I gave one more look in the mirror and didn’t much care for what I saw staring back at me, but there wasn’t much I’d be able to do about my puffy, red-rimmed eyes. My shirt, though, was stained with tears and dirt, and there was something I could do about that. I stopped off at one of the stores in the mall, bought a cheap T-shirt, and wore it out of the store, tossing my grimy used shirt away. I didn’t want to have to deal with my parents catching me sneaking the shirt into the house and questioning me about it.
I took the subway home after that. I caught a few people staring at me, but they all looked away once I caught them. I guess I must’ve been looking pretty troubled during the ride. After the third time I caught someone looking my way, I got up and moved to the back of the train. At some point I took out my iPhone. I knew my parents had left messages, but I didn’t care about that. I wanted to look more at the demon Weston’s photo. As I mentioned earlier, demons have claws instead of hands, kind of like what you might see on a hawk, except their claws are much thicker and more grotesque, and their nails long and deadly looking. I wondered how they dressed themselves without shredding their clothing, and in Weston’s case how it was that he could tie a Windsor knot with those things. They must just be extremely dexterous.
You can probably guess that when I got home I wasn’t in any mood to get lectured to by my parents, but I was feeling too wasted to do anything other than sit there and take it.
It’s past midnight now. I’m tired and am calling it a night. But no worries, I’m not about to shirk my responsibilities regarding these demons. I know what I have to do.
Sunday, August 28th 8:45 PM
TODAY JUST PLAIN SUCKED.
I have only a little over a week before school starts and had mapped out where I wanted to do more countings during this little time I had left, but my parents just threw a monkey wrench into the works.
I’d gotten up at seven, put some clothes on, and was going to make myself an espresso before slipping out of the house and heading to Cambridge and Somerville to do more demon watching and counting. Usually on Sunday mornings my parents stay holed up in their bedroom until ten with their CD playing to drown out the noise they’re making, but I guess since they had gotten off on each other yesterday morning, I found my parents instead in the kitchen lying in wait for me. My dad wanted to have a heart-to-heart. He and my mom decided that we needed to act more like a family, that the old days of me running off by myself had to end, and that the three of us were going to go to Crane Beach. I didn’t worry about this being a long-term problem—I knew they’d lose interest quickly enough—but I couldn’t afford to let them mess up my remaining time. I told my dad that it was a good plan, and on principle I could see the value in what he was proposing, but that I already had plans today. He told me tough, and the look he gave me made it clear that I had no choice in the matter. It was a similar look I’d seen on him when he and my mom were considering shipping me out to a military academy.
“This isn’t fair,” I argued. I could feel my cheeks heating up with anger, and I knew that was wrong. I’ve been getting angry too easily. Yesterday, right now. If I was going to be any use in dealing with these demons I needed to stay cool and detached. So even as I was confronting my dad, I knew I was making a mistake, and that I needed to get control of my anger. This is something I need to work on. I can’t afford to let my emotions get the better of me or I’ll be useless against these demons.
“Too bad,” my dad said.
“I have commitments for today. Mowing and otherwise. You can’t just spring this on me without any warning!”
“Too bad,” my mom threw in, her mouth tightening into a harsh line, “because that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
At least I had the presence of mind to realize how badly I almost screwed things up. I had opened the door for them to question me more thoroughly about my plans, and that would’ve most likely led to me being caught in a web of lies. I realized my tactical error, and was thankful for my mom’s spitefulness—otherwise I’m sure my dad would’ve questioned me, and being a lawyer he would’ve caught me in some sort of inconsistency. Realizing all of that also made me realize I’d better let this drop, especially given the steely look my dad was giving me.
“Fine,” I said. “You want to play family today, we’ll play family.”
