The Devil Himself

The Devil Himself

Perley J. Thibodeau

Copyright © 2015 Perley J. Thibodeau

All rights reserved.

Distributed by Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

E Books:

The Unexpected Trip

The Devil Himself

AUTHOR

PERLEY J. THIBODEAU

Perley J. Thibodeau was born and lived the first 45 years of his life in Bangor, Maine. He now resides in Manhattan, New York.

Table of Contents

AUTHOR

THE DEVIL HIMSELF

KRIME DOESN’T PAY

SORRY, RIGHT NUMBER

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

ONLY THE SHADOW KNOWS

MISS KASH’S SECRET

ANN’S FINAL CONFESSION

THE PIPER MUST BE PAID

TELL ME WHAT YOU SAW

THE SKY’S THE LIMIT

NOT LIVING TO TELL THE TALE

THE MAN WHO WON THE LOTTERY

THE RISE AND FALL OF CAROL CARON

WHO KILLED THE COMPUTER TROLL?

A FRIENDLY GAME OF MURDER

THE POSTMAN RANG ONCE TOO OFTEN

MURDER IS JUST A THOUGHT AWAY

WHERE THERE’S A WILL TH ERE’S A WAY

EVERYBODY TALKS ABOUT THE WEATHER

HE’S THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK AT MONTE CARLO

THE DEVIL HIMSELF

BOOK

of

SHORT STORIES

1

THE DEVIL HIMSELF

A man goes to a small county fair in his hometown, and he soon gets bored with the midway attractions, including the side shows, the rides, the agricultural display, and all the other features that make up the once a year highly anticipated otherwise fun event.

Even the junk food like the cotton candy, the candied apples, the hot dogs, and the sticky sweet caramel popcorn balls have lost their enjoyment for him.

Out of sheer boredom he wanders into the beer tent where long picnic style tables have been set up, with folding chairs for the many male and female beer guzzlers like him who have come to the fair to spend their hard earned crop picking money on bingo and beer sit in animated conversation with each other. But as nobody is really listening to what’s being said, each one is basically just talking to themselves.

And so they sit, thinking they are having a good time, while really knowing fully well that both the Bingo and beer are losing propositions, and they really might just as well have stayed home and spent their money on their small children who continually go with out the bare essentials of life like food, clothing, and decent shelter in order to pay for their good times..

For like water seeking its own level, the man knows that here he’ll find others like himself, and thus will acquire solace from a like group of kindred souls who too are enjoyably self centered individuals, and are able to appease the demons that torture his soul for no apparent reason, whatsoever.

As he looks around for a place to sit, he knows that soon he’ll be in the pleasurable company of people just like himself.

But now the hour is getting late, and soon at the witching hour of 12 o’clock midnight, the entire enterprise will be closed, and battened down for the night in anticipation for the next day’s business ventures that will last until the end of the week when the fair workers will pull up stakes, and head for the next town on their summer season itinerary.

The man knows that then he will have no place else to go but back to the shanty where his own continually battered wife, and near starving children will be waiting in hopes for him to bring home his paycheck that will tide them over for a few days. Knowing full well that even if he does, they’ll face hunger again because, the local town welfare woman won’t allow them any kind of rent, fuel, or food subsidy because technically the man is earning too much money to qualify for the benefits.

Earning too much money, he laughs in a derogatory manner. That’s a laugh.

For everyone in the town including the welfare worker knows that he drinks all of his paycheck money up on his way home on payday. When there’s nothing left he reluctantly heads for home, where he abuses his wife and children in blame for his own character weaknesses, and mental short comings.

If the town we live in would give us welfare, the kids wouldn’t be going to bed hungry, he silently accuses. And my wife wouldn’t have to put up with the beatings that force her to not complain, and to stay in line. Then I could spend my money on beer, cigarettes, and other manly pleasures.

That thought settles his churning brain only for the length of time that it takes for him to reach into the pocket of his snug fitting designer jeans and to realize that he now doesn’t have the price for another beer.

No sense to try mooching a free beer from these other drinkers, he curses silently. This time of the night they’re as broke as I am."

And with that rightful decision he turns and leaves the beer tent to go back to the midway spread out in dazzling brightly lit colored lights before him.

‘Damn welfare people, he curses, under his stale beer and cigarette smoke smelling breath. Won’t give the wife welfare because her husband earns too much money. Would you think about that? He asks himself. They want her to take the kids, and leave me so she’ll qualify for monthly payments and food stamps. They’d actually take a woman and her children away from a man, and split up his home. And all for a couple of cheap bucks."

The old saying, "An Angel on the street and a Devil in his own home best describes Dan Chisholm. And he wears the well earned description proudly.

The smell of cigarette smoke, and stale beer on both his breath, and the now offensive odor of perspiration from the heat of the surrounding late summer night makes him realize that the night is about over.

