The Demon Senders Read online

  “You mean Bilbo from the Lord of the Rings?”

  “That’s him,” Rachel said. “You sobering up in a flash is like that sword glowing. It’s a sign. One you need to pay attention to. And another thing, and this is pretty important: You won’t ever drown when battling a demon. You can drown just like anyone else when not battling so don’t go testing this gift out. That gift makes the most sense since you are in the business of drowning now.”

  “So I can get smashed, falling down drunk but the second I get close to a demon, I’ll be sober?”

  “Like you never had a drop.”

  I don’t remember how long the silence lasted, but it felt like an hour or so. I was just sitting on her couch, processing everything she told me. I got up a couple of times and pounded down the few beers she had in the fridge and poured myself a few shots, but besides me getting drunk, Rachel and I just sat in her apartment, doing nothing.

  As you can imagine, the whole thing was a lot for a guy like me to take in. If she was right, my old life was over. No more gigs, no more substitute teaching and no more anything. I started thinking about Al and that I should probably find a home for him since my new job would require me to be on the road. I started thinking about my mom and dad and how I would explain my giving up the music business to go off doing whatever the hell I could come up with to explain what the hell I would be doing. I had no idea how long I would be a sender but since Rachel’s first partner was sending for decades, I started to think my new career was going to be a life-long one.

  When my thinking to myself was about finished, I asked Rachel about the old man I picked up in my van the other night.

  “The old man you picked up on that road the other night,” she answered, “wasn’t who you think he was.”

  “And who do you think I think he was?” I said, finishing another can of Bud Light.

  “You think he was the devil himself, but he wasn’t. He was what I call a ‘spotter.’ His job is to identify targets for the demons to go after. That’s why he left you the feather. Each spotter—and I have no idea how many there are so don’t bother asking—leave their own calling card. Usually something simple, like a feather, a four leaf clover or a dollar bill with some writing on it. Once the target takes possession of the calling card, the demon can hone in on its target.”

  “Wait a second,” I interrupted, my speech beginning to slur dramatically, “I’ve seen dollar bills with writing on them a hundred times. You saying I’ve been targeted that many times?”

  “Not unless it was given directly to you by a demon,” Rachel answered. “And, just so you know, not all paper money with writing on them came from demons. Kind of makes things a bit more confusing.”

  “And every person who picks up a feather or spots a four leaf clover isn’t doomed as well I hope?”

  “Not at all. The spotter almost always gives something as a gift or leaves the marker with the target. For you, the spotter left a feather in your van. He wanted a demon to take you out before you could take out any of them.”

  “I burned the feather. Does that remove me from the target list?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Just makes you a feather burner. You’ll always be targeted but you’ll also always be feared.”

  “So,” I continued, “both you and that creepy old dude are spotters, playing for different teams. And since I’m a sender, can I assume the other team has senders as well?”

  “I guess you can call the demons ‘senders,’ but I prefer just calling them what they are: Soul stealing wretched wraiths.”

  “How about that hazy-faced asshole in the bar earlier today? Another spotter?”

  “Nope,” she said. “That, my friend, was your first demon.”

  That bit of news was a tad shocking. Deep in my soul, I knew there was something twisted about Hazy Face. Something horribly dangerous and evil, but I hadn’t put the whole thing together in my mind yet. Sure, I still had plenty of doubts about the whole “demon sending” role I guessed I was playing, but making the connection between what Rachel was telling me about demons roaming the Earth in search of trophies and me actually running into an actual demon was still a connection not ready to be made.

  “So he’s out there, roaming the streets? Shouldn’t we do something about that?” Now, I know that this sounds like I was brave and ready to tackle, or, in my case, to drown a demon, but it wasn’t like that at all. As soon as I hinted we go after Hazy Face, my stomach curled into a radiating ball of nerves.

  “You weren’t ready yet. But don’t worry, we’ll be seeing him again real soon.”

  “He told me that if I leave him alone, he’d leave me alone,” I said. “Any luck with that happening?”

  “The demon is a liar. They all are. They are masters of mixing the truth with lies, which makes them incredibly powerful. They lie to each other, to themselves and to their targets.” Rachel’s expression went distant for a moment, like what she said had forced her to take a mental pause. She continued a moment later, “They are so twisted with hate that the truth is a source of pain for them. You should never engage one in a conversation. They will twist your mind. They will either make you want to be their best friend or terrify you beyond any point you could possibly imagine. It’s best to identify, send back and move on.”

  After letting Rachel’s words sink in and demanding my tired little brain quickly process the contents of the conversation, I turned to Rachel and said, “Two things: Why was Hazy Face, hazy-faced and why aren’t we going after him right now? I mean, he is a demon after all.” Again my feigned bravery sent another round of commands to my already twisted up stomach.

