Chapter Eight:

The sheriff stood between Danny and Morton. He seemed a little shocked. Ciara appeared next to him and whispered in his ear.

Danny looked at the bullet in her left arm and began laughing and crying at the same time. She clapped her hand over the wound and ignored the blood flowing freely through her fingers.

"Danny, what's wrong with you?" Morton asked.

Still laughing, Danny said, "'It's just... for the first time... I feel... again..." She sank to her knees, abandoning her laughter.

"Hey!" Brett Henderson ran into the clearing. Ciara whispered again and the sheriff shot him through the stomach twice, missed once, then placed a bullet in his skull. A stunned silence filled the area. Henderson rolled his eyes, kicked the gun out of the sheriff's hand and sent a bullet skimming his head, knocking him dead unconscious. Henderson tossed the gun to the side and said, "Ciara, let's end this foolishness. What's the point anymore? Just give me what I want from you and I'll leave you and your precious Reiney alone."

Ciara stepped backwards over the sheriff's still form. "Henderson, the point is this: Hell is my domain. You are allowed nowhere near the throne. I will not let you have it!!"

Morton discreetly made his way over to Danny. "What should we do?" he asked her.

Watching Henderson and Ciara argue, realization dawned on Danny. "Ciara is you Demon! Isn't she?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Everyone has an Angel, right?" Morton nodded. "And everyone has a Demon as well. Ciara is your Demon and Henderson—Henderson is my Demon... He's the one who gave me the power for the witchcraft... and I didn't ever repay him for his services. That's what he came here for. He got tired of waiting." Still holding her arm, she struggled to her feet and stumbled, slight light-headed, over to the Devil and Demon, saying, "Wait—stop. I know who you are."

The two immortals (or semi-immortals, should they break the undying laws, they would be destroyed by the contract and the spirit of Elphiba) stopped their arguing and looked at her. "What?" they asked in unison.

Danny was getting really dizzy. "I know who you are, Henderson," she repeated.

Henderson scoffed. "Took you long enough," he muttered. "All right, then. Who am I?"

The mortal woman's balance nearly failed her. Morton caught her and said, "She needs to see a doc—"

"How do you suppose you explain how she came by this wound?" Ciara asked.

Danny waved her question away as though it were an annoying fly. "Henderson, you are not really Henderson, at all, are you? No, you are a Demon of Hell that once helped a foolish high school senior with learning witchcraft." She escaped Morton's grasp and approached Henderson slowly and surely. "Being a kinder Demon, you didn't recall the magic from her when she forsook you for years... But now... Now you are fed up with waiting for payment and now you demand it from her though she didn't necessarily know who you were..." She stopped right in front of him. "Now she knows... And she's asking you: What do you wish for payment... Jerue?"

The Demon looked down into her eyes and murmured, "Only this..." He lifted her chin and—according to Morton's recollection—kissed her.

Morton began to move to stop Henderson, but Ciara held out a hand and he stopped in mid-step. "Stop," she said, walking over to him. Quietly, she whispered an explanation for what Henderson was doing:

He wasn't just kissing Danny. To be kissed by a Demon, whether yours or another's, is almost the equivalent of selling your soul. The contract is more of a loving sort than that of Ciara and Morton. Loving in such a way that the soul isn't necessarily taken from the Human, per say, but is the thing binding the Human to the Demon for time and all eternity.

After what felt like ages to Morton, Henderson released Danny from the embrace. The bare skin around the bullet wound on her arm started glowing with a strange, black light, engulfing the wound. When the light dissipated, her wound was fully healed and the bullet fell to the ground with a soft clink.

