Pedro sang along with the music, not always understanding the deeper spiritual meaning of the lyrics, but accepting that it was good to have someone or something to pray to, something to worship, something greater than a strong drink or a good cigar. The Spanish voices singing the glory of God and the love of His Christ appeared to be an impenetrable barrier to the dark forces that stalked him.
Pedro did not know much about being “born again,” but he did know that for some reason, God seemed to have remembered him. And now He seemed to provide protection from the spiritual blackness surrounding Pedro’s truck.
There had to be a reason that Pedro had crossed paths with Jim Demore. A reason why the Government Man and his evil-looking, little friend had ended up at the estate that had once been his family’s and should be his. It dawned on Pedro that life was less about being unfair and more about being a circle, and for some reason, the circle of Pedro’s life had almost closed.
As Pedro drove and sang, the darkness around the truck gave way to the bright glow of urban streetlights. Pedro had no problem locating Saffi’s apartment, and he parked his truck on the street behind a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser. Pedro turned off the truck’s engine. The music stopped and he crossed himself.
“Gracias, Dios. Gracias.”
He exited the truck and walked toward Saffi’s apartment. He stopped short of the doorstep and glanced around. Fifty yards down the street a compact sedan, with its headlights off, pulled over under a darkened street light. Inside the sedan, a light flared and flickered, illuminating what looked to Pedro to be a woman. But a covey of shadows, dancing in the flickering light, concealed her face.
A sudden chill enveloped Pedro, which surprised him in the still warm, autumn night. He heard singing, but not the beautiful sounds of the Spanish gospel in the player. This was a chorus of discordance. Yet it transmitted a sense of worship. Dark, powerful worship full of fear and foreboding. A different kind of worship. Devil worship. The sound did not seem to come from any of the apartments or nearby structures. Sadness permeated the aria and it weighed down on him, warring against the sense of hope he had rediscovered.
“No. No. No. No,” he said.
Pedro fought back against the darkness. He remembered his friend who gave him the gospel CD. He had said, “Pedro, remember this — no matter how bad things get in your life, draw closer to God, and he will draw closer to you.”
Pedro remembered and stepped into the ring of light around Saffi’s front door. Gracias, Dios. Gracias.
Pedro knocked on Saffi’s front door. As he waited, the light around the doorway appeared to dim. Pedro blinked to clear his vision, but the creeping darkness thickened. The darkness pressed in, as if it had substance and mass, an existence as real as his own. Pedro knocked again, harder, as if the rapping on the door would somehow drive away the darkness. But as Pedro’s feelings of anxiety and fear rose, the darkness pushed in even closer. Ayudame, Dios. Help me.
Pedro tried to remember the words to the Spanish gospel songs, but he found it difficult to think. A feeling of depression and sadness once again crept over him. Abandoned. Hopeless. Lost. A palpable and soul-crushing despair gripped him. He was going to die poor and alone, a broken-down, drunken relic of a forgotten war. Suicide. Pull the plug. The logical end to an illogical life. Pedro slumped against the door frame as the darkness consumed him.
***
Jim stared through the door’s peephole. Pedro looked to be alone, but he also looked troubled as he slumped against the doorjamb. He looked like if he’d had a gun in his hand, he would have shot himself.
Jim opened the door and glanced up and down the street. The street lights bathed the neighborhood in a soft, warm glow. Jim heard the sounds of urban life in the distance, but the street was quiet. A lone sedan, parked under a dark street light, left the curb, pulled a U-turn, and sped off.
“Señior de la Garza,” Jim said. “Come in.”
Pedro did not move. He was blinking, but the rest of his body seemed frozen.
“Señior de la Garza, come on.”
Jim reached out, put his hand on Pedro’s shoulder, and pulled him forward into the room. At Jim’s touch, Pedro relaxed. His expression changed and he looked at Jim as if he had awakened from a bad dream.
“Señior Demore, I am sorry.”
