2009 George Macdonald Award Third Place to James Scott Lee (19 and up)

The 2009 Anonymously Sponsored

George Macdonald Award

Goes to:

James Scott Lee

Sparta, WI

Third Place

(category:  19 and up)

Bio: I was home schooled all the way until college, studying by learning on my own whatever I could learn in textbooks and literature. I attended Hillsdale College from which I recently graduated with a BS in Chemistry. I am now pursuing a Ph. D. in Chemistry at Purdue University. Despite this I have always loved the stories of Chesterton and Lewis. However, as short stories go, I find most enjoyment and affinity for those written by Edgar Allen Poe and Graham Greene.

To contact James Scott Lee you may seek his contact information through the contest administrators by sending an email to director@athanatosministries.org.

DISCUSS ON FORUM

Important Copyright Information

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE STORY

The Devil Child

by

James Scott Lee

Copyright May 2009, All Rights Reserved

Under the grass and the pines, the devil child lay. It wasn’t dead, no… it was just waiting: waiting for the right sacrifice. The old woman had spent decades trying to bring it back. It was hers, she had brought it into the world, and on the very night of its birth, its father had taken it out. The man had paid, dearly. Paid in such ways as only the best can, she had seen to that. It had been the work of her long long life, finding the best man, deceiving him, and bringing forth the child of death. And in her moment of triumph, it was all taken away; all but the vicious broodings of an old hag.

She brooded and muttered, cursing all, even now when she had lost her power to call down misfortune on others. There had been a time when with this power, she almost ruled the people of a small town she lived by. Its people would bring her anything she asked for. Some obeyed because they were her disciples, others out of fear; but the result was the same, none dared cross her. She had lived there for nearly a century, taking whatever form was best suited to her ends. At times she was an old hag, at others, a lovely, innocent young girl; but inside, she always was herself, bitter, spiteful, and wicked. And now, deserted by the vile spirits she had once called her servants, and divested of all but a shadow of influence in those around her, she schemed to revive her greatest scheme, which was also her greatest failure. The thought made her old bones shake, and with them, the pines creaked.

******************************************

Harriet Lee was sitting in her front yard, clearing it of those blasted black walnuts. She was a frail old woman, well over eighty years old. And yet, there she sat, picking the walnuts out of her yard.

A voice called to her, “Harriet, come!”

She stood. It was not something one would have expected, knowing Mrs. Lee. It would have been much more like her to tell whoever it was to come to her. She was a strong-willed, hard-headed, stiff-necked old woman, and yet she was gracious. But this time, she stood. She brushed off her simple dress, straightened her hair, and walked toward the speaker. Although she walked slowly, and with every sign of rheumatism, she walked erect and proud. Almost it seemed that her rheumatic limbs were less painful, for she walked, not faster, but with more ease.

The voice spoke again. This time much softer audible only to Harriet, “You must go again. She will try once more, but she has not long. You must go to her.”

Tears fell from the old woman’s face, she knew that the Lord asked the impossible… well, not the impossible, just the nearly impossible. He had asked it of her before, and it had been hard then, when she was young. But now, she was old, ancient by some reckoning, and she was to fight again. Not the prayer warrior at whose approach demons fled that she had been for the past forty years or so, but a real fighter, someone who sought out their enemy, and destroyed their schemes. Also, this time, the man who had actually stopped the witch-woman would not be there to save her like last time. He had already received his eternal crown, moments after saving her. This time…. She shook herself. She knew that the tempters where already there, now that the direct Spirit was gone. She forced herself to recall the past, accurately, and without either rosy glasses or black ones, but with clear and candid remembrance. She hoped to read her enemy from her last actions, and also remember how bad it had been, and that the Tempter really didn’t care what age his victims were, he deluded them all, merely changing his tactics depending on age. Whereas now she felt frail and incapable, last time she had felt strong and ready. Both were deceptions. Ah, she had let her mind wander, back to the past.

Her first intimation that her friend had gone wrong was, as it usually is, a small thing. Chance comments are hard to remember sixty, or even seventy years later. But there it lurked at the fringe of her memory like a ravenous wolf, waiting for the fire to die before he leaps upon his prey. What she could still remember with a certainty was that it was a hot day in the summer: she could see the little stream running by, hear the mill grinding, the mosquitoes all round them, she even remembered her friend killing one on her own face, right as it was full up. Perhaps it was that little bloodstain on her face that made the impression worse. She remembered everything about the incident, except what had actually caused those chills, and goose pimples, and that horrid sick feeling in the bottom of her stomach. Even now, she felt that sickening chill. Tea… Tea would cure the memory of its chill.

As she sipped her tea her thoughts sank back into her ancient memories, to the next event that stuck out in the chronicle of her friends earthly damnation. Her friend had damned herself, slowly shoving further and further away from God, taking as many as she could with her…. But there, she wondered again.

