The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel

by Dave Zeltserman

  “One minute,” he told me.

  I nodded, still dizzy from the crowd nearly suffocating me moments earlier, my heart racing too much for me to say anything. He escorted me into the courthouse, and there a court officer took over. He gave me a stern lecture about what would happen if I made any noise inside the courtroom, and I nodded my acquiescence. Once he was satisfied he led me inside, and you can guess the rest. Yep, Clifton Gibson’s a demon. He was taller and thinner than Mr. Hanley, but he had that same flaming red skin and horns and claws and all the rest of those demon features. Even though I was expecting it, the whole thing still took my breath away. And the really crazy part was that he wasn’t the only demon in the courtroom—there were two others, both spectators. One of them turned my way, his expression puzzled as he looked at me. At that point I figured I’d better get out of there, and I indicated to the court officer that I’d seen enough. He walked me out of the court, and after that I was moving fast down the hallway and out of the building. I had a funny feeling as I was squeezing my way through the crowd, and sure enough, after I had gotten out of that scene I turned to see that the demon from the courtroom was trying to push his way through the crowd also, but not having much luck given his larger bulk. He had followed me and was after me. I ran then.

  I made a mental note to myself after that that I had to be more careful when looking at demons. I wasn’t expecting other demons in that courtroom, but it was still no excuse to let down my guard. They’re sly and clever and have an innate sense of when they’ve been recognized. If I make a mistake like that again, it could be the end for me.

  It’s a quarter to eleven, and I have to get going if I want to get those Dunkin’ Donut crullers. I have a busy day planned. First up: I have to mow Mr. Hanley’s yard. I’ll explain in my next journal entry how that came about.

  Auf wiedersehen for now.

  Wednesday, August 24th 12:18 PM

  I WASN’T PLANNING ON WRITING ANOTHER JOURNAL ENTRY until later tonight, but I’m still shaking from what went down minutes ago at that demon’s house. I need to get this on paper now while the details are fresh in my mind. If I save this for later I might leave out important details, or worse, add in some exaggerations, and what happened was bizarre enough without doing that.

  Let me explain first why I’ve been mowing Hanley’s yard, although you probably can guess. After he found out I was mowing other lawns in the neighborhood, Hanley made a point of watching for me so he could barrel out of his house and wave me over to offer me the job. I think he wanted to test me, see how I’d react, but he probably also wanted to keep an eye on me so that he could decide whether I suspected anything. What was I going to do? Turn him down? That would be the same as telling him to his face that I knew what he was. Instead I quoted him a rate, adding in a fifteen dollar demon surcharge. He gave me a little demon snarl, as if he suspected that I had inflated my price for him, but he accepted my price, and for the last year I’ve mowed his lawn every week during the summer.

  Today, like every day that I’ve mowed his lawn, he watched me through his kitchen window while I tried to act as if I wasn’t noticing, only allowing myself to catch accidental glimpses of him. During the forty minutes I was there I don’t think he moved once, probably not even to blink (do demons blink? I don’t think so), but that wasn’t anything unusual. He always just sat watching me through the window like some sort of demon Buddha with his demon muzzle set in a scowl. The deal we have is for him to mail me my payment each month, but today as I was finishing up he came out his side door and tried waving me over. I pretended I was too wrapped up in what I was doing to notice.

  “Henry, boy, come over here. Let me pay you.”

  I looked up then and tried to act surprised that he was there. “I didn’t know you were home,” I lied, probably pretty badly. “Just mail me a check like you always do.”

  “You can save me a stamp,” he said in his flat demon growl. Just as I could now see them as demons, I could also hear them as such, and they don’t sound anything like humans. Their voices have a deep, unnatural sound with far too much bass echoing in it, like they’re inside an echo chamber with all these hisses and snarls mixed in.

  I tried to smile sympathetically and act as if he wasn’t a demon. “I have another job after this one,” I explained. “If I take a check from you now I’ll probably lose it before I get home. Or it’ll get too soaked through with my sweat for my bank to take it. I’ll tell you what, why don’t you deduct the cost of the stamp from your payment?”

