The Demon of Montreal

by A. Michael Schwarz

  This wasn’t going to work. She scanned for…a milk crate—lots of milk crates. She made a stair. Now elevated, she could spy comfortably.

  D’Orion stood a few meters from the others who grouped together, making five against one. She recognized Marducci—don’t mess with Marducci The Mouth if you wanna keep your marbles—which she thought was pretty cool because it meant she had found a meeting for the Big Guys. She couldn’t hear much through the windows, but could see well enough.

  Marducci gesticulated wildly, exactly like she pictured of an Italian crime boss. It looked like D’Orion had pissed off the old don something fierce.

  Oh, shit!

  Her juvenile delight in spying on the mafia met with a brick wall. What if D’Orion had come out here to get killed? Oh, no, no, no! Fuck that. It would screw over her whole plan and she’d have to go off and find some more bottom feeder thugs to offer up to the monster.

  Nothing to do but wait and see.

  D’Orion’s turn to speak. He looked similar in the use of his hands and head, gesturing like that, but Abby could see even from here, he was scared. He moved erratically, frantic and pleading, trying to keep himself from getting shot no doubt.

  The men stopped and turned, Marducci leading the show. A leggy woman in a red dress stepped out of a parked limousine Abby hadn’t really paid attention to before now. She walked with the well-practiced swagger of a stripper. Wait, this was a stripper, this was D’Orion’s precious Delilah.

  D’Orion scratched his fatty neck, then took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Marducci took hold of Delilah’s arm and held her by his side, while another wise guy put his hands on D’Orion’s chest. They were keeping them apart.

  A few moments passed that made the whole thing seem like a stage tableau and then D’Orion went ape-shit and started pawing after his beauty like a rowdy Irish drunk. The wise guys around him converged and held him in check. Shouts and swear words, Italian and English, echoed through the warehouse.

  Finally, D’Orion settled down to a manageable red-faced puffing when Marducci gave an order and lit a cigarette. D’Orion stood frozen for some moments causing Marducci to shout and this time Abby heard it: “I said take off your fucking clothes!”

  More squabbles and bitch slapping took place before the one on D’Orion’s left pulled a gun and pressed the muzzle to D’Orion’s temple. After that the little man wasted no time in relinquishing his suit coat and unzipping his trousers.

  He stood in white underpants, T-shirt and black sock garters. He looked like comic relief from some 1950’s sitcom.

  Marducci gestured at him to which he responded with a string of unintelligible epithets. A friendly nudge in the temple quieted him down again. That was when D’Orion pulled his underpants down.

  * * * *

  “You see, I have a problem,” said Morieu. “Undoubtedly, you are a man who can appreciate problems, no?”

  Marducci nodded in a lazy manner, seemingly unmoved, but Morieu knew the man better than that. Much better.

  “Because,” continued Morieu, “you have problem too. For instance, here you sit, under my jurisdiction involved with all manner of…shall we say illegal dealings, no?” Morieu leaned back. “Quite a problem, don’t you think?”

  Marducci took a deep breath. “Yeah. Quite. So why don’t you tell me about your problem, and then we’ll see what we can do about mine.”

  “Wise, sir. Very wise. Let me start by offering you a cigarette.”

  Marducci accepted. Then Morieu pulled out a copy of last week’s newspapers and pointed to the headline: Demon Cleans Up Montreal. No Tax Dollars Spent.

  “You see,” said Morieu, “I have a fly in my ointment.”

  * * * *

  Abby couldn’t help but notice the way D’Orion jiggled as he played with his junk. And speaking of his junk, she really couldn’t see it from her vantage point. But she could see his gut and his butt and Delilah, who at this point wore her regular attire when around D’Orion—nothing.

  Marducci wouldn’t let D’Orion touch the vixen, but he’d seen to her disrobing to give D’Orion the stimulus he needed. Abby was pretty sure that trying to jack off at gun point in a freezing cold warehouse had to a put a slight damper on things. She just couldn’t understand what kind of mob meeting was taking place here anyway. Since when did public masturbation become a crime syndicate ritual?

