Demon Theory

by Stephen Graham Jones

  “What are you saying?” Seri asks.

  “Last time,” Hale says, looking once at Seri then away, at the decomposed demon hand partially visible under the table. “I … Egan. Killed him. Right over there.”

  Con studies Hale. “And he didn’t come back,” he says, and then nobody says anything again. Hale studying Nona. Seri covering herself with an old jacket, finally.

  “Our numbers are thinning,” Hale says, and Con turns around, the close-up of his eyes closed in anger, thought, something. But then he grins. Looks upstairs.

  “Newt,” he says to himself, remembering. “I’m going upstairs,” he announces. “See a man about a book.376 Anybody coming?”

  Hale and Seri just sit there, stare him down.

  Con shrugs. “Guess every day’s a good day to die,377 here,” he singsongs. “You two stay here. Guard the drama queen.”

  Before ascending the stairs he makes a show of tightening his prosthetic, then’s gone, Hale and Seri watching the space he was in.

  Hale breathes in and out, and his breath is frosted.

  EXT., the cellar door is just visible through the storm. It opens a little bit, the wind doing the rest.

  For long moments everything’s still, then a demon hand appears at the lip, and Stan rises into the snow, determined, the mask still on.

  BY now Con’s in Hale’s mother’s bedroom, looking at all the nothing there is to see.

  “Newt …?” he calls quietly, no response. By degrees then, he becomes sure someone’s behind him, spins around to catch them. More nothing, though. Just the hall, windowless, dark.

  He lights his lighter, follows it, this time careful to duck under the blade stuck in the wall.

  “Newt,” he says again. “It’s me.” Nothing.

  And now the door to Hale’s old bedroom is closed. Con shakes his head, sick with it all. He holds the lighter up to the ceiling, and the dust and grime and smoke residue caked on the jamb around the attic door has brand-new fingerprints. The idea being it’s been opened, recently.

  “Fee fi fo fum,”378 Con says, and walks a little into the deep end of the hall, the F.A.M.E. book there at the edge of his pool of light, Con not seeing it for long moments, then finally reaching for it. But it’s too dark to read. He takes a step backward, closer to the light of Hale’s mother’s bedroom, but trips on the wheelchair, falls against the door to Hale’s old bedroom, crashes through, losing his lighter as he has to.

  There’s still a little light though, through the far window. Enough to see the scorched demon wall, Skopek’s blood on the bed.

  “Yeah,” Con says, the “as if” there in his voice. He stands carefully, trying to watch all the corners at once.

  He looks down and the book’s still in his hand.

  DOWNSTAIRS, Hale and Seri look up at the noise Con’s made, then look away.

  “You’d think we’d quit going up there alone,” Hale says.

  “We’ve got to do it the same, though,” Seri says, then nods to Nona. “According to her, at least.”

  “Yeah, well,” Hale says back. “Outside, I … she’s the one who … the ambulance. The electricity. The gun. She’s making sure it’s all the same this time.”

  Beat, beat, Seri just staring. “That bitch,” she finally says. “I knew it.”

  “She’s sick.”

  “We could be gone, though, out of here.”

  “We don’t know … ” Hale trails off, unable to object. “One way or the other we’d probably … ”

  Seri stands, walks to Nona’s couch, looks down. Looks like she’s going to spit, then doesn’t, instead talks: “One thing she didn’t know … Egan. His full name was Egan Parker.”

  Hale digests this, trying to gauge Seri. Seri looks up from Nona.

  “As in my father, yes.”

  “The doctor who—”

  Beat, beat.

  Seri just staring at Hale.

  “How old was he … then?” Seri asks. “The first time we were all … doing this?”

  “Not old enough,” Hale says.

  “This old?” Seri asks, unfolding the volunteer photo from her pocket. Inset, it could be Egan, from the side.

  Hale nods.

  “That must be how your father remembered him,” Seri says. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t recognize him last—the other time … ”

  “Because you never knew him at that age,” Hale offers. “Probably some bullshit mind block like that. Repressed.”

  Seri shrugs, nods. Puts her hands in her pockets. “I do remember … us, though,” she says, nodding to Nona. “Before her, I mean. Real or not.”

