The Boy Who Killed Demons: A Novel

by Dave Zeltserman

  “You’re asking for the same treatment, huh, scrub?” he asked. He took a step towards me, and then turned to leer at the rest of the bus over what he was going to do to me.

  “I sure hope not,” I said. “Your armpit stink would probably kill me.”

  That got some of the other students laughing. Not Curt, though. He was too close in proximity, and he sat terrified that he might end up a recipient of some spillover violence from Malphi. My crack certainly enraged Malphi. His face reddened and his eyes narrowed to knife slashes. He started moving towards me while I braced myself, ready to attack one of his vulnerable areas. Part of my demon routine was studying self-defense on my own, and if Malphi got close enough, I was going to strike him in either the throat, groin, or go for his eyes. Of course he didn’t have much of a target with his throat since he had almost no neck, but I’d take advantage of whatever I could. Before I had a chance, though, the bus came to an abrupt stop.

  The bus driver had pulled the bus over and now stood in the aisle. The driver was a beefy middle-aged woman, probably my mom’s age. She pointed a thick, stubby index finger at Malphi.

  “You,” she ordered in a gravelly voice that must’ve been ruined by an untold number of cartons of cigarettes. “Off my bus now!”

  Malphi’s mouth dropped open as he stared incredulously at her. For one stunned moment he said nothing, then he sputtered, “But we’re not at the school yet. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Walk!”

  He didn’t like that. He started to shake his head, but when the bus driver took a menacing step towards him, his expression turned pinched as he resigned himself to the situation. He turned to point at me and petulantly complained that I was the one who started everything.

  “I was minding my own business when this jerkoff had to snap at me, calling me names. Totally unprovoked!”

  “That’s not true. I have a rearview mirror. Get off my bus. Now!”

  The way the bus driver stood with her hands on her hips, I could see how big her forearms were. They were massive, maybe even bigger than Dorthop’s, the owner of Cornwall’s Bookstore. I was sure Malphi noticed the same, and probably the last thing he wanted was to be manhandled by a woman bus driver in front of an audience of other students. Reluctantly, he trudged forward, but not without first telling me I was dead. I shrugged and told him he was still ugly. That drew some laughter from some of the other students, but it was a nervous kind. Malphi shot me one more death stare, and then he was off the bus. As the bus drove off, I looked back to watch Malphi trudge along after us, a dark fury muddling his face.

  “I don’t think that was a smart thing to do,” Curt said, a queasy, scared look still on his face.

  “Eh, I deal with more dangerous cretins every day,” I said. “Besides, if Malphi causes us anymore problems, you could always summon Cthulhu to our rescue.”

  Curt gave me a look as if I was crazy. He repeated again how I shouldn’t have pissed off Malphi like that, and after that he stayed quiet the rest of the ride, which was fine with me. I didn’t feel like listening to any more talk about Yog-Sothoth.

  After the bus pulled up to the school and we all departed, Wesley hung around by the front of the bus waiting for Curt and me to catch up with him. His face was still mottled purple from the headlock Malphi had put on him, and there were imprints from Malphi’s arm left on his cheek. In a voice that sounded like he was still fighting to keep from crying, he thanked me for helping him with Malphi. I nodded as if of course I would do that. Wesley then walked with us into the school. Once inside Curt left us to find his homeroom while Wesley and I continued walking together.

  “That was so uncool of you ditching me like that in Boston,” Wesley said once Curt was out of earshot.

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry and all that, but I couldn’t help it.”

  “Why couldn’t you help it?”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t going to tell him anything, but I relented and said, “One of these days maybe I’ll be able to tell you.”

  Wesley gave me a sad look, as if something was wrong with me. I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything else, and we walked in silence for another minute or so with all the other students jostling past us in the hallway before Wesley asked me again about the picture I took of the demon Weston.

  “What did you do with that picture?” he asked in a hushed voice so no one could overhear him. “If you did something illegal with it, you need to tell me. I could be an accomplice.”

