The Devil’s Deal

“Please, Miss? Can you help me?”

The girl is quite ill; that much is obvious. Such a little thing—she couldn’t be more than seven or eight years old. Her dull brown hair hangs limply down to her shoulders, and her face is covered in dirt. Beneath the grime I can tell there’s a slight sheen on her forehead from sweat. Her cherub-like face is red, and she shakes as she stands looking up at me from the mud.

I bend down, meeting her at eye level. “Have you got the pox? Because you’ll be needing a real doctor for that, I’m afraid.”

She shakes her head. “No, Miss. Just the fever.”

Normally, had she contacted a doctor, he would likely use leeches to release her bad blood. But I’m no doctor and I’ve got no leeches, so I suppose my homemade remedies will have to do.

It’s a grey day today—the clouds conceal the sky without texture, as though someone has covered the blue with an old, soot-coloured blanket. The air is heavy with a misty fog that clings to my skin and hair. Surely this means more rain is on the way, though I must admit I’ve had enough of it these last few weeks to last me a lifetime. Things are always quite busy for me this time of year, as winter gives in to the first few rainy weeks of spring. Everything is so wet, and still rather cold. The girl in the alley is the fourth child this week I’ve been asked to treat for fever, and I would hazard a guess that she won’t be the last.

“Wait here,” I murmur. The girl’s eyes follow me as I tread a little further down the alley.

Mr. Clifton, with whom I trade for professional grade remedies, prefers me to use the back door to his shop. Taking the muddier back alleys may be a tad more dangerous, but I have found that it offers the most concealment from prying eyes, as these alleys simply offer back doors and storage spaces for bars and shops down the main street.

The trade-off is quick—some herbs from my garden exchanged for a few proper remedial concoctions that I could not have made myself.

The little girl remains precisely where I left her. Though, as I get closer, mud squelching underfoot, I notice a woman with her now. At first glance I wonder if she is the girl’s mother. She has the same dark brown hair, and she stands with her hand on the child’s shoulder. But as I draw nearer, I can see the hardness in her eyes and the stern shape of her lips. Her hand rests an inch or two from the little girl’s skin, as though she thinks it inappropriate to touch her.

“What can I do for you?” I ask. She’s there for me—that much is obvious—but she doesn’t exactly look ill.

Her throat constricts as she swallows, and her eyes flicker down the alley in the direction of Mr. Clifton’s. Did she see our transaction? Has she come to report me for illegal dealings?

“This child indicated that she has been waiting for you,” she says, finally. 

We stare at each other for a long moment, and I get the distinct sense that she is somehow sizing me up.

The little girl releases a dry cough that breaks the silence. She takes the herbs I give her with wide eyes, staring between me and the strange woman she’s found herself sandwiched between.

“Tell your mother to brew a strong tea,” I tell her. “And be sure to drink it all. Every drop.”

She nods as she takes a few steps back from us. I can barely hear her mumbled words of thanks before she turns and runs down the alley, splashing mud up the back of her tattered dress.

“Did you know her?” the woman asks.

I decide I might as well be honest—I’m sure she’s already guessed what I’ve been up to.

“No, I did not.”

“Then why help?”

“What do you suggest? That I stand by and watch a child suffer?” I don’t mean to sound so harsh, but I also don’t want to imagine it. Sitting by a child’s bed. Watching him die and doing nothing to stop it.

She smiles then, and her face looks much less severe that way. She holds her hands up as well in a quick gesture, palms out towards me, as if in apology.

“You practice healing, then?”

Ah. And here it is. The reason for the disruption was not malicious, but desperate. I can hear it in her voice.

“Mostly for the poor. Those who cannot afford a real doctor.”

“What about the people whom the doctor has turned his back on?”

If someone in her life is sick enough that a doctor couldn’t help, I don’t believe there’s anything more I could do for them. Still, I can’t help but picture it. Someone is suffering somewhere. There have been times, plenty of them, when I have had to walk away. Where there was nothing more that could be done. It pains me to leave a house and feel the sorrow follow me home, but I think it may hurt worse if I were to not try at all.

“Alright,” I tell her. “Do you live around here?”

“Yes,’ she says. There are so many emotions in the word. Relief, hope, fear, determination… in a few syllables, in her breath as she sighs, I hear it all.

“Come with me.”

***

Her house, resting on the outskirts of town, looks beautiful in the evening light. Some golden rays escape the grey clouds as we make our way up the drive, caressing the building with their light touch. Something about the air here is different. The way the breeze whispers through the trees out front, and how the white shutters sit with a child’s chalk drawings baking in the sun. It feels like a home.

The woman, Grace, as she has told me, walks heavily up the front steps. They creak as we step up and towards the threshold. Something stops me there, though I can’t entirely describe what it is. A feeling like… like missing a step on the stairs. Like falling. Like something is wrong.

