by Adam Dark
‘The kind I can’t see, apparently.’
Rufus had reached the front door of the Patron Hill building, which he now held open for all of them with a curt smile and nods for everyone. Did the guy not even have a conscience? They stepped uncertainly inside, and Rufus passed them yet again to head for what was apparently the front desk inside what looked like a lobby.
“Hello, Mr. Dirre,” said the woman behind the glass partition. Her voice carried through the little circle cut out of the glass, and she grinned at Rufus.
“How you doin,’ Glennie?” he replied, stepping up toward the narrow counter to prop his elbows up onto it and lean forward. That counter was almost too high for him to even do that.
“Oh, you know. Pretty much the same as every night. I just came on. You here for Liz?”
“Is there someone else I should be coming to see?” The man’s voice dipped even lower than Ben thought was possible.
This Glennie lady behind the counter giggled and shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Well if there is, you’ll let me know, right?”
The woman tilted her head at Rufus and grinned. “Absolutely.”
Ben really hoped the guy hadn’t just dragged them all here just to have an audience while he flirted at the counter and acted like he hadn’t just seen a woman exorcised and killed because of it. That was exactly what this looked like, and he forced himself to keep from telling the guy to hurry it up already.
“Just need you to sign in,” the woman said, pushing a clipboard and pen through the little slit beneath the glass.
“Anything for you,” Rufus said, focusing on signing the list with a rather loud scratch of the pen.
Ben glanced at April, who just rolled her eyes and shook her head in response. Good, so he wasn’t just imagining it.
“You have a good night.” Rufus nodded at the woman and slapped a hand on the counter.
“You too,” she replied. Her grin faded a little when she noticed the four people in their early twenties all staring at her with various levels of irritation. Yeah, that would have confused Ben too, if he’d had as little of a clue about what was going on as this woman clearly did.
They followed Rufus down the long hallway, lined here and there with posters on rehabilitation and “settling into life at Patron Hill”, plus a few fliers of information on all the different activities available to the residents of whatever the heck this place was. Were they in a nursing home?
‘Addiction center?’ Ian offered.
“What are we doing here?” Peter said it so slowly, staring at all the information on the walls like they’d just stepped into an orgy instead.
‘Super weird connection, there, man.’
Yes. Yes it was. Despite the fact that that would never happen here, Ben still didn’t want any part of it. He couldn’t imagine that whatever they were about to do would be any better than what they’d done behind the movie theater.
“They sure do have a lot of cameras,” Chase added. Ben looked up to see those cameras mounted every few yards just below the ceiling. “Wonder if any of them are actually on.”
And what would this kind of place need to record with so many freakin’ cameras? Ben didn’t like being watched like this anyway, let alone when he had no idea where he was or what he was actually going to be doing.
They turned a corner down the hallway, then Rufus stopped at a door on their left and gently knocked. Ben didn’t hear any kind of answer from inside, but the man grabbed the doorknob and turned it anyway. He stepped inside the open room, and there was a definite and unspoken consensus among Ben and his friends that they’d probably do best to prepare themselves for whatever they happened to find there. Going after demons on their own had never felt this weird or tense before—not counting when Ben, Peter, and April had gone to face the Guardian and try getting Ian out of that house. They’d been completely on their own back then, and there was a lot more baggage tied to that abandoned house than anything else they’d done since.
With a deep breath, Ben stepped into the room before the rest of them, and they slowly filtered in behind Rufus. “Close the door, please,” the man said without turning around. Ben looked back to see Chase enter the room last, and he closed the door softly as he’d been told.
It was dark in here. That was the first thing Ben noticed; only a small lamp with a brown, light-dampening shade allowed them to see anything, which wasn’t much. The lamp was on a side table on the far wall, what looked like a kitchen to his left and another door into maybe a bedroom on his right. Beside the table was a dull-colored armchair against the curtained window—or maybe it was just the light—and really nothing else.
