The Demon Senders Read online

  “Not anymore, you’re not. You’re a sender and based on your bar friend’s reaction to you, a damn dangerous sender.”

  My head was spinning and not from the screwdriver Rachel made me, though after taking my first sip, I wouldn’t have been surprised if my head spun right off my body. She added an awful lot of vodka. “Is there any orange juice in this at all?” I asked.

  “Trust me,” Rachel said, “you’re going to be happy it’s so strong.”

  I took another shallow draw. “So, where do we begin?”

  “How much do you know?” she asked. Her face softened as she spoke, revealing her true and striking beauty. Her brown eyes belonged to someone who had seen too much misery in this world and displayed in them was a kindness and softness that could melt the coldest of hearts.

  Almost the coldest of hearts.

  “What do I know?” I said. “About what? About what that freak said to me in the bar? What do I know about what?” My voice was climbing up the volume ladder a bit more quickly than I liked. I didn’t want Rachel to think I was yelling at her, but, damn, she was asking me what I knew about something I had absolutely no knowledge of at all.

  “Anything strange happen to you recently?” she asked. “Meet anyone you’d consider ‘bizarre?’ ”

  “I’m a musician,” I said, my voice obeyed my desire and was held at a more conversationally suitable level. “I meet bizarre people every freaking day.” I was avoiding her question and I think she knew it. I certainly knew I was avoiding answering her question because a part of me really wanted to believe the whole “hot breath dude” I nearly ran over in my Astro van never really happened. That someone at Shorty’s slipped something into my beer and caused some hallucinations. Could have been Mr. Shorty himself. A bit of payback for me playing one of my original tunes instead of sticking to a widely accepted and recognized songbook bar musicians around the world stuck close to. If I had chosen to play “American Pie” instead of “Roses and Stones,” hell, I probably would have landed that gig I lost because of Hazy Face and wouldn’t be sitting in Rachel’s living room, finding out I’m some spiritual warrior.

  “Everything happens for a reason,” my mom used to say. I hate that expression. I always have. Probably because I’m not a fan of believing in fate and its death grip on the future. But, as things turned out, maybe all these things did happen for a reason. Maybe they had to happen.

  Rachel looked into my eyes. Deep into them, like she was exploring my brain with her eyes. “You know what I mean. Tell me, has anything strange happened to you recently?”

  She was good, I had to give her that. Either she had a connection with the realm I was just finding out about that was damn strong, or she could read me like a book. If she wasn’t in whatever occupation category you would put “demon hunter” under, I bet Rachel would have made an exceptional trial lawyer.

  I explained to her about my experience during my drive home from Shorty’s, the feather and its magical teleportation abilities and how I tried to convince myself I either imagined the whole thing or was drugged. “I suppose I would enter that into the ‘Strange Life Events’ page in my journal.”

  “Tell me what the man in the car said to you. Exactly what he said, if you can remember.”

  I did the best I could and told her everything I remembered the old creep saying to me. I’m sure I left out a few things and probably didn’t quote him word for word, but as soon as I finished talking, Rachel’s expression told me that one hundred percent accuracy didn’t really matter.

  “That wasn’t a coincidence, Trevor. That old man, that ‘creep’, as you called him, he was waiting for you. He probably wasn’t sure what he was going to do if you stopped for him, which explains a lot.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, standing up and fully intending to get the hell out of her apartment and away from this conversation. “I’m not even sure the whole thing happened.” My mind was made up on leaving Rachel and that whole conversation behind me, which was something that didn’t happen for me all too often. I always liked to keep my options on the table. I said what I had to say, reached down and pounded down what was left of my screwdriver and turned towards the door.

  “It really happened, Trevor and your life is never going to be the same.”

  I sat back down.

  <<<<>>>>

  “This world, the people, the animals, we’re not alone. There’re more who walk among us. Some we see and never give a second thought about and others, there are others we never see. But they can see us. They hear our conversations and watch us do things when we think no one can see us. Some are good and seek only to offer assistance, while others have more malicious intentions.

  “There’s another realm where these others exist. We can’t see this realm or feel its presence but it is real. There are several who tell us they can contact others in this realm and can, in their own unique way, communicate with these beings.”

  “Like psychics?” I asked. Honestly, I wasn’t buying what she was selling but something about the way she talked—and the way she looked—made me want to listen. Like I didn’t have much choice in the matter. And in a strange way I can’t explain, I felt what she was saying and what she was going to say was the drop-dead honest truth.

  “Psychics, mediums and even some who are well practiced in meditation claim the ability to contact this realm. Some make the claim in order to earn their living, but some can actually communicate. Nine times out of ten, these conversations are harmless, beneficial, actually. But nine out of ten isn’t a hundred percent. Very few of these connections are dangerous. These communications open a door between our world and this realm. And once the door is open, bad things can come through.”

  “And when these bad things come through?” I asked.

  “That’s your job. That’s who you are. A sender. You send back the bad things. Like it or not, you are now deeply involved in the never-ending battle between good and evil.”