Pedro stepped across the door’s threshold and into the room. As he stepped inside, Jim took one last look around. The street was quiet and the city looked at peace. Nevertheless, in spite of the night’s outward peacefulness, Jim knew that peace would not be part of his life anytime soon.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Baalzaric watched de la Garza enter the apartment. While he loved inhabiting a body of flesh, loved the sheer, uninhibited pleasure of sexual and physical excess, he hated relying on human beings for this indulgence. While he could possess and control the lower creatures, fish and amphibians, it was a cold, soulless, unpleasant experience. Flesh without spirit being only marginally better than spirit without flesh.
The higher animals, while warm-blooded, had no souls. Unlike humans, other mammals had no self-existent awareness. God had given the beasts of the field a spirit, a life force, and more intellect than the lower orders; but, even with bodies of flesh, they remained unsuitable hosts.
Two-thousand years ago, near the city of Galilee, the Nazarene had cast a demonic legion into a herd of pigs. The beasts ran into the sea and drowned, their temporary demon masters unable to control them. Nevertheless, the demon spirits had outsmarted the Nazarene. Once the pigs drowned, the spirits were free to roam the earth until they found another suitable host. They had avoided the pit while the Nazarene eventually got himself nailed to a Roman cross. Today, that legion found itself safely ensconced in Kevin Williams.
Baalzaric needed to take even greater control of Kat, but he remained acutely aware of the risk. Kat, the almost perfect vessel, would be of little use if he drove her insane or to her death. Fortunately, Baalzaric had rapidly reestablished his spiritual intelligence network, helping him to overcome the physical limitations of his host and her idiot partners.
Of course, neither Lucifer’s demons nor Adonai’s angelic hosts could know what a human was thinking, or what was inside a human being’s heart, unless actually in possession of the human. Dispossessed demons and the angels who obeyed God and maintained their estate could only watch, listen, and guess. Adonai alone claimed to have the power to know all human thoughts, all human hearts.
Baalzaric had his doubts about that. After all, why would God allow a battle between his own kingdom and Lucifer’s domain to continue if he had the power he claimed? Why wouldn’t he just send Lucifer and his demons straight into the pit? Just get it over with if he had that kind of power?
Regardless, Baalzaric took no chances. The pool had become Baalzaric’s safe haven between hosts, but now there existed the hope of an unlimited supply of vessels. Spiritless shells prepared especially for his and the other demons’ eternal pleasure. His fellow free spirits would be thankful to him, and he would stand above them all. For the time being, Baalzaric would allow Kat to keep enough of her own mind to stay sane, but everything else would belong to him.
***
Kat found it hard to believe that her future was in the hands of two absolute morons. Kevin’s kidnapping of a Highway Patrol trooper had initially appeared to be a stupid, stupid move. But she would turn it to her own good. Prompted by a “knowing,” an intuition that spread across her entire being, Kat called The Candle and Wind. Martha answered on the first ring.
“Hello Kat. I’ve been waiting for your call.”
“I have a problem. It involves Kevin.”
“Kevin does have his issues. You know, Kat, I have ways of knowing things too. Sometimes dark, secret things.” Martha paused. “You carry a great power inside you. We recognized that.”
The way that Martha said “we” implied a larger group than just Kevin and her. The shadows probably?
“Kevin
has acquired a new friend who may be useful to me. A Highway Patrol officer. His name is Carl Johns,” Kat said.
“Carl Johns,” Martha repeated. “I know who he is. When Kevin acquires new friends, it usually does not go well for them. Like I said, Kevin has his issues. But then, so does Trooper Johns.”
Kat stayed quiet, waiting for Martha to continue.
“His wife, Kaaneesha, is a customer. She occasionally comes in to buy her spiritual supplies. Well, apparently, Trooper Johns had fallen into temptation with a young woman, actually several young women. She needed a powerful spell to save her marriage and punish the women who had slept with him.”
“So, she let the cheating bastard get away with it and punished the girls?”
“Poor girl’s in love,” Martha said. “As it turns out, Carl Johns didn’t get away with anything after all, did he? How can I help you, Kat?”