In the chair, though, sat a woman who looked maybe just a little older than Ben. Definitely not old enough to be in a nursing home. So obviously that wasn’t what this place was, and the addiction treatment center wasn’t entirely off the table. Only this woman didn’t quite look… all there.
Her hands rested in her lap, palms turned upward, her curly brown hair draping the sides of her face. Ben had noticed her last amid everything else here only because she hadn’t moved once since he’d stepped through the door. Her door, apparently. She didn’t even seem to notice when Rufus stepped toward her armchair and knelt there in front of her.
“Hi, Lizzie,” the man said.
Lizzie’s head swiveled a little, and she blinked so slowly, but that was just about it.
“It’s time.” Rufus nodded where he knelt, one forearm resting casually across his knee. “Are you ready?”
The woman’s head drooped almost all the way to her chest, making Ben think she’d passed out or fallen asleep. Then it slowly lifted again, wobbling on her neck as if she barely had enough strength for it. Lizzie blinked again, and Rufus reached out to pat her upturned forearm a few times.
“Rufus,” Ben said, keeping his voice surprisingly soft and low for all the anxiety coursing through him right now. “Is there one in this woman, too?” He didn’t even bother to ask Ian, because if this was anything like the demon inside the old woman, Ian wouldn’t have been able to tell him anyway, and they both knew it. Rufus turned around, still on his knees, and regarded Ben with an open awareness that made Ben even more uneasy about this guy. And he’d liked Rufus the best out of the three Sectarian Circle members he’d met so far—hopefully ever. But the man didn’t say anything. That was never a good sign. “I’m not going to do this,” Ben added. “You didn’t tell me what would happen with that woman, but now I know. And I won’t do it again.”
The man closed his eyes and sighed. “You won’t have to do anything now, Ben. This is just for you to watch.” Then he glanced up at the other side of the door. “Peter.” Peter blinked with wide eyes, which darted back and forth from Lizzie in the armchair to Rufus. “Open the box.”
“Are you kidding?” Peter asked. “You have to know what happens if I do that.”
“This was meant as an opportunity for all of you to see a little of how we handle things,” Rufus replied. “But I wasn’t asking, Peter. Open it up.” He nodded at the floor between them.
Peter looked at Ben, who didn’t know what the hell to say to any of this. So he just held his friend’s gaze until Peter took a few steps forward and set his metal demon-catching box on the floor. The click of the top panel popping open sounded a lot louder in this dark, quiet room than it had behind the movie theater. With all four of the box’s sides now splayed open and flattened against the brown carpet, the green-tinged crystal resting in the metal setting at its center glowed. Then it started to pulse.
Rufus rose to his feet and approached the box. He squatted there in front of it and reached out with this bare hand toward the stone filled with the demon they’d just put into it. “Woah, woah,” Peter almost shouted. Rufus’ hand froze. “I really wouldn’t grab it like that.”
With a patient smile, Rufus tapped the blue, glowing band on his outstretched wrist. “Minor precaution,” he repeated. Then he
lifted the demon-stone from its cradle, and nothing happened. The man turned around again to face Lizzie, and though Ben couldn’t actually see the stone in his hand anymore, it was hard to miss the pulsing green light, glowing brighter with each quick succession of more intense flashes. What was this guy doing?
Rufus whispered something to Lizzie that Ben couldn’t hear, then he stepped back until he stood almost as far away from her as Ben and the others. Only he’d left the demon-stone in one of Lizzie’s upturned palms.
“That’s not a good idea,” Chase muttered, shaking his head. Rufus shot him a scathing enough glance to make Chase freeze and look away, which was just a little weird. Chase never seemed to care about the way somebody looked at him.
April nudged Ben’s arm, and when he looked at her, he found her eyes glued to Lizzie’s chair. So he turned to look there again and felt like he might be sick.