  What Rachel was telling me was made easier to believe by how genuine she seemed. Now, I know crazy comes in all different packages and if she was crazy, it sure was wrapped in some damn fine packaging. Somehow and for some reason, everything she was telling me resounded with some part of me.

  Rachel was telling me the truth that I guess I always knew. I was different from others. My grandmother told me so a hundred times, I just never listened to her. And there were things that happened to me. Strange things that, looking back, were signs that my grandmother was right. I remember when I was around six, maybe seven, there was this crow that followed me around everywhere I went. I woke up one morning and the crow was sitting outside my bedroom window. Actually, it may have been a raven. No matter, I know it was a big, black bird and seeing him sitting outside my window on the ledge that morning scared the living hell out of me.

  Wherever I went for five or so days, the damn raven followed me. I’d walk downstairs to the kitchen, and sure enough, the damn bird would fly down and perch itself on the kitchen window. I’d go outside and the bird would keep me in sight the whole time. Like I said, it followed me around for almost a week.

  One morning, I woke up, glanced out my window and the bird was gone. I ran and told my dad—who never really thought too much about the whole thing—and he just smiled and said the bird probably found another kid to scare. That made sense except that besides the first time I saw it sitting outside my bedroom window, the bird never scared me. It actually felt comforting, like it was watching over me.

  Anyway, a couple of hours later, I hear my dad calling me from outside. He was standing right below my second story bedroom window looking down at the ground. It was my bird he was looking at and it was laying on the ground, dead.

  “I’m certainly no bird expert,” my dad said with his eyes never leaving the dead bird, “but it looks to me like this bird starved to death. Look how skinny it is.”

  He was right. Most of the birds I’d seen had some beef about them. But this one, it had no
thing to it. It was still pretty tall as far as birds go, but I would have bet if those feathers were taken off, I would have seen nothing but little bird bones sticking out through its skin.

  My dad helped me bury the bird out behind the work shed in the backyard. I didn’t feel bad, mind you, but I was pretty sure I was going to miss the thing watching over me. Later that day, my grandmother came over to the house for dinner. I told her the whole bird story, complete with how my dad and I believe it starved itself to death.

  Now, my grandmother was always a bit off. Strange but in a grandmotherly way, if there is such a thing. When I finished telling her the story, she looked me dead in the eye, smiled, and said, “That bird knew you’re special, just like I know you’re special. That bird would rather watch your every move than eat. That’s a sign, Trevor. A sign that you’re special.”

  There were a whole bunch of other things that happened to me that, if I did keep a journal, would have gone into that “Strange Live Events” part. I won’t bore you with all the details, partly because you probably wouldn’t think some of the things that happened to me were all that strange and partly because I don’t know how much time I have left to tell you the real important parts of my story. Suffice it to say, when Rachel was talking to me, all those strange life events kind of clicked in my head. Like they were all connected. All telling me that my grandmother was right and getting me ready to really listen and to believe what Rachel was telling me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Over the next two hours, Rachel did her best to explain things. The more she told me, the more I felt everything was spot on. As incredible as it was, the more she said the more impossible it was for me to deny. The stories she told me just sat right with my brain and soul, like her words were plugging holes I didn’t know existed. The more she spoke, the better I felt about things.

  She told me about Hell and how demons who cross over from the other realm roam the Earth looking to steal souls as their trophies. She told me how these demos earn a higher status in Hell with each soul they steal. A demon steals a soul by making its target do something horrible, something far outside the target’s normal personality. Like the person who suddenly commits mass murder. Or the person who kills themselves, surprising everyone who knew them. The worst is when a demon’s target is a baby. The demon infects the mind and the child doesn’t have a chance from the get go. It’s horrible the ways they infect a person and horrible what things they convince the infected person to do. After their targets commit whatever terrible act the demon persuades them to do, the demon owns their soul. And when that person dies, their soul goes to the worst levels in Hell.

  “The new souls go through some type of initiation or cleansing. I’m not really sure. I’ve only picked up bits and pieces from some of the demons we sent back. But from what I’ve heard, Hell is everything you were told it was when you were a kid. The only way a Hell-trapped soul can earn any status in Hell, is by stealing human souls and bringing them to Hell. The more souls stolen, the higher their status. Again, I don’t know how it all works. A lot of what I am telling you is speculation.”

  “And senders, people like me, we are supposed to find these demons and send them back to Hell before they can steal a soul?”

  “Essentially, yes. You send them back to Hell. Again, I’m not sure about this, but I believe once they get sent back, they lose their status and have to go through the initiation all over again. Right before we sent one back a while ago, he started screaming and crying about what we were about to do to him.”

  “Hell has an initiation?” I asked. “What is it, a really bad fraternity?”