  Neither did D’Orion, evidently for all his red-faced efforts and the naked stripper in front of him, he just couldn’t seem to get going.

  Abby heard Marducci, “Come on, fat ass, you know you always wanted to do it in front of her.”

  That didn’t help. D’Orion just sputtered more until at last, he gave up and put hands on hips, limp as a dishrag.

  What happened next didn’t surprise as much as it fascinated. The action seemed without purpose. Marducci motioned for D’Orion to pull up his underpants and then gave some kind of orders to the other men, because they grabbed the poor D’Orion and preventing him from squirming about—and despite his screams—neatly and efficiently snipped off the man’s index finger. Blood gushed like a latex paint gun from the removed appendage and coated his arm down to his elbow. It made an awful mess on his white T-shirt. The man wailed and screamed and had to be thoroughly restrained from reclaiming the lost finger that rolled like a dropped breakfast sausage and came to rest sodden on the cement floor.

  Wise guys stuffed Delilah back into her clothes and then into the limo while they wrapped D’Orion’s spurting finger in his torn suit sleeve and chauffeured him in his own vehicle. Abby jumped down from the window, leaned into the shadows and waited while the warehouse bay doors opened and the mobsters peeled out. Minutes that seemed like hours passed as Abby strained an ear to any sounds that might indicate that mobsters lingered. After a while she determined they’d all departed.

  She found, as she gingerly rounded the corner, they had left the bay doors open and there on the floor, innocuous and lifeless, lay D’Orion’s severed finger.

  It was a perfect totem.

  * * * *

  “You see, Marducci,” said Morieu as he lit another cigarette for the man, “I don’t really care how you get the sample. Or what sample you get. Hair, blood, semen—though I think semen will be best, less strings for you that way. And I don’t think your man has hair. Anyway, I care only that it is a sample and that you don’t clean it up, oui?”

  Marducci inhaled deeply, his mouth curving at the edges. “Ah, why the fuck do you want to do that? I mean, what’s it to you? If you don’t mind my asking that is.”

  Morieu did mind his asking, but he also wanted the man’s cooperation. He chose his next words very carefully.

  “Well, my friend, let’s just say that if you do this, in a couple of days, I will be very surprised if your fatso doesn’t turn up dead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Trisha had not given up. Abby was around, she knew. For one, Trisha’s Vespa and helmet had gone missing two days before, the key snatched clean from her key ring. She wondered when her sister had purloined it. She had always been so good at sneaking in and out of the house.

  It pained her. She wanted so badly to reach out, to find her and tell her to come home, but somehow she knew that was impossible now. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the object that had somehow, ridiculously become the symbol of her sister’s disappearance: a blank fortune.

  By now the paper frayed and curled, but still Trisha kept it as if, maybe, just maybe, she held it long enough, she’d find Abby. One way, or another.

  * * * *

  Abby hadn’t seen Simon when she’d come in from her mob bust. She’d left the severed finger on the table in his study, knowing that the rest would care for itself. She’d heard his voice down the long corridors emanating from the beast’s chamber and decided not
to interrupt.

  That had been two nights ago. Now, she sat at her usual spot at Le Sexe Machina voyeuristically taking in the scenery. Like always, two martinis sat adjacent on the bar next to her. This time the bar tender really did eye her, like a fricking bug into the blue zap light. She’d have to consider changing clubs and routines for a while. No trace of D’Orion populated the club tonight. She expected that he never would again.

  The trance beats had gotten into her somehow and she found herself drifting with the music, her mind emptying of its content.

  An empty mind, that’s probably a good thing.

  She needed rest. Perhaps, she needed a long hiatus on some remote island somewhere. She didn’t know how close they were to completing their task. A thousand eyes, that’s all Simon had told her, that’s all Simon knew. So, she brought the sacrifices. Every time she’d tried to count the number on that misshapen, fucked up head, she’d lost count right around one hundred and fifty. How one could verify a thousand remained a conundrum, though nothing would surprise her anymore.

