I shoved the card in my wallet and walked by the demon as it lay drooling on the floor, the television off for once. I stood there in disbelief. How come Petty couldn’t see it? How the hell was that possible?
I whipped out my phone and took five pictures of the thing snoring in the loveseat. Going into the gallery and swiping through the pics one by one made me feel nauseous with every flick.
Every single picture I took was of someone else lazying about: a slender man in a suit with a red beard, a round faced portly postman, an older Mexican lady with gray hair. I instantly remembered my internet fame and how quickly both the creature and my face was scrubbed. What kind of power did it really have?
Suddenly, the television turned on scaring me half to death. The demon stirred and groggily turned towards the screen. That familiar music from that kid’s pirate show started to play.
“Captain Cross,
Whisk us away on advent-uuure.
Captain Cross,
The sea winds are a-blowing,
Fore the mast,
And change ye sails.
Oh, Captain. My Captain.
Land ho! Land ho!”
Captain Cross still seemed in a bad mood this episode. He kept getting upset every time some kid cut him off and was especially hard on Caitlyn with a Y and her choice to wear two different colors to band up her ponytails.
“There was a place called Sodom and Gomorrah…” Cross started to say.
The demon sat and watched this, and for some reason, so did I. It was a pretty awful show and should have been cancelled already, if it wasn’t on the chopping block already. But I immediately felt drawn to it, like the scene of an epic car crash.
In my hand, I kept flicking through the pictures. A female lumberjack. An Amish guy with a du-rag. What the hell was going on?
Fortunately, I knew only one person who had the answers. Unfortunately, the guy was a complete dick.
So I went with my second option to try to help me out.
CHAPTER 12
As soon as I got to Donaldson’s door, I immediately sensed something was wrong. His door was partially open, and through the crack I could see what appeared to be grocery bags thrown on the ground, scattering most of the food all over the floor. This put me on high alert. What made me kick down the door and enter the apartment was the cell phone smashed on the ground, shattered glass scattered all around.
Okay, I’m also kind of a creep. I wanted to see into this guy’s apartment. But everything had set me on edge and I would be damned if I was going to let someone back into my house without knowing where and how he lived. And yeah, a demon could have been hawking him up as a hairball while I stood in his hallway. I had every right to barge in.
Donaldson’s apartment was the same layout as my parents’ home, minus the furniture. In fact, it didn’t have one piece of furniture to speak of. I couldn’t see into the back room and the bathroom, those doors being firmly closed, but the living room had nothing other than room to live in. No loveseat, no couch. No TV or radio. There were three dirty plates in the sink, one used pot on the stove, and nothing else but large canvas bags pushed against the walls. Donaldson had a job working as a manager at Book & Ende, the largest bookstore chain in New York. However, that didn’t explain why he had been living several floors above me for almost an entire month, but his apartment looked like he hadn’t moved in at all.
Below the door in the back, a shadow glided one way and then the next.
A hand fell on my shoulder.
Swinging blindly, I threw a right hand which landed like a gong against the space between Donaldson’s jaw and his ear. He stumbled backward, trying his best to stay on his feet. It was an awkward hit, but one that I could tell made him see stars.
“Ow!”
“Don’t sneak up on me!”
Donaldson flexed his chin and checked that his earlobe was in one piece. “Says the person breaking and entering.”
“Entering but not breaking. The only thing I almost ended up breaking was your pride.” I gestured with my chin. “What’s in the other room?”
He looked at me reluctantly at first. He stood there, and I quickly saw myself getting my ass unceremoniously kicked out of this man’s apartment. But instead of getting angry, Donaldson turned the doorknob to the back room and pushed the door open so that I could see.
The room looked far more lived in than the rest of the apartment. There was one unmade bed there, a set of small speakers, a dresser by the back window, and a laundry basket overflowing with dirty clothes. The wispy drapes were wafting in the wind blowing in from the window.
“Do I pass your inspection? And want to give me a better reason as to why you’re here again?”
“I saw your bags, um, on the floor. And your phone …”
Donaldson cursed and picked it up. “Yeah. Had my hands full bringing this stuff in from work.” He paused. “Was in a hurry when I got in.” He paused a second time. “Had to pee.”
“Oh. I need …” I started shaking, my internal dial slipping from fight to flight. “I just needed … you to come downstairs. For a second. No big deal. I … have to go,” I said and dashed for the door. I felt like an absolute jerk and wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I hadn’t had someone decent to talk to in so long that I forgot that there are right and wrong ways to have people hate you. Petty had put me on edge, too, and look how that blew up in my face. I considered myself one huge fuck up that needed a proper place to sulk in.
Donaldson cut me off at the door and pushed it closed with his hand. Then he walked toward me. Slowly.
Seeing this put me in defensive mode again. Why didn’t he let me leave? What was that expression on his face? What was he going to do?
Instead he went and pulled a bag of frozen peas from his freezer and stuck them to the side of his head.
“Okay. Now I’m ready to go.”
Frustrated, I had to ask, “Why are you so nice to me?”
Donaldson shrugged. “You didn’t know? I’m part angel, Grey.”
