What Isn't and Came to Be
Chapter 26: Paved with good intentions
The sound of a small bell ringing breached Johnny Chadwick's concentration. It drew his attention away from the maths assignment he'd been working on and made him look at the clock on the wall with a frown.
Mum wasn't back yet; she'd taken Jack off for his nap twenty minutes ago and hadn't returned.
He wrinkled his nose in annoyance and put his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound; but the noise still got through. The bell was high pitched, demanding and impossible to ignore. If the bell was ringing, that meant she wasn't in the master-bedroom.
He wished his mum would go find out what Mr Crowley, the man in black, wanted so the noise would stop.
There was just something about that sound, bbrrriinnng-tinkle-tinkle-brrriinng, over and over, which drilled into his brain. He couldn't ignore it, no matter how hard he tried.
Yet mum was ignoring it, or she just couldn't hear it.
Mum said Mr Crowley had gotten hurt and needed to stay in bed. The bell was so he could call Mum if he needed something. It seemed to Johnny that the man in black always needed something, even in the middle of the night.
After four days of answering the bell, Mum had started rolling her eyes and muttering under her breath about milk whenever it rang. Which was kind of weird. Even though the man in black was always asking for a drink, Mum never took him milk.
The bell kept ringing, and he just couldn't concentrate on his maths anymore. He decided to go find his mum and tell her about the bell, just in case she couldn't hear it.
He found his mum in the first place he looked. Their bedroom, with Jack. Mum and Jack were both asleep. Jack in his crib, Mum sitting in the rocking chair beside the crib with Jack's favourite book open on her lap, the one about Pip, the bird who wanted to fly.
About to go over and shake his mother awake and tell her about the bell, Johnny stopped himself.
His mum looked really tired. There were big black shadows under her eyes. And those shadows reminded him of when she was really sick, before; when she kept getting nosebleeds and having to go to the hospital for transfusions.
Seeing it, he remembered his dad sitting him and the sisters down and explaining to them all that Mum was really sick. And that they all needed to help out, so she could get more rest.
He'd thought the man in black had made Mum better with the glowy medicine he'd injected in her neck. But now, staring at her there, asleep in the middle of the day, made a worry started to squiggle around in his tummy. Remission was when people who were sick with something like cancer and got better for a bit. Caitlin's mum had remission, but then she got sick again—and she died. Maybe mum wasn't better, maybe she was just in remission. He didn't want her to die.
"Brriiinngg-tinkle-tinkle-brrriinng..."
If Mum was sleeping because she was tired, he should let her sleep.
He should help out, so she didn't get sick again. Or die.
He bit his lip and moved from foot to foot. Helping out would mean going to see what the man in black needed. That was scary. Suddenly, he really missed his dad and his big sisters. He even missed his little brother, Chris, because being brave was easier when you were with someone else. Even if that someone was little and kind of useless, like his little brother Chris.
Helping out now wouldn't be like putting his laundry away or helping Chris put on his shoes.
Helping out now would mean going to talk to Crowley, the man in black—alone. He really didn't want to do that. Maybe he could just take his maths assignment out beside the swimming pool and finish it out there. Pretend he hadn't heard the bell. Mum was sleeping now, even with the bell ringing; so he could probably just let her sleep and pretend he hadn't heard. No one would know.
But there was that tight feeling in his tummy. The one his Sunday school teacher said was his conscience. The feeling you got when God wanted you to do the right thing, but you didn't want to. She said there was something called a sin of omission, which was when you were supposed to do something good, but you didn't. That sometimes doing nothing was the biggest sin of all. Inside, Johnny was pretty sure not helping the man in black would be one of those sins of omission. Mr Crowley was scary and kind of grumpy, but he was also hurt and the right thing to do would be to help him and let Mum sleep.
…ooo0ooo…
Crowley rang the small silver bell, smirking as he wondered how long it would take Ma Cherie to start suspecting that he was in fact malingering. Truth be told, he could have healed the wound days ago using a spell—but for the fact he'd been rather enjoying the novelty of lazing about in bed and being waited on like the king he was.
