Running with the Demon Part 3

The demon studied the boy silently for a moment. "What's the dog's name?"

"It don't matter what his name is! Just pay me the dollar!" The boy's face was flushed and angry.

"Well, if I don't know his name," said the demon softly, "how can I call him off if he attacks someone?"

The dog sensed the boy's anger, and his hackles rose along the back of his neck and he bared his teeth with a low growl. "You just better give me the dollar, buddy," said the boy, a thin smile twisting his lips as he looked down at the dog and jiggled the chain meaningfully.

"Oh, I don't think I could do that," said the demon. "I don't carry any money. I don't have any need for it. People just give me what I want. I don't even need a dog like this one to make them do it." He smiled, his bland features crinkling warmly, his strange eyes fixing the boy. "That's not very good news for you, is it?"

The boy was staring at him. "You better pay me fast, b.u.t.t-head, or I might just let go of this chain!"

The demon shook his head reprovingly. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you. I'd keep a tight hold on that chain until I'm well down the road from here." He slipped his hands in his pockets and c.o.c.ked his head at the boy. "Tell you what. I'm a fair man. You just made a big mistake, but I'm willing to let it pa.s.s. I'll forget all about it if you apologize. Just say you're sorry and that will be the end of it."

The boy's mouth dropped. "What? What did you say?" The demon smiled some more. "You heard me." For an instant the boy froze, the disbelief on his face apparent. Then he mouthed a string of obscenities, dropped to his knee, and released the chain on the dog's collar. "Oops!" he snarled at the demon, flinging the chain away disdainfully, eyes hot and furious.

But the demon had already invoked his skill, a small, spare movement of one hand that looked something like the blessing of a minister at the close of a service. Outwardly, nothing seemed to change. The demon still stood there in the sweltering heat, head c.o.c.ked in seeming contemplation, bland face expressionless. The boy lurched to his feet as he released the dog, urging him to the attack with an angry shout. But something profound had changed in the boy. His look and smell and movement had become those of a frightened rabbit, flushed from cover and desperately trying to scurry to safety. The dog reacted on instinct. It wheeled on the boy instantly, lunging for his throat. The boy gave a cry of shock and fear as the dog slammed into him, knocking him from his feet. The boy's hands came up as he tumbled into the dirt of his yard, and he tried desperately to shield his face. The dog tore at the boy, and the boy's cries turned to screams. Drops of blood flew through the air. Scarlet threads laced the dusty earth.

The demon stood watching for several moments more before turning away to continue down the road. He read later that if the boy's body hadn't been found in front of his house, the authorities would have needed dental records to identify him. His family couldn't recognize him from what was left of his face. The dog, which one of the neighbors described as the boy's best friend, was quarantined for the mandatory ten days to determine if it had rabies and then put down.

Junior Elway pulled the Jeep Cherokee against the curb in front of the dilapidated apartment complex situated on Avenue L and West Third where Deny Howe rented a small, one-bedroom unit. They talked for a moment while the demon listened, agreeing to meet at Scrubby's for pizza and beer that evening. Both were divorced, on the downside of forty, and convinced that a lot of women were missing a good bet. Derry Howe climbed out of the Jeep, and the demon climbed out with him. Together they went up the walk as Junior Elway drove off.

Inside the apartment, the window fan was rattling and buzzing as it fought to withstand the heat. It was not adequate to the task, and the air in the apartment was close and warm. Derry Howe walked to the refrigerator, pulled out a can of Bud, walked back to the living room, and flopped down on the sofa. He was supposed to be on picket duty at the number-three plant, but he had begged off the night before by claiming that his back was acting up. His union supervisor had probably known he was lying, but had chosen to let it slide. Derry was encouraged. Already he was wondering if he could pull the same scam for Sunday's shift.

The demon sat in the rocker that had belonged to Derry Howe's grandmother before she died, the one his mother had inherited and in turn pa.s.sed on to him when he was married and she still had hopes for him. Now no one had any hopes for Derry Howe. Two tours in Vietnam followed by his failed marriage to a girl some thought would change him, a dozen arrests on various charges, some jail time served at the county lockup, and twenty years at MidCon with only one promotion and a jacket full of reprimands had pretty much settled the matter. The road that marked the course of his life had straightened and narrowed, and all that remained to be determined was how far it would run and how many more breakdowns he would suffer along the way.

