Jeramiah Thompson was strange, even for one of the miners who went out west and came back wealthy beyond words in gold scratched form the land on a distant coast. The California gold-rush was the making or breaking of men, but Jeramiah Thompson was one of the lucky ones.
Or, it was whispered, maybe he was something else.
See, Mr. Thompson didn’t go to church anymore. Never once set foot on Hallowed Ground, even for Christmas and Easter, and people were starting to think that maybe when he went out West, he came back more, or maybe less than he was before.
But it was hard to call a man a demon when he was the most genuinely kind fellow around.
Oh, certainly he was rich. No one knew just how much gold he really found, but despite efforts to find his hidden mine, no one ever had. He made three or four trips out each year and came back richer than before.
But his riches didn’t seem to have turned a simple man into a bad one. His clothes were a little better than they were before, and he built a big house on a good piece of property, and set up there.
For all that, for all that he avoided the Church like the plague, he was good friends with the pastor, who could often be seen visiting with him. Jeramiah offered good employment to anyone willing to work hard, and paid twice what they were worth even when they were worth a lot. He threw grand parties, and made sure to invite anyone who wanted to come. He even bought all the girls pretty new dresses fit to meet the richest in San Francisco with their heads held up high.
That alone might have gotten him in trouble, except that he did it for their mothers as well, and walked their grandmothers home from town, arms full of their groceries, calling them Ma’am, and listening to their stories.
All in all, an upstanding young man.
“I sold my soul,” he said when anyone asked him how he came about such grand success. “Traded it to a lady-demon, and since I’ll never get into Heaven, best I can do is help along as many as I can.”
Most everyone thought he was joking, and tittered nervously, but Father Hennessey never smiled when he said it.
But it was true enough that he chased every single loan shark out of the neighborhood, and bought out the contract of every prostitute he could find before giving them honest work. Mothers with no husbands often found that their houses were bought and the deed left in a simple unmarked envelope tucked in with the morning milk delivery.
All in all, it was hard to condemn a man who worked so hard to do good for everyone around him. He wasn’t virtuous, particularly, having an Irish boy’s love for fine whiskey and food, but he never let his hands go soft.
It wasn’t until someone, a new arrival form the mines down south, tried to shoot him that folks started wondering if maybe Jeramiah wasn’t joking about his soul being sold proper.
“I don’t die today,” Jeremiah told Billy Fowler apologetically as the man leveled a gun on him. “I’m cursed to die old, like it or not. Put the gun down, son.”
“Why did you get all the good fortune!?” Billy howled at him, so angry his hand shook on his gun, but young enough to be stupid. “I knew you back in the mining camp. You’re a nothing-boy form a nothing-country!”
“Sold my soul, Billy,” Jeremiah told him, easing sweet Chastity behind him and out of the line of fire with a good man’s worry for everyone but himself. “The Devil’s Mistress came to me and took a kiss and my soul. Put the gun down. Is it money you want? I’ll give you all you want and more.”
“I don’t want your damn charity!” Billy screamed, mad around the edges and drunk in between. Jeramiah only looked tired, and maybe a little resigned. “I want your damn head!”
“Won’t do a scrap o’good,” Jeramiah told him regretfully, and waved Charity over to her mother, and then to the door. “Off you get. Tell your Nan I send my love.”
Father Hennassy tried to step forward, but then he caught the gleam in Jeramiah’s eyes. The red glow that seemed a trick of the light except there was nothing that could cast that light on the man, and worse, it seemed to come from within.
“Look at me!” Billy roared, and fired the gun at Jeramiah’s feet. Jeramiah only sighed and patted Father Hennassy on the shoulder as he turned back to Billy.
“I’m lookin’ at a desperate man,” he said and advanced on the broken miner with no fear of his gun or his madness. “I’m lookin’ at a man who needs help. You try an’ murder me, you’ll burn for it. Don’t put that on your soul.”
“Don’t you talk to me about souls an’ Hell,” Billy snarled, and raised his gun to Jeramiah’s head. Jeramiah never flinched, even when he pulled the trigger.
The gun backfired with a thunderous crack and Billy screamed as smoke billowed around them. Father Hennassy crossed himself when he caught the shadow of demon wings around Jeramiah and heard a woman’s laughter in the echoes that rang off the walls.
When the smoke cleared, Billy was gone, and Jeramiah’s shoulder’s slumped with a weight too heavy for a man to bear.
“Bless me Father,” he said into Father Hennassy’s stunned silence. “For I have sold my soul to a demon, and I will never see Heaven.”
Once you sell your soul, the deal is made, but no one ever talks about what happens between the Deal, and when it comes Due.