Even at the height of his Kingship, his demonic minions hadn't shown near as much devotion to his well-being as his little prophet had in the past few days. He supposed that was because demons were self-serving scum, while his prophet was the kind of selfless and nurturing mother figure one saw lauded in hallmark television dramas. Maybe if his own mother hadn't been a cold-hearted harpy the entire experience wouldn't have held so much novelty; but as it was, the daily intimacy of having his wound cleaned and the bandages changed. And the touchingly worried manner she fussed over him, laying cool hands against his forehead to check, almost obsessively, for fever. Her insistence on trying to get him to eat and drink. They were all welcomely novel. And Crowley found himself leaning into the pointless indulgence of her nursemaiding, and even encouraging it a subtle, premeditated fashion.
The only downside he saw in the current flow of events was her refusal to furnish him with Glen-Craig. Claiming, pigheadedly, that the internal application of alcohol would hinder his healing. While also applying some noxious alcohol-based tincture externally with the claim it would ward off infection in the wound.
She was utterly blind to the fact nothing poured into or onto his meat-suit could do much either way. Because a meat-suit was only a container and no demon required nursemaiding. Demons were by essence smoke and power. They weren't bound by the same rules as corporeal creatures. They didn't need to heal any more than a swarm of bees needed to heal after you went at it with a fly swat. Maybe you'd lose some individual components in the assault, but the swarm remained and continued to function. It could simply reform and reorder itself without losing much in the way of functionality. Sure, a demon might lose some overall capacity and become a measure weaker after an attack, but there'd be no wound, Per se.
The damaged meat-suit was just a container, something that could be evacuated by his demonic self on a whim. It didn't affect anything past a certain somewhat cosmetic level.
Still, he continued to allow and even encouraged the prophet's mother-henning. Let her cook dishes for him especially, in an effort to tempt his appetite and build him up with healthful nutrients, because there was something truly gratifying in her fussing. Perhaps he was playing it up a little much. Grudgingly taking a few mouthfuls of her latest offering just to see that look of burgeoning relief on her studious little face. And then he'd cheekily shatter it by pushing the food away with some spurious complaint. Only to await her next offering with eager anticipation.
The woman was trying so pathetically hard to tempt him, practically begging for him to eat. Under that mistaken assumption, that the dead meat-suit he inhabited required nutrition in order for him to heal from his injury.
Her efforts were utterly unnecessary, but her tender mercy was a taste of something he'd never had an opportunity to indulge in before, and he was determined to enjoy the experience while he could.
…Yet time was ticking on, and Ma Cherie was tardy. He'd been ringing the bell for five minutes at least. Irritation prickled under his skin as he waited. And he begun formulating a subtle rebuke for the prophet's negligent behaviour.
Instead of Ma Cherie, the master-bedroom door opened to reveal the prophet's son, looking scared and nervous.
Crowley eyed the boy with disgust and irritation. Sat up straighter in the canopy bed and smoothed the coverlet over his satin pyjama clad legs.
"Your mother isn't in here," he told the lad shortly, hoping the wandering child might summon his mother to her duty.
The boy flinched and looked at him like a frightened rabbit but didn't bolt away. Instead, he gathered himself, stood up straighter, and lifted his chin.
"I know that sir, Mum's asleep. She's really tired, and I didn't want to wake her up… If you need something, I could get it for you."
He eyed the boy in surprise. Altruism ran in the family, apparently.
"You really are your mother's son, aren't you, Lad?"
The boy frowned. "Why do people always ask me that?" he asked. "It's kind of dumb. Both me and Mum have the same last name and green eyes. What's the chances I was switched at birth? You know eye colour is inherited and having green eyes is pretty rare, right? — like only two percent of the world's population. We did this thing at school with Mrs Demi last year — made bar graphs for how many of us in the class had what eye colour. I was the only one in the whole class with green eyes. We looked it up online and that's what it said, only two percent. Did you know three quarters of the world population has brown eyes? The rest have blue or grey. The website said having green eyes is most common in Scotland and Ireland and more than three quarters of the people there have green eyes, and that's probably where the gene mutation for green eyes must have started out. I wrote about it in my project on Scotland, for social studies.