It had not proved difficult for the demon to find Derry Howe. Really, there were so many like him that it scarcely took any effort at all. The demon had found him on the second day of his arrival in Hopewell, just by visiting the coffee shops and bars, just by listening to what the people of the town had to say. He had moved in with Howe right away, making himself an indispensable presence in the other's life, insinuating himself into the other's thoughts, twisting Derry's mind until he had begun to think and talk in the ways that were necessary. Hardly a challenge, but definitely a requirement if the demon's plans were to succeed. He was Deny Howe's shadow now, his conscience, his sounding board, his devil's advocate. His own, personal demon. And Deny Howe, in turn, was his creature.

The demon watched Howe finish his beer, struggle up in the stale air of the apartment, walk to the kitchen, and fish through the cluttered refrigerator for another. The demon waited patiently. The demon's life was wedded to his cause, and his cause required great patience. He had sacrificed everything to become what he was, but he knew from his transformation at the hands of the Void that sacrifice was required. After he had embraced the Void he had concealed himself until his conscience had rotted and fallen away and left him free. His name had been lost. His history had faded. , His humanity had dissipated and turned to dust. All that he had been had disappeared with the change, so that now he was reborn into his present life and made over into his higher form. It had been hard in the beginning, and once, in a moment of great weakness and despair, he had even thought to reject what he had so readily embraced. But in the end reason had prevailed, and he had forsaken all.

Now it was the cause that drove him, that fed him, that gave him his purpose in life. The cause was everything, and the Void defined the cause as need required. For now, for this brief moment in time, the cause was the destruction of this town and its inhabitants. It was the release of the feeders that lurked in the caves beneath Sinnissippi Park. It was the subversion of Deny Howe. It was the infusion of chaos and madness into the sheltered world of Hopewell.

And it was one thing more, the thing that mattered most.

Deny Howe returned to the sofa and seated himself with a grunt, sipping at his beer. He looked at the demon, seeing him clearly for the first time because the demon was ready now to talk.

"We got to do something, bud," Deny Howe intoned solemnly, nodding to emphasize the importance of his p.r.o.nouncement. "We got to stop those suckers before they break us."

The demon nodded in response. "If union men cross the picket line and return to work, the strike is finished."

"Can't let them do that." Howe worked his big hands around the beer bottle, twisting slowly. "d.a.m.n traitors, anyway! What the h.e.l.l they think they're doing, selling out the rest of us!"

"What to do?" mused the demon.

"Shoot a few, by G.o.d! That'll show them we mean business!"

The demon considered the prospect. "But "that might not stop the others from going back to work. And you would go to jail. You wouldn't be of any use then, would you?"

Deny Howe frowned. He took a long drink out of the bottle. "So what's the answer, bud? We have to do something."

"Think about it like this," suggested the demon, having already done so long ago. "The company plans to reopen the fourteen-inch using company men to fill the skill jobs and scabs to fill the gaps. If they can open one plant and bring back a few of the union men, they can work at opening the others as well. It will s...o...b..ll on you, if they can just get one mill up and running."

Howe nodded, his face flushed and intense. "Yeah, so?"

The demon smiled, drawing him in. "So, what happens if the company can't open the number-three plant? What happens if they can't get the fourteen-inch up and running?"

Deny Howe stared at him wordlessly, thinking it through.

The demon gave him a hand. "What happens if it becomes clear to everyone that it's dangerous to cross the picket line and work in the mills? What happens, Deny?"

"Yeah, right." A light came on somewhere behind Deny Howe's flat eyes. "No one crosses the line and the strike continues and the company has to give in. Yeah, I get it. But why wouldn't they start up the fourteen-inch? All they need's the workers. Unless..."

The demon spoke the words for him, in his own voice, almost as if in his own mind. "Unless there is an accident."

"An accident," breathed Deny Howe. Excitement lit his rawboned features. "A really bad accident."

"It happens sometimes," said the demon.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it? An accident. Maybe someone even gets killed. Yeah."

