“Why? What changed your mind?”
Stone flopped back onto the sofa. “Because it fucking worked, that’s why. My luck changed. Everything turned around. Everything. My partners dropped their lawsuits, some former clients who still owed me money decided to pay up, a guy from Microsoft called with an offer to buy a couple of my software patents, my wife and I got back together — six months later, it was like my life had done a complete one-eighty.”
“So you decided that your good fortune meant that your bargain with the Infernal must have been real, after all.”
“Yeah, eventually. It took me a long, long time to finally admit the possibility. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, you know what I mean?”
“I do, for sure.”
“But the bill comes due at midnight, and I’m scared, man. I have to admit now that I am really, big-time terrified. Can you help me, Mister Morris? I mean, I can pay whatever you want. Money’s not a problem.” Stone snorted in disgust. “Money’s the least of my problems.”
“Well, I’m not sure what—”
“Look, you’re some kind of hotshot occult investigator, right? There’s a story about a bunch of vampires, supposed to have taken over some little Texas town.” Stone stopped, and sat studying the palm of one hand for several seconds. “Vampires. Jesus.” He shook his head a couple of times, slowly. “I didn’t use to believe in vampires — but then, I didn’t use to believe in demons, either. The dude who told me about that Texas business, a guy I’ve known and trusted for years, said you took care of it in, like, four days flat.”
Stone leaned forward, and Morris could see panic moving just below the surface of his demeanor, like a snake under a blanket.
“And, yesterday,” Stone said, “I talked to a guy named Walter LaRue, he’s the one told me how to find you, finally. He said you saved his family from some curse that was, like, three centuries old, but he wouldn’t tell me any more about it. Christ, you must deal with this kind of stuff all the time! There’s gotta be a way out of this fucking box I’ve got myself in, and if anybody can find it, I figure it’s you. Please help me. Please.”
Morris studied Trevor Stone in silence for almost a full minute. Unlike his unexpected visitor, Morris was dressed casually, in a gray Princeton Tigers sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sandals. The once coal-black hair was shot through with streaks of gray that made him look older than his years. The black hair came from the Morris family tree. The gray was put there by the family profession, begun over a century ago by a man who died in the shadow of Castle Dracula.
Getting to his feet, Morris said, “You’re probably pretty thirsty after all that — how about something to wet your whistle, before we talk some more?”
Stone asked for bourbon and water, and Morris went to a nearby sideboard to make it, along with a neat Scotch for himself. There was precision and economy to his movements that Trevor stone might have found mildly impressive, under other circumstances.
Morris gave Stone his drink and sat down again. “You know, my profession, if you want to call it that, isn’t exactly regulated. There’s no union, no licensing committee, no code of ethics we’re all expected to follow. But my family has been doing this going back four generations, and we have our own set of ethical standards.”
Stone took a big sip from his glass, but said nothing. He was watching Morris with narrowed eyes.
“And it’s a good thing too,” Morris went on. “Because it would be the simplest thing in the world for me to go through a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, recite a few prayers over you in Latin, maybe splash a little holy water around. Then I could tell you that you were now safe from the forces of Hell, charge an outrageous amount of money, and send you on your way. You would be, too.”
Stone blinked rapidly several times. “I would be — what?”
“Safe, Mister Stone. You’d be safe, no matter what I did, because you were never in any danger to begin with.”
After a lengthy silence, Stone said, “You don’t believe I made a deal with the Devil. Or a devil.”
“No, I don’t. In fact I’m sure you didn’t.”
Hope and skepticism chased each other across Stone’s face. “Why?” he asked sharply. “What makes you so goddam certain?”
“Because that kind of thing — a deal with the Devil — just doesn’t happen. It’s the literary equivalent of an urban legend. I don’t know if Chris Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus” was the start of it or not, but bargaining away your soul to a minion of Hell has become a … a cultural trope that has no basis in actual practice. Sort of like the Easter bunny, but a lot more sinister.”
