Demon Lights

by Michael M. Hughes

  And then it stopped. William stood up to his knees in a reed-lined river under a crescent moon and a sky full of stars. Alone. The smell of the murky water and pungent vegetation was almost overpowering, and in the distance he saw the dark outline of what looked like a flat-topped pyramid.

  His hands were those of an older child, but the skin was much darker. When he caught his reflection in the water the face of someone else stared back at him—an older kid with deep brown skin and black hair. He was wearing a simple white robe, its hem floating on the brackish surface. In his palms he held a ceramic cup full of inky liquid. He drank from the cup. It tasted like pomegranate juice, but a metallic aftertaste made him think of blood. He poured the remainder into the water, where it spread in an oily slick. An offering.

  A breeze ruffled the reeds, whispering.

  The water beneath him bubbled, eddies swirling around his legs. He stretched his arms above his head, bringing them to the shape of a V as he tilted his head back, his eyes turning to the stars. He’d never seen stars so bright, so full of power. From each of them emerged a string of energy, shooting out toward him from across the black void. The strings of starlight pierced him and the ecstasy was overwhelming. He was hanging in the void now, strung up like an insect in a spider’s web, radiating strings of vibrating stellar energy to the ends of the universe.

  A face appeared, blocking out all else. Nearly featureless except for the deep black enormous eyes. When it spoke, the buzzing and clicking turned into thoughts he could understand.

  Boy thing, how do you travel so? Long sleep cold star space.

  William couldn’t reply. He was freezing.

  Warm blood feel taste. Touch mind to open. Let inside.

  And then everything exploded.

  —

  “William?”

  Ms. Fortune was holding him. It took his eyes a few seconds to focus. He was slumped in his teacher’s arms, his head pillowed on her breasts. She smiled, brushing the hair from his eyes. “You did it, William. My, my, my. That was quite extraordinary, wasn’t it?”

  His head ached and his mouth was dry as sand. He looked around the room. Victoria’s eyes were wide, her mouth hanging open. Everyone was staring. And then he noticed the warm wetness between his legs. He’d peed his pants.

  “Let’s go get you cleaned up,” Ms. Fortune whispered. “You just went straight to the top of the class, young man. Dr. Regardie will be quite pleased.”

  —

  Victoria sat next to William at dinner. Everyone else seemed to be studiously avoiding him, even Colin. Maybe they were scared of him now.

  She took a bite of her mac and cheese. “Gross,” she said. “Everything tastes like it’s made of turds.”

  William nodded. He was waiting for the inevitable insult. The joke about pissing his pants in front of the entire class. But she just kept poking at her tray of food.

  “That was really weird today.”

  “Tell me about it,” he said. His head still ached.

  “When it happened—when your eyes got all wiggly—we all felt it, too.”

  William turned to her. “Really?”

  She nodded. “I saw things. In my head. People in weird clothes, ancient people. Like a movie. And the lights in the room flickered. It was totally creepy.”

  William put down his fork. He didn’t have much of an appetite. “It was scary. It seemed like it went on forever. How long was I…”

  “Like a minute, maybe. If that. It was like you were frozen. Ms. Fortune’s eyeballs were popping out of her ugly, fat face. I’ve never seen her smile like that. So it looks to me like you got an A on that test.”

  William shivered. “I don’t want to do that anymore. Ever.” He shivered. At least she hadn’t mentioned his pee-soaked pants. Yet.

  Victoria glanced furtively around the tables. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “You were the first to do it. And I think that’s why we’re here. To do that.”

  William swallowed. “I think so, too.”

  “That’s why we’re learning about all the stupid old gods and doing all the meditation exercises, right? Because she wants us all to do what you did. To talk to those things.”

  William lowered his voice even further. “I’ll tell you something if you promise to keep it a secret. I mean, really secret.”

  She held out her pinky. “I swear.”

  He wrapped his pinky around hers. “Swear on your mother’s grave.”

  “Swear. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. I might not like you very much, but I keep a pinky-promise.”