  Hale nods that he does too.

  “It doesn’t have to be the same as last time in every way,” Seri leads, crossing the room to Hale. “Maybe that’s the way to make it all stop, even … ”

  Her jacket falls invitingly open as she approaches.

  Inappropriate as it is, she bends to kiss him, or something good, and we cut to Nona’s groggy, heavy-lidded POV. She’s just waking. And the first thing she’s seeing is Seri astride Hale, losing what few clothes she has, the pharmaceuticals in Nona’s blood tinting and stretching everything, making the Cinemax scene come to her in pieces—a long, lingering freeze-frame replaced by some fast-forward, stylized stuff.

  Seri’s altered voice comes through—“We don’t need her anymore”—and then Seri looks back to Nona, and the reaction shot is Nona’s eyes, full of water. She looks away, at the wall, and the twisted shadow there has the demon-head again, but it’s still unclaimed.

  Nona tries to scream but is too weak, her POV fading back to black, match-cut with the light-level upstairs, in Hale’s old bedroom. Shannon Tweed half-stripped on the wall, her cleavage nearly match-cut with Seri’s. Con perched on the edge of the bed close to the window, reading the F.A.M.E. book, not understanding.

  Close-up, he’s not on the Jenny page, yet.

  And then he turns to it, studies the pencil drawing for too long. Holds his place and flips the book back, rereads the cover aloud, like a question—“‘Famous American Murders?’”—turns back to the Jenny page, bends to it. Can’t be even halfway through the first sentence when the door creaks shut.

  He looks up and no one’s there.

  “Newt?” he whispers, no answer, then scans across the room, desiccated Jenny suddenly on-screen, looking directly at him from a wall.

  Con swallows loud.

  Jenny looks away from him, to her old bed, and Con finally looks with her.

  When he swings his POV back to her, she’s gone.

  Con shakily gets a cigarette out, starts patting himself down for his lighter, and when he can’t find it, looks again to the bed Jenny was directing him to.

  There under it is his lighter.

  He smiles, says, “Shit. I guess ghosts are good for something after all … ” then squats down, manages to bump the lighter a little deeper into the shadow. Close up, his hand follows, his fingers running across a floor vent, the spaces wide enough between the slats for one of his fingertips to pull across a dry eyeball.

  Con retracts quickly, with the lighter. Lights up. Paces, paces, turning back to the bed over and over. Finally he takes his prosthetic off and uses it to raise the edge of the mattress, shaking his head no the whole time.

  Looking up from the floor vent is Jakey Boy, stuffed in there somehow, about as dead and gross as he can be.

  Con reels back, starts breathing hard.

  “You fucker,” he says, to Skopek, “he wasn’t even involved in all this,” and on cue Skopek crashes down through the caved-in ceiling, onto Jenny’s bed.

  The two of them look hard at each other.

  “Nobody here to stop it this time,” Con says, and Skopek shakes his head no, there isn’t.

  Con smiles, looking to the hall, scheming in high gear, then flicks his cigarette into Skopek’s chest. “Catch me if you can,”379 he says, and is already halfway out the door, sliding under the blade in the wal
l.

  Skopek crashes out of the room, gets a little prehensile with the opposite wall, then turns all his yellow-eyed momentum Con’s direction and catches the blade midchest. He’s too tall for it to decapitate him though. Instead it just cuts him deep, midchest, slings him back.

  He stands again. Unplants the blade, his grip on it cutting into his hand, blood pouring down.

  Con watching all this, his plan fallen through. He backs away, down the stairs.

  HALFWAY down and going full-tilt his POV catches Hale and Seri tangled on the couch, clothes and skin everywhere.

  “Wha—?” Con starts, about them, then looks to the stairs, from there to the front door, mapping his intentions for the second time in as many scenes. “Something truly wicked’s this way coming,”380 he says, smiling thin, then takes his prosthetic off, tosses it to Hale. Hale catches it; Con smiles. “Time to see how lucky I am,” he says, “because I already know this is stupid—” and then he’s through the front door, Skopek racing down the stairs after him, through the front door as well, practically on all fours.

  After they’re gone Hale’s standing in the door, looking back to Seri, to Nona, and then he steps out too.

