The Devils Within

The devil is in us all, but we choose to lock him away. Silencing him, we ignore his cruel, whispered words. Day in, day out, he lies dormant, waiting. Biding his time. Just waiting.

It was a night in December that it happened. I was in the front room reading the newspaper, the fire crackling before me, smoke billowing up the chimney. Everything was as it was supposed to be.

Susan was on her way back from her shift at the hospital. I glanced at the time – nine o’clock. She was later than usual, but, on her request, I didn’t call.

‘Sure, I like having a coffee and chat at the end of a shift,’ she said last time I rang, shooing me off the phone. ‘Don’t you worry so much.’

That night though, when it got to half-past nine, I tried her mobile phone. But it went straight to voicemail and so I left a message, a sleepy, ‘Where are you? I love you.’

Now that I know why she was late, the thought of what she was going through at that moment turns and turns my stomach.

Because twenty minutes later, she stumbled into the house, her eyes black, her wrists blue. She fell to her knees, then her side. As she curled into a ball, she let out a low animal groan. The sound of pain.

I knew what had happened. Of course I knew. And so I said nothing as I wrapped my arms around her and felt her tense at my touch.

‘Who was it?’ I asked finally. ‘Who did it? Susan, come on, tell me. Who was it? Who was it?’

I wanted to shake her until the answer fell from her mouth, but she was crying for so long she had no breath for words.

‘Seamus O’Connolly,’ she said at last, after it felt a lifetime had passed between us. ‘He followed me past the church. He dragged me down-,’

And then she jerked from my embrace and was sick on the floor, the crucifix of her necklace swinging in front of her eyes.

It’s a small town, Kiltimagh, and I knew Seamus O’Connolly from church. He's only about nineteen; morose and acts as if the world is against him. His parents, Sheelagh and Michael, have go to mass every week. And he’d come with them until recently.

I walked to their house the next morning and they met me with warm smiles, offers of tea and cake. But I refused, asked if Seamus was home.

‘He is indeed, Andrew,’ they said, unquestioning, and called up the stairs.

He appeared: tired, bloodshot eyes.

‘Will you come for a walk with me, Seamus?’ I asked, and I could see from the way he stared at the ground that he knew that I knew.

The devil was in me that morning. It was through his eyes that I watched Seamus drown.

And now, eight months later, Susan’s stomach is still swelling. Another devil within.