“I need Kevin to spend a little more time with his new friend. Get the Highway Patrol looking in the wrong direction.”
“Unfortunately,” Martha said, “‘Trooper Gone Wild’ didn’t work as well as we wished, but ‘Trooper Runs Off With A Badge Bunny’ has a nice tabloid ring to it. I’ll call Janet Poulet. That should buy Kevin a couple of days with his new friend.”
“That’s all we need. In two days this will all be over.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Pedro sipped hot coffee and wished that the pretty girl named Saffi had some whiskey. Pedro’s feelings of spiritual awakening that had come to him and sheltered him during the drive to Ft. Myers had dissolved into an ambiguous funk, much like the feelings he had when his squad would return from a patrol in Vietnam. Always glad to get back to the base alive, but frequently depressed at having lost someone, either dead or wounded. In ‘nam they called it survivor’s guilt.
A large, family Bible lay open on the coffee table in front of the sofa where Trooper Demore and Saffi sat. Pedro could not see which book or chapter it was open to. It did not matter. The Bible represented something good in a night where many things were bad.
“Señior de la Garza,” Jim Demore started, “give me as much detail as you can on what happened tonight.”
Jim took the pen and his small notebook out of his shirt pocket.
Pedro lowered his coffee cup. He did not understand everything that had happened, but his experience convinced him that something dark and malicious drove tonight’s events. He believed that tonight’s experience was an extension of some unknown, spiritual evil that had landed on his family through his great-grandfather, and he reasoned that the only way to be free from its century-old grip would be direct confrontation. Anything less would leave him endlessly wallowing in a spiritual and emotional gutter.
Pedro would start at the beginning, the very beginning, with the story of his great-grandfather. Trooper Demore wanted details. Pedro would give him details.
***
Saffi listened to Pedro’s story with both her ears and her spirit. It was fascinating, touching on incredible. She saw truth in Pedro’s eyes. She had been raised a Southern Baptist and, unlike the Pentecostals and Charismatics, her church did not deal much in signs and wonders — those immaterial, some would say occult — aspects of Christianity. It left her with little direct experience with the metaphysical elements of the supernatural. After all, if you never opened that door, you never had to worry about what might jump through it.
She looked at Jim, his face painted with a liberal coat of skepticism. Nevertheless, Saffi could tell that Jim had been as captivated by Pedro’s story as she had been.
“Most people do believe that a spiritual world exists,” Saffi said.
“Saffi, we’re scientists.” Jim replied. “At least, scientists-in-training.”
“Regardless,” she continued, “as scientists and CSIs, we follow the evidence, no matter where it leads. We follow the evidence, even if that means accepting that maybe there are some things that exist in this world that we have yet to experience and cannot explain.”
“Well, if you are talking about demons and wizards and things that go bump in the night, I think I will continue the role of investigative skeptic.”
“Señior Demore,” Pedro cut in, “the face of the Government Man’s companion was evil. I could see it. But, more than that, the evil followed me. I felt it pressing into my truck. I felt it again, outside, before you opened the door.”
Pedro held his coffee cup in one hand and crossed himself with the other, something he had not done for many years. Tonight it was becoming a habit.
“Look, simply because someone feels something, doesn’t mean there is some supernatural force involved,” Jim said with a hint of irritation. “A feeling,” he continued, “is not a fact, no matter how strong or real it might seem.”
Saffi smiled, but it was not the carefree smile of an innocent girl. It was a smile of knowing. A smile that said, “I’m being patient with you.”
“Jim, evil is a fact. You know that,” Saffi said softly. “Otherwise, how do you explain Hitler and Stalin and Saddam Hussein? Or, for that matter, Columbine or Oklahoma City or 9/11? We deal with the results of evil every day in our jobs. The real question is where does evil come from? The heart of man, or the heart of darkness. Or both?”
