Devil's Nightmare: Premonitions (Devil's Nightmare, Book 2)

by Robert Pruneda

  “Is he breathing?” the dispatcher asked over the speakerphone.

  “No, he’s not breathing,” Maria said. “Aaron is giving him CPR.”

  “Okay, good. Stay on the line with me until the ambulance gets there. It’s already on its way and should be there in less than ten minutes.”

  Maria held the phone in one hand and pressed the other against her chest while Aaron attempted to revive their son.

  Cody coughed.

  “Oh, thank God! He’s coughing.”

  Aaron lifted Cody and pulled him close. He continued coughing and wheezing as his savior held him in his arms.

  “Wonderful!” the dispatcher said. “The ambulance is almost there.”

  “I can hear it.”

  “Good. Do you need me to stay on the line?”

  “No, thank you so much.” Maria ended the call and dropped the phone. She knelt next to Aaron and kissed Cody on the forehead, crying tears of joy. “What were you thinking?” she said, holding his head in her shaking hands. “We love you so much, Cody.” She kissed him again.

  He coughed a couple of more times and pulled away from Aaron’s embrace. He sat in the grass in a state of dejection and lowered his head. He took in a deep breath, coughing several times afterwards. “Why couldn’t you just let me die?”

  “Don’t say that, Cody.” Anguish flooded Aaron’s face. “I would die before letting anything happen to you.”

  Sirens wailed from the highway. Flashing emergency lights appeared over the tree line. They grew brighter, the siren louder with every passing second. The sirens finally stopped when an ambulance and police car pulled onto the long gravel driveway.

  “I just wanted to go home,” said Cody, his eyes focused on the approaching ambulance. He met Aaron’s gaze with moist eyes. “I just wanted to end this nightmare. This curse.”

  “It is over.” Aaron put his hand on Cody’s shoulder and reassured him, “You don’t have to worry about that chimera hurting anyone. We broke the curse. I saw it with my own eyes. It’s gone.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m not talking about the chimera.” He closed his eyes and coughed a few times. “It’s something worse,” he said through choked sobs. “A lot worse.”

  †

  Cody spent two hours in the emergency room receiving an oxygen treatment to counteract the effects of the carbon monoxide poisoning. His doctor admitted him for observation as a precaution. Cody shared a room in the pediatric wing of Lost Maples Medical Center with a nine-year-old boy who had broken his leg after falling out of a treehouse. Despite the cuts, bruises, and broken leg, Anthony was full of energy, and talked almost non-stop. Cody drifted off to sleep while his roommate told a long-winded story about how he and his father had built the treehouse together on his birthday last summer.

  Images of playing checkers with Anthony in his treehouse, and then falling endlessly towards the ground below, turned into a collage of flashbacks from Saint Hedwig. Cody relived incidents where Joseph Michaels and the other boys had bullied him there. His mind played back a bloody reel of the chimera mutilating a deputy outside the building. He watched a satanic priest slice Mr. Hadley’s neck with a dagger, then drink his blood as part of a sacrificial ritual. Cody lay motionless on the altar. Then the building erupted in flames.

  Cody stood outside the charred ruins of Saint Hedwig Youth Home. He entered the basement, following the voices of several children calling out his name. He made his way down to a hidden chamber where he found two decomposing bodies, their chests ripped open and crawling with maggots eating the dead flesh. Their blood stained the floor and bookshelves that lined the walls, and the scent of death filled the air.

  It was the pentacle on the floor that held his attention. As he stepped toward the middle of the candlelit room, the door slammed shut behind him. Whispers of children, some of them laughing, surrounded him. He heard them running all around him for several seconds until they stopped all at once.

  “Over here!” a lone voice of a child called out in an echoed whisper. Cody followed the voice to the back corner near a row of dusty bookcases. “In here!” The voice sounded as if it were coming from behind the shelves.

