by Andrew Nance
I jumped from the backseat while we were still rolling. Mad Hatter’s hamburger erupted from my mouth. I stayed on my knees until I was sure I was done. Looking around, I noticed we were on one of the hilly roads north of Maplewood. In the distance, I could make out the silhouette of that creepy mansion, Daemon Hall.
“Hey, Jimmy!” My stomach lurched at the sound of Larry’s voice. “What’s wrong? Is Winner’s Choice Saturday too groovy for you?”
The Go-To Guy leaned against the car, watching me with a crooked smile.
Larry stood over me and babbled some more. “You still have over an hour until midnight! Over an hour left with Larry the Loon and the Go-To Guy!”
I’d had it. Pointing at Larry the Loon, I said, “Can’t you shut him up?”
“You’re the chief.” The Go-To Guy pulled the cigar from his mouth and flicked it to the ground. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small black pistol.
“Uh-oh, bad scene!” Larry said.
I tried to move, to speak, but I was frozen. The Go-To Guy walked up to Larry, grabbed his ear, and pulled him away from the road.
Larry’s voice rose an octave. “Jimmy, come on! I thought we were pals!”
The Go-To Guy pulled Larry into some brush. There were two rapid pops and, a moment later, a crash in the undergrowth.
The Go-To Guy stepped from the scrub. “What next, chief?” he asked calmly.
I didn’t answer; I couldn’t. Dazedly I returned to the car and fell into the backseat.
The Go-To Guy closed the back door, climbed into the front, and drove off, humming along with “Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)” by John Fred and His Playboy Band.
Later he turned and said, “Closing in on midnight, chief. I’m gone after that. Anything else the Go-To Guy can do for you?”
“Can you make me forget tonight?” I mumbled.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Kidding? Hell, no! I wish I could forget everything that’s happened!”
The car slowed, turned right, and stopped. We were back at my house. The Go-To Guy opened my door, leaned in, and covered my face with a chemical-smelling cloth.
Before I lost consciousness I heard him say, “You got it, chief.”
* * *
The fluorescent lights blinked three times and turned on, causing a sharp pain between my eyes.
“Oh, my head,” I moaned.
“Don’t worry, chief. The headache is just a side effect of too much chloroform.”
“You drugged me?” I had trouble talking.
“Anesthetized. I put you O-U-T.”
“Why?”
The Go-To Guy came into my limited view, lowering his face until we were only inches apart. “You told me what you wanted for your Winner’s Choice Saturday.”
The smell of stale cigar smoke intensified my headache. I couldn’t move. I was flat on my back, arms and legs outstretched and anchored. A strap of some sort across my forehead prevented me from turning my head, so it took me a moment to realize I was in my own house, down in the basement.
“Why am I tied to Dad’s pool table?”
He grinned. “So you don’t hurt yourself during the operation.”
“Huh?” Numbness gave way to fright.
“Come on, chief. What was the last thing you told me? You said, ‘I wish I could forget everything that happened.’ Right?”
“Yeah, but I was—”
He backed out of my vision. “I’m the Go-To Guy. I deliver.”
“But what are you—”
“There’s a treatment that the troublemakers at Morningside undergo. It’s called a transorbital lobotomy.”
“Lobotomy?”
“Rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” He chuckled.
“Lobotomy?” I repeated.
“Transorbital, a simple procedure. They take an implement not unlike this”—he held up the ice pick from our kitchen—“and insert it between the top of the eye and the eyelid.” I twisted violently back and forth. The Go-To Guy rambled on. “Then they take a mallet, I’ll use this”—he held up my father’s hammer—“and give the ice pick a sharp rap to get it through the skull. That’s the thinnest part of the skull, behind your eyes.”
“No! Nooooooo!” I pleaded.
“Then I’ll wiggle it back and forth, scrambling the frontal lobe. Guess I’ll have to go a bit deeper than usual to ensure you forget everything.” He lowered the ice pick.
I screamed and there was a crashing noise upstairs followed by the sound of footsteps rushing into the basement. The police grabbed the Go-To Guy as the ice pick was a quarter inch from my right eye.