"Think about it," said the demon. "Something will come to you."

Derry Howe was smiling, his mind racing. He drank his beer and mulled over the possibilities the demon's words had suggested to him. It would take little effort from here. A few more nudges. One good push in the right direction. Howe had been a demolitions man in Vietnam. It wouldn't take much for him to figure out how to use that knowledge here. It wouldn't even take courage. It required stupidity and blind conviction, and Derry Howe had plenty of both. That was why the demon had picked him.

The demon leaned back in the rocker and looked away, suddenly bored. What happened with Derry Howe was of such little importance. He was just another match waiting to be struck. Perhaps he would catch fire. You never knew. The demon had learned a long time ago that an explosion resulted most often from an acc.u.mulation of sparks. It was a lesson that had served him well. Derry Howe was one of several sparks the demon would strike over the next three days. Some were bound to catch fire; some might even explode. But, in the final a.n.a.lysis, they were all just diversions intended to draw attention away from the demon's real purpose in coming to this tiny, insignificant Midwestern town. If things went the way he intended - and he had every reason to think they would - he would be gone before anyone had any idea at all of his interest in the girl.

And by then, of course, it would be too late to save her.

Chapter Five.

Nest Freemark went down the back steps two at a time, letting the screen door slam shut behind her. She winced at the sound, belatedly remembering how much it irritated Gran. She always forgot to catch the door. She didn't know why, she just did. She skipped off the gravel walk and onto the lawn, heading across the yard for the park. Mr. Scratch lay stretched out in the shade beneath the closest oak, a white and orange torn, his fluffy sides rising and falling with each labored breath. He was thirteen or fourteen, and he slept most of the time now, dreaming his cat dreams. He didn't even look up at her as she pa.s.sed, his eyes closed, his ragged ears and scarred face a worn mask of contentment. He had long ago forfeited his mouser duties to the younger and sprier Miss Minx, who, as usual, was nowhere to be seen. Nest smiled at the old cat as she pa.s.sed. Not for him the trials and tribulations of dealing with the feeders of Sinnissippi Park.

Nest had always known about the feeders. Or at least for as long as she could remember. Even when she hadn't known what they were, she had known they were there. She would catch glimpses of them sometimes, small movements seen out of the corner of one eye, bits and pieces of shadow that didn't quite fit in with their surroundings. She was very small then and not allowed out of the house alone, so she would stand at the windows at twilight, when the feeders were most likely to reveal themselves, and keep watch.

Sometimes her grandmother would take her for walks in the stroller in the cool of the evening, following the dark ribbon of the roadway as it wound through the park, and she would see them then as well. She would point, her eyes shifting to find her grandmother, her child's face solemn and inquisitive, and her grandmother would nod and say, "Yes, I see them. But you don't have to worry, Nest. They won't bother you."

Nor had they, although Nest had never really worried about it much back then. Not knowing what the feeders were, she simply a.s.sumed they were like the other creatures that lived in the park - the birds, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, deer, and what have you. Her grandmother never said anything about the feeders, never offered any explanation for them, never even seemed to pay them much attention. When Nest would point, she would always say the same thing and then let the matter drop. Several times Nest mentioned the feeders to her grandfather, but he just stared at her, glanced at her grandmother, and then smiled his most indulgent smile.

"He can't see them," her grandmother told her finally. "There's no point talking about it with him, Nest. He just doesn't see them."

"Why doesn't he?" she had asked, mystified.

"Because most people don't. Most people don't even know they exist. Only a lucky few can see them." She leaned close and touched the tip of Nest's small nose. "You and me, we can. But not Robert. Not your grandfather. He can't see them at all."

She hadn't said why that was. Her explanations were always like that, spare and laconic. She hadn't time for a lot of words, except when she was reading, which she did a lot. On her feet she was all movement and little talk, losing herself in her household tasks or her gardening or her walks in the park. That was then, of course. It wasn't the same anymore, because now Gran was older and drank more and didn't move around much at all. Small, gnarled, and gray, she sat at the kitchen table smoking her cigarettes and drinking her vodka and orange juice until noon and, afterward, her bourbon on the rocks until dusk. She still didn't say much, even when she could have, keeping what she knew to herself, keeping her explanations and her secrets carefully tucked away somewhere deep inside.