The demon-stone pulsed so quickly with green light, it looked almost constant. The woman’s head wobbled fiercely on her neck—yes, Ben hated to admit, like one of those dashboard bobblehead dolls—but she didn’t make a sound. Her eyes never seemed to leave the same spot on the carpet she’d been staring at since they got here, but her lips had parted ever so slightly. An odd, repetitive hiss filled the room. Ben realized the woman was panting now in quick, short bursts; it was almost impossible to see her chest heaving up and down with how intensely and erratically her head moved above her shoulders.
‘Dude, if she can’t talk…’
Then she couldn’t tell them to stop. “Rufus,” he said, “we can’t do this to her.”
The man just held up a hand to silence Ben, his eyes reflecting the green flash of the demon-stone, and pointed back toward Lizzie.
Gritting his teeth, Ben made himself pay attention, but his stomach tied itself in knots. This wasn’t right at all. He didn’t care what Rufus had to say about it.
Then the demon-stone let out the brightest flash of all that just about blinded him. Ben flinched away from the light, and when he opened his eyes again, the crystal in Lizzie’s hand was its normal milky-white again. Empty.
Tendrils of green wove their way up Lizzie’s arm, crossing over her skin, branching down across her chest and opposite shoulder, up her neck, spreading across her cheeks. The woman’s panting stopped, and then her entire body bucked in one gigantic spasm. She jerked again, and the stone dropped from her hand. Lizzie’s entire torso lurched forward in the chair while her head flew back farther than it should have been able to go. These were seizures. The green strands moving all over her body didn’t stop, and the woman was flailing around in the armchair now, the top of her head thumping against the back of the chair as her bare feet thrashed against the carpet. Ben had had about enough of this, but when the woman started choking and letting out one tiny, desperate moan after the other, he was done.
“That’s it,” he said.
‘Yup, right there with you.’
Ben stepped forward and raised his hand, completely ready and willing to let Ian do what he had to do to get that thing out of this clearly helpless woman. Screw Rufus. Screw the Sectarian Circle. This wasn’t what he’d signed on for, and it definitely wasn’t in his rulebook to let innocent people get consumed by a demon, whether or not they could talk or move for themselves. He wasn’t going to feed her to a demon he’d just pulled out of another woman before she died.
His palm itched when the green glow appeared under whatever power Ian chose to use, then a hand grabbed his other wrist. Ben jerked his head to see Rufus beside him, digging his fingers into Ben’s flesh to apparently make him pay attention.
“I swear to everything I believe in, Ben Robinson,” Rufus growled, “if you interfere right now, our offer is completely off the table. And you will never have your answers.”
Beyond the man’s voice being the most menacing thing Ben had ever heard coming out of a living person’s mouth, the man’s grip was incredibly powerful on his wrist. And intensely painful. Ben clenched his jaw, glaring at the shorter man who’d been dragging him around on a wild demon chase for the last hour only to involve him in what looked a lot like ruining two women’s lives tonight.
“Whatever you and Ian were about to do,” Rufus added, “put it away. And let this happen.”
The sounds of Lizzie’s strangled chokes and her bucking in the chair and now her gasps of most likely agony tore him up on the inside.
“Ben…” That was April’s voice now, pleading with him to do something. But he couldn’t tell if she wanted him to keep going or if she was reminding him about the questions they wanted to ask and the answers they needed to hear.
He clenched his fist below Rufus’ grip on his arm, feeling his own body tremble in anger and indecision. Then he made what might have been the hardest decision of his life.
‘This is so bad,’ Ian said, but he pulled back from what little control he’d taken within Ben’s body, and the glow in Ben’s palm faded. When that happened, Ben lowered his hand and jerked his other arm away from Rufus.
The man lifted both his hands in a gesture of attempted peacemaking, and Ben felt himself breathing almost as heavily as Lizzie. “Whatever this is,” he said through his teeth, “if it ends up hurting her, I’ll do it anyway.”
Rufus nodded, averting his gaze as if now, all of a sudden and way too late, he felt a little guilty for what he’d just done. “If that happens, I won’t stop you.”
