The Demon Conspiracy (37 page)

The spindly little demon emerged from the
drainage pipe in the cul-de-sac at the end of Oak Avenue. He paused
in the pitch-blackness of the tunnel, knowing he was entirely
invisible to any humans that might be outside in the night air. He
turned to his five companions.

“Da way’s clear,” he hissed in his softest
demon whisper. Numerous sets of glowing eyes blinked open before
him. Some were bright red, some deep yellow, and one set of three
in a triangle shape was translucent pink. The other demons listened
intently. “We’re a demon death squad and ya knows da plan so don’t
screws up. Finds a good shadow and stays outta sight till I gives
da signal.”

“What’s the signal?” asked the demon with
pink eyes.

“Dammit, Klawfinger!” barked Lipsludge. “We
wents over dis before we lefts da caves!”

One of the other demons nudged Klawfinger
and whispered to him. “The signal is when Lipsludge says ‘Get ‘em
boys!’”

“Get ‘em boys?” Klawfinger scratched his
head with a giant lobster claw-like hand. “Okay, got it.”

“When we gets in da house, finds da right
place and stays outta sight. Klawfinger, you hides by da big oak
tree out front. Dere’s plenty of shadow dere, even for you. No
matter what, you keeps ‘em in da house so we can deals wit’
em’.”

“Oak tree, got it. Hey, Lipsludge, if
there’s an oak tree do you think that’s why they call it Oak
Avenue?”

Lipsludge shook his head. “Yer as hopeless
as a human.”

About then the porch light came on at the
front of the house. A moment later an adult woman emerged and
walked to one of the cars. The demons shrank back into the shadows
until the car had driven off.

“Das better,” said Lipsludge. “Won’ts be as
many of ‘em now. Remembers, all of you. We’res Demon Nation! Let’s
go!”

Each of the demons whispered the word under
their breath. “Demon Nation.”

As the demons moved silently and quickly
from shadow to shadow in the moonlit night, Lipsludge kept an eye
on both his crew and the houses. The massive demon, Klawfinger,
disappeared behind the great oak tree like he was supposed to and
Lipsludge gave him the thumb’s up. As Lipsludge went to the front
porch of the McCormicks’ house to test the door, a man-sized demon
with four arms moved up behind him.

“Lipsludge,” said the four-armed demon. “The
house next door’s supposed to be empty. They got lights in
there.”

“Don’t worries about da house next door,”
said Lipsludge. “We does our job right, they won’ts even knows we
wasez here. It’lls be a piece o’ cake.” He turned the knob easily
and the door swung open. He looked back at Four-arms and grinned
horribly. “Now ain’ts they courteous to leaves da door unlocked?
Like I says, a piece o’ cake!”

30

BREAKING AND
ENTERING

MANSON

Manson Stanfield ran along the roadway
carefully watching every step. Her frog-demon mask was loose
fitting with a tendency to block her vision and she didn’t want to
turn her ankle in the loose gravel. She followed Donnivee and Kurt
Lazarus, who also wore horrible demon masks and grotesque rubbery
hands. Kurt stopped running and ducked into a dense thicket at the
edge of the cul-de-sac.

“There it is,” he said, pointing at the
McCormicks’ house. They took off their masks. Kurt’s was a
horrible-looking oversized head with nearly a dozen fake eyes
mounted in a bloody skull. He wiped sweat on his shirtsleeve. “That
stupid mask is hot. I can’t see for crap.”

“We have to wear ‘em or they’ll know who we
are,” said Donnivee. Her mask was a cross between a vampire and
some kind of grisly wolf-like creature. “I can’t get caught. My dad
would kill me.”

“We won’t get caught,”
said Kurt flatly. “I
never
get caught.” He bent down and kissed Donnivee on
the mouth. Right away she threw an arm around his neck and they
started making out in front of Manson.

“This is real cool, guys,” said Manson, a
little peeved and plenty nervous. “Can’t you wait till we’re
done?”

Kurt broke the kiss and laughed at Manson.
“You’re just mad cuz Robbie didn’t show up.”

“Wrong,” said Manson worriedly. “I don’t
want to get caught cuz you two’d rather mess around than get to
work. Look at that house next door, it’s all lit up. You said it
was empty.”

