell three feet from Misty.
Temporarily ecstatic, the sonata still playing in her mind, Misty stood, pointed the gun at the stocky man's twitching body, pulled the trigger again, watched the body jump as the bullet penetrated the body, and then stopped and waited. Now towering over the bodies of the men who would surely have raped her and taken her life, Misty waited and waited, for what she was not sure, saw the pools of blood gathering under the bodies, saw out of the corner of her eye lights in the houses across the street go on, heard sirens in the distance, tossed the gun into a thick hedge that grew in the yard next to the driveway where the car had stopped, and stepping over the two bodies ran the remaining two blocks to her home.
When she entered her house, Misty's mind cleared. She figured that, shortly, the police would be banging on her door, then hauling her away for questioning. As she walked numbly into the dark kitchen to call Jason on the phone, she heard movement upstairs, knew that one or both of her parents were out of bed, inwardly gave thanks that her parents were all right, then heard her mother shout frantically form the top of the stairs, "Misty??? Misty? Is that you honey? Is that you?" She knew the fear in her mother's voice, had heard it before, and instinctively responded to calm her mother.
"It's just me, Mom," Misty said, exhausted now, forcing herself to sound normal while, her hand now trembling, she reached for the phone. "Everything's fine, Mom, just fine," she said in a voice that she knew sounded cold as steel, and she wondered, as she knew her mother listened at the top of the stairs, how her parents could not know something dreadful had just happened.
"Honey," came the voice, "there's two police cars down the street. At least, I think it's two. Lights are flashing everywhere. Your father thought he heard some shots." As she had done before, Misty's occasionally hysterical mother was asking her daughter for directions.
"Go back to bed, Mom," Misty replied, not sure why she didn't tell her mother that she had just shot two men in cold blood, almost without blinking, and was now waiting for the police to take her away. "Mom, I'm all right. Everything is all right, " she added, even calmer this time as she heard her mother respond, "OK, honey, just so long as you're here. Your dad and me were worried. Just worried is all. You know how we are." For Misty, preserving her parents' safety and peace of mind meant protecting those same elements in her.
"Nothing to worry about, folks," Misty said, fighting to remain calm, not wanting to upset her mother or make her father sicker, then lifting the phone and punching Jason's number.
Sure that her mother would go back to bed, Misty heard the phone ring four times before she got the recording: "Hello, world, this is Jason. I'm away from my desk right now, but at the beep if you could be so kind...." She could hear the Beethoven piece in the background.
When the recording finished and signaled for her to leave her message, she spoke: "Jason, you need to come and get your gun. You left it with me. Something bad has happened."
She waited for an instant, hoping Jason would pick up the phone, sure that he was lying in bed next to the phone, listening to the message.
Putting the phone gently back in place, Misty remembered that she had thrown the gun away, knew the weapon would be found soon, and wondered what was taking the police so long. Glancing out a side window, she saw that the moon was setting.
She waited through the night, sitting next to the phone, gazing out the living room window at the street, watching night slowly give way to dawn. Around 6:30, sure that her usually peaceful existence would not be disrupted for at least another day, she arose and walked slowly upstairs, not certain what would happen, wondering what she would learn in religion class today, knew that eventually she would become front page headlines, suspected that her life from this point on would never be the same.
V. Jason rolled over in bed, listened, froze when he heard Misty say something bad had happened.
Sitting up in bed in his one-room apartment, Jason reached for the pack of cigarettes on his night stand. Always, it seemed, he needed a smoke. Now was no exception. He wondered if he should pray for Misty, thought better of it, then lit up. Inhaling deeply, he pressed the button on his CD player and waited for Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" to fill the room and lull him back to sleep and forgetfulness.
In the darkness, wrapped in soft sounds, he remembered what Misty had said hours before as he had impatiently listened in her bedroom, one thing on his mind. He recalled thinking, as he had dressed in Misty's room after the sex, that he should pick up his gun and take it with him. But something in his girl friend's voice had set off an alarm, and he knew even then, inexplicably, that something wicked was coming Misty's way. And he knew she would have to face it alone, perhaps soon, so he had left the weapon, fully loaded, next to her bed.
Since leaving Bible college, Jason had fought the frequent intuitions of evil that, once again, he had felt that evening with Misty. All his life, he'd had haunting premonitions, and if they were from God, he thought as he inhaled more smoke, he wished God would just leave him the hell alone. If God were real, he knew, then he was indeed Misty's keeper; hell, he was everyone's keeper. Jason knew from the tone of her voice-numbed, as if spoken by a dead person-that something terrible had happened, that he was supposed to know about it and do something about it, and that he, somehow, was now permanently part of it.
Forcefully, even angrily exhaling smoke out his open window, looking at the moon sinking towards the horizon, he realized that his inaction, his failure to remain with Misty when he sensed disaster, had permanently complicated his life. Flipping his cigarette out the window and lying back to resume sleep, letting Beethoven's sounds drown thought, he had no idea where to go from here. His mind and soul churning within him, he wasn't sure if he should even care about Misty. Wondering if he would eventually have to marry her, he didn't want to care.[4956]
-Rich Logsdon
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