  He had such a worried look on his face that I had to tell him not to worry about that picture—that it was taken for the good of mankind, not for evil purposes. I shouldn’t have included that last part. It was stupid of me to say that, but I was operating on no sleep and the recent viewing of Spider-Man, and that movie always has its effect on me.

  Wesley gave me another sad, worried look. Shaking his head, he said, “Henry, you need to stop living in this fantasy universe you’re stuck in. You’re not out there saving the world from evil forces like you think you are.”

  I laughed at—partly out of nervousness that he somehow had an idea of what I was up to (even if he thought it was only insane nonsense on my part), and partly that someone who lived as much of his life in comic books as Wesley did would lecture me about living in a fantasy world.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I told him. “I know what’s reality and what isn’t.”

  His eyes dulled enough to show that he didn’t fully believe me, but he didn’t say anything else and we soon separated to go to our respective homerooms. It wasn’t hard to find them since they had the building color-coded. When I walked into mine, my heart nearly stopped. Sally Freeman was sitting in the front row. God, she was beautiful. She still had those large brown eyes and dimples and long brown hair, and she had that same little overbite that Mary Tyler Moore used to have on that old show. Even though she was sitting down and wearing a bulky sweater jacket, I could tell she had a slender, athletic body. Our eyes met and she also recognized me instantly. She gave me a smile that turned my knees to water. I wanted to smile back and sit next to her, but instead I kept my face a blank and nodded hey to her and took a seat a couple of rows behind her.

  My head was pounding as I sat there, and all my old foolish feelings of longing for Sally came rushing back. I tried telling myself that I didn’t sit next to her because I couldn’t afford to have a girlfriend. That my responsibilities with the demons were too great to allow myself to have a girlfriend. That’s what I tried telling myself, but I knew the real reason: I was a coward. How’s that for irony? I’m chosen to see these demons as they really are and have to come face to face with them and have all the responsibilities associated with that heaped on my shoulders, and here I was too much of a coward to sit next to a fifteen year-old girl. I wanted to get up and take one of the seats next to her—wanted it so badly—but I couldn’t force myself to do it, and soon it was too late because a plump frizzy-haired redheaded girl and an ultra-preppy-looking boy took the open seats and sandwiched her in. I hated myself right then. God, I was pathetic.

  The rest of the homeroom period was pure misery for me as we went through orientation for the year. We already had our schedules for our core classes, but as tenth graders we now had the option of electing out of Spanish or French and picking a different foreign language. I glanced around the room. Six of the twenty-some-odd kids in the homeroom had been friends of mine BSD; one had been on my seventh grade Little League team. Now the ones who looked my way did so as if I was a freak. None of them bothered saying anything to me or even nodding to me. Just dull, empty stares. A few of them whispered stuff to the other kids sitting next to them. Fine, I didn’t care. It was all part of the sacrifice I had to make, same with why I couldn’t be near Sally. Still, though, it made the orientation miserable, knowing that she was in the same room as me and all I could do was stare at the back of her head. If we were sitting together, we’d be able to compare our class schedules and sign up for the same fore
ign language study. It was pure torture, and it became even worse when I saw the preppy kid buddying up with her and telling her about his class schedule, just as I should’ve been doing.

  Finally the hour-long orientation ended. I knew I had to switch homerooms. It would be difficult enough knowing Sally was in the same high school as me, but it would be impossible for me if I had to see her every day, especially if she got together with the preppy kid. I was steeling myself to that realization when I felt a hand touch me lightly on my shoulder. I looked up to see Sally grinning at me. My insides just turned to slush. I hadn’t noticed her walking over to me. For the last five minutes I’d been staring intently at my desk as if I were trying to burn a hole through it, terrified I’d catch Sally and preppy boy walking out of the room holding hands. I could live if I never saw Sally again, but seeing something like that would kill me.

  “Henry, I can’t believe it’s you! I haven’t seen you since sixth grade! And we’re in the same homeroom!”

