Demon Theory

by Stephen Graham Jones

  Seri shakes her head in disbelief, looks as far away as possible. Flinches in spite of herself when the ambulance rocks, Skopek manhandling the jack and the spare at the same time. He cuts his hand on the jagged piece of beer bottle improbably sticking up out of the flat, and, pissed, hurls the flat deep into the trees. It’s our first indication of what he can do. But then he reels it all back in, settles the spare onto the hub, at first with what looks like great deliberation, but slowly becomes suspicion. As if can tell he’s not alone, is just going through the flat-changing motions now. His POV watches the exhaust curl delicately around the chrome bumper. When it finally shifts, not with the wind, Skopek closes his eyes once, twice, and on three he spins, crowbar in hand, but is too late: from an aerial POV he’s already receding, the POV turning suddenly ahead of the ambulance, focusing miles ahead, on Georgie the werewolf,311 howling, throwing an empty beer bottle at Hale’s mother’s window, knocking a single pane out, lower right.

  FROM Hale and Jenny’s bedroom the glass crashing into the house is muted, but there. Enough. The cigarette smoke in the room moves toward the new airway, mildly curious.

  “WELL, we’re here,” Tine says, looking up, shivering, “it’s Halloween … where is she already, Dim? My nipple ring’s making me look more excited than I am, here.”

  Dim the gargoyle is playing Chuck Connors312 with the riot gun though.

  “Jennifer, you mean?” Jakey Boy asks, but before Tine can answer, Georgie raises Con’s prosthetic formally, interrupts: “This is part of his initiation, right? That he goes inside first?”

  Dim smiles, with it now, and nods.

  Veronnie looks to Jakey Boy, mimes pity.

  “You scared of a ten-year-old girl in a wheelchair who’s dead anythehellway?” Georgie asks Jakey Boy, pushing him toward the house.

  “She wouldn’t be ten anymore, would she?” Jakey Boy asks.

  “Do you age after you die?” Dim asks back, no answer.

  “Initiation … ” Tine agrees. “We’re an exclusive group, Jakey Boy. As I’m sure you can tell … ”

  Jakey Boy shakes his head, chews his tongue, stalls, stalls, then finally slams the beer Georgie offers and throws the frothy half of it back up, the crew laughing about this. In response, Jakey Boy stares them down, walks up to the door. Knocks.

  Silence.

  Beat, beat.

  Stace looking to the Chevelle, twirling the keys on his index finger.

  Jakey Boy looks back for guidance then knocks again, louder, and this time the door swings in. It doesn’t swing closed again. In Jakey Boy’s POV there’s a gargoyle face looking down at him.

  “No more,” Stan says again.

  Jakey Boy swallows for us. Before he can even begin to back away, Stan has him fast by the throat, is slinging him out into the others. Following him down to finish it.

  As he steps off the porch he draws one of his signature shear blades, holding it low, leaning into this thing called killing, and is almost on Jakey Boy again when the riot gun simply explodes—Tine screaming from the sound, falling to her knees. The slug catches Stan in the side, picks him bodily up, throws him back onto the porch.

  It’s all silent again for a moment, but then he stands.

  Shuffles back out again.

  When everyone else backs up, away, fanning out, Dim remains, holding the gun at his hip. “I’m not up for any Jason313 bullshit tonight,” he says, and pumps the gun, fires again and again and again into Stan, who keeps coming, finally doesn’t have enough left to even maintain balance.

  After a few moments, Georgie approaches, stands with Dim over the smoking corpse of Stan. The rest too, except Jakey Boy, backed up to the porch, still trying to breathe. He watches as they touch him with their feet at first, and when he doesn’t stir they stomp him and stomp him and beat him with the gun. Toward the end Tine strips the mask off, even—revealing Stan’s decomposed face—throws it behind them.

  The kicking session over, the crew still stands over him. Their would-be killer.

  They have his blood all over them, are breathing hard too. They look at each other, Dim smiling in his mask for Jakey Boy, and then the first bit of wind from the storm moves in, lifting the snow around them.

  “See,” Georgie says. “The bad guys don’t always win,” but then Veronnie goes even whiter in the face than she already is, can’t even scream. Instead she has to mime out what’s in her POV, over Jakey Boy’s shoulder: at the end of the line her finger makes is a huge DEMON figure, vague through the snow, just wings and torso.