“Oh please, do come in,” Grace beckons. She’s hanging up her shawl on a hook attached to the wood-panelled wall, and before I know it, I have done the same.

“He’s in his room, resting. Come.”

It’s much darker in here; no one has lit the candles yet tonight. Grace takes me through their front room and up the stairs to the second floor. There’s a smell here, something that doesn’t belong. I’ve been around illness before, of course, but I have never experienced this odour. Something sweet, but not pleasantly so. Sickly sweet. Like… rotting.

Grace pushes his door open, and I have the strangest desire to tell her to stop. My hand grips her arm, but it’s too late. There he is, curled up in his bed, wheezing. A little boy.

Perhaps I should have guessed this. In her desperation, I should have known. I should have recognized the desperation of a mother. But maybe I did understand, somehow. As I crossed that threshold, as she opened his door. A part of me must have known.

Sentimentality will get me nowhere here, so I push it away. The images, feelings, of a little boy curled up in bed. A different little boy.

The bedroom is not large. The warmth emanating from the boy’s body fills the small space, otherwise populated only by his bed and a small dresser against the back wall. A window overlooking the backyard has been left open, but the evening breeze does nothing to quell the sickly-sweet smell overpowering the room.

The remedies I’d gathered just this morning from Mr. Clifton rattle in my bag as I put it down. The child’s forehead feels feverish under my hand, but he has no markings on his body. Nothing to suggest smallpox, or any other such illness. But his breathing is laboured, and he’s clutching his stomach, as though it pains him.

“He has fits,” Grace whispers to me. I jump, not having heard her come up behind me.

As his mother describes them to me, I only grow more confused. I’ve never come across an illness with such strange, unbalanced symptoms. He has an intense fever yet does not sweat or shiver. His breathing sounds laboured, yet when I ask him to cough, it is dry and without phlegm. None of his many symptoms align with any illness I have ever seen or treated.

I begin with one of Mr. Clifton’s remedies, knowing it can do more for him than my homemade concoctions. My fingers are steady as I raise it to his lips, which, according to Grace, are dry and cracked no matter how much water he drinks. He swallows the whole bottle as though it has been delivered to him from God himself, and yet his fever will not budge. My hands begin to shake as I pull herbs from my bag, a mixture that has always worked for me before. He breathes in the fumes from this blend, meant to ease his breathing, and yet still struggles to draw breath.

“Do you see now?” Grace asks me from where she kneels beside his head, a hand on his feverish cheek. “The doctor said there was nothing left to be done. Please, Elizabeth, please tell me this is not true. There must be something that can be done…”

It is palpable in her voice now, no longer masked by the hope I brought to her. Fear. Mourning. I know the sound. I know it well enough that my mind shies away from it, cringing away from the void of grief Grace is opening inside herself.

But there is a part of me that does not shy away. I can’t just let a little boy die.

Forcing my sluggish brain into action is difficult. I have no idea what he could possibly be suffering from. Perhaps he’s in the first stages of smallpox and has yet to develop the characteristic lesions. Or maybe it’s simply some sort of flu, a kind I have yet to learn how to treat…

The sun lowers below the horizon as I work fervently, slowly whittling down the resources I brought with me while I treat him as best I can. The moon is high by the time Grace begins to pray.

Dear God, I place my son in your hands and ask that you restore him to health again as your humble servant…

She continues on, and I find myself sitting back for a moment. The moonlight filters into the grim bedroom, its light bathing the boy in white. He lies there, and I watch as he shows no sign of improvement. If anything, his condition has worsened in these late hours. It must be after midnight now.

The witching hour.

Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it until now. Of course. I had heard more and more cases recently, cases of jealous women turned witches, bidding the Devil to enact revenge on their behalf. But this young boy, how could he have wronged someone so greatly as to drive them to that extreme…

Perhaps it wasn’t him. Perhaps it was her.

I feel Grace watching me when I turn to her, though I can barely see her eyes in the dim light.

“This is not a natural illness,” I tell her.

“No,” she says. It’s a statement, not a question.

“You knew.”

She doesn’t answer, but her silence speaks volumes enough for me.

“Why bring me here? Why bring me to heal a boy that cannot be cured?” I’m standing now, though I don’t remember doing so. All I know is that I need to leave—I need to get out of here now. There is evil here, and she’s led me right into it, straight into the stomach of the Devil.

“The doctor wouldn’t help, not when he saw what had happened,” Grace gasps, tears trailing down her face. “I thought perhaps, if someone just tried…” She grabs my hand and I pull away so fast I fall into the doorframe, skinning my elbow on the rough wood. The pain brings everything sharply back into focus. The woman in front of me, so desperate to save her son she is willing to damn me in the process. And the boy behind her, wheezing in his bed. Fragile. Ignorant. Blameless.

