“No you won't.” His eyes never left hers, never even considered the knife.
He squeezed her arm harder still before releasing it. Blood rushed back into the depleted muscles in a wave of painful barbs.
“I need to tell you a few things first.”
“Like what?” She glanced from Cheddar, to the house, and back again. She wanted to see her dad standing in the window, waving to her. Welcoming her. Instead, she saw nothing.
“Like, first of all, Des is a sick man. Sick of mind and body.”
“What do you mean?” Somewhere nearby, a screen door snapped open and closed depending on the wind, otherwise, the neighborhood had quieted, as if everyone up and down the block now clung to their every word.
“I like your old man. He's good inside, deep inside, if you look hard enough for it. And he means well. Always means well…” Cheddar trailed off. “I told you, me and him are tight, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, her fear rising.
“That just means we're as friendly as a doper and hookup can get, you know what I mean?”
“My dad, he's…” Maggie couldn't finish the sentence.
“He's a big ol' scaghead, sure as shit. That's how we got acquainted.”
She wasn't familiar with his slang. “You mean heroin?”
Cheddar nodded. She'd seen many times what heroin does to a person. It wasn't pleasant. It wasn't manageable. It was horror and agony and torment all rolled into one, as Cheddar liked to say, sure as shit.
No matter what she'd heard, Maggie still yearned to run through that door. But she also felt bitter. Bitter at both her dad for getting in this kind of trouble, and at herself for even thinking any good could come from this so-called adventure.
“But you see, girl, he's not like most scagheads. He's got his… demons…”
That word. Only that word could draw her attention away from the house and the promise inside. “So, you're saying—”
“Yeah, that's a real-for-damn-sure haunted house.”
“There are no ghosts,” she whispered automatically. She thought she saw a flickering light in the front window, but couldn't be sure.
“No, but there are demons, and Lord in heaven, your daddy's got a whole mess of 'em.”
Maggie saw the light again, the soft glowing green of a light stick. It could be kids horsing around. It could be Cheddar's henchmen set to jump her as soon as she entered the house. But it could also be demon light.
“Why are you helping him?”
“I've had my own demons—demons as destructive as any you'd find in that house. I also had a daughter. Once… a long time ago. Lorraine had the sweetest smile, a smile so sweet I'd walk through fire just to see it. And my demons, they took her from me.”
Maggie looked into Cheddar's eyes and saw only truth staring back at her. His anguish made her want to weep. Demons came in many forms, claimed countless victims, each different from the last. Maggie bit her lower lip to hold back a sudden wave of emotion, and could only nod her thanks as she turned and headed for the door.
“Those demons…” Cheddar said. “Des silences them by creating other demons to take their place. He needs to see you before it's too late… but you best be safe. If things turn south, you run, girl. Run like hell.”
“Can you come with me? Please?”
“No, we made a deal. Des knew how to find you, and how to bring you here. I told him I'd help him, but then I told him I was done. No more Cheddar love. No more hookup.”
Maggie felt defeated even though she had yet to see her dad.
Cheddar went up to her and took her hand. His touch was gentle, sympathetic. “Tell you what.” He forced a baggie into her palm, closing her fingers over it. She hadn't realized how beautiful his eyes were—two brilliant sky blue islands in twin bloodshot seas. “This is some dope scag. Pure, and I mean pure. You have him cook a hit to take the edge off, to keep them demons at bay.”
Maggie felt sick inside, but she put the baggie in her pocket just the same. She nodded.
“And if he should happen to cook the whole lot…” Cheddar made a slicing gesture across his throat. “Like a mercy, girl. Like a mercy.”
* * *
Just shy of the door, Maggie glanced back one last time and saw Cheddar crying silently. He looked ashamed to have someone witness it. He wiped his cheeks, crossed himself, and then walked away into the shadows.