  Cody ran his fingers over the old books and found the 666 Rites of Demon Summoning written in plain English. He pulled on the book and heard a metal click. The bookshelf opened inward with an eerie creak, revealing an empty room. No furniture. No bookcases. Nothing. Through the flickering light, he saw movement. The room wasn’t completely empty after all. Several hairy Mexican red-knee tarantulas crawled on the walls. Hissing cockroaches scurried across the floor. A single giant centipede, almost a foot in length, moved across the floor like a serpent, away from Cody.

  “Do not be afraid,” a gentle female voice said. “Come. Join us.”

  Cody hesitated, but he entered the arachnid and bug-infested room, his eyes sweeping from side to side. The door shut behind him, enveloping him in complete darkness. The sounds of cockroaches bustling on the stone floor gave him chills, but nowhere near as much as the thing that suddenly ran up his arm.

  “Agh!” he blurted out, as he swatted whatever it was away.

  Candles lit the room, but it wasn’t the same room he had just entered. It was a cellar, one he immediately recognized. While he took in the environment, a black tarantula crawled up his back and onto his shoulder, inching towards his neck. Cody let out a high-pitched scream as the hairy legs made contact with his skin. He brushed the large spider away and shivered as he watched it scurry across a pentacle and towards an altar in the middle of the room. Several tapestries with markings commemorating various demons covered the walls. There were also six rows of six metal chairs each, lined up in front of the pentacle and altar.

  People materialized like ghosts, chanting as they sat in the chairs one by one. Cody recognized two of the specters. Joseph Michaels and Jackson Smith closed their eyes while they chanted in a strange language. “Hello, Cody,” a male voice said behind him. A voice he recognized.

  He turned around and gasped. Robert Smith stood before him in solid human form, his head lowered. He wore a black tunic and carried the same dagger that the priest had tried to sacrifice Cody with at Saint Hedwig. Robert lifted his head and opened eyes that were completely black. He smiled. “Surprised to see me?”

  Cody screamed and searched for a way out of the room, but could not find an escape. He looked for the staircase that led up to the surface, but all he could find were four solid stone walls.

  “There’s nothing to fear, Cody,” Robert said, and laughed. “This knife isn’t for you. Besides, Aaron and those two FBI pigs already defeated that pesky chimera. However, I think it’s time for you to finally make things right. You need to recompense for past sins.” He stepped towards Cody and ran two fingers over the edge of the blade, drawing blood. “We still must offer blood sacrifices in order to satisfy our master. But not your blood, Cody, but the blood of those who have harmed you.”

  He set the knife on the altar and licked the dark red blood from his fingers as more spirits materialized in the chairs. They continued to chant while Robert Smith spoke. “Remember when Tony stopped abusing you and your mother?” Cody didn’t answer, but his jaw tightened. “Of course you do. He was the reason why you made the wise choice to trust me and conform to the ways of Satan. To become his child.”

  “Lies! They were all lies!” Cody yelled. “It was wrong. You never cared about me. You ruined my life!”

  Robert laughed. “On the contrary, I saved it. Our master rewarded you for your allegiance. He gave you the protection that you desired. And now you don’t have to worry about Tony Scoletti hitting you ever again… or that bitch who let him do it.”

  “My mother never did anything to hurt me. She loved me, and now she’s dead because of you!”

  Robert shook his head. “You know that’s not true. She wasn’t your biological mother, Cody. She adopted you when you were only an infant. That bitch was as guilty as your stepfather for
allowing him to abuse you. For that, she was guilty. Their deaths were your reward for bathing yourself in the swine’s blood and offering your soul to Satan. And I promise you, Cody, it’s not too late to come back and claim your eternal reward. You can finally have peace. Real peace. You can have your curse truly lifted simply by doing what our master asks of you.”

  “I don’t believe you. Everything you ever taught me was a lie. I just want to go back to living a normal life. I just want the nightmares to stop. And I’d rather die than join you and your Satanist freaks.”

  “You asked for my help and I gave it to you.” Robert’s voice was compassionate. “I loved you like my own children.”

  “Yeah, and you killed them. You’re evil! How could you kill your own wife and kids? I was so stupid for believing anything you ever told me. I never should have taken that book from you. My friends and family would still be alive.”