Hell, the condition I’m in now won’t even find me an interesting companion for quick pleasure, he laments, as he makes his way bleary eyed around the runway one more time.

But dead broke and smelly, he’s knows he’s hopelessly looking for excitement that just isn’t there for him anymore.

Back on the midway, he sees the lights on the Roller Coaster, the Tilt a World, and the Ferris Wheel are now going dark, and even the food concessions have had their canvas curtains pulled down to close off the space behind where the concessionaires dish up their greasy potato fries, and burned hotdogs.

I think I’ve stayed too long at the fair, he laughs unsteadily to himself, as he continues to walk the circle around the tents, the giant trucks with their miles and miles of cable and wires containing the life producing electric generators that make the carnival parts of the fair move.

The calliope music of the colorful children’s carousel is stopped and silent now, as are the male carnie barkers with their old time straw hats, red arm garters, and electrified megaphones amplifying their voices to an almost fevered pitch to get the paying customers into the side shows featuring freaks, both real and contrived, and the supposed strip shows that feature old fat, and unattractive women who can no longer cut it with the younger audiences at Boston’s Revere Beach, or New York’s Coney Island.

Deep down he knows that county fairs in small rural areas are the last whistle stop for what was once young adventuresome men and woman, but through years of traveling from town to town, have now become the dregs of the earth.

It’s in this state of physical exhaustion, mental fatigue, and just plain inebriation that Dan comes across a tent with an open doorway that a very old wizened man is sitting cross legged on the ground in front of. The man sees that he’s caught Dan’s eye, and so he beckons to him silently with a long thin claw like hand, and whispers in a voice that sounds more like a swarm of angry buzzing bees than a human being’s normal form of communication.

‘Enter, enter my friend. The old sickly thin man dressed in rags begs Dan. It’s free. All free with no charges what so ever."

The perfect ending to an otherwise dull and boring night. Dan thinks to himself.

The frail old man goes on talking in his urgings to get Dan to step inside the mysterious looking tent.

See what awaits within, and you’ll be talking for years to come about the experience of a life time, he rasps, desperately gasping for breath.

Just what am I going to see inside that miserable looking little tent that I have never seen before, old man? Dan challenges him, out rightly.

It’s beyond my knowledge to describe it in the colorful, exciting, and adventurous way that only a first hand visit can show you, my friend.

The old man with the white wisps of hair sticking out from under a woolen knit skull cap that is much too heavy for the heat of an August summer night, throws back the challenge.

Out o f sheer boredom, and with a lack of anything better to do, which to him includes going home to his wife and children, Dan allows the heavily clad ancient appearing man to now rise from his sitting position on the ground, and to carefully pull back the opaque curtain flap that is hanging across the opening to the tent before them.

The smell of burning sulfur assails Dan’s nostrils, as he enters, but he can’t really distinguish the odor due to the cigarettes he has smoked, and the beer he has drunk deadening his sense of smell and taste.

‘Watch your step," The older man warns, and then seemingly completely disappears when Dan glances back at him.

He now moves tentatively forward in the semi darkness that is only lightened by a faint reddish orange glow emanating from farther back in what seems to be a very long and narrow corridor that stretches endlessly before his now burning and watering eyes. He finds it uncomfortable to breathe at first, but both his eyesight and lungs adjust to the otherwise mildly adverse condition, and after pausing briefly in order to try to think matters through, he continues his journey to the unknown territory that he has been promised lies just ahead of him. For that is all he has left now, as when he had turned back earlier to retrace his steps to where he would again be on the midway of the carnival; he had run right into a solid wall.

The light gets brighter, the heat gets warmer, and the path he is following seems to now be slopping more and more down hill as he walks slowly along.

Occasionally there are wide bright spots in the pathway where Dan now happens upon scenes of history that depict events and people that he has only seen in books or motion pictures, and the tableaux of each often stops to relate their tales of eternal damnation, and their reasons for not deserving such. For each appears as they were at the hour of their death, and each is now forced to constantly relive over and over again for eternity the agonies of their last minutes of life on earth.

Gazing into the glassed in space before him now, it is easy to recognize who the subject before him is even without looking at the card on the glass that states;

ADOLPH HITLER

20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945)

"The Soviet troops have now entered Germany, Der Fuehrer speaks in electronically interpreted English. I refuse to leave my country in escape. He continues to speak to the young blonde women sitting in front of him in their cramped quarters. I’m afraid of being captured. He goes on. I’ve heard stories of how the Soviet troops plan to parade me through the streets of Germany in a cage. To prevent this humiliation I’ve decided to commit suicide. As your new wife, I will join you, Adolph," the blonde woman agrees.

Two days before his death Hitler married Eva Braun."

