Free The Devil's Demeanor by Jerry Hart Page B

brain matter covered Mom’s slippers and dress.
    She stood there
a moment, looking down at the dead dog as she breathed heavily, then she turned
and picked up a crying Ethan. He clung to her, his eyes shiny with tears.
    As she carried
him to the house, those eyes of his never left Don.
    *   *   *
    That night, Don
lay awake in his bed, staring at his wall. He never liked the design of his
wallpaper: The repeating pattern had a boathouse on a dock, with a sailboat
going past it. The boathouse had darkened windows, and the front door was open
revealing total blackness within. He couldn’t help but always imagine a
creature of unspeakable horror living in the shack, staring out at him. The
wallpaper scared him more than the opening credits of Tales From the
Darkside .
    At that moment,
though, he imagined the dog that attacked his mother at his grandparents’ house
all those years ago. He didn’t know exactly what that dog had looked like, but
after having one nightmare about the cute bulldog ripping the head off a
rabbit, he used it as a placeholder.
    As he lay
there, staring at the wallpaper, he thought about what had happened hours
earlier; about how he let the German Shepard attack his little brother,
secretly hoping the dog would kill him. He knew he should be disgusted about
feeling that way, but he didn’t.
    Mom had taken
Ethan to the hospital while Adrian got rid of the dog.
    Don was at the
age where he was afraid to sleep with the door closed, but would soon be afraid
to sleep with it open. Now it was open, and he could see the bathroom directly
across the hall. His mom’s room was on the right and Ethan’s room on the left.
    Poor, poor
Ethan. He had cried for what seemed like hours at the hospital. The doctor said
he was fine, but Ethan didn’t sound fine. His crying seemed to come from fear
rather than pain, and the look he had given Don as his mother was carrying him
away....
    Don couldn’t
get the look out of his mind. Through those watery eyes, Don could see the
words Why didn’t you protect me, Big Brother? It was as if the real
Ethan had come to the surface. He’d seemed like a real child for the first time
in his life.
    The sound of a
door slowly opening drew Don out of his troubling thoughts. He already knew
whose door it was. He knew if he looked out his own open door, he would see his
brother standing there. He wanted to jump from his bed and close the door, but
he felt he would never make it in time. If anything, Ethan was probably already
in the room, hiding in the shadows.
    He didn’t care.
He leapt from the bed and darted into the hallway, past Mom’s room. He didn’t
look to see if Ethan was there, on the left, standing in front of his own door.
He didn’t have to look. He could sense his younger brother’s presence,
his eyes no longer leaking tears.
    Don ran down
the impossibly long hallway, into the playroom. He wanted to hide in the toy
box in the corner, but it seemed like such an obvious place. Instead, he chose
a couch on the left of the room and hid under it.
    Hide and seek.
    Don tried not
to breathe hard as he hid under the couch. A few toys had migrated from the box
and into his hiding place at some point. There was a ViewMaster, a baseball,
and a pair of gray plastic handcuffs. A few ViewMaster reels were littered all
over the tile floor, and he focused on them to calm his racing heart.
    Ethan was mad.
He wanted revenge, or rather, the thing sharing Ethan’s body did. Don knew in
his heart that was what this was about.
    It was about
fear. It was about helplessness. Ethan wanted Don to be afraid. Boy, it was
working.
    Don didn’t know
how long he’d been under the couch, but his knees and elbows were cramping. He
wanted to move, but he heard a raspy noise coming from the dark dining room.
    It sounded like
breathing.
    Ethan was in
there, and he knew Don was in the playroom. Don waited a few more minutes, then
the breathing stopped. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He