The Gift of the Demons

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “I had a poem,” said Carter, looking away from me, embarrassed. “It was in German or something. I don’t really remember it. I just read it off a paper.”

  “What happened to the paper?” I said, hoping that he didn’t still have it.

  “I gave it back.”

  “Who did you give it back to?”

  “This sophomore guy. Nick something or other. I don’t remember his last name.”

  “And does he still have the poem?” I would have to go find this kid and get it from him. I couldn’t leave everything for the janitor to do, after all.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Either he does or he doesn’t, Carter,” I said.

  “Well, that’s the thing. He’s sort of—gone.”

  I remembered the news story about the missing people. One of them was from my high school, but I hadn’t recognized the photo of him.

  “Do you know if he gave the poem to anyone else?” I asked.

  Carter shrugged. “He wasn’t the type of guy who had lots of friends. He was sort of—vanilla, if you know what I mean.”

  “But we need to know, Carter. If someone else has a bargain with a demon coming due, we could stop it.”

  “You could stop it maybe,” said Carter. “But I don’t think he told anyone else. He had a girlfriend, but she’s dating someone else now. And that’s all I know about him.”

  I asked for the girlfriend’s name and figured I would look her up and call her. Although I was trying to figure out what I would say. When you answer the phone, you don’t really expect someone to ask if you’ve been summoning demons.

  At the end of the school day, I was passing by the office when I heard someone mention Mr. Barry.

  “He wasn’t in his classroom today. It’s the first day of school he’s missed in twenty years of teaching. And then there’s a fire there. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

  I shook myself. Mr. Barry. I hadn’t gone over to his house when the fire started, which was what I should have done, instead of waiting around outside the school. I’d been too focused on Rumpy and demon hunting. Mr. Barry might be somewhere, dying, or making a bargain with a demon. And I needed to stop him, if it wasn’t too late already.

  .

  Chapter 7

  I got on my regular bus, but got off on an earlier stop and walked over to Mr. Barry’s. I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer. His car was still in the driveway, which didn’t seem like a good sign to me.

  The door was locked, and I tried kicking it down, but I only ended up making my foot ache so badly I wondered if I’d broken half the little bones down there. I limped around and tried to elbow the glass of the windows out. It didn’t work. All those Hollywood moves they show you, they just aren’t helpful tips on how to do it in real life.

  I was going to have to use my feet again, but this time I used the other foot. I kicked hard, and my leg went right through the window. That was when it occurred to me that I could end up with my leg half cut off by the broken shards of glass. I decided at the last moment to sort of let my whole body weight slide through to the floor. It was scary since I hadn’t planned to land that way and hadn’t checked to see where I was falling. But lucikly, I ended up on the couch in his living room.

  None of the lights in the house were on and I felt disoriented until my eyes adjusted. It wasn’t pitch black out, at least, so despite the blinds there was light coming through the cracks.

  “Mr. Barry?” I called out. “It’s me, Fallin.” If he was here, and could hear me, I didn’t want him to be worried. Maybe he had fallen and couldn’t get up. Maybe he had a stroke or had a heart attack and I could get him immediate help. I could save his life.

  That’s what I wanted to believe.

  It occurred to me that there were worse scenarios. What if he was being held by some kind of urban home invaders? What if he was holed up in a closet somewhere because there thieves taking everything he had or terrorists planning an attack against the city?

  Not likely, but those were things I could do something about.

  I got away from the broken glass and crouched down on all fours, trying to make sure that I was ready for an attack if one came. I had all the Tae Kwon Do moves in my head and was running through them. I’d never actually used them in a real situation, but that’s why you practice, so it’s second nature, right?

  I strained my ears, listening for any sound of evil voices. Any sound at all, really. The only thing I could hear was the faint noise of the wind outside and the tinkling of the glass that was still falling into the dining room.

  And my own breath. It was loud. Easy to track.

  I tried to get it under control, and then I finally started to move out of the living room. I made a big sweep of the house, starting in the kitchen, where I saw that Mr. Barry had left out a bowl, spoon, and cereal for breakfast. I looked at his wall calendar and saw that yesterday’s date had not been crossed off yet, though every other one had with the same black marker and the same neat “X.”

  About that time was when I started to think that I should have thought to bring someone with me. One of the other kids from Mr. Barry’s class, or Georgia. Or Rumpy, the demon fighter—only I didn’t exactly know how to contact him.

  No one knew where I was. It could be a long time before anyone found my body. I swallowed hard at that thought and kept moving through the house.

  “Mr. Barry?” I called again, my voice quavering. “Are you here?”

  I finally found him in his bedroom. He had his pajamas on. They were the warm, flannel kind with stripes. Pink and yellow and green stripes, which were strangely right for Mr. Barry’s personality. That was just about the only thing about him that looked right, however. His face was in a rictus of agony, and he had his hands on his chest. I felt as if I could hear the ringing scream still in my ears, though it must have happened hours ago. Last night, most likely. After I’d last talked to him and he’d assured me that nothing was wrong.