  “Demons need a place of transition when they cross over. A place to solidify, for lack of a better term. Hazy Face must have chosen that bar to be the place to make his transition. He probably goes there whenever he crosses and waits out the time till he can blend in. Other demons choose very obscure places as their transition areas. I’ve seen some walking out of the densest woods, out of sewers, any place they feel comfortable and believe they won’t be noticed. But they all stick close to areas with plenty of water.

  “The reason we don’t go after him is that there isn’t anything we can do till his transition is complete. Hazy Face is still moving between the realms. You try to drown him and, yeah, he’s sent back but only for a few minutes. It’s too dangerous for us to try to send a demon back before they are fully on Earth. It’s not worth the risk.”

  “So when do we send him back? What if he steals a soul before we get him?”

  “I’ll know when it’s time.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Phillip’s feet were battered, his head screamed in pain and his ears ached from an unknown pressure and from the constant sounds of the distant screaming. He was full of hatred and anger and wanted, somehow, to use his emotions for something that would (hopefully) lessen his feelings.

  As Henry suggested, Phillip knew which direction he needed to head. He started off on his quest to find Henry by looking for another cave like the one he had been tortured in.

  But he could find no caves. Nothing of any substance, form or of unique character.

  The intense murkiness that surrounded him limited his visibility to just inches, and as he moved through the soup of confusion, he relied on his hands to feel for anything to guide his direction.

  “I must look like fucking Frankenstein’s monster the way I’m walking,” he said to himself, then slammed the small laugh that some part of him offered as a comforting gift. “No,” he yelled before moving as fast as he could, hoping his feet would be introduced to a pain-inducing rock. But all his quick movements delivered was more murkiness. More darkness. More feeling of being utterly lost.

  But still, somehow, he knew his direction was true. Denying himself the feeling of comfort in knowing he was not lost, he trudged on towards Henry’s location.

  <<<<>>>>

  “Took you long enough,” Henry said. “Didn’t think
you’d ever give it up.”

  “Give what up?” Phillip asked.

  “Never mind. Doesn’t matter.”

  Though Henry and Phillip stood no more than a foot away from each other, their faces were clouded from each other: Details were obscured affording only the familiar shape of their bodies and a distant, though muffled, recognition of voices.

  “I brought you here for a reason,” Henry said. “For a specific task. If you want to gain any position here, you’ll do exactly as I say.”

  “You promised me a lot, you sonofabitch! You better deliver. Remember, you owe me.”

  “You do what I need you to do,” Henry replied, “and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

  “What the fuck does that mean? You told me I’d have power, freedom and anything I wanted if I let you talk me into that shit over there. Tell me, Henry, right here and now. What’s coming to me?”

  “You hear that noise?” Henry said, waving his arm slowly in an arc in front of him. The distant echoes of the screaming coming once again to the forefront of Phillip’s awareness. “That noise is something you don’t want to be making yourself. What’s coming to you is more what won’t be coming to you if you don’t screw me on this. I told you that things are different over here. Over there, you go along to get along. Here, you don’t go along with shit except the shit I tell you to do.”

  “You lied to me,” Phillip said. “You made me do that shit over there, made all types of promises and now you’re telling me that I get nothing.”

  “Truth don’t mean shit.”

  There was very little left that Phillip recognized of himself. Each time his anger flared, more of that which once defined him was burned away. Unlike the burning, ripping pain of his transformation however, the fire’s touch as it sought out and consumed what remained of him felt good.

  The burning was cleansing, relieving pain through its continuation of pain.

  “Tell me,” Phillip said after a long, breathless pause, “what I need to do.”

  <<<<>>>>

  Phillip had just turned twenty-three when he killed the family of four. He started with the mother, a thirty-seven-year-old lawyer who was making a name for herself in the city of Baltimore. Had you asked anyone with any inside knowledge of the political culture in the Baltimore area, they would have told you that Mellissa Scranton was the odds on favorite in the next mayoral race. Mellissa was brilliant, driven, successful, a master at playing the “you scratch my back and I’ll tell you I’ll scratch yours” game, and Mellissa had the look.

  When she walked into a room, eyes jumped towards her, drawn to her as if Mellissa’s body had mind control abilities that reached out in a fifty foot radius and temporarily assumed control of the minds of people within that radius. Men looked at her with desire and lust, while women looked with envy. She had married her high school sweetheart, Andrew Scranton, who was, of course, the star football player for their high school team. Andrew graduated top of his class at Dartmouth and started a successful international trade consulting agency two years after completing his MