The Devil first arrived dressed as the landscaper. Told them he could make their lot into a beautiful garden. All that was managed was a pile of rocks and a small crucifix in the opposite corner. Managed, also, to bring them some whiskey.
“A housewarming gift,” the Devil had said.
The whiskey they had drank in slow, small pours their first week there, on their lot. Last night they decided they could celebrate. That they could have long, large pours from the glass. And they both felt drunk and took each other into each other’s hands, knowing the Devil was somewhere in the trees watching, listening.
The pile of rocks was meant to be a rock wall, shielding their lot from the one next to it, whose owner they had not yet met. Who they did not want to meet. He wished now that he had met them, that he knew them, that he could reach out over their property lines and touch and ward off the Devil’s encroachment.
The crucifix was left empty, nothing hanging from it, nothing nailed to it. But the cows from neighboring farms would come by and graze at it, keep the grass low enough that he could see it from any part of the lot. When she was still alive, he half-expected to wake up one morning with her little cat nailed to the cross, but every morning the cat would follow him down to the fireplace and watch as he lit kindling, then curl itself in front of the flames and wait there until she woke up.
This morning the cat did not follow him down to the fireplace. This morning the cat never woke up. This morning his wife never woke up.
The laughing keeps building as he feels each dribble of sweat run down his face, his arm, his back, his leg until it dries up in the middle of its journey, stopped by the cool wind blowing through the trees. The same wind that carries the laughter.
“We should dig a hole,” she had said to them after they had finished their whiskey.
“A hole?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “a hole. In case.”
“In case of what?” he asked.
“Just in case,” she said.
So they dug the hole last night and this morning she did not wake up, nor did the cat.
He thinks about the cat and he thinks about his wife not waking up and he thinks about her now in the ground and he listens to the Devil laughing from the trees and he thinks that the laughter is getting closer and he sees that he cannot see much of anything at this point and he knows he should have made a fire earlier but he will have to make one now, in the dark, with the Devil lurking in the shadows.
When the fire is built and he can see further than he could before, he falls asleep to the sounds of the wind and the trees and the nightbirds and the Devil.
It isn’t until there’s chirping and a pink in the sky along the tops of the trees when the Devil taps him awake and tells him that he can make his lot into a garden.
“I would love that,” he says, “but first, let me ask my wife.”
Joseph Linscott is a writer living in Rhode Island. His work can be found online and in print. He can be reached at @prosephlinscott on Instagram, BlueSky, and Twitter (for now).
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