The Devil Does His Best Work in the Dark
by L. Jordan James
part 1
A young man is standing at a dry, barren crossroad looking about, questioning himself on which direction to take when an old woman walks through the sparse brush lining the road and hobbles onto the path. Her footsteps and low-hanging dress leave an uneven, chaotic trail in the dirt behind her. She stops short of the young man as wind and dust come to life, swirl, grow, and encompasses them both, obscuring their definite shapes, making each shield their eyes.
The gust reaches a point where it sounds more like the moan of someone’s final breath instead of wind. The old woman leans forward on her cane, a gnarled and knotted piece of wood until the squall dies down.
The young man lowers his arm and turns his back to the fading wind, the setting sun, the old woman, and stares off into the distance, his face in shadow. She stands beside him, but he doesn’t acknowledge her.
She cranes her neck trying to pick out what interests him in the distance. She speaks, “Be you lost?” Her voice is raspy and low like she has smoked Crest Weed all her life. Her body is bent and twisted, almost as contorted as her cane.
“No,” he replied, “claiming the mantle of lost means I have a destination in mind. I have no goal. I have no home. I am... in-between.”
“You say you are in-between. In-between can be a destination.”
The young man nods.
“And your clothes... Your clothes say something different. Your attire fits you well, and you are dressed as neither vagabond nor beggar.”
He turns to her. “Is there a difference?”
“Aye, there is. A beggar will go about making his appearance as shabby as possible to collect more coin. A vagabond cares not what people think.”
He nods again and returns his gaze to the distance. She stays beside him, though, staring out into the void but soon tires of trying to see something where nothing lives but sparse brush, dead trees, and dust. She hobbles forward to stand in front of him.
When they stand facing each other as much as they could face each other — her height is greatly diminished because of her distorted body — she says: “I can exchange lodging and food for repairing my roof and mending my fences. In this offer, I give you a destination.”
He nods once again. His eyes fall on the old woman. His forehead knits. His eyes tilt upward again to the distance but come back again to the old woman. “My thanks. You’ve given me purpose... for now.”
Now she nods.
He follows her away from the crossroads and off the path to a barely perceptible trail leading downward. The closer they travel to her house, the darker the night becomes, until the air resembles ink. No words are exchanged while they walk. No moon resides in the sky, giving brief reprieve from the black. Slight light illuminates, but from whence it comes is unknown. The way is treacherous, full of false paths and dangerous footholds. He marvels at her surefootedness, for she does not stumble, hesitate, or lose her balance on the uneven ground.
The wind blows and erases any evidence of their passage as though they are fleeting ghosts passing through the material. When they reach her doorstep, full dark descends, and he keeps close, for he cannot see beyond her dress. And still she moves with certainty, and still the way slopes ever downward.
The next day, after sleeping in the old woman’s barn, he sets about the repairs. By mid-morning, he fixes the thatched roof and starts the fencing.
While the work is not backbreaking, it does tax him. He stops several times. During one of these lapses, she shuffles out of her front door to bring him drink and something light to sustain him, to keep him working. The expected payment, a meal, will be given after everything is finished. He eats and drinks.
When he completes all the work, and the sun dips beyond the horizon, she calls out for him to come inside. He steps into the small home and sees it sparsely furnished and neat. The food she lays out for him is enough for three people.
After he has eaten his fill, the young man sits back satisfied. She takes away the plates and cleans the table.
She says, “I offer conversation by the fire in a more comfortable setting.”
He is usually a taciturn man, but his belly is full, and he has no plans to travel at night nor is he sleepy. He stands and follows her into her sitting room. There are only two chairs, one of which looks well-worn but comfortable. The other is a chair from her dining room placed ahead of time. They are close to a fire along with being close together. The seats are facing one another.
He sits without hesitation taking the smaller, more spartan chair, but her sitting is more of a dance. She shuffles over to her seat and, when she stands in front of her chair, she turns her back to it and lays her cane aside. She looks around herself. Peering straight ahead, she moves slightly to the left and then ever more faintly right. Her hand moves out to the armrest of the chair behind her. Her hand doesn’t quite touch the chair, but then she sticks out her large backside and lets gravity perform the work. She falls into her heavily perfumed seat cushions. “Ahhh...” she says. She begins to move the rocking chair back and forth.