  I shouldn’t have listened to him. I should have come to stay with him. I could have done something to help him. Somehow.

  My hands were shaking. I needed to call the police. Would they think he was related to the other missing people? Or would they think this was a natural death/ It didn’t look natural to me.

  And then there was the problem of why I was here and how I’d gotten in.

  But I wasn’t ready to call the police.

  There was information I wanted to know.

  So I moved closer to Mr. Barry’s body and pulled the pajamas away from his throat a little to look down his chest. It felt very strange to do it to my German teacher’s body. I’d never seen someone dead this close up before. It felt a lot less like a human when I touched it.

  I could see strange smoke marks around his neck and wrists and drifting down to his chest. Also, his skin looked like it had been dried, almost like one of those Egyptian mummies you see in museums. Like he’d been dead for a long time, not just a day.

  The police were definitely going to be curious about that. I wondered if there were other bodies like this that had been found outside. Would people automatically recognize them as human? Would anyone guess to see if the faces looked like someone who had been missing recently or would they assume automatically that the corpse belonged in a museum?

  I did something stupid then. I remembered the piece of paper that Mr. Barry had ripped up and thrown away in the bathroom. I went in there and bent over the garbage can. It was like I was watching someone else do it, like I told myself to stop, but no sound came out and my hand would not stop moving forward.

  I picked the paper out of the garbage can and then took it over to the sink. I put the pieces back together like a puzzle.

  Bad idea, a part of me was thinking. But that part of me wasn’t the one that had control of my body. I didn’t know what part of me had control of my body or if any part of me did. Was this what people meant when they talked about possession? I�
�d always thought that was a convenient excuse when you did something you wished later you hadn’t. Blame it on demonic possession.

  But I was starting to believe that demons were real. A lot of what had happened to me in the last few days only made sense if I believed that, so I clung to it.

  How could I be possessed by a demon, though? I hadn’t made a bargain. I hadn’t said the words to summon a demon.

  Except that I could feel my lips starting to move. I could hear the soft sound of a guttural German whisper coming out of my throat. Was that my voice or someone else’s?

  And then I saw the smoke coming from somewhere beneath the bathroom floor tiles. Or fog. Or dry ice or something.

  I thought of Mr. Barry’s body, covered with those marks, dried up like a mummy, and somehow I found the strength to put my hand toward the ripped bits of paper and swipe them onto the floor again. Then I walked out of the bathroom entirely and closed the door behind me.

  As soon as I was away from the paper, the feeling of possession fell away, replaced by a cold sweat that left me shaking and nauseated.

  If that was what had happened to Carter, then I felt sorry for him. How could anyone blame you if you summoned a demon accidentally? Or if it wasn’t exactly an accident, but you wouldn’t have done it if you understood the real consequences.

  Mr. Barry had understood, though, I thought. He was too smart. He had to have been careful with the demon summoning spell. He wouldn’t have ripped it into pieces if he hadn’t been afraid of it. Where had he found it? How many people had he given access to it? Why hadn’t he been more careful?

  He was dead now, but I was still mad at him. Carter was just a teenage guy. And Mr. Barry had made him deal with something that was totally beyond him. Maybe it was beyond everyone. Knowledge like that just shouldn’t be around. It should be—

  The classroom. The school. The fire.

  Rumpy had set the fire on purpose to burn all Mr. Barry’s books. He probably didn’t speak German well enough to go through them one by one and check to see if they said something about summoning demons. Or maybe he just didn’t think he had time.

  What if one book had a reference to another book, and that book led to another book? You could never be sure which ones might end up being dangerous. Better to get rid of all of them. Even if they were Mr. Barry’s life work.

  I didn’t call the police. I was about to leave Mr. Barry’s house through the back door when I heard a noise. Someone was coming in the broken window that I’d come in. After a moment of pressing myself to the wall and trying to hide, I saw that it was Rumpy.

  “Hmm. I wondered if you would show up here,” he said to me.

  “Wait a minute. What are you going to do?” I could see he had a gas can and a lighter. It was pretty obvious, actually, but I wanted to hear him say it.

  “I have to take care of things here. Surely you must see how dangerous this house is. Mr. Barry knew it was dangerous, too. That’s why he’s like this. Only he wanted to make sure that he paid for his crimes first.”

  Rumpy went around the house, pouring gas on carpets, curtains, and especially books. All the books in Mr. Barry’s front room, all the ones in his bedroom in boxes, thrown together.

  I didn’t try to stop him. I can’t blame that on feeling possessed. I just didn’t know that he was wrong.

  “What do you think he did?” I asked, when he had doused everything and had turned back to me.

  “I think he gave a bunch of people a spell to summon demons and he didn’t realize it until last night. He was so interested in acquiring secrets of the past that he was oblivious to the dangers those secrets might pose.”

  “But how did he die?” I asked, my throat as dry as if Rumpy had already lit the fire and I was standing in the middle of it, flames sucking at my tongue and throat.

  “He made a bargain of his own.”

  “You don’t think he’d made a bargain already?”