No one ever asks me if I'm dad's son, even though he's got brown eyes like Chris and Jen and Vic. Why don't they ever ask me if I'm dad's son? Wouldn't that make way more sense?"
The boy lapsed into silence as if waiting for an answer. And Crowley found he'd lost track of how many questions the child had asked during his headlong flood of blather.
"People aren't really asking you if your mother is your mother. It's a rhetorical question. Do you know what that is?"
The boy nodded, green eyes wide and solemn but somehow never quite meeting his own.
"A rhetorical question is a question someone asks when they don't really want an answer." The boy pouted at the floor. "Rhetorical questions are dumb! Why ask a question if you don't want an answer to it?"
Crowley smirked at that, tilted his head and pondered his answer.
"I suppose, in this particular case, I was simply acknowledging that I can see that you are your mother's son."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why tell me you can see I'm Mum's son?"
Frowning, Crowley considered his answer with a little more thought. "It was a compliment, I suppose."
"Oh? Because you want something! Mum says if people want something, they'll often say nice stuff before they ask to make you happier. She says doing that is kind of like putting grease on a hinge, to make it turn better and not squeak. Mum says it's something called social lubrication and I have to learn how to do it, too." The boy frowned down at his feet and fidgeted again. "People with autism aren't great at stuff like that," he admitted, "but Mum says if I learn how, it'll make my life easier in the long run."
"Does she just?"
The boy nodded and took a few steps inside the doorway.
"You don't need to lubricate me to make me happy, though—"
Crowley stifled a chuckle at the boy's word choice. The lad was delightfully clueless. No wonder his mother had been so very horrified at the thought of the lad anywhere near some degenerate pedophile.
"—You're hurt, and Mum's real tired lately, so until she wakes up, I'll do my best to help you. I could get you something to eat if you want, or a drink. Are you allergic to milk, too?"
"Milk?" He frowned at the left field question.
The child nodded.
"Mum says you're allergic to salt. Are you allergic to cow's milk too? You keep arguing with mum about her getting you a drink, and yesterday she said something kind of under her breath about milking it. Do you need to have goat's milk? Are you going to get a goat?"
Allergic to salt? What a quaint way of putting it. Now he was talking. McGuffin's conversational style had a lot in common with a shotgun blast, scattering fragments of information and opinions at his target in a decidedly hit and miss fashion. Yet in his clueless innocence, the boy let things slip which his mother would rather conceal. He might function as an excellent barometer of his mother's inner workings. Ma Cherie suspected he was milking it; that heads up was useful.
"I would very much appreciate something to drink if you'd be so kind."
"Juice, lemonade or water?"
He smiled at the boy. "Whatever you like best, and bring one for yourself while you're at it."
…ooo0ooo…
Michele woke with a start to the sound of a yell from down the hall.
Johnny!
Fear shot through her body, and she was on her feet out of the bedroom, chasing that yell before her brain was even fully engaged.
The yell had been Johnny's, and it'd come from the master bedroom.
Rounding the door frame at a run, Michele stopped dead. Confused to see Johnny sitting calmly in a chair beside Crowley's bed with his laptop on his knees, completely unharmed.
Crowley sat upright in the bed with his own laptop on his lap. His eyes intent on the machine's screen.
"You have to be bloody kidding me," he growled incredulous still intent on his laptop screen. "The-King was blown up by a Creeper!?"
Johnny bounced in his chair with glee.
"That's why I said you needed a bow. I told you Creepers blow up if you hit them!"
Creepers? Michele blinked in confusion.
Her son and the King of hell were playing Minecraft together?
"Horrible green menaces!" Crowley scoffed, still scowled down at his laptop. So wrapped up in the game, he hadn't even noticed her entrance. "Hey! Where's all my stuff? It's gone."
Johnny giggled. "You lose all your inventory when you die and respawn. I told you that too!" With his usual preternatural awareness of her Johnny looked up at her and waved.
"Hi Mum, we're playing Minecraft!"
At Johnny's words, Crowley flinched and looked up from his screen quickly. A flash of something like guilt or embarrassment chased across his face, before he plastered on a smile that looked defensive round its edges.
