The Devil's Footprints

Or like heavy footsteps.

The hair at the back of Thomas’s neck lifted as a terrible dread gripped him. He scrambled out of bed, pulled on his clothes and grabbed a shotgun and coat on his way outside.

Using a side door to avoid the slippery porch, he trudged around to the front of the house where he had a better view of the roof.

The moon was bright on the snow, a luminous glow that turned nighttime into a subdued twilight, and the air was pure and so cold that his nostrils stung when he breathed. He turned, looked up and what he saw chilled him to the bone. Cloven footprints started at the edge of the roof, moved in a straight line up the sloping tin and disappeared over the peak.

Slowly, Thomas turned in a circle, his gaze encompassing the yard, the barn, the cotton fields and finally returning to his house and then up the porch steps right to his front door. He saw now what he had not noticed before. The footprints were everywhere. He’d never seen anything like them. He’d lived in the country all his life and he knew the tracks hadn’t been made by a four-legged animal, but by something that walked upright. And the stride was long and at least twice as wide as the footprints Thomas had left in the snow.

A terrible premonition settled over him. The farmhouse had been his home since he was a boy, and on Sunday mornings when his neighbors headed into town for church services, he had instead walked the fields alone. The peace he found there was deep and profound, the clean silence of the freshly plowed earth more suited to his idea of prayer and reflection. But now, as he stood in his own front yard, Thomas Duncan had the sense that a part of his heritage had been desecrated.

An urgency he couldn’t explain prodded him, and he rushed back to the house, avoiding the prints on the steps and across the frozen porch as he flung open the front door. His heart hammered against his chest as he stepped inside, expecting to see melting tracks on the plank flooring. The only snow, however, was from his own boots.

Quickly he bolted the door and strode down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. As he opened the back door, his gaze dropped. The prints started at the threshold and continued down the steps and across the yard to the open field, as if something had come in the front door, passed through the house without leaving a mark, and let itself out the back way.

More afraid than he’d ever been in his life, Thomas moved back inside and clicked the thumb-lock on the door. He shoved a chair under the knob and sat down at the table, shotgun across his knees, to wait for daylight.

By morning, word of the footprints had spread throughout the town, and with it, speculation as to their source. One of Thomas’s neighbors followed the tracks right up to the edge of the river where they continued in the same straight line on the other side.

For several nights after that, some of the men sat up with Thomas, waiting to see if the strange phenomenon reoccurred. When nothing happened, the community began to breathe a little easier—until a local preacher sermonized that the drillers, in their quest to strike it rich, had somehow punched a hole straight down to hell, unleashing the devil himself to run unbridled across the countryside.

The cloven footprints vanished with the melting snow and were eventually forgotten in the tiny Arkansas community.

Then seven decades later, they reappeared near the mutilated body of sixteen-year-old Rachel DeLaune.

One

She had no idea he was there.

Seated on the porch steps of the old Duncan farmhouse, the girl remained blissfully unaware of his vigil. If she had turned she would have seen him, but she didn’t turn. Instead, she pulled her jacket more tightly around her slight body, as if stricken by a sudden chill.

In the distance, the ancient bells up in the cottonwoods tinkled in the shifting twilight. Ghost music, he thought. A serenade for the dead.

He listened for a moment, eyes closed, anticipation strumming the nerve endings along his spine. Then he crept a few steps closer.

And still she heard nothing.

Not surprising. He’d learned a long time ago the importance of a silent approach. No squeaking shoes. No snapping twigs. Not even an exhaled breath. He moved like a shadow, like a stealthy predator bearing down with eagle-eyed precision on his prey.

Her head suddenly lifted, as if yanked by the invisible bond that connected them, and he froze, heart hammering, until the danger passed.

She settled back to her daydreaming as her dog played nearby in the tall grass. Her back was to him; he longed to call out her name, make her turn so he could glimpse her face, stare deeply into those dark, dark eyes.

A shiver coursed through him. He wanted that contact more than anything in the world, but it couldn’t be today. It would be night soon, and the longer he stayed out, the harder it became to control his natural urges. The demons driving him sometimes made him careless and greedy and all too willing to risk everything he needed to keep hidden.

But for her, it might be worth it.

Outwardly, she looked like a normal girl. Straight dark hair with a fringe of bangs across her forehead. Pale skin. Deep brown eyes. Nothing at all extraordinary about her appearance.

On the inside, though, where it counted the most, Sarah DeLaune was anything but normal.

She was young, only thirteen, so he had to be very careful with her. He was older, wiser and—in some ways—worldlier, although he could shed his dreary veneer as easily as peeling away the Goth persona he’d adopted. Unlike normal-looking Sarah, he had embraced the trappings of darkness, because without the black clothes and heavy makeup, he became someone else.

“Gabriel, you leave that squirrel alone. You hear me?” she scolded her dog. “Don’t make me cut a switch!”

He smiled at the idle threat. Sarah would never harm a hair on that mutt’s head. Until now, Gabriel had been her only companion. Until now.

The dog trotted over to the steps, and Sarah cupped his homely face in her hands, scratched behind his shapeless ears. Gabriel started to flop at her feet worshiping her, but a change of wind brought a new scent, a new excitement, and the dog whirled, his keen eyes searching the shadows at the corner of the house.

He started to step back out of sight, but it was too late. He’d gotten careless and now he’d been spotted.

As Gabriel bounded toward him, he reached into his pocket and snagged one of the treats he kept in a plastic bag. He’d learned early on that Sarah’s dog had a weakness for bacon.

Skidding to a halt, the ugly mutt sniffed his hand, then greedily gobbled the morsel right from his palm. He dug out another, his gaze never leaving Sarah.

She’d risen from the steps and stood looking at him as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Her instincts told her to run, but her curiosity urged her to stay. For a girl like Sarah, there really was no choice.

Slowly, she walked through the dead weeds toward the corner of the house, peering into the shadows.

He drew several quick breaths as he watched her. He’d been in her house on any number of occasions when the family was out. He’d drifted through the silent rooms, touched her things, absorbed her scent. He knew her so well by now. Her habits, her secrets, her innermost fears. Sometimes, it almost seemed as if she were a mirror image of himself. And yet for all that, he’d never before been this close to her.

A quiver of excitement vibrated through him as their eyes met for the first time. In that instant, he could feel her gaze penetrating the darkest recesses of his soul, probing the deepest corners of his mind, the way he’d searched every crevice of her room.

“Hey, you!” she called. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The intensity of her focus disconcerted him and he had to glance away as she approached. “I just wanted to have a look around. I didn’t think anyone would be here this time of day.”

“Well, you thought wrong.” She gave him a scowling appraisal. “Who are you anyway? I’ve never seen you out here before.”

“My name is Ashe Cain,” he said, careful to remain in the shadows where she couldn’t get a good look at him.

“Never heard of you, and I know everyone in town.”

“I’m not from Adamant.”

That caught her interest. “Where you from then?”

“Does it matter? I’m not trespassing, am I?”

“Yeah, but nobody gives a shit about this place.” She cocked her head as she continued to study him, apparently not the least bit afraid. He should have had more faith, he realized.

“Ashe Cain.” She repeated his name slowly, as if testing the feel of the syllables against her lips. “Is that your real name or did you just make it up?”

The question startled him. “No, it’s my real name. Why?”

“Because all the Goth kids at my school give themselves lame-ass names like Twilight and Shadow.” She paused with a mocking smile. “And Ashe.”

He scoffed at her suggestion. “Don’t lump me in with those poseurs. I’m not like that.”