Demonica

by Preston Norton

  I swept forward, lunging and spinning, slicing and hacking. The Demon Dagger was weightless in my grasp. I aimed for their rotten, disjointed necks each time. Heads hit the tarmac like melons. Fucking instinct. I felt like a ballet dancer. But, you know, bloodier and scary as hell. Another burst of flames swallowed the swarming creatures to the left. Their dead moans joined in unison, louder and more frantic.

  The fire receded. I took a quick glance at the nearest house to my right: 226. We were halfway there.

  In less than a minute, Zoey and I adopted a strategy. I cleared our forward path while Zoey stayed glued to my back, Mongolian-barbecued the undead coming in from the sides. The occasional fire-consumed zombie would wander frantically into my path, flailing and screeching. At which point I was all-too-glad to put the poor undead bastard out of his misery.

  Number 235 finally came into view—a simple white one-story with peeling paint and a less-than-maintained lawn. By this point, the zombies were far too preoccupied with the fiery mosh pit that ensued across Crestwood Drive. Zoey and I sprinted to the rickety front porch, scrambling through both the screen and front doors. We slammed the door behind us and fumbled with the lock, deadlock, and a hook lock at the very top.

  “Let’s not do that ever again,” said Zoey.

  I peeked through the door’s peep hole. The street was in such blazing fiery chaos, our escape had gone unnoticed.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. I blew a wisp of red hair out of my face. Turning back around, I slumped against the door.

  It wasn’t until now that I finally gave a hint of attention to the inside of Levi’s house. It had looked slightly neglected on the outside, but shit. That didn’t prepare me for what was on the inside.

  There was no furniture. No nothing. The carpet was bare without even the imprints of where furniture might have been in the past. I would have said that the place was completely empty, but that was hardly true for the walls. Not even close.

  Every inch of wall space was covered in tacked-up photographs. At least the front room was. As well as the initial hallway. And pretty much everything I could see of the spacious living room at the far end of the house. The only objects to break up this overwhelming trend were occasional mirrors on the walls. Some hanging crooked. None of them matching. They were like blisters amid a nightmarish montage.

  “Oh. My. God,” said Zoey.

  I stepped nervously into the front room, observing the closest photos. They were all of individual people. Men. Women. Old people. Young people. Little kids.

  I didn’t care if Levi was a photography nut. This was the sort of décor I expected in the home of a homicidal maniac.

  As I moved further into the room, I started seeing students at my school. Many I did not know well, but plenty who I did.

  Devon.

  Kelly.

  Eli.

  Casey.

  Zoey.

  “Fucking fuck,” said Zoey when she saw her pictures.

  I reached the adjacent wall, and things got much creepier. I spotted a picture of me. And another picture. And another. My gaze scanned seamlessly from one photograph to the next in speechless horror.

  The entire wall. It was only photographs of me.

  And not just pictures of me at school. They were also of me at the park. At the mall. Swimming.

  Asleep in my bedroom.

  Fucking fuck!

  I took trembling steps back. That’s when I realized these photographs weren’t arranged randomly. From a distance, the blurred conglomeration of the images formed a new image.

  The entire wall was a disturbingly lifelike collage of my face.

  “Monica, let’s get out of here,” said Zoey. “This is bad.”

  “No, Monica,” said a voice behind us, as familiar as it was frightening. “Let’s stay.”

  It was my voice.

  29

  The Remnants

  Zoey and I both whipped around to find an exact replica of me standing between us and the door. My usual friendly expression was gone, replaced by an eerie smile. My doppelganger’s eyes were fixed solely on me.

  “Don’t be scared, Monica,” she said. “You should never be afraid of yourself. I just want to have a little heart-to-heart.”

  “Who are you?” said Zoey. The fear was tangible in her tone.

  “Why I’m Monica,” she said, gesturing to herself. And then she paused, placing a thoughtful finger to her lip. “Well…sometimes.”

  His skin began to like liquid. Clothes and skin seemed to meld together in a blur, her frame growing. In seconds, her soft, slender features hardened into a chiseled male form. “Sometimes I’m Eli.”

