Stalked by Demons

by Trudi Jaye

  “You okay, Hazel?” asks a rough, sleepy voice.

  It’s Mr. Fookes, my super, standing in front of his doorway, looking like he’s just been woken from a deep sleep.

  He raises his eyebrows at my fighting stance. “I know it’s not the best neighborhood, but that’s overkill, don’t you think?” he says with a joking smile.

  He’s in his fifties, balding on top, and hairy everywhere else. He’s wearing boxers and an undershirt that’s straining over his beer belly. It’s a warm night, but he could definitely be wearing a little more.

  “Never be too careful,” I mutter, nodding at him as I turn to go.

  “Wait a minute. I have something for you.” He disappears back into his apartment, leaving me to stand awkwardly in the lobby.

  A moment later he returns to the door, holding an old, battered toaster. “Mrs. Wilson from 3F said her toaster’s not working.” He glances down at the appliance in his hands, which looks like she bought it in the ‘50s. “She’s a widow. Her kids don’t come by.”

  I hesitate, wishing I could just say no. But her kids don’t visit. “Give it here,” I say grumpily. I walk over and grab the ancient machine, juggling it with my monster—demon—hunting devices. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Mr. Fookes smiles at me like I’ve just agreed to give him a million dollars. I’ve lived a lot of places in the last few years, and he’s the first super I’ve ever met who actually gives a rat’s behind about anyone other than himself. It’s hard to resist, even for someone like me.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Fookes,” I say, starting the climb to my apartment on the second floor.

  “Goodnight, Hazel.”

  By the time I get to my door, I’m regretting taking the toaster, if only because I’ve almost dropped my own device several times on the way up. Usually I don’t mind the stairs, it helps keep me fit, but tonight, everything seems harder. My body is aching, and my head is acting like I’ve never stayed up later than midnight before.

  Putting the toaster and my metal box down on the ground outside my door, I turn my key in the lock and push open the door. A large figure looms over me, dark and twisted, and I stumble backward, almost tripping over the toaster behind me. It makes a loud clattering noise on the hardwood floor as it’s pushed backward.

  This time it’s real. The demons have come for me.

  6

  I raise my hands into the same fighting stance as before, my heart pounding like it thinks it can escape my chest and run in the other direction. I don’t have anything to protect myself except my bare hands, and I don’t think—

  Wait.

  The demon isn’t moving.

  I squint up at it, pushing my glasses up my nose. The face comes into focus.

  Metallic eyes gaze blankly down at me, broad shoulders dwarfing my own. All the readiness leaves my body with a whoosh.

  This creature is covered in metal, just like the one at the recycling yard, but that’s where the similarities end.

  It’s my own damn creation, a sculpture made of twisted junk metal. I moved it into the living room before I left because the courier is picking it up in the morning. I glance at the clock on the wall. In less than four hours.

  Leaving the door open, I crouch down and grab the toaster, now even more dented, and my demon device.

  Behind me, another door opens, and I turn to see a face peering out.

  Nelson. The kid from across the hall. He doesn’t say anything, and it’s well past his bedtime. He just stares at me, his dark brown eyes taking everything in. His pajamas have Spiderman on them and are a little bit too short on his legs like he’s had a recent growth spurt.

  “It’s fine. You can go back to bed,” I mutter in his direction as I stand back up.

  He just keeps staring. I don’t really know how old he is, probably about eleven or twelve, and I’m not sure why his mom is letting him open the door in the middle of the night to check out strange noises.

  But I also don’t know how to deal with the odd kid standing behind me, so I just go back to what I was doing. Turning, I walk into my apartment and put the two devices on the kitchen counter. I glance back to the open door.

  He’s still there, watching.

  “Go back inside and lock the door,” I say to him. “It’s not safe out here this time of night. Go on.” I make a shooing gesture with my hand, and he finally goes back inside his apartment and shuts the door.