‘Our goodbyes to associates have been said, he states passing her a small tablet. Place this in your mouth and bite down hard on it. I’ll do the same with the cyanide tablet I have, and it will soon be over."

Dan watches the blonde do as she told, as the figure the military man does the same. Only he produces a revolver and holding it determinedly to his temple he pulls the trigger, and both fall to the fall dead.

Having now witnessed first hand this part of history, Dan turns and hurries on before he is forced to again see an eternally repeated performance.

Stopping to catch his breath, he comes across yet another window back in time. It is a scene set in a public plaza, and he pauses fascinated to see what this new apparition will depict.

FRENCH REVOLUTIONIST

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre

6 May 1758 - 28 July 1794)

Dan reads in stunned silence as he recognizes the view before him, and hears the angry roar of the unseen crowd that is gathered in the public square.The man in bindings behind his back is wearing peasant clothes, and has his mouth wound professionally in now dried bloody bandages that have successfully stanched the flow of his wound. Dan knows without being told that thirteen men have now been beheaded, but only this man has now been forced to lie on his back face up to await Madame Gguillotine. When clearing Robespierre's neck the executioner tears off the bandage that is holding his shattered jaw in place, producing an unearthly agonised scream until the fall of the blade silences him forever.

Having seen this interesting live display, Dan continues now walking down the still long narrow passage way, and even though the reddish orange flickering light ahead gets steadily brighter, he at least seems to feel a bit more comfortable in the accompanying oppressive heat that has been hitting him head on with all the force of an open blast furnace. The sweat of his body and brow now seem to settle into a steady slightly cool glaze that is no longer dripping down in rivulets in the ever present sweltering heat of the passageway.

Soon he is surprised, and almost relieved to come to yet another wide spot along his continuous route downward. The claustrophobic feeling leaves his body, and mind as he sees what looks to be another stage lighted scene behind glass, and he sees a small neatly printed white card with the insignia of a royal crown placed over the writing.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

8 December 1542 - 8 February 1587

He quickly grasps the idea that this is a scene of an Elizabethan Execution, and once again, he’s being allowed to have the doubtfully curious pleasure of witnessing it first hand.

He sees the scaffold that has been erected is about three feet tall and draped in black. It is reached by five steps and the only things on it are a disrobing stool, the block, a cushion to kneel on, and a bloody butcher's axe that had obviously been previously used on animals.

Quickly surveying the scene before him he sees what look to be executioners, and two female servants who are helping a regal looking red haired lady of obvious nobility to remove a black outer gown, two petticoats, and a corset that now reveals a deep red chemise, chosen as everybody knows to help hide the soon to flow royal blood.

As she is systematically disrobed, the elegant lady smiles faintly to the executioner, and says, Never have I had such assistants to disrobe me, and never have I put off my clothes before such a company.

She is then blindfolded and made to kneel down on the cushion in front of the block. She positions her head on the block and stretches her arms out behind her.

It takes two strikes of the executioner’s axe to decapitate the woman: The first blow misses her neck and strikes the back of her head, at which point the Queen's lips move.

She whispers the words Sweet Jesus. Which the one man audience can’t decide is a prayer, or a curse.

The second blow severs the neck, except for a small bit of sinew that the executioner severs by using the axe as a saw.

Afterward, the executioner holds her head aloft, and declares, God save the Queen.

At that moment, the auburn tresses in his hand came apart, and the head falls to the ground rolling forward on the floor, revealing that Queen Mary had had very short, grey hair.

Dan turns quickly from this new grisly scene of barbaric horror, and trips and falls in his haste to make distance between him, and what he had just curiously witnessed.

Picking himself up from the nearly burning heat of the ground under him, he hurries ever forward, and soon comes upon yet another live scene being enacted behind glass.

This time there is a similar white card embossed with a slightly different Heralic Emblem, but featuring a slightly more elaborate coronet than the previous one he has seen.

ELIZABETH THE FIRST

QUEEN OF ENGLAND

7 September 1533- 24 March 1603

An extremely old, wrinkled and highly dissipated women lies in regal splendor on her death bed. Her face still painted white, with an overly abundant amount of red hair, that shouts of being a wig.

I may not be a lion, but I am a lion’s cub, and I have a lion’s heart, The sick feeble old woman boasts in a weak voice. I leave behind a rich and prosperous country. Now gasping heavily for breath. Whether or not my second cousin Mary received absolution for her earthly sins as far as her church is concerned, will perhaps never been known. However, the same may soon be said about my abiding faith in my father Henry’s Church, also.

With those words of final disclosure, her wrinkled hand drops over the side of the bed, her eyes close, and she is dead.

No post mortem claim, one of the attendants says quietly. It’s clear that her face powder all these years has caused her condition. Old age and vanity has done her in. She had been poisoning herself all along without knowing it."