  He leaned closer. “I did that kind of…thing…before. In Guatemala. In a cave.”

  “Tell me,” she whispered.

  He figured he had nothing to lose. “Me and my mom were captured by this drug dealer named El Varón. He lived in a huge mansion with all kinds of guards and stuff. He wanted to marry my mom and I was scared he would and then I’d never be able to leave. He was hairy and gross.”

  Victoria’s face wrinkled. “Eww.”

  William nodded. “We tried to get away. He had this room in the basement full of all the heads he had cut off people. Like lots of them. And we got caught. El Varón was going to kill us.”

  “Wow.”

  “And there was this statue down there. Of a god, a Mayan god, but he was like a bat.” He shuddered. If Victoria noticed, she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were wide. “But somehow it was real. Not just a statue. It—” he struggled to find the words “—got inside me somehow. Like it was controlling me.”

  Victoria stared at him in a way he’d never seen. Almost like she was impressed. “What did it do?”

  He lied. “I can’t remember. But then there were lots of explosions and people shooting and my dad showed up with a bunch of soldier guys. They busted into the room and killed El Varón. And took us away.”

  “Your dad brought you here?”

  William rubbed his eyes. He was determined not to cry in front of her. “No.” His father had been shot. He hadn’t seen it, but he had heard it and would never forget his mother’s face as she witnessed it before shoving his head into her chest. No tears. Not now. “He died. Someone shot him. Then Lily brought us here.”

  For the first time, Victoria seemed completely real. Not mean, not pretending to be nice so she could spring a carefully plotted prank. “That’s messed up,” she said. “That’s crazy.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “We’re all messed up and weird. All of us. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Why are you here, then?” William asked. “What’s your mutant superpower, besides making people laugh?”

  Victoria shrugged. “Both my parents are scientists. My mom is a molecular geneticist and my dad does robotics for the navy.”

  William stared. “Robots? What kind of robots?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s boring stuff. He can’t really talk about it much or he’ll get in trouble.”

  William sighed. It figured. He considered telling Victoria about the robot books he’d written, but then thought better of it. He wasn’t sure he completely trusted her yet.

  “But they were into weird stuff, too,” Victoria continued. “I was like their little experiment. My dad always wanted to know about my invisible friend, Mr. Winston. He made me talk to him while he taped me, and asked me to draw pictures.”

  “What did he look like?” William asked. “Mr. Winston?”

  “He was like an angel, sorta, but he had a lion’s head and bird feet. My dad wrote a paper about it for some scientific magazine so I guess I was kind of famous. Mom and Dad had a special room in our house, and I wasn’t allowed inside. They kept the door locked, but I peeked in once. It had candles and statues and masks on the walls and they were always burning stinky incense. You could smell it all the way in my room.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  “I just thought it was stupid. They’re just my weirdo parents. But one night they had a bunch of peo
ple over, and they were all in that room for a long time, making noises and singing and stuff. And they left the door unlocked when they went to bed. So I snuck in.” She paused. Looked around the room. “In the middle of the room was a statue of Mr. Winston.”

  William straightened. “What?”

  “He was made out of papier-mâché. They painted him, and put candles all around him. He looked exactly like I always saw him.” She breathed deeply and shifted in her seat. “And then he moved.”

  “No.” Now he was scared.

  “Swear to God. I ran back to my room but forgot to close the door. The next morning they had one of their serious talks with me. Said the Mr. Winston statue was an experiment. They said his name was really Ipos, and that he was real, some kind of spirit, and that other people knew about him, blah blah blah. I was really mad. I hated them. They were never mean to me, but they weren’t like other people’s parents. I was like a pet or something, just something they could experiment on.” Her eyes had started to water.

  William struggled to find something to say. “I’m sorry.”

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. Isaac smiled. “Hey Little Willy, want to buy a diaper?”

  “Shut up, Isaac,” Victoria said.

  Isaac sat down. “Sorry.” He bit into a cookie. “Are we cool?”

