 When I was a boy, my grandfather Nathaniel Forbes often spoke of how he fought the Devil at the Crossroads, just outside of Mill Creek, Montana. Now the way he told it, he was a young man in his prime looking for any opportunity to show the world that he had balls of steel. Not too different from most young men out there. Like most, he'd heard the local legend about the Crossroads just outside of town. The legend was old, far older than he was, and there are still some folk who whisper about it today. I don't think most people truly bought into any of it. But kids looking to prove their grit have bought into dumber stories of the supernatural, and as history marches on, they'll buy into even dumber stories. I don't know just what my grandpa thought he'd find out there, if he even really believed in the legend or not. But when he was told that if one were to visit a certain Crossroad at midnight, one might just happen. To meet a pale man in a pitch black suit, he had to go and see for himself. Now according to the stories about the man in black, he'd grant you any one thing for a price. Exactly what the price was varied depending on who you asked. Some folks say he'd take your soul, others say he'd ask for something of value. Either way, the cost of any gifts he gave was always high, higher than even the richest man would care to pay. Some folks swore up and down that the man in black truly was the devil incarnate and those who didn't dismissed it as a fairy tale. My grandfather didn't seem to care either way. He wasn't looking for any gifts, he wasn't after a boon. Oh no, he was a prideful bastard even back then and he was looking for a fight. I couldn't tell you if he was looking to prove something, faith or devotion perhaps, that God was on his side. In all his years, he never actually said why he'd gone to the crossroads to fight the devil, however, if you believe the story the way he tells it, he met that man in black and he had his fight. According to him, he beat that son of a bitch into the dirt. The man in black put up a good fight, but my grandpa was even stronger and what all was said and done, the man lay broken on the ground just outside the cabin and Nathaniel Forbes towered over him. He looked down at the man in black and he said to him, you stay out of Montana boy, you stay out of Montana for as long as there is a Montana. Because if you don't, I'll come back and knock you on your ass. And even if I'm not around, my own blood will do the same. You ain't welcome here. And with that, the man in black sank into the accursed dirt and did not return. When I was a kid, I always figured that whole story was a crock of bullshit, something the old man had just made up. One of my grandmothers had a similar story about an old fur coat she owned, often saying that she'd killed the bear herself. Of course she hadn't. That coat wasn't even real fur, but it was a tall tale told in good fun to entertain me and my brothers. Nothing more. I thought the same of grandpa Nathan's story about the devil. While he had almost certainly once been a prideful and arrogant young man and he had been in more than his fair share of actual brawls, I never once believed he'd fought the devil himself. That said, my disbelief didn't stop me from loving the old man. I only knew of the scrappy bastard he'd once been from his own stories of his glory days. Even then, I could hardly picture the old man picking those fights as my kindly doting old grandfather. Time had mellowed him out and I can't begin to count the happy memories I have of him while I was growing up. That's why, when he passed away a couple of weeks ago, it hit me hard. Grandpa Nathan had been the sort of man who I'd been sure couldn't possibly die. Even in his late 80s, he was full of life and sharp as a knife. Age may have taken its toll on his body, but not his mind. Every now and then I still caught glimpses of the fiery young man he'd once been and sometimes when I visited with him, I even forgot he was staring down the barrel of his 90s. The last time I saw him was when my family and I went down for a visit. It had been the anniversary of my grandmother's death and I thought it might be nice to offer him some company. My wife Kathy and I packed up the baby and drove down to his little cottage a ways out of town. The cottage hadn't changed in 50 years and going back there always carried a certain rush of nostalgia with it. As soon as we pulled up into his dirt driveway, I could see Grandpa Nathan making his way out from the backyard with an unfamiliar companion I'd never seen before, a large black dog. It was a mutt that looked to have a bit of Labrador in it. It bounded happily by his side, tongue hanging out as