  From the way his jaw twisted I could guess he would’ve been smiling pleasantly if I could’ve seen him as a human, but all I could see was malevolence in his demon face and dead yellow eyes.

  “You’re sweating right now, Henry,” he growled. “You could use something to drink. Come on in. I’ll get you something.”

  I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingling. My voice caught in my throat as I told him thanks, but no thanks. Maybe this was a test, or maybe he still had his doubts about me and finally decided he wasn’t going to risk me knowing what he was. I had a bad feeling about his intentions and what would happen to me if I went inside his house. I wondered then for the first time how fast a demon could move. I had no idea. We had only thirty or so feet separating us, and he was edging closer. If I had to, I’d leave my lawn mower behind and make a run for it to escape him.

  “Come on over here,” he said, still waving his claw at me. The thing was so red in the sunlight it looked like it had been dipped in blood. He kept edging closer to me. The distance had shrunk to only twenty feet. I took a few steps further away.

  “There’s money in it,” he said.

  I didn’t respond to that. This wasn’t a test. He wanted me inside his home for ill reasons. He would probably take his time in killing me. God knows what he’d do to my body afterward.

  “Five hundred dollars,” he said.

  I forced myself to play along. My voice was little more than a whisper as I told him I wasn’t gay.

  “Really? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Why would you think I was gay?”

  He shrugged. His jaw contorted—he must have been smiling more broadly in human form. “Boy, the way you look and the way you carry yourself, and also the vibe I’m picking up from you. You may not know it yet, but you’re gay. A thousand dollars. Trust me Henry, you’ll enjoy the experience.”

  He was having fun, both in testing me and playing his mind games, trying to wound me by questioning my sexuality. As I’ve been discovering, demons can be an especially nasty breed. Or maybe he thought he’d piss me off enough to take a swing at him, and then he’d be able to grab hold of me. In either case, it didn’t work. I backed further away from him, dragging my mower with me as I did so. I had only ten feet or so to go before I’d be out of his fenced-in backyard, and after that any passerby would be able to see me and he’d be taking too big a chance if he tried charging me. I had a good idea then that if he could’ve moved fast enough to grab me he would’ve.

  “What’s to stop me from telling my parents or the police about you trying to solicit me?”

  He laughed then. Or at least I’m assuming he laughed. The noise that came out of him was something awful.

  “Who’d believe you, Henry?” he asked. “You’re the street flake. Everyone knows it. If I have to, I’ll tell the police you’re lying. That you’re a disturbed child who tried extorting money from me by threatening to make up a ridiculous lie. They’ll believe me over you.”

  “They’d at least search your house. And they’d find something.”

  He tensed then. I could tell that he was judging the distance more carefully, trying to decide if he could make up the distance fast enough to grab me.

  “What would they find, Henry?”

  I bit my tongue. I wanted to say a freezer full of dog meat, maybe dog carcasses also, and worse. But I knew that that would be a dumb thing to say. Instead I told him they’d find child porn
all over his house and on his computer.

  A change came over his demon face then. It was a subtle change, but it was there. The violence that was so imminent seconds ago was gone. Like a valve had been opened releasing it. He was sure then that I only suspected him of being a perv, not a demon. I was safe. At least for now.

  “You’re going to have to find a new lawn person,” I yelled out as I pulled my mower out from his backyard and from behind his fence. “I quit.”

  He laughed his demon laugh at that, and I’m still shaking.

  It’s twenty to one. I wish I was going into Boston alone, but I promised Wesley Neuberger he could go with me. He’s been bugging me for days about us doing something together, and as much as I’d like to cancel, I better not.

  I’m feeling almost too shaky to eat, but it will be a while before I have another chance, and I need the energy since Wesley and I will be riding our bikes into the city. At least eight miles and through a lot of traffic. I’ll make a couple of lettuce, tomato, and cheese sandwiches and bring them with me.

  Fucking Hanley.

