by Dale Lucas
The boss got a good look at Monk's swollen, blood-caked face. "Jesus, kid, what happened to you?"
Monk shuffled closer. The old pharmacist and his customers were listening. He didn't really want to discuss it in front of them. He leaned close to the boss.
"It was the old man," he said. "He aired out Toby."
The boss looked at him like he was speaking Chinese. Monk knew Dolph Storms to be capable of almost Biblical rages, but there seemed to be no rage in him at the moment, just complete confusion.
"Wait a minute," the boss said. "You're tellin' me old Farnes did this? Beat you silly and capped Toby to boot?"
Monk nodded.
"Can I help you gentlemen?" the pharmacist asked.
"Yeah," the boss shot back, "you can shut the fuck up and keep your jig pals on their soda stools. We're engaged in a conversation here, if you didn't notice."
The pharmacist swallowed. "Yes, sir, I see. It's just that… we're gettin' ready to close."
The boss rolled his eyes, stepped up to the counter, and yanked a buck out of his pocket. He tossed the crumpled bill on the counter. "Here, Sambo—make me a goddamned root bear float. How 'bout that. Not gonna close with paying customers, right?"
The pharmacist seemed to stare at the bill as though it were paper poison. His two patrons stared at it as well, silently daring him to take it. But he took it. Then, he went about making the float.
The boss turned back to Monk. "Now, explain yourself. You're tellin' me that the Reverend Farnes, who is seventy goddamned years old, shot Toby and beat you black and blue."
"I ain't makin' it up, boss," Monk said.
"Bullshit," Benji huffed from his place by the door.
"Shut your trap!" Storms barked at Benji. "Monk here's senior on this crew, you little punk, and that means he doesn't have to put up with incredulity from the likes of you!"
Benji seemed to shrink at the boss's rebuke.
The boss then hauled off and smacked Monk a good one, open-handed, right across the face. Monk felt all the subsided pain in his ruined face return in an instant.
"As for you," the boss said, "I expect a better story than the one you just gave me."
"It ain't a story," Monk said. "Swear to God, boss, it ain't! When we got there, he was locked in the cellar—"
"Shut it," Storms snapped. "Just shut your mouth. I mean it. Where's that float?"
The pharmacist put it on the counter. Storms snapped it up. He displayed it for Monk. "You got until I finish this thing to come up with another story, or I'm gonna leave you here for Uncle Remus to take out with the garbage."
Storms began to drink his root beer float in large gulps. Steams of brown soda and melting ice cream tumbled out from either side of the glass and trickled onto his collar.
The door bell tinkled as someone suddenly burst in. It was Irving, the boss's driver. He'd left the Bentley idling at the curb. His eyes were wide and startled.
Monk felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. He saw the kid who'd run off standing outside in the rain. He was pointing at the pharmacy, directing someone that Monk couldn't see.
Jesus! The cops?
The boss turned and lowered his soda. "What the fuck is this?"
"You gotta see this, boss," Irving said.
"See what?" Storms asked. "I got a root beer float here."
"Niggers with guns, boss," Irving said. "Lots of 'em."
21
Doc Voodoo watched in silence as the Reverend Farnes's body stiffened, bending board-straight for an instant before flopping down again onto the bed and convulsing under the weight of the spiritual forces the Reverend Brown invoked. The demon seemed to laugh and mumble worriedly at the same time, in a multitude of voices. Near the bedroom door, Fralene's lantern flared and flickered, as though unnatural air currents swirled in and around it as the object of the exorcism rocked and the exorcist himself—the Reverend Adam Clayton Brown, Jr.—carried on in a strong, clear voice.
"Barnabus Farnes," the reverend declared, "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made you free from the law of sin and death! Slip all your bonds and come out from your prison! Your jailer cannot bind you! Your oppressors cannot keep you in chains! Your persecutor will be swept aside—"
The demon roared, straining against its bonds. Outside, the wind howled in answer, groaning against the eves and rattling the windows in their sashes. The whole house seemed to contract and flex around them, as though threatening to tear itself to pieces.