  Another step forward. It was Kelly.

  Another step. It was an exact replica of Zoey. My best friend gasped beside me.

  “I’m really whoever I want to be,” said the Zoey imposter. “Whoever I need to be.”

  She grew even taller than Eli, now uniformed as a police officer, complete with a friendly mustache. I remembered him. It was Sheriff Patterson, the man who had questioned me after taking Casey to the hospital.

  “Believe me, it’s so much easier to cover the murders of seven hungry Demons when you have the law on your side.” His eyes glanced from me to the encompassing walls. “But judging from the photo fetish, you can probably guess who I am most of the time.”

  The figure took another step forward, growing thinner and lankier. Curly brown hair fell across a pair of glasses. It was Levi, minus the peppy cheerfulness. Behind his glasses, there was a seriousness that was genuinely disturbing.

  “What are you?” I asked, mustering every ounce of courage in my tone.

  “Ah,” Levi sighed, raising a finger. “That’s the question now, isn’t it? But I can imagine you probably already have a hunch on that too.”

  “A Demon,” I said. Almost on pure instinct, the Demon Dagger materialized in my grasp.

  “My true name is Leviathan,” said Levi. He hardly seemed fazed at the sight of the Demon Dagger. “I’m the variety of Demon your kind would refer to as a shape shifter. But like my brother, Belphegor, my views are not quite in line with the rest of our little Demonic family. You can kill me if you want. But you might want to hear what I have to say first.”

  Although my grip remained every bit as tight on the Demon Dagger, I lowered it nodded. “I’m listening.”

  Leviathan smiled and gestured us towards him with two fingers. “Come with me.” He started down the photo-laden hallway. Zoey and I exchanged skeptical glances before following.

  “There’s something you should know about me and my fellow Demons here in Villeneuve,” said Leviathan. “We’re not actually Demons.”

  “You’re not Demons?” I repeated incredulously.

  “At least not in the traditional sense.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “We’re more like fragments,” he said. “Fragments of an extremely powerful Demon but fragments nonetheless. We refer to ourselves as the Remnants.”

  There was something very peculiar in that wording. I knew it because I had heard it just last night.

  “Like your story last night,” I said, more as a realization to myself. “About Hexham Manor. You said that an exorcism and the witch’s spell collided, splitting the thing possessing her child into several coexistent fragments. Seven remnants. ”

  “Good memory,” said Leviathan. “Yes, minus a few slightly important details, that was a true story. That’s how my family and I came to be.”

  It was only then that a certain detail of Levi’s story merged to the forefront of my mind. Just the thought gave me chills.

  “You’re a fragment of the son of the Devil?”

  Leviathan smiled. “My fellow Demons and I have alternate identities that I think you will find very interesting.”

  I was
so absorbed in the conversation that I hardly realized it when we came to a halt in the living room. The living room was even bigger and just as plastered in photographs and mirrors. All except for one wall. This wall was even weirder.

  Seven Demon names had been burned into the wall. Together they formed a circle. Some I had already killed. Others I simply knew of. But now, not a single name was unfamiliar to me. The strangest detail, however, was a word that was scorched beneath each name. Starting at the top of the circle, the Demon names proceeded counter-clockwise:

  Amon / Wrath

  Asmodeus / Lust

  Beezlebub / Gluttony

  Belphegor / Sloth

  Leviathan / Envy

  Lucifer / Pride

  Mammon / Greed

  I obviously didn’t believe in God or the Bible or anything, but I wasn’t an idiot.

  “The Seven Deadly Sins,” I said.

  “What do those have to do with anything?” said Zoey.

  “Everything,” said Leviathan. “When we were born through the destruction of another Demon, it wasn’t randomly. We were divided into separate entities by our unique sinful natures. And with those natures came special abilities. For example, I, Leviathan, am also known as Envy. I am dissatisfied with being myself, so my unnatural Demon ability allows me to shape-shift. In essence, I become someone else. You might be intrigued to know that, at some point or another, I have impersonated almost every wretched human being in this town.

