Demoneater

by Royce Buckingham

  The persistent demon crawled along the Seattle docks, a frightening place for a little fire, given their proximity to water. It sought somewhere to hide, a place where it could be safe and grow.

  Nat had tracked the little fire to the docks but lost its trail there. He had not yet found a trail for Wedge, the demonic crack that rent asunder anything it touched. The two destructive demons were running loose somewhere in the city, and it was his job to capture them before they did any harm. Nat took a deep breath. Now he had a runaway Troll to find too.

  CHAPTER 6

  UNDER THE BRIDGE

  Sandy pulled over to the curb near the Aurora Avenue Bridge. Cars lined the street, and she had to parallel park. The process took her several minutes and inflicted minor dents on the bumpers of the vehicles in front of and behind hers.

  Nat tried to help. “Forward . . . okay, now back, back, back . . . ”

  Clunk!

  “Stop.” Richie smirked.

  When the car was finally parked, badly, they tumbled out and headed under the bridge.

  It looked worse than it had on the news. The hole where the Troll’s lower half had been buried looked like a bomb crater. Chunks of concrete were scattered all over the street. Crowds of people milled about taking pictures, grabbing pieces of concrete as souvenirs, and puzzling over the disappearance.

  Nat strolled to the edge of the hole, trying to look nonchalant. Yellow tape warned the public about the sudden pit. Richie walked up behind Nat and looked down.

  “Hello-hello!” he barked, listening for an echo.

  “Please don’t make a scene,” Nat whispered out the side of his mouth.

  “So where could it hide?” Richie asked. “It’s as big as a rhino riding piggyback on an elephant.”

  “I don’t know,” Nat said.

  Richie turned to Sandy. “You’re the smart chick. Got a theory?”

  “I’m working on it,” she replied tersely.

  Nat caught sight of a man in a badly tailored suit looking in their direction. “Uh-oh. Let’s move along,” Nat said. He tried to pull Richie away, but it was too late.

  The suited man poked through the rubble, taking notes, but when he spotted the kids, he sniffed the air and skittered toward them. He was the most shapeless man Nat had ever seen. No hips, no shoulders—just a tubular body with an unnaturally round head on top and sticklike arms and legs poking out the sides. He had a jerky, rushed manner.

  “Hello. I am Mr. Calamitous. Who are you? I’m a researcher investigating this phenomenon, or an investigator researching it, whichever you like. I’m very excited. It’s amazing, don’t you think? May I interview you?”

  He spoke so fast that it was hard to know which question he wanted answered.

  “I heard it was a prank,” Nat mumbled.

  Calamitous laughed. “Oh no. This is no prank. No prank at all.”

  He sifted through crumbled concrete with his blunt fingers. He looked like he was missing a couple of digits, but they twitched so rapidly that Nat couldn’t quite tell.

  Calamitous sniffed the concrete. “Something happened here. Something strange. Something . . . chaotic.”

  “University students, probably,” Nat suggested. “They’re wacky and pranky.”

  “Tell me,” Calamitous chattered, “do you live around here? Close? Nearby?”

  “Yes,” Richie said.

  “No,” Nat said at the same time.

  “You don’t and you do?” Calamitous eyed Nat and Richie in turn. “Tch-tch-tch,” he tittered, shaking his head. “How do you know each other? Where’s the connection. What’s the relationship?”

  “We don’t really . . . ,” Nat began.

  “He’s my 12-step sponsor,” Richie cut in. “I’m addicted to video games.”

  “Hmmm.” Calamitous put one of his twitching fingers on his chin. “And the female?”

  “The what?” Sandy blurted.

  “Who is she? Where is she from? Does she not live around here too? What is her role in this supernatural event?”

  Nat squirmed. “Who said this was supernatural?”

  “Do any of you feel what happened here?” Calamitous kept talking, scribbling notes as he babbled.

  “I think I felt a twinge,” Richie offered.

  “Could you excuse us, please?” Nat said, grabbing Richie by the collar.

