It was long past midnight when Clark Richards got out of his car near Bridge Street on the old state highway out of Ridgway Pennsylvania. His life's dream was off to a miserable start. The radiator continued to hiss as he walked out into the middle of the road, hoping to see a car that could give him a lift back into town. Nothing.

It was the wee hours of June 6, 1945, the first anniversary of his brother's death in Normandy. He just couldn't stay in town any more. As the date approached he could feel the whole town tightening around him, cutting off his air, so he decided it was time to make his break for New York City. He was going to be famous, he knew it. After all this was America where anything could happen for you, so long as you were free white and twenty-one, as they used to say. Now that the war was clearly over things would be good again and if he played his cards right, he'd be on the radio coast to coast, welcoming the boys home. If not, the soldiers would already have all the slots. Nobody'd be giving a break to a scrawny 4F over a veteran.

Richards shivered in the night. "Shit!" he slapped the fender of his car. Maybe somebody would be coming down Bridge Street. If they were going anywhere near New York then he'd just abandon the old Nash Lafayette right there and hitch a ride with them.

Half-way to the corner he heard the low hum of an engine behind him. He'd barely turned around to wave for assistance when he had to leap out of the way of a massive Packard, more outdated than his Nash but perfectly pristine. The street-lamp flashed on it's immaculate shell as it passed beneath and it was swallowed by the dark of the country highway.

"Lousy son of a bitch," he muttered to himself, kicking at an old beer can as he walked up to the intersection. No traffic was coming on Bridge Street, nothing else on the highway. He continued to mumble to himself in a steady stream, "Gotta get to New York. No matter what it takes, I'm going to make it big there. Real big."

"What make you think you're going to New York?"

Clark spun on his heel, unable at first to place the voice. There was a faint red glow in the shadow by the street-light, the tip of a cigarette that brightened with an inhale then died off a bit as it drifted comfortably back to the man's side.

"I'm getting in to show business," he finally replied.

"Your going to be famous?"

"Yeah, I'm going to be famous buddy," Clark shot back. "Everybody in this country's gonna know who I am."

"That's fine," the shadow replied, "just fine. But... why are you going to New York?" As the man stepped up onto the road Clark was surprised to see that the guy was very slight, like a jockey, even he could take this guy if anything started, and so he managed to relax a bit.

"Where else do you go? You want to get into show business, you go to New York."

"Yes," the little fellow replied, "everybody does. That's fine. When you get to New York, you're nobody though, you see?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

The man put a delicate little hand up to his porcelain chin. "I might. Yes. I happen to know of a job on the radio in Utica. Do you know the town?"

"Upstate New your right?"

"Quite right. The way you speak, I'm sure I could help you get it. Are you interested in radio work?"

Clark Richards felt the world jump from under him for a split second. It was unimaginable that he'd get his first big break out here, in the middle of the night after barely leaving home. He tried not to look shocked, tried not to look eager, then opened his mouth and dismissed any doubt of either, "You're kidding me right! That's perfect! What do I have to do to apply?"

"Just show up," the man replied, "I can arrange the rest." He looked back toward Clark's old Nash, steaming somewhere in the darkness. "Can you get there?"

Richards frowned, "It may take me a couple days to get the car going again, then I'll have to take it slow but I'll get there."

"Hm," this time it was the little man who frowned, "no, it will certainly be too late."

Clark's stomach dropped. Was this how it was going to be? A series of big breaks that would eventually break him?

"Maybe you should get a ride with me. It's on my way. Of course, you'd have to abandon your automobile. Is it worth doing that?"

"It's worth anything doing anything!" Clark cheered and ran back to grab his suitcase.

"That's fine," the little jockey-man said, "just fine."

When Clark got back to the crossroads with his things his new patron was waiting inside that same giant old Packard. The subterranean thrum of the engine made Clark's bowels shake until he thought he'd lose control of them.

"You passed me on the road tonight... earlier," he ventured.

The little man shifted into gear and the car leaped into the night.

"Yes, I came back to see if you were alright. I thought perhaps I could offer you some help."

"Well, you've certainly done that," Clark laughed.

"It's nothing," the man waved, "a small step. You can decide from there how much you really want fame."

The man's fine blond hair fluttered in the breeze of his open window. Outside the telephone poles flashed by nearly invisible. Though they must have been travelling over a hundred miles an hour Clark's sole focus was ensuring that this fellow knew just how serious he was.

"It's not just that I'm going to be famous. I'm going to stay famous." Every word was dropped individually, as if each were enough to support his resolution on its own. "Every person in this country will know who I am and it's going to stay that way for a long, long time."

"Fame is a difficult thing to maintain," the man replied.

Unaware of the corner, which they seemed to take at full speed, Clark was thrown back against the passenger window. The driver continued on unfazed. "What is it, do you think, that the people want to see in a celebrity? Who, for instance, embodies the kind of renown that you would like for yourself?"

"The President?" Clark ventured after chewing his lip for a moment.