Pedro nodded in agreement. “I once thought it was only from the heart of men,” Pedro said, “but now I know that it also exists outside of men’s bodies and men’s minds. It is a force in the world, in its own right. Even if we can’t see it.”
Pedro sipped his coffee. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper.
“Tonight it came for me. Madre de Dios, protect us.”
***
Jim was silent. He was tired, bone-weary, and he did not want to think about demons, goblins, or evil spirits. He wanted to get back to solving good, old-fashioned car crash cases. Yet, what if something supernatural did overlay this case? Some occult evil right out of The Exorcist or The Omen? How do you fight something that you cannot see or touch? Pedro said he felt the evil, but feelings do not solve cases, facts do. On the other hand, how would he explain his own cop-sense, if he had to? Of course, some would simply chalk it up to cop paranoia. A feeling.
“Okay, for argument’s sake,” Jim began, “let’s say there is some kind of demonic power or witchcraft. Whatever you want to call it. Some supernatural crap involved here. Does it matter? I can arrest a suspect. I can’t arrest a ghost.”
“It could matter,” Saffi jumped in, “and we are not talking about ghosts. Ghosts are fiction. Demons are real, and not only do I not believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in witchcraft either. At least not the Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie type.”
Jim almost laughed aloud.
“So, we could be fighting something that you don’t even believe in?” Jim replied. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you understand the Bible’s version of witchcraft and the supernatural,” Saffi shot back.
“God and the devil? Sunday school stories.” Jim said.
“More than God and the devil. God, the devil, and the whole spiritual cosmos,” Saffi told him.
Jim knew the basics of what many Christians believed. He knew that God had his guys and the devil had his, and they were all pretty much invisible, so nobody could prove anything. He knew the Bible said God occasionally showed up as a burning bush, or as a voice from the sky, and that Jesus and his disciples were supposed to have been able to cast demons out of people. At least, those were the kinds of things that his hard-core Pentecostal preacher uncle had told him growing up. Jim never thought of his uncle as a liar. Just a guy who took his religion a little too seriously after almost getting his butt shot off in Vietnam.
“If I’m wrong,” Saffi told him, “then all you have to do is go out and arrest the bad guys.”
When Jim’s cell phone rang, they all jumped. If it were not that Carl Johns’ life was in danger, it would have been funny, but nobody laughed. Jim looked at the caller ID screen before he
answered. It showed a text message with a video attachment. The message simply said, “Watch this.”
Jim held the phone where they could all see it and stabbed the play button with his finger. A girl, naked and still, appeared on the screen. The camera panned slowly from her feet to her unblinking eyes.
“Madre de Dios” Pedro uttered. He crossed himself.
“Do you think Carl’s already dead?” Saffi asked softly.
John shook his head, “No”.
“Not Carl. But that girl. They killed her. Message is from the same phone as Carl’s video. They want me to know they’re serious.”
Jim closed the video. He stayed quiet for a minute. What if, for argument’s sake, Uncle Jack had been right? What if the Bible’s version of good versus evil were true? God and his angels stand on one side, the devil and his demons on the other, and the rest of us are stuck in the middle? The classic, fundamentalist view of good and evil. Well, from the looks of things, it didn’t appear that good was winning.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Jim’s phone rang again. The caller ID said Kat Connors. He answered.
“What a coincidence, Ms. Connors. I was just thinking about your boyfriend. And you driving his pretty car. And where that car is now. You have to ask yourself, what kind of people are you tangled up with? Looks to me like things have gone from manslaughter to felony murder.”
“There are no coincidences, Trooper Demore.” Kat’s tone was smooth and sure. “There are only the paths we choose and the paths that are chosen for us. A little voice told me that someone else has your case now. A smart man would realize that he had been given a new path.” Kat paused. “You’re not alone, are you?” she asked, but it was more a statement of fact.
Jim wanted to ask her how she knew, but he was not sure he wanted to hear her answer.
“I’m alone,” he lied.
“It’s not good to lie to me, Jim. There are three of you there,” she said.
The Demon Pool Page 28
