by D V Wolfe
But to where? Why? Everyone I knew was slipping into this fate and somehow, I knew that I had caused it. I felt the bumper and the front tire of the truck nudge me from behind and then the weight behind it began to drive me forward. I closed my eyes and lay down as the earth began to swallow us, falling into darkness.
8
I bolted upright on the floor and Rosetta’s quilt fell off me. Someone was standing, framed in the doorway to the kitchen, across the hallway from the living room. There was the smell of something familiar in the air.
Sulfur.
I got to my feet and was annoyed to notice my shoes were off. Rosetta must not have been able to help herself when she came down to check on us. I padded across the hall.
“What brings you here, Festus?” I grumbled, walking past him into the kitchen.
“Good morning, Bane,” He said, keeping his voice low and surreptitious. “I almost couldn’t get in to see you.”
I filled a glass with water from the tap and knocked it back, pouring a third of it down my front, feeling relief as the cold water hit my sweaty skin.
“How did you get in by the way?” I asked, setting the empty glass down. “We just burned and smudged the whole place. It should be about as pleasant in here for you as playing chicken with your privates and a band saw.”
“Trust me, it’s no picnic.”
I grinned at him when I noticed Festus was shifting his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“Hell’s hemorrhoids?”
“You have no idea,” Festus hissed moving to a kitchen chair.
“Not that I don’t enjoy watching the pain in my ass have a pain in his ass, but to what do I owe the pleasure?”
He changed his mind about the chair and leaned against the oven door instead.
“I heard tell that you were planning on dragging that old clunker to St. Louis in search of a demon to hunt.”
I didn’t move. I worked my face into an expression of boredom. I trusted Festus about as far as I could throw him. And he wasn’t thin or very aerodynamic. I didn’t know why he was asking and I sure as hell didn’t want to show my hand to a pissant demon who was going to run home and tattle to the big dogs. Especially since I still had no clue as to how I was going to kill the son of a Beelzebub.
“Did you now?” I said on a yawn. “Well, I like a demon bedtime story as much as the next condemned soul, but why don’t we wrap this up. I’ve got shit to do.”
“Like relive fond memories in your dreams?”
I gripped the counter to keep from throwing the water glass at him. “Have you been digging around in my head, Festus? You know that isn’t very gentlemanly.”
He grinned. “Where do you think we come up with all the brilliant ideas for the creative things we do to you in the pit?”
“Get on with it, Festus,” I said. “What do you want?”
For the first time since I’d known him, Festus looked nervous. He smoothed his tie and closed his eyes as he shifted his feet again.
“Could we talk outside? This burning pain is absolute hell.”
I snorted and started towards the back door. “There’s no irony when you say that, is there.”
He followed me out onto the back porch and I slumped down onto the top step. Festus paused next to me as if he was about to sit and then thought better of it and then tripped on his way down the stairs.
“How do you humans function like this? You can’t see anything.”
“Poltergeist wrecked Rosetta’s porch light,” I said.
I heard Festus huff and from the light coming from the kitchen, I could see him move carefully off the bottom stair, to stand in the yard. Then he turned to face me, leaning one hand on the railing.
“Much better,” He said with a sigh. I just looked at him, waiting for him to tell me why he was there. “I only bring up St. Louis,” Festus said, casting a gaze from side to side as if checking Rosetta’s yard for eavesdroppers. “Because if you are, I want to help.”
I stared at him. “You. A demon. My court-appointed accountant, wants to help me kill another demon?”
Festus rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you take out a front-page ad while you’re at it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, how do you humans put it? I want to move up the corporate ladder and the demon standing on the rung above me is a huge supporter of said St. Louis-bound demon. If he’s dethroned, the rung above me becomes vacant because in the rules of warfare downstairs, when a general dies, you torture his privates at the victory party.”
“Torture his privates, huh,” I said, trying to stifle a laugh. “And whose privates do you serve, Festus? Are you the right nut, the left or Sargeant Schlong?”
Festus rolled his eyes. “Do you want my help or not?”
“How many souls is this demon worth?”
Festus shook his head. “You know I’m not allowed to tell you that ahead of time. This isn’t an arcade game where you can pick and choose the big point bucks.” I glared at him. “Suffice it to say,” he said with a sigh. “You will be considerably closer to your goal after killing him.”
“So are you going to share with the class how one goes about killing a demon?” I asked.