"That's fine. Noble, powerful characteristics. Good choice," came the quiet response. "I think I can help you get what you want. You'll have to sign a contract, of course."

On the highway north from Williamsport the tail-lights of the old Packard burned like the eyes of a demon in the long country night.

Everything was changing back then. The prefabricated housing revolution meant that suburbs sprang like mushrooms. Television hypnotized the nation and the sky overhead was populated with the meteor-streaks of the first man made satellites. Americans quickly adapted to the new pace and maybe that's why the accelerated aging process of all the Presidents after the long-ailing FDR sounded no alarms. Nobody even seemed to notice. Besides, carrying the weight of the worlds greatest superpower was bound to wear down even the best of men.

But Clark Richards knew it was more than that.

On that night's long drive with the devil, on the sixth day of the sixth month, Clark had made a pact for his soul. In exchange he shot to fame like an Atlas rocket. And he was allowed to feed on the vitality of no less a personage than the American President.

Now Clark was no fool, he knew the devil had been trying to trick him. He made sure that little blond poof agreed he'd get the current president, not just feeding off Truman until his death. Each new president brought with him a new vigour, a new decisiveness and an abundance of other noble characteristics that Clark Richards could absorb into himself.

And the ever-youthful Richards put those characteristics to good use. The same personality traits that won the majority of voters at each election magnetized Clark, binding more listeners, then viewers to him. Even the prickish Nixon was put to good use, giving him the chutzpah to fight his way through the dirty back-rooms of television broadcasting.

His fame was a facile one but as unwavering as he was himself. Decades went by and men kept going into the White House whole, coming out years later, greatly lessened.

He knew that the worst of the devil's bargain was still coming. There would be another, bigger trick. Needing no sleep, he spent long, watchful nights thinking about it. When they happened to meet, which was not uncommon since the devil had considerable business dealings in Washington, Clark would even taunt him about it over lunch.

"Ooh, it's coming! I know it's coming! You can't wait to get me, just as soon as you can outsmart me!"

The devil would always smile pleasantly, "Some do escape me of course. That's fine," and he would go serenely on his way after picking up the cheque. He would even help Richards out of a tight spot once in a while by disposing of the body of a hooker or misdirecting drug-enforcement agents. At one point in the mid sixties, Clark Richards grew mad with his lust for the fruits of this bargain and went too far in his feeding. The lengths that the devil had to go to in hiding that horrible mistake were inconceivable. He'd been much more careful ever since and haunted the air ducts and empty rooms of the nation's capital with supernatural impunity.

It wasn't until the new millennium that Clark knew the other shoe had finally dropped. The cunning vigour of the brilliant, personable mercenaries who scrambled into the top office was finally replaced by an imbecile born exactly a year and a month after Clark's contract with Satan.

Richards, with a cooler head, would have surely enjoyed the occult joke. The sixes in the day and month of his contract were trumped by the sixes in the day and year of the president's birth. After so many years preparing for such a turn he should have been able to calmly wonder if the hour of birth completed the chthonic trinity, but there was no such calm, lucid contemplation. Clark Richard's howled through the streets. Years of feeding from the new retarded president meant he would occasionally forget to come back at night to renew himself. All those years started piling onto him now. Crushing him with the weight of his excesses and abuses.

It wasn't long before vapid, catty entertainment reporters began to comment, timidly at first, that the eternal Clark Richards was finally starting to show signs of aging. Worse still, the little shits actually started to pity him. Rage upon rage welled up inside Richards, driving him back to drink from that poisoned half-wit soul. No matter what it did to him, Clark would not let go. Even when the impossible second term proved incontrovertibly that this was the devil's doing, his anger carried him back to the White House or whatever far-flung vacation spot the president happened to be at.

Eight long years.

Eight long years.

After eight gruelling, pitiful years the shell of Clark Richards began to hope. There could be no third term. A new spirit would take office. He could be strong again. In the victory of his burning, sustaining hatred he dragged his whithered body out into public again, his pallid visage haunting network Christmas specials. He would be well again. He signed on to cohost a new radio show. In a year he would be strong again and have a show on his own. He had defeated Satan. He would live on.

Carefully, perfectly silently, Clark Richards slithered through the ductwork of the White House toward the president's bedroom. As he pulled himself along, eyes bulging out into the dark, he whispered, "Mine... you promised they'd be mine."

It was dark in the bedroom when Clark slithered across the wall and down to the carpet. He replayed that long gone night when he first met the devil at the Pennsylvania crossroads. "I told you," he hissed, "this is America. You'll give them to me."

It had taken him more than an hour, dragging that fragile, horribly old body across the carpet to the foot of the president's bed.

"Mine at last. This is America, any man can become president," In his mind he was already that young man again, drifting back to the low vernacular of the nineteen-forties and his exact words in making the pact with the devil, "so long as he's free white and over twenty-one."

The new president slept deeply in accordance with Clark's supernatural pact. Indeed he was free, and well over twenty-one.

- Jason Gracey

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