Demons (13 page)

“Shrow it, fuckin’ shrow it. I takeuh headsish time,” the Bugsy hissed, staring at the quarter in my hand, drooling.

“Sure.” I tossed the quarter up—toward a farther corner of the roof. The Bugsy ran for it.

I mouthed
Run!
at Robert. He only gaped at me, blinking stupidly, tears starting from his eyes.

I sprinted for the door to the stairs.

“No, don’t, man!” Robert yelled hoarsely. “He . . .”

The Bugsy made a sound like a furious boar, and, as I ran, it shouted, “I won thatsh tosh!”

“Wait!” Robert yelled. He said nothing else after that—there was only the scream. It was such a piteous cry, I paused at the outbuilding, just around the corner from the door, to look back. Always a mistake, to look back at a demon.

“You don’t wanna see whush I gotferya here?” the Bugsy said, “cigarette” bobbing as with one set of talons it held Robert facedown, the other claws digging deeply into Robert’s back, demonic grip closing firmly over the writhing human’s spine. One hand pushing, the other pulling—with a practiced motion, pulling Robert’s spine from his body, the whole spine, as from an overcooked fish, though it was still attached to his skull. Until, there, the spine was yanked free, and the Bugsy waved the vertebrae spatteringly at me. “We cud be friendsh, give ya immortality, shecrets—all tha’ shit, teach you do shit like thish, whatcha shay . . .” And as it spoke it strode toward me, waving the segmented dripping red wand of Robert’s spine, holding my trapped attention.

I broke free and ran for the door, for the stairs, and vaulted over the railing, fell twelve feet—maybe more—to the next landing, a painful landing, hearing the unnaturally soft boot steps on the stairs above me as the demon came after me, seeing the red bony splintery thing flung past my head and down the stairwell.

I was down just ahead of the Bugsy, through a doorway, down the hall, running to Paymenz’s apartment door. With terror-focused concentration putting the key
very exactly right into the lock
, no wasted motions as I inserted, turned the key, got the door open, removed the key, and ran in, slammed the door, shouting for Melissa, feeling like such a goddamn little boy, calling for the protection of his mother.

But when she came to the living room, put her hand on the door, I heard, almost immediately, the hasty retreat of the Bugsy padding away down the hall outside.

A little later we heard a rustling outside the window and saw a Sharkadian flying the Bugsy down from the roof in its arms, the two of them pausing to look toward us, about fifty feet past the balcony railing, hovering to stare before flapping awkwardly away.

The day after the Bugsy, with radical foolhardiness, I decided to visit some kids I’d been giving art lessons to. The soldiers wouldn’t accompany me. I got there without running into the gangs. On the way I saw the things I described near the opening of this narrative. The Grindum, the man in the Volvo, and me on my way to teach an art lesson.

On the way home I had to dodge a van full of drunken, glue-sniffing kid fundies. Gangs of hysterical teens who think they’re supposed to bring about the final judgment by punishing the enemies of God, which is whoever they happen on when they’re out on the town. Half the time, happily, the demons get them. They nearly ran me down, but I cut through a burned-out Tofu Chef place and lost them in the alley.

Since then, some days of quiet. A Lull. I think it’s a Monday afternoon. It’s dull gray outside, like a Monday afternoon should be, anyway. The only noise is the occasional gunshot. The looters, I guess. Shot on sight, lately.

Quiet. But Melissa and I can both feel it: the imminence. Something is about to happen. Meanwhile, she’s meditating in her room and I’m wondering if I’m—

Hold on, there’s a pounding at the door. Someone pounding. Going to check it out.

Why don’t we have a fucking gun here?! Going . . .

I’m back; I washed out my mouth but still taste vomit. My hands are shaking. Hard to write.

When I went to the living room, Melissa was opening the door—why, I don’t know. Stupid to open the door, though the metal chain was across the gap.