* * *
The Go-To Guy had used his gun twice before he shot Larry the Loon. Once on the Chevy guy and once on Brian. Shelley flipped out when the Go-To Guy shut her in the trunk with Brian’s body. Someone heard her screaming and called the police. She told them that I was in on it, and they came to arrest me. Of course that changed when they saw me strapped to the pool table. They locked up the Go-To Guy, and everything should be okay, right?
Wrong. I can’t go anywhere because most of the kids think I did have something to do with it. All that pssst-pssst whispering is a bummer. I saw Shelley a few weeks ago at the ice cream shop, and she burst into tears. The principal called my parents and said it would be a good idea to change schools.
The telephone rings, and I wait for my mom to get it but remember she’s at the beauty parlor. I push up from the lounge chair and leave the warm morning sun.
“Hello.”
“Hiya, chief,” a whispery voice says.
What feels like the pitter pat of frozen rat paws runs all over my body.
“Good news, I got out again. And don’t worry, I’ll catch up to you before they find me. I’m bringing the proper surgical tools this time. The Go-To Guy won’t let you down.”
Day and night alternated over and over, which added to the creepiness of Demarius’s ending.
Lucinda sat wide-eyed. “That was sick.”
“Sick as in ‘that’s cool,’ or sick as in … sick?”
“Both.”
I took the Book of Daemon Hall from him and set it down. “Reminds me of an evil genie story. He grants your wish, but it has a horrible outcome.”
Ian Tremblin smiled. “You not only researched Morningside for your story, but you also studied the music and lingo of the late sixties. Well done.”
“Why’s research a big deal?” Lucinda asked. “Especially if it’s fiction?”
“When readers start a story, the author invites them to engage in the voluntary suspension of disbelief. Take Demarius’s story. If the characters used jargon like dude, awesome, and gnarly instead of bummer, man, and groovy, we wouldn’t believe it was the sixties, and it would be harder to suspend disbelief. That’s why the music had to be from that era to be convincing. An accurate factual framework firmly supports fiction.”
Tremblin’s impromptu writing lesson managed to distract us, but only momentarily.
Matt sat with his head down and hands stuffed between his thighs. He looked like a little kid who’d gotten into trouble. “I wish I could go home.”
Lucinda snapped, “Yeah, well, I wish I had a million bucks, but that ain’t going to happen either.”
He looked up, his cheeks red. “Do you have to be sarcastic all the time?”
“Maybe I do. What of it?”
Matt’s voice dropped. “I don’t like you when you’re like this.”
Lucinda’s face tensed, and I thought she was going to let loose on him, but then she sighed. “Yeah, I don’t much like myself when I get like this either.” She reached over and pulled him into a one-armed hug. “Sorry.”
The passage of light/dark/light/dark sped up.
“Geez!” Matt blurted out, his voice muffled by Lucinda’s hug.
The tempo increased until night and day oscillated at high speed. We all stood, the strobe effect making it seem like we were mo
ving in slow motion. In a second I was struck by intense fear, not an anxiety attack, but the deafening rumble we’d encountered when we burned the place. I remembered how we’d beat it: Ignore it, ignore the effect it has on us, and we’ll be okay.
Demarius was talking softly to Ian Tremblin, who was huddled on the floor. Millie crouched behind a chair, tears flowing down her cheeks, and I went to her. The noise stopped, and we told them how to overcome the fear if it started again.
Demarius helped Ian Tremblin stand. Tremblin pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his face. “It’s more than just a terrifying noise.”
Matt tried unsuccessfully to control his shuddering voice. “What is it?”
“The sound of time slowing.” He pointed to the mantel clock. The hands were turning at normal speed.
What sounded like a herd of buffalo charged down the hall. Two young boys flew by the door. A second later a teenage girl followed.
“You better run!” she bellowed.
“Cornelia?” Ian Tremblin snatched up the Book of Daemon Hall, rushed to the door, and peeked out after the fading footsteps. He turned to us, eyes ablaze. “Rudolph Daemon’s daughter. And she was chasing Bartholomew and Thomas, her twin brothers.”