She told Nest early on not to talk about the feeders. She was quite emphatic about it. She did so about the same time she told the little girl that only the two of them could see the feeders, so there wasn't any point in discussing them with her grandfather. Or with anybody else, she amended soon after, apparently concerned that the increasingly talkative child might think to do so.

"It will just make people wonder about you," she declared. "It will make them think you are a bit strange. Because you can see the feeders and they can't. Think of the feeders as a secret that only you and I know about. Can you do that, Nest?"

Pretty much, she found she could. But the lack of a more thorough explanation on the matter was troubling and frustrating, and eventually Nest tested her grandmother's theory about other people's att.i.tudes on a couple of her friends. The results were exactly as her grandmother had predicted. Her friends first teased her and then ran to their parents with the tale. Their parents called her grandmother, and her grandmother was forced to allay their concerns with an overly convoluted explanation centered around the effects of fairy tales and make-believe on a child's imagination. Nest was very thoroughly dressed down. She was made to go back to her friends and their parents and to apologize for scaring them. She was five years old when that happened. It was the last time she told anyone about the feeders.

Of course, that was just the first of a number of secrets she learned to conceal about the creatures who lived in the park. Don't talk about the feeders, her grandmother had warned, and in the end she did not. But there were a lot of other things she couldn't talk about either, and for a while it seemed there was something new every time she turned around.

"Do you think the feeders would ever hurt me, Gran?" she asked once, disturbed by something she had seen in one of her picture books that reminded her of the furtiveness of their movements in the shadows of summer twilight and the dismal gloom of midday whiter. "If they had the chance, I mean?"

They were alone, sitting at the kitchen table playing dominoes on a cold midwinter Sunday, her grandfather ensconced in his den, listening to a debate over foreign aid.

Her grandmother looked up at her, her bright, darkly luminescent bird's eyes fixed and staring. "If they had the chance, yes. But that will never happen."

Nest frowned. "Why not?"

"Because you are my granddaughter."

Nest frowned some more. "What difference does that make?"

"All the difference" was the reply. "You and I have magic, Nest. Didn't you know?"

"Magic?" Nest had breathed the word in disbelief. "Why? Why do we have magic, Gran?"

Her grandmother smiled secretively. "We just do, child. But you can't tell anyone. You have to keep it to yourself."

"Why?"

"You know why. Now, go on, it's your turn, make your play. Don't talk about it anymore."

That was the end of the matter as far as her grandmother was concerned, and she didn't mention it again. Nest tried to bring it up once or twice, but her grandmother always made light of, the matter, as if having magic was nothing, as if it were the same as being brown-eyed or right-handed. She never explained what she meant by it, and she never provided any evidence that it was so. Nest thought she was making it up, the same way she made up fairy tales now and then to amuse the little girl. She was doing it to keep Nest from worrying about the feeders. Magic, indeed, Nest would think, then point her fingers at the wall and try unsuccessfully to make something happen.

But then she discovered Wraith, and the subject of magic suddenly took on a whole new meaning. It was when she was still five, shortly after her attempt at telling her friends about the feeders and almost a year before she met Pick. She was playing in her backyard on the swing set, pretending at flying as she rose and fell at the end of the creaking chains, comfortably settled in the cradle of the broad canvas strap. It was a late-spring day, the air cool yet with winter's fading breath, the gra.s.s new and dappled with jack-in-the-pulpit and bleeding heart, the leaves on the oaks and elms beginning to bud. Heavy clouds scudded across the Midwest skies, bringing rain out of the western plains, and the sunlight was pale and thin. Her grandparents were busy inside, and since she was forbidden to leave the yard without them and had never done so before, there was no reason for them to believe she would do so now.

But she did. She got down out of the swing and walked to the end of the yard where the hedgerow was still thin with new growth, slipped through a gap in the intertwined limbs, and stepped onto forbidden ground. She didn't know exactly what it was that prompted her to do so. It had something to do with thinking about the feeders, with picturing them as they appeared and faded in shadowy patches along the fringes of her yard. She wondered about them constantly, and on this day she simply decided to have a look. Did they conceal themselves on the other side of the hedge, just beyond her view? Did they burrow into the ground like moles? What did they do back there where she couldn't see? Why, her inquisitive five-year-old mind demanded, shouldn't she try to find out?