‘At least that was a little more quiet death, "Dan thinks to himself, as he reluctantly goes on to the next live exhibit where he sees the notice;

JEZEBEL

9TH CENTURY B.C.

The new scene now depicts a small balcony with an open doorway behind. A woman dressed in ancient finery, and carefully made up with red lip rouge and powder runs from the door to the balcony’s balustrade to escape men who are chasing her.

‘You are a wicked, wicked woman, Jezebel. You’ve sinned by making Israelites worship false Gods!"

‘Kill her," One of the men’s voices in the background shouts.

Yes, another chants. Throw her off the balcony, and leave her corpse in the street to be eaten by dogs."

The loudness of the wild dogs barking, yelping, growling, and viciously fighting each other for the meal that has been provided from the woman’s fall causes Dan to cover his ears, and he turns and hurries on.

At what hopefully appears to be the end of the frightening tunnel, Dan begins to unexplainably shudder uncontrollably when he sees a man moving a few yards up before him. When he gets closer he sees a perfect image of a man dressed in a Halloween type devil’s suit. He scoffs with slight fear, but decides he has come this far, and he won’t back out now.

He quickly comes to the conclusion that the evil person he sees before him is somehow his own reflection in a full length unframed mirror. The mirrored man is laughing maniacally at Dan, and Dan can feel his own facial muscle stretched to the point of pain in the man’s doing so. It seems that the man standing before him has taken over Dan’s entire being, and Dan is now reacting in the exact same insane manner that the wicked looking man before him is acting in. Dan picks up what appears to be a prop that looks like an already bloodied battle ax, and he swings the metal ax at the image before him. But when he strikes the man’s leg, it’s his leg that feels a sharp pain. When he hits the man’s shoulder, it is his shoulder that aches and throbs suddenly.

Thoroughly confused now and aching all over he tosses the battle ax to one side, and screams in horrible agony.

I give up. he yells in total exasperation. I’ve seen right though all of these cheaply made plastic and gauze carnival horror show props, and the gaudy lighting tricks, but I can’t phantom who or what you are."

‘That’s’ simple, my friend."

Dan tenses up in recognition of the way the image has now spoken the words, my friend, and that forces him to realize that this evil looking creature before him is just another guise of the old man who was overly dressed in heavy winter clothing sitting on the ground in front of the tent, and who had convinced him to enter this ridiculously campy version of hell in the first place.

Beelzebub Lucifer, Prince of Darkness, Satan. I have many many names. The hideous looking form now explains. "Six hundred and sixty six of them, to be exact. And all of them highly flattering, I might add.

The Devil. Dan whispers, hurriedly.

Is that a question or a statement? The now familiar droningly raspy voice asks archly. Well, no matter. I feel you may soon either relax, or become afraid enough to recognize just who it is that I am. He laughs machiavienly. Tell me, have you ever heard of Doctor. Faustus?

Wasn’t that an Elizabeth Taylor movie? He asks.

I imagine it was, my friend. I imagine it was.

Yeah. The guy sells his soul to the Devil, right?

Right, the evil one happily agrees.

I saw it when it starred Tab Hunter, and he played a baseball player. He tries for a vocal sound of levity.

Movie stars like politicians, and other phonies on the make are a dime a dozen, to use a well known phrase that is nonetheless still highly descriptive. He now openly scoffs. You want movie stars and politicians, kings, queens, highly placed religious figures, you can have them all. They are now mine, and mine alone to either keep or give away. He states with passion. Go ahead. Name a name that you wish to be your eternal friend or helpmate. He now coos lightly. Even Jack the Ripper, or Jeffrey Dahmer, if you wish. In a new nostalgic tone of voice. Although Jeffrey does happen to be a particular favorite of mine!"

Dan is now falling helplessly under the spell of this highly confident actor who is playing the role of the Devil so well. Mesmerized, is a much better choice of a word to describe his awed feeling that he has now acquired, as the newly emerging Svengali continues to enter and manipulate his inner most thoughts.

Faust or Faustus was unsatisfied, much like you, yourself. He made a deal with me, the Devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.

A sudden enveloping burst of intensely hot flames accompany this explanation.

Are you asking me to sell my soul to the Devil? Dan tries hard to lightly laugh the foolishly implied suggestion off lightly.

It’s a little too late for that my friend. This said with complete conviction. You see, I’ve already slowly taken over your soul with every evil deed that you have performed against your fellow creatures of the earth over your lifetime. Lightly waving away the question. No, no. I owe you no price, for your very being is now mine, and mine alone.

He suddenly feels a sore tenderness on each side of the top of his head. He reaches up with his painfully aching arms, and he feels two small bumps rising quickly from his skull just in back of his hairline. An irritating sensation at the tops of his ears diverts his attention, and when he places his fingers to each of them, he realizes that instead of being rounded they now come to sharp