by Kate Moseman
A Good Demon Is Hard to Find
Copyright © 2020 by Kate Moseman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition
ISBN 978-1-7345144-0-7 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-7345144-1-4 (paperback)
Published by:
Fortunella Press
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Dedicated to all the apostates
Contents
PART I: ERIN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART II: ANDROMALIUS
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
PART III: ERIN & ANDROMALIUS
Chapter 31
PART I
ERIN
1
Erin hurled another armful of clothes out the front door. “Take your stupid shirts”—she paused to reload, scooping up another pile beside the doorway—“and your stupid pants, and get lost.” The pants followed the shirts out the door, collapsing on the lawn like a flock of fainting birds under the rapidly dimming sky.
It was lucky he’d left a few things behind after the divorce—they made great ammunition.
“Be reasonable, Erin,” said Mark, her ex-husband. “Can’t we discuss this like adults? I only came over because you continue to refuse to answer your phone, and having this conversation at church is not exactly a good idea.”
Erin turned back into the house, found a shoe, and hurled it over her shoulder without looking. It narrowly missed Mark and instead nailed the driver’s side door of his cherry red convertible. She found the matching shoe, turned around, aimed, and flung it end over end to join its mate.
“Watch it!”
“Oh, did I ding your midlife crisis-mobile? I’m sorry,” said Erin, without a shred of sincerity. She tucked her hair behind her ears and crossed her arms.
“I wish you wouldn’t make a scene,” said Mark.
“Really? I’d prefer you weren’t a cheating dog, but you get what you get, right?”
Mark rolled his eyes and leaned back against the car in the driveway. “Look, Erin, all I’m asking you to do is find someplace else to worship, okay? I know you’re only going to church to keep your mom off your back.”
He might have been right, but that didn’t mean he deserved reasonability in return. Erin glanced around, looking for more things to throw. She spied a stack of Mark’s exercise DVDs. She picked them up and flung them one at a time, like frisbees, into the yard. “I. Said. Get. Lost.”
An ancient Pomeranian shuffled to the doorway and peered out into the soft light of the setting sun.
Erin picked up the dog.
“How’s Nancy Drew?” said Mark, in a transparent attempt to defuse the situation.
“She’s great. She never liked you, anyway,” said Erin, scratching her behind the ears.
Mark looked upwards as if asking for strength. “Erin, I’m asking you. Can you please stop going to our church? Wouldn’t that make things easier for you?”
“Are you kidding?” said Erin, carefully setting Nancy Drew down on the tile floor of the entryway. “You don’t want to make things easier for me. You want to make it easier for you and Genevieve.”
“Genevieve has just as much right to be there as you do,” said Mark.
“Does she? Kind of uncomfortable to be reminded of your sin every single Sunday, isn’t it.”
“Now you’re just being difficult.” Mark threw his hands up.
“Maybe I like going to church with my ex-husband and the woman he cheated on me with. If it bothers you so much, why don’t you find a different church?” She stepped onto the covered porch and carefully shut the door behind her, to keep Nancy Drew from making an escape.
“Come on, Erin.”
“It’s ‘Come on, Erin,’ this and ‘Be reasonable, Erin,’ that when you want something, isn’t it?” Erin took a barefooted step forward.
Mark took a step back.
“You don’t have any claim on me. Not that you ever had any real say over what I do in the first place—but whatever I owed your sorry ass evaporated when you cheated on me and made a mockery of our wedding vows. I’ll go to church, or not, if I want to, for any reason or no reason at all. So you can take your stupid shirts and your ugly khaki pants and drive your ridiculous compensation car all the way to hell.” Erin pointed her finger at Mark. “May the Lord forsake you and the Devil take you!”
As she spoke, the last sliver of the sun disappeared behind the western horizon.
She whirled and went inside the house, slamming the door behind her and stomping away before remembering to turn back and lock it.
The bolt slammed home loudly, echoing in the sparsely furnished house.
Erin leaned against the door and slid down to the floor.
Nancy Drew shuffled over and stared at her with rheumy eyes.
“Oh, Nancy,” said Erin, running her fingers down the dog’s back. A terrible pressure welled up in her chest as she tried to hold back the tears. They escaped anyway, like water from a glass filled to the brim, dripping down her cheeks.
Mark had seemed like a good idea at the time. His self-assuredness, relentlessly on display at the local steakhouse where they went for most of their dates, provided a sense of solidity in a world that felt like it was shifting under her feet. After six months of dating, he’d asked for her hand over the steaks he’d ordered well-done, and she’d answered “Yes” without hesitation.
After the wedding, when they settled into a well-done routine of perfectly correct married life, she put aside the feelings that didn’t quite fit into her new life with Mark.
It shouldn’t matter that steaks were starting to make her queasy—or that church services inevitably brought on a sense of anxiety. She had chosen him, and he had chosen her.
It should have been enough.
Erin wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and stood up. She peeked out of the dusty window blinds and was relieved to find that Mark had gathered his things and left. She headed for the kitchen, Nancy Drew trailing her hopefully.
“Here, girl,” said Erin, offering Nancy a dog biscuit from the glass container on the Formica countertop.
Nancy, blind as a bat, nosed around until her snout bumped the biscuit, at which point she snapped it up with doggy enthusiasm.
“How is i
t? Good?” Erin retrieved a second biscuit from the jar and eyed it. She tentatively nibbled a corner. “Not bad,” she mused. “I can’t get any lower than this, Nancy. My husband left me for another woman and I’m eating dog biscuits while talking to a mostly deaf dog.”
Nancy tried to focus in Erin’s general direction.
Erin handed Nancy the nibbled biscuit. “Only slightly used. But you won’t mind, will you, girl?” She kneeled and patted the dog. “Is it too early for bed?”
Nancy sat down heavily on her hindquarters, as if she was too tired to keep holding them up.
“I feel the same way,” said Erin. She rose and crossed to the pantry, where she considered a dusty bottle of red wine half-hidden behind a stash of paper towel rolls. They never drank wine, so the bottle—a gift from a wedding guest—had sat untouched for years. Erin retrieved it and rummaged in a drawer for something to open it with. A multi-purpose kitchen tool revealed a fold-out corkscrew that served the purpose.
Lacking a wine glass, Erin poured the wine into an insulated plastic tumbler and retreated into her bedroom with the tumbler and the bottle.
She drank a big swallow of wine and coughed. Perhaps this wasn’t the best idea.
Then again, she didn’t have any better ideas. She took another sip, set the tumbler and bottle on the nightstand, changed into her pajamas, and crawled under the covers.
Two tumblers of wine later, her head buzzed like a beehive. She should have eaten something to soak up the wine, something more than a nibble of dog biscuit, but it was too late.
Erin rolled onto her side and closed her eyes. The room spun. She searched her mind for comforting thoughts to chase away the impending nightmares and found nothing.
Instead, she recalled her last words to Mark. The Lord forsake you and the Devil take you.
Erin shuddered with embarrassment. Could she be any more childish? She cringed into her pillow and pulled the covers tighter, willing herself to go to sleep.
With her eyes still closed, and her mind drifting in a state between wakefulness and unconsciousness, a frisson crawled over her skin from the top of her head all the way to her toes, wiping away the tension in her body as it rippled through her. If this was a dream, she didn’t want to wake up. It was far more pleasant than her current reality.
A sound like an unfurled bolt of silk brought her to the edge of awareness. She dreamily observed a pair of gray feathered wings unfolding over her. Instead of feeling frightened, she felt sheltered—safe—as she tumbled the rest of the way into the darkness of sleep.
2
The phone on the nightstand rang.
Erin groaned and rolled across the bed. She grabbed the phone and mashed the button to pick up. “Hello?”
“Well, hello there. You sound rough.”
It was Joyce, Erin’s mother.
“Mom?” Erin blinked at the clock. 8:00 a.m. on the dot.
“What are you doing in bed, honey? Weren’t you and Mark always up with the chickens?”
“Mark isn’t around anymore, Mom, and there never were any chickens. Unless he was hiding those from me, too.”
“It’s amazing how you can still make jokes about it,” said Joyce.
“Would you rather I made death threats? It would be more satisfying,” said Erin, lying back on a pillow and closing her eyes.
“Don’t say that. It sounds so un-Christian. Besides, you and Mark were a great couple. I just don’t understand what went so wrong.”
Erin sat straight up and triggered a massive pain in her head. “A great couple? Are you kidding? He cheated on me, Mom. We’re divorced. There is no ‘you and Mark’ anymore.” She rubbed her eyes. “And if we’re going to talk about being ‘un-Christian,’ how about we talk about Mark’s behavior instead of my reaction to it?” Erin smacked her lips together, trying to work some saliva into the foul-tasting desert of her mouth.
“Of course, darling,” she trilled. “Have you eaten? What are you making for breakfast?”
“No, Mom, I haven’t eaten. I just woke up. And I don’t know what I’m making for breakfast.”
“Did you ever make Mark breakfast?”
“Oh, my God, Mom! Lay off.”
Her mom clicked her tongue. “You know, honey, men like to feel taken care of.”
“Like little boys,” Erin said, standing up and stretching.