  The ether that the music spirited her away into felt good. Nice to be somewhere else for a while.

  “May I?”

  The question jolted her. She opened her eyes and rubbed in two knuckles. The lights blurred and returned, sharpened. A man sat on the bar stool next to her, one hand wrapped around a martini.

  “May I?”

  Abby sat up. “No. No, you may not.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. You know as well as I do that no one else is going to claim this drink. So, why not?”

  Abby shook her head. “Look, I said ‘no’. Now, fuck off.” She tried to take the drink back, but the man pulled it away.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” He wagged a finger. “Don’t be so rude to a guest. It’s liable to be the last one you ever get.”

  She took a moment and studied him. He wasn’t the type of fare she had expected to hit on her. He was middle-aged, graying and sporting a smile that verged on gleeful insanity. He wore a suit but no tie.

  Mafia? She thought, but he sounds French. French mafia?

  “You are looking confused, Abigail is it?” he took a sip and set the drink down. “I normally don’t drink on the job, but this is special occasion. Allow me.” He reached into his suit coat and produced a narrow leather case that he flipped open to a badge. Just as nonchalant he dropped it back into his jacket.

  Abby laughed a short huff through her nose and felt her eyes water up.

  “Hard week?” he asked.

  She couldn’t look at him anymore. All she could hear was Simon’s voice in her head—But they can get you!

  She tipped the martini glass into her mouth and took her first drink in months. “I guess you got me,” she said.

  The man nodded playfully. “Yes, yes I did. Isn’t it fun to play this cat and mouse game?”

  “Can we finish this song first?”

  “Be my guest, darling.”

  * * * *

  Simon hadn’t seen Abby in four days. It was unusual. Two at the most…never four. Had madness become too much for her mortal conscience after all? He understood that. It would break anyone. It would have broken him too, if he hadn’t already been.

  The beast rarely slept now, hungering feverishly in its cradle. He had fed the last carcass to it himself, the corpulent hairless morsel with the missing finger. And the babe had attacked it with ferocity, chomping half its stature in one go. Simon could still see the lingering need in the eyes of the beast, pleading for another.

  Nine hundred and ninety eight. What then? What happens at one thousand, the magic number?

  And soon, after all the long years, Simon would find out. Two more to go. Two more and then…the end.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She pushed her fingers back and triggered the gag reflex. Her body lurched and her stomach emptied into the toilet. She gazed at it for a moment as she spit out the rest of her chocolate pudding and Caesar salad before flushing it.

  Morieu had stopped smiling so much when she’d told him about the demon—the real demon who’d stitched together a monster underneath the city and fed it with the bodies of his victims. A little time in Douglas, he’d said, would do her some good before they talked again. He had nothing on her…yet.

  Abby pulled herself to the mirror and, ignoring the black circles, washed her face. She’d begun sticking her fingers down her throat three days ago to keep the Thorazine out of her system. She was used to going without food, but even she had to admit this was pushing it.

  No matter, tonight would end it one way or the other. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Trisha since she’d gotten locked up in the mental ward, waking in a cold sweat from a dream she’d had of the tunnel monster.

  How many eyes had he now? She could never count them in real life. How many did he need? One thousand and then what? One thousand, the magic number. His crazy, mismatched head was covered in them. Eyes. Nine hundred and ninety something—she could count them in her dream, she could count them if she looked through Simon’s vision, through the eyes he no longer had.

  Of course! She’d sat up in bed that night. His eyes had been the first to give to the creature. Simon knew and so did Abby. Nine hundred and ninety…eight, if she counted D’Orion.

  Two more to go, but how would he find them now? How would he find the last sacrifice if Abby was locked up eating Thorazine pudding?