  Alone now, Seri wraps herself deeper in her jacket, closes the door behind Hale, locks it once, then unlocks it, going through it about three times. In the end, it’s unlocked. She turns from it and lucks onto the F.A.M.E. book left on the stairway.

  She picks it up, reads the spine. Opens it right to the Jenny page, the blowing snow penciled in, resolving back as real snow, real storm, Con caught in it.

  “Hey!” he yells, trying to get Skopek’s attention, but Skopek’s nowhere.

  Con falls onto the cellar door, flings it open and closed as loud as he can, which is nothing compared to the storm.

  And then he looks up, skyward: “C’mon, what’re you waiting for? I brought him out—” but cuts himself short, his POV almost seeing something a few feet out. He backs away, starts running blind, zigging and zagging all over the yard, never sure there’s even anything or anyone behind him.

  Finally he collapses, runnels of ice forming from his nostrils, and stays there on his knees, hugging himself, shivering.

  Slowly, immediately in front of him, Skopek comes into focus, sheened in sweat.

  “What are you waiting for?” Con screams to the sky, “I brought him out here for you and everything … ” but when the demons don’t come Con just grins defeat, holds his arm and arm-stump limply out, giving Skopek his throat.

  “Guess I’m not a hero,” he says to himself, “just stupid,” which Skopek seems to dimly appreciate. He steps forward to drive his blade through Con but at the next-to-the-last instant the close-up of a peachy-smooth hand taps him on the shoulder.

  He turns, all seven feet of him unafraid, and Hale drives Con’s prosthetic into his face with everything he’s got.

  “If I kill you, you fucking die,” he says, and Skopek reels back, one of the prosthetic fingers deep in his eye socket, yellowish juice pouring out.

  But it’s not enough: Skopek goes to his right knee, bends down, and in one extended line of pain removes the finger. Looks one-eyed at Hale standing above him, and breathes in deep, as if in preparation.

  Hale, without looking away from Skopek for an instant, is already backing up, feeling behind him to keep his balance. Just as he stumbles, Skopek stands to give chase, but Con stumbles between.

  “It’s not him you want,” he says, still trying to be a hero, and Skopek just backhands him aside, bears down on Hale again, this time forcing Hale to his knees.

  Hale just stares, waiting.

  “I want to see what happens too,” he says, and Skopek narrows his good eye, places one large hand over Hale’s skull, raises the other far behind him. The one with the blade.

  As he starts his swing though, a demon hand clasps his wrist firmly.381 Strong enough he can’t follow through, though he tries, twice.

  He turns and it’s a demon face. Stan.

  Stan looks to the blade. “That’s not yours,” he says, and comes down hard on Skopek’s neck, driving him down. The snow moves in on them as they fight and the fight comes in jagged pieces,382 but it’s mostly about Stan pummeling Skopek, punishing him, lifting him up just to knock him down again.

  Hale watches this from his knees. Con collects his prosthetic, makes his way over, tries to drag Hale to the house with him but Hale won’t go, is transfixed. And it is transfixing, watching Stan and Skopek go at it—T1383 vs. T1000,384 titans clashing.385 Finally Skopek goes facedown, and Stan stands over him, waiting. Looking back once to Hale, some father-son stuff going on in the middle of all this.

  Hale nods thank you.

  Stan nods back, and then behind him Skopek rises slowly, bigger than ever, beaten to a bloody pulp, towering; mad.

  Hale shakes his head once, no, and Stan cocks his demon head to the side so that we see through his Voorhesian tic this time, to that 101st dalmation puppy.386 It’s the first way we ever saw him.

  On cue then, Skopek drives the blade through his chest, twisting it cruelly, Stan arching his back away, being lifted off the ground.

  Hale falls forward, onto the heels of his hands, and everything goes calm and quiet for a few moments.387 Long enough that the snow floating six inches off the ground becomes important again. It scatters moments before a lone demon dives hard from the sky, doing a fly-by on Skopek, left slicing at air, Stan torn open again, tossed aside.

  Behind Skopek, then, a demon coalesces.

  Across the yard, Con smiles. “Finally,” he says, then makes a snowball one-handed and zings it at Skopek, keeping him distracted. It works, too, until the demon looks down to find Stan’s hand around its foot.