if it was having the time of its life. Pete, he called. Well, well, long time no see, boy. Hey, Grandpa. I replied as I got out of the car. Kathy went to get the baby while I greeted him. How you holding up? As well as I can, I suppose, he said, voice, horse and raspy from age. His dog sniffed at me and I pet its head in greeting. I guess you made a new friend, huh? So I did, Grandpa replied. He cracked a smile down at the dog, found him down by the side of the road. Poor boy looked to be starving. I just couldn't leave him, couldn't find an owner, so I figured I might as well take care of him myself. He's taken a shine to me since then. As he spoke, he reached down to give the dog a pat on the head. It eagerly licked his hand in response. There we go. That's a good boy. Can I get you a beer, Pete? No matter what time of day it was, the old man always offered beer. I passed him up on the offer. Kathy had the baby out and I excused myself to give her a hand. The visit was nice, but uneventful. There's not much I can really say about it. There were no tearful goodbyes or parting words of wisdom. We watched an old Frankenstein movie with Boris Karloff and watched his grandpa fond over the baby. Little Katie, who was barely three months old at that point, smiled and giggled at him. She tugged on his beard before my wife took her for her bottle. The dog lingered around grandpa, rarely leaving his side, although it did come up to me for a scratch behind the ear every now and then. It seemed even tempered enough, which was nice to see. I recall thinking that grandpa could have used a pet to keep him company. I remember that grandpa and I talked for a bit, mostly just shooting the shit, but I don't recall much of what was said. We didn't stay too long, though. We'd had Chinese delivered and had dinner with him, then packed up and headed home. I remember giving the old man one last hug as Kathy put Katie into the car. You take care of yourself. Call me if you need anything, I'd said. He just playfully shrugged me off. I got myself covered, Pete. You just watch the baby. And don't be a stranger. I don't mind the company. He'd waited on the porch as we drove off and in my rear view mirror, I could see him heading back inside that dog still on his heels. I told myself I'd be back again to see him in a week or two, if for no other reason than just to check on him. In the meanwhile, I was just a phone call away and he knew that maybe it was arrogant of me to assume everything was just going to be okay. I've replayed that day countless times in my mind, but Grandpa Nathan seemed as strong and as sharp as ever. Maybe he could have had another decade or two in him. Fate had other plans, though. Nathaniel Forbes died alone in his house less than a week later. Proud and stubborn until the end, he climbed onto a small step ladder to get something out of his pantry and somehow he lost his balance and fallen. I want to believe that he died on impact. I really, really want to believe that. I'm not sure I can, though. Grandpa Nathan was a tough old bastard and I can't honestly buy that a simple fall would be enough to stop him, even if he was well into his 80s. I don't want to think about him lying on the cold kitchen floor for days, screaming for help. I don't want to think about it, but I just can't stop myself. I really can't and while I want to believe that he died peacefully, part of me knows that he didn't. Part of me knows that he suffered. I won't get into the ugly details of his estate. Anyone who's ever lost someone could probably tell you what a bureaucratic snafu death can be. I ended up being the one to handle most of his final affairs, his possessions, the house, and most importantly, the dog. Truth be told, I would have been perfectly happy just putting the damn thing up for adoption. It was a nice dog, sure, but I wasn't too sure I wanted it in my house. I didn't fault it for what it had done to grandpa Nathaniel's body. No, it had been about a week before they'd found him. I couldn't blame a big hungry dog alone in a house next to fresh meat for doing what came naturally. I didn't want it in my house, though. I tolerated it for the first few days, but I made it clear I was sending it off to the pound the first chance I got. Caffe had other ideas. We can't just get rid of it. She'd said to me. Do you have any idea how many dogs get put down instead of being rehomed? We'd probably end up killing it. Well, we can't keep it. Dogs need attention. They need walks. We've already got our hands full with Katie. Besides, we don't even know if that dog's gonna get along with her. Considering that my wife had the baby in her lap when I said that, she didn't seem to like me bringing