Standing in the hall was a young guy in a Day-Glo orange VR-connect jumpsuit, the kind with all those little jacks on them and lots of peeling stickers from software companies slapped on between the jacks. The VR doesn’t work very well, and when they use it they look like idiots, walking on their squirrelly little treadmills, and if they aren’t real careful the goggles get disconnected or the wires pulled out of the suit. VR heads get into it anyway. This VR head was shaved, even his eyebrows; he’d have been rockstar-good-looking if not for that. He seemed clean, and, at first, he seemed sane: He didn’t seem like a Bugsy slave. And he wasn’t one.

“Do you need food?” Melissa asked. “We have a little to spare. Some canned stuff.”

“I could use some,” the guy said. “I live in the building here, you know, just a floor down.” He stuck his hand in the space between door and frame as if to shake hands.

Melissa made as if to shake it. I pulled her back. He withdrew the hand, grinning, showing pearly white teeth. His manicure was perfect, too. “Look, we should stick together—the people in this building. I’ve got a good wireless Internet connection, the very best, if you wanta come and check it out. I do that Clan Collector website. That’s mine, you know. My name’s Dervin. Just Dervin.” He looked at Melissa, then me. “You don’t know the name?”

“No . . . The
what
website, did you say?” I asked.

He seemed genuinely surprised. “Clan Collector. You never heard of it? You’re kidding! It’s the third most popular site in the country. All seven clans of demons are totally represented . . . even some interviews!” He spoke fast, clasping his hands again and again to emphasize each statement. “We’ve got the best graphics showing them from different angles, rundowns on clan-specific styles of killing—the whole thing. Files on all the different worship cults, chat rooms, fan voting—right now the Gnashers are the most popular. There’s a lot of Bugsy fanatics out there, though. Me, I think there’s something majestic about the Tailpipe. And I think if we could learn the Tartaran terms for the clan types we could give them names that are, you know, more fitting, that honor the whole gestalt of that demon type. And I’m working on that.”

Melissa and I looked at each other, then at the stranger. “Did you say fans? And . . . Bugsy fanatics?” She turned to push one of the cats, a fat tabby named Stimpy, away from the door. The cat wanted to get to what he thought would be outside, and he was pacing behind us, staring at the partly open door into the hall.

“Sure. The demons have a major fan base.”

“A fan base?” she said. “But they’re slaughtering us. In huge numbers.”

“Well, yeah, but serial killers had a big fan following, and so did Hitler. Still does. I spoke to a Gnasher online—he said he was a Gnasher and I think he was, but that’s, you know, controversial in fan circles—um, spoke to him in the chat room, right? And he said Hitler is actually—” He broke off. Chuckled. “You guys are staring at me like I’m nuts, but you’re really the ones who’re out of it. There was a Fox Channel special—they have that mobile Fox Channel transmitter, on that bus that uses that satellite info and dodges the demons. They have that show
The Clans
and it’s just pure demonophile stuff.”

“O-
kayyyy
,” I said. “Whatever. We can let you have some canned goods, what you can carry. I know the building’s been getting unevenly supplied—there was a raid on the Army convoy or something, and uh . . .”

“Ahh—actually . . .” He was exchanging stares with the tabby cat. “I’d rather have one of your cats. One or two. You have, what, five?”

Melissa tilted her head as she gazed at him, trying to see if he was kidding. “You’re joking, right?”

“Um—no. I can trade you all kinds of stuff for a couple of cats. Or as many as you want to give me.”

“Food’s that hard to get?” I asked. “I just offered—”—

“No, it’s for sacrifice. I’ve got an online relationship with that Gnasher—it’s online and ongoing. It’s safe, online. But to continue the contact, he requires sacrifices, and he’ll accept animals.”

“No,” I said. “Not a chance. Good-bye. Move away from the door or I’ll shout for the soldiers.”

Then I saw that he was staring at Melissa’s chest. I thought, at first, he was staring at her breasts, but his gaze was lower. And he was reaching behind him.
I’ve got an online relationship with that Gnasher. Online and ongoing.