“Exactly! You do understand, but for some reason you never follow through on my advice.”
“Can’t imagine why,” said Erin, sliding her feet into her slippers. “Mom, I gotta go get ready for church.”
“You’re not afraid to see Mark?”
“Mark is dead to me.”
“That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”
“No.”
“Well, wear your good dress. And put on some makeup.”
“Sure, Mom. Bye now.” Erin hung up the phone and hurled it onto the unmade bed. She didn’t even know why she bothered going to church anymore. Habit, maybe. Or just a desire to make Mark and Genevieve squirm.
A crash from the direction of the kitchen made Erin jump.
Nancy Drew looked up from the floor next to the foot of the bed.
Erin picked up the half-full bottle of wine, ready to throw it.
Nancy stood up and swished her tail back and forth.
They crept into the hallway leading to the kitchen.
“Who’s there?” called Erin. “Is that you, Mark?”
“I’m sorry,” called a male voice. “I was just looking for a mug and I knocked a plate off the shelf. How do you like your coffee?”
Definitely not Mark.
Erin stepped into the kitchen and confronted a nattily dressed, youngish man in a dark red suit and bow tie. “Who are you?” She deftly flipped the wine bottle up to hold it like a club, but forgot that it was still half full of wine and poured it all over herself.
The man rubbed his closely-trimmed salt and pepper beard. “Are you in the habit of pouring wine all over yourself, or is this a special occasion?”
“Get out of my house, or I’ll call the police!” She brandished the now-empty bottle as her fuzzy slippers slowly absorbed the puddle of wine.
“Why don’t we start with introductions? Hi, I’m Andromalius, but you can call me ‘Andy’ for short.” He smiled, exposing a row of gleaming white teeth, and held out his hand to shake.
He didn’t seem like a murderer—but then, would he? Erin backed away. “I don’t care what your name is. You need to leave right now.”
He put his hand down. “But you invited me.”
“I invited you?”
“You invited me,” he said, as if he had received an engraved invitation by mail, signature required upon delivery. He seemed hurt.
“How did I invite you?”
“Oh, you remember,” he said, waving his hand airily.
“No. I don’t!”
He sighed and took a small step closer to her.
Nancy Drew, noticing that he had also moved closer to the jar of dog biscuits, approached him expectantly.
“‘The Lord forsake you and the Devil take you,’ remember? Does that ring any bells?”
Erin lowered the wine bottle. “What did you say?”
“I said”—he stood up straight and pointed his finger at her in a way that unmistakably reminded her of herself—“The Lord forsake you and the Devil take you!”
“How did you—is this some kind of joke? Did Mark put you up to this?”
The man looked offended. “He most certainly did not.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you.”
“Andro-something,” said Erin.
“Andromalius, a mighty Great Earl of Hell. But you can call me Andy.” He inclined his head.
“A great earl of what?”
Was he trying to look modest? “You’re not from hell. You’re just some maniac who broke into my house.”
“Is that so? Watch this.” He snapped his fingers and wings—impossibly large, gray wings flecked with white—exploded from behind his shoulders, filling the width of the kitchen and making a sound like an oversized umbrella snapping open.
Erin staggered backward. “Oh, my God!”
“Wrong direction,” said Andromalius, Great Earl of Hell, and pointed downward.
Nancy Drew barked and tottered in a circle.
“Put them away, you’re scaring the dog,” said Erin, her voice shaking.
“Oh! Sorry, dog.” He snapped his fingers and the wings retracted, then disappeared. He retrieved a dog biscuit from the jar and held it out to the dog.
Nancy Drew took it and lay down, crunching the biscuit happily.
“He’s probably hungry,” said Andromalius, Great Earl of Hell.
“She,” said Erin, absently. “Nancy Drew.”
He stared at her for a very long moment. “So, she’s Nancy Drew, you’re Erin, and I’m—”
“From hell.”
“Just call me Andy.”
“Andy. And you’re the devil,” she said.
“Not the devil. A demon. Can I get you a chair? You look a bit peaky.”
Erin glanced down at herself. Her pajamas and slippers were soaked in red wine. She was probably puffy-faced, too, from the wine of the night before. She pressed one hand to her throbbing head.
“Fear not, a demon is here to help you out!” He gently removed the wine bottle from her hand and steered her into a chair next to the kitchen table. Then he made jazz hands, as if to say “Ta-da!”
“But demons don’t really exist. And if they do, they’re evil. They make people do bad things.”
“Wrong! Humans don’t need any help doing bad things. How about that coffee?” said Andy.
“I don’t want your demon coffee.”
Andy examined the coffee bag. “It’s not my fault you buy pre-ground. And anyway, you summoned me.”
