by Randall Pine
“We should probably keep a good distance,” Simon said.
“Yeah, seriously, Abby—that demon’s no joke,” Virgil added, hurrying to keep up.
“You guys, it’s fine. I’m not going to try to go into the house,” Abby said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not going to go poke the demon. I just want to get closer, and it’s going to be fine. How many people are walking past it every hour, with no clue it’s there? Dozens? Hundreds?”
Simon had to admit, she had a point.
“It’s going to be fine,” she repeated.
“We should have brought a bat or something,” Virgil muttered.
“I really don’t think a bat would do much against Asag,” Simon said.
“Asag’s not the one I’m worried that we might have to knock out,” Virgil replied.
Simon looked up after Abby. “Oh.”
She reached the edge of Mrs. Grunberg’s property and crouched behind the end of the fence that separated the old woman’s yard from the apartment building next door. The guys crouched next to her, with Virgil peering over their shoulders to try to get a good look at the house. “Is it still there?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Simon said, swallowing hard. “It’s still there.”
The pulsing red heartbeat glow filled the basement windows, getting brighter, then dimmer; brighter, then dimmer. And maybe Simon’s mind was playing tricks on him, but this time, it seemed like every time the lights got brighter, the house actually expanded, the walls bowing outward and then contracting again when the light dimmed. As if the house was breathing.
The begonias were covered even more thickly in the liquid black shadow. The wet darkness dripped more quickly, and more frequently, creating smoking shadow puddles on the walkway.
“Well, that’s not normal,” Abby said, taking in the scene.
“Right. So can we go?” Simon asked nervously.
“Hold on. I want to get closer.”
Before they could protest, Abby was off again, crouching low to the ground and running into the front yard. She jogged up behind the oak tree near the corner of the house.
“Hey, look...some of our salt is still there,” Virgil said, pointing down at the wet, broken line of salt crystals in the grass.
“You guys made a salt ring?” Abby asked. She nodded her approval. “Nice.”
Simon’s chest grew warmer, and his toes began to tingle. “Thanks,” he said bashfully.
But Abby held a finger up to her lips. She had just noticed something. She inclined her head, leaning in and trying to hear it more clearly. Simon held his breath and listened, too.
And then he heard it.
The house actually was breathing.
As the lights got brighter, and the walls swelled outward, and the house inhaled; when the lights got dimmer, and the walls pulled back inward, and the house exhaled. It was a low, rumbling sort of breath that vibrated the very grass they stood on.
“You didn’t tell me the house could breathe,” Abby said.
“It was not doing that before,” Virgil said. “The lights, yes; the breathing, no.”
“And it wasn’t expanding, either,” Simon said.
Abby nodded thoughtfully. “Asag’s power is growing,” she said. “We should tell Llewyn. We’re running out of time.”
“Time for what?”
“Time to defeat Asag. Whatever he’s planning, he needs to build up enough strength to do it. Based on the house, I’d say he’s getting close.” She pointed at the wet, black begonias. “See that? That’s called umbrasis. Asag is turning the flowers into living shadows. That’s a sign of advanced strength.”
“They were like that last night, too,” Simon said quietly. “Not as bad as it is now, but…yeah.”
Abby gritted her teeth. “Asag has to be put down.”
“Okay, yes, sure. But…not tonight,” Simon said nervously. “Right?”
“Sure…right…” Abby said. But she sounded distracted. She sank to her knees and shook out her hands. She placed one hand on the ground in front of her, pressing her palm into the grass.
“What’re you doing?” Virgil whispered.
“Shh,” she whispered back. “Concentrating.”
Virgil and Simon crouched uncomfortably behind her, watching the house expand and contract. Abby knelt as still as stone, except for her own breath, which slowed over the course of a minute so that her breaths matched the house’s breaths perfectly.
The blades of grass near her fingers began to tremble. Simon gasped as they bent toward her, as if the grass itself was bowing to Abby’s hand. The ring of affected grass widened, and more and more of the blades in the yard bent over, leaning in toward Abby. The circle expanded and expanded, until all the grass between the tree and the house was hunched over, pointing toward their hiding spot.
“Simon,” Virgil whispered. “Look.”
The lights from the basement were growing darker. They were still fluctuating with the house’s breath, but the brightness wasn’t so bright anymore, and the dimness was practically solid darkness. As they watched, and as Abby breathed, and as the blades of grass bent toward them, the demon’s light got fainter and fainter. Soon, it had fallen to nothing more than a steady, dark-red burn, like the glow of a shuttered furnace.
Simon felt something in his stomach clench. “Abby…what are you doing?”
But she didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were moving, murmuring something in a secret language.
Simon felt something strange in the tips of his fingers. They prickled with numbness, and the sensation moved quickly across his palms and up his arms. His legs grew weak, and he fell onto his knees. Abby was too preoccupied to notice, and Virgil didn’t sense anything wrong.
The cold, numb tremble crept across Simon’s whole body, filling his chest so he could no longer feel his heart hammering. He tried to cry out, but his vocal chords were numb, too, and he couldn’t make a sound. The pins-and-needles feeling moved up his skull, tingling at his eyes. As the sensation covered his face, a static blackness blanketed his vision, falling over it like a bad television signal. He sank down in the grass, screaming inside, seeing nothing and making no sound.
