Short Story: Beating The Deil

Short Story: Beating The Deil

The Devil found Angus Cameron beside the goat pen where the family’s small herd chewed passively as they bedded down in the comfort of their straw. Wild dogs had been seen nearby so the animals stayed in their pens. Angus was a large man and he swung an axe with brutal strength at a log, splitting the dry wood with a sharp, splintering crack.

“Wit’s yer business here, Deil?” Angus asked, piling the wood against the wall of the byre and straightening up to his full, hulking height.

The Devil smiled slyly and smoothed his slim fingers down his rough, badly-fitting trews. His black hair was slicked back like oil on his narrow head and his eyes were dark, flashing a deep red as the sun appeared between the clouds. His tongue flicked across his thin lips, almost too fast to be seen.

“Ah, my good man. I wonder if you would help me. I have walked a long way, and without sustenance. Could I trouble your honest household for a meal to give me strength to carry on my journey?”

Angus hefted the axe and gave the Devil a look that was heavy with meaning. “You’ll no cross the threshold o’ ma hame, Black Donald. No’ while ma heart still beats in ma chest. Awa’ wae ye.”

The Devil shrugged with acceptance and turned to leave, kicking up a little dirt under his cloven feet. As he took a step away from Angus, he stopped and half turned, eyeing the big man over one bony shoulder, eyes narrowed, mouth twitching into a smile.

“Unless,” he said, innocently, “there is anything I could offer you in return. A deal, a bargain. I am bound to keep my word, after all.”

Angus stared at the Devil’s back, seeing the squirming under the ill-fitting jerkin. He imagined the black wings, their surface shining with the black, green and blue of a fly’s body. He shuddered with revulsion but his interest was piqued, against his sensible Protestant principals.

“What wid you offer in trade?” he asked, resting the axe handle against his broad shoulder.

“A game, of your choice, anything. A simple game and, if I win, you provide me with a satisfying meal. If you win... you name your prize, Highlander.”

Angus didn’t think about it, the answer was out of his treacherous mouth before his heart or brain could see the error in his words.

“Ma strength is known far and wide but I’m growing older. I feel the ache in ma bones every morning. Gae me the power o’ a young man for aw ma life. If I win, you make me strong tae I die.”

The Devil spread his thin hands and closed his eyes. “The deal is done. Choose your game wisely.”

Without hesitation, Angus picked a game the Devil would not expect the big man to think of.

“Hide-and-go-seek.”

“A game for bairns?” the Devil laughed, dancing with delight, feet hitting the earth with a sound like a pony.

“Aye, that’s ma choice,” Angus said, putting down his axe and crossing his thick arms across his chest, muscles shifting and straining the fabric of his thin shirt.

“So be it, mortal. We shall play hidey. Who is it?” the Devil laughed, clapping his hands together excitedly.

“You are,” Angus said, confident that he knew every inch of this land and the woods beyond, where his family had lived and farmed for three generations so far. He didn’t believe even the Devil himself could find him on his land.

The Devil nodded and said, “I will count to one hundred and then we’ll see if you can outsmart the dark one himself.”

He turned his back on Angus, leaned his forearms on the wall of the byre and began to count loudly, just as a bairn would. Angus jogged away as quietly as possible, circling the building, taking a zig-zagging path. He stopped at the edge of the byre, where the wooden structure met the white walls of his house. His thick fingers worked into the crack between the structures and he pulled free an old, heavy key.

With great care not to make a sound, Angus inserted the key into what appeared to be a knothole in one of the planks that made up the walls of the byre. The lock was well oiled and opened immediately with the merest click.

Once the narrow door was open, Angus slipped into the space beyond, pulling the door closed behind him and locking it from inside. A little light entered through the cracks in the wall and Angus had to stand still, constrained by the space that was only the width of two planks. It had been used by Angus’s grandfather for smuggling and possibly hiding traitors. He’d been a man with questionable morals and even more questionable acquaintances.

After a short time, he saw a shadow fall across the narrow beams of light that cut across the small space. He breathed shallowly and kept very still, relieved when the shadow moved on, the click of those sharp little hooves moving off around the side of the house.

He emerged slowly and with great caution, blinking in the sudden light. With the hiding space locked up again and the key concealed in its place, Angus moved around the building slowly. He spotted cloven prints on the dusty ground and paused, following the line of them as they disappeared into the trees bordering his land. With a feeling of triumph, he began to walk more confidently towards the wall where the Devil had stood to count.

And that’s when he noticed the open gate to the goat pen and all the cloven hoof prints leading away from it, scattering into the woods.

A cold chill of primitive fear crawled up his back as the shadow dropped from the roof of the byre and the Devil’s feet landed nimbly on the ground in front of him, the thin figure straightening up, a vicious smile of victory on his sharp face. With deliberate slowness, he reached out one hand and gently tapped Angus on his meaty shoulder.

“You’re it,” he whispered, eyes flashing a deep ruby red.

“I didnae agree to another round,” Angus said, trying to ignore the icy feeling in his bowels.