My dad glared at me to let me know I’d better watch it. So we ate a family breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, and espresso and headed off to Ipswich and Crane Beach. I spent most of the time there walking along the shore alone. No demons in bathing suits or bikinis. A complete waste of a day. I couldn’t even bring my copy of Daemonologie along to do any translating. It’s pretty brittle as it is, and if I brought it to the beach it probably would’ve disintegrated on me. And even if I didn’t have to worry about it getting ruined, I certainly didn’t want my parents seeing it and questioning me about what Daemonologie meant in English or what the book was about. So I had an utterly wasted day, and we didn’t get home until twenty minutes ago, because my parents wanted to have dinner at Woodman’s in Essex, where the only thing that didn’t contain fried clams, fish, or meat was a house salad, onion rings, and corn on the cob. My mom tried to argue that if I ate lobster or fish I wouldn’t be breaking my vegetarian vows, but fortunately my dad made her stop. At least I caught on quickly to the situation and didn’t complain or act sullenly that day. Things would’ve only been worse if I had. All I can hope for is that this family unity stuff ends very soon. I know it’s only a phase with them, and they’ll get tired of it once they get caught up in their high-powered careers, but it sucks when they go on these kicks.
Sunday, August 28th 11:55 PM
FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO I FOUND THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE FROM Virgil:
If you knew about demons you’d know that they look like normal people when you take photos of them. So who are you and what’s your game?
So most likely Virgil isn’t a fraud. There’s still a chance, though. The thing about demons and photos could’ve been a wild guess on his part so he wouldn’t have to send me a photo, but I don’t think it’s likely. Which means Virgil is either legit, or he’s a demon trying to uncover me. It’s a coin flip which one it is, with the slight possibility the coin could end up balanced on its edge.
I sat and tried to think of what to send Virgil next, and what I came up with was the following:
That’s true. I wanted to make sure you didn’t try photoshopping some monster and trying to pass it off as a demon. But you can still send me a photo you’ve taken of one of them and the demon’s identity and address, as I’m doing here. This way you can verify for yourself that he’s a demon, as I’ll be able to do with the demon you send me. Tell me about dogs?
I included in the message a photo I had taken a year ago, as well as the demon’s name and an address in Revere. I’d checked recently and he was still living there. If Virgil’s a demon there’s no way he’d be able to track me down from that photo or the information I sent him. If he’s like me, maybe it will lead to us figuring out how we can meet and team up.
Virgil’s message has left me excited and nervous again. But enough of that.
After my wasted day at the beach I just couldn’t get myself psyched enough to tackle Daemonologie and instead decided to find something on cable to veg on. I ended up turning on this old John Carpenter movie called They Live. I had no idea what the movie was about and it ended up blowing me away. It turns out that these ugly-ass aliens (although they’re downright beautiful compared to demons) are living among us and look like everyone else, unless you’re wearing these special glasses. If you put these glasses on you can see them for the ugly-ass aliens that they are. Their goal isn’t just to live among us but to enslave mankind for their own ends. The star of the movie was some ex-wrestler, and once he found these glasses he felt the responsibility to expose these aliens for what they were to save his fellow man. I found myself caught up in this movie, and at times in tears because I could rel
ate so well to the burden that had been placed on this man, and to the ultimate self-sacrifice he had to make. I also couldn’t help thinking whether glasses could be made so that others could see these demons just as I could see them. If I was able to see through their camouflage, maybe others could, too, with the right equipment. The idea of that left me buzzing as I wondered how I could get glasses like that made. There had to be something unique about my eyes, maybe the shape of my corneas, and I was going to have to go to an ophthalmologist and see what they came up with.
I know I’m not going to be able to get any sleep, not with all these ideas from They Live buzzing through my head and with how psyched Virgil’s last message has left me, so it looks like I’ll be cuddling up to Daemonologie tonight after all.