So there she was, standing at the edge of the park, staring out across the broad, flat, gra.s.sy expanse of ball diamonds and picnic grounds to where the bluffs rose south and the wooded stretches began east, a pioneer set to explore a wondrous new world. Not that day, perhaps, for she knew she would not be going far on her first try. But soon, she promised herself. Soon.

Her eyes shifted then, and she became aware of the feeders. They were crouched within a copse of heavy brush that screened the Peterson backyard some fifty feet away, watching her. She saw them as you would a gathering of shadows on a gray day, indistinct and nebulous. She caught a glimpse of their flat, yellow eyes shining out of the darkness like a cat's. She stood where she was, looking back, trying to see them more clearly, trying to determine better what they were. She stared intently, losing track of time as she did so, forgetting where she was and what she was about, mesmerized.

Then a drop of rain fell squarely on her nose, cold and wet against her skin. She blinked in surprise, and suddenly the feeders were all around her, and she was so terrified that she could feel her fear writhing inside her like a living thing.

And, just as suddenly, they were gone again. It happened so fast that she wasn't sure if it was real or if she had imagined it. In the blink of an eye, they had appeared. In another blink, they had gone. How could they move so quickly? What would make them do so?

She saw Wraith then, standing a few feet away, a dark shape in the deepening gray, so still he might have been carved from stone. She didn't know his name then, or what he was, or where he had come from. She stared at him, unable to look away, riveted by the sight of him. She thought he was the biggest creature she had ever seen this close up, bigger even, it seemed to her at that moment, than the horses she had petted once on a visit to the Lehman farm. He appeared to be some sort of dog, immense and fierce-looking and as immovable as the ma.s.sive shade trees that grew in her backyard. He was brindle in color; his muzzle and head bore tiger-stripe markings and his body hair bristled like a porcupine's quills. Oddly enough, she was not frightened by him. She would always remember that. She was awestruck, but she was not frightened. Not in the way she was of the feeders. He was there, she realized, without quite being sure why, to protect her from them.

Then he disappeared, and she was alone. He simply faded away, as if composed of smoke scattered by a sudden gust of wind. She stared into the s.p.a.ce he had occupied, wondering at him. The park stretched away before her, silent and empty in the failing light. Then the rain began to fall in earnest, and she made a dash for the house.

She saw Wraith often after that, possibly because she was looking for him, possibly because he had decided to reveal himself. She still didn't know what he was, and neither did anyone else. Pick told her later that he was some sort of crossbreed, a mix of dog and wolf. But really, since he was created from and held together by magic, his genetic origins didn't make any difference. Whatever he was, he was probably the only one of his kind. Pick confirmed her impression that he was there to protect her. Matter of fact, he advised rather solemnly, Wraith had been shadowing her since the first time she had come into the park, still a baby in her stroller. She wondered at first how she could have missed seeing him, but then discovered that she had missed seeing a lot of other things as well, and it didn't seem so odd.

When she finally told her grandmother about Wraith, her grandmother's response was strange. She didn't question what Nest was telling her. She didn't suggest that Nest might be mistaken or confused. She went all still for a moment, her eyes a.s.sumed a distant look, and her thin, old hands tightened about the mittens she was knitting.

"Did you see anything else?" she asked softly.

"No," said Nest, wondering suddenly if there was something she should have seen.

"He just appeared, this dog did? The feeders came close to you, and the dog appeared?" Gran's eyes were sharp and bright.

"Yes. That first time. Now I just see him following me sometimes, watching me. He doesn't come too close. He always stays back. But the feeders are afraid of him. I can tell."

Her grandmother was silent.

"Do you know what he is?" Nest pressed anxiously.

Her grandmother held her gaze. "Perhaps."

"Is he there to protect me?"

"I think we have to find that out."

Nest frowned. "Who sent him, Gran?"

But her grandmother only shook her head and turned away. "I don't know," she answered, but the way she said it made Nest think that maybe she did.