  “The chimera killed them because it was what you truly wanted in your heart. It simply complied.”

  “You’re a liar! I never wanted that. And that thing could come back and kill me, for all I care. Better than living like this.”

  Robert held his pale hands in front of his chest with the tips of his fingers touching each other. “The chimera’s existence in your life was due to your own foolishness. It was your punishment, but it’s gone now. However, your curse still remains. Removing the chimera from the equation doesn’t change a thing. You are the key. You always have been.” He held his hands behind him and stepped up to Cody. “But you can end this curse and redeem yourself if you complete one task. One simple task and the devil’s nightmare will drift away into a distant memory. This can all go away, and you can experience true peace in your life. Just one simple task is all that our master asks of you. Obey, and he will reward you with the desires of your heart and soul.”

  The room morphed into a living room Cody didn’t recognize, but framed photos of him and the woman claiming to be his mother hung on the walls. They were both smiling in the photos. A boy that looked just like him sat on the couch next to the woman. They were laughing and eating popcorn. She turned around and smiled at Cody before giving the boy sitting next to her a one-armed hug.

  “This isn’t real,” Cody said. “She’s not my mother. She can’t be.”

  “Oh, but she is. And you can be reunited with her, your flesh and blood, if you just do what the master asks of you. Just one simple task.”

  The woman and the boy that looked like Cody tossed popcorn up in the air. They chomped on them as the morsels dropped into their mouths, laughing and flinging popcorn at each other.

  Robert stepped behind Cody and placed his hand on the boy’s shoulders. He leaned over and spoke into his ear. “When is the last time you smiled and laughed like that? You’ve been miserable, and deserve some happiness in your life again.” He pointed to the woman on the couch. “She deserves to be reunited with her son. Make her happy, Cody.”

  The woman tickled the Cody lookalike. He laughed while kicking and flailing his arms, enjoying the playfulness from his mother.

  Cody inhaled and exhaled a deep sigh. “And what is this thing you keep talking about? This task.”

  Robert set his right hand on Cody’s head and closed his eyes. Cody’s eyes rolled back and his body trembled. “Do you see it? Do you see what you must do? Complete this task and you can have—”

  “No!” Cody grabbed Robert’s hand and shoved it away. “I can’t do that. I won’t do that!”

  Robert lowered his brow and curled the sides of his mouth downward. “Then the blood of those that perish is on your hands.” His voice was deep and demonic. The woman and child cried out in agony as the couch burst into flames, engulfing them with it. “You and those you love will suffer the consequences of your disobedience until Satan welcomes you into the fires of hell.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I am…Redemption

  Aaron sat alone on a wooden pew at the back of the hospital chapel, staring at the large cross hanging on the wall behind the altar. A woman and her young daughter entered the room and sat on the front row. She wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulder as they bowed their heads in prayer. Aaron watched them pray for several minutes before they, too, stared at the cross. The little girl sniffled. Why was she crying? Who was she crying for? Her father, lying in one of the hospital rooms, dying from a terminal illness? Or perhaps he was suffering from critical injuries sustained in a terrible accident. The little girl rested her head against her mother’s body. The mother ran her hands through the girl’s curly brown hair.

  Aaron sighed. He had almost lost Cody to an act of suicide early that morning, something that grew heavy on his heart. His mother had done the same thing when he was a child. He wanted to help Cody, but he didn’t know how. He had sudden, irrational feelings of remorse about adopting Cody, feelings that bothered him more than the suicide attempt itself. Was he trying to live a life that just wasn’t suited for him? He had lived the single life for so long, and hadn’t wanted to play the role of a father figure back then. But adopting Cody had seemed the right thing to do. The right thing to do? Aaron shook his head at the thought. What an ignorant reason to adopt a kid. But maybe that was it. Maybe he just felt sorry for him. Maybe—

  The chapel doors opened. It was Maria. She’d been the main reason for the adoption. She revolved her life around kids. She’d been the one to bring up the idea of adopting Cody in the first place. Being a father hadn’t been something Aaron had truly ever wanted. His previous marriage had ended for that very reason. He closed his eyes and struggled to force the negativity from his mind.

