Tales from the Crypt - Demon Knight

by Randall Boyll

He marched to the hole, dropped to his knees, and crawled through, his dirty black shoes scraping and clunking. “Did it,” his muffled voice came back. “Who’s next?”

  “I guess we are,” Martel said, and pointed Uncle Willie in the right direction. “Give us a minute.”

  Jeryline leaned toward Brayker. “Looks like Irene has a soft spot for old Willie,” she said softly.

  “Bad times can bring two things out of people,” he replied. “Their natural goodness or their natural badness.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Brayker the philosopher,” she said, her voice tainted with friendly sarcasm. “You seem wise beyond your years.”

  “And what a pile of years they are,” he said and fell silent, staring down at the thick white beam of the flashlight and the currents of dust moving through it. She wondered if she had hit a sensitive nerve, then gave a mental big deal! He had acted like a jerk when they first met not too many hours ago, so who cared if she had somehow hurt his feelings?

  He raised his head suddenly. “Shall we go?”

  Irene’s green fanny was disappearing into the blackness at the other side of the hole. Jeryline crawled through, then Brayker. He stood and aimed the flashlight around.

  “Old,” Jeryline breathed. “Wow.”

  The mineshaft had been cut just deep enough to stand in. Despite the parched earth overhead, these rocky walls were damp in spots, hairy with spiderwebs whose owners had died and shriveled in their own homes before Jeryline was born. Crusty and orange with rust, a narrow pram track cut down the middle of the floor. The mossy smell of stagnant water hung in the air. It seemed obvious, or at least plausible, that the miners had cut this shaft through to the foundation of the building and said whoops after making the little hole and looking through. Or, of course, a lot of years’ worth of rats could have gnawed their way in. As if any of that mattered anymore.

  “I need the light up here,” Roach said. His voice seemed to boom out, rebounded four or five times in a creepy, deepening echo, and was gone. “Please,” he said more softly.

  Brayker touched Jeryline’s elbow and made motions for her to follow, if she wanted. Consternation welled up in her. Half of the time this guy was a moody loner, the other half a courteous Boy Scout. If he would just give away that stupid key they could both leave tonight, hitchhike out of her parole jurisdiction, start real lives. But no, she had already offered him that, and he had chosen to keep the key. Fine. If this mineshaft led to the world above, she would do her hitchhiking all alone.

  Brayker took the lead with Roach while she hung back in the company of Irene and Willie and Deputy Martel. The sights and sounds of this tunnel, the damp smell in the air and the harshly cutting beam of light, reminded her, in a strange way, of the women’s prison in Colorado at night, especially in the solitary block where all the stink and the wetness sank down from the prison above, and the guards raked the bars with their flashlights when they got bored.

  “Fork in the road,” Roach sang out. Echoes replied as everyone came to a stop. “Old man, do your thing.”

  Martel stepped forward, supporting Willie. “Can you think straight?” he asked him. “Does any of this look familiar?”

  Brayker waved a hand indicating time-out. “I don’t think he’s ever been down here,” he said. “He was an investor, knew all the maps.”

  Roach poked the barrel of the shotgun against the tunnel’s floor and leaned his weight on it. “Oh, this is just swell,” he said. “The drunk leading the blind.”

  Brayker looked over to him. “Ready to call this off? Go back and wait for morning?”

  “No way.” Roach smacked the barrel with the side of his foot; the shotgun spun around quite professionally, and he parked it on his shoulder, ready to march. “American veteran, National Guard,” he said. “Suck on that.”

  “To the left is north,” Willie slurred. “Feeder line to the main, no lode, no vein, no nothing. Lost my ass.”

  Irene frowned. “What?”

  Martel shook Willie. “Which direction leads to the surface, old man? Left or right?”

  “That-there is the south spur, takes you up like an escalator. Unless we’re headed south, which would make it . . .” His eyes opened and shut in slow motion. “Where in the hell?”

  Roach made a noise approximating the blowing of a nose. “Toss that old fucker back through the hole,” he grumbled. “I think the shaft on the left angles up. Brayker?”

  Brayker shook his head in the same slow motion Willie had used. “I have no idea. Besides, this is your parade.”

  Roach swallowed. “I know, I know. We’ll go left, fifty percent chance, what the heck. We can always come back.”