“You’re saying you don’t believe in Hell?”
Morris shook his head slowly. “I am saying no such thing, no sir. Hell really exists, and so does Satan, or Lucifer, or whatever you want to call him. And the other angels who fell with him, who were transformed into demons as punishment for their rebellion — they exist, as well. And sometimes one of them can show up in our plane of existence, although that’s rare. But selling your soul, as if it was a used car, or something?” Morris shook his head again, a wry smile on this face this time. “Just doesn’t happen.”
“But … how can you be sure?”
“Because, among other things, it makes no sense theologically. The disposition of your soul upon death is dependent on the choices you make throughout your life. We all sin, and we all have moments of grace. The way the balance tips at the end of your life determines whether you end up with a harp or a pitchfork, to use another pair of cultural tropes.”
“What makes you such an authority on this stuff?” Stone asked.
“Apart from what I do for a living, you mean? Well, I reckon my minor in Theology at Princeton might give me a little credibility if I need it, along with the major in Cultural Anthropology. But, far more important: we’re talking about the essence of the Judeo-Christian tradition, Mister Stone. The ticket to Heaven, or to Hell, is yours to earn. You don’t determine your spiritual fate by playing the home version of “Let’s Make a Deal” — with anybody.”
“But it worked, goddammit! I bargained for a return to success, and success is what I got.”
“What you got was confidence. You may have had a little good luck, too, but most of it was just you.”
“Are you serious?”
“You bet I am. A fella like you has got to know how important confidence is in business. If you believe in yourself, it shows, which causes other people to believe in you, too. And that’s where success usually comes from. You were convinced your business problems were going to be fixed, and thus you acted in such a way as to fix them. You assumed your failing marriage could be repaired, and so you went and repaired it. And so on. They call that a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy,’ Mister Stone.” Morris held up spread hands for a moment. “Happens all the time.”
“My God.” Stone sat back, relief evident on his face. But in a moment, he was frowning again. “Wait a minute — Dunjee, with his contract and the rest of it. I didn’t imagine that, I didn’t dream it, and I don’t do drugs, anymore. None since college, and nothing that would give me those kinds of hallucinations.”
“I have no doubt he was there. That’s why I asked you what name he was using, and what he looked like. Your description was very accurate, by the way.”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Oh, yeah,” Morris said with a sigh. “When you deal with the occult, it pays to keep track of the various frauds who pretend to have supernatural powers. A lot of my work involves debunking con artists.”
“Con artists? That’s what Dunjee was — nothing but a fucking con artist?”
“Exactly. His real name, by the way, is Manfred Schwartz, and he ran that particular scam very lucratively for a number of years. It’s a version of the long con. Pretty damn ingenious, really. He would look for successful people who had fallen on very hard times. He’d show up, go through the routine he used on you, get a signed contract, then fade away.”
Stone’s brow had developed deep furrows. “I don’t get it — how could he make money doing that? He didn’t ask me for a dime.”
“Not at the time, no. His approach was to visit a number of people, across a wide geographical area. He would go through his ‘deal with the devil’ act, then wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“For his ‘clients’ fortunes to improve. Some of them would never recover from their adversity, of course. Those folks would never see ‘Dunjee’ again. But Manny chose his victims carefully — people with brains, guts and ambition, who had just been dealt a few bad hands in life’s poker game. People who might very well start winning again, especially if Manny convinced them that supernatural powers were now on their side. Then, after they started to pull themselves out of their hole, Manny would show up again.”
“Before the ten years were up?”
“Oh, yes, long before. He’d say he was just checking to confirm that they were receiving what he had promised — and to remind them what the ultimate price would be. Then he’d sit there, looking evil, and wait for them to try to buy their way out of their contract.”
“Oh, my God,” Stone said. “I see what he was doing, the little bastard.”