  “It is the same for Amon—Wrath—whose werewolf ability is triggered through his anger. Or Asmodeus, whose lust is satisfied through her existence as a succubus—a sex Demon. Beezlebub gluttons himself upon blood, and when he can’t, he feeds on anything else. Belphegor is slothful, so he raises the dead to do his bidding or creates new undead out of the living—which, ironically, are just as slothful as he is. Mammon is the Witch King and satisfies his greed through witchcraft as well as the craft of his witch followers. And lastly, Lucifer—our classmate, Lucy Hartley, if you care to know—is our self-appointed leader. She is the most powerful of us all.”

  “What’s her power?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Lucifer takes the form of a Fallen Angel,” said Leviathan. “Believe me. She’s scarier than anything you’ve seen so far. But nowhere will you ever find a breed of Demons like us because we are unnatural in every sense of the word. Even by Hell’s standards, we’re considered abominations.”

  “So you aren’t real Demons,” I said. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  “If we aren’t real Demons, it’s interesting to see how compatible you are with our abilities. I spied on your fight with Asmodeus and Beezlebub, and I have to say, the way that you’ve seamlessly transitioned Amon’s power into your own is…fascinating.”

  “Yeah, but…that’s what Demon Slayers do,” I said. As Leviathan’s smile grew wider, I asked, “Isn’t it?”

  Leviathan pressed his fingers together. “What if I told you that there’s no such thing as a Demon Slayer?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I just think it’s incredibly ironic that everything you’ve done thus far has been according to what you’ve been told by a Demon. How have you felt ever since you began your Demon hunt? Has anything felt…off?”

  Zoey glanced back and forth between us. For once in her life, she was utterly speechless.

  “Let me throw you a bone here,” said Leviathan. “Have you felt wrathful since you defeated Amon? Or perhaps slothful since Belphegor submitted himself to your dagger? Maybe you felt recent bursts of lust or gluttony since you took on Asmodeus and Beezlebub?”

  I felt cold from the inside out. All the anger that I’d felt. The overwhelming desire to sleep. Everything.

  It was all because I was killing and absorbing these…things. These Remnants.

  “You trust Dante a lot, don’t you?” said Leviathan.

  “If it wasn’t for him, my brother and I would be dead,” I said. I wanted to sound defensive, but every word came out hollow.

  “And there’s another irony for you. He saved your lives, yes. But only because your brother made a Deal with him to begin with. He would show your brother how to find and kill Amon, and in return, your brother would…hmm.” Leviathan scratched his curly brown head. “Oh, now what was it? The other half of this bargain seems to be escaping me. Do you remember what it was? He did tell you, right?”

  Now he was just toying with me. My grip tightened around the Demon Dagger which had never left my grasp. A flicker of rage burned inside of me—a rage that I could now identify as Amon’s wrath.

  How much of me was actually me?

  “No worries,” said Leviathan. His gaze shifted to my best friend. “Hey, Zoey, could you do me a favor and remove your ankle bracelet?”

  “My what?” said Zoey. She could not have looked more confused. For starters, an ankle bracelet wasn’t even visible with the jeans she was wearing.

  “The bracelet on your right ankle that your coven gave you. The one with a particular Demon warding symbol on it.”

  When Zoey didn’t respond right away—too busy looking stupefied—Leviathan’s fingers melded together. The texture of his arm became moist and scaly, extending into a long tentacle. This new appendage whipped at Zoey’s right leg. Naturally, she screamed. It slithered around her calf and snapped a leather anklet off. There was some sort of dangling stone attached. I caught only a brief glance of the emblem on it—some sort pentagram/crucifix doohickey.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got it,” said Leviathan.

  His tentacle wrapped around the stone in a contorted ball, squeezing furiously. This appendage retracted in length, returning to normal flesh. In mere seconds, Leviathan was extending a human fist again. He opened it sideways. Dust crumbled from his palm along with the leather band.