Festus shook his head. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m not stupid. After him, you’d probably turn on me. Humans. You’re all so two-faced about not being two-faced. Demons, you always know where you stand: about a hundred yards away with eyes in the back of your head.”
“Does that mean you don’t know how to kill one or you’re not going to tell?” I asked.
Festus shrugged. “I know that demons can’t stand Soulman's Spice.”
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” Festus said. “It’s just something demons say to each other. ‘I hope you fall headfirst into a vat of Soulman's Spice’ or ‘Eat Soulman's Spice for that’.”
I shook my head. “Wow you guys suck at trash talking.”
“Anyway,” Festus said. “That’s somewhere to start. Figure out what the spice is and it could help at least repel him.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Not that I’m gonna go after the demon, but thanks for the oh-so-helpful info.”
Festus shook his head. “I’m not going to go skipping through the hellfire, singing about you going after a demon. I’d be in worse trouble than you would be if they knew I was trying to help you.”
I stood up. “Why are you trying to help me, really?”
“I told you,” Festus said, pulling out his sunglasses and putting them on. He snapped his fingers and Rosetta’s broken porch light flicked on. “I’m a corporate climber.”
“Whatever.” I turned to head back into the house. “I’ll think about what you said.”
At the door, I turned to look back at him and saw a few red sparks scattered across her lawn, fading to nothing.
I tried to go back to sleep but every time I closed my eyes, there they were. Crying and burning and calling out for help. I took another pill and eventually they faded again, but sleep was gone for the night. I lay on my pillow with one arm behind my head, listening to the kid snoring on the couch next to me and I began piecing together a plan.
When the sun was up, we would head for Messina. If I had to nail Stacks’ sorry hide to the wall of his rat-trap trailer, I would. Gleefully, in fact. He owed me. And he was also about the only expert I knew who might have some kind of inkling as to how to take down a demon.
I started making a mental list of things we’d need and by the time the kid woke up, I was flipping pancakes in the kitchen. He ambled in and I waved the spatula at him.
“How’d ya sleep?”
“Like a rock,” he said, slumping into a kitchen chair and staring at the items I’d strewn across Rosetta’s table. “What’s this thing?” Noah asked, pointing to a shell loader.
“My shell loader. You ever reloaded shotgun shells?”
Noah cut his eyes to me. “Until two days ago, I
’d never held a shotgun.”
“Well consider your cherry popped. Now comes learning technique and the pre-game work that goes into it.”
I slid the pancakes onto a plate and traded the skillet for the coarse kosher salt Rosetta kept in the cabinet. It was industrial size and I showed him how to fill and press to seal the shells.
“Now put your back into it. The last thing you want in your barrel is a poorly-filled shell. Talk about something blowing up in your face.”
Noah worked the press and as I turned the bacon in the pan on the stove, I watched the expressions on his face change like channels on a TV. They rotated from satisfaction when he would press a perfect shell, and then his face would shift to anger and disbelief and then satisfaction again when he’d press another perfect shell.
“Something on your mind?” I asked, filling our plates.
“Why me,” Noah said. It wasn’t a question.
“Sorry?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
He poured syrup on his pancakes and put a finger on a shell before knocking it over with a flick. “I’ve been wondering why it’s me that’s sitting at this table in West Virginia with you. Why am I the kid that can set people on fire with his hands? Where am I going to be in five years? A week? Tomorrow?”
“Well, assuming you want to keep trucking with me, you’ll be in Messina, Indiana.”
“What’s in Messina?” Noah asked. He stuffed a forkful of pancakes in his mouth and looked around the table for something to drink. I watched him.
“You alright there?” I asked. He was looking frantic and with nothing to drink readily available, he spit the mouthful back onto his plate. “I’m starting to see why all the girls are crazy for you,” I said.
“Hot,” he whispered.
I got up and filled a glass of water from the sink and set it down in front of him.
“Where’s Rosetta?” He asked after draining the glass.
“Sleeping in. She’s like an old cat. Give her a sunspot on the bed, and she’ll curl up in it until high-noon when it goes away.”
“I heard that,” Rosetta croaked from upstairs. A second later pink, bunny slippers appeared on the stairs followed by a bright pink housecoat and Rosetta’s gray hair trying to escape from a man’s black ski cap.
She shuffled past us and we heard the front door open. She shuffled back down the hall and reappeared with the newspaper sticking out of the pocket of her housecoat. She walked past me and took the coffee pot to the sink to fill it.