“Oh shit,” I said. He put his shoulder against the door so we couldn’t slam it, and he whipped the automatic pistol around to shove it through the opening. “Run, Melissa!” I yelled.

I jerked the wrist of his gun hand toward me with one hand, the other pulling his elbow, pulling him off balance. He instinctively pulled his arm back a little so the gun tilted up, and I pushed, hard—and Melissa helped me, ignoring my glare—and the gun muzzle went back as the gun went off pointing into Dervin’s right eye socket, blowing his eye back into his skull, his brains out through the top of his head in a sudden, brief, thick-red fountain.

We threw his body off the balcony. I don’t expect anyone will come and ask about it.

Then I had to run to the bathroom to vomit, as Melissa knelt by me, sobbing softly and stroking my hair.

I’m going to go brush my teeth again. At least my hands have stopped shaking.

In spring 1989, I came home from school to find our television taken apart, all over the living room floor, and my mom and her boyfriend, Curtis, crouched, tweaking amidst the parts.

“I know what you think,” she said, grinning, so crankedup it was an involuntary grin. I saw she’d lost a couple more teeth.

I snorted and tried to ignore them, skirting the wreckage of the TV, the tools they’d used to take it apart, trying to escape upstairs. Curtis was glaring at me, jaws working, grinding—like a Gnasher, it seems to me now. There was a buzzing in his deep-hollowed eyes, a vein throbbing on his forehead. (Yeah, the Bugsy’s doomed pet, Robert, looked like Curtis, except Curtis was somewhat cleaner.)

“You got a problem, kid?”

“No.” I was almost to the stairs. Then I stopped, staring. My boom box my aunt had given me. They’d taken it apart. They’d destroyed it. I stared at it, tears in my eyes. It was almost the only thing I owned. I loved music. And they . . .

“There was a—a bug in it. Curtis found a bug in it,” Mom was babbling. “There was a whatdoyoucallit govermint gover-mind mind-control controller bug in it. Hon, we found it—where is it, I’ll show you!”

She scrabbled in the parts and came up with a piece of the CD laser.

“That’s for reading CDs,” I said, barely audibly. “That’s not—”—

But Curtis heard me and snarled, “You’re saying I’m full of shit?”

I shrugged, dazed, wiping my eyes. “You just . . .” I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying anymore, which was a mistake. “You just do what crank cases do. You guys are tweaking and you take shit apart and you can’t get it back together because you’re on a tweaking thing. They all do that. It’s a simple inevitability.”

Curtis guffawed. “You hear that pretentious shit?” He put on his lame version of an English accent: “It’s a ‘simple inevitability’!” He stood up, locking his eyes on me.

My mother was feeling the plunge, the crash, slumping where she sat. Her voice was dead as she muttered, “Oh leave him alone; let’s put this shit back together—”—

“You know why he talks that way, the little fucking snot? He studies
art
, he reads Jane fucking Austen! How come? To keep himself separate from us, that’s what, to make himself higher—oh, he’s on a real higher fucking plane, your little prick—”—

“I don’t know why I’d want to keep separate,” I said, wishing I could shut up and run. “Why I wouldn’t want to be a crank burnout, I don’t know.”

“You little
fuck
! What’d you call me!”

After that, he was up and hitting me, and I was trying to shield myself with my school backpack and he was tearing it from me and swacking me with it, knocking me down, kicking me, cracking my ribs. Then I was scrambling away as my mom tried to pull him back, babbling something about I was just a kid and didn’t understand and forgive him, Curtis, for he knows not what he does. And then he caught me and was dragging me back by the shirttail and I was tearing my shirt to get away from him and running through waves of pain to get to the back door and shouting incoherently. He threw a stereo tweeter at me—it went through the kitchen window—and then he was hitting Mom because she was holding him back and I turned to pull him off her and he hit me, knocked me flat, breaking my nose, and then I heard shouts from the front door.