Despite the neighborhood it didn't surprise her to find the door unlocked. She was expected, after all. Invited even. She pushed the door open and stepped inside a home that smelled like a Phoenix alleyway during the height of summer: urine mingling with stale beer and rotting restaurant throwaways. The closed-in air was heavy with it, and when Maggie exhaled, the stench lingered in her nostrils. Inside, the low green glow reached every surface, from the salvage yard furniture, to the pockmarked walls and ceiling; every surface possessed a luminescence that she could no longer deny.
Demon glow.
With her hand covering her nose, she took a tentative step but saw no sign of her dad.
She'd never met anyone else with the ability to see demons or their unearthly glow. It was a burden she wouldn't wish on anyone. Ever since she was a child she'd had trouble looking people in the eye. Demons could be anywhere and in possession of just about anyone. This was the first time she'd ever pressed ahead after encountering that telltale light. Her typical survival skill up to this point—to run like her life depended on it—had served her well.
All at once the green glow disappeared. Without it, she felt suddenly exposed, an intruder in some stranger's house. She almost panicked and ran for the door. Almost.
After a steadying breath, she forced herself forward one hesitant step after another, until she entered the kitchen. She found a mass of skeletal limbs nested on grimy blankets in the middle of the room. His filthy stick arms were splayed before him as if grasping for something. His hands were empty, as were his open eyes. A syringe dangled from a vein in his left arm.
She wanted to deny that it was him but couldn't. She knew it from the angle of his jaw, the whorl of his ears, his badly healed broken nose—all indelible details, like fingerprints. Maggie's heart broke; if only she'd walked a little faster getting here. If only she hadn't let Cheddar yammer on outside. If only…
“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered. She wanted to go to him, to cradle his head in her lap. The room reeked of vomit and rot, but what overpowered everything else was the persistence of desperation, even after his death. She tasted bile in the back of her throat and slapped a palm over her mouth. Piles of trash surrounded her father. Rancid takeout containers, bloated garbage bags with split seams, piles of newspapers. Everywhere, newspapers. The kitchen sink had served as a fire pit, and at a quick glance, the newspapers had kindled the flames.
And spread around him on the floor, his succor. His demon to bury other demons. Used syringes castoff like spent cigarettes. Some whole, some broken apart for spare parts. Bent cook spoons, charred black. Disposable Bic lighters. An empty lighter fluid bottle.
She wanted to look away. She wanted to cry.
All those miles. All those lost years. Wasted.
Her many anxiety-inducing questions answered in one vacant pair of eyes staring back at her.
As she gaped at him a gray film formed over his skin, every inch of it, obscuring his features. And then as soon as she noticed it, it lifted of its own accord, away from his corpse like a snake shedding its skin.
But it wasn't his skin. It was his spirit. A chill ran across her nape. Her stomach muscles clenched against the fear building inside her.
The gray translucent film—his spirit, Jesus God, his spirit—sat up at the waist. The see-through eyes blinked. The smoke-like lips formed three words: Sorry, honey-bean.
She'd almost forgotten the pet name he had given her. Still frozen in place, Maggie felt her hand reaching of its own volition toward the spirit. She pulled the limb to her, even as the spirit mirrored her initial acti
on.
“No…” she croaked.
“I'm so sorry, Maggie,” the spirit said, his voice in her head as much as the fouled air between them. “I couldn't hold on any longer. I was too weak.”
“You're not real!” she said, finding her voice. She turned on her heel and folded her arms in front of her, but moved no further. She could hear rats scurrying nearby, searching the debris for crumbs of food, or perhaps a more horrifying meal.
“Maggie… please.”
“No. You're not real. You’re dead and gone.”
The low green glow once again pushed away the darkness and the air itself became stained by the demon's presence. She inhaled it into her lungs, could feel inquisitive tendrils threading through her, seeking a purchase, a foothold, a weakness. She shifted her gaze to the body and saw a crack form between its lips, at the crevasse of its eyelids, its nostrils. And the light, emanating from within. Possession.
“I'm not a little girl anymore,” Maggie said, her voice strengthening. “I know what you are.”