She was muttering but I distinctly heard her say, “What kind of a fool makes breakfast and forgets the damn coffee.”
I grinned. “What’s with the ski cap, Rosetta? Gonna be an early winter?”
“More comfortable than a hair net. Have to keep something on the hair or it tries to grow a mind of its own.”
“Uh, hello,” Noah said, his voice ratcheting up in pitch. Rosetta and I turned to look at him. “You didn’t answer my question. Why me?!”
“My,” Rosetta said with a little shake of her head. “You do like to have all the attention, don’t you, boy.”
Noah looked from me to Rosetta and back. “How do you people act like everything's normal? Like fried chicken and pancakes and poltergeists go together? One of these freaking things is NOT like the others!”
Another silence followed this latest outburst of Noah’s and I saw him quickly move his hands from the table to his lap. I saw a wisp of smoke trailing up from his lap and curling around his chin and hair. I opened my mouth to say something but Rosetta beat me to the punch. She slammed down a coffee mug in front of him.
“Boo-freaking-hoo! So what, you can set people on fire with your hands. Some people would be happy to have an ability like that. My husband was eaten from the inside out by a ghoul and left for me to find. We have friends who’ve had to murder their mothers, children, sisters, and brothers because they were possessed or enthralled or taken and turned. And Bane…” She turned to me and after a moment changed her mind and looked back to Noah. “I’m so sorry, Princess, that you had to find out that the world is a lot meaner and full of more things that go bump in the night than you had ever thought. I don’t freaking care that all those ‘scary movies’ in theaters that the kids like you only go to to try to cop a feel of your teeny-bopper girlfriend didn’t prepare you for this. The fact is, the real shit is out there and it’s hungry. And it doesn’t matter if you being wrapped up in this is fair or not. Because news flash, Einstein, LIFE ISN’T FREAKIN’ FAIR!”
A longer silence followed this statement. Rosetta was breathing like a winded bull and Noah looked like he’d shrunk in his chair by several inches.
I was trying not to laugh.
After a minute or so, Rosetta straightened up and patted her ski cap. “Sorry. I haven’t had my coffee.”
9
Rosetta poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the chair next to me. Noah continued to look dumbstruck in the aftermath of Rosetta’s rant. On the plus side, it looked like his hands had stopped smoking. I nudged her with my elbow. “I’d forgotten what you were like when you get your feathers wet.”
“Yeah, it ain’t pretty,” Rosetta said. She drank half her cup in one swallow and turned to fix her gaze on me. “So I suppose you two yahoos are off to Messina today.”
I stood and took my plate to the sink. “Yep. Going big game hunting for Stacks.”
Noah picked that moment to regrow a voice along with other anatomy. “Who is this ‘Stacks’?”
“Wilford ‘Stacks’ Crosby,” I said, “is a wizard.”
“Like a wizard, wizard?” Noah asked.
I shook my head. “Put your D&D books and your Gandalf replica staff back in the closet. No, he’s a wizard, like the kind who knows everything. Not the ones with the magic wands.”
Rosetta rolled her eyes. “Never say that in front of him. You’ll give him a big head and that is the exact opposite of what he needs.”
“So he needs a tiny head?” I asked and then ducked as the potholder I’d dropped on the table from the pancake pan came sailing across the kitchen and over my head.
“Anyways, we better get a move on. As I recall it’s about what, six hours from here?”
Rosetta nodded. “Probably longer in your rust-bucket.”
“No need to get nasty,” I said. “Noah, why don’t you go fold up your bedroll and hit the head before we get on the road.”
Noah nodded and started to cross the hall towards the wraith’s bathroom.
“Not that bathroom!” Rosetta and I called. He froze with his back to us before wide-stepping around the open door and heading for the stairs.
“Your pills aren’t worth a damn, Rosetta,” I said once we were alone.
“What, you seeing them right now?”
I looked around the kitchen. “No, not right now.”
“I’d say they’re working just fine then,” She sniffed.
“Not when I’m asleep.”
She looked over the rim of her mug at me. “Dreaming of that day again?” I nodded.
“Bane, you realize the last time you told me that you dreamed of Ashley was the night before that mean s.o.b. in Kentucky ripped your head off your body?”
I nodded again. “I remember. Unfortunately in my condition, you don’t get to forget all the ways you’ve died before.”