  “Oh no. No excuses,” Calamitous said, excited spittle leaping from his mouth. “I’m hot on the trail. And the trail seems to lead through you somehow.” Suddenly, he stopped, sniffed the air, and hurried off.

  Just then, a Volkswagen Bug drove up. It was pink, and painted flowers adorned its exterior. The tiny car pulled a huge trailer with equally colorful murals painted on its sides. Another car departed, leaving a large parking space, and the Volkswagen and its trailer drifted smoothly up next to the curb.

  Nat hauled Richie into a corner.

  “What’s your problem?” Richie said. “He’s just doing research.”

  “On us!” Nat snapped. “He’s nosy. He’s snooping. And we’re supposed to be inconspicuous.”

  “If I knew what that meant, I’d try to be it,” Richie said.

  “It means shut up,” Nat said. “And don’t tell people where you live.” Just then, Nat froze and gazed past Richie at the VW Bug.

  An eighteen-year-old girl stepped out. She wore a tie-dyed sack dress whose colors seemed to swim as it moved. Her Birkenstock sandals were so well-worn that they seemed molded to her elegant feet. She had long auburn tangles of unmanaged hair that seemed to go wherever it wanted but always in an interesting direction. And a small, glittering emerald jutted from one side of her pierced nose. She closed her deep green eyes, feeling the aura of the area.

  Nat stared at her.

  Sandy stared at Nat. Her eyebrows pinched with concern. “What are you looking at?” she asked, despite it being clear exactly what he was looking at.

  The girl shook her renegade hair and walked past the crowd, straight to Nat.

  “I’m Lilli,” she said, “from San Francisco. Is this where the Troll was?” She closed her eyes. “Ah, yes. I’m getting a vibe. I think it’s still close by.”

  “Wow,” Nat said.

  “Not exactly a revelation,” Sandy jumped in. “It couldn’t have gotten far without someone seeing it.”

  “You’d be amazed what people don’t see,” Lilli said in a way that was both whimsical and dismissive at the same time.

  “So true,” Nat agreed.

  Sandy fumed, speechless.

  “I’m going to check out its former pad,” Lilli said. She smiled at Nat and then sashayed under the bridge toward the pit.

  Nat watched her swinging hips send colors rippling through her dress in rhythmic waves as she walked away.

  “Nat,” Sandy said. “Nat!”

  “I’m listening.”

  “No, you’re not,” Sandy insisted. “Now look away from the hippy chick for just one second.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “The police think thieves hauled the statue away on a truck,” Sandy said. “I don’t believe that, do you?”

  “No. It walked away. I’m sure of it.”

  “The thing weighs tons. If it walked across the grass on either side of the street, it would have left footprints.”

  “Okay . . . ”

  “So it must have walked straight down the street. And there’s only one logical place where something that big could hide.” Sandy turned and motioned to the end of the street, which ran out from under the bridge. It led directly to the shore of Lake Union on the edge of downtown Seattle.

  CHAPTER 7

  DESTRUCTIVE DEMONS

  Neebor slumped to his knees in his garden, dismayed. His award-winning tulips had melted into yellow and pink globs. What was left of them looked like dried drippings of wax from a candle. The average man would have imagined that a toxic chemical had been dumped on them, but Neebor knew better. He glared up at the looming house next door—Nat�
��s house. He couldn’t imagine how, and didn’t want to, but somehow the house and the bizarre goings-on next door had mutated his prized flowers into worthless goo.

  As Neebor stared upward, he heard a sound behind him.

  Rustle-rustle.

  He whirled. “Who’s there?”

  The sound came from behind him again, this time from the other direction.

  Rustle-rustle.

  Neebor began to crawl through his garden, wielding a hand shovel and wondering if he might catch the culprit who’d murdered his tulips.

  Suddenly, dirt erupted behind his strawberry patch. He turned and raised his shovel. He didn’t see movement, but he saw a spiny shoot on the ground, invading his patch of ruby red strawberries.

  “Blackberries,” he sneered.

  If he didn’t do something soon, it would be a berry war, he decided, and there was no question that his strawberries would lose. He plunged the shovel into the ground, cutting the blackberry branch off at the root.

