Personal Demons
By David Morrison
Copyright © David Morrison 2018
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
First published January 2018
Table of Contents
Part One (Chapters 1 to 21)
Part Two (Chapters 22 to 35)
Part Three (Chapters 36 to 56)
Part One
Chapter One: The Party
Sometimes I wonder how things would have played out if I hadn’t gone to the Halloween party. If I’d been anywhere else - like at home where I’d meant to be, or doing a late night at the garage - maybe none of what followed would have happened. The stupid part is that I hadn’t planned on going at all. In fact, I’d actively planned on not going, until Kate’s jealous moron of a boyfriend Clark told me not to show up, ‘or else’.
It might not have made any difference. Maybe Victoria Pryce’s Special Ops team would have stepped in before the supernatural creature tracked me down. Maybe they’d have captured it before Section 19 showed up, and I’d have woken up the next morning none the wiser to the chaos of the previous night. I’d have heard the same rumours as everyone else, about a weird animal running riot around town and that would have been the end of it.
Maybe, if I hadn’t gone to the party, my life would have trundled along as usual.
I guess we could all drive ourselves crazy wondering about might-have-beens. What if I hadn’t done that, hadn’t been there, hadn’t said that? I don’t know.
What I do know is this: As I stood alone in a darkened school corridor around nine in the evening facing a snarling monstrosity, armed with nothing more than a broken door handle (no, really) and an impending sense of doom - I was definitely cursing the events that had put me there.
The thing, roughly the size and shape of a silverback gorilla but more canine-like, glared at me, all glowing red eyes, vicious claws and drooling fangs. It reminded me of the Gozer dog things from the original Ghostbusters only scarier because that was in a film and this was real.
Worse still, it was not happy with me at all.
To be fair, I had just smacked it across its snout. In self-defence, of course. I don’t normally go around whacking animals. I like animals generally, I’m just not a big fan when they’re trying to turn me into lunch.
So as I stood facing the first monster I’d ever encountered, aside from cursing the fact of being there at all, my only other coherent thought was:
I’m only sixteen! That’s way too young to die!
As it turned out, I’d end up thinking that a lot in the following couple of weeks. If I had a penny for every time that particular thought crossed my mind, I’d be – let’s see, about ten pence richer. Maybe fifteen. Honestly, I lost count by the time things kicked into high gear on the whole ‘Let’s kill Jason Storm’ deal.
Either way that Halloween was the night that everything changed. It was the night I found out that monsters are real and started to get some idea of what I am. It was the night that unleashed a whole chain of events which...well, happened.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind a touch to explain why I was in that school corridor and introduce you to a few people. Just a few hours, before we get to the whole ‘Snarling monstrosity about to tear me limb from limb’ bit.
Don’t worry, I didn’t die.
Obviously.
*
Nine Hours Earlier.
Lunch break, Bridge End Secondary School canteen.
“So are you two losers going to the Halloween party tonight, or what?”
That was Kate, one of my two best friends, talking to Deepak and me. Calling each other ‘losers’ and trading insults was how we knew we liked each other. It’s a British thing.
Our little gang of three was composed of the school’s outsiders: Kate - too smart and rich to be at a non-private school (her dad insisted on sending her to a comprehensive despite being loaded), Dee, the only British-Indian kid (his elder sister had left the year before, leaving Dee one of the few non-white kids in the school) and me, the ‘quiet weirdo’ who kept himself to himself.
“Pff,” I scoffed.
Dee rolled his eyes and took a bite of his sandwich.
Sitting at the next table, Forrest chimed in even though he wasn’t part of the conversation. Forrest wasn’t a member of our little outsider gang, he just hung around on the edges sometimes. Everyone, teachers included, called him by his second name. Honestly, I didn’t even know his first name. His main function in life seemed to be trying to wind up as many people as possible.
He usually managed it as well.
“Halloween is so lame,” he piped up, “it’s just another over-commercialised holiday designed to make us buy more stuff that we don’t need. As if we don’t have enough of those already.”
See what I mean? Typical Forrest.
Not for the first time, Kate looked like she wanted to throttle Forrest. Dee rolled his eyes again and carried on with his sandwich.
“You’re an idiot, Forrest,” I said.
“At least I can, you know, read,” Forrest shot back.
I grinned, but it was forced. Forrest had hit a nerve, more by accident than out of malice. I’d never been the sharpest tool in the shed academically. I wasn’t stupid or lazy, I just struggled at school. Other kids, mentioning-no-names Kate, swept up straight A-stars without breaking a sweat. Even Dee, with his affinity for languages, got the odd A here and there. I on the other hand usually scraped C’s and the rare B if I put my back into it.
Okay, so I was a bit lazy. The thing was I knew what I wanted to do when I left school and academic studies were not part of the plan.
Cars. It was all about cars for me.
“Idiot,” I bantered back at Forrest, masking my discomfort.
“Fool.”
“Moron.”