"One of the few benefits of the Demon's Kiss for a mortal is instant healing. Her death date has already been decided, though," Ciara said. "Watch it, Jerue!" Danny was about to fall over from mental stress. Morton ran over and caught her. Ignoring the two sent from Hell, he carried her inside and gently laid her on the couch. Henderson—or Jerue as both Ciara and Danny had called him—walked over, knelt by her side and, brushing her hair away from her sleeping face, said, "The debt is now paid, Lianey. May your Aveish watch diligently over you until the day comes when you shall leave this earth and return to me..." With one last look at her sleeping form, Jerue—for that's what his true name was—faded from view.

Ciara kicked the wall lightly. "Well, dammit," she spat. "Now I have to wait until she dies to get rid of her. Damn him..."

Morton ignored the Devil and knelt by Danny's side. He took her cold hand in his and rubbed his thumb across her stiff fingers. She was deathly pale and cold. Behind her closed lids, her eyes flicked back and forth restlessly. Morton looked down at her hand and noticed light, script on the back of her hand by the 'V' formed by her thumb and index finger. "Lianey Jerue?" he muttered.

"Pardon?" Ciara said, looking at him from the bookshelf. "What'd you say?"

"There's a—I guess it's a name—on her hand," Mort said, "Lianey Jerue or something. It's really faint."

Ciara crossed over saying, "Let me take a look." She examined Danny's hand, snorted in a most un-ladylike manner and said, "So that's her name." Morton looked confused, but didn't say anything. "Everyone has an Earth name. Hers is Danny Reiney. Yours, Morton Reiney. Mine, Ciara Wirewood. But in the Unliving Realm, everyone has a different name entirely. Henderson's is Jerue. Mine, Satiana. And hers is apparently Lianey. You have yet to reveal yours as far as I am concerned. We may not know it until you die and go to Hell." She shrugged. "Be interesting to see what Lzildian has thought up for you..." Then, with a flick of her skirts, she left Morton alone watching over Danny.

He assumed he had fallen asleep for when he felt Danny running her fingers through his hair, he opened his eyes with a start and saw she was staring at the rafters as she absently did so. After he woke up a little bit more, he heard her singing under her breath, "Don't wish; don't start. Wishing only wounds the heart... I wasn't born for the rose and pearl. There's a girl I know... He loves her so, I'm not that girl..."

"Yes, you are," he said. Danny shook her head and said, "No. I'm not. I'm a horrible person... Will you hold me?" She sat up and he sat next to her. She laid her head in his lap and hugged his right arm while his left hand gently rubbed her stomach. "Mort... I'm a hideous person, aren't I?"

Needless to say, he was a little more than startled. Shocked was more accurate. "Absolutely not. You were a victim here... Just like the rest of us..."

She shook her head again. More forcefully this time. "No... I'm not a victim, Mort..." she whispered. "I killed them..."

"Liar..." he said, more than willing to believe it even if it wasn't true.

He felt warm tears drip onto his bare arm. "No. I don't lie, remember? I killed them all..." She drew a shuddering breath. "With my bare hands... No gun. No knife. Just the occasional screwdriver and my bare... hands..."

"No..."

She nodded almost violently. "I did... First Glenn... then Robbie... then Jessica and Anne... I saw it when Jerue kissed me... I saw it all... I don't know what's wrong with me. I want to stop before I get to Lily or the boys. I really do..."

They talked for several more hours about what had happened to Mort the year prior and what was going on at the time. With every passing minute, Danny seemed to relax and Morton seemed to feel like he did when he thought Shooter was a real person trying to murder everyone he held dear. And with every passing minute, their love for each other grew, but so did their contempt for the other. They weren't sure of what exactly was happening between them, and they weren't exactly comfortable with what they were feeling towards each other.

By and by, they both fell asleep on the couch. Morton, still holding Danny and Danny, still clinging to his arm. During her restless sleep, Danny dreamt that she was taking a serene walk through the woods surrounding their home, admiring the beauty of nature when Morton appeared in the middle of the path and smiled secretively at her. Not knowing exactly what was on his mind, she asked him to join her. They walked down the path for a time and as they did, Morton was beginning to become more and more skittish. As they approached the fork in the road where Morton discovered the bodies of Tom Greenleaf and Herb Creekmore in Mr. Greenleaf's truck. As they reached it, Morton took her by the arm and kissed her, holding her close to him. As they kissed, he pulled out a yellow-handled screwdriver and plunged it deep into her back. The last image she saw before waking was Morton standing over her, laughing while wearing the ridiculous black, felt hat with the rounded crown and wide brim.