  Spinning, there’s two others as well, spaced evenly around the crew.

  Tine says it then, for the record: “What if we are the bad guys …?”

  Dim, in his gargoyle mask, looks to the demon opposite him and his reaction shot puts a demon in his b.g. as well, immediately over his shoulder. His mask in comparison is a bad joke.

  He pulls the trigger of the riot gun but the hammer falls on nothing, on Meatloaf, a time-compressed “Bat out of Hell”314 kicking in hard. The demons move in on cue, and it’s the Lost Boys315 massacre in flashes, practically an MTV316 video. Anthematic as hell.

  Which is to say we want the demons to do what they do, now. Want it on-screen.

  And it is satisfying: Tine dies; Georgie dies; Dim dies about three times, in as many ways. Stace, however, manages to back out of his jacket somehow, crawl away. Veronnie and Jakey Boy are both nowhere—either dead or presumed dead.

  As Dim leans into his fourth death the Chevelle fires up, Stace behind the wheel, fishtailing backward, the front end whipping into the side of the cattle guard.

  IN the cab, he rolls his window furiously up, keeps the tires spinning—chains sparking uselessly again on the iron—but then the front of the car settles down with demon legs, demon weight, making the close-up of the rear tires spin in air, the chains whistling.

  We pan up from them, to the rear window, the modest radio sticker there, deadcenter: KBAT, the white letters framed by black bat wings, the car shaking like its nose is in a meat grinder.

  X amount of time later—though the storm’s not hit hard yet, so it can’t have been long—Con’s still walking down the road. Dirt now, trees leaning over it. Less beer than before.

  He bends over to cough a lung up, and when his POV settles back on the road, Veronnie is running towards him, her mime face blood-splattered.

  Con looks left and right but there’s nowhere to go.

  Fifteen feet out she stops, breathing hard. Evaluates him, asks her question: “… Mad Max?”317

  In her POV, Con, backlit, featureless, shrugs his shoulders, looks down at his boots, hair, etc. Is piecing a response together when Veronnie gets spooked, falls a few steps forward, into his arms. Con pats her back with his good/only hand, keeping an eye on her back road.

  “You’re ….” she starts, “you’re not going there, are you?”

  “Thunderdome,”318 Con nods, getting into the role.

  “But … there’s—”

  “Bad things,” Con finishes, serious for once. “I know.” As proof he holds his stump up and it freaks Veronnie enough that she falls down, backpedals away. “Run along now,” he says, where she can’t really hear.

  He doesn’t watch her leave. Instead he raises his good/only hand. What’s in it is Stace’s pistol, lifted from Veronnie’s pants.

  As he trudges deeper into the canopied tunnel the trees make he checks the clip, smells the nose of the barrel, snugs it into his own waistband, the shot not moving with him, locking in place just when his elbow’s jutted out, his hand still on the gun, the night opening up.

  After a few steps he dissolves into it, is replaced by the house getting re-est.: the slight rise of the cellar, the shed, snow all around, frozen red with blood so it looks like a cherry Slurpee or something. Still no electricity. Just a trail of fresh footsteps approaching, the Strange Stories book in the back of the Chevelle blown open, pages fluttering back and forth, the screen going black on it fo
r long moments, marking time, enough nothing happening on-screen that the headlights cutting through it all are welcome.

  ON the other side of the headlights Nona is tracking their progress, leaning up through the divider. Over her shoulder it’s snow, snow, more snow, and then the house suddenly looms into view, filling the windshield.

  “Our Devil’s Tower,”319 she says to herself with all due appreciation. “I knew it was out here somewhere.” But the wasted Chevelle is blocking their way. Skopek noses up to it, idles for a moment, finally kills the engine.

  “We can’t get any closer?” Nona asks.

  Skopek shakes his head no.

  Nona leans over more, looks as high up as the ambulance will allow, then gauges how far it is to the house. “Well then we better bring everything in in as few trips as possible,” she says. “We don’t want to be out in the open any more than we have to.”

