The day after Tom’s visit to the doctor to look at his knee, he felt good enough to make the trek into Albany. I met John at 9AM in our usual spot in the field. John was a bit downbeat and quiet. I’d never seen him this way.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
John took a deep breath. “No. I don’t think it is,” he said. “It’s your husband. He asked me how often you and I take these walks, and I told him just about every day. Which made him really mad. He cursed me out. I told him it was not a big deal. That we were friends and you liked to share what was on your mind. When he asked me what you shared, I wouldn’t tell him. That made him even angrier.”
I had stopped and was waiting for Alice McQuiskey to pass us in her minivan. “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”
“No. I don’t think it’s going to be fine. Tom is on his way to a priest in Boston right now. He’s going to come back with some bible passages and an old coin. He’s going to make me disappear.”
My heart sank. If this were true, Tom was putting on a good face. He’d mentioned that he thought John was acting funny of late, but there hadn’t been any sign in him that something this severe was festering under the surface. That he was planning to exorcise John.
I pulled out my phone and called Tom. John waited and watched me.
“Hi babe, just checking in. Are you still driving? Boston? What’s in Boston?”
Tom said he had to go. That we would talk about it when he was home. We hung up.
John said, “See. I’m not lying.” I apologized and promised John that I would stop Tom from sending him into the spiritual abyss.
“This is your home,” I told him. “And we can work this out. Tom just gets angry.”
John said he was pretty certain that Tom was going to follow through. Which is why he’d had to alert Carl and a few of the other neighbors he was close to.
“They need me. If Tom takes me away, they’re going to be in bad shape.”
I felt a piercing pain in my stomach as soon as John mentioned the other neighbors. They weren’t going to let Tom go through with this. And if he did go through with it, then what? We’d have to move. Or worse. Carl didn’t seem like a violent man, but I knew how much he loved John. I needed to control the situation. “Are they going to try to stop Tom?” I asked.
“Yes,” John said and he faded away, gliding off on a gust of wind that carried some fall leaves with it.
I called Tom back and told him that I knew what he was planning. He started yelling at me. “Oh, I guess John told you. When you took your daily walk! It seems he knows everything about us!”
“I never talked with him about you. Not once.”
Tom let out a shitty laugh. “You talked about yourself and your life. All of your many problems. To me, that’s talking about us. We’re married, you know. We’re sharing a life. You don’t talk to me about these things.”
I pleaded with him to settle down but he was white-hot angry. I hung up the phone when he said, “Maybe you’d like to be married to John instead of me?”
Tom could get like this, heated and irrational, when something really bothered him. I’d let him cool off and we’d talk about it when he got home.
That night he pulled into our driveway a half hour later than usual. I stepped into the yard to meet him. I had set the kids up with a movie and snacks in our room, so that Tom and I could discuss outside without their little ears around. Before I could get a word out Tom said, “Everything is fine, everything is fine.”
Just then, Carl charged out from the bushes with a shovel raised. He ran at Tom. My husband turned, holding up his hands and shouting, “It’s over! It’s over!”
Carl held up, lowering the shovel. “What do you mean?”
“I already performed the exorcism. I parked a couple streets over and hiked in through the pond area. John just smiled as I read the incantations. He didn’t protest at all.”
“You bastard,” Carl said. Tears welled up in his eyes. He lifted the shovel back up and Tom blurted out, “It’s fine. It’s not going to affect you. The exorcism only applies to me and my wife.”
Tom gestured to me, and then patted on his chest. “Kelly and I can’t see him anymore. But you’re fine. He’s still there for you.”
Carl ran off to check. I stared at my husband. I wasn’t sure what to say. How to broach how I was feeling. After a while he said, “Aren’t you going to say something?”
I didn’t say a word. I walked down to the field and hid behind a tree. From there I watched Carl laugh and proclaim, “That guy is really wound up. Oh well, their loss.” I couldn’t see anyone other than Carl. Tom was right, the exorcism only applied to me and him.
I ordered takeout for dinner. Tom had a couple of beers with the meal and was in a better mood. He came over as I was scraping food off the plates and asked, “Are you okay?”
I said, “I will be.” Which seemed to be enough for him.
That night, I sat in the backyard and stared at the sky. I could hear Carl next door, playing music in his garage. Even if I couldn’t see John now, I could get Lily to help me communicate with him. She’d have to be quiet about it, so that Tom wouldn’t try to apply the exorcism to her. But she’d do that for me. It would be our secret.
I wondered what would happen if I tried to apply the exorcism to my husband. Maybe it would get him to relax. I wouldn’t be shocked to find that he had some dormant demon residing in the background of his psyche. Maybe it was the demon who felt threatened by John and decided to take such a radical action. If I got that demon out, could I sneak a bit of John into Tom’s subconscious in its place?
Tom met me in the backyard. He sat down and took my hand. “It was just getting weird. And causing problems between us.”
I nodded but didn’t give him an answer.
“I’m sure you’re going to be mad at me for a while about this, but sooner or later things will be fine. They’ll go back to the way they were.”
I kissed him on the cheek and asked him to build a bonfire. I couldn’t let him see any sign of worry or regret. He’d key into that and remain suspicious. In the morning, I’d bring my daughter out to the field to meet John. And sooner or later, just as Tom promised, things would be fine. They’d go back to being the way they were.
Awesome story and writing, Chris. I really enjoy these stories and look forward to the next installments!