  I forced myself to give her this look as if I was trying to place her. “Oh yeah. Sally . . . Sally Freeman. Hey, that’s right. I think Wesley might’ve said something to me about seeing you. How are you doing?” I stumbled out trying to sound nonchalant, but my voice cracked at the end, showing what a liar I was. Sally almost broke out laughing, but she kept it contained in her eyes. They were dazzling eyes, which turned my knees and legs into the same helpless jelly that my insides had become.

  “It’s such a shame you didn’t recognize me,” she said, her lips pursing in an amused way. “If you had, you could’ve sat next to me and saved me from being bored to death by Lucas Anderson. Uggh!” She took the seat next to me, and even though my heart had already turned to slush it still pounded like crazy. I didn’t know if she was wearing any perfume—she probably wasn’t—but she smelled every bit as wonderful as she looked. Kind of like lilacs mixed with sea breezes. I was definitely going to have to change homerooms. There’s just no way I could focus on demons if I was constantly thinking about Sally. Which I would be.

  “If we’d sat together, we could’ve compared our class schedules,” Sally continued, her lips forming a slight frown. She handed me her class schedule for her core curriculum, and I did the same. Her brow furrowed when she saw we weren’t in any of the same classes. I felt a pang of regret, but also some relief. “That’s too bad,” Sally said with genuine disappointment in her voice, “we’re not in any of the same classes. What foreign language did you pick?”

  I mumbled out that I had signed up for Italian, my voice barely working enough for me to do that.

  “Me too! That’s amazing that we both picked Italian. I’ve always wanted to travel to Florence and Venice. It just sounds so cool and romantic. I’m hoping to be able to go Junior year. This is so great that you’re taking it, too. We’ll have to study together!”

  The way she looked, the way she smelled, and the fact that she was inches away from me made me so dizzy that I thought I might pass out. I lied and told her sure, we could study together, and that I signed up for Italian for the same reasons she did, hoping also to go there my Junior year. My real reason was in case I ever got my hands on a copy of L’Occulto Illuminato. I knew that was a crazy reason to take Italian, since the odds were so small that I’d ever find a copy. Even if I did, it was possible the book was written in Latin, despite the Italian title. I almost continued on with French instead so that I could translate Berjon’s Mystere Des Esprits Noirs, which I knew I could get a copy of, but I switched to Italian on impulse. Since there was only one first-year Italian class, I was going to have to switch back to French, and change homerooms.

  A throat-clearing sound from up front interrupted us. It was the homeroom teacher not-so discreetly getting our attention to let us know we were alone in the room with her; that all the other students had already gone to their first class since the bell had rung several minutes earlier. From the heat burning up my cheeks, I knew I was blushing as Sally and I walked out of the room together and our fingers accidentally brushed for a moment. Or at least accidentally on my part. She didn’t show any indication that we had had that physical contact. Instead, she just looked happy and excited, and stayed close by my side until it was time for us to split up to go to our different classrooms.

  Not much else to report about my first day of tenth grade. I tried concentrating on my classes, but my thoughts kept drifting back to Sally. That wasn’t good. I knew I was going to have to avoid future contact with her, or I’d be lost.

  If Ralph Malphi was looking for me, he didn’t find me. But that was understandable. Newton North is a large high school, with over three thousand students. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him after school ended, so instead of taking the bus, I walked home, and afterwards rode my bike to Watertown so I could buy some spy cameras. When the school bus passed by I heard Malphi yell out the window that I was dead. I didn’t care. I was too busy thinking of Sally. I knew I couldn’t afford to do that, that I had more important things to think about. But I couldn’t help myself.

  Friday, September 9th 3:15 PM

  MY EYES ARE NORMAL. THE OPHTHALMOLOGIST USED A VIDEO­keratography computer to create a complete corneal imaging of my eyes. No defects, nothing oddly shaped, nothing to explain why I see demons that other people don’t.

  Of course, for my mom, not any ophthalmologist would do. She wanted only the best, so she wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of her friends. Which was why she arranged for me to see a leading specialist in downtown Boston. She didn’t go with me, obviously, but she put on a show last night of acting the concerned mom, probably for my dad’s sake.