her into the conversation. Katie will be fine. She insisted, I'm already going to be home with her. So why not have the dog here as well? If nothing else, it'll be company while you're at work. You've already got the baby. I regretted saying that the moment I actually said it and the look on Kathy's face told me that I had lost this debate. The dog was going to stay. Grandpa Nathaniel hadn't actually given him a name. As far as I knew, he just called him Dog, so Kathy took to calling him Patch. Not sure where she picked that name out from, and I'm not so sure that it fit him, but it became his name. I can't say that Patch was all that unwelcome of an addition to the family. For sure, he was a cute and playful thing, and he seemed just as friendly as he did when I'd first seen him at Grandpa Nathan's. I noticed pretty quickly that he had a couple of quirks though. Every dog has its quirks. That's normal. You see cute pictures and videos of quirky pets on the internet all the time. My friend had a dog with truly crippling anxiety, and Kathy used to have a poodle mix that would start licking you and never stop. Patch, on the other hand, was a little bit different. The dog didn't sleep. Kathy put Katie down fairly early, and she usually passed out shortly afterward. I was the night owl of the family. Sleeping had never come easy to me. Some nights I just couldn't shut off my brain, so I usually stayed up late. Some nights I'd stay in the living room working late. And when I did, I noticed that dog doing the rounds around the house. He wasn't moving like he wanted to play. I grew up with dogs, and you can tell when they're playful. Patch just sort of wandered. I'd hear his nails clicking on the kitchen tile, then he'd walk into the living room and stare at me for a moment, before continuing to walk. At first, I thought he might have been nervous or wanted to go outside, but he never seemed upset nor did he respond when I opened the door for him. He just liked to wander. He didn't lie down or nap. He just kept going. Maybe that was a red flag looking back. I really can't say for sure. I tried to write off the nighttime wanderings, and I only mentioned it to Kathy once. She wrote it off quickly, and so I tried to do the same. The vet had told us that Patch was a perfectly healthy dog, so I didn't really have any reason to believe anything was wrong. All the same, I couldn't shake this sense of unease that had hung in the air ever since grandpa died. I told myself it was grief or stress, and for a while I believed it. Now though, I'm quite sure it was something else entirely. It started with little things. Things would disappear around the house, nothing major, the remote, car keys, cables, things that go missing all the time. It was a little bit frustrating, sure, but nothing all that serious. I don't think Kathy or I saw it as anything more than a run of bad luck. It wasn't until it got worse that we started to really take notice. The first major incident came while I'd been redoing some of the baseboards in our house. I'm relatively good with my hands, and I take care of a lot of our renovations. I'd taken off some of the baseboards to repaint them and was just putting them back when the accident happened. I'd been using the nail gun to put the dried baseboards back in place. I knew what I was doing. Hell, I'd used that damn nail gun a thousand times without anything going wrong, and looking back, I'm still not sure exactly what happened. The doctor at the hospital suggested that the nail had hit something hard and ricocheted off. I think that's bullshit, but I don't have any other explanations. One minute I was on the ground nailing the baseboard back into place, and the next I felt a white hot pain in my hand. I saw the nail embedded just beneath my finger before I saw any blood. The tip was coming out of my palm and it took me a moment to register what had happened before I started screaming. But was it about that time the pain hit me? Kathy came running in, the baby in her arms and eyes wide. That dog was right on her heels, tail wagging as if nothing in the world was wrong. I remember that it looked right at me, tongue hanging out in a stupid doggy grin. I got to spend the rest of the day in the ER because of that and the hospital bill afterward wasn't a pretty one either. That wasn't the end of my troubles though. It wasn't even a week later that the fire happened. I wasn't there to see it. I only heard about it through Kathy's frantic call while I was on my way home from work. It took me a few moments to get her to slow down to explain to me what the hell had happened. Apparently, she'd been in the kitchen when the smoke had started to pour from the oven. She'd