Monday, August 29th 1:30 PM
I ENDED UP FALLING ASLEEP LAST NIGHT. AROUND FOUR THIRTY I must’ve conked out, and next thing I knew my parents were waking me up at seven so they could toss another grenade into my plans. More about that soon. Let me tell you first about Ginny Cataldo. She’s a little three-and-a-half-year-old girl who was reported missing this morning. According to the TV reports I’ve been watching she either wandered off or was taken from her preschool in Everett. They have a small fenced-in playground outside the preschool and one minute preschool workers remembered Ginny sitting in a sandbox, the next minute she was gone. This might have nothing to do with demons. The odds are it probably doesn’t. Still, I keep thinking of Clifton Gibson and those cages of children they found in that abandoned warehouse in Brooklyn, and all the rumors surrounding what was done to those children. The photo they showed on TV of Ginny Cataldo was of a tiny little girl with big dark eyes and a mess of dark black hair. The thought that she might’ve been taken by a demon makes me sick. I keep trying to tell myself that’s probably not what happened, but I might have to go down to that preschool and check the area to see if I can spot any demons. If I do, I’ll track them down and make an anonymous call sending the police to the demon’s address, and maybe they’ll find Ginny there. I have no idea how to get to Everett, but I’ll figure it out.
Now for the grenade my parents tossed. As I mentioned, they woke me up at seven this morning and dragged me out of bed even though I was complaining that I was feeling lousy and needed to sleep more. They ignored my complaints and told me that they wanted us to have breakfast as a family and they wanted to talk. It turns out they’re still on this big family kick of theirs, that our trip to the beach yesterday didn’t quite fill their quota for the year for quality family time, and that they made plans for us to go away to Quebec City from this Wednesday until Labor day. I almost blew my espresso out my nose when they laid that bit of news on me. As it was I singed my nostrils. So there you have it. The precious time I have before school starts is being taken away from me. It wasn’t going to do any good arguing with them, but I tried anyway, telling them that I had jobs lined up for the week. My dad gave me this haughty look that he’s so damn good at—probably something they taught him in law school—and he told me how it was already decided that since they were reinstating my allowance I would stop my mowing and snow shoveling enterprises. Of course I never agreed to anything like that, but I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere trying to argue that with him. So I tried a different tack.
“I can’t just leave my customers high and dry like this,” I said. “I gave them my word.”
My dad rubbed his upper lip as he considered this. He nodded to himself and took a sip of the cappuccino he had made for himself, leaving a line of froth on his upper lip. He carefully wiped it off before telling me that we wouldn’t be leaving until Wednesday. “That gives you two days to mow whatever lawns you need to,” he added. “But this is the last year you’re doing this.”
This wasn’t a battle I would win now, so I didn’t bother trying. Once he got busy at work again he’d drop his uberparent act and ignore me like he’d been doing the last two years, so I nodded my acquiescence, then remembered the movie I watched the other night—the one with the ugly-ass aliens that could only be seen with special glasses—and thought again how I wanted to have my eyes checked out so I could figure out the abnormality I had that allowed me to see demons. If I knew what that abnormality was, I might be able to have glasses made to replicate the same defect so others could see demons, too. I told my mom how I needed to see an eye doctor, using the excuse that I was getting headaches whenever I read for any length of time. I wasn’t getting headaches, but it seemed like a good excuse to give her.
“If you weren’t staying up so late, you wouldn’t be getting these headaches,” she told me in response. I just stared at her open-mouthed, not quite believing what I’d just heard. She recovered quickly from that, realizing how bad that would sound if I ever repeated it to anyone, like a teacher. “Fine,” she sighed in her well-practiced put-upon manner. “I’ll make an appointment for you to have your eyes checked out. Anything else I should know about?”
I didn’t think it would do any good to tell her about how her only child also sees demons, so I just shook my head.
So there you have it. My parents ruined my plans for the week. Plans that I can’t afford to have ruined, not with what’s at stake. This morning I’ve been mowing lawns, as well as weeding (one of my customers, Lorna Field, has me weed her garden), and I’ll be spending the rest of the afternoon doing the same. Tomorrow morning, too. I can’t afford to lose my customers, especially since most of them also hire me to shovel their driveways and sidewalks during the winter. Hunting demons isn’t cheap. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish my jobs by late tomorrow morning, so I can have the afternoon free to check out that Everett neighborhood for demons.