Michele crossed the room to her son, heart still hammering as Crowley watched her passively from the bed.
"Mmm, I can see that," she muttered, running a nervous hand through Johnny's hair.
She wanted to haul him into her arms and drag him away from Crowley, but the hospital had only been four days ago, and she was leery of upsetting her son's fragile happiness. In his game, Johnny circled the crater where the creeper had blown up and collected the items Crowley had dropped when he died. He did it in a competent little dance of keystrokes that had always left her faintly amazed. She'd never been any good with computers, usually left all that stuff to Phil.
Johnny was fine. Crowley hadn't done anything to him. She shouldn't overreact.
"You were asleep, and the bell was ringing. Mr Crowley was thirsty, so I got him a drink. Then he said he was bored, and I showed him what I like to do when I'm bored. He wanted a try, so I got his laptop from the office, and made him an account. Now we've got a multiplayer server! Mr Crowley says I can invite the other kids from the academy to come on it," Johnny glanced over at Crowley quickly, as if remembering a caveat. "—If that's okay with you."
Michele felt heat crawl over her skin at that. After his deal, she hated that Crowley had been anywhere near her son unsupervised. And she certainly didn't want him playing Minecraft with a bunch of rich vulnerable kids from the academy.
"We'll talk about it later. Have you finished your maths?"
Johnny's face dropped, and he looked hangdog.
"I only have two more questions."
"Okay, well, go get them done before Jack wakes up."
"But—"
"No buts, schoolwork first. You know that."
"Your mother's right, Lad. If one is to succeed, one must attend to the pursuit of knowledge first and foremost."
Michele clenched her fist, unaccountably annoyed by Crowley's support.
Without waiting for any more argument, or unwanted assistance, she lifted Johnny to his feet and shooed him towards the bedroom door with his laptop.
"Come on off you go, get that maths finished so we can go swimming when Jack wakes up, okay? I need to check Crowley's bandages and he should rest."
Just before she pushed him out of the door, Johnny stopped and turned back to Crowley.
"Don't worry, I picked up your items when you died, Mr Crowley. I'll bring them back to our base, then maybe we can make you a bow or find a cat. Creepers are scared of cats."
Crowley smiled at him, and the smile looked genuine.
"I believe your mum might have mentioned that to me once. Thank-you for alleviating my boredom, lad. The companionship was appreciated. Now, off you go and finish those sums." He made a shooing gesture and Johnny ran off.
Michele shut the door and turned back to the king of hell.
"What was that?! Minecraft, seriously?"
Crowley shut his laptop primly and set it aside. "You're acting like I lured him in here with sweeties and despoiled him, Pet."
"Don't say that!"
"Why? Isn't that what you're worried about? That everything I do is prompted by some nefarious motivation. Please! I can't stand kiddy fiddlers. I thought you knew that much about me. They're weak, pathetic, bottom dwellers. One of the best parts of my position downstairs was making sure they got their just deserts."
His lips twisted in palpable contempt, making her believe the truth of his words, but her defensive fury didn't abate any.
"Last time you were alone with my son, you got him to sell you his soul. It's hardly surprising I'm not thrilled to find him in here with you."
"You commit suicide in front of boy, I fix things, and I'm the bad guy in the situation!? When are you going to stop punishing me for that? Nothing I do is ever good enough for you lot. I could have fixed this—" He waved an angry hand at his wound, "—days ago, but I know how you feel about witchcraft! Instead, I let you poke and prod at me like one of your science projects, and for what? I've been laid up for days, in agony, ignored for hours on end, without so much as a glass of decent scotch as solace. All to mollify your puritan biases. I feed, clothe and educate the boy, I've done everything I could to protect his health, yet still you typecast me as the bloody devil."
Michele stared at him, in openmouthed shock as he pushed himself up out of the bed and stood clutching at his wounded stomach and the bedpost. He looked like he was gathering himself to storm off but could barely stand. Had he really been suffering needlessly because he knew she disapproved of witchcraft? That was insane.