  “Ha!” he laughed.

  When he turned away, the shoot writhed, kicking up dirt and sending a dying signal to its fellows. Neebor looked over his shoulder and frowned. More blackberry branches had surfaced—huge, sinewy ropes of thorns weaving into his hydrangea and out of his lilacs. How had he missed them on his first glance? He wondered.

  He crouched, rotating in place, scanning the rows. Each time he turned the stems seemed to have infiltrated more of his garden. They were getting closer too. He never saw them move, but somehow they had surrounded him.

  Richie babbled about the new girl as they neared Nat’s house. “She’s got that earthy thing goin’. And did you check out her ride? All pimped out with bloomage.”

  “I guess that’s cool,” Sandy sighed, turning onto Nat’s street, “if you’re into that.” She glanced over at her boyfriend.

  “Yeah,” Nat said, carefully noncommittal.

  Sandy crinkled her nose. “‘Yeah,’ as in, it is cool, and you are into it?” she asked. “Or ‘yeah,’ as in, it’s only cool if you’re into that sort of thing, which you’re not?”

  “Huh?” Nat said.

  “I mean, it’s just a clothing style and an old VW Bug she’s painted up to look ‘groovy,’ for gosh sakes,” Sandy snapped.

  “She had a sense for the Troll,” Nat said. “She felt it.”

  “According to her own self.”

  “Whoa! You think she’s, like, a gypsy fortune teller or something?” Richie chimed in.

  “Look,” Sandy interrupted, “we know the Troll couldn’t have gone far without being seen. Ergo, it must have hidden in the lake. Not a big mystery. What do you think, Nat?”

  “Yeah,” Nat said, gazing out the window. “Lilli said it would be close by.”

  “I said, what do you think?” Sandy insisted.

  “I think I agree with her.”

  Sandy pulled over abruptly, her tire running up onto the curb.

  “Are we getting out here?” Richie asked.

  Moments later, Nat and his apprentice stood on the sidewalk as Sandy sped off, and Nat didn’t think that Sandy’s comment about needing to drop them off two blocks from the house because she was late getting home was completely true. They began to walk.

  As they approached the house, Nat suddenly stopped. He crouched. “Look at this.” A tiny crack ran along the pavement.

  “It’s a crack in the sidewalk,” Richie observed. “So what?”

  Nat pointed to where it led. Richie followed Nat’s finger along the concrete path and up the walk. The crack ran all the way around the house and into the backyard. He hadn’t noticed it before.

  “Do you feel something?” Nat asked.

  “Yeah,” Richie nodded. He turned and followed the crack the other direction. Nat jogged alongside him. The fracture in the ground wound down the hill for more than a mile, veering off through driveways, wood fences, and concrete walls as it broke everything in its path.

  “This is the sort of track Wedge leaves behind,” Nat explained. “It’s the Thin Man’s second minion, the divider. It’s a parasite of sorts. It forces its way into solid objects, lives inside them, and tears them apart. The night we fought the Thin Man, Nikolai tore up the floorboard that Wedge was inhabiting so that the crack had nowhere to go. Then Nik threw the board into our garden pond. A crack can’t get loose in the water because it can’t break its way through liquid. The piece of wood must have drifted against something so that Wedge could make the jump to a solid object—something it could get inside and split open.”

  “Like a concrete wall in an artificial pond,” Richie said.

  “Exactly,” Nat said. “You’re learning.”

  “It’s getting bigger.” Richie pointed to a larger gap in the street as they walked.

  “It’s feeding and growing,” Nat explained.

  The boys followed the crack for several more blocks, shuffling along hunched over, until they came to a paved footpath that had been completely torn asunder. The path led to a square where a horse statue was split in half. The front half looked like a two-legged animal standing upright and the back half looked like an obscene practical joke tilting out to present itself to passing traffic. The boys turned a corner.

  “Oh my God!” Nat gasped.

  “Yeah, that’s not good,” Richie said.