At the front of the house, the door came crashing in. Maggie unsheathed her knife and readied herself. A swirling steel gray fog billowed into the kitchen, sweeping across the tile floor like a rising tide. It hit Maggie square in the shins, and its frigid touch brought a cry to her lips. The fog filled the kitchen, covering her dad like a shroud. She wanted to pull him from its depths, but knew it was pointless. Instead, she shoved the rotting garbage from the nearest countertop and climbed out of reach of the fog, her legs aching to the marrow from its touch.
“You can't frighten me. You hear me, you can't!”
A green opalescence roiled through the fog as a rush of clomping footfalls entered the house. She did what she should have done as soon as she entered the kitchen—checked for escape routes. A closed door was on the far side of the kitchen. Where did it lead? The basement? The backyard? She thought about breaking the narrow window above the sink, but she didn't think she'd be able to crawl through the opening unscathed.
All at once, the three scarecrows she'd seen a block away pressed together to fit through the kitchen doorway. Their limbs creaked, full of dried straw and twigs. The paint chipped away from the doorframe and then the frame itself splintered until it accommodated their advance. Their eyes glowed green and black smoke seeped like slowly exhaled breath from their gaping mouths. Once they cleared the doorway Maggie could see that each specter carried a reaper's scythe in its rag-wrapped hands. In the uncertain light the blades looked rusty, but she soon realized the blades were deadly-sharp, their edges painted with blood.
One scarecrow stepped clear of the others, expertly cocking its scythe back for a reaping stroke. To avoid the billowing fog, Maggie remained on the countertop as she scurried away, scattering trash in her wake. The scarecrow swung the scythe down at Maggie—its body shrieking like a thousand green twigs stressed to the breaking point—and she barely pulled her legs away before the blade buried itself deeply into the countertop.
While the scarecrow worked feverishly to free its scythe, she saw that the other two were now blocking the exits. It was hopeless. She would never escape. They would never let her leave.
A morbid sense of calm settled over Maggie. Of course it was hopeless. She'd spent her entire life avoiding hope. Time and again that warm, tingling feeling—hope—had proven to only lead to disappointment. And by letting the slightest hint of hope to creep into her life, by traveling across the country based on a whim, on an internet rumor of all things, she'd left herself exposed to the worst possible disappointment.
The scarecrows all stared at her with their green glowing eyes, curious. She was no longer running. Was no longer scared.
After a prolonged silence filled with loaded anticipation, a wild scurrying swept through the room. It came from the steel gray fog and the rotting things buried in its frigid depths. Patches of charred black fur broke the fog’s surface, before falling away, again and again. Rats. Hundreds of them.
A groundswell of giant charred rats poured in between and around the legs of the scarecrow guarding the door. Some, with no space to move, ran along the backs of their brethren, while others took to the walls, crawling spider-like as they closed on her, chittering and crying. Her flesh was their singular focus.
Seeing the rats revived Maggie's will to fight. She didn't have any hope for survival, but she wasn't about to go easily. When Maggie stabbed the closest rat its wriggling body remained impaled on the blade. Before it could lash out at her, she backhanded another rat with her knife hand, and both rats went flying into the fog. Tears started flowing down her cheeks as she slashed and punched, kicked and stomped. But it was all for naught. A ceaseless wave of rats climbed the cabinets until they reached her. Their teeth soon found her skin, filling it with the pain of a hundred tiny wounds.
“Daddy… why…” she cried, falling from the edge of the countertop into the roiling fog. “Why did you have to find me? Why did you ever leave me?” She was weeping now and no longer fighting. The cold depths of the fog eased the pain from the bite marks. “Daddy... I loved you... and you went away…”
With her strength ebbing, her mind retreated into darkness.