Stunned, we trailed the writer into the hallway. Cornelia shouted, and we followed her voice to the second-floor landing. We gazed down at them standing by the front door.
“I knew time was flying by, but I didn’t realize how quickly,” Tremblin said. “Judging from the age of the Daemon children, I’d estimate that we’re now in the late thirties—no—the early forties.”
Cornelia cornered her brothers at Daemon Hall’s front doors. They wore matching brown shorts, white shirts, and suspenders. Their sister had on a white dress with pink stitching and wore a large red bow in her hair. “You broke my French bébé doll!”
Not wanting to be seen, we hovered on the landing several steps behind the banister. It was weird, watching what seemed like normal behavior from three kids who would die violently before they got a chance to grow up.
“Why are you running around with that?” Cornelia demanded.
The boys each held the end of a coarse rope; the length of it lay on the floor between them.
One said, “We were playing crack-the-whip—and I lost my balance—and fell against your desk—and the doll fell off—and—and—sorry.”
“What’s going on?” A voice boomed behind us, making me jump.
A tall, trim man stood on the landing with us. He had high, thick hair and a gray suit and tie. In one hand he held a pair of reading spectacles. In the other he held a book.
“Look,” Demarius whispered. “It’s the Book of Daemon Hall.”
It was the book, but not like our version. The cover seemed new, and the title was legible. I looked from it to the copy Ian Tremblin held and back again. They were two separate books, yet the same one.
“I asked a question. What is going on?”
Ian Tremblin passed the Book of Daemon Hall to me. He swallowed nervously and stepped forward with an outstretched hand. “Mr. Daemon, I know you don’t know us—”
Mr. Daemon? This was the man who killed his own family?
“—but let me introduce myself. My name is Ian Tremblin and I—”
The strangest thing happened then. Rudolph Daemon walked right through Mr. Tremblin and descended the stairs. The writer stood off balance a moment, then crumpled to the floor. I grabbed his arm and started to pull him up.
“A moment, just a—” he muttered. “So cold, dizzy.”
“Dammmmn!” Demarius drew out the word.
“Are you okay?” Millie took his other arm.
Before Tremblin could answer, Rudolph Daemon reprimanded his children, “Haven’t I told you not to run through the house? And playing tug-of-war as you go?”
“Crack-the-whip,” one of the boys answered meekly.
With our help, Ian Tremblin got to his feet. He stepped forward, still shaky, and leaned against the banister to better hear what was being said.
“Where did you get that?” Daemon demanded, nudging the rope with his foot.
“We found it in our room by the door when we woke up.”
The other twin pointed at his brother and laughed. “Barty thought it was a snake.”
“It moved,” Bartholomew explained.
“Who put it in your room?”
Bartholomew shrugged.
“And Barty said it hissed,” Thomas teased.
Rudolph pointed by the door. “Place it there. I’ll have the servants discard it.”
Entranced, Ian Tremblin descended the stairs, the rest of us trailing behind. The writer stepped close to each of the Daemons, scrutinizing every little detail.
“Father, they broke my porcelain doll.”
“Which one, Cornelia?”
“The bébé.”
Rudolph shook his head. “Of course they did. It was the most expensive. Your allowances will go to your sister for a while.”
“Awwww,” both boys moaned.
Rudolph Daemon smiled, placed the book on the table, and knelt before his children. He took them into his arms. “We’re family,” he whispered forcefully. “We have to look out for one another.”
“Father, something strange happened last night,” Cornelia said.
“Shhh.” Daemon put his finger to his lips. “Remember, we only talk about that kind of thing when we’re away from the house.”
One of the twins grabbed Daemon’s jacket. “When are we leaving? You said we would move to a new home, one that isn’t scary.”
Daemon rubbed the boy’s head. “We need to go together, as a family, and you know how your mother feels.”
The other twin said in a pouty voice, “She likes it here.”