  Shaking my head, I close my door and head back to the kitchen. I need a soothing cup of chamomile tea to sort this day out. I put the jug on to boil and then remember the chocolate chip cookies in the cupboard. My stomach rumbles, and I figure almost getting arrested is practically cardio, and pull them out.

  My hand stills on the cookie tin. The packet is half gone and I only ate one of them. For a moment, I stand there, trying to get my head around it.

  And then I realize.

  Nelson.

  I’ve never properly talked to him before tonight, or even smiled at him. The interaction we just had is the most we’ve ever communicated. But about a year ago, I realized someone was breaking into my apartment while I was at work. It wasn’t because anything was missing or broken. But things were moved around in the kitchen, and the toilet seat was sometimes left up.

  I set up cameras to find out who it was. My main suspect was Mr. Fookes; he has a key and seemed the obvious suspect. But when I watched the video, I discovered my young neighbor across the hall was sneaking in and playing my PlayStation after school, drinking my milk, and then carefully cleaning up after himself before he left.

  At first I was just relieved I didn’t have to confront Mr Fookes. Then I figured I’d just catch his Mom in the hallway sometime, and let her know. But then, when I thought about it some more, I wasn’t so sure. He’s always careful, never spills his drink or leaves a mess. And he’s always long gone by the time I get home around six in the evenings. He doesn’t bother me, and he’s not looking to spend time with me. I never felt like I had a real complaint to make, especially given the fact that he’s only a kid.

  So I never stopped him.

  But now he’s eating my chocolate chip cookies. A slice of annoyance works its way into my thoughts. It was fine when he didn’t let me know he was here. But eating my chocolate chip cookies is a whole other level. It’s like he’s deliberately testing the limits.

  I’m half tempted to go knock on his door and demand that his mother pays for the cookies he’s eaten. For the emotional turmoil the loss of those cookies has caused me.

  And then I wonder if his mother is even there.

  I close the door to the cupboard firmly and turn back to pour the hot water into my cup. I’m not getting involved.

  Nelson is not my problem. He’s a smart kid, I’m sure he’s fine.

  I have bigger things to worry about.

  7

  Running down the last steps, my footsteps echo in the stone stairwell of the Professor’s basement lab at Stanford University. My eyes feel like enormous bloodshot saucers, and I have a raging headache.

  It’s cold and damp down here, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t survive an earthquake, but the Professor doesn’t care, and I can’t afford to.

  I’ve just traveled to work on my least favorite form of transportation—the bus. I hate how it stops every two minutes to allow yet another sweaty passenger to squeeze into the already over-crowded aisles. The smell of body odour and flowery perfume still lingers unpleasantly around me, even now. The sooner I can get my car back from outside the metal recycling place, the better.

  It also means I’m really late for work.

  Pushing through the door, I see the Professor hunched over a brand-new, high-pitch frequency meter set up in the middle of the room. It’s blasting out a signal that’s too high for me to hear, but the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, so I know it’s there.

  Behind him on the bench are three brand-new machines; one a specialist microscope of some kind, another a d
evice for analyzing sound waves, and the last one I don’t even recognize. It’s all come from the grant he mysteriously received last month. Rumor around campus is that they’d been about to kick him out when he announced it. Yet again, he survived by the skin of his teeth.

  He’s got one more piece of equipment set up beside the others. My heart sinks. He’s trying the paranormal indicator machine. Again.

  “Professor,” I say.

  He doesn’t look up.

  I clear my throat. “Professor Hasselblatt. I’m here.”

  He still doesn’t look up, so I walk forward until I’m standing beside him. He’s so focused on the paranormal indicator he doesn’t even notice.

  I watch him fiddling with the dials, itching to tell him the stupid machine’s not going to work. I should know, I’ve done every test under the sun on it.

  “Professor?” I say instead. “Do you want to hear about last night?” I touch his shoulder lightly, trying to get his attention.