He looked so pale and worn out, in his black satin pyjamas and bare feet and all she could see was the Crowley from her not-memories, it made her doubt everything else.
"That wasn't what I wanted. I'd never ask you to suffer like that," she pleaded crossing the space between them and wrapped an arm round his waist. "If there's a spell that will help get you back on your feet that's all I need to hear. I don't know enough to judge. I overreacted, I'm sorry."
Crowley's arm tightened around her, and he rested his chin against her hair with a weary sigh.
"Darling, I want us on the same side, surely you can see that."
…ooo0ooo…
Crowley ground his teeth in irritation and drummed his fingers irritably on his desk. Got to his feet and paced his office a glass of scotch in hand. Things had been going so well. Little by little, he'd been softening his little prophet up, convincing her he wasn't the enemy. Despite her religious leanings, he'd even managed to convince her to act as an assistant of sorts in casting the healing spell. His meat-suit was was healed and he was sure he'd caught something like hunger in her eyes, watching the spell knit his sundered flesh back together. Ma Cherie might not find power for powers sake overly attractive, but her empathy was always going to be a weakness and the road to hell was often paved with good intentions.
She'd allowed him and the lad to play the computer game together, and the boy was growing more comfortable and talkative by the day. Enough so that he'd started to insist they shared mealtimes, just like a family. With his acquiescence, things had gotten positively domestic.
Then he'd bought up the need to perform a grace extraction on the nephilim and things had gone a tad sideways.
Arguing over the topic was beginning to drive a wedge between himself and the prophet, and it disgusted him to discover he cared.
You'd have thought the paediatrician's demise would have been enough to convince her that Satan's love child and his developing powers represented a clear and present danger, which needed diffusing, toute suite, for everyone's benefit. But no, still she argued the toss, claiming the spawn of Satan was too young to undergo the procedure. Far too safe in her continued defiance now that she'd worked out that he didn't dare force the issue or attempt the grace extraction without her assistance.
Trying to convince her with words was proving an infuriating waste of breath; but it suddenly occurred that perhaps there was another, more underhanded method he could use.
If she insisted on refusing to listen to common sense, he'd have to convince her another way. Employ something else — and come at her in a place where argument and logical thought were swept from the board—in her dreams.
He'd used the tactic before to decent effect on her prophetic predecessor, Kevin Tran. All it had taken then was a certain spell, and the severed finger he'd pocketed during one of Kevin's object lessons. The boy prophet's stubborn resistance had crumbled like a sandcastle before the tide. Why couldn't things proceed in a similar manner with Ma Cherie?
Chopping off pestilent prophet's appendages might have been loads of fun years ago, but he'd discovered temperance since. But all that particular spell actually required was a couple of strands of the individual in question's hair or a few drops of blood; personal trifles his prophet failed to safeguard almost constantly during their cohabitation — Her appalling, but highly useful, ignorance of all thing's witchcraft related had ever so many advantages.
Some of that ignorance fell at the doors of her religious biases, but Sam Winchester, her internet pal, really should have done a better job (or any job at all) of educating his little friend. Especially about the risks of leaving personal items such as hairbrushes just lying about, where a magic practitioner might get ahold of them. Apparently, the younger Winchester took after his mummy, he too had preferred to shove his head in the sand in denial. Which took so much less effort than doing his supposed job and protecting the innocent.
Such a pity, truly. Knowledge was power, and those without, invariably ended up the ping-pong ball in someone else's match.
Crowley grinned in self-satisfaction, happy to realise he didn't need to waste his breath arguing. Not when he could simply penetrate her unguarded subconscious with a pedestrian piece of magic.
A few nights of reconnaissance, and it would be child's play to fill his pet prophet's stubborn little head with worst-case scenarios. Make her dreams into an endless horror reel of what a nephilim gone wild might be capable of. Paint the calamitous ruin a toddler with the powers of a god might cause, inside that least guarded portion of her subconscious, in glorious technicolor red.
Soon enough, she'd be down on her knees in front of him again. Begging for an opportunity to plunge that needle into the child's soft little neck and suck all that horrible, powerful grace from the creature's body. For the greater good, of course.