  Two houses leaned at odd angles, their foundations shattered. They stood, half tilted, at the edge of a sinkhole the size of a swimming pool that dove into the earth beneath Mercer Street between Nat’s neighborhood and downtown Seattle. A third house had completely collapsed. Shattered glass, bent furniture, and broken wallboard lay scattered in the street. A crew of workmen loaded trucks with debris while a man, a woman, and three children watched from a nearby lawn as the remnants of their home were carted away.

  “This is where Wedge went,” Nat said with a guilty sigh. “I let it get away, and now it’s grown large enough to tear down homes.”

  “Let’s go get it,” Richie said. “C’mon, I’ve been waiting for some action for weeks.”

  “We can’t. It’s gone underground. We can’t follow it there.”

  “At least we know where it is,” Richie offered.

  “Yeah,” Nat said grimly, “downtown, beneath the skyscrapers.” He turned and started back toward the house. “One problem at a time,” he said. “We need to find the Troll first.”

  CHAPTER 8

  LILLI’S TRAILER

  Lake Union sat on the north edge of downtown Seattle. Dozens of heavily occupied businesses leaned out over the waters of its southern shore. Not a good place to have a giant Troll running loose, Lilli thought as she peered across the lake from Seattle’s Gas Works Park on the opposite northern shore.

  Gas Works Park was a nineteen-acre peninsula that stuck out into the lake. The land had been purchased by the City of Seattle in 1962 and turned into a public park, but with one catch: the old, rundown gas plant had to remain. The decaying forty-foot- high gas tanks towered over the grassy playground like grumpy giants—big, scowling, and old. Lilli admired them. They looked wonderfully out of place in the happy green park, an industrial contrast to the fresh air and open space. Their preservation pleased her.

  Lilli watched the water. The random collisions of the waves made the lake sparkle like a Christmas tree. It was ever-changing and beautifully chaotic, but she’d been staring across the water for an hour and seen no sign of the Troll. She stepped out of the shadow of the rusting factory. It was beautiful, in its own way, the rust slowly changing its colors. Had she thought about it from another point of view, she might have realized that the rust was also eating the old factory alive, but her perspective was that of an artist.

  Lilli walked up the path to her parked trailer. The trailer was actually a converted tour bus discarded by the failed folk band Groove-a-Thon from the ’60s. The bus didn’t run. Instead, it was towed by the flowery little VW Bug, which was scientifically impossible but somehow worked. Elaborate murals adorned its exteri
or, and the windows were painted over with funky earth-tone oranges and greens.

  Lilli checked over both shoulders, pushed open the bi-fold bus door and stepped inside.

  The long front hall led to a large living room. Her bedroom door was on the left, and the kitchen was visible through an archway. The big rooms and long halls were, of course, as impossible as the tiny car towing the incredible bus, yet they existed for Lilli. From the outside, her trailer was a just a dead vehicle. Inside, it was as large as a small house.

  Lilli glanced around the psychedelic landscape of the main room. Living colors moved across the walls and then left them and floated through the room. They came to her, nuzzling, dazzling, flowing over her feet and curling around her ankles like cuddling cats. Amorphous creatures of paint and clay swam along the floor of the room like an animated carpet.

  Lilli swept her hand, and the colors changed wherever she pointed. There were hundreds of the creatures, all shapes, sizes, and sounds—visual and audio—gathered from buildings and subways and dozens of other places where random chaotic beauty sprang up in the city but would disappear if she didn’t collect and preserve it.

  Lilli’s own aura glowed purple all around her as she finally flopped down, weary from the day’s events. One of her pets formed an instant hammock beneath her, supporting her limp body as she fell backward and relaxed, trusting them to catch her.

  Across the room, a shadowy spot appeared in a dark corner, a black void in the swirling colors. The darkness spread like ink bubbling to the surface of a bright drawing and creeping outward over the picture, blotting it out.

  Lilli shifted in her hammock to get a better look at the strange occurrence developing in her trailer.

  A pair of round white eyes blinked open in the center of the blackness. They narrowed beneath heavy pinched brows and fleshy eyelids, fixing on her. A thick bald head emerged from the shadows around the eyes, and a broad, sinister grin underscored it all, completing the face of something dark, menacing . . . and chubby.