“Sure. Manny would act reluctant, which would usually prompt the victim to offer even more money, which he would finally accept — in cash, of course. If asked what the Devil wanted with money, anyway, he’d say something about money being the root of all evil, and the more money the forces of darkness had to work with on this plane, the more evil they could create, et cetera. He’d wait while the mark went to the bank, if necessary. Then he’d make a ritual of tearing up the contract, and go off to spend his loot. It’s a perfect con, because the mark never even knows that he’s been ripped off.”
“Wait a minute — Dunjee never came back to see me. Never!”
“I’m not surprised,” Morris said. “Because Manfred Schwartz was picked up by the FBI on multiple counts of interstate fraud — something like nine years ago.”
“Son of a bitch!”
“Manny never came back to extort money out of you after your life got better, because Manny’s life took a turn for the worse. He’s currently serving fifteen to twenty-five in a federal pen — Atlanta, I think.”
“But I never heard a thing from the FBI — they never asked me to testify.”
“Probably because Manny hadn’t received any money from you yet, so technically he hadn’t committed a crime. Besides, I expect the government had plenty of other witnesses to present at his trial.”
Stone appeared to really relax for the first time since he had shown up at Morris’s door.
“Feeling better?” Morris asked with a quiet smile.
“Better doesn’t begin to describe it,” Stone said. “I feel like … like I can take a deep breath for the first time in years.”
“Well, then, I’d say that calls for another libation.”
Morris took their empty glasses back to the sideboard. While mixing Stone’s second bourbon and water, he unobtrusively opened a small wooden box and removed a couple of capsules. Using his body to shield what he was doing, he popped open the capsules and poured their contents into the drink he was making. He stirred the contents until the powder dissolved, then poured another Scotch for himself.
Morris gave Stone his drink and sat down again. The two of them made small talk for a while, Stone asking Morris questions about his “ghostbusting.” Then Stone said, “Man, I suddenly feel really wiped out.”
“Not surprising,” Morris said. “With the release of all that tension, you’re bound to feel pretty whipped. Anyone would.”
A few minutes later, Stone’s speech started to slur, as if he had consumed far more than two drinks. His eyelids began to droop, and then they closed all the way. Stone’s head fell forward onto his chest, and the nearly empty glass dropped from his fingers and rolled across the carpet, before coming to rest against a leg of Morris’s coffee table.
“Stone?” Morris said. No reaction. Then more loudly: “Stone! Wake up!” Receiving no response, he slowly stood and went over to the unconscious man. He put two fingers on the inside of Stone’s wrist and held them there for several seconds, while looking at his watch. Satisfied, he gently released Stone’s arm.
Morris then left the room, and came back carrying a small, rectangle-shaped bottle with a glass stopper. Back at the sideboard, he poured several ounces of what looked like water from the bottle into a clean glass, then returned to his chair. He put the glass on a nearby end table, but did not drink from it. Then he glanced at his watch again, picked up the latest issue of Skeptical Inquirer from the end table, and settled down to wait.
Morris did not check the time again, but he knew the witching hour had arrived when an elegant grey Homburg suddenly plopped onto the middle of his coffee table. Looking up, Morris saw a small man in an elegant gray suit and maroon bow tie sitting on the sofa next to the unconscious form of Trevor Stone. The new visitor absently stroked his goatee as he frowned in Morris’s direction.
“I was about to say that I’m surprised to see you, Quincey.” The little man’s voice was surprisingly deep. “But, on reflection, I really shouldn’t be. My last client tried to hide out in a cathedral, for all the good it did him. So I suppose it was only a matter of time before one of them came crying to you for protection.”
“I’m a little surprised myself, Dunjee,” Morris said calmly. “Surprised, I mean, that you even bothered with this one. He was contemplating suicide when you showed up to make your pitch, you know. You guys would have had him anyway — and a lot sooner.”
