Covenant

by John Everson

  He flipped ahead to the chapter on callings, and began to read.

  5. Calling A Demon

  There are as many schools of thought on performing a calling as there are types of demons to be called. Some ancient Wiccan rites demand the use of a pentagram and advise that the area of the calling be bordered with trails of salt, human blood, blessed candles and other esoteric paraphernalia—including by one report, the excrement of a virgin—to ensure that the demon cannot escape the circle unbound into the world before a covenant of service is established.

  Most modern experts claim that there is no way to restrain a demon using minerals or religious artifacts. They are, after all, ethereal creatures. The key is not keeping the spirit contained, but rather in keeping it bound to this realm. Because our earth is not the natural realm of demons, such beings may not remain here for more than a few moments unless bound in service to something corporeal. The covenant is the key, and if the demon has an interest in remaining in this realm—and many do, at any cost—then a highly beneficial covenant can usually be forged between the caller and the demon. At the moment of calling, such a demon will be interested in hearing the terms of the proposed covenant, rather than escaping into the world for a few minutes only to be pulled back from whence it came.

  One of the key tenets of demonology is the power inherent in names. It can be highly dangerous to attempt a calling without addressing a specific being and having some understanding of the nature of that being. A demon cannot be bound in covenant completely to an earthly master unless its true name is spoken in the invocation. Justorius wrote in A.D. 654 of an incident in which a calling was conducted without a name being specified. A Borlock demon of extreme maliciousness answered the call and decimated half a village before losing its grip on this realm and disappearing. This incident also gives credence to the uselessness of salt and candle boundaries. The witch who attempted the calling had, in fact, used a salt barrier to restrain the being prior to performing her inexact invocation.

  This, naturally, begs the question, “How does one find the name of the demon one wishes to call?” There certainly is no phone book of the other realm, with listings by specialty of demons interested in assisting the earthbound with issues of fertility, protection, healing, wealth accumulation and the like. However, there are several occult volumes that have been published over the past centuries that have listed a number of demons that have been successfully called and utilized for service by those established in the dark arts. Demarck’s excellent Devils and Delirium, first published in 1798, includes an appendix that lists several dozen key spirits….

  The phone rang, and Joe marked his place in the book and set it aside for later. He hoped it was Brett, though he couldn’t believe that they’d have results this fast.

  “Hello,” he said after rattling the receiver out of its cradle on the third ring.

  “Joe?” It wasn’t the voice he expected, but his face bright-ened anyway.

  “Hey, Cindy,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “Well, you know tomorrow’s Friday already,” she said, let ting the sentence dangle provocatively.

  “You want to do something?”

  “Is that an off er?”

  “Dinner, a movie?” he said.

  “I accept,” she chirped.

  By the time he hung up the phone, Joe had forgotten all about demon calling, and went to the kitchen. After a quick survey of the anemic contents of his refrigerator, he pulled out a paper and pen and started a shopping list.

  It was going to be a long one.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ken’s unconscious form sped through the black veins beneath Terrel’s Peak without protest. His lungs filled with water as his body temperature dropped at a rate that would have alarmed the paramedics from Folter’s Ambulance service, had they been present to measure it.

  But they weren’t.

  The water swept Ken along like a fallen leaf down its well-worn path, a watery road that led to the warm and salty womb of the ocean.

  But the ocean wasn’t to be his final destination.

  “This will do nicely,” a voice offhandedly announced inside the empty, uncomprehending confines of Ken’s brain. In a slow but deliberate motion, one of the spelunker’s arms lifted and then slapped its weight against the water. The other joined it, and presently, in a strange, spasmodic motion, Ken’s body propelled itself to the invisible shore, a zombie swimmer of the underground.

  His face scraped up against the rocky edge of the riverbed, and both arms slapped upward to grasp at the shore, but not before the current had dragged him face-first into a rocky projection. The collision of flesh with limestone was audible throughout the chamber, but it didn’t bother the body’s animator.