But then, through the darkness of his vision, a red light began to glow—the light from inside the basement. It didn’t get brighter or dimmer; it just grew wider, spreading across the darkness, changing the fuzzy blackness into vivid red, until it was all he could see. Then a figure began to melt forth from the blood-red field. It resolved itself into a shape of the huge, hulking demon in a finely-tailored suit, his face covered with a white porcelain baby mask. “Simon,” the demon whispered, growing larger in his vision, expanding against the red light. “Siiiimooonnnnn…” The demon lifted a hand to his mask and pushed it up. The shadow of the porcelain fell across Asag’s face, and Simon’s heart began to hammer in his chest as the shadow lifted, and he saw the demon’s true visage.
“Simon!”
Simon snapped back to himself. He blinked; his vision cleared instantly. Asag vanished, and the red light was replaced by the sight of Mrs. Grunberg’s yard. Virgil was standing over him, his hands on Simon’s shoulders, shaking him. “Hey. Are you okay?”
Simon blinked. He gave his head a good shake, to clear the confusion. “Yeah,” he lied. “I’m good.”
Abby’s attention was still focused on the house, and the light coming from the basement windows. “We should probably keep it down,” she said, sounding distracted. “It’s probably weird enough for people walking by that we’re hiding behind a tree in an old lady’s yard.”
As if on cue, a new voice materialized from behind them: “What are you doing hiding behind a tree in my grandma’s yard?”
All three of them jumped. They spun around to see a young man standing behind them, a brown paper bag cradled tightly in his arms. He was
younger than them, but not by much, probably just out of high school. He had bright orange hair and pale, white skin, covered with freckles. His large brown eyes had dark circles beneath them, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His shoulders sagged, and his eyelids drooped. Simon was exhausted just looking at him.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded again. The paper bag looked heavy; he shifted it from one arm to the other, frowning down tiredly at the three strangers crouched in the grass.
“Oh. I…um. I…” Virgil stammered. “I…dropped my…con…tact?”
“He dropped his contact,” Abby quickly confirmed, taking control of the conversation with remarkable confidence. “It’s his last pair. Would you help us look?”
The young man squirmed uncomfortably. He obviously did not want to help them look. “I…need to get inside,” he said, his voice weighed down with exhaustion. He skirted around them, keeping his eyes trained on them as he moved toward the front porch. “But you guys shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?” Virgil asked. “Got something hidden in the basement?”
Simon elbowed him in the ribs. He groaned in pain.
“Private property,” the young man murmured. “Just…you should go.” Then he turned and climbed the stairs, fumbled with his keys, and disappeared into the house.
Abby looked at the Simon and Virgil. “Well, that was weird,” she decided.
Simon pushed himself up to his feet and brushed off his knees. “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” he said.
But Abby looked directly into his eyes, holding him with her stare. “What did you see?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Simon said. “I didn’t see anything. Let’s go.”
Abby hesitated. She seemed to be working something out in her mind. “Simon…I’m not going to touch you. I’m not going to empathize. I could do that. But I won’t. Because I think we need each other. All three of us. I think we’re in this together, and we have to trust each other.” Her blue eyes blazed. “But I need to be able to trust you. We all need to be able to trust each other.”
Simon tried to hold her gaze, but he found himself completely unable to do so. He looked away, staring down into the grass. “If I saw something that I thought I should tell you about, I would tell you about it,” he said. It wasn’t a lie, exactly.
Abby bit at her lower lip, considering him closely.
Virgil leaned in, breaking the air between them. “Sorry, am I missing something? Are you…seeing things? Things that aren’t a house and a light and a demon and some nerd with groceries?”
“No,” Simon said, brushing past Virgil and heading back toward the Pontiac. “Come on, we need to go.”
“I always, always, always hate to say this, but I think Simon’s right.” Virgil shuddered. “That kid weirded me out.”
“That kid hasn’t slept in days,” Abby replied, her voice thick with concern. “He has an extraordinarily powerful hell-spawn camped out in his basement. You wouldn’t imagine the strength of the negative vibe that sort of presence radiates.”
“I might,” Virgil frowned. He looked on as Simon trudged back toward the street. “Simon might, too.”
Abby looked over her shoulder, considering the old house. Lights—regular, everyday yellow-white lights—flicked on as Mrs. Grunberg’s grandson moved through the house. There was another light on in the top floor, a dim light, as if from a lamp. It was likely Mrs. Grunberg’s bedroom.
“Look,” Abby said, nodding up at the house. “Look at those lights. This is a home. At least, it’s meant to be a home. But a demon moves into the basement, cloaks himself from the inhabitants, so they have no idea that he’s down there…just sitting there, in the darkness, draining their power, soaking in their strength. He’s killing them. Slowly, and painfully. He’s killing them.” She crossed her arms and stabbed at the earth with the toe of her shoe. Then she added in a whisper, “You can’t possible know how that feels.”