“It was empty last weekend,” said Donnivee.
“Now it’s not. So what?”

“So what? They could see us!”

“Not if you stay outta the light,” said
Kurt. “When you’re in a house with the lights on at night, you
can’t see squat outside the windows. Come on.”

Manson pulled on her mask and followed as
the brilliant half moon cast shadows over the street and yard. A
slow moving, curdling fog moved through the trees and was just
beginning to settle above the ground. They knelt beside the
Mustang, which was parked by the curb, and kept their heads down.
Manson suddenly remembered something.

“Where’s the minivan?” she asked. “They have
two cars. I’ve seen the minivan.”

“Who cares?” said Kurt. “It’s not here. That
means nobody’s here but those girls.”

“How do you know they’re still here?” asked
Manson.

Kurt pointed to one of the basement windows.
Manson strained to see what was there, but all she could make out
were several candles inside. A moment later a shadow moved by the
window and she got a brief look at Kelly as she glided in and out
of view.

“It’s her!” said Donnivee. Manson could tell
her friend was so angry that she could hardly keep from diving
through the window after Kelly.

“Come on,” said Kurt. “Back door.” He led
them around the garage while Manson nervously watched the house
next door. She saw people in there working and moving about, but
apparently Kurt was right. From inside the brightly lit house, they
couldn’t see anything outdoors, even if it moved.

At last they made it to the shadows behind
the house and Kurt studied the situation.

“Stay here.” He leaped up on the deck and
silently crossed the rough wooden planks until he came to the
sliding glass door. He tried the door. Manson could just see him in
the filtered moonlight as he pulled hard and the door slid open.
“Can you believe these fools? They don’t even lock up! Let’s
go!”

Manson followed Donnivee to the door, but
her heart was pounding. There was no way she wanted to go into that
house, though she was afraid Donnivee and Kurt might hurt her if
she didn’t. She looked around, her hands shaking as she stopped at
the doorway.

“Wait,” she said, trying to hide the obvious
fear in her voice. “What if the foster mom comes back? If she pulls
into the driveway we won’t see her. We’ll get trapped in here, or
worse.”

Donnivee gave her a dangerous look and
Manson thought she might get punched. But Kurt nodded. “Good
thinking, Manson. You stay here and keep guard. If somebody comes,
scream. We’ll get outta here fast. Anybody else who hears you will
be so startled they’ll probably wet their pants and hide. Come on,
Donnivee.”

“Don’t be long, okay?”

“We’ll be in and out like the wind,” said
Kurt.

Donnivee looked back at her best friend.
“Yeah,” she repeated. “Like the wind.”

Manson waited reluctantly by the sliding
glass door as Kurt and Donnivee moved through the kitchen and
disappeared around a corner, Manson heard them talking.

“Manson was too scared to come in,” said
Donnivee angrily.

“So?” said Kurt. “We don’t want her with us
when we’re messing around.”

Manson was steaming hot inside the mask, but
she was cold everywhere else. Maybe she was scared, she didn’t
know. But whether it was fear or just the brisk night air, she did
not want to be here waiting for that stupid Kurt. They were going
to get caught, she could feel it.

She stepped off the deck and went to the
corner of the house by the garage. She heard the whirring of
electric drills from the house next door and looked that way. Every
now and then somebody would move past a window and cast a shadow
across the narrow yard between the houses. This whole thing was too
stupid. If it were just she and Donnivee, everything would be fine.
But Kurt was an idiot, even if he was nineteen. That settled it.
Manson had had enough of breaking and entering.

She went back to the deck and glanced into
the semi-dark house to see if her friends were coming out. All she
saw was a glow of light from the hallway. They turned on a light?
Kurt was so stupid! Manson Stanfield cursed under her breath and
ran around the side of the house, right past the basement windows
on ground level. She stumbled over something in the dark and pulled
off her mask. Then she ran as fast as she could to the woods across
the road and all the way home.

KELLY

“Okay, we got the candles lit, it’s night
and there’s at least two of us,” said Melissa, scanning the
directions she’d gotten off the internet about using a Ouija board.
“I’ll be the medium because I know more about ghosts, and stuff,
okay? Remember, I’m the only one who can ask the questions. But if
you have a specific question you want to ask, just think it to me,
and I’ll ask it.”