* * *
Just as quickly as it rolled through the doorway, the fog withdrew. Maggie lifted her hands away from her face and saw the room was now empty. Her father—no longer skeleton-thin—was sitting across from her with his back against a kitchen cabinet. He looked like her fondest memories of him. Youthful, fit, clear-eyed and sober. She was immediately thrown back in time a decade, to the apartment her parents rented when she was a child. When they were poor and on the verge of losing everything at any moment, including each other, but still somehow happy.
He smiled deeply, barely a trace of wrinkling at the corner of his eyes. There was still an afterglow surrounding him, a trace of green. She wasn't fooled by this sudden change, but at least she wasn't being devoured alive. She checked her skin but couldn't find a single wound. Just an echo of pain remained.
“Why did I find you, track you down?” he asked, followed by a warm chuckle that she remembered fondly. “Because I need you, of course. I've missed you, Honey-bean.”
“Who am I speaking to?” she asked, unfazed.
Again, the warm chuckle, so familiar. After all those lost years, Maggie was now sitting across from her dad in the middle of an abandoned house. They could be sharing a fire while camping. They could be having a real conversation. But she knew this was all a ruse.
“You're speaking to your father,” he said and looked down at himself as if for the first time.
“Why...” Maggie paused. She knew that every word spoken by someone possessed by a demon would be a corruption of the truth, but she pressed on nonetheless: “Why did you leave me?”
Above all others, this was the question she needed answered.
“You kids,” he said, looking up from his hands to her face, “you always ask the same questions. Always. A million times over.”
The demon's smirk cracked. For the slightest moment Maggie witnessed an internal struggle, but after a brief snarl and gritting of its teeth, the demon once again subdued her dad.
“It was your mother,” the demon answered. “She was broken inside.”
“That's not true. We were so happy!” she shouted, surprised by her sudden emotion. “We were a family, and you just walked away.”
Her father's fingers twitched, then his eyes. His fingers and eyes, not the demon's. He rubbed his temples, rubbed as if something burrowed just below the surface. Then, suddenly, he fell to his side and his body began to writhe across the floor in a series of violent spasms. Spittle caked his lips as he fought to gain control.
“Daddy!” Maggie said, rushing to his side. She touched his shoulder, tentatively, as if she expected a jolt of pain from the contact.
“You look so much like her,” the demon said. “Just like Des remembers your mother.” Its head drooped and its eyes closed as if it'd fallen asleep,
and when the head lifted again, she saw her dad staring back. “I miss her, Maggie. Her laugh… God, remember her laugh? Like she didn't care what anyone thought? Remember, Maggie? Remember!”
He lashed out, taking hold of her shoulders, squeezing until white-hot pain lanced each joint and she both felt and heard snapping.
That's me breaking, she thought with an agonized shudder. She pictured her mother all those years ago, before he left. No, she wasn't broken inside, at least not before he left. But afterward, when a pall seemed to hover over their tiny family of two… yes, she had broken. But then and only then.
Her eyes cleared temporarily, and she saw the demon's façade crack again as it continued to fend off her father.
“Oh, my… God…” he said, fighting to articulate every word. “Maggie, what are you… what are you doing… here?” His head whipped from side to side, ever faster, until it blurred.
“Daddy?”
His head slowed to a dizzy wobble. “Yeah, it's me… and God, it's you. Maggie! My Maggie!” He held her crippled form in his arms. He touched her cheek, and it was him. Really him. “You asked me… you asked me why I left.”
Maggie nodded her head and he shushed her before she could speak.
“You see the light, don't you? Demon light?”
She nodded her head again.
“I've been looking for you for a long time. Since I learned how to… silence the demons inside me. You see the demon light, and that's why you've been so hard to find. Why you've lived alone, skipping town every couple of months. You see the light just like me. And that's why I went away.”
“Yes,” she croaked. It was such a weighty answer to her question. She didn't think she could handle it. Not now. Not here.
“But they've never touched you. Never possessed you. These demons.”
She shook her head from side to side. “Daddy,” she said, grimacing. “Can you do something for me?”
Garden of Fiends Page 17