seen the orange glow from inside and thankfully had put out the fire before it spread. Aside from our oven being toast, there were thankfully no other damages. I couldn't blame her for being terrified though. There were other events as well in the weeks that followed. Mostly smaller incidents, broken glasses, a branch falling and damaging the roof. Nothing quite as life-threatening, although with how frequent they had become, that sense of impending dread I felt seemed to grow and grow until it last. It came to a head. Of course, by then, it was too late. By then, what had happened had made everything else pale in comparison. The nail, the fire, the little accidents. They meant nothing after we lost Kathy. I remember waking up to Kathy's screams. They tore abruptly through the house and I almost fell out of bed when I heard them. I tore through the house, racing into Katie's room and I saw Kathy there, standing over the crib and cradling our baby in her arms. Her eyes were wide and filled with tears and as I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, the words died in my throat. Just looking at Katie, I understood. She was pale and limp. Kathy cradled her clothes, but even as she did, I could see her limbs just hanging there, lifeless. In one moment, my entire world shattered. The next thing I knew, I was crying and trying to somehow wake up our little girl, but there was no taking it back. The doctor said she died in the night. Even after all was said and done, they wrote it off as SIDS. Do you know what a baby coffin looks like? It's small, like a chest or a foot locker. It's too small. I was able to carry it in my arms when we took her to be buried. I was her single pallbearer. If you've never lost a child, I envy you. I truly do. It's a pain that is impossible to describe. It rips away every other thought on your mind and replaces it with a grief so deep that it leaves you hollow. The house seemed too quiet. I found myself actually missing being woken up by her crying and Kathy, she was silent as the grave. When I'd married her, she'd had such a spark of life that I'd adored. She'd been so willing to go anywhere and do anything. Even when we'd had Katie, she'd taken to motherhood like a fish to water. But watching her in the aftermath of her death, it broke whatever pieces were left of my shattered heart. She spent most of the time in bed. I was there for her as much as I could be, but I was hardly in any better of shape myself, and I truly had no idea what to say to her. There was no reassurance I could give that wouldn't sound empty. There was no bright side to look on. Patch had continued to bound around the house, seemingly oblivious to all that had been going on around him. The stupid dog didn't understand, and with all that had happened, he'd become an afterthought, something we took care of without thinking of. We let him out, we fed him, but we hardly noticed him otherwise. Even his sleepless late night wandering had been forgotten by us. Both of us were just empty, and in our own ways we grieved. It wasn't long after Katie's death that I started watching the footage from her nanny cam. It was strange, I suppose, but I guess it gave me comfort. Seeing her again, watching as we put her down, it might not have been healthy, but it let me cling to those memories of her and let me hold on to some small part of her that even death couldn't take away. I'd avoided the footage from the night she died. I knew I couldn't bring myself to watch it, but I didn't delete it. On the nights when Kathy was in bed, either asleep or crying, I'd sit on the couch and remember our daughter watching that footage and looking for some form of closure that never seemed to come. And when at last I found my answer, it was by accident. I hadn't realized I was watching the footage from the night Katie had died. The video had started to play automatically, and through the tears I hadn't thought to check which one it was. I'd been on the couch, watching the recordings on my phone. I was two or three beers in and waiting to see how many it took before I stopped feeling like shit. On the screen, I watched Kathy put our little girl into the crib. There were no plushies in there, no pillows, nothing that could have suffocated her. I watched Katie sleep for a while, until from the corner of the screen, I saw the door open. In the darkness of her room, I saw movement on the camera. Then a shape seemed to drop into the crib. Four dark legs stood around Katie as a dark snout pressed against the camera, moving it to face downwards. It didn't record what happened next. Maybe that was for the best. But it recorded enough. I sat upright and rewound the footage. There was no way