Devil Incarnate (On Hiatus)

Chapter 3

 The walk from school to church is pretty eventful. I have to walk through a bustling marketplace on the way home and I always have to stop by Aunty Roseline's fruit stand. She's not actually my aunt, but everyone in town knows her as Aunty Roseline. As I walk towards her, we lock eyes and her face lights up.

"My sweet Marie!" she exclaims as she goes to get out of her chair to come embrace me.

"No no no, Aunty, don't get up. I know your knee has been acting up." I say as I settle her back into her chair.

"What would I do without you, my sweet Marie?" she says looking longingly into my eyes.

I am not sure how to reply to that because it left a pit in my stomach seeing her have to work so much, even though her arthritis has been flaring up recently. I just give her hand a gentle squeeze and got right to work tidying up the oranges and making sure to put the older ones on top. I then grab the broom and begin sweeping up but my mind starts to drift. I know that my dad will be angry if I am late to church again, but I can't bear to leave Aunty alone unless I know she is taken care of.

I go to sit next to her and ask, "So how soon do you think your granddaughter will be here?"

"I'm not sure what time she'll be here by and I know that your dad is expecting you, so you should get going, my sweet girl. I don't want to cause a rift between you and him." she says, handing me my backpack and taking the broom from my hand.

It pains me to leave her like this but I knew she was right so I give her a kiss on the cheek and continue my walk to church. The rest of the walk is usually pretty uneventful. I wave at Stephanie as I pass her booth that sells handmade journals. I give Big Bob a quick nod as I pass his cart where he sells phones and cases. Finally, near the end of the market, I pass by crazy Anne's fortune telling booth.

Crazy Anne is known as crazy Anne because of some incident that happened long before I was born that nobody will give me the details about. From what I have deduced, I guess she got into an argument with somebody and cursed them and ran through the streets cursing anybody who tried to calm her down. I don't know how she could have run through these dangerous streets alone without getting hit by a car because she is old and blind. I also don't know exactly who she cursed or what they meant by "cursed" because she doesn't seem like the type of woman that would use curse words. And real curses don't even exist anyway. Dad says that the only curse that exists in this world is not knowing God.

I guess I must have drifted off in thought and stopped for a second in front of her booth. I hear her creaky old voice addressing me, "Come forth, child, and I will tell you of the dangers that lie in your future!"

I stand, staring at her for a second, before I reply, "No thank you. I'm on my way to the church now. I don't want to be late."

She turns and looks me straight in my eyes before saying, "Go on then, young Marie Lavaeu. Head into your future blind instead of trusting a blind woman to help you see."

I turn and walk away, confused. How did she know my first name? And why did she call me Marie Lavaeu? And what did she mean by 'danger' in my future. I shake it off and kept walking. Next thing I know, I feel a hand pushing my chest and I hit the ground. I look up to see Connie Meagle, the only girl who can be everywhere at once.

"Stop harassing my grandmother or I'm gonna tell the police about how your dad has been touching little boys." she says with a snide grin.

I got up and dusted myself off and continued on my walk. She wasn't worth my time. As I'm walking I hear her yell at me, "Of course you're gonna walk away from a fight. You know you can't win! You'll never be able to beat my at anything!"

At this point, I'm at my wits end with her. How can she harass me for bothering her creepy grandmother when her creepy grandmother was the one bothering me? I turn to her with venom dripping from my voice and say, "At least I can beat your grandmother at reading. How can she read fortunes if she can't even read a book?"

I immediately regret this after saying it. I could see the fire building in Connie's eyes as she glared at me from across the way. I knew that apologizing to her wouldn't make any difference and that she would make my life hell at school either way so I continued walking. Before I even took more than three steps, I heard running footsteps slapping on the pavement behind me. I turned only to see Connie running toward me. Before I had a second to think, she ran her hand along my collarbone whispering, "spiritus restringere," over and over.

I push her away and she looks at me for a second before walking off. I turn and continue walking to church. I take a look at my watch and realize that I will be late to church unless I run. I run all the way to church and get there just in time, barely taking a second to take a breath. My father glares at me from across the aisle but I ignore him and go to take a seat near the front.

He sets down the Bible that he had in his hand and turns to address the groups of teens and tweens that fill the first three rows of the church. After-school mass is usually made up of about 15 kids whose parents drop them off after school in an attempt to keep them out of trouble. They either fall asleep or work on homework or sneak notes to each other during the 2 hours that my dad is lecturing at them. Today's topic is the dangers of letting your faith waver. After listening to him lecture for about 10 minutes I started to zone out.

I started to think about what had happened earlier with Connie. I was so confused about what she was saying because it sounded like something from the old bibles that we have in the church. So she must have been speaking a different language. Latin! That was the weird language she was speaking! What could she have meant by 'spiritus restringere'? I could figure it out if I could find a Bible, because it has translations in the margins. If I could find the words spiritus and ringere, I could figure out the exact meaning of those words. I look up, trying to see if one of those old Bibles is in the basket in front of my seat. Then everything goes black.

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