  Victoria turned to William, then back to Isaac. “Yeah. He’s one of us now.”

  Chapter 3

  “Well, don’t you look like shit,” Ray said.

  Mantu lifted his head and laughed quietly. “Ray. Goddamn you. It’s about time you came to see me.” He had a bushy beard and his dreads had grown out and thickened. He was dressed in the basic Brotherhood getup of loose white linen pants and shirt. His cell was small but clean. The bed had a real mattress and the toilet and sink had a curtain that could be pulled around them for privacy. He even had a desk, piled with books and sheaves of paper.

  Ray stuck his hand through the bars. Mantu grasped it tightly. “I can’t believe they let you in here,” he said. His eyes looked tired—red, bloodshot, underscored with dark circles.

  “Jeremy is throwing me a bone. He wants me to help him. To visit the artifact site.”

  “Quid pro quo,” Mantu said. “That’s Jeremy, all right.”

  “I’m a brother, now,” Ray said.

  Mantu’s eyes widened. “They finally got you?”

  “Yeah,” Ray said. “They tricked me. I wasn’t prepared.”

  “No one ever is.” He shook his head. “But that’s just step one. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Ray turned to the tyler. “I know you’re going to stay here, but can you stop staring at me? You’re giving me the creeps.”

  “Don’t even try,” Mantu said. “Hey, tyler, at least bring my visitor a chair. C’mon. Do a brother a favor just this once.”

  The tyler walked across the room, picked up a chair, and set it down next to Ray.

  “Do they ever talk?” Ray asked. The tyler went back to his position by the door and stood in the order’s peculiar manner—like a relaxed but poised martial artist. Ray sat and scooted the chair closer to the cell’s bars.

  “Nope. They don’t laugh, either. I tried, believe me. Hit ’em with all the best of my routines. The three-headed hooker, the horse with the tiny dick and the mermaid, even the one about my grandmother’s diabetes farts. They’re stone-cold, humorless bastards. Sometimes I talk to them anyway. It’s the only company I have except for my good man Vinod.”

  “Hello” came a voice from across the room. A thick Indian accent.

  Ray hadn’t even noticed the man in the opposite cell. Vinod was sixtyish, his ink-black hair streaked with gray and slicked tightly to his head. His sparse mustache reminded Ray of an adolescent boy’s. He was wearing thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes seem enormous and two-dimensional.

  “Hello,” Ray said.

  “Hello, Ray. Mantu has talked about you on many occasions.” His voice was all monotone, without inflection. Like a telemarketer robot. “He says you are his favorite white boy. A cool motherfucker and a stubborn bastard.”

  Ray stared, struggling not to laugh.

  Mantu smiled and nodded across the room. “Tell him why you’re stuck in this shithole with me.”

  “I broke into the Brotherhood’s primary server system,” Vinod stated.

  “He poked around where he wasn’t supposed to,” Mantu added. “Jeremy’s files, private communications, code names for our operatives, that sort of thing.”

  Vinod smiled. It was the most forced smile Ray had ever seen. “I was testing our security but Brother Jeremy did not see it that way.” He blinked several times. “So he sent me here to punish me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ray said.

  “Oh, it’s okay, Brother Ray. I broke the rules. I got caught. It’s not so bad. I can’t use computers but I still have books.” He pointed to a pile of hardbacks and paperbacks next to his bed. “Do you like science fiction, Ray? I like space operas and stories about artificial intelligence.”

  “I know a kid you should meet,” Ray said.

  Mantu cut them off. “Vinod, my man, let’s table that for a bit, okay? I only have a few minutes with my friend Ray, here, and I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  Vinod’s expression didn’t change. Just the same forced, toothy smile. “Okay, Mantu, my main man. It’s cool, brother. I can chill silently.”

  Ray coughed into his hand to hide his laughter.

  “Vinod’s been picking up on my South Philly stylings. Hey, Vinod, tell Ray what I’m gonna buy you when I take you to Philly with me.”