that Patch had jumped into Katie's crib, right? But the footage was right in front of me. That dog had gone into our little girl's crib. Looking at the date on the footage, I realized it and felt a sick pit growing in my stomach. My grief seemed to boil over inside of me and was replaced with a cold, bitter rage. That dog. That was why Katie had died. Some little useless voice in the back of my mind tried to argue that maybe he was just looking for attention, but I couldn't have cared less in that moment. Like a raging bull, I only saw a red. I dropped my phone and stood up, listening for the clicking of toenails as Patch wandered the house, but I heard nothing. Dead silence, and yet I felt as if I wasn't alone in the room I was in. Patch. I called my voice trembling in anger, but there was nothing, and that made me uneasy. Something felt wrong, Patch. Still nothing. I'm not sure what I would have even done if that stupid dog had come running anyways. What I had seen couldn't be denied, though. That stupid dog had taken my little girl from me. I refused to keep it in the house. Kathy, I needed to show Kathy what I'd found. I snatched up my phone and headed for the bedroom, looking down at the paused footage one last time. Kathy, I called, although the name died in my throat. The first thing I noticed was the dark shape of a man standing by the bed, silhouetted by the light from the window. Then I saw the tangled bedsheets with no sign of my wife amongst them. I froze and stumbled back a step, looking up at the man in black. I could feel his eyes on me, and somehow I knew he was smiling. What the hell? There's no need to swear, Peter. He replied. His voice was smooth and mellow. Who the hell are you? Where the hell is Kathy? The man just continued to smile. Looking into his eyes, I sensed something familiar in them. Don't you recognize me? I'm your dear sweet patches, your lovable loyal dog. Although I must admit, I really was not fond of that name. Oh well, no need for it anymore. I have a gun in the kitchen, and if you don't give me a straight answer, I'll You what? Kick me out of Montana again, like your dear old grandpa. I felt a cold chill run through me. The dark man's smile seemed to grow wider. I'll confess, he did put up quite a fight all those years ago, but his little warning was too tempting to pass up. I just had to come back to see if he'd make good on it. Unfortunately, the spirit was willing, but the body was far too fragile. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn't come. All I could do was stare at this impossible man, the devil himself, staring me down and taunting me. Unfortunately, old Nathaniel was adamant that his blood could beat me into the dirt just like he did back in the day, and as I said, I truly do love a challenge. I've watched you. For a month now, I've watched you. You're not as stubborn as he used to be. You're older than he was when he defeated me, but I'll humor your challenge all the same. I'll let you prove the old man right, and if you do, I'll leave Montana again. I'll let your sweet wife return home. I'll even give you back. Your little girl. The words coming from his mouth sounded cold and serpentine. I didn't know what to make of them. I remained rooted to the spot. My eyes locked with his as he awaited my answer. I've caused you a lot of pain, Peter. Surely you'd like some payback, wouldn't you? How about it? You and me, down at the crossroads outside of Mill Creek, Montana, just as it was meant to be. I looked the devil in the eye, and as I did, I felt my fist clench. You'll let my cafe go, and we'll get our little girl back. I replied, my voice barely more than a croak. No strings attached. I'm a grifter friend, but I'm no liar. He said, shall I see you there tomorrow night? Yeah. The words sounded so heavy coming out of my mouth, but they needed to be said. The rage and grief in me seemed to boil over. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Some part of me knew it was a trap, but something else told me that I had to do it anyways. Tomorrow night, I'll beat the living shit out of you, and when I do, you stay the hell away from my goddamn family for good. Do you hear me? Loud and clear. The man in black replied, and just like that, he was gone. I've recorded all of this so that if I don't come back, someone knows what happened to me. I'm going to head out to the crossroads soon, and one way or another, I aim to finish what my grandpa Nathan started. I know that the devil I'm facing won't fight fair. I know my odds might not look good, but I'll fight all the same, and even if it kills me, I'll beat that son of a bitch into the dirt just like my grandpa did. I'll win this one, whatever it takes.