  “Please,” Stan croaks, but the demon only snorts, kicks Stan violently off. Which finally does get Skopek’s attention.

  He turns, blade held low, in both hands, and when he swings at the demon, the demon catches the blade in its hand/claw, snaps it in two, leaving Skopek holding the stump. He follows it back up to the demon, his POV taking note that this is the demon with only one hand, and with it the demon reaches calmly forward, takes Skopek’s head in hand/claw—Skopek’s grabbing onto the demon wrist—and then it flaps its huge wings, takes Skopek up with it, to about roof-level, where more demons join the slaughter, pass Skopek’s rag-dolled corpse back and forth, disemboweling it, etc.

  But then one of their aerial POVs latches onto Con and Hale, breaks formation lazily for them, and Con starts running for the house, pushing Hale in front of him, Hale still trying to look back to Stan.

  In their b.g. it’s all demon wings and slow motion.

  ON the living room couch Seri is still reading the Jenny article. She looks up moments before Hale crashes through the door, falling up the stairs.

  Moments later Con gets propelled through too, hard, missing the stairs, taking out the chest where the phone sits. It crashes to the floor with everything else.

  Seri watches the door for more but nothing else comes through.

  In the aftershock—before Con or Hale can recover—she throws an evil look over at Nona then crosses to the fireplace, gently sets the book inside.

  The flames lick it up, and the steady flare is reflected on her face, whatever it is she’s doing here.

  NEXT is the close-up of a hand, slamming into a wall. Backing off a little, it’s Hale, in the downstairs bathroom, standing over the toilet, peeing in the half-darkness. He rests his head on the back of his hand, closes his eyes. Reaches to flush but now the water’s messed up, the toilet making a sicker-than-usual sound.

  Hale opens his eyes, staring at nothing, then his face shows some memory. He opens the high cabinet, feels hesitantly around, pulls his old porn mag out. It’s so brittle it just rains paper when he tries to open it, but it does manage to open something else: from behind him, Hale hears Nona’s voice from the original—“For the days before silicon … ”

  He turns, not breathing anymore, and thr
ough the open bathroom door is the utility, and the images of him and redder-headed Nona are going at it hot and heavy just like the first time. Only now the Nona from then’s watching the Hale from now.

  Slowly, she guides the first Hale’s head down to her chest, cradling his head, and this first Hale goes for it at first—just as in the original—but then pulls away. Hale in the bathroom does too. When he looks back out, the utility is empty.

  He collapses into a corner, terrified, gets replaced by a demon hand. The one Skopek brought in. Con’s eyeballing it against his prosthetic. Finally he balances it on the wrist stump, looks to Seri for approval.

  She shakes her head no just as some blood leaks out, burning rivulets into the prosthetic forearm. Con drops them both; the demon hand is still moving. Seri and Con look at each other, at the closed front door, furniture piled in front of it.

  “You can’t kill them,” Hale says, in explanation, exasperation, from the kitchen doorway, scaring them both.

  Con looks from Seri to Hale, says it: “Unless you kill him, right? He’s the one keeping them here … ”

  “But you said they don’t want—” Seri starts, gets interrupted by Hale, settling into the couch: “They don’t want him because they like the gate being stuck open.”

  “Maybe it’s just not him they want,” Seri says.

  Con looks hard at her. “What do you know?” he asks, but Seri shrugs the question off. Looks tellingly to Nona.

  “What do we really know about her?” she asks. “Other than that she’s mentally disturbed, video-literate?”

  “That not the same thing?” Con quips, then waves it off: “If she ever checks back in, I think we can trust her.”

  “We wouldn’t be stuck out here if it wasn’t for her,” Seri argues.

  “Without her, we wouldn’t even know what here was,” Con argues back.

  “But what if she’s got it all wrong?” Seri asks, getting strident. “Or, what if she got it all wrong on purpose?”

  Con reevaluates her. “You’re not telling us something,” he says. “Don’t you know withholding information is a sin punishable by death in these things? That’s why Egan had to get it li—” but Hale interrupts with “Enough,” then, to Con: “No more about Egan, okay? Please?”