  Fucking demons.

  Have I mentioned before how much I hate demons?

  Wednesday, August 24th 9:37 PM

  I DIDN’T TELL MY PARENTS ABOUT THE DEMON HANLEY TRYING to solicit me—for one thing, they’d never believe me. I’m sure they would’ve believed Hanley’s lie over whatever I told them. I mentioned earlier how ASD I cut off most of my social activities. You can’t be worrying about sports and girls and dating when you have to spend all your energy figuring out how to protect the world from demons. I know my parents are wondering why I’m not dating and seemingly showing no interest in doing so, and I know they have their suspicions about me. Nothing they voice to me directly, but they drop hints and make innuendos as they try to ferret out of me whether I’m gay. I think they’re also convinced that the two supposed friends I hang out with, Wesley Neuberger and Curt Tucker, are also gay. I don’t think either of them are, although I don’t know for sure. They’re both social misfits for reasons having nothing to do with demons and that’s why I hang out with them, or at least enough to keep my parents off my back. It would take too much effort and time to hang out with any of the cool kids, time that I don’t have.

  So about Curt and Wesley. Curt is deep into everything goth, and that alone has probably convinced my parents about his sexual identity, but my parents are clueless in such matters. Wesley, well, he might have some effeminate mannerisms, but I don’t think that means he’s gay, not that it would matter. Both he and Curt seem to show real interest in girls, at least from the type of stuff they’re always saying to me.

  So if my parents wouldn’t believe me, it would be foolish to think that the police would. And it’s probably better this way. Hanley thinks he has me fooled. That I believe he’s only a perv and not a demon. Maybe now he won’t be so careful, and he’ll screw up and make a mistake—something that I can use against him and the other demons.

  At least I hope so.

  I had another demon sighting today. This was in Boston. Before I write about it, let me give some background on Wesley and me, since he was with me at the time.

  The two of us go back a long way together, all the way to the second grade. That was when we were moved into the same class and became friends. Wesley lives only two blocks away, has my whole life. Back when we were second graders we played the dumb games second graders play and read comic books and watched cartoons on TV. Wesley was always into comic books, especially superhero ones. Most little kids are, I guess. I used to be also, but in his case his dad is really into it, too, and has this rare comic book collection. Some cool stuff, including the first hundred Spider-Man comics, all wrapped up in plastic bags.

  Even in second grade Wesley was a thin, gawky-looking kid with curly hair and thick glasses. I’m gawky-looking now too, but it took me until I was almost fifteen to get that way—Wesley was that way from the start. For whatever reason he was just one of those kids who came out of the womb uncool, but as I’ve been learning with this demon business cool and uncool mean squat in the larger scheme of things.

  So from second to fifth grade Wesley and I were best friends, but in fifth grade we started going in different directions. We both played T-ball early on, with Wesley showing little coordination even then, and in fifth grade we were both assigned to the same little league team. I pitched and played centerfield, while Wesley mostly sat on the bench. That was when our friendship started drifting. I was good at all the positions the coach put me in, and ended up being our best pitcher and outfielder. Wesley just wasn’t cut out for sports, so he didn’t sign up for little league the next year, and by then we’d become more like uncomfortable acquaintances than friends, where we’d nod hey to each other but little more than that. It stayed that way until ASD.

  As I already mentioned, Wesley has been bugging me for days about us doing something. What he had in mind was us hanging around reading comic books, but I didn’t give him a choice; it was either ride our bikes into Boston and hang around there, or nothing, and after some whining on his part he tagged along.

  Wesley hasn’t moved to wearing contacts yet and still wears these goofy-looking glasses with thick brown plastic frames that cover a good third of his face, and has mop-like curly brown hair. He’s still what most kids at my school would call a skinny runt. While I’ve had my growth spurt, he hasn’t and maybe never will.