Her mind sank back into its revere, forgetting its need for the tea, which grew cold in her hands. Flitting among a myriad of small things, which took all of them to build into something odd. Not even evil, merely odd when recounted. A look here, a word there, her friend had been very good at concealing how far gone she was. Determining this, she went, in her mind, to the very back corner where she had stored her worst memories. She didn’t want to bring them back to her consciousness, but that evil chill coming from the little girl with a bloodstain on her cheek must be stopped. Wickedness loved it when people forgot how evil it was, so she would remember and stop her friend once more.

She went to the worst memory of all, one which would not make much sense to anyone else without a little background. It was the spring of her twentieth year when it all the little things became a big thing. All the minute hints resolved into one huge catastrophe. She had had to stop it. She was chosen, not by fate or chance, but by the Lord. She hadn’t done so well last time, she had only partially stopped the witch-woman, Hedy. She had rebelled from her calling, and the town suffered. She hadn’t really been the one to stop the witch last time anyway. But he was gone. He had been willing to die for his child, and she… she had stood there in the light of those burning bones, in that small cluster of onlookers, knowing that something must be done, but petrified by fear. The man, who had so loved his child, and his wife, even though she was a witch, and his child who was cursed…. His death had been terrible, and she had stood there knowing that that should have been her action. He had charged into the flames and carried his doubly accursed wife, and his dieing child out of the flames. The flames had consumed him, for they were not ordinary flames. They were the very fires of hell, and he had endured them to save the evil witch-woman. Hers had been that place, and looking back, those doubts and indecisions that stopped her then now were revealed to be what they were: fear, and the devil. Her love for her friend had not been enough to even try to save her from her evil deed.

The witch was unscarred, but the man had died with his child. They should have been buried together, the man’s ashes to protect the child’s ashes, to keep the witch-woman’s bony hands away. But that is not what happened; nothing had gone right. She still had the child’s body, and the evils she had planned were not stopped, they were merely delayed. This time, the witch was old, hardened, and practiced. It is a rule with witches that they become more powerful as their bodies weaken. They dominate more of the lesser spirits, and befriend more of the greater ones. This time, it would not be so simple. Just snatching her out of her fiery magic circle wouldn’t do, it would not be possible for anyone now; especially not an old, weak, woman like herself. Stopping her supply of offerings wouldn’t work either. Everyone in the town was either her eager slave, was conquered by abject fear, or hadn’t the slightest inkling about what was really going on. No, the food, powders, potions, and sacrifices would flow to her house until either the Devil came to claim his own, or Christ did. Either way, the witch would be damned. And they had been friends. There only remained confrontation.

She shook herself, stood up, put on her coat, and left the house. It was a long walk, but it was impossible to get the witch-woman’s real house any other way. It was true that her real house and the one everybody else saw were in the same place, and looked almost the same. The differences were subtle. But one couldn’t see the witch for what she really was, unless one walked the whole distance, with the purpose of seeing the witch. The house everyone else saw was just an illusion, carefully maintained over many, many years. The only place that was the same place in both the illusion and the reality was the little grave where she had cunningly buried her little child. That place was a small little gravestone, overgrown with weeds under a willow tree, in both places.

As she walked she was assailed with the same doubts and fears as last time she had made this walk. This time, she ignored them. They were whispers and images put into her mind from elsewhere, and as such had no bearing on her present task. She arrived, and the house saw her.

“So you came,” the house said, “My mistress said you might. She also said not to worry too much about it, you will fail this time too. You are an insignificant wobbling chunk of senile flesh! What do you plan to do before one who commands the gods themselves?”

“I did not come to talk to a house. Where is your mistress?”

“Inside.”

“Let me in, I have business with her.”

“What if I say… No!”

“It’s alright, let her in.”

The thin creaking voice had come from inside the sentient house, but it was not the house that spoke. The voice made one think of dried pine needles. Not the pleasant warm afternoon smell, but their shriveledness, their brittle point, their deadness. It was wispy like the sound of the wind blowing through stands of dead pines, whose needles clung to them still, in a hopeless mockery of life.

The house lowered itself. Harriet whispered a prayer, crossed herself, and entered. Her palms itched badly.

***********************************************************

No one after could understand the fire that night. It raged all night, it burned with such a delight of burning as must have inspired the ancients to believe there were spirits in the fire. Everything burned, orange strove with blue, and white with black as the fire raged over the countryside, white hot, burning everything in its path. Its path was not like a normal fire, this fire had chosen what it would burn, and avoided what it desired not to burn. The swamp burned and the winds blew it everywhere, yet when it reached the town, only some places were burnt. Where there had been two pubs, one was burned and the other untouched; where there had been two churches, one was ashes and the other whole; the halving of the town did not extend to the dwelling places of the inhabitants. No, most of the houses were burnt down: those burnt were wholly burnt; those untouched wholly untouched. The firemen were ineffective; the fires burned insatiably and then went out like they began, together.

The strangest occurrence found in this strange incident was in the ashes of a house just out of town. There, two corpses of very old women were found; one burnt down the bones, and the other untouched by the flames.