Then the room went entirely silent. Ben looked back at Lizzie and found her slumped sideways in the armchair, completely still now. At least she was still breathing, though it was still faster and heavier than it should have been. Her body started to slide out of the chair, and before Ben could step forward in an attempt to catch her when she fell, the woman’s hands shot out to grip the cushion. Her fists clenched tighter, her arms straightened, and then she lifted herself from the edge of the cushion to sit fully upright in the chair once more.
After another long, slow breath, she rolled her neck from side to side, lifted her chin, and opened her eyes to look at them. A wide, brilliant, intelligent grin bloomed on her face, and Ben swallowed. He most definitely hadn’t expected that. When she laughed, he took a few automatic, cautious steps backward.
“Wow,” Lizzie said, her voice airy and sounding more than a little dry. “Every single time is like the first.” She chuckled again. “You found me a good one, Rufus.”
20
In no way did Ben like the way that sounded. He liked even less the nod of accomplishment the man directed toward this newly possessed woman and the demon he’d just let weasel its way inside her.
Lizzie—or the demon—looked around the room and the darkness, the bare walls and the lack of furniture, and frowned a little. Then her gaze moved over Ben and the others, and she chuckled. “Why does everyone look so upset?” she asked. Her smile was completely genuine and not in the least bit evil-looking, which was really the biggest red flag of them all. Apparently, un-creepy things were now freaking Ben out too.
“Where’s Lizzie?” he asked, trying not to sound like a jerk about it. He was pretty sure he failed at that.
The woman tilted her head, and her brows drew up in apparent sympathy. “Oh, was this your first time? Rufus, I’m honored that you brought me an audience.” Rufus just folded his arms, and while he didn’t exactly smile, it looked like he wanted to. “Lizzie’s right here with me,” the woman said, catching Ben’s attention again by addressing him. “And she’s perfectly fine.”
Ben glanced at his friends—April stared at him, unblinking; Peter was gaping at Lizzie, dragging his hands down the side of his face; Chase just stood there with his arms folded and his nostrils flared like he was smelling the pile of trash outside the theater again.
‘This is totally weird, man.’
Yeah, Ian could say that again, and it wouldn’t even be annoying. It was true. And Ben had no idea what to do about it.
“Hold on,” Lizzie said. She pushed herself to her feet with
a little sigh, then let out a girlish giggle and stretched her arms. “Oh. Everything works.” She sounded way too happy. She sounded like a woman who hadn’t moved or spoken in years and had finally found a miracle cure for whatever had kept her that way for so long. But this wasn’t that woman, by her own admission. The demon’s admission. She eyed Ben and each of his friends, then clicked her tongue. “It’s so sweet how concerned you all are for her. And I promise you, she’s quite happy with our arrangement.” April scoffed and shook her head. “Well,” Lizzie added, “you’ll just have to take my word for it.” Then she looked at Ben again. “You, though… I can show you.” Her eyes—Ben couldn’t see their color in the dark room—flashed with that spirit-realm green, and the woman extended a hand toward him. “Come. Come here. Lizzie wants to speak with you.”
Ben had absolutely no idea what was going on, and the last thing he wanted was to walk willingly into a demon’s open arms just to see what might happen.
‘I really wish I had some advice to give you, man,’ Ian said.
That wasn’t surprising, but Ian didn’t sound as hesitant as Ben felt. Then again, if anything happened to Ben, Ian still wouldn’t die. He’d just be released back into the spirit realm for another thirty thousand years of hanging out as a regular undead person without a body.
‘Yeah, that’s cheery. Thanks.’
“If you want your proof, Ben…” Rufus said with a shrug, and now Ben couldn’t ignore the demon-woman’s offer. He’d told Rufus he’d banish this thing again if it did anything to hurt the woman it now possessed. He could find out, and he could do exactly that.
You up to take that chance? he asked Ian, staring at the woman with the curly hair, the kind smile, and the hand stretched toward him in invitation.
‘Well, I know the demon’s there, now. Pretty sure I can at least get it back out again if I have to.’