Tuesday, August 30th 11:45 PM
TOMORROW MORNING WE’RE LEAVING BRIGHT AND EARLY FOR Quebec City. I know we’re leaving bright and early because I’ve been reminded three times already in the last forty-five minutes by my mom. Just fucking awesome, huh? And awfully thoughtful of her to keep drumming it in. I can’t tell you how excited I am. Yeah, sure. The only thing that doesn’t completely suck about this trip is that my parents booked a suite at the Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac. At least I’ll have a separate room so I can continue my translation of Daemonologie. I’m not taking my journal, though. I can’t afford to have my parents find out about it. So it will stay hidden in my bedroom. Carrying around Schweikert’s book is risky enough as it is.
My mom’s yelling through the door at me that I’d better turn off my lights and go to bed, that if I’m not up and ready tomorrow morning they’ll be dragging me into the car in my pajamas if they have to. I take a deep breath and count silently backwards from five before yelling back that I’ll be going to bed soon and for her not to have a cow. I imagine her mouth tightening from that, and can picture the wrinkled lines around her lips that would be showing if it wasn’t for her Botox injections, but she doesn’t yell anything back.
Let me mention again how much I’m looking forward to spending all this extra quality time with them. What a joke. They’d be happier going off by themselves, and I’d sure be happier being able to stay back here alone so I could do the things I need to do.
I spent the entire day yesterday and this morning taking care of all the lawn work that I would otherwise have spread out through the week. I finished today around noon, and after I had something to eat, I took the subway to Haymarket and then a bus to Everett, which took over two hours. When I found the preschool where Ginny Cataldo was taken from, I saw what must’ve been several plainclothes police hanging around the area. One of them gave me the stink eye big time, as if I had to be the one who had taken Ginny and for whatever reason had decided to come back to the scene of the crime. I pretended I didn’t notice the look he was giving me, but it was pretty clear that if I tried hanging around to look for demons, the police would arrest me. Instead I spent two hours walking around different neighborhoods nearby. No demon sightings. If there are demons living in Everett, I didn’t see them. I left at ten minutes p
ast five and didn’t get home until seven-thirty. No demon sightings during my travels. All in all, a wasted day. But that’s the nature of demon hunting. Most days are wasted days.
And nothing new from Virgil, either. He’s probably trying to verify that the demon I sent him is in fact a demon. That’s assuming Virgil isn’t a demon himself.
I turned on the eleven o’clock local news earlier. Still nothing new about Ginny Cataldo.
A thought has hit me. Hanley might not be fully convinced yet about me, and he might try breaking in during our absence. My parents have a state-of-the-art alarm system for the house, so I don’t think he’d be successful if he tried, but still, the thought of Hanley somehow getting into my room and searching through my possessions makes me sick. And if he does and finds my journal, I’m dead. Yeah, I know, I’m being paranoid, but I can’t help it. When you’re dealing with demons twenty-four seven you tend to get paranoid easily. I have an idea where I can hide the journal so that the demon Hanley would never find it.
Monday, September 5th 7:15 PM
SOMEONE—OR I SHOULD SAY SOMETHING—SEARCHED MY room while I was gone! I don’t how they did it without setting off the house’s alarm system, but they did. My heart’s pounding so hard in my chest right now that I can feel it in my temples!
I need to take some deep breaths and try to calm down before my heart explodes.
Okay, I’ve taken some deep breaths. Enough, anyway, for me to slow down and describe as much about the break-in as I can piece together. Before we left for Quebec City, I took precautions and put up safeguards so I’d know if anyone searched my room while I was gone. I placed a small strip of paper between my closet door and the door frame and laid out some hairs across the opening of dresser drawers—stuff like that. At the time I thought I was being overly paranoid, but I put up those safeguards anyway, and every one of them has been disturbed. The small strip of paper is now lying on the floor near my closet, showing that someone had opened the door. Same with my dresser drawers—they’ve all been opened! Even without these safeguards, I would’ve known from the smell I picked up when I first walked into my room that my room had been violated. It was faint, but definitely the same sickeningly sweet mix of onion and sulfur that I’ve caught whiffs of from Hanley and other demons.
The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel Page 6