And through it all, Doc held vigil, feeling the near-undeniable force of the Reverend Brown's prayers threatening to chase Ogou from his own body every time they were recited. It was like trying to stand fast in the face of a hurricane wind, or stay afloat in a stormy sea.
You know this could get out of hand, Ogou said to him. You realize that if we get caught in the crossfire of this man's prayers and the demons struggles, I could be forced right out of you?
"Just stay with me, Ogou," Doc whispered to himself, to his patron. "No matter how hard the spirit winds blow, you just hang on to me."
Dub Corveaux knew he was taking a terrible chance, standing here horsed as a holy man sought to cast the demon out of the Reverend Barnabus Farnes. In spiritual terms, after all, there was little difference between the demon in Farnes and the strong and ancient lwa that horsed the Dread Baron. The Reverend Brown's prayers could end up driving one out while leaving the other intact—and it could very easily be Ogou, and not the demon in Farnes, that was forced to flee.
"Tell me your name!" Brown cried.
The demon in Farnes cursed him in a hundred different tongues at once.
"I command you to tell me your name!" Brown cried. "In Jesus' name! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy—"
Then, Doc smelled it. Heat. Smoke. Something burning. He looked to the bed.
Somehow, the demon was radiating heat from its host body, and that heat was burning right through the cords that held it to the bed. It happened in an instant: the rope on its wrists blackened and snapped, then the bonds on its ankles, and finally, the fat coil that wrapped around its middle, keeping it bound to the bed itself.
"Oh dear," Brown breathed, seeing this, knowing what it meant.
"Keep going!" Doc shouted, and dove toward the bed.
The last ropes sizzled, blackened and snapped. With a howl of triumph, the demon was free. It shot upright on the bed, shifted to get its legs under it, and prepared to spring. It had murder in its eyes and ropes of drool cascaded down from its borrowed mouth.
Then Doc landed hard atop it, a flying tackle that drove the demon back onto the bed. An instant later, demon and Baron were rolling around, a tangle of locked arms and kicking legs, Doc struggling to hold the beast at bay, the demon doing its damnedest to scurry free.
Doc saw from the corner of his eye that the Reverend Brown very nearly screamed and ran—but something in him kept him rooted. Doc didn't know if it was courage or foolishness or plain shock, but either way, Brown stayed right where he was. Behind him, Fralene Farnes screamed and stumbled against the tightly-shut bedroom door. She shrank and she drew the lantern up close to her, but to her credit, she didn't flee.
But Beau was the one that most surprised him. The boy had left his sister's side. He was hurrying to help Doc hold the demon down.
"No!" Doc roared. "Stay back, boy! I've got him!"
Doc's strong, coat-clad arms jostled for a good grip on the wiry, long-bodied Reverend Farnes, who snarled and snickered as he struggled to get free. The thing might have been in the body of an old man, but it was supple and strong nonetheless, a clear match for even the magically-enhanced Baron. The demon jerked to the right. Doc yanked back toward the left. The two of them went tumbling onto the floor with a room-shaking thump.
For one instant, the demon was free. It leapt to its feet, turned toward its quarry—
—then Doc had it again, bolting his arms around it from behind and lifting it bodily off the floor. The
spindly old legs wheeled in the air. The long, lithe body bucked and squirmed.
"Do it!" Doc barked.
"Do what?" Reverend Brown asked.
"Drive it out!" Doc shouted back, still struggling. "I'll hold it!"
"The hell you will!" the demon growled. "Two for one, reverend! See if you can drive us both out! This sum-bitch's horsed too, you know!"
The Reverend Adam Clayton Brown, Jr., stared at the thing before him—the thing that looked like his old friend and mentor, Barney, but that seemed to have a hellish light in its eyes and terrible misdeeds on its mind. Amid his struggles to hold the demon, Doc Voodoo saw the confusion and the sudden realization on Brown's face—that the only thing standing between Brown and the beast was a man who looked like Doc, a man invoking infernal powers and paying homage to the darkness—an apparition in a skull face and top hat and ropy, whipping braids. Brown probably never imagined that he would find himself in such a situation.
Truth be told, Doc hadn't imagined it either.