“My mutant power is not empathy,” Virgil admitted. When he heard his own words, his eyes grew large, and his face flushed pale. “Not that you’re a mutant,” he added quickly.
Abby nodded and waved him off. “It’s okay,” she said, smiling. “I know what you mean.”
Virgil fidgeted awkwardly. “Well…” he said, trailing off as he looked up the street. Simon had made it back to the car, and he was leaning on the hood, shooting impatient looks back at Virgil. Virgil nodded at him. “We’re definitely going to help them,” he said, turning back to Abby. “That’s what we’re doing. Right? That was our plan all along. I mean, man, that’s why we broke in and faced the demon. And now we have a real wizard teaching us how to take it down! We’re going to help them, Abby. Definitely. That’s the whole plan. I mean, it’s the only plan, really,” he shrugged. He looked doubtfully down at the deep red glow rising and falling through the basement windows. “It’s just…now’s probably not right. You know?”
Abby sighed. She nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“I mean, we thought we were ready, and we weren’t. We were not. The monster just blinked, and I was teleported from in there to over there,” he said, jerking his thumb at the spot where he’d come back to consciousness. “And Simon…I don’t know what happened to Simon, but something happened, and he won’t tell me what, but he has not been the same since.”
Abby frowned. “So he’s not always that…I don’t know…odd?”
“Well. He’s always odd. Just not so odd.”
“Hm,” she said. The corners of her lips turned up into an almost-smile.
“Look, what I’m saying is, we weren’t ready...we weren’t nearly ready, and we’re still way not ready. I know you have super powers or whatever, and actually, I have a lot of questions about that, because the wizard got a little weird when he talked about your mutant power thi—sorry! Sorry. Not your mutant power thing, you know, but…” Virgil took a deep breath and started over. “What I am saying is that we’re going to come back, and we’re going to rock that demon’s world, and we’re going to banish him so hard, he’ll blast straight down into the eighty-eighth circle of hell. But it’s not happening tonight.” He frowned down at his hand and flexed his fingers. “I can’t even make magic happen without a bracelet.”
Abby rubbed her forehead. She glanced helplessly back at the house. There was a quick flutter of motion from one of the windows, and a curtain fell into place, as if someone had been watching them from inside. “Okay,” she finally said, turning back and glancing at Simon across the street. “You’re right. We’ll come back when we have a plan.”
“Good. Thank you,” Virgil said, sounding relieved. “Simon had that serious ‘I’ll leave you behind and you can Uber home’ look in his eyes.”
“Does he leave you behind a lot?” Abby asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, sometimes,” Virgil shrugged. Then he grinned. “But only when I deserve it.”
He turned and walked back across the lawn, heading toward Simon and the Pontiac. Abby took a couple of steps, then she paused. She glanced back at the house, with its blood-red windows and dripping black flowers. Then she made a quick decision: she grabbed the locket around her neck and pulled down sharply, snapping the thin silver chain that held it around her neck. She made sure neither Simon nor Virgil was looking in her direction, and she dropped the necklace into the grass.
Then she hurried across the lawn, catching up with Virgil and walking back with him toward Simon’s car.
Chapter 17
“Everything okay?” Simon asked as they approached the Pontiac.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” Virgil replied. “You good?”
Simon nodded. “Yeah. I’m good.”
Abby sidled up next to Simon, her hands planted in her back pockets. She leaned up against the Pontiac, her hip pressing against the fender. “Guess we shou
ld call it a night?” she said.
Simon nodded slowly. “Guess so,” he said, sounding a little reluctant. Abby had a feeling it had more to do with saying goodbye to her for the evening than it did with saying goodbye to Asag.
“I work a double shift tomorrow,” she told them. “You guys coming in?”
“Let me ask you a question…you know any secret cheat codes for any of the games that make them spit out extra tickets?” Virgil asked hopefully. “I have been playing for that stupid Nerf gun for so, so long…”
Abby snickered. “Sorry, champ,” she said, pushing herself off the car. “You’ll have to earn it like all the other suckers.”
“We have to be at Llewyn’s early tomorrow,” Simon said. Then he added, “But…maybe we can come by after.” He gave Virgil a questioning look.
Virgil nodded. “Definitely.”
Abby smiled. “Good,” she decided. She touched Simon’s arm as she scooted between them, taking a few steps toward her truck. “See you tomorrow, then.”
Simon was grateful for the darkness; it meant Abby wouldn’t be able to tell how hard he was blushing. “Tomorrow,” he confirmed.
“I’ll be there too, but, you know, whatever,” Virgil said, rolling his eyes at the other two.
“Get home safely,” Simon said.
“No promises,” Abby teased. She scratched her neck, and then her fingers began to move around her throat, patting her skin, as if searching for something that wasn’t there.
“Everything okay?” Simon asked.
“Skin mites?” Virgil suggested.
“My necklace. I must have dropped it by the tree,” Abby said, pursing her lips into a pout.
“We can go look,” Simon said, taking a step back into the road.
“No. Thank you. But no. Go home.” Abby smiled again, and it lit up her entire face. It seemed to light up Simon’s face, too. “I’ll find it. Go on back, I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
