The New Neighbor

queen and wicked stepmother she'd read about in fairytales as a child.

Something moved.

Connie stopped. The dog on the woman's porch lifted its head, ears stiff, and gave a low, throaty growl. On the opposite side of the trailer Connie spotted movement in the darkness. Bushes rustled and footsteps crunched over the ground.

A short squat figure emerged from the dark edge of the road. It looked to Connie like a dwarf. She stepped back into the shadows and hugged her bag to her stomach, holding her breath as the figure crept around the woman's trailer toward the porch and the Doberman, limping awkwardly into a pool of light from the window next door.

Connie dropped her bag when she saw his face. He turned to her suddenly, so she could see him fully, and she shrank back, horrified.

The Doberman stood, growling, and the man moved quickly. A long gleaming blade appeared in his hand with a metallic hiss and he waved at Connie, rasping, 'Go! Get away from here! Now!' Then he rounded the trailer and lunged for the dog as the porch light came on and the door opened.

'Oh, my God,' Connie whimpered, bending to grope for her bag. Clutching it, she stood and glanced once more at the trailer across the road as the glinting blade swept down and the dog made a long guttural sound that made Connie feel sick. Then the man cried out as the dog fell off the porch and the woman – Mitch's lover – appeared in the doorway, growling, 'You!' with surprised recognition.

Connie ran toward the trailer court's entrance, praying that the cab would be waiting for her, but seeing clearly that it wasn't. She ran away, heading for the road and deciding to wave down the first car that came along, when -

– the man's voice ripped through the night as he screamed, 'No! Die! You should die!'

The woman laughed and there was another sound. It was a sound Connie had never heard before, but she knew it was not human. Halfway to the road, she tried to run faster without falling because now there were footsteps behind her, also running, and the man was screaming, 'No, I killed it! I killed it!'

Gravel crackled like frying bacon beneath the tires of the cab as it pulled to the shoulder in front of the trailer court. Connie laughed with relief as she gasped for breath, waving at the driver, crying, 'Open the d-duh-door! Open the door!'

'You the one who called?' the driver asked through the window.

'Yes! Please! Open the – “

She stumbled and fell forward and her bag skidded over the gravel away from her, but she scurried to her feet instantly, ignored the bag as she threw herself toward the cab, tore the door open and fell into the back seat. She screamed when she turned to pull the door closed and saw the man right behind her. He pushed into the cab, slammed the door and shouted, 'Drive! Drive now!' But the man wasn't the worst of it. The real reason for her scream was the black thing following him. It rocketed toward the cab, two or three feet off the ground, flapping broad wings that seemed to be made of dead skin. And the sound it made…

Connie wanted to vomit.

Uttering a babble of curses, the driver put the car in gear and threw gravel behind them as he drove away.

'Faster!' the man said. 'Faster!'

Connie felt numb, drugged, detached from her body, and stared open-mouthed at the man's face, not wanting to believe what she was seeing. Looking down, she saw the blade and, even worse, the hand that held it.The hand wasn't real.

'Don't worry,' the man gasped, his chest heaving. 'I won't hurt you. I came to help you.' He reached out to touch her arm and she pulled back, pressing herself to the opposite door. He put his hand back in his lap and whispered, 'You can never go back there again. Ever.'

Last Weekend

A quiet rustle passed through the congregation as Pastor Jeremy Quillerman stepped up to the pulpit. He was in his mid-fifties, with a round belly that pressed against the powder-blue shirt beneath the coat of his dark-gray suit. He walked with a limp, the origin of which was a mystery to everyone at the Christian Fellowship Non- Denominational Church. His right hand had small mangled nubs where his last three fingers used to be. The remaining thumb and forefinger latched over his bible like fleshy hooks as he placed it on the pulpit and smiled at his congregation. His face was soft, gentle, lined with the creases of countless smiles. His silver-streaked black hair was cut short, carefully combed and thinning on top. His thick mustache was dark but had a white stripe below each nostril.

The gentleness of his face, however, was offset by his eyes. The left eye was glass and, as a result, was wider than the right and bulged slightly. From the inside corner of the eye a pale scar, smooth and slightly glossy, crawled up over the bridge of his nose and up the center of his forehead, stopping just short of his receding hairline. The right eye was both hard and sad, as if it had seen too many things that were at once horrifying and heartbreaking.

Pastor Quillerman began his sermon the way he always did: as if he were having a quiet conversation with a dear friend.

'What is evil?' he asked. 'Where do you suppose it nests? Is it easy to recognize? Will we always know it when we see it so we can steer clear? Or has the master of deception fooled us with a perfectly executed shell game and led us to believe that evil is lurking just around the corner or right behind us… when it is, in reality, directly under our noses?'

The Pritchards were sitting halfway back from the front in the left column of pews, George with his arm around Jen, who had turned sixteen yesterday and who fidgeted beside her seventeen-year-old brother Robby.

'In I Peter 5:8,' Pastor Quillerman said, 'and I'm reading from the New International Reader’s Version here, Peter says, 'Control yourselves. Be on your guard. Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to chew up and swallow.''

Some of the Pritchards' neighbors were in the church, too. Mr. and Mrs. LaBianco were seated in their usual place: front pew, right column, on the aisle. And behind them were the Weylands, Paul and his wife Denise and their teenage daughters, Caryl and Stephanie.

'Now what, you may ask,' the pastor went on, 'does self control have to do with being on guard against evil? Isn't it enough simply to watch out for evil? Isn't it enough for us to be constantly on the alert for its traps? Well, my friends, that way of thinking happens to be one of its traps.'

Sheri MacNeil sat in the very back pew with her son Christopher. She always sat there, just in case the toddler decided to start up a fuss or needed to go to the bathroom.

'Just as a child molester or a murderer almost never looks like a child molester or murderer, evil is seldom obvious. In the past, evil has been depicted as a red demon with horns and a tail. We’ve become more sophisticated today, but I’m afraid we still expect it to show itself, to look like evil. It's natural. I find myself doing it all the time. We all want something solid and specific to watch for. But when we spend all of our time trying to do away with things that might look questionable, sometimes we completely miss the most insidious forms of evil that are right before us… or, my friends, or… that are growing inside us.'

Robby's best friend Dylan Garry was seated with his mother in the opposite column of pews – Mr. Garry never came to church – and the two boys made subtle, snide faces at one another across the center aisle.

'Just as god lives in each of us – just as the kingdom of heaven is within us, as Jesus said – we also have seeds of evil inside us,' Pastor Quillerman said. 'All those seeds need is a little nurturing, a little care, in order to blossom. Or sometimes, all they need is a little neglect – like weeds in a garden. We so often look