Bedtime

Chapter 8
Deal with the Devil

Chapter Description: Jessica is presented with and considers a deal, which will restore Andrew to his former age.

Andrew didn’t have the strength to open the box. It remained shut. Over the next few months, Jessica looked after Andrew as if he really were her son. The devil that had plagued them before seemed to have moved on to bigger and better, leaving them be.

Jessica was happy with her little bundle of joy, but she missed Andrew, her boyfriend. His incident with the box had happened so fast that she never had a chance to break up with him and she missed him all the more for it. She had tried consulting various priests about Andrew, but they all just laughed at her. All they could see when they looked at Andrew was a small baby, barely a few months old, and they weren’t about to investigate, especially in light of the circumstances.

One day she was exiting the store, when she noticed her boss, Jeff, waiting for her. When she saw him there, every fiber of her being told her that this wasn’t Jeff, and she needed to leave. But she didn’t. She made eye contact and he approached with a friendly greeting. Jessica clutched Andrew in her arms. She returned the formality.

“I see you’re enjoying your motherhood,” he brought up. Jessica stared at him, ready to leave her groceries and run at any moment.

“This child isn’t Andrew, please leave me.” she murmured quietly, almost as if talking to herself. The Jeff impostor just gave a dry laugh.

“What if I told you he could be Andrew again? Doing you that solid won’t take much effort on my end, but I may have a favor to ask in return at some time in the near or distant future.” He produced a small, hand-held mirror and dangled it right in front of Jessica.

“That box you gave me was what did this and Andrew nearly lost his soul. Why should I trust the mirror?” she objected, “It could just make a bigger mess.” Instead of arguing, Jeff just put the mirror in Andrew’s face. Andrew’s face was reflected in the mirror, not the baby’s. There was a glow of light. Jessica dropped Andrew as he started to grow. It was as if she were fast-forwarding through Andrew’s life. There, in front of her, stood her real best friend. Jessica’s heart skipped a beat. She stared at him as he picked himself up off the ground.

“What happened?” Andrew declared groggily, as if waking from a trance. He spotted Jessica and rushed to her side, ready to apologize for the scum he’d been. As Andrew left the light of the mirror, his image seemed to fade. Once again, Andrew was just a few months old. He bawled from hitting the hard ground. Jessica retrieved him. To her relief, he’d sustained no injuries.

Jessica sighed. She loved having Andrew like this, but more than that she missed the man she grew up with who knew her better than anyone else. Giving in to her desires, she moaned, “What do you want?” She held her baby closer than ever.

She could see the devil manipulating the illusion of the man as if with strings. “There’s an incantation which can make the mirror’s restoration permanent. If you deliver this message for me, I’ll give you the mirror and the incantation,” the devil and its illusion said in unison.

Jessica cringed. She did not know what she was getting herself into, but she missed Andrew a lot. If she couldn’t have him back, at the very least, then she wanted to say goodbye. She took the slip of paper from the apparition. It had a random coded message typed onto it. “Why can’t you deliver this yourself?”

The devil just snickered, “I could... but I do know a certain girl who could use a favor, so in return I would like a favor.”

Having no alternative, Jessica thought long and hard. “Where do you want this delivered?” she avoided the devil’s eyes as she waited for a response. She was told to wait until this evening and leave it under a specific bench at a chapel in some church she had never heard of. She knew delivering the message was probably not something she should agree to under any circumstance, but she missed Andrew that much. Hating herself for it, she accepted the terms and was told she would receive the mirror and the incantation upon her success.

All afternoon Jessica had to keep telling herself that somebody would probably just throw it away during cleanup, that monster’s plans would be foiled, and she’d be reunited with her Andrew once more. She chanted this repetitively on her way there and during her wait. As the sun started to set, she left the scrap of paper under the specified bench, cursing herself all the while. As she left the building, she noticed a homeless man wander into the church. She gulped, hoping against all hope that he wasn’t the one for whom the code was delivered, and if he was, then that he wouldn’t understand it. Upon arriving home, Jessica found a small package with a note on it right in front of her door. The note read, “Well done.” with an incantation hand-written on the back of it.