But that didn't matter right now.
"Do it!" Doc commanded. "Don't stop until its gone!"
This could get bad, Ogou said in the center of his brain. Very bad.
"Just hold on," Doc growled, and braced himself.
Brown's words came loud and strong. He held the Bible before him. The demon writhed and made its terrible, other-dimensional sounds—the sounds of many voices crying from the same mouth, cursing and pleading and assuring him they were going nowhere—nowhere—that his prayers would all amount to nothing.
The Dread Baron held the thing. The two of them jerked back and forth. They slammed against the far wall of the bedroom, pirouetted back toward the bed, bounced off the bed and rolled across the floor, lurched once more to their feet and whirled like belligerent dancers through the room. All the while, Brown kept reading, invoking, commanding, demanding a name. At the bedroom door, Fralene prayed as well. When the demon seemed to grow too powerful, Brown took out a vial of Holy Water that he had stowed in his pocket and began anointing the thing.
When the droplets hit the demon's skin, they drew smoke. They did the same when they hit Doc. Both of them cried out in their distress.
Brown hesitated.
"Don't stop!" Doc shouted. Holding the demon while also holding the threatening-to-bolt Ogou within himself felt like trying to cling to an umbrella that had been snatched by a powerful wind.
Brown went on, his voice reaching a high, wavering crescendo. Doc felt the older man's struggle to gather all of his strength, all of his faith, all of his will and to channel them all through the sound of his voice as he shouted the words from the Psalms he read. The storm outside was raging and every board, window pane and piece of furniture in the bedroom shook, ready to tear itself apart. As Brown's voice grew louder, Doc saw that he drew nearer as well. With all the Holy Water gone, Brown had no other recourse but to return to the pewter cross in his coat pocket. He drew it out and leveled it before him. The pewter bauble hovered just inches from the demon's face.
Doc had to avert his own gaze and strain against the force radiating from it. It was like a heat storm in the middle of cold winter wind—hot, bright, pure kinesis. He dug in his heels, gritted his teeth, and sought to hold Ogou inwardly while still holding the demon-possessed Reverend Farnes in the physical world.
When the demon in Farnes saw that cross—so close, so bright—it let out a multitudinous howl that seemed to fill the upper floors of the Farnes home and threatened to lift the house off its very foundations. This was the moment—the wave Brown had been riding had reached its crest and Brown could only press forward and ride it toward the shore, even if it destroyed him upon impact. Brown stabbed the cross forward, planting its cross-bars right on the demon's face. Barnabus Farnes's eyes rolled, turning white. His mouth threatened to snap right off its hinge as his mouth opened wide and a thousand infernal screams came thundering out.
The Reverand's body went taut.
An invisible force lifted Doc and threw him backward, blasting his grip on the struggling Reverend Farnes and driving him right against the outer wall of the bedroom. He hit that wall with bomb-blast force and landed in a heap on the floor. The whole room filled with light and heat and a roaring sound not unlike a great pillar of wind rising out of a deep abyss, although Doc could not swear that the light and heat and roaring existed anywhere other than in his own fevered brain.
Doc lifted his gaze. Blinked. He saw Brown press the cross against Barnabus Farnes's forehead. Smoke and flame rose—from Barney's flesh or the cross itself, Doc couldn't tell—and behind that haze the demon gave one last electric convulsion—one last, long wailing from the deepest pits of Hell—then went silent and collapsed.
Barnabus Farnes hit the floor like a dead man, a heap of old bones and dark flesh.
A terrible silence fell. There was only the sound of three people breathing, the light rattling of the rain against the wind panes, and a gentle, jostling wind skirling up under the eaves of the old house.
The Dread Baron looked inward. Ogou?
Let's not do that again, eh? Ogou answered.
"Not anytime soon," Doc said aloud.
Brown stared at the heap before him.
"Did it work?" Fralene asked in a small, quailing, little girl's voice.
"Is he dead?" Beau breathed, voice strangled in his own throat.
Doc found his feet again. He replaced his fallen hat atop his nest of thick, black braids.
Fralene and Beau lunged forward from the doorway, shouting their uncle's name. She fell upon him, shaking him, turning him onto his back. Beau took the old man's bony hand.