  “Henry,” she told me, “while you don’t need me to, if you’ll feel more comfortable, I’ll come with you, you know I will. The doctor’s office is only a several minute walk from the Government Center subway stop.”

  A flash of anxiousness showed in her eyes while she sat hoping I wouldn’t double-cross her, but she probably knew I wanted her to accompany me even less than she did herself. I let her off the hook and told her I’d be fine going myself.

  My appointment was at ten thirty, which meant I would be missing school, but my mom needed to have the right chichi doctor for me, and Dr. Robert Gelman fit the bill and was a busy man and hard to schedule appointments with, and she wasn’t about to face the social stigma of having me see a lesser ophthalmologist just so I wouldn’t have to miss school. When I got to Dr. Gelman’s office, a technician performed half a dozen tests, including a corneal topography. After that I waited forty-five minutes before I was brought in to see Gelman. He was in his late fifties. Tall, broad shouldered, full head of silver hair, and looked a lot like Tom Selleck without a mustache, except that he didn’t dye his silver hair black. He smiled patiently as he looked over the test results and then peered into my eyes as he shined a penlight into them, and finally tested my vision. I was crestfallen when he told me my eyes were perfect. If I was seeing demons because of a physical deformity, then that would’ve been only a random event, something that could’ve happened to anyone. Maybe I would’ve been able to replicate the deformity with a pair of special glasses like they did in They Live, maybe not, but at least the fact that I saw demons when others didn’t wouldn’t have meant anything. But if it wasn’t physical, then it was something else—like I had been chosen by a higher power and for a higher purpose. The responsibility I’d been feeling ever since I accepted that Hanley and the others were truly demons was real.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong with my eyes? Nothing out of the ordinary? Nothing oddly shaped?”

  “No, nothing at all wrong with them, Henry. You have perfect eyesight and perfectly shaped corneas.” He gave me an inquisitive, yet patient smile. “You seem disappointed?” His smile shifted from patient to patronizing as he considered me. “You may need to get more sleep at night,” he said. “Or possibly take more breaks from your reading. Try to remember to simply close your eyes every ten minutes for a few seconds of rest. But
your eyes are fine.”

  So that was it. It was noon when I left his office. Lower Washington Street where the strip clubs were was only a fifteen minute walk away, and I made my way over there thinking I’d do another demon count, although this time with a more heightened awareness of any cops in the area. After a half hour of counting the number of suited guys and lowlifes walking into and past the clubs (but trying hard to look like I wasn’t loitering) I lost my enthusiasm for doing a demon count and I left the area. Cornwall’s was close by, and it had been two weeks since I’d been there, but I didn’t even have the enthusiasm for that. Instead I bought some pizza for lunch, then picked up a couple of Dark Knight comic books and read them on the subway back to Waban, which was one of the few pure kid things I’d let myself indulge in since seeing demons.

  Thursday, September 15th 6:30 PM

  I KNOW. IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I’VE WRITTEN. I’LL EXPLAIN the reason for that soon.

  How to begin? This is difficult, much more so than I ever imagined, but it’s important that I give a full accounting. Even though this entry won’t have any additional information regarding demons, it’s still significant—maybe my most significant entry yet.

  I didn’t change homerooms. I didn’t switch out of my Italian class. Everyday I’ve been walking to school—not just to avoid Malphi (whom I still haven’t seen, although Curt tells me he’s looking for me), but because Sally’s mom drives her to school each morning, and Sally’s been getting her to stop and pick me up. That’s why I haven’t been riding my bike. If I did, I’d be missing out on time with Sally, and I can’t get myself to do that. We walk home together, too. And sit together in homeroom. And have lunch together every day in the cafeteria. We’d be sitting together in our Italian class, too, if the teacher didn’t make us sit in assigned seats. You’re probably thinking this is pathetic on my part. Maybe it is, but I can’t help it.