  Rumpy sighed. “I don’t know for certain, but no, I don’t think so. I think he prided himself on the fact that he knew something he didn’t need to use. It was arcane knowledge and maybe he told himself that he didn’t believe in demons. But in the end, he couldn’t avoid it. That’s what happens to all of us who see the demon summoning spell. It calls to us. We may turn away from it for a few days or a few weeks, but it ultimately is waiting in the back of our minds. There will always be a desperate moment when we think the spell is the only hope.”

  He was staring at me as if he knew me only too well, but I could only think that he must have personal experience with this.

  “So he summoned a demon at the end? That’s what killed him?”

  “You have a better, more rational explanation?” he said, eyebrows raised.

  I wished I did. “But what did he want? I mean, what did he think a demon could give him that no one else could?”

  Rumpy shook his head. “Whatever it was he traded, there was probably a loophole of some kind. There always is when you make a bargain with a demon. You may think you will get what you want, but somehow you don’t.”

  “So he dies and he still doesn’t get what he wants?”

  “I suspect he wanted to make sure that no one else got his spell. But however he worded it, the world still isn’t safe. That spell is still around here somewhere. That’s why I have to burn this. To finish giving Mr. Barry what he was willing to die for. You understand, don’t you, Fallin?” he said.

  I nodded. “I guess I do.” But that spell. I had read that spell. I tried to put it out of my mind. I had only seen it for a moment. I hadn’t even said all of it out loud. If I didn’t think about it, if I pushed it away, surely that would protect me.

  I forgot lots of things. Even things I wanted to remember.

  But a lot of things I wanted to forget, I could never let go of. The names I’d been called in elementary school, the way I’d been stared at by this kid, or that one, as if I were an alien. The shrug of a teacher’s shoulders when asked why I hadn’t gotten a part in a play. The way people’s eyes glazed by me in a store, as if they didn’t see me if they didn’t want to.

  “So once this is all burned, then what?” I asked.

  “Why do you care?” Rumpy asked.

  “I didn’t say I cared. I’m curious.”

  “I move on to other places. Other demon outbreaks. I go where the trouble is.”

  “And if the trouble isn’t gone?”

  “Are you trying to tell me something? Did you find something here? Did Mr. Barry tell you something before he died?”

  “No,” I lied. “I just mean—what if someone else finds it. What if in a few years there are more demons here. Will you appear again to deal with them?”

  “You mean, since I’m so old and decrepit, will I still be alive then?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t mean that.”

  He stared at me.

  “I meant, how do I get help if I need help? I know how to deal with an attacker in a dark alley from Tae Kwon Do. But demons—I don’t know. Is a knife all I need?”

  “No. Definitely not. Don’t try using a knife against demons without any training,” he said.

  “So what do I do?”

  “Stay away from them. Just stay away. That’s the safest thing for you.”

  Yeah, I figured that out already. “And if someone else needs help? It doesn’t seem right to think only about myself.”

  “There’s not much you can do for other people. If they summon a demon, they’re probably corrupted.”

  “But what about Carter? I thought you said he was going to be fine.”

  “As long as he doesn’t make another bargain with a demon, he will be.”

  “And if he does?”

  There was a long silence. “You shouldn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Why? Because I’m a girl? Because I’m a kid?” Was he so old he didn’t remember that women were supposed to be equals to men now?

  “Because you’re—you,”
he said lamely.

  “I want to do something. Even if it’s only warn people. Please, give me something.”

  “All right, fine. I want you to get away from this fire, though. I don’t want anyone to be able to connect you with it. So go home and don’t say anything to anyone about being here. I’ll wait for an hour or so, then set it.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you can be patient and wait for me to find you again. We can talk about what you can do to be safe.”

  “And to help other people,” I added.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “I’m pretty tough,” I reminded him. “I can bench twice my body weight. And I can take down most of the guys at my dojo.”

  “Humans are not like demons,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “You don’t know anything,” he said, and he looked suddenly stricken, like he was angry at me. I didn’t know why. What had I done to him, except ask a few questions? Maybe I reminded him of someone else, but was that my fault?

  “Sorry,” he said immediately afterward. “I said, I’ll talk to you later. But go now.”

  I hesitated. “You promise?” I asked.

  “I promise,” he said.

  “And if you don’t?”

  “I will.”

  “Why should I trust you?” I asked.

  “Because you don’t have any other choice,” he said.

  I stared at him for a long moment. “You—aren’t what you seem to be, are you?”

  His face went still. “What do you mean?”

  “Just that you seem so ordinary, but you’re not. I bet you have loads of stories to tell. Lots of demons that you’ve fought. Like an old army veteran or something.”

  He let out a breath, looking disappointed, though I didn’t know why. “Yeah, something,” he said, and waved half a hand at me.

  I went out the back door and looked behind once. Everything looked perfectly ordinary. For now.

  Chapter 8

  I walked home briskly, waiting for the sound of a massive explosion, but I never heard one. When I got home, I helped Dad with dinner and did homework.