For a long tune, Nest was the only one who saw the dog. Sometimes her grandmother would come into the park with her, but the dog did not show himself on those occasions.

Then one day, for no reason that Nest could ever determine, he appeared out of a cl.u.s.ter of spruce at twilight while the old woman and her granddaughter walked through the west-end play area toward the cliffs. Her grandmother froze, holding on to the little girl's hand tightly.

"Gran?" Nest said uncertainly.

"Wait here for me, Nest," her grandmother replied. "Don't move."

The old woman walked up to the big animal and knelt before him. It was growing dark, and it was hard to see clearly, but it seemed to Nest as if her grandmother was speaking to the beast. It was very quiet, and she could almost hear the old woman's words. She remained standing for a while, but then she grew tired and sat down on the gra.s.s to wait. There was no one else around. Stars began to appear in the sky and shadows to swallow the last of the fading light. Her grandmother and the dog were staring at each other, locked hi a strange, silent communication that went on for a very long time.

Finally her grandmother rose and came back to her. The strange dog watched for a moment, then slowly melted back into the shadows.

"It's all right, Nest," her grandmother whispered in a thin, weary voice, taking her hand once more. "His name is Wraith. He is here to protect you."

She never spoke of the meeting again.

As Nest wriggled her way through the hedgerow at the back of her yard, she paused for a moment at the edge of the rutted dirt service road that ran parallel to the south boundary of the lot and recalled anew how Sinnissippi Park had appeared to her that first time. So long ago, she thought, and smiled at the memory. The park had seemed much bigger then, a vast, sprawling, mysterious world of secrets waiting to be discovered and adventures begging to be lived. At night, sometimes, when she was abroad with Pick, she still felt as she had when she was five, and the park, with its dark woods and gloomy ravines, with its murky sloughs and ma.s.sive cliffs, seemed as large and unfathomable as it had then.

But now, in the harsh light of the July midday, the sun blazing down out of another cloudless sky, the heat a faint shimmer rising off the burned-out flats, the park seemed small and constrained. The ball fields lay just beyond the service road, their parched diamonds turned dusty and hardened and dry, their gra.s.sy outfields gray-tipped and spiky. There were four altogether, two close and two across the way east. Farther on, a cl.u.s.ter of hardwoods and spruce shaded a play area for small children, replete with swings and monkey bars and teeter-totters and painted animals on heavy springs set in concrete that you could climb aboard and ride.

The entrance to the park was to Nest's immediate right, and the blacktop road leading into the park ran under the crossbar toward the river before splitting off in two directions. If you went right, you traveled to the turnaround and the cliffs, where the previous night she had rescued Bennett Scott. Beyond the turnaround, separated from the park by a high chain-link fence that any kid over the age of seven who was worth his salt could climb, was Riverside Cemetery, rolling, tree-shaded, and sublimely peaceful. The cemetery was where her mother was buried. If you turned left off the blacktop, you either looped down under a bridge to the riverbank at the bottom of the cliffs, where a few picnic tables were situated, or you continued on some distance to the east end of the park where a large, sheltered pavilion, a toboggan slide, a playground, and the deep woods waited. The toboggan slide ran all the way from the heights beyond the parking lot to the reedy depths of the bayou. A good run hi deep winter would take you out across the ice all the way to the embankment that supported the railroad tracks running east to Chicago and west to the plains. Stretching a ran to the embankment was every toboggan rider's goal. Nest had done it three times. There were large brick-chimney and smaller iron hibachi-style cooking stations and wooden picnic tables all over the park, so that any number of church outings or family reunions could be carried on at one tune. Farther east, back in the deep woods, there were nature trails that ran from the Woodland Heights subdivision where Robert Heppler lived down to the banks of the Rock River. There were trees that were well over two hundred years old. Some of the oaks and elms and s.h.a.gbark hickories rose over a hundred feet, and the park was filled with dark, mysterious places that whispered of things you couldn't see, but could only imagine and secretly wish for.

The park was old, Nest knew. It had never been anything but a park. Before it was officially t.i.tled and protected by state law, it had been an untamed stretch of virgin timber. No one had lived there since the time of the Indians. Except, of course, the feeders.