  Skopek looks up into the sky, where Nona was looking, and there’s nothing there. He keeps watching anyway, watching close, Nona in the rearview looking away, the shot panning around to a side angle as she surreptitiously depockets a pill bottle—her meds, evidently—and raises it to her lips, kisses the bottle bye, ceremoniously dropping it behind a cushion, the shot pulling tight on it and then back up to Seri, who evidently saw this.

  She swivels her head, tracking Nona’s progress to the ext. of the double doors. They swing open for the second time, and this time Nona steps down out of the darkness, keeping her hand on the latch, her back against the box, the sky so empty above her she has to close her eyes against it, make herself breathe steady.

  Next is Hale, and his stepping all the way on-screen at long last is labored, elaborate, as if it’s him testing the ground now. A hero-shot already. He’s pretty much the same as in the original though, just a few years older. In what must be some of Skopek’s clothes, hanging off him.

  “They’re too big for you,” Seri says, stepping down herself, the tape on her legs cut. “You look like a little boy, I mean.”

  When the rest move off, she stays, until Hale extends a hand, leads her down by her tape-cuffs. Nona watches this, wipes her nose in disgust and flicks her fingers, which sprays the snow with blood. She retrofigures back to her hand. “Not now,” she says, lipless, extra-determined, then gets distracted by the sardine can the Chevelle used to be. Shakes her head with a combination of vindication and regret.

  “See?” she says to Skopek, and Skopek nods, adjusts the oversized duffel bag over his shoulder. Smiles the littlest bit.

  They single-file it to the house, following Con’s tracks in, meaning, from an attic POV, through the glass, they swing around the red snow in the yard, as Con must have. Saving it for later is the idea.

  SERI asks it—“What happened here?”—trying not to step too much into it, the blood, and Nona, not not not looking up, having to stiffleg it even to move forward, answers: “What always happens.”

  Seri, in turn, takes note of Nona’s well-est. agoraphobia. Looks to the sky herself, unafraid. Not remembering yet, it would seem.

  Once to the safety of the porch, Nona turns to Hale, running a finger along one of the suspicious six-packs hanging over the porch rail.

  “Well it’s your goddamn house,” she says.

  Hale nods once. “How did you … find me?” he asks, his first words on-screen.

  “911 automatically traced your call. To the pay phone. Three years ago tonight. When Vangelesti and Cat came out … ”

  Hale looks to Skopek, the kidnapped Seri—mouthing “Vangelesti, Cat”—then back to Nona.

  “But I would have found you without it,” she adds, then looks away, as if embarrassed.

  Hale nods as if he believes she would have, yes, then opens the door on Con, pistol already drawn, candlelight glancing off it. Skopek automatically underhands the duffel bag through the doorway, Con getting one spastic shot off just as the bag levels him.

  For a few seconds then, everyone looks down to see if they’re bleeding. Nobody is.

  Skopek sneers anyway, crosses the room in one stride, lifts Con by the throat. Con in turn extends his good arm, the pistol resting between Skopek’s eyes. An intense little moment, and then Nona steps between: “No no no,” she insists, but doesn’t weigh enough to back it up.

  Meanwhile, Con’s lips are going blue. He thumbs the hammer back, Skopek smiling down the barrel, the veins of his arm swelling, Con’s trigger finger contracting. At the last possible instant, Hale steps forward, clamps down on the gun so that some moving part of it catches on the webbing of his thumb. He grits his teeth, takes it, a thin line of blood trailing down.

  Skopek releases Con; Con tries to breathe. Hale, in turn—everyone looking at him now—dutifully surrenders the pistol to Nona, who makes a demonstration of sliding the clip out onto the couch. “Now that that’s over,” she says after a few beats, and looks to Con. But Con’s studying Hale.

  “Back from the grave,” he says appreciatively.

  “Aren’t we all,” Hale says back, singsong.

  Seri laughs, shakes her head no. “Knock knock,” she says. “Some of us have never even been here.”

  “We’ve all been here,” Nona corrects.

  “When, then?” Seri asks.

  Nona looks to Hale, then to Con. Asks Hale the question first: “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-six,” Hale answers, hesitantly.

  Nona nods, turns on Con: “And how old was he when you and that other … your—”

  “Virginia,” Con supplies.

  “When you and Virginia resuscitated him, took him to the hospital?”

  “Or, that—Vangelesti,” Hale remembers aloud, getting lost. “Cat, right?”