  “A motherfucking cheesesteak, a cold forty, a fat blunt, and a smokin’ hot sister in boots and a short skirt.”

  Ray and Mantu both laughed out loud.

  “What’s going to happen to you?”

  Mantu sat with his bare feet up on his desk. He leaned his head back and sighed. “Fuck if I know. No one really talks about the penalty for breaking the Obligation. Because no one ever breaks it. But it ain’t gonna be nice.”

  “Who is your lawyer? Do they have lawyers here?”

  Mantu laughed. “No lawyers here, no jury. Just the Council of Nine. Eight brothers and sisters and Jeremy.”

  “I’m sorry, Mantu,” Ray said. “I can’t help but feel responsible for this. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t broken the rules for me.”

  Mantu lowered his feet from the desk and turned his chair to face Ray. “You can’t blame yourself for this, Ray. I made the decision.” He lowered his voice. “Remember when I told you why I decided to break my vows? Right before I dumped Brother Ramón’s ass in the jungle? I had been catching a bad vibe from the leadership. Things were different with Micah. He was straight-up as it gets. No head-fuckery from that man, just a hundred percent dedication to the mission. I believed in what we were doing in Blackwater. But when I got here, something felt different. It took me a while to really home in on it, but when I did, that feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t go away.”

  “But you kept trying to bring me here.”

  “They were pushing me to bring you in. For your own good, Jeremy said, and I believed him. Well, I mostly believed him.”

  “It was more than that.”

  “Yeah, that was clear from the beginning. You’re a traveler, and a natural one, too. That’s a rare gift, and it makes you valuable. And you’ve met some things that his best travelers can’t even get near. That’s what he cared about—getting you on the team. I told him to go fuck himself, that you had the right to say no and I wasn’t going to drag you here against your will. He wouldn’t have cared if I dropped you off at the gate hogtied with duct tape over your mouth—you were a prize, and he doesn’t like losing a prize. But I said no. I signed up for this bullshit. You didn’t.”

  “So you don’t think I should go with him to the site? He told me it might help him find Ellen and William.”

  “I can’t tell you what to
do. Maybe it will help him find them. He’s been trying to tap that thing in the jungle for a long time, I know that much. And he’d cut off his own balls if it meant he could take out Lily. She’s killed more brothers and sisters than I can imagine, and each death cuts him deep. He might be crazy, but he cares about all of us—even me. So I have no doubt he’s trying hard to find her. He’ll do whatever he can to find that bitch and turn everything for miles around her into a smoking crater.”

  Ray shook his head. “I don’t think I can do it, though. Especially after everything that happened at Sabina’s.” He held up his hand. He no longer bandaged the wrinkled knot of scar tissue where his ring finger had once joined his palm. “Because of this. Because I don’t want to get that close to permanent insanity again. I’m done with ancient magic and spirits and monsters. Fuck that shit, Mantu.”

  “Then listen to your instinct. Don’t do it.”

  “But what if he’s telling the truth? And if he needs me so badly, maybe I can bargain with him to get you out of here. I’ll go, see the artifact, do whatever the hell he wants, if he lets you go.”

  “No. No way. Don’t bargain for me. I did the crime, now I’m doing the time. He won’t go for it anyway; he takes the Obligation very seriously. Ain’t gonna happen, Ray. You take care of yourself, okay? Do what you need to do. Find your woman and her boy.”

  Ray nodded. “Maybe there’s another way to get you out of here.”

  Mantu laughed. “Look around! This place is a fortress. I’m not going anywhere.”

  A bell sounded.

  Mantu stuck his hand through the bars. “Thanks for coming to see me. It means a lot.”

  Ray grasped his hand. “I’ll come back.”

  Mantu smiled. “And soon, I hope. In the meantime, hang in there, brother.”

  The tyler hurried him through the door.

  —

  “You’re serious? You know where they are?”

  Jeremy nodded. “I got confirmation this morning. Lily is there, too, or will be soon—a compound in the Canadian Yukon.”