“Whatever,” Forrest replied, “Anyway, I’m going. It should be a laugh.”
Kate, who had been observing our exchange with her ‘unimpressed’ face, nodded.
“That’s truly fascinating, Forrest, but I wasn’t actually talking to you. Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to barge in on other people’s conversations?”
Forrest was stuck for a comeback and shrugged, which was the effect Kate had when she wanted to. She could always get the last word in and make sure it stuck. It was one part of her occasionally irritating, but mostly charming, charm.
Kate was still waiting, standing at our table. The question hung in the air.
“We’re not going,” I said, “We’ve got a night planned of stealing cars, kicking ass and taking names, right Dee?”
“What better way to spend our free time is there?” Dee asked. He sounded appalled at the very idea there might be an alternative to a night on the Playstation.
“Oh,” Kate said, “Fair enough. I think it’ll be fun.”
As well as being a straight ‘A’ science nerd, Kate was a horror film fan, so a Halloween party was her type of thing. Me, I was more of a ‘James Bond/The Fast and the Furious’ type of guy. It takes all sorts.
Kate gave me a look I couldn’t read – something which had been happening a lot lately. Before I could respond, a voice boomed across the canteen.
“Legend!”
Kate’s pale face turned a few shades redder than her wavy ginger hair. I winced in empathy. Clark, Kate’s boyfriend, waved from the other side of the
canteen, grinning.
“I’ve told him not to call me that,” Kate scowled.
Kate was semi-stuck with the nickname ‘Legend’ even though she hated it. Her dad was a local B-list celebrity who back in the day had been the frontman of the punk rock band ‘Jonny and the Legends’ – and went by the name Jonny Legend. These days he stuck to bit parts in movies and television shows and owned a small nightclub in town. He’d been smart enough not to burden his daughter with his adopted moniker and given her his real name, Leary. Still, some kids – her current boyfriend included – insisted on calling her Legend now and then.
It drove her nuts.
Kate stalked across the canteen with a clear ‘we’re going to have words’ expression on her face.
“Sheeee liiiikes you,” Forrest smirked.
I scowled at him but he left before I could start denying it.
“Good grief, that guy can be such a tool,” Dee said when Forrest was out of earshot.
“Right?” I said.
Chapter Two: The Warning
As we sat finishing our lunches, Dee held up the forefinger of his right hand to get my attention. I realised from the grin on his face that something was about to happen. I’d seen that expression thirty times or more. I swivelled my head to look in the direction he was pointing, already getting ready to laugh.
If Dee had a superpower, it would be predicting when people were about to do stupid things like trip over a loose paving stone, knock a glass of water over a computer, drop an ice cream on a toddler’s head and so on. He had an uncanny knack for spotting when body language and catastrophe were about to collide. He was right most of the time.
Admittedly, being able to predict when people are about to take a pratfall would be one of the most useless superpowers ever, but it caused us a lot of laughs.
Case in point: Walking across the school canteen was a fourteen-year-old girl carrying a set of three lunch trays back to the serving area.
Dee pointed at the girl’s shoes. Her untied left shoelace flopped as she walked.
“Wait for it, wait for it...” Dee said.
The girl took another couple of steps, oblivious to her untied shoelace.
“Any second...now!”
Right on cue, the girl’s right foot stepped on her left shoelace and she went sprawling head first. She managed to break her fall and avoided any serious injury, but the three plastic trays she’d been carrying went spinning out of her hands. Bits of leftover mashed potato and baked beans flew everywhere, spraying several of the other kids with stray food. The girl recovered but then had to endure a round of applause from the kids who’d been out of range and groans from those who hadn’t.
Dee roared with laughter and I chuckled along.
“How do you do it?” I said, shaking my head, “Every damn time.”
“You just have to know what to look for,” Dee grinned.
The bell rang, and we headed to our classes.
I snoozed my way through Maths and tried to stay awake through History. I was just looking forward to my shift at the garage later in the evening. Rob had a classic 1970s BMW brought in for restoration, and it was a real beauty – one of only 150 ever built. A collector’s item that would be worth well over two hundred grand when we’d finished with it.
Ok, look, everyone has that one thing they geek out about, right? For some people its sports, for others its computers, or comic books or learning Klingon or whatever. With me it was cars, especially classic old cars.
My interest in cars had started when I was seven and had accidentally sat in front of a Saturday re-run of the James Bond movie ‘Goldfinger’ - the one with the Aston Martin and the ejector seat. My seven-year-old brain had been astonished by a car which could send you in two directions: Forward and up. For the next few weeks I did drawing after drawing, fascinated by this concept. My mum, Sally, was excited because she thought I’d discovered my artistic streak. It took her a while to realise that all my drawings were of multi-coloured cars with stick figures flying through the air.