The little man shook his head, frowning. “Our projections were that he wouldn’t have given in to his suicidal ideations, more’s the pity. Even worse, there was a 70-30 probability that, after hitting rock bottom a couple of years later, he was going to enter a monastery and devote the rest of his life to prayer and good works. Ugh.”
Dunjee stood up. “I hope we’re not going to have any unpleasantness over this, Quincey.” He reached inside his jacket and produced a sheet of paper, which he waved in Morris’s direction. “I have a contract, duly signed of his own free will. My principals have lived up to their part of the agreement, in every respect.” He glanced over at Stone, and his expression reminded Morris of the way a glutton looks at a choice cut of prime rib, medium rare. “Now it’s his turn.”
“You know that contract of yours is unenforceable in any court, whether in this world or the next,” Morris said. “The only thing you’ve got working for you is despair. The client thinks he’s damned, and his abandonment of hope in God’s mercy ultimately makes him so.”
Dunjee shrugged. “Say you’re right. It doesn’t matter a damn, you should pardon the expression. If it’s despair that makes him mine, so be it. Bottom line: the wretch is mine — for all eternity.”
“Not this time,” Morris said quietly.
“Surely you’re not claiming he didn’t accept the validity of the deal. Did he come running to you because he was eager to hear stories about that famous ancestor of yours? I don’t think so, Quincey. He knew he was damned, and he was hoping you could find him an escape clause.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Morris told him.
Dunjee stared at him, as if suspecting a trick. “So, why are we talking?”
“Because I found one.”
“Impossible!”
“Not at all. Despair is the key, remember? Well, he doesn’t despair any more. I convinced him that his soul isn’t his to sell. Further, I spun him a yarn about how you were a con artist planning to come back when his luck changed and extort money from him, except you got arrested before you could return.” Morris shook his head in mock sympathy. “He doesn’t believe in the deal anymore, and that means there’s no deal at all.”
Dunjee’s eyes blazed. “He doesn’t believe?” Before Morris’s eyes, the little man began to grow and change form. “Then I will MAKE him believe!” The v
oice was now loud enough to rattle the windows, and Dunjee’s aspect had quickly become something quite terrible to behold.
Morris swallowed, but did not look away. He had seen demons in their true form before. “That won’t work, either. I slipped him a Mickey — 120 milligrams of chloral hydrate, combined with about four ounces of bourbon. He’ll be out for hours, and all the legions of Hell couldn’t wake him.”
Morris stood up then, facing the demon squarely. “The hour of midnight has come and gone, Hellspawn,” he said, formally. “You have failed to collect your prize, and consequently any agreement you may have had with this man is now null and void, in all respects and for all time.”
Morris picked up the glass he had prepared earlier. Pointing the index finger of his other hand at the demon he said, in a loud and resolute voice, “I enjoin you now to depart this dwelling, and never to enter it again without invitation. Return hence to your place of damnation, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is never quenched, and repent there the sin of pride that caused your eternal banishment from the sight of the Lord God!”
Morris dashed the contents of the glass — holy water, blessed by the Archbishop of El Paso — right into the demon’s snarling face, and cried “Begone!”
With a scream of frustration and agony, the creature known on Earth as Dunjee disappeared in a puff of gray smoke.
Morris took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He carefully put the glass down, then pulled out his handkerchief to mop his face. His hands were trembling, but only a little.
He looked over at Trevor Stone, who had started to snore. He would never know what Morris had accomplished on his behalf, but that was all right. In the ongoing war that Morris fought, what mattered were the victories, not who received credit for them.
Sniffing the air, he realized that the departing demon had left behind the odor characteristic of its kind.
Quincey Morris frowned, and wondered if a good spray of air freshener would get the pungent scent of brimstone out of his living room.
Justin Gustainis is a college professor living in upstate New York. He is author of The Hades Project, Black Magic Woman, Evil Ways and the forthcoming Hard Spell and Sympathy for the Devil. His website may be found at www.justingustainis.com
Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives Page 13