She woke up screaming to realize Mort was no longer sitting on the couch with her. He had disappeared while she slept fitfully and she wanted to know where he was immediately. "Mort?" she called, receiving no answer. Feeling slightly disoriented, Danny stood and walked around the house. The sight that met her eyes was not a pleasant one:

The house was in a chaotic state that she didn't even begin to imagine in her worst nightmares. Books and manuscripts were thrown everywhere. The octagonal coffee table had been overturned. And everywhere, everywhere, everywhere was one word. The word was shooter. Shooter had been written on the walls in colored chalks he must have taken from her drawer of art supplies. Shooter was sprayed on the window twice in what looked like dried whipped cream—and yes, there was the Redi-Whip pressure-can, lying discarded under the stove. Shooter was written over and over on the kitchen counters in ink, and on the wooden support posts of the deck in the far side of the house in pencil—a neat column like adding that went down in a straight line and said shooter shooter shooter shooter. Worst of all, it had been carved into the polished cherrywood surface of the table in great jagged letters three feet high, like a grotesque declaration of love: shooter. The screwdriver he had used to do this last was lying on a chair nearby. There was red stuff on its steel shaft—stain from the cherrywood, she assumed, knowing full well, it was really dried blood from one of her unsuspecting victims.

"Morton, where are you?" she called again, reaching for a stainless steel blade from the knife block and concealing it in her shirt. There was no more answer to her second call than her first. With the blade hidden, she climbed the stairs. At the top, she found no one. Not in the study loft; not in the bedroom (or even the bedroom closet); not in the bathroom. Sighing, somewhat in relief that she was alone in the house, Danny returned to the stairs...

Which she saw Morton at the base of. He wore the hat he always accused John Shooter of wearing. It gave a strange, disturbing look. Having it pulled down to almost touch his ears, he looked up at her from underneath the wide, felt brim and asked calmly, "You lookin' fer someone, Missus?"

"Morton," she said, reaching for the banister. "Why are you wearing that ridiculous hat again? I thought you hated it since it reminded you of Shooter."

"I am Shooter, Missus," he drawled, a thick southern accent apparent in his voice, as he climbed the stairs. Danny was trapped unless she wanted to throw herself through the secret little window and into the small cornfield two stories below it. The option was not a comforting thought. Shooter was still nearing her and she still had no way out. "I'm not gonna hurt you, Missus Reiney. I promise..."

He reached the top of the stairs and still looked out from underneath the brim. The effect was frightening to Danny, and she wanted him to take the hat off. "What have you done with my husband, Shooter?" she demanded, no longer in control of her own thoughts of rationality. "Where's Morton?"

"You got the wrong number, woman. Ain't no Mort here. Mort's dead." The gimlet eyes never wavered. "He did a lot of squirmin around, but in the end he couldn't lie to himself anymore, let alone to me. I never put a hand on him, Mrs. Rainey. I swear. He took the coward's way out."** He lunged at her, swinging a knife for her throat.

Danny managed to block his attack with her own weapon, extremely grateful she had been trained so well in the art of fencing and self-defense. They lashed out at each other for a brief five minutes before Shooter pushed Danny down the long flight of stairs. She landed at the bottom with a dull thump and had hit her head on the nearest doorframe. Moaning quietly, she pulled herself into a kneeling position and looked up at Shooter. He descended the stairs slowly, a mad fire in his usually serene brown eyes that she had fallen in love with when they first met. Gagging, Danny struggled to her feet only to be struck down again by Shooter.