  “Until we take another two or three forks after that,” Irene said. “That’s how scuba divers die in underwater caves, they get all lost. We ought to leave some kind of trail.”

  “Fresh out of road flares and bread crumbs,” Roach said.

  Irene smiled sweetly. “We can always follow the trail of your fleas.”

  “We’ll try the left,” Brayker said. “At least for a minute or two.”

  They looked at each other, nodded mutual consent, and walked on. Jeryline lagged behind, mulling over what Irene had said about scuba divers. Was it possible to get that damned lost down here? To die of thirst, maybe cannibalize each other? No, no way. She was just tweaking a little.

  At the fork, where miners long dead had chopped the rock into a pockmarked surface like the moon and left a sharp vertical edge, she heard something drift from the right. She lifted a hand, ready to call out to the others, then stopped herself in mid-breath. They couldn’t all be trotting around chasing echoes hither and yon. She stayed in place only about thirty seconds, time enough to think there might be bats scratching around down that right tunnel, bats who ought not be disturbed. Besides, she was alone; the others had gone around a bend and been swallowed by the earth, save for a shuddering glow of light in that solid darkness.

  She lifted a foot, abandoning ship before a case of the scaredy-cats could get her jumping at ghosts. Again came a sound—it seemed like a groan, maybe a sob of some sort. She put her hand out and clutched the wall, turning again, listening intently.

  Somebody was crying. It sounded like a child—but a crying child, down here? She thought of Brayker’s so-called Salesman: a trick? Lure her away from the others and turn her into what Cordelia had become?

  Jeryline stopped at the point of actually entering the tunnel. She had a book of matches in her pocket, of course, because no smoker ever left home without one, she supposed. Matter of fact, a cigarette right now sounded simply fabulous; what better way to chase a case of the jitters away? But her cigarettes were far away and her matches were to be ersatz flashlights now. Yet should she risk lighting one? What if the Salesman and his buddies were ten feet in front of her, holding their breath, ready to shout surprise! and scare her instantly to death?

  Oh, too many questions. She got the matches out of the back pocket of her Salvation Army jeans and struck one. She held it overhead, staring into the tunnel with huge eyes, Jeryline the Owl Woman. A thousand bowls of light and shadow adorned the walls as before; the rusty pram track arrowed away into blackness. No Salesman, no demons. Just a severe case of the jitters and someone sobbing.

  Barely breathing, sweat beginning to appear on her forehead and upper lip, Jeryline trod softly between the narrow rails. The flame touched her fingers and she flapped the match away, licked her thumb, lit another and held it as high as the ceiling would allow. Cobwebs and dust, swinging black shadows on the walls, water drops glistening like yellow gems. A poet would like this, she thought. Poets always like weird places.

  The second match went out after introducing itself to her fingers, making her hiss and dance. She lit another, stuck it overhead, and saw the person who was making all the fuss. It was a kid. The kid looked at her. The kid was Danny from over at the Eureka Cafe, the cute little guy who hated Wormwood as much as Jeryline did. The two had talke
d a few times here and there.

  Jeryline knelt in front of him. “Danny? How in the heck did you get down here? Where’s your mom and dad?”

  She moved to touch his shoulder, but he jerked away. In his dark brown eyes lurked an animal sort of terror Jeryline had never seen before.

  The match burned her. “Shit!” she squealed, dropping it. She rose and did a furious little dance on it. “Cheap-ass matches,” she howled, tended her wounds with her tongue, blew on her fingers knowing blisters would be erupting there soon. She switched hands, and lit another. A pair of eyes glowed alive just to her right, and she cringed back, then saw who it was.

  “Homer,” she said, her voice full of relief. “What is everybody doing in the mines? Hiding?”

  Homer ignored her. He slowly craned his head and looked down at Danny. “Why did you run away, son?” he asked in a strange, gutteral voice. When he looked back up again he fastened his eyes on Jeryline. “Look what you’ve done to him, you nasty bitch,” he said evenly. “You must pay the price.”

  Jeryline took a backward step, knowing. She bumped into something soft, and whirled.

  It was Wanda. Like Homer, she was still wearing the official Eureka Cafe apron. The pupils of her eyes were dull orange circles instead of the usual animated black.

