VISION

For the past three weeks, John Allen Bishop had been keeping the devil chained in the basement. What, exactly, the devil had been doing in Chicago John didn’t know and the devil wasn’t saying. What John did know was that over the past several days the situation had been getting increasingly worrisome.

At first, the threats yelled up from the basement had been the most vile things imaginable—things that John would have expected to hear from the devil. But in the last few days something had changed. In those long, hushed moments as the sun went down and the world went still, John had found himself shuffling closer to the basement door, carefully leaning in, stretching his neck to put his ear close to the narrow crack in the door that led to the darkness down below.

That was when he had first heard the whispers.

Since the floor squeaked, the devil knew whenever John was in the kitchen, near the top of the stairs. When John put his ear close to the crack in the door, the devil always greeted him by name. Sometimes the devil chuckled softly to himself. The whispered promises never failed to make John’s mouth go dry.

But now the menace in the basement had inexplicably fallen silent. The silence worried him more than the whispers had.

He paced from the refrigerator to the sink and back, debating what to do. He didn’t relish the thought of going down there again. The chain was strong enough, he was sure of that, and he knew how far it could reach. He

knew to the inch. Still, he didn’t want to go down there any sooner than he had to.

As he paced, the fluorescent light hummed above a sink full of disorderly stacks of dirty dishes. A clump of crusted forks waiting to be washed stuck up from a cracked green plastic tumbler. Ordinarily, John prided himself on being tidy, but with the dire turn of events he certainly didn’t think he could be blamed for ignoring the dishes.

The dishes would just have to wait; the devil was more important.

John turned away from the mess in the sink and paced back toward the refrigerator, following the same track he’d been walking for the past hour as regret kept building, bringing on the familiar weight of indecision. He didn’t know how he had ever gotten such a crazy idea in the first place.

He hadn’t thought it through. He realized that now. He should have thought it through. People always told him to think things through.

But what else could he have done? It had been so unexpected. He had to do something. The devil knew things—too many things.

It had seemed simple at first. Chain up the devil; the world would be safe.

Kate would be safe.

It was turning out to be not so simple.

John told himself that he should go down and bash in the devil’s head. He knew he should. There were tools in the basement—beyond the reach of the chain, of course. There was a sledgehammer that could do the ghastly job.

But John didn’t have that much courage. He should have done it in the beginning, when the devil had been unconscious, but he hadn’t had the courage then, either. Even as he tried to summon the courage to do what needed doing, he knew that his chance had passed.

John wondered if he should call Detective Janek. From time to time she would come to see him, to show him the pictures. She was nice. He liked helping her.

He glanced over at the phone on the wall in the hallway. Detective Janek’s card was sitting on the top of the phone, leaning against the wall. She had left it there one day when she’d told him that he could call her anytime, day or night.

He wondered if maybe he should do that now.

John didn’t like to use the phone, though. He didn’t like to call people.

He got confused on the phone.

He feared that this was different from the times she’d come to see him.

He feared that this time she might not believe him.

He might even get into trouble.

Fear and doubt welled up. What if he lost his job?

His sister had helped him get his job. She’d told him that he could do it, told him to do his best. It was the first job that he’d ever had. He liked his job of fitting the colorful plastic pieces together, but mostly he liked that it made him independent. Having his job meant he could pay the bills and take care of himself.

Kate helped him when he got confused, but he could do most things on his own. She said that she was proud of him, of how well he was doing.

He liked being on his own. He didn’t want to lose his job. He didn’t want Kate to be disappointed in him.

John didn’t ever tell his sister about Detective Janek. He didn’t want her to be afraid. It was the only way he could protect her.

He knew that it was wrong to chain people in the basement, of course, but this wasn’t a regular person. This was the devil.

Still, he feared that even Detective Janek might not believe him. He suddenly wondered if he might even be put in jail.

John wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs. He swallowed in terror at what might happen to him if he was arrested. The very thought of going to jail and having to look into the eyes of all those men nearly made his knees give out.

His attention was snatched by his own shadow falling across the refrigerator. He drew his collar tight at his throat and told himself that he had things under control. He just had to keep them that way, that was all.

It was getting late and he knew that he needed to get down there. He didn’t like taking food down to the basement, but John just didn’t have it in him to kill, either by a quick blow or by slow starvation. He couldn’t stand it when people hurt, even if the hurt was hunger.

Distantly, through the tumbling fragments of thoughts pulling him this way and that, it seemed that there was something not right about the refrigerator. Something different.

In the dim light he surveyed the newspaper clippings that he had carefully cut out and taped to the door. They were all still there. John hated the stark look of the white refrigerator, so he frequently taped items that interested him on the blank door, after he had carefully folded over the pointed corners. He didn’t like sharp points.

He changed the clippings often, whenever something new caught his eye. It didn’t have to be anything especially meaningful. Pictures of animals, headlines about holidays, or sometimes even just a single word that was pleasing—anything to cover the nakedness of the refrigerator.

There were photos as well, their corners also carefully bent over, stuck on the refrigerator door with word magnets. He smiled back at his sister smiling out at him from a sunny beach, from behind the wheel of her first car, from the couch in his living room.

He scanned the newspaper headlines about parades and holidays and sunny forecasts, looking for something new, something that might have changed. Some word. Some sign.

Then, he spotted what wasn’t right.

There were dozens of little magnets attached to the door. They’d been a birthday gift from his sister. Each magnet was a white word on a black background. He liked to arrange the words so that they rhymed, or so that they said something cheerful. The words stuck to the white metal door always seemed welcoming, offering a friendly greeting when he came home and went to get himself something to eat—or, like now, when he went to get the devil something to eat.

The last message he’d made from arranging the magnets was still there: A CASTLE KEEPS YOU SAFE.

He’d made the saying with the magnets some time ago, after he had heard that a man’s home was his castle. Except for going to work and the store, John didn’t like going out. He liked to be inside. Safe. Home was safe. Home was his castle.

Chaining up the devil was the most daring thing John had ever done in his whole life.

But now the little magnets that he had so carefully arranged into A CASTLE KEEPS YOU SAFE were no longer in a line by themselves the way they had been.

All the spare words that had been pushed off to the right side were now arranged into a circle, leaving a cleared, round, white patch near the refrigerator door’s handle. A CASTLE KEEPS YOU SAFE sat in the middle of that circle.

But now there were new words arranged in a neat line below, as if in answer.

The new words said NOT ANY MORE.