  There it was again. Dancing and flitting about in her mind’s eye. The totem that had started it all—the fortune.

  Then she knew. Knew it like her name or how to tie her shoes. Knew it from the bottom of her stomach to the top of her prefrontal lobe. Trisha had the paper. Trisha kept it as a keepsake, the last link to her sister who’d disappeared without warning or preamble and who’d left a phony suicide note behind to placate the police. Knew it.

  Trisha wasn’t so stupid. Trisha knew Abby, but more, they’d shared the womb, thoughts, nearly shared bodies and though so different in manner and style, so disparate in disposition, it didn’t change the fact that they were and would always be twins.

  Abby reached under her mattress. Felt for the thin length of metal and confirmed it still waited there, loyal to her. Tonight, yes, the plan had been drawn.

  * * * *

  Lights out came at nine o’clock and everyone knew that if you didn’t want trouble, you wouldn’t fight what came after you fell asleep. Drugged sleep didn’t guarantee safety, it just covered things up.

  So you slept and if you were sore in the morning, you didn’t wonder or care. Abby had heard through the walls when she was supposed to be comatose from her anti-psychotics. She’d seen it on faces the morning after and no one said a Goddamn word.

  Sex can be a commodity, even in a place where it’s stolen.

  The nurse called lights out and that was that. Abby waited for about an hour, the usual time frame before Nurse Hagstrom secured and the psych tech, Dewey, took over.

  She listened for the tap of high heels and the casual words exchanged that signaled the change. Then it was just Dewey and all those drooling girls. A fertile playground for someone whose emotional development hadn’t progressed beyond feeling up drunk girls in junior high. Dewey was pretty big, not fat either, muscle and well proportioned. Ugly too, with acne scars and pit marks like sandpaper. Dewey wore soft-soled and pristine white tennis shoes and walked like a cat. He didn’t make a sound.

  Abby crouched by the door, peering around the corner at the lamp light of the front desk. She could hear the television and knew Dewey had taken the guard. He always watched Loony Tunes for half an hour, munching on a bag of caramel corn before getting started on his rounds.

  She straightened and stood where he could see her. For once she was happy her room was so close to the front door. Under normal circumstances t
he rooms weren’t locked, unless of course lock down had been called. The drugs were far more efficient at keeping the girls corralled than any security system.

  She waited, watching the flash of television light on Dewey’s face. He shoved candy coated popcorn into his mouth as he laughed at Bugs Bunny. He loved Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig and the damn black duck. He loved cartoons and candy corn and drugged out girls asleep in their beds. Then she caught his attention. He squinted past the TV, into the dark lit hallway.

  “Huh?”

  Abby didn’t respond.

  He turned down the volume and stood up. The desk was located about four meters from where she stood. “Whaterya doin?” he called, a smile stretching his lips back.

  Let him come.

  “Yoohoo!” he called out. When she didn’t respond he grabbed a night stick and began walking towards her, silently. He towered over her, his white pants and shirt clinging tight against his musculature.

  “Whatdya want?” he asked.

  The next moments took a strong will. Without a word, she stared at his pimpled face and drew up the hem of her hospital gown, revealing her utter lack of underwear.

  It was like cartoon pinwheels had been shot off in his eyeballs. “Get inside,” he said and pushed her into the room. He didn’t take care to close the door, why bother?

  He shoved her on the bed and yanked her legs apart, pushing her gown up well past her breasts. He was rubbing against her, his sex hard beneath his uniform. “Oh, fuck yeah!” he said, tongue hanging to one side. “Fuck, fuck, fuck yeah!”

  She swallowed hard, had to repress the gag reflex from his panting popcorn breath. She wanted to give him a little time to get into it. His hands groped painfully at the tender skin between her legs as he dry humped her.

  Okay already, horny fucker, enough is enough!

  She slipped her fingers under the mattress, fumbling for the broken off power saver light bulb she’d hidden there. Dewey still undulated, the bed squeaked on rusty springs.