  “Ah, God,” Jeryline moaned. “Not both of you.”

  Wanda’s face twisted into a dull, stupid leer. “You’ve been naughty with Danny,” she rasped. On the outrush of her breath Jeryline smelled dried blood and decay. “You must pay the price.”

  The match fell from Jeryline’s fingers. She turned, tensed to run, but Danny lurched forward and took her right leg in a bear hug. Instead she dropped heavily to her knees.

  Wanda dug cold fingers through Jeryline’s hair. With a piglike grunt, Homer took her head in his hands and began to twist it. Things in her neck snapped and clicked. She was able to bellow out a scream. Wanda reacted by jamming her entire fist into Jeryline’s mouth. Jeryline kicked and bucked, out of air, the muscles and tendons of her head wrenched to the breaking point, knowing that before they were done her head would be completely torn off for the others to find.

  How long do you stay conscious while your head rolls away? she wondered, and blacked out.

  14

  It was an instinctive motion. Brayker was walking beside Roach when he heard Jeryline scream; he spun to the side and jerked the shotgun cleanly out of Roach’s hands. Turning swiftly in the suddenly crazy light from the big orange flashlight, he knocked Martel out of the way, ran a step and plowed chest first into Irene’s ample bazooms, careened against the wall, and rebounded into Uncle Willie’s drunken path. Cursing, he disentangled himself and made it back to the fork of the tunnel, cut a hard left with the echoes of his footfalls pounding back and forth, and homed in on the unmistakeable gurgles and grunts of someone being either choked or smothered to death. It was a sound he had heard often enough.

  Dark shapes were bent over Jeryline, whose blue-jeaned legs were jerking and twisting as she fought. Brayker put on the brakes, tripped against a rail, and fell to his knees, still skidding along. Sharp rocks cut through his pants, through his skin, grated across the bones of his kneecaps. One of the figures jerked upright. Brayker aimed the flashlight its way: just some average Joe whose hair stuck up like bunches of weeds, whose eyes glowed an unhealthy red, and whose face had been drained of all color. This was no demon, Brayker knew. This was a man possessed.

  He fired while the shotgun was still at his hip. The top right quadrant of the man’s head blew apart in a shower of blood and bone. The man staggered backward, then bared his teeth. “You there,” he said while blood bubbled up to the lip of his exploded skull and began to sheet down his face. “Tried to steal my Bronco, eh? Tried to tried to tried to . . .”

  The other figure became erect. This was a woman in similar shape. One of her arms dead-ended in Jeryline’s mouth. As for Jeryline, not too good. Her eyes were open and rolling, twin circles of pure terror.

  Brayker pumped the shotgun and fired. The woman’s shoulder blew apart and splashed against the wall. Jeryline shuddered up to a sitting position and jerked the severed arm away from her mouth. An ugly blue necklace of ruptured blood vessels indicated the line where her neck would have split from her body.

  Something else moved. Brayker cycled the gun with one hand, saw one more shape, trained the barrel on it.

  “No!” Jeryline coughed out. She rocked to her feet, grabbed at the figure, and lurched toward Brayker with it. A little boy, Brayker saw. Pale as white wine, tear-stains on his cheeks, dirt scuffed on his clothes. Brayker got a twinge of surprise: it was the kid from that cafe, the little shit who had foiled the attempted car thievery.

  “I know this kid,” Jeryline gasped. She fell against Brayker, clutching at his clothes, coughing a fine mist of blood against his shirt. “It’s Danny Long. Local boy.”

  Brayker urged them both aside. The man he had shot was wobbling all over the place but the woman, unconcerned about her missing arm, had picked up a rock and was shambling toward him.

  “Not in front of Danny!” Jeryline rasped. “It’s his mom!”

  Brayker hesitated. It was a tough old world sometimes, but to see your parents gunned down? Not that tough.

  He tossed the flashlight at Jeryline and snatched the boy up by the back of his shirt. “Go!” he shouted at her, but the flashlight had smacked her on the knee and fallen to the floor of the shaft. She dropped down, madly scrabbling for it while the beam skittered across the walls and ceiling. Then she was up and running. Danny’s parents gobbled unhappy things as Brayker sprinted away carrying his unusual luggage.