It’s a moment before I can speak.

“Who did this?” My voice is rough. Aged. It is a stranger to me.

Grace gives me a name. And I know her. She lives only a few houses down from here, not even to the end of the dirt road.

I don’t remember leaving the house, only dimly realizing the night air is cold against my skin. My feet are too numb to feel the cold mud beneath them, but somewhere inside I keep track of the steps I take. Count the houses as they pass.

It’s more of a shack than a house. For a moment, I can see the witch’s jealousy so clearly in my mind. I see her passing that beautiful home as she makes her way into town. I see her ridiculed for her old age, her bent back, her dirty hands, and I know that the family down the street must have been everything she wanted. Perhaps she thought that if she could not have it, then no one should.

I knock, but there is no immediate answer. There’s a shuffling inside, and a strange noise I can’t quite place. “I know you’re in there!” I call to her. My voice sounds strong, though my hands shake at my side. It must be the cold.

She still doesn’t answer, and all I can think of is the little boy a few houses down and his mother as she prays over his body. I push the door open myself.

There’s a fire burning in the hearth to my left. Her house smells like dirt, perhaps a product of the leaves and soil littered about the floor in the front entryway. There’s a kitchen table to my right, herbs and meat scattered strangely on it, as though I had interrupted the witch during some sort of ritual. One of the chairs by the table has fallen to the ground, and as I follow it with my eyes, I cannot resist the urge to run.

She lays on the floor, crumpled, even smaller in death than she was in life. But it is not her who frightens me—I have seen death before, after all. Looked it in the eyes many times. It is the man who bends over her body, the humanoid mass of shadow, that sends me reeling.

I stumble three steps backwards into the door, whipping around and grappling for the doorknob. But as I stand there, fingers gripping the handle, I hesitate. And that one moment is all he needs.

“A rare occurrence, indeed.”

His voice is a hiss behind me, and I can’t bear to turn to him. It is deep and cold and merciless—the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. Then the Devil draws breath, and the rattling in his chest is known to me. A deep, sickly rattle. The familiarity gives me a senseless strength.

When I turn to him, he is no longer just a shadow. He looks very much like a man.

“It is not often that I am caught by surprise.”

“I did not mean…” I cannot get the full sentence out; my voice shakes something awful, but he just smiles. His teeth are rotten. Such a smile is no comfort to me.

“The witch is dead,” he says, gesturing to the body. His hand is slimy, and something that looks like scales glimmers in the firelight. Even in my fear, I understand his meaning. The boy is dead, too, for the Devil would have finished their deal before taking her soul.

“Please,” I beg. My stomach churns as the word comes up, burning my tongue on the way out. His eyes flicker in the firelight, the flames reflected in their depths as he studies me.

“It is not yours, as I understand.”

But I can see mine, my boy, as he looked in his last hours. I can see his laboured breathing, the spots that covered his face burning red in the candlelight. I have watched him suffer for so long; I see it every time I close my eyes. And I feel it, too. That horrible, soul-crushing loss, etched into my heart every minute of the day.

I think he sees this, too. Perhaps it is magic, or simply intuition, but the Devil knows my failure. He revels in it, grinning ear to ear, feeding on my suffering.

Then he speaks.  

“There is a way.”

“How?” I rasp. My throat closes in on itself, tightening around the word, as if it somehow already knows how this will end.

“I think I shall have your soul.”

How strange. I don’t even know the boy’s name—Grace never did mention it to me. A nameless boy. Of course, it doesn’t really matter. Not in the end—in this means to an end.

“Yes,” I breathe.

“Take it.”

And he makes his deal.

***

Sunlight pours into the room. It is the first thing I feel—warmth—as the light falls onto my body. The wood is hard under my shoulders, but so solid that it helps to ground me in what I have done. For a moment, eyes closed there on the floor, I do not feel regret, or fear, or loss. I feel at peace.

And then they come in. The men in their boots, shaking the ground as they enter the old witch’s hovel. They pull me up from the floor by my upper arms, yanking me away from my beam of sunlight. I can’t understand. I saved him. I saved that boy. I am not a witch. Yet, as they drag me from the house, I see her standing there. Grace and her son, rosy-cheeked and alive. And she looks at me with such disgust, such fear, I wonder if I have given in to madness.

“Is this her, ma’am?” one of the men asks.

She nods without hesitation.

The sun breaches further over the horizon as they pull me away and down the road. We go past that beautiful house with its white shudders and perfect family, with the son who reminded me so much of my own.

I hope I will see my son again.

I hope God can forgive me.

Please, God. Forgive me.