“Well, well. The gang’s all here.” The voice was sultry, and we turned to see a woman enter the foyer from the right side hall. She was so stunningly beautiful my breath caught. Demarius and Matt stared with their jaws hanging. Ian Tremblin mouthed words of awe. Even Millie and Lucinda were wide-eyed at her radiance. She glided across the floor in a yellow-gold, off-the-shoulder gown. I took in her features, looking for one little flaw and finding none. Long dark hair, pale complexion, pink cheeks, dazzling blue eyes, and red lips. And her body, even clothed, was more seductive than any swimsuit model’s. The Book of Daemon Hall slipped from my numb grasp and fell to the floor.
“Mom!” The twins ran to her and threw their arms around her hips.
She stiffened and peeled them off. “You’ll wrinkle Mommy’s gown.”
“Narcissa, you look lovely,” Rudolph said.
“Of course.”
“Why don’t we take a drive tonight, treat the children to ice cream.”
“Nonsense. They would be up past their bedtime. Besides, several new ensembles were delivered today. I’ll be too busy trying them on.”
“Awww, Mother,” one of the twins groaned.
“Look at the time, my little darlings.” Narcissa spoke to them while stealing quick glimpses of herself in a mirror on the wall. “If you’re good, I’ll prepare hot chocolate.” She spoke in baby talk and put a finger to each of their noses.
Lucinda growled, “If she pushed my nose like that, I’d bite her finger off.”
“Oh, all right,” one twin said.
“Okay,” said the other.
“That’s my sweet little boys. Get ready for bed, and I’ll be up shortly.”
They ran up the stairs like squirrels up a tree, while Cornelia stayed. “I’m thirteen. Can’t I stay up later?”
“Young women need beauty rest, especially if they wish to be as beautiful as me.”
Cornelia stalked off, muttering.
“Narcissa,” Rudolph Daemon said, “let’s discuss moving.”
“Moving? But, dear, this is our home.”
“Narcissa—”
“I must protest, Rudolph. I’m in too fine a mood to bicker.” She turned in a splash of twirling
fabric and retreated the way she’d come.
Rudolph Daemon stared after his wife and muttered, “It’s time to put an end to this.” He grabbed his version of the Book of Daemon Hall and hurried toward the stairs.
Ian Tremblin looked at us, his face flushed. “This may be the evening he kills his family. I must follow Daemon through his bloody task, to see how he does it.” While everyone was sure Daemon had committed the crimes, no one knew how. The kids were found dead in their beds, no sign of struggle, their expressions peaceful. Narcissa’s body was never recovered. Daemon hanged himself from a rafter in his study—another mystery, as no one knew how he got up there with the rope. “If it’s too much for you, wait here.”
I picked up the Book of Daemon Hall, and we followed.
“He seems nice,” Lucinda commented.
“Yeah,” I said. “I expected a nutcase. But he seems normal.”
“Yet something will send him over the edge,” Ian Tremblin said.
Daemon stomped up the stairs, muttering. Bypassing the second floor, he went up to the third and traversed a couple of hallways.
Tremblin pointed out three doors. “The family bedrooms.”
Daemon stopped by a medieval door in the rounded stone wall.
“It’s his office,” Ian Tremblin told us.
We followed Daemon in. He paced for a moment in front of his kidney-shaped desk, dropped the book on it, then went and shut the door.
Tremblin, meantime, looked at a copy of the newspaper on Daemon’s desk. He tapped it. “The date is July 23, 1942. I was right. Tonight’s the night.”
“Hey, check this out.” Lucinda stood before a glass display case set against a wall upon which several black-and-white photos hung.
Ian Tremblin glanced at the pictures. “Various stages of construction. That must be the black tree.” He pointed to one photo of workmen. Behind them were the lower branches and trunk.
I peered into the glass case. “Look at this.”
A plaque said “artifacts found during construction.” There were buttons, pieces of pottery, a tin plate, and a sewing needle that a note card said were from an eighteenth-century village. Another card was propped on an ancient Indian bow and one arrow that said they were either from the Nanticoke or Lenape tribe. The bow was three feet long and made from dark wood. The arrow had long white feathers at one end and a chiseled black arrowhead at the other.