  “Hold up!” Brayker shouted at Jeryline as she ran through the fork. She stopped and turned in a wash of fresh dust. He slowed enough to put Danny Long on his feet before dropping to his haunches to recover his breath. Damn those cigarettes, he thought. Haven’t smoked since 1938, and still I get winded.

  He emitted a miserable chuckle. What a zany life he had led. It would be nothing but pure relief to get rid of the key; there were times when being dead sounded so much better than being alive.

  “They’re still coming,” Jeryline panted. Blood was running from the corners of her lips and her upper teeth had acquired some odd new angles and spaces. To cap this unfortunate beauty treatment, large clumps of her hair had been pulled out by the roots, which were not bleeding but oozing a watery, pinkish fluid. If she were to be the next keeper of the key, Brayker knew, she’d better get used to looking like shit most of the time.

  Yeah . . . if.

  A strange, windy rustling began in the darkness of the left passageway, as if Roach and crew had decided to fan themselves with newspaper. Jeryline looked at Brayker; at that moment Danny tottered to her and collapsed in her arms. She hugged him tight and stood, simultaneously offering Brayker the flashlight that now hung from her little finger.

  “Wait,” he said, rising, and dug the key out.

  She glared at him. “He’s just a little kid.”

  Brayker awkwardly took the flashlight in the same hand that held the shotgun, aimed the beam at Danny’s face, and touched the key between his eyes.

  No reaction. He put the key away and took the flashlight in a firmer grip. “This tunnel thing just isn’t going to work,” he said. “There are too many blind spots, too many branches, and it’s already been invaded. We have to go back to the basement.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Duh. What was your first clue, Sherlock?”

  He ignored her, cocking his head, listening. “Wings,” he whispered. “If I’m right, we are in deep shit.”

  “Bats,” Jeryline shot back. “I think I heard them before.”

  He aimed the flashlight at her feet. “See those?” he said.

  She looked down. “Salvation Army retreads. You got a problem with that?”

  He shook his head. “Your feet, Jeryline. If you have ever run fast in all your life, run faster now.” He pumped the sh
otgun. “I’ll cover you to the basement.”

  “What? How come? How about the others?”

  He aimed the light at the other tunnel. “We should be expecting them about now.”

  A new noise arose: the panting and squealing of humans on the run. In a few seconds Roach and Martel, then Irene and Uncle Willie, scrambled past on a mad rush back to the basement, tripping, falling, stumbling into the walls, climbing over each other. “Wings!” Irene wailed in passing. “Some of them got wings!”

  Brayker hooked the gun across one elbow and worked the key out of its pouch once more. “Seal the hole as soon as you get in,” he said, and pushed it toward her. “You’ve seen me do it.”

  She hesitated, then took it without a word.

  “Go,” Brayker said, and she went.

  From behind, questing fingers touched his hair, his shoulders. He spun, extending the butt of the shotgun, and smashed it across the man’s bloody face. The man staggered back, his hands still pawing at the air. Blood spiked with broken teeth drooled down his chin. The woman was faster, able to get a firm purchase in Brayker’s hair. He turned the shotgun in his hands, took it by the barrel, and with a short prayer that it would not go off by itself, plowed the butt of it against her throat. Her tongue popped out like a fat blue popsickle, and her head lolled all the way back between her shoulder blades, her broken neckbones grating against each other as she fell away. But she would live, he knew. The parents of that kid Danny would bumble about like robots down here until their muscles began to rot from the bones, and only when their eyes had decayed sufficiently for the poison to leak out, would they find rest. The Salesman was powerful, but even he could not deny the mastery of death itself.

  Brayker sprinted down the tunnel toward the basement. The whirring of wings approaching from behind was loud, punctuated now by the flopping of oversize feet against rock. The Salesman had been busy outside, very busy making these things. Perhaps every single mineshaft under this town was loaded with them. To Brayker it would be no surprise: like any good salesman, you have to keep knocking on doors to find the right buyer. And maybe that was why Harrison, whose blood was running dry in the key, had dubbed the Evil One just that: the Salesman. The guy just never knew when to give up. For two thousand years he had tracked the last key of the seven, yet here he was in Wormwood with his bag of samples and his hearty handshake, knocking on doors until people got weary of the pitch and finally start buying his wares. Cordelia had been the first customer tonight; any of the others could be next.