Anyway, ‘Goldfinger’ began my car obsession, which was compounded when I realised 1) I couldn’t do sports anymore (we’ll get to why later) and 2) my mum briefly dated a car mechanic, Rob, who owned a garage specialising in fixing up high end and classic motors. Rob took me under his wing despite him and mum splitting up. Ever since then I’d spent a lot of my spare time in his garage, learning everything about cars, motorbikes, scooters, vans, you name it. I was the first kid in our year to get a learner driver licence (swiftly followed by Kate) and couldn’t wait until I turned seventeen and passed my driving test.
Rob in the meantime, I guess he became a substitute father figure since my dad took off when I was two and a half.
*
With school done I headed to the garage. I didn’t get far before Kate’s boyfriend and his two thick-as-planks henchmen rounded on me. They caught me outside the school gates.
Clark was a year above me, in the sixth form. Outside school he wore a red leather jacket and had his dark hair groomed in a spiky style straight out of an Anime film. He thought he was cool, especially now he was dating Kate, the daughter of Jonny Legend.
He wasn’t cool.
“Shrimp,” he said, “stop right there.”
“What do you want, Clark?” I asked.
I ignored the fact that he’d called me a shrimp. I was 5 foot 9 inches tall but seemed smaller because of my slim, unimpressive build. Plus I hunched a lot, hoping that no-one would pay me any attention.
Clark, a good three inches taller than me, tried to appear menacing. Not an easy thing to do when you essentially look like a Pokémon reject.
“A word. You aren’t going to the party tonight.”
“Why’s that?”
I knew why, of course.
“I’ve already told you, shrimp. I don’t like you hanging round my girl.”
It was pointless trying to argue with Clark. I’d known Kate for nine years, he’d been dating her for, what, two months? There was also no point trying to tell Clark that things weren’t ‘like that’ between Kate and me. This was partly because he wouldn’t listen but mostly because I wasn’t sure that things weren’t ‘like that’ anymore. Recently stuff had been awkward between us. I’d started to like-like Kate. It was confusing, and I was doing my best to ignore and hide these new feelings because she was one of my two best/only friends and anything else would mess everything up. So instead of protesting, and resisting a sudden urge to hit him, I simply thought: You’re a moron, Clark.
It was better than saying it or lashing out. The fire was building up inside me and knowing what it might lead to scared the hell out of me.
Don’t do it, I thought, it isn’t worth it. You know what could happen.
Clark, mistaking my silence for fear, pressed the advantage he thought he had.
“Stay away from the party tonight and stay away from my girl for good. Clear?”
I shrugged, muttered ‘whatever’ and slipped between Clark and his minions.
“Last warning, shrimp,” Clark said as I walked away.
I wanted to say something cool and tough like “Yeah, the last warning for you,” but I left it.
*
Despite having walked away – or more likely because I’d walked away - by the time I got to the garage I was seething. What right did Clark have to tell me who I couldn’t hang out with? Especially my oldest friend, Kate. Ok, so we hadn’t properly started hanging out until we were twelve, but that wasn’t the point.
I worked on the Beamer’s engine. Rob could see my heart wasn’t in it though.
“What’s wrong, fella?” he asked.
“It’s nothing,” I mumbled, “just people being people.”
Rob grinned.
“Girl problems, right?”
“No,” I started, but didn’t get any further.
“Let me guess, that pretty little redhead is it? What’s her name, Kate? She’s a peach, that one.”
“Come on man, that’s my friend you’re talking about.”
Rob shrugged, “Your friend? Really?”
“There’s nothing going on. It’s not like that. Her boyfriend doesn’t want me to go to the school Halloween party tonight, that’s all.”
“Right,” Rob said. He thought about it. “You should go,” he announced.
“What?”
“Well you don’t want her thinking you’re scared of him, do you?”
“No, but it’s really not like that.”
Rob took the screwdriver out of my hand, “You’ve got to go,” he said.
The thing was, now Clark had told me not to go, the idea of showing up to get on his nerves was becoming more appealing by the second. Rob just gave me the last little push.
“I haven’t got a costume.”
“You’ll find something in amongst all of your mum’s junk at the shop. Go on, get out of here.”
He had a point. Mum owned a vintage clothes shop. From what I saw, ‘vintage’ meant stuff she’d found in charity shops and then added a zero to the price when she put it in her shop. Some of it was cool though.
“Fine,” I said.
I cleaned up, got out of my garage overalls and texted Dee.
Change of plan. We’re going to the party.
A few seconds later Dee texted me back.
What? Why? What am I supposed to wear?
I thought about it.
I’m going as Dracula. Wrap up in some bandages and call yourself the Mummy.
Good grief. Fine. Why are we doing this?
Clark told me not to go.
Oh well there’s a sound reason, Dee texted back.
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or sarcastic.
Meet me at my place at seven.
Which was how Dee and I - the Mummy and Dracula respectively - ended up going to the party. I bought a set of plastic fangs from Poundland and Mum provided me with an oversized red-lined black cape with a high collar. I slapped on some white face paint for good measure.
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