  “Good as any other anchor,” the disembodied voice observed.

  Ken’s arms slid across the gray rock to wrap around the L-shaped overhang at the banks of the river. At the same time, Ken’s right knee bent, and with an uncoordinated thrust, his right leg threw itself up onto the bank, out of the water. With a final push against the stone, Ken rolled away from the water, finally moving his entire body out of the cold river. He came to rest on his side, still unconscious and now bleeding from half a dozen gashes, one of which sliced his cheek from eye to chin. He was going to have a hell of a headache when he woke up.

  If he woke up.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Joe had never been much of a cook. But there was good reason to have Cindy at his apartment for dinner rather than taking her out to a local restaurant.

  People would talk.

  Most particularly, people would talk about that big-city newspaper fellow getting his dirty fingers wet in the pan ties of a young girl.

  Wasn’t proper. Wasn’t seemly.

  Wasn’t what Joe—or Cindy—wanted at the moment. There might be talk if they turned up at a club together, but mostly, the kids drinking and listening there couldn’t care less if a twentysomething guy turned up with a younger girl. The local eatery waitresses and patrons, however, were a different story.

  Hence Joe’s current dilemma.

  The aisles of Carter’s Grocery had never seemed so foreign, so full of possible pitfalls as tonight. He’d thrown a head of green lettuce into the cart (seemed crisp, but not too hard) followed by a couple tomatoes (hothouse pale, probably tasteless, but what’re you going to do?), a green pepper, a cucumber and a bag of green onions. He then pulled the onions out and tossed them back on the now-misting shelf. Didn’t want to chew up a bad breath salad now, did they?

  He walked two steps and then backpedaled.

  What was a salad without green onions? Every restaurant he’d ever eaten in put onions in their salads.

  He picked up the now-sodden bag of onions and tossed them back to the bottom of the cart.

  Then came the salad dressing. He didn’t trust the bottle of Italian he vaguely remembered being half full on his fridge door, so he grabbed a new bottle. Then he considered the fact that she might not like Italian.

  He hadn’t asked Cindy about dressings when he’d made sure that salad and steak for dinner were acceptable. So he grabbed French, Thousand Island and a bottle of Bleu Cheese for good measure. They clinked together merrily, toasting the coming evening, in the growing pile at the bottom of his cart.

  The steak, he thought he knew how to choose. He only prayed he wouldn’t burn it to a crisp when he slapped it on the grill. He really was hit and miss with his meat preparation, but when it was only yourself that you were feeding, the occasional tough brown shoe for dinner wasn’t a problem.

  Tonight he couldn’t afford to serve shoe leather.

  He pawed through half a dozen cuts, looking for one with a minimum of fat but still laced with enough white to sizzle up good.

  When he’d finally grabbed one, picked up some fresh sour cream for the potatoes and pushed his cart to the checkout, there was (naturally) a line that was six carts long.

  Fabulous. />
  He scanned the tabloid headlines as he waited, amused with their obvious chicanery. Sometimes they annoyed him; their tall tales and outright lies gave his whole profession a bad name. But mostly, he was amused. People really would believe whatever they chose to, he thought. It all just had to do with what source they chose to sip from. Did the font espouse ascensions and virgin births and resurrections? Future messiahs, past lives, eons of karma? Palm reading, séances and tarot? Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster or UFOs? A living Elvis? Poltergeists? A cliff inhabited by a malevolent spirit?

  But the last wild story, Joe was beginning to believe himself. It was, quite possibly, the only bit of otherworldly nonsense that he’d ever come close to swallowing as truth. And apparently, bizarre as it appeared, it had never made headlines, locally or otherwise.

  That, in itself, somehow lent it more credence.