  “I’m sorry,” said Leviathan, “but somebody has been eavesdropping on our conversation, and that particular piece of jewelry isn’t so friendly to his kind. Dante, stop being so antisocial. Come join us.”

  30

  Dante and the Secret

  Leviathan’s gaze shifted to the shadows of a separate hallway. Black mist swirled around an invisible shape. The figure materialized as he stepped forward—Dante, wearing his classy black suit and loose collar. His blue eyes were fixed on me.

  “Monica,” he said. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

  His face was lathered in guilt. After he said this, his eyes shifted down. He couldn’t even look at me.

  I noticed Zoey glancing between the two of us suspiciously. When I told her everything, I hadn’t necessarily told her everything. I left out the feelings I had for Dante. Zoey, however, had an eye for spotting chemistry and lingering emotions. I wondered just how visible it was on my face.

  “Is Levi telling the truth?” I said.

  I had meant to point my finger, but instead pointed the Demon Dagger almost accusingly at Leviathan. He beamed in a twisted sort of way, clearly enjoying the attention.

  Dante’s green eyes shifted down. “Yeah. It’s all true.”

  My hand fell limp at my side. The rage vanished, replaced by suffocating emptiness. I had no words. No desire. Nothing.

  “Why are you here?” said Zoey. “Just to tell Monica you’re a liar?”

  “No, I’m here to give answers,” said Dante. “Or at least to fill in the holes of Leviathan’s story.”

  Leviathan gestured enthusiastically for Dante to proceed. “By all means. Fill away.”

  Dante’s eyes returned to me, but I very consciously glanced down at my shoes like they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe.

  “It all started with the Hexham Manor legend,” said Dante. “Leviathan already told you an accurate version, but he left out three important names. That night, Dr. Hexham really was visited by a witch. A
very young and beautiful witch at the time. Her name was Martha Binsfeld.”

  I choked. On what? Hell, I dunno. Oxygen? But I choked, and like, how do you breathe again?

  “Your mother was a witch long before Mammon ever came into the picture,” said Dante. “She only joined Barbara Marion’s coven because she was suspicious of her intentions. She knew the ramifications of black magic. She knew because her tampering had inadvertently resulted in the possession of her child. That child’s name was Monica.”

  No…

  “And the Demon possessing her really was the only son of the Devil,” he said. “It was me.”

  I was past thinking or feeling. I was in this state of numb, shell-shocked, skull-fucked mental paralysis. I was detached from the world around me, floating in an empty sea of nothing.

  “To this day, I still don’t fully know or understand what happened to me that night,” said Dante. “But somehow, your mother’s witchcraft and Dr. Hexham’s exorcism collided. They integrated together. The end result didn’t just rip my spirit out of you. It literally ripped everything that made me a Demon out of me. The exorcism couldn’t even send me back to Hell because there wasn’t enough Demon left in me. All of my power went into the seven Remnants of my being that went on to possess and kill Dr. Hexham and his family.

  “So my miserable excuse of a spirit was left as a lingering afterthought on earth. But I never left Villeneuve. I watched as my seven Remnants found new vessels. For the most part, they remained dormant, hibernating and allowing their severed spirits time to heal and to fuse with their new hosts. But as they did so, I never wandered far from the witch’s daughter I possessed. For some reason, my energy was stronger when I was near her—as if my brief possession left something in her that made me feel somewhat whole. My spirit grew stronger. Strong enough to wander on my own. After my near-demise, I steered away from possession. Instead, I learned to strengthen myself through the ancient Demon art of Dealmaking. But with my Demonic evil stripped out of me, Deals took on a whole new meaning. I couldn’t manipulate people for my own gain. I just…I couldn’t. So…I helped people. In a sense. A parent trying to pay the rent. A child trying to protect him or herself against an abusive father. A single mom trying to feed her baby. But Demon Dealmaking always asks for something in return, and I needed something to survive. Demons are parasitic by nature. So in exchange for each Deal, I asked for a year of human life, and I never made a Deal with the same person twice. It would be a year that most of them would never miss.