  He jumps and lets out a yell. Putting one hand over his heart, like he’s checking it’s still beating, he looks up at me, his hairy, white eyebrows going up and down like they’re rabbits racing across a field. “You gave me the shock of my life, Hazel.” His pale blue eyes are wide and reproachful behind his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “I did call your name, Professor.”

  He harrumphs and then turns back to his machines. “I’m busy,” he says and proceeds to ignore me again. “Go tidy up the junk room.” He waves one hand in the direction of the room, his other hand still adjusting the machine. His thick fingers are fiddling with the dials, like he’s trying to find some particular frequency. He’s very involved in whatever theory he’s testing, his mind going a mile a minute. “There are some new boxes in there.”

  He’s not worried about the time, and he’s obviously forgotten where I was last night.

  I stand behind him for a moment, hesitating. Do I force him to listen to my story of what happened? Do I make him pay attention to what I learned from the police detective? How I almost captured a paranormal creature?

  A demon.

  It’s a huge deal. I got a name to call them, and my machine worked. Mostly. As soon as I fix it, I’ll be able to do it again. My fingers are literally itching, I’m so excited by the prospect of having a real, live demon to test. My heart wriggles around in my chest like it’s a toddler trying to escape a high chair.

  But I also don’t want to aggravate the Professor. He can be temperamental, and sometimes it’s better to just let him be. It’s not surprising he’s so absorbed by his machines, they’re clearly brand new. He never gets new stuff.

  Maybe my story isn’t that important, and forcing him to pay attention might backfire on me. I didn’t actually capture a demon, after all. The whole night was a bit of a disaster. I take a step away. In fact, the more I think about it, the better the idea of leaving him be. No need to poke the sleeping bear.

  At least he hasn’t noticed that I’m an hour and a half late for work.

  Wandering down to the end of the lab, I step over the threshold into my favorite place on campus.

  The junk room.

  It’s all second hand, patched up, broken down, but it’s the only reason the Professor manages to get by in a university that wants him gone. That, and the fact he knows exactly when to make himself scarce.

  I often wonder how the Professor managed to find the perfect room for all his treasures. It’s like he’s got a lucky star over his head, and no matter how many people he pisses off, he’s still able to squeak through and make his world how he wants it to be.

  Anywhere and anytime someone is giving something away, Professor Hasselblatt is there. He’s always in the right place at the right time. It’s his superpower. It’s how he got most things in this room, and the lab behind me. It’s how he got the old water-damaged boxes of notes from the top-secret CIA paranormal research off an unsuspecting lab assistant who was supposed to destroy them.

  Two years ago when I came to talk to him about his paranormal research, he assumed I was a student, and asked if I wanted to be his assistant. He said couldn’t afford to pay me, but I could use any of his old machines—the ones that worked at least. I agreed immediately…and then told him I could fix all his old machines for him if he wanted.

  I’ve never told him I’m not a student at Stanford, and he’s never regretted hiring me.

  It took me a year, but I fixed all his old machines and other mechanical treasures. He’s like a kid in a candy store some days, excited over the capabilities of his newly functioning second-hand machinery.

  “I always knew it would come in handy,” he crowed at me not so long ago, as he was flicking the switch on a dust particle analysis tool that was previously only useful as a doorstop. I’m just glad my fixing superpower—thanks to growing up in a survivalist community that didn’t believe in outside interference—can be useful to someone other than my elderly widowed neighbors.

  The junk room is different from the rest of the lab. It’s a little musty, but also somehow exciting. It smells of promise. Of anticipation. The tang of old paper mingles with rust and oil, and the coppery taste of metal to create the exact mix to attract someone like me, desperate for answers.

  All the walls are covered in shelving—acquired when one of the other departments was being refurbished a few years back—and the shelves are completely covered with junk.

  I meander over to the big wall of shelves at the far end of the room. Gazing up and down the row, I hum under my breath, trying to decide what to work on first.