I nearly choked yelling, “You are?”
But by the crooked look he shot me, I knew that I had definitely screwed the pooch.
“We should go,” I said, changing the subject.
“Yes please,” Donaldson groaned. “Before my peas start defrosting.”
Three minutes later and I found myself in an astonishingly ridiculous position of watching television with Donaldson on my right and the demon on my left.
“Coming next month to the BCA, it’s The Stud. Watch as our handsome, self-made millionaire, Darius, CEO and founder of Soap for the Homeless, and avid buck hunting enthusiast, looks for love among twenty technically desperate women. Watch as he narrows down his search to the final few. And with five ladies left, Darius is going to have to make some hard decisions.
“Darius: ‘I don’t want to hurt any of the ladies’ feelings. But also, I don’t want to hurt my feelings.’
And what happens next is so … un-believe-able.
Random woman: “What is mononucleosis?”
The Stud. Only on Channel 6 BCA.
I turned away from the screen to watch Donaldson’s face. From the moment he spotted the demon on the couch, he never averted his eyes. His eyes went from confusion to immediate shock.
“Holy shit!” He rubbed the back of his bald head.
“Yeah?”
“You got a roommate?”
I groaned. “Oh my god, Donaldson. You are a big, steaming pile of not helpful.”
Looking at me, confused, he stood up, and leaned toward the black Shade on the edge of my couch.
The demon, noticing his proximity, sat up and narrowed its yellow eyes. Donaldson reached out his hand as if to touch him and suddenly the demon’s skin grew darker, rigid, as if growing scales. It climbed onto all f
ours on the seat and, setting its ass into the air like a giant cat, a ripple formed around the demon’s head and it hissed, quickly flashing all ten thousand of its teeth. Purple smoke poured out of its throat and its yellow eyes burned so hot that there seemed to be small embers in them.
As I was about to tackle him to the ground, Donaldson poked out his hand for a friendly handshake while yelling, “Hola! Me llamo Jeffrey!”
I grabbed him by the shirt and luckily, the demon dropped back down in its seat.
“Are you out of my mind?”
“What? Did I not conjugate the right word? Shit, is it ‘Tu me llamo’? No, wait …”
“Focus, Donaldson! You’re going to explain to me, in detail, what you see on that couch.”
“On the couch?” Donaldson looked back and pointed, but never got to answer.
“Boowww!”
The sound scared both of us half to death. The demon had screamed, bellowed really, and it sounded like a fog horn. It was so loud that Donaldson and I quickly covered our ears as my windows shook and threatened to burst.
Growling in frustration, the demon slammed the controller so hard that it bounced across the living room, inadvertently setting the television on mute. Grumbling, it stomped its way back to its room but not before shooting Donaldson a look. I couldn’t tell what was behind it, where it was coming from: anger, joy, fear. All I knew was that Donaldson himself didn’t seize up or grow scared; he stared right back into those big, yellow eyes. When it slammed the door behind itself, he casually said, “That was weird.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I was too busy seeing what had cut into the demon’s show. It was a flashing a banner that said: “Breaking News: Bodies Found in the Hudson”. My body glided around by itself. I couldn’t feel myself floating to the loveseat and sitting down. I couldn’t feel where Donaldson had gone. I only knew that the silent image on the screen would forever be burned into my eyes. That my life was officially crashing down around me and no amount of shutting-in would save me.
The newscast had blurred out the lady’s face they had dragged from the Hudson, so I wasn’t sure how old she was. But it was still easy to see that her blonde hair was sopping wet and that her skin was a dull, sickly color. And on that skin, carved into her forehead with what I could only imagine was something crude, were four letters that made me rush to the bathroom, climb into my bathtub, and close my eyes before the panic attack took away my ability to move.
Grey.
She had my name carved into her forehead.
CHAPTER 13
Donaldson kept knocking on the door as I pushed farther back into the tub and drew the curtain. While I understood why he was upset―when the person you’re standing next to goes white as a sheet and then locks herself in the bathroom, it should be cause for alarm―I didn’t understand why he cared so much.
The tub was cool but I still felt like the air hanging around my shoulders was trying to strangle me. It was like Gaffrey Palls was haunting me, like he was continuing to squeeze the life out of me. With the blood in my veins still burning hot, I ran the cold water, clothes and all. The cold shock cut into my skin, but this calmed me, allowed me space to leave my body for a bit.
I’m not sure how long I was in there, floating in that emptiness between my ears, but by the time I came out, Donaldson had left and the demon was collapsed on my couch again.
I ran up the stairs, two by two, and banged on Barnem’s door. It only took a few seconds for him to open up. I expected his usual drollness, some kind of pushback for me even being there. But he took one look at my face and said, “I saw. It’s all over the news.” He opened his door and let me in.
Knowing how much Barnem cares about things―as in how very little he cares about a damn thing―gave me an idea as to how the guy lived his life. So walking into his apartment, I mentally prepared myself for the worst. A television on a milk crate. A castle made out of beer cans ruling over a corner in the living room that was growing a thick mold that I hoped was kicking in for part of the rent. An empty plastic milk gallon sitting by a crate for when he had to piss and didn’t want to go all the way to the bathroom.