  “Again, I certainly don’t know for sure, but from what some demons said when they knew they were going to be sent back, it seems that when a soul ends up in Hell, it must be purged of all hope. When anything loses all its hope, there’s nothing much left.” Rachel looked distant for a moment, like she was trying to imagine what it would be like to have your hope ripped from your soul. “From what I can figure out, the only way all hope is taken is through terrible pain. I imagine the initiation is like what someone dying of some horrible, painful disease must feel like. Horrible, unrelenting pain till there’s nothing left to feel. No hope except for death.”

  That created an image in my mind of how my grandmother died. She came down with bone cancer a few years before this whole “sender” thing came into my life. I remember sitting by her hospital bed and her crying for more morphine. She just wanted the pain to end and I’m sure she gave up any hope of getting better. If I were to guess, people don’t really die until they surrender all their hopes of living.

  I took a big hit from my orange juice flavored vodka before I felt Rachel was ready to continue the conversation.

  “So,” I said, “you said before ‘we’ sent them back. So am I to assume you’re a sender as well?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m like a sender’s assistant. A spotter.”

  “I’m afraid to ask, but what happened to your last sender?”

  “Every sender is targeted, just like you have been targeted. Not sure, but I believe if a demon is able to steal a sender’s soul, it gets extra rewards. The last sender I worked with was named Jim Darden. He was a good man but, over the years, he grew too confident. He tried to send back a demon without me, which he had done before. But with the last one, he was sloppy and it cost him.”

  “Was he the only other sender you’ve partnered with?”

  “There were others. Three others, to be exact.”

  “And all three were, what, taken by demons?” I asked, as fear about my newly discovered role crept in.

  “Two were,” Rachel told me. “Two were taken and one, my first sender, died of natural causes. He was very old when I met him. He had been sending demons back for decades before he and I got together. Must have been in his eighties when his heart stopped.”

  We talked for another hour or so about her past encounters with demons, how they were sent back and the many ways a sending can go bad.

  “Once I help you identify a demon and get you in the right place at the right time, my work is pretty much done. The demon will be near water—it has to be—and you’ll need to drown it in order to send it back.”

  “So for me to send back a demon, I have to drown it? There’s no other way? I mean, a bullet to the head would be a hell of a lot easier.”

  “Drowning them is the only way to send them back. You need to hold their heads under the water until their bodies go limp and begin to fade away. You’ll know when they’ve been sent back. And I can’t help you with that part of the job. I can help with everything up to the drowning, but then, it’s all up to you.”

  “Seems to me that a demon should avoid water at all costs. Hell, if I was a demon, I’d do my work in a desert.”

  “That would make sense,” Rachel said. “But, they need water to stay on this side. They manifest in water and, based on what I’ve seen, they spend as much time as they can near or in water. Kind of makes sending them back easier for you. I know this is all new to you and probably very overwhelming. I wish I had more information to give but a lot of what I’ve done and what you’ll be doing is a mystery. Why do they stay near water when they know water is where they will be sent back? I don’t know.”

  “How many senders are there walking around this Earth?” There was something about my last question that really smacked me upside my head. It wasn’t the question itself, it was how casually I had asked it. My asking about how many senders there were felt more like I had asked how the Yankees did in last nights game. I was way too comfortable with believing everything, and that scared me.

  A lot.

  “I have no idea,” Rachel said, as she stood, walked to her kitchen to pour me another orange juice flavored vodka. “All I know is you and I will do a bit of traveling together but that we never have to go all that far. With Jim, we lived near Cleveland and never had to travel past Maine to the east, Toronto to the north, Chicago to the
west and North Carolina to the south. There must be other senders out there because I can’t believe demons only target people in a few states.”

  “So now our ‘home base’ will be where?”

  “Right here,” she said, handing me my third drink of the day. “Your apartment is too hot for us to stay there. Too many eyes watching and too many ears listening. You’ll stay at your apartment but as soon as I sense our services are needed, we’ll team up here.”

  “They don’t watch or listen to you?” I asked.

  “To them, I don’t matter, really. I don’t have any connection to their realm, as far as they know. You’re the only one who can send them back. I’m just your spotter.”

  “How will I know about a demon that needs to be sent back?”

  “That’s my job. I can’t tell you how I know, but I know where we have to go, what to look for and even, most of the time, where we will find our demon.”

  “But I won’t know anything about our target until you tell me?”

  “That’s why that hazy-faced demon back at the bar called me your partner. You and I work together and that is pretty much the only way for us to send them back. I can’t send them back but I know when they cross and where we have to go to find them. You’ll have no idea when they cross, what to look for or where to look for them. But only you can send them back. You and the other senders, that is.”

  There were a couple things I remember realizing right then: One, assuming everything she had told me was the truth, Rachel was going to be a very important person in my life. Two, I really wanted another heavily poured screwdriver.

  “Once you were given the role of sender,” Rachel said, “you were given a few gifts as well. Since you need to be sharp and ready to go at a moment’s notice, any alcohol in your system will vanish as soon as you get close to a demon. Kind of like that hobbit’s sword glowed blue whenever orcs were around.”