  Con looks to Hale. “Fourteen,” he says.

  “Twelve years, then,” Nona tells Seri. “Do the math.”

  Seri smiles. “With imaginary numbers?” she asks. “Because what you’re saying is that him [indicating Con] and his … paramedic friend … Virginia or Vangleeni or whoever, that they drove out here when they were like twelve—which was five years ago?—and performed some CPR BS on him [indicating Hale]?”

  Con smiles an apologetic smile. Looks to Nona as well. Who isn’t looking away. “How long have you been out here, anyway?” she asks him.

  “Too long already,” Con says. “But I thought you were all locked up?”

  Nona nods. Looks to Skopek. “I had some inside help,” she says. “Didn’t look like you were going to be showing up anytime soon … ”

  “Got this thing about institutional medicine now … ” Con says, tying his empty sleeve shut.

  “So what happened out front?” Nona asks.

  “Hell if I know,” Con says. “But I did see Marilyn Burns on the way in.”

  “Marilyn who?” Seri asks, still bound, frustrated.

  “Sally,” Nona explains. “The girl who lives through Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”320

  Con smiles at the floor, gets a cigarette between his lips. “Nice to be part of your lunacy, again, Noan,” he says, lighting up, the storm slamming into the house on cue.

  “It’s not mine,” Nona says cryptically.

  IN the front yard, the bloodstain on the snow seems to be leeching out almost, growing larger. Or maybe it’s just the wind. For a brief second a shadow comes into focus over the bloodstain, and then it sharpens rapidly, darkens, and Con’s prosthetic enters the top of the frame butt first, lands hard, evidently rejected. Sticks in the red snow so it’s reaching up.

  BACK in the living room the shot is tight on the coffee table, from directly above. For a moment the duffel bag blots everything out—Skopek’s thick arms guiding it—and then is pulled away, spilling its contents, Nona’s survival tools: lantern flashlights, snack food; Physician’s Desk Reference,321 solar blankets, copper tubing, files, mounds of candy, occult paraphernalia, electric pencil sharpener, etc. It’s all wet too. Before the wetness can be identified, however, we crosscut over to Con’s reaction shot: he’s looking to N
ona, shaking his head in disbelief. “The Girl Scout comes through again,” he says.

  “What did you bring, then?” Nona challenges, and Con whips out his carton of cigarettes, beer from every pocket on his left side. The beer he offers around, but no one’s interested.

  “Making me feel bad here … ” he says. “Shit cost me an arm and a—well, an arm.” He smiles, peels the inserted tab back. Hale takes note of this inserted pull tab. Manages to snag it from the air when Con flicks it at the fireplace candles.

  “Didn’t think they made these anymore … ” he says, panning around for support.

  “This is BFE, remember?” Nona says, not interested. “Probably been on the shelf for ten years already. Nothing like age to bring out the taste, right?”

  Con reexamines his beer, hesitantly whistles the opening riff of “Dueling Banjos,”322 an invitation nobody takes. He drinks anyway.

  Seri laughs. “This why you kidnapped me?” she asks. “A keg party at a haunted house on Halloween? Aren’t we a little old for this?”

  “We’re playing younger,” Nona says flatly, then shrugs, giving permission to Hale. Hale removes Seri’s wrist-tape.

  “So this is … ” Seri begins, rubbing her wrists, eyeing everybody. “I’m not a hostage anymore?”

  In answer, Nona’s POV confirms via close-up that the ambulance keys are still around Skopek’s neck. Skopek nods. In turn, Nona nods to Seri.

  “We’re fifty miles from anywhere,” she says. “Do what you want.”

  Seri stews. Opposite her, Skopek palms a lantern flashlight off the coffee table, drops it back instantly. Slings his hand as if the flashlight was hot. Everyone jumps. Close-up, the plastic housing of the flashlight is melted away; extremely close-up, one side of it’s blown out, an exit wound. Wet all around.

  Nona turns on Con: “You shot the battery,” she says, overenunciating, inspecting the rest of her destroyed goods in wonder. Laughing. “It’s all … corroded, God … Just one shot?”

  “Wrath of Khan323 … ” Con suggests.

  Nona looks to Skopek, still wiping the burn off his hand. “More like Conan the Expendable,” she says, her voice trailing o.s.