  Shaking his head away from headlines of spirits and two—headed babies, he scanned the women’s magazines. What Men Won’t Tell You! screamed one two-inch tall headline. Wow Him Back To Bed teased another. Fifty-six Tips for Better Sex: the Results of Our Reader’s Poll bragged still another. Joe smiled. If you couldn’t hook ’em with magic and religion, snare ’em with sex. He’d glanced through some of the articles on tips and sex secrets in the women’s magazines and couldn’t believe that anyone would come back more than once to seek sensual wisdom from those sources. He’d had deeper thoughts about sexual experience when he was fifteen years old and looking at bra ads in the Sears catalogue than the adult scribes at Cosmo and Woman’s Day offered.

  At last, he approached the black treadmill of the checkout counter. Joe grabbed a plastic grocery divider, placed it on the belt ahead of his items and shook his head when he noticed a Kool cigarette ad plastered to it. Is there no place safe from advertising? he thought. I mean, seriously, a grocery divider? After separating his groceries from those of the dumpy forty-ish woman ahead of him, he began loading his fourteen items onto the conveyer. He noted with annoyance that the woman ahead of him had brought twenty-three items into the fifteen-items-or-less aisle.

  Not only did people read stupid, obviously shallow or false newspapers and magazines, but they didn’t read and follow signs, he thought. You see only what you want to see. He sighed. Mentally he added up his items once more and nodded with satisfaction.

  Fourteen.

  Joe squirted lighter fluid onto the charcoal and dropped a match. The flame sprang up hungrily, and he went back to the apartment as it fed on itself. Armed with a butcher knife and a wide, deep wooden bowl, he diced and sliced a salad, which he tossed into the fridge, and set the steaks on a platter. Then, cold Miller Genuine Draft in hand, he retreated to the couch to wait for the knock of his young date. He could hear the prying voice of his mother now: Yes, Joe, she seems very nice. But she’s just a kid. What do her folks think? Shouldn’t you try to date someone a little closer to your own age? What do you have to talk about? What do you have in common?

  She’d smile that slightly crinkled, all-knowing smirk of hers, and he’d wither an inch or two before crawling off to his bedroom to feel stupid and guilty in the comfort of loneliness.

  “Not this time, Ma,” he said out loud.

  The room didn’t answer. Not that he’d expected it to.

  Had he?

  But he felt funny having spoken out loud to the dead. He got up and went outside to check the grill. A cool breeze was blowing in, and the sun was a bloody blur on the horizon. It was going to be a chilly night.

  The coals were well-seasoned; white on the outside with fiery pits of orange in between, when Cindy arrived at the door. She held out a bottle of red wine, which he accepted along with her hand and a quick peck on the lips before she stepped inside.

  “Do I want to know where an underage girl like you got that bottle?” he asked.

  She winked, and shook her head.

  “You look great,” he said, noting that her dandelion yellow stretch-cotton top clung closely to her chest and midriff and her blue jeans revealed rather than concealed just about every conceivable curve of flesh below that. Her lips glowed with life; her eyes sparkled, even in the dim light of his living room.

  “Thanks,” she said, blushing just a little. “I like this outfit. It’s comfortable, and I know some guys seem to enjoy it.”

  With that, she winked again and stepped past him.

  “I’d be careful about what guys you wear it around,” he countered, and joined her on the couch.

  “Are you dangerous?” she asked, eyes wide with feigned innocence.

  “Maybe. Hope you’re hungry,” he said, sidestepping her jibe.

  “Hope you can cook!”

  “That remains to be seen.” He laughed. “That’s why I hope you’re hungry. That way, if this doesn’t work out, you’ll eat it anyway!”

  “You hope.”

  Joe picked up the TV remote and tossed it to the couch. “Well, if you want food, I’m going to need to get these things on the grill. How do you like your meat?”

  “Throbbing?” Her face remained inscrutably blank. But after a second, she couldn’t hold back a giggle.

  “I can offer you a fine cut that throbs later,” Joe said, not missing a beat. “But the steaks are quite dead, I assure you. No movement, or throbs, at all. How’s medium rare?”

  “Long as it’s not bloody,” she said.