"Stay back!" Brown said.
"Don't!" Doc warned.
Neither Fralene nor Beau listened. And to their mutual relief, nothing came of it. Once they had Barnabus on his back and more or less laid out straight, they could all see clearly that he was unconscious—veritably comatose—but still breathing.
Breathing. Alive.
Tears sprang to Fralene's eyes, rolled over Beau's smooth cheeks, cut tracks down the Reverend Brown's soft, lined old face.
Doc stepped forward, looming over the fallen Farnes. Fralene and Beau each bent over him, as though they intended to protect their uncle from the vigilante's depredations.
"Don't worry," Doc said. "I just want to put him back in his bed."
Fralene stared for a moment, as though she didn't believe him. Beau was the one who finally convinced her, with a single touch of his hand, that the Cemetary Man meant what he said. Fralene looked to Brown and Brown nodded too. The man had proved a friend so far, frightening countenance or no. They had no reason to stop trusting him now.
Fralene stood and backed away.
Doc lifted her uncle with Beau's unnecessary help, swung round, and laid him gently upon his bed. Fralene straightened the now-tangled sheets and drew off the charred ropes that had been holding him. Brown moved to the Reverend Farnes's side and checked his pulse.
"Still with us?" Doc asked.
Brown nodded, looking more than a little disturbed. "It's there, but it's weak."
Fralene leaned forward, prying her uncle's eyelids open and staring into them. "Uncle Barnabus! Uncle Barnabus, we're here! Talk to us!"
"Could be he'll need time to recover," Doc said.
Could be I will, too, he thought.
But then he felt something new and realized there would be no time for him to recover. Not tonight. With all the psychic and spiritual turbulence in the bedroom subsiding, the Dread Baron could once again feel the vibrations that ran along the great psychic web that he was the center of… the web that told him where danger could be found, and who needed his assistance.
He was used to hearing the moaning of distressed web-strands in the center of his brain like a slow, low note bowed on the strings of some invisible cello, the note gradually rising as he neared the location of the distress. Now, though, he heard a storm of bows on a great convocation of strings, like some lu
natic's orchestra tuning all at once and making a terrible botch of it.
The web was groaning, crying, screaming under the weight of soon-to-explode mischief.
And he was the only one who could do anything about it.
He made for the door.
"Where are you going?" Fralene asked.
"We need you," Beau added.
"Not anymore," Doc answered. "There's something else nearby. It can't be ignored."
"Will you be back?" Brown asked.
Doc bounded down the stairs and out into the raining night without answering him.
Truth be told, after the paces he'd been put through, he really couldn't say.
22
Dolph Storms couldn't believe his eyes. He couldn't chalk it up to just being a rain mirage or some kind of hallucination, either: it was right in front of him, big as life and twice as ugly. He was starting to think that maybe—just maybe—he should've let Monk find his own way back downtown.
Stretched out across 134th Street was a platoon of darkies in hats and raincoats. They filled the street from one side to the other, so there had to be at least twenty or thirty of them, all standing shoulder to shoulder. And goddamned if they weren't armed to the teeth.
He saw scatterguns, he saw Tommies, he saw Springfield rifles left over from the Great War, and he saw big, black Smith & Wesson pistols. Every one of the men in the street held his rifle like he knew what to do with it—well-practiced, comfortable, ready for action. At the center of the big, broad skirmish line that stretched across the street stood a fat man with little round glasses whose wire frames hugged his broad, dark face like golden thread.
Jebediah Goddamned Debbs, Dolph thought.
Storms took stock. He had four guys, including the still bloody-faced, half-dazed Monk. They were outnumbered five to one.
He glanced over his shoulder. Maybe, just maybe, they could hop in the Bentley, gun the engine, whip around in the street, and flee in the opposite direction… but the vigilantes looked like they had itchy trigger fingers. They'd open fire the minute they moved for the auto, and with all that firepower, they were likely to hit something, even if they were lousy shots. If they got caught in that car with a flat tire or a busted engine block, they were screwed. There was no way out for them at that point.