  Wesley’s bike has to be some sort of old-fashioned antique, unless it’s a retro number. I’m guessing his dad had it when he was Wesley’s age and saved it all these years so he could embarrass his own child with it someday. It’s not even a ten-speed—I think it only has three gears, and even on moderate inclines Wesley’s huffing and puffing when he’s pedaling it. Whenever we’re riding bikes, I have to keep slowing down—otherwise I’d lose him. It doesn’t help that he’s such a timid rider if there’s any traffic. Once we hit Brookline I had to stop every couple of blocks and wait for him to catch up. By the time we reached Kenmore Square he looked winded and needed to rest. That was okay with me. I take these trips into Boston so I can be on the lookout for demons, sometimes also so I can visit Cornwall’s Used Books, this dusty and cluttered used bookstore in this rat hole area of Boston that has a surprisingly strong occult book section, sometimes with rare books that other stores have never heard of. Cornwall’s is where I picked up my copy of Daemonologie, and other books on demonology from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I wasn’t planning on going there today—not with Wesley tagging along—but that was okay. Today was reserved for spotting demons.

  Once we reached Kenmore Square, Wesley went into Store 24 to pick up bottles of Vitamin Water for both of us, and after that he went into UBurger to get himself a potential dose of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease on a sesame bun with pickles and ketchup and a bag of French Fries. While he did this I ate one of my tomato, cheese, and lettuce sandwiches and counted the number of pedestrians walking by. This was good. Kenmore Square is a busy area and I hadn’t done a count there in weeks. What I’ve been trying to do is perform counts at strategic locations throughout Boston and Cambridge and see if I can spot any trends with these demons. Once I was done eating I sat and continued my count until Wesley came out of UBurger. After he sat on the steps and joined me, he distracted me by telling me how he saw Sally Freeman two days ago.

  Some of my sandwich almost came up on me. I struggled to keep it down and took another swig of my heavily sugared Vitamin Water. My heart was racing like crazy, and my voice didn’t sound right as I shrugged and said, “Yeah?” It came out more as a squeak. Wesley was nice about it and pretended he didn’t notice my reaction, and instead told me how he saw Sally at the Chestnut Hill mall when his mom took him there to get him new back-to-school clothing. It didn’t seem like the best time to tell him that I hadn’t gone clothes shopping with my mom in over two years.

  “She asked about you,” he added.

  Well, that just shot my count to he
ll. Let me explain about Sally Freeman. We went to grade school together, and I had a crush on her the first moment I saw her in my kindergarten class. Back then I used to watch reruns of the old Dick Van Dyke show with my dad. I was too little to get much out of it other than the silly clowning around that Dick Van Dyke used to do, but my dad got a kick out of the show, so I liked sitting there with him. I also thought that Mary Tyler Moore was the most beautiful woman imaginable, at least until I saw Sally. Sally had that same cute button nose, brown hair, big brown eyes, and probably looked the same as Mary Tyler Moore did at age six. I didn’t let her know it, and instead teased her the way little kids always do, yet I had that crush on her all through grade school. But Sally lived on the opposite side of Waban, closer to the Charles River, and I was assigned to Bigelow for middle school while Sally went to Brown. I hadn’t seen her since we were assigned to different schools, and ASD I’ve tried not to think of her.

  “What did she ask about?” I said as I tried really hard to sound nonchalant while doing a lousy job of it.

  “About how you’re doing. Stuff like that. I told her you said hi.”

  “Yeah. Whatever,” I said, but felt a hotness burning in my cheeks, and was pleased that Wesley did that. Say what you want about him. He might be an uncool gawky kid who spends too much time with his comic books and graphic novels, but you could always count on him.

  “She’s transferring to Newton North this year. So she’ll be slumming it with the rest of us.”

  That stunned me. I didn’t expect to see Sally again, and the thought of her going to the same high school as me started me getting an erection, which was embarrassing. I forced myself to think of demons until the erection went away, hoping that Wesley didn’t notice.

  Let me explain:

  Last year when I started high school, I’d heard through the grapevine that Sally was going to one of the elite local private schools we have in the area. That was why I assumed I wouldn’t have to think of her again.