  He was married now. He had a family. One thing he and Maria had agreed on, without much debate, was the decision to leave Austin to start a new life in Lost Maples. It had sounded like a great idea at the time, the perfect life, living out in the country with a beautiful wife and two kids. Leaving the big city life for a life in Lost Maples was supposed to help change everything, help erase the nightmares. But that hadn’t changed anything. All it had done was change the scenery. Maybe it had been a mistake.

  Maria sat next to Aaron. “He’s awake now,” she whispered, and squeezed his hand. “Dr. Brown wants to meet with us.”

  “Who?”

  “The psychologist. We talked about this.”

  “I thought we agreed not to send Cody to a shrink.”

  “Well, he needs to talk to someone,” she said, while keeping her voice low. “He tried to kill himself.”

  “You don’t have to convince me that he needs help, but…” Aaron jerked his eyes away, heaved a sigh, and shifted his eyes back to Maria. “You know how I feel about shrinks.”

  “I know, honey,” she said, and pulled her hand away. “But what else are we supposed to do? We can’t handle this on our own.”

  Aaron hated the idea of using a child psychologist. They had never done him any good when he was a kid. When his parents died, his therapist had acted as if he had all the answers to deal with a grieving child. He’d even gone as far as trying to tell Aaron his true feelings. He had no idea. But that degree hanging on the shrink’s wall proved he was a smart guy, and, therefore, he had to have known what he was talking about, right? After all those case studies and psychology books he’d studied in college, he must have known what it was like for a ten-year-old boy to lose his father to murder and then his mother to suicide six months later.

  Aaron’s therapist had tried to treat him like any kid who had lost a loved one. No book assigned in college had adequate answers to treat a boy mourning his murdered father. No college course could prepare anyone with the tools needed to properly counsel him. What do you tell a kid after he’s found his mother overdosed on drugs, drowned in her own vomit, dead on Monday morning before dawn? She hadn’t made pancakes for him that morning. She hadn’t given him a warm hug and a kiss, the way she always had before sending him off to catch the school bus. And his father hadn’t taken him to his first football game to see th
e Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium. None of that had happened. Only screams, tears, loneliness, and nightmares. A cookie-cutter therapeutic remedy, taught in college textbooks and lectures, wasn’t going to fix any of that.

  His therapist had meant well, but it didn’t excuse his inability to figure out that Aaron hadn’t wanted anyone to fix him at all. He hadn’t been looking for anyone to make him feel better. He’d wanted his parents back. It had been that simple. And he’d wanted the bastard who’d murdered his father to fry in the electric chair in Huntsville. That was what had mattered. It was all he’d ever wanted. The Austin Police Department couldn’t give him that. The Travis County Sheriff’s Department couldn’t give him that. The Texas Rangers couldn’t give him that. And a child psychologist sure as hell wasn’t going to give him that in fifty-minute weekly sessions at a hundred fifty bucks per hour.

  What would Dr. Brown do to treat Cody, a kid who had witnessed a mythical and demonic beast rip his parents and friends apart? And what about that whole cult sacrificial thing? Chances were the shrink probably hadn’t taken any college courses to cover that subject. Aaron did agree that Cody needed to talk to someone. But it sure as hell wasn’t going to be a child psychologist. He was not about to let that guy plant any bullshit into Cody’s head, and then try to dictate his feelings.

  When he pulled the plug on the idea of hiring Dr. Brown, Maria gave him the angry glare that he’d expected to receive when he refused to conform to her wishes.

  “Would you step out into the hall with me?” It wasn’t a question. She was about to rake his ass through the coals, and he knew it. She didn’t even wait for Aaron to shut the door behind him. “What’s the problem with having at least one session with Dr. Brown? I want to know what he has to say.”

  “And what are we supposed to tell him? The truth?” Aaron raised eyebrows.

  “I don’t know, Aaron. We obviously can’t bring that up. But this is about Cody trying to kill himself today.”