The Deal by David Gallie Page A

threaten my early hour's stroll
through one of the toughest cities in the world.
    My thoughts began to come back together again
as I continued walking. Satan, unexpectedly, had a change of heart
about Lisa. He was now willing to let her go, and only after a few
weeks of my servitude.
    That struck me as very odd for the lord of all
things hellish. He hadn’t budged an inch during the initial deal
making process and yet now he was willing to
re-negotiate.
    One thing I was certain of was that it was bad
news for me. Whatever he had planned next was most likely going to
involve something he did not expect me to come back from and hence
he was simply trying to pacify me until that time came.
    I realized as I strolled by a
rundown apartment block, that I was still clutching the gold chain
with the small heart pendant. I had been certain that it was, in fact, the real artefact Satan was after, yet he had
made no attempt to even look at the chain he snatched from my
hand.
    Why?
    Did he simply know it was the
right one and had no reason to double check or did he simply
not give a shit? If the latter was the case, then there was
definitely something much bigger on the horizon and that made me
feel very uneasy.
    After about half an hour of
walking, I rounded the corner of a bodega which had been closed for
the night, its graffiti-covered steel shutters
protecting the valuable stock inside.
    When I looked up I noticed I was approaching a
small, but old building with a children’s playground laid out
before its front doors. As I got closer I saw that the placard
screwed to the pillar of its gates stated it was St Helen’s
Elementary School and Kindergarten.
    I stood at the opening of the derelict
building, my heart beginning to beat faster, as I soaked it in. The
playground equipment had long been looted for its scrap value. Its
windows were smashed and only partially boarded over.
    Vandals had left their mark by spray painting
just about every wall they had come across and I noticed that the
front doors to the building had long been kicked in and there had
been no attempt to reseal it after the fact.
    My legs decided to carry me towards the main
entrance, not entirely against my will, but my racing heart warned
me that something was very wrong with being near this
place.
    You shouldn’t be here Sammy
boy. Warned the voice in my head as I
approached the small set of steps just before the
entrance.
    I stood there for a few seconds
staring into the darkness of the building. I could feel my skin
erupt in gooseflesh and suddenly I wanted to about turn and head
back to the street. My body, on the other hand, had different
ideas.
    This is where Lisa worked Sam. Do
you really want to be here?
    The voice in my head had a habit of raising
some pretty good questions.
    Wasn’t this what I wanted? When
Pertilius had mentioned the name of the school I knew instantly
it had been the place where Lisa had once been a teacher. I wanted
to know about her life before she had met me. I needed to know what
the hell she did that was bad she ended up in purgatory for
it.
    Despite my inner turmoil I had continued to
move forward without realising it and once I snapped back to
reality, or what I called reality, I found myself standing in the
darkened hallway which branched off on either side. The hallway on
the left would lead to the elementary classrooms while the one on
the right I was certain would take me towards the
kindergarten.
    Tables, chairs, and sheets of
paper littered the hallways as well as the occasional jacket which
had been left behind by their owners. Despite how foreboding the
building looked on the outside and how vandalized it was inside, I
couldn’t detect a reason to feel the kind of fear I had done
outside in the playground.
    Fortunately, just like the abattoir, the roof
of the building had been slowly disintegrating over the years and
rays of pale moonlight flooded inside to light my way, as I
continued towards the smaller rooms which