Every Sunday at church when the clergyman started reverting to his boring self and lapsed into endlessly droning sermons, my eyes would wander off cheerfully in the direction of a family, consisting of an old decrepit-looking lady who looked like she was brought back to life straight out of the fossil collection and her three awkward-looking grandsons.
“Hey Charles, Charles, are you one-hundred percent absolutely undoubtedly sure that they three really really have been fostered by the Devil?”
I was but repeating what my dad Charles had told me, and he was the most brilliant, most knowledgeable and by far the only witch hunter I’d ever known. Though he was on the dangerous verge of getting fired by the committee because he had always acted like a baby in front of everyone in a way that was sort of embarrassing, being his daughter I was always enthusiastically adopting every one of his whimsical presumptions. When he’d draw me aside and whisper to me real hysterically that “Phil! I am one-hundred percent absolutely undoubtedly sure with all the adequate premises big and small that that lady selling ice-creams and all down there in the alley is a demon from hell!”, I’d exclaim, “No way!”, at first. Then he’d say, “Yes way!” And I’d say, “No way!” We’d go back and forth like this for a while, but eventually I always believed him.
So there I was, turning to Charles and starting to repeat my question, but seeing the state he was in, decided against it. Boy there was no use asking him in church about anything. “Oh, oh, oh!” he’d groan dramatically every time the clergyman declaimed some poetic verses. “So beautiful, so soulful and penetrating…!” And everyone would turn to stare at him admonishingly and in unison, even the clergyman. But Charles would pay no heed, an attentive audience of his own comical performance.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Peeved and exasperated I bided my time for church to be over and for Charles to get normal again, which in his case, meant that he’d return to a more normal degree of craziness. He was still shuddering violently on our way out of church, having heard the clergyman’s vehement condemnation of sinners that were bound to be roasted like Chicken McNuggets in hell.
“Charles?”
“Oh the flames the red hot flames and the…!”
“Charles!” I leaned in close as if to whisper, and screamed into his earholes, “Which ones of those three are the foster sons of the devil?”
He was still shivering as if he really were McNuggets taken out of the refrigerator. He looked at me, then at the three boys, who were being led out by their prehistoric grandmother, and then back at me, the fear undiluted in his eyes. “All of them,” Charles whispered feverishly, his voice a mad tremor, as if he’d foreseen his dreadful ends within an oven.
“Oh really?” I pursued, getting excited all over, “which one of those are already in association with their dad?” Associating with the devil meant that one was a witch.
Charles looked mournfully at those three boys, as if they were the ones who’d skewer and roast and barbecue him in his afterlife. “The littlest ‘um, I think, hasn’t gotten involved yet,” he was mumbling and swallowing, an ominous telltale that he’d start crying if nobody would buy him a pizza.
I leapt up. “Somebody’s gotta warn that poor kid against his evil brothers!” I cast my eyes around desperately for the family and found them ahead of us, the primeval granny, the two sallow-faced and surly-looking elder brothers who were surely several years my senior, and their kid brother.
Their kid brother. The sole, singularly predominant reason why I kept nagging Charles about that family, he was all brown and gold and dust and grime, his eyes handsome, his nose handsome, his ears handsome, his hair handsome, his breath smelt handsome, his booger handsome, even his constantly sweat-excreting pores blinked with flamboyant handsomeness.
And best of all, he was around my age.