None of these things were there.
Instead, the Seraph’s place had more going for it than mine. Newish furniture, stainless steel fridge and stove, a mounted 50” flatscreen TV, a dishwasher humming in the background. He even had a coat rack with a nice hickory finish holding up the dingy overcoat he always wore.
“Where did you get all of this?”
Barnem must have gotten so lost in thought that he forgot I was there because he jumped nearly six feet in the air. “Christ almighty!”
“Is that an exclamation or a job reference?”
Gathering himself, the Seraph stared at me and got a beer for himself. “You know those spaces people rent to store things? The ones that you can go to an auction when folks can’t pay up?”
I looked around. “You won all of this stuff at auctions?”
Barnem cracked the can open and took a large gulp. “Hell no. I stole all of this. I brought it up because a show like that is coming on soon and I want to watch it, so let’s talk, Grey. Let’s talk about this … carver.”
I froze. “You don’t want to talk about my roommate?”
Barnem burped. “Trust me. It’s the same thing.”
A lump grew in my throat.
On his marble countertop, he pushed over a thin laptop, which was already on the news site that broke the story.
“Hilary Clamp. Know her? Heard of her?”
“No,” I said, skimming through the article. “Wait. She wasn’t the only one they dragged out of the river?”
“One more. A Harry Somethingorother. It’s all in there. Real grisly stuff. All of them burned pretty bad. Disfigured, the works.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. These people had died, had been murdered―
“And each and every one of ’em got your name carved into their foreheads,” Barnem said, cutting into my thoughts.
“You have to tell me, Barnem. I need to know what’s going on. What the fuck did I do when I killed Gaffrey Palls and let these things out?”
Barnem swirled his beer, downed most of it, and threw himself into his plush leather couch. “Know the Bible, Grey? Ever read it?”
“Which one?”
“Doesn’t matter. Same principle for most. What would you say the Bible’s about?”
I threw my hands up. “How about the Sparknotes here, Barnem? Life or death.”
“All right. Here’s my brief synop. I like to think that the book is only about a beginning and an end, with the stuff in the middle being dressing, filler linking both points of the timeline. If someone ever asked me for a five word summary of the Bible, it would be ‘Something happened. Something will happen’. To beings like me, and even to your roommate downstairs, we consider the Bible a sort of How-To pamphlet, an official Employee Manual, if you will. It lays out our roles, explains the Do’s and Dont’s, and it’s all to one end. It may seem like shit, but the moment you or me or anyone comes into existence, our main purpose is to bring this world one step closer to its destruction. I’m not here to spread love, or enforce peace, or … play the harp. Like any major company, our sights are set on outcomes at the end of the fiscal year.” He drew the can to his lips. “Except, of course, that the end of the fiscal year revolves around the severing of your timeline and the complete and total annihilation of life and death.”
“So these demons,” I began, “they’re here, in New York, why? You’re telling me because humanity was at the end of its run already?”
“Damn near knocking on it, Grey. Damn near opening the lid to the rapture and wrath. I told you. What Palls had in him, what he was carrying, was a defiler of men’s souls. The Beast eats away at anything it touches, anything it takes over. The Shades corrupt humani
ty. They bring out the worst in your race and can raise some serious hell while doing so. But when they merge into one host, like they did in your friend Palls—”
“Not my friend.”
“I get that, Grey. No need for the claws. Look, my job was to slay the Beast when it was fully formed, and after thousands of lifetimes, I almost did. Almost.” Finding his can empty, Barnem grabbed another beer and still didn’t offer. “I’ve seen a human host take four Shades before melting. Shit, Hitler had five living in his skin and look at what happened to him.”
“Hitler? He committed suicide.”
Barnem scoffed. “What? No! Adolf got out of Germany at the tail-end of the war. Moved to a small farm in the French countryside, changed his named, and even shaved that stupid little mustache of his. Grew muttonchops instead, but he didn’t have the head shape for it. Managed to settle down. Died at the ripe old age of ninety-two. Shame, too. Three days before his youngest daughter’s wedding, he stepped on a nail and contracted tetanus.” Barnem shook his head and then peeked over at me. “He went to hell, Grey. Same place you’re going.”
“Oh, thanks,” I muttered, throwing my head in my hands. “Clever celebrity endorsement you did there. Who’s your marketing firm?”
I sighed and stared at the picture of the woman I didn’t even know but who died because of me. “So I’m going to hell. This woman, Hilary Clamp. Is she going as well?”
Barnem shrugged. “But there will be more. She’s not the first and not the last.”
I grew nervous. In my mind, there was only one true sick, evil dick capable of this. I had to ask, “What if Palls didn’t die? What if he’s the carver?”
Barnem didn’t even hesitate and said with conviction, “No, Palls is gone. But we have another problem. Another Shade has found a host.”
“Oh great.”
He flicked over to another open tab on the laptop and tapped on the screen. “Been seeing this guy on the television more and more.”
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