“Indeed not, friend. I have won, fair and square. The price was a meal, a satisfying meal.”

With resignation, Angus headed towards the kitchen door, stopping abruptly when the Devil’s impossibly slender hand wrapped around his upper arm, his smile gone, replaced with a look of infinite coldness and inhumanity.

“I do not eat your food, Highlander. I am the Devil, I am Black Donald himself. You can only satisfy me with your soul and, by the rules of our game, it is now forfeit.

And so Angus Cameron died on the doorstep of his own home, found by his wife who screamed when she saw the agony that stretched his face into a horrified mask of pain.

Hundreds of years later, a descendent of Angus Cameron, by the name of Nairn Cameron, sat on a wobbling bar stool and nursed a pint of lager until the barmaid began to slam the cash register drawer shut sharply with annoyance as she glared at him. His morose expression and tendency to sit there all afternoon with one, maybe one and half pints, had been slowly driving her out of her mind for more than a year. That and the way he never spoke more than one or two words at a time.

“Nairn, you want a wee hauf yet?” she asked at last, nerves stretched to breaking point by the miserable bugger hunched over the bar. A collection of water rings marred the bar in front of him because he would never move to allow her to run a cloth over the surface of the bar.

Nairn shook his head without looking at her, taking the smallest sip of his pint which must have been like lukewarm tea by them. He stared resolutely at the beer pumps in front of him.

“You friend, you look like you could use some help,” commented a man at Nairn’s left elbow, his voice smooth and filled with a strange tone of amusement, despite his words.

“Aye right, I’ve heard that patter before, my man. You another wan o’ them god-botherers?” Nairn said, turning to look at the man, his expression disinterested and blank.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose I am,” the man said with a wry laugh.

Nairn raised one eyebrow when he saw the smooth, slim figure of the man who’d spoken to him, slick-haired and twinkly-eyed. Despite the black shirt and trousers, he didn’t look like a man of the cloth, right enough.

“So how come I shouldnae tell ye tae piss aff and mind yer ain business?”

The man didn’t seem to be angered of offended. He considered Nairn’s question and then turned to face him, leaning one arm casually on the bar.

“Maybe because I can give you what you want. What you want most in all the world. What do you say?” he said silkily.

Nairn Cameron had heard some dodgy offers in his time but he couldn’t see the harm in hearing the stranger out in a public place so he tipped his glass at him and asked, “And wit might that be? Eh?”

“You tell me. What have you lost? Your job? Redundancy was it? Wife and children? Your home? Your sobriety?”

Nairn laughed, a short, bitter bark of sound. “They all went a long time ago. Wit use wid I have for them noo?”

The black dressed man smiled and said, “That’s for you to decide. What is it you want and maybe we can make a deal? A wager?”

Nairn found his attention piqued. He was a gambling man, after all.

“Aye, wit would the bet be?” he asked.

“If I win, I take from you something you don’t want and no longer need. If you win, I give you what you want most in the world.”

Nairn considered the deal and made the same decision his ancestor did so many years before.

“Alright. What are we gambling on?”

“That’s your choice, Nairn. Any game you choose,” the man said with a small smile, as though he was sharing a secret with Nairn.

“I choose a drinking game,” Nairn announced, his face showing no reaction when the man laughed deeply. “And you’re paying for the drinks,” he added.

The Devil agreed, shaking Nairn’s hand with amusement dancing in his eyes, his other hand waving to get the barmaid’s attention. He released Nairn’s hand and slapped a few ten pound notes on the bar, then ordered several shots of whisky. Nairn eyed him without reaction, licking his lips eagerly when the drinks were placed on the bar.

Three hours later, as a large crowd of patrons gathered round to watch and cheer, the Devil ordered what would be the last round of whisky in the game. Despite deep misgivings, the barmaid continued to serve him because he looked stone-cold sober and, for some reason, she felt compelled to serve the dapper yet slightly creepy punter.

Nairn stayed resolutely on his stool, eyes far away, swallowing thickly, his hand moving slowly and with deliberation for the shot glass. He dragged it through a small puddle of moisture, smearing it across the wood, and began to lift it as though it weighed twenty pounds.

The slick man in black faced Nairn and picked up his own glass with a steadier hand, and raised it to his mouth, pausing before it touched his lips, looking at his comrade evenly.

“Friend, I don’t think the game will last much longer. Tell me what you would have chosen as your prize if you’d won.”

Nairn smacked his lips and looked from the glass to the Devil. “When I win, I want someone to buy me all the whisky I can drink,” he declared, tossing back the shot, swaying precariously on his stool.

The Devil frowned in confusion. “But that’s what you just got. That’s the game, not the prize.” He tossed back his own drink and set the glass down a little too heavily, smashing it, much to the amusement of the assembled patrons.

Nairn looked up, steadied himself with a hand on the bar, looked Black Donald squarely in the eye and said, “I suppose that makes me the winner then, aye?”

The Devil blinked slowly and slid bonelessly from his seat, hitting the floor limply as the cheers echoed through the pub.