I nodded, watching her set up her iPhone on
a special stand. She made adjustments, so it was recording
everything we did, and said. “What’s with the video? You’re not
streaming us live, are you?”

“Course, not. What if something happened,
and we looked like complete idiots?” Melissa laughed. “No, I’m
recording this, just in case.”

“Just in case…what?”

“We make contact.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Angie to get
back?”

“We’ll be fine. There. It’s kind of a long
shot, but everything is in the picture. Now, sit close enough to
me, so our knees touch. Good. This thing here is called the
planchette. We both have to put our fingers on it, to make it work,
when we ask questions.”

“Who are we asking questions to?”

“Spirits. Ghosts, you know.”

“We’re gonna ask dead people a bunch of
questions?”

“Yep. But here it says, we need to begin
with some simple yes and no questions. I’ll start. Spirits, are you
with us?”

I looked at the planchette and held my
breath. For a moment nothing happened. Then I felt it start to
move. “You’re doing that, right?” As soon as I spoke, the
planchette stopped moving.

Melissa shushed me. “I’m the medium! Don’t
talk, or you’ll scare them away. Let’s try again. Spirits, are you
with us?”

This time the planchette
moved slowly toward the word
yes
on the board. I immediately went into Melissa’s
thoughts, and listened, to find out if she’d moved the
device.

“They’re here,” said Melissa firmly. “I can
feel their presence.” All at once a shadow moved quickly past the
window behind me. Melissa freaked. “A ghost!”

I nearly choked with fear, until I picked up
the thoughts of the person outside. “It’s Manson Stanfield! She’s
afraid of something. She’s running home!” I scanned some more.
“Kurt Lazarus and Donnivee are in the house, right now!”

Melissa pushed the planchette out of the
way, and grabbed her cell phone. “Come on, Kelly. We need some
weapons!”

I searched the basement for something to use
as a weapon, and remembered seeing Chris, a few weeks ago, with a
metal pipe and a baseball bat, that he’d found under the stairs. We
looked there, and found both items. Melissa took the pipe, which
was nearly as long as the bat, and met me at the base of the steps.
She held the pipe in one hand, and the cell phone in the other.

“You’re recording?”

“We might need the evidence.”

“How are you going to record, and swing the
pipe, at the same time.”

Melissa thought, as her eyes got a little
crazy. “I’ll figure it out as I go. Let’s do this!”

“Wait!” I said. “Are we
gonna
hit
them
with these? We could
kill
them!”

“Hit ‘em in the knees. They won’t run away.
Then I’ll record them, lying on your floor, confessing about why
they broke into your house.”

I nodded, and slowly followed Melissa up the
basement stairs. As we passed silently through the kitchen, we
heard the ceiling creak above us. I looked up.

“They’re in my room!” I
whispered. “They’re looking for something of mine to
steal
!”

“Of course,” said Melissa, her voice almost
too soft for me to hear. “Why else would Donnivee come here?” We
hurried to the stairway by the front door.

“Maybe we should call the police,” I
whispered, reaching into my pants pocket for my cell phone. “Wait,
my cell phone’s on the charger in my room.”

“We can call later. I’ve got an idea. You go
in the den on that side of the stairs, and I’ll hide in the living
room. When they come down, we’ll clobber them from both sides!”

I was uncertain and tense, but I liked the
plan. Donnivee and Kurt would never see us coming. How dare them
enter my house and try to steal something! It made me hot with
anger to think that they‘d broken in, just to hurt me, and my
family, in some way. If we got them on video, that would be all the
evidence we’d need for the police. Maybe we could keep them trapped
upstairs, until Angie got home. Then they’d be in big trouble.

But, as mad as I was, I
wondered, could I
really
hurt one of them? What if they were crippled for
life? Part of me said,
Good! Clobber
‘em!
But my stupid compassionate side made
me fearful that I might not swing the bat all that hard, when it
came down to it. I became angry at my own softness. They had come
into my house for one purpose: to steal from me. They might even
try to beat me up, too! I worked up my anger again and swung the
bat at the air. I had a pretty good swing. The bat felt right in my
hands.