THE DEVIL’S BRAND: By Paul Magnan
Monday, January 31st, 2011“Those aren’t ordinary shoes, no sir. Those belong to the devil himself.”
They could have passed for father and son. The older man wore denim overalls and had a wide-brimmed hat sitting on greasy gray locks of hair. The younger man’s clothes were dusty from countless miles walked on windblown rural roads, just like the one they were standing on now.
The younger man adjusted his backpack and stared up at the shoes, tied together by their laces, that dangled from an out of service telephone wire about twenty feet above the intersection of two unpaved roads. A crossroads. A gathering ground for spirits of the dark.
The younger man, a drifter named Spence who was in no way related to the older man, turned to him. “And how is it that the devil’s shoes got up there on that wire?”
The older man shook his head and looked at Spence. “Well, that’s not important, is it? What’s important is that they remain up there. If those shoes should ever touch the ground, then the devil will fill them and walk the earth. While they hang up there, we are safe from his depredations.”
Spence, whose curiosity about the world drove him to a life on the road, knew what he had to do. This was too good to pass up.
***
Spence returned to the crossroads at dusk, alone. It has taken him most of that day traversing through a nearby woodland to find what he needed. The branch from a birch tree he had found on the ground was about fifteen feet long, and light enough to hold up above his head. The length of the branch, along with Spence’s height, should be plenty to reach the shoes and knock them off the wire.
He positioned himself underneath the hanging shoes. They were white, but they were not sneakers; they looked to be of some older design.
Spence reached up with the branch and knocked the tip against the lower of the hanging shoes.
The shoe swung back and forth. He held the branch with both hands and hit the shoe harder. It swung up and nearly cleared the line, but fell back down. Now Spence’s ire was up. No shoe was going to get the best of him. He pulled the branch back and swung it like an overlong baseball bat and connected squarely with the side of the white shoe. The footwear arched over the top of the old telephone line and, with its companion, fell with what seemed a slow-motion flight down to Spence.
He threw the limb aside and deftly caught the shoes at the lace that tied them together. Even with the deepening shadows Spence could see they were of a style that had been out of fashion for many years. Yet, despite their age and the fact that they had been hanging on the wire for who knew how long in all sorts of weather, they were in great condition. They actually looked brand new.
Spence realized that what he held was not a lace, but a length of twine. Each end was tied to a shining brass button, at the top of a row of buttons that ran down the sides of white leather spats attached to the top of each shoe. Engraved on each spat was a small symbol, dyed red, in the image of a pitchfork.
He saw these symbols clearly because someone was standing a few feet away holding a flashlight.
Spence turned and saw the old man he had been talking to earlier in the day. Behind him were at least fifty people, men, women, and children, silently watching Spence.
Spence pointed to the pitchfork symbols and smirked. “The devil’s shoes, eh? The devil even has his own logo on them, I see. Satan’s own brand of footwear. Is this you people’s idea of entertainment around here? Tell a country myth to some gullible passerby and see if he falls for it? Well, you got me. You can all have a good laugh now.”
The old man did not laugh, nor did anyone behind him.
“Oh, that’s right, they have to touch the ground before the devil fills them. Let’s give this joke its punch line.”
Spence put the shoes on the dirt road. The group of people stirred, a mass movement that, to Spence, seemed to project both anticipation and relief.
“This is our covenant,” the old man said. “Disease and want do not afflict us, at the price of one soul per year. This year the soul is yours.”
Spence looked at the old man in disbelief.
A sudden, terrible presence came into being next to him.
The shoes were full. The darkness tore into Spence, shredding his body and ripping free his soul, which howled in crushing despair as it was pulled down into Hell, the annual payment for a century-old deal.
***
The sun rose over a bleak, empty crossroads. An old, out of service telephone wire hung over a dirt road that was etched with angled, resin-filled lines. On the middle of the wire, tied together with twine, two white shoes swayed and waited for the turning of the calendar.
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©2011Paul Magnan