"Mort, stop—"she started, but he got in a good kick to her ribs. She felt the air spill out of her lungs faster than she could say his name again. Before he could kick her again, she managed to sick her knife into his thigh and scramble out the front door as he howled in pain behind her. Once outside, Danny looked around for anything and everything that could possibly help her. She found nothing. Cursing her annoying habit (at least, Morton found it annoying) of obsessively cleaning everything up after she was done with it—or even after he was done with it. She heard Shooter utter some obscenities as he pulled the knife out of his leg and threw it on the ground. "Danielle, come back here and face me like the woman I know you are!"

Very close to panicking, Danny ran around the side of the house. Weaponless, she felt defenseless. Even if she had something to use against him, she doubted very much if she could bring herself to harm him anymore than she already had. Not paying attention to where she placed her feet, she tripped over something—she didn't see what—and fell to the ground. Hard. Having the wind knocked out of her on top of having an asthma attack, she laid on the ground, trying desperately to breathe. She tried everything she could think of before he turned the corner to where she was. Now was the time to panic. Danny did everything she could to get away, but to no avail. Without being able to breathe properly, one cannot accomplish much.

"Don't squirm, Danielle," Shooter said, the southern drawl grating her nerves. "I don't want it to hurt you no more than it should. I said, stop squirming!" Shooter threw a smaller knife at her and it caught her shirt and staked it to the ground. She was literally stuck where she was.

Shooter stood over her holding a shovel with both hands. He looked down at her thoughtfully, almost seeming to make the choice to actually kill her or make her his personal slave for the rest of her short life. Making his decision quickly, Shooter raised the shovel above his head and prepared to bring it down into Danny's chest when a voice shouted, "Reiny, stop!" Shooter ignored the person. Danny knew instantly who it was. She had grown up hearing that voice yell at her and her sisters every day of their childhood. It was her brother. Still ignoring Kevin, Shooter began to bring down the shovel.

"Reiney—Stop!"

"There is no Reiney h—"Shooter began, and then a gunshot rapped briskly across the fall air. Shooter stopped where he was, and looked curiously, almost casually, down at his chest. There was a small hole there. No blood issued from it—at least, not at first—but the hole was there. He put his hand to it, then brought it away. His index finger was marked by a small dot of blood. It looked like a bit of punctuation—the period which ends a sentence. He looked at this thoughtfully. **

Then he dropped his hands and looked at Danny. "Babe?" he asked, and then fell full-length beside her on the garden soil. **

There was nothing Danny could think of to do but weep. She threw herself on Morton's still chest and cried. Kevin walked over and trued to get her to let him alone, but she would not be pawed at. After two minutes, the paramedics managed to get her away from Morton and tranquilize her so they could get them both to the hospital.

They did what they could for Danny and Morton at the hospital, but there was no saving her denial. She flat out refused to believe Morton or she had been under any type of mental stress including schizophrenia or any other type of split-personality disorder and she carried on her days as though nothing had changed. Danny returned to the cabin and continued to live by her schedule, only slightly modifying it. One day, she began to build a large wooden play-fort complete with monkey bars, a slide and some swings.

When asked by her neighbors why she was constructing the fort, she simply said, "For the children to play on, of course... For the children to play on..." She and Morton had, of course, no children and they never could have children.

One day, Danny was found sleeping in the completed play-fort. She wore her usual shorts and tank top combination and she appeared to sleeping peacefully, despite the coolness of the breeze blowing through the slats on the fort. On closer inspection, the neighbor discovered she was actually dead and not merely asleep. Danny had lived for twenty years longer after she and Morton had their nervous breakdowns, still believing he was alive and well. She had been in denial about his death for twenty years to the point of refusing to recognize the town had held public funeral for him. She didn't attend.

**These are passages that I took directly from the novella, Secret Window, Secret Garden, with all due respects to Stephen King who totally rocks as an author! Go, King!