"The Devil You Know" by David Wiseman

The devil likes the peace and quiet of small town life during the holidays.

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The Devil You Know by David Wiseman

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I met the Devil today. He was walking down main street, right by the undertaker in B____, which is a little town near here, and which, for obvious reasons, I’d better not name. I recognized him straight away because he had furry legs with hooves for feet. Well, almost right away, at first I thought he was just some guy in fancy dress, but who dresses up like that on Christmas Eve? Not only that, he clip-clopped as he walked, and who has an outfit with sound effects?

And he wasn’t alone.

He had at least two smaller devils with him. I say at least because although I can picture them now, the edges of that picture are a little fuzzy, so yes, two for sure but maybe three. I took them for boys out with their dad doing last-minute shopping, looking for something for their mom, so two fits the picture I have in my mind. But who dresses their kids up in fancy dress to match their dad?

I was so taken by the dad’s legs – well, all the way from his chest down, the more I think about it – and the clip-clopping, that even now his face is hard to place, but I’m pretty sure he was wearing a hat and when I picture that, I reckon it was a white cowboy hat, and with some horns on it too. Horns like cattle might have with black tips, although I seem to recall by convention they’re supposed to be goat’s horns. Besides the horns, the hat had a black band round it but wouldn’t you expect the whole hat to be black? Maybe that old black-hat white-hat thing isn’t true after all. Either way, horns on a cowboy hat didn’t make a lot of sense, even for a fancy-dress costume.

But then I haven’t been to a fancy-dress party for a very long time, so I’m no expert.

The three of them, or four maybe, were coming right at me, the low winter sun straight in their eyes. There’s not space for four abreast outside the undertakers so I stepped off the path into the road to make room. Maybe they hadn’t seen me at all, ‘cos they just walked on till they were level with me and I just stood there gawping.

“Hey, fella, what’s up?” said the dad, stopping and turning towards me.

What’s up? Only everything. Where to start? So I mumbled, “Nothing,” but I couldn’t leave it, could I? “I just er… I wondered if…”

“Ah, surprised eh?” He looked up and down the empty street before asking, “You’re not from around here, right?”

“No, we just moved to…” I waved vaguely in the direction of my new home, about thirty minutes down the road.

“Ah, okay. Well,” he said, ready to move on, “Merry Christmas to you.”

“Wait,” I blurted out, louder than I meant. “Who are you?”

He turned back to me. “Here I’m Nick, Nick Baphomet, other places I got other names, but I think you already know me.”

“I’m not sure, maybe I do. You live here in B____? I wouldn’t have thought in this sleepy little…”

“No, not full time, just here for the holidays.”

“You celebrate this holiday? I mean…” I hesitated over saying the word for fear of tempting a thunderbolt to strike me down, but he’d said it to me, hadn’t he? “You celebrate Christmas?”

I looked again at the blotchy white and grey fur that started sparsely across his chest under his tweed jacket, thickening as it ran down his body to muscular legs tipped with shiny black hooves.

“Of course!” he replied, “One of my great successes don’t you think?”

“Your great successes? But…”

“Oh yeah. Jesus, Mohamed, Abraham, all the other guys like that, all mine.” He smiled and leaned towards me slightly, so a cloud of foul breath rolled over me. “To be honest, I’m still pretty smug about ‘em all. Used to be that there were so many gods nobody knew who did what and who to pray to, then I got the idea of just one god. Counterintuitive, right? But then the argument’s over whose god is the real god. So good, eh? Brought more misery into the world than anything before or since. Yep, proud of that.”

My head was reeling. Was this guy just playing me for a fool?

“Am I dreaming this? Did I die without noticing?” I protested.