  Junk is probably too polite a term for most of it. Books, appliances, old clothing, bottles filled with liquid and unidentifiable floating objects, research papers, old shoes, vials, tubs, plastic buckets, a stuffed rabbit and two stuffed mice, a packet of old dried worms, and an enormous jar of what looks like animal hair are among the more useful items. I’m the one who sorted through them, itemizing and organizing it all.

  On the lowest level of the shelving, there are some boxes I haven’t seen before. They’re made from wood and seem a little sturdier than some of the other bedraggled cardboard research boxes we usually get. They must be the new boxes the professor was talking about.

  Immediately intrigued, I pull out the one closest to me and place it on the old wooden table—inherited from the chemistry department, complete with burns and stains all over it—in the middle of the room. The top is nailed shut, but that doesn’t stop me. Grabbing my tool kit from behind the door, I get my hammer and have the lid off in no time.

  Inside is a crowded mix of glass bottles, metal flasks, paperwork, and strange metal disks about the size of my palm with weird writing on them. I frown down into the box, taking note of each of the items, before deciding what to look at first.

  The metal disks are intriguing, so I pick one up. It hums gently in my hand, the metal warm, rather than cool as I would have expected. Frowning, I turn it over, trying to figure out where the mechanism is that would create the noise and the warmth, but it’s just a thin metal circle with a thickened point in the middle, like a flattened spinning top.

  I put it down on the table, and idly make it spin with my fingers. It whirs on the wood; the humming noise intensifies and the writing blurs. It’s an unusual tone, and I hum along, trying to make my voice meld with it.

  The hairs on my arms stand on end, and the air around me thickens. There’s a sound being made by the disk that I can’t hear. Little sparks and electrical threads like baby lightning appear off the top of the spinning disk, charging the atmosphere in the room. A shiver runs over my body.

  Abruptly I put my hand out to stop the disk spinning.

  The air around me relaxes immediately, and I let out my breath. I don’t know what the disk was doing, but it didn’t feel good.

  8

  Returning the disk to the box, I pick up one of the bottles.

  It’s about the size of a perfume bottle, the lavender-colored glass patterned and d
elicate, with an old-fashioned cork stopper at the top. It looks like it has swirling smoke inside it, but that’s probably just a trick of the old glass.

  What intrigues me the most is the bottom of the bottle, which has some kind of mechanism at the base, with a tiny switch on the outside. I peer through the glass at the mechanism, trying to understand what it might have been used for. It doesn’t make sense, with wires and strange blobs sticking out in random places.

  I place it back in the box and pull out an old manila folder filled with documents. The paper is old and thin with wonky typing from an actual typewriter and whiteout used to correct the mistakes. The words are dry and precise, but what they’re describing is the real-life accounts of people who have claimed to see demons or other paranormal occurrences in the region. Each of the witness statements is described in detail, with similarities underlined in red pen.

  Excitement zips through my veins. I’ve talked to people who said they saw paranormal creatures—mostly ghost hunters and crazy kooks—in the hopes of finding some with an experience similar to mine. But they all told different tales, and none of it matched what happened to me. The waterlogged CIA research talks about paranormal experiments and gives details about the creatures, and but all their information sources were undisclosed, with no references to real people.

  But this… this is different. This is proof that other people have seen what I’ve seen. On top of meeting the detective last night, this seems like more than I could have hoped for.

  I scan my finger over the pages. Already I’ve seen mention of a blue glow. A creature looming. My heart is pounding as I try to figure out the ramifications of what this could mean for me.

  Essentially, it’s huge.

  Ginormous.

  It means I have proof that I’m not the only one to have seen blue, glowing demons. That maybe I don’t deserve to be sent back to Ravenwood.

  Hands shaking, I put the paperwork down and pick up another of the small glass bottles, this one a hazy green, turning it gently in my hands. The documentation puts another light on the artifacts in front of me. It makes them seem more authentic, more likely to be valuable.