A fly lands upon her hand. She does not notice, and it goes away on its own.
Quiet descends between them while they listen to the snap and pop of the burning wood and watch the flames dance and move in unexpected ways. Their silence is comfortable, like that of two old people who are remembering their past and contemplating a short, unavoidable future.
After a small while, she says, “Pray, tell me your story.”
“My mother birthed me, I live, and I will die,” he says without hesitation.
“That is not a story but an abbreviation of the facts.”
“Aye.”
“I would rather not sit here in the quiet as is my usual night. Pray, tell me about your father and mother.”
“I have no father.”
“Was your birth of Immaculate Conception? Are you of divine blood?”
“No.”
“Then, begin your true story.”
The young man sighs while staring into the fire. The only sounds in the room are her rocking chair moving back and forth and the crackling fire. A significant part of him does not want to converse but only wants to listen to the flames consume wood.
“I never knew my father,” he begins. “He died before I was born. I only know him from drawings my mother kept. And my name is unimportant. I have no home because my mother turned me out.”
“Why?”
His eyes avert to the ground. Then he looks at the old woman and says, “If you must hear it, you will hear it all.”
“Aye, aye, aye, all of it!”
He purses his lips and watches her. He takes a deep breath. “I have never told anyone this — not even my mother — but I’ve always seen the evil in men and women. It comes to me in a vision as I walk past them like the slight breeze you feel as they pass. Sometimes, when I walk in a crowd, it’s all I can do to keep myself sane. In those visions, I’ve seen husbands and wives taking on lovers. I’ve seen stealing, jealousy, hatred, and violence.” The room is quiet for several moments.
He covers his face and shivers. “I’ve seen murder,” he says flatly.
She nods and accepts his fantastic story.
“What did you see when we crossed paths?”
“You... you’re different,” he says. “I cannot see anything about you.”
She smiles and nods. “Tell me about your mother.”
“My mother? My mother,” he said after a short period of silence as if settling on a single thread of thought. “There’s an old saying my mother quoted to me while she cuffed me about the head and shoulders for some transgression I’d committed: ‘The Devil does his best work in the dark.’ And if she had been heavy at the wine beforehand, it would change slightly. She’d say: ‘The Devil did his best work in the dark.’ I knew what she meant. It was a slight, an insult.” He hangs his head but continues.
“My mother would always drag me to church after I’d done some crime. I remember sitting in the pews and hating every moment because I saw the evil deeds those holy men committed behind fastened doors. I said nothing, though. Mind you, my offenses were minor — too insignificant to even mention by comparison.”
His hand drops to a hidden knife in the folds of his clothes. He will have his destination, his own home before the sun rises. The old woman shifts in her chair, leans forward, eyes intent on the young man. “I understand,” she said. “What were your transgressions?”
He stares at her throat and realizes this dance; this theater could be finished with a flick of his knife-laden hand. Her neck, he notices is as pale as the underside of a fish and would give way easier than said fish if met with his blade. His hand tightens on the knife hilt so much he can feel the grain of the wood. But then he relaxes. There is no rush to kill this old woman. His story is being told. No one has ever asked for it before. There is a strong possibility no one will ever ask again.
Shortly, she sits back, and her neck is again hidden in the dimness, only appearing at the whim of the dancing fire. A tease. He meets her gaze.
She is a woman whose jowls hang. Her nose is long, hooked, and suffers from warts. Her posture is bent and frail but the atmosphere she exudes is anticipatory and this raises questions in the young man, but he beats his queries back into silence, into submission. His interest is in his story.
“My last act before I was pitched out of my mother’s house was to nail a note to the cleric’s door along with a lock of black hair.”
“What did the note say?”
“It said: I know what you’re doing with her,” he replies.
“Why did you do that?” A hint of a smile touches her lips.
“I do not know.”
“Answer the question. Why did you nail a note to the cleric’s door?”
Copyright © 2021 by L. Jordan James