  “Done.”

  He took the platter and a long fork to the patio and laid the steaks with a sizzle on the grill. As he looked through the grating to judge the intensity of the fires below, a hand slipped around his middle. He saw the delicate tanned fingers creep like a spider across his belt line, descending with a slow but obvious intent.

  She’s just a kid, a voice inside screamed.

  Doesn’t act like one, his conscious mind retorted.

  “So, have ya missed me?” she said, interrupting his private argument.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, and, ignoring her attentions, flipped the bubbling meat with a fork.

  “You?”

  “Nope, haven’t missed me at all,” she said.

  When he turned around, she was smiling. “I don’t have to go home tonight,” she announced.

  “Won’t your parents worry?”

  “They think I’m off with a friend from school. I said I probably wouldn’t come back tonight.”

  Joe’s groin jumped at that thought. The night they’d spent a couple of hours in the backseat of his car had been heaven. But it wouldn’t compare to the luxury of a bed. And that was obviously a luxury she intended to make use of tonight.

  He sure hoped he didn’t burn dinner.

  He didn’t.

  Joe set the small kitchen table with two plates and bowls, put the salad in the center and set out all of the dressings he’d bought. A tried and trusty corkscrew relieved the wine of its cork, and he filled two long-stemmed glasses with its tart, dark vintage. Then he retrieved the steaks from the grill, which, even though it was outside, had filled the house with the mouthwatering scent of charring beef. His stomach growled and Cindy laughed.

  “You keeping a wild animal in there?”

  “You just never know,” he said.

  He set the meat on the table using the only china he had; luckily he wasn’t hosting a dinner party, since the blue flowered set had only three remaining plates (the claim of unbreakable had been suitably disputed, he thought).

  She cut her steak as delicately as a princess, he thought, watching her wooden-handled steak knife slice slowly, gently, firmly through the juicy slab of beef on her plate. She looked up at him with a small smile—a look of thanks and acknowledgement and hunger, all in one small glance. Hers was a face of expression, a mouth that pursed one way to show laughter, the other to spit derision. One wrinkle on her forehead could mean a chapter, and Joe was starting to hope that he was allowed to read the whole book.

  “Steak sauce, ketchup?” he asked.

  “If it’s any good, it doesn’t need dress
ing up,” she said, and with exaggerated temerity, brought a fork of steaming pink meat to her mouth.

  She chewed a moment, as Joe watched. His eyes waited for the slightest hint of dissatisfaction.

  “Well?” he asked after she’d swallowed a piece.

  “You can cook for me anytime.” Her teeth shone white as she popped another forkful between them.

  He laughed.

  What the hell was he getting into?

  Bed, as it turned out.

  Dinner led to collapse on the couch, and more wine.

  They talked some, her about college and roommates and growing up in backwoods Terrel; he about college and roommates and living in a big city. The TV buzzed through old episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Star Trek, and they scanned past VH-1 and MTV. Finally they settled on a Discovery Channel program about disappearing breeds of penguins and long-armed monkeys. Cindy’s head moved from upright, to leaning against his shoulder, to lying in his lap.

  He worried with the latter position that she could feel what was going on in his pants as he looked down on her sweet, slightly flushed face. He longed to bend over and take her tongue into his mouth. He wanted to scoop her snuggling body up in his arms and carry her back to his bedroom. But she was, in his eyes, still a minor. And despite their activities in his car and on the cliff, he felt funny doing anything that might be construed as “forcing” himself on her. Flirtations aside, if she wanted to go to bed with him, she would have to make the first move.

  Ultimately, she made the first, second and third moves.

  “I really like you, Joe,” Cindy said out of nowhere. She rose from Joe’s lap to kiss his lips.

  “I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had you these past few weeks. I mean, when you first saw me, I was so broken up about…you know. And it still hurts—it does. My family’s been great, but they can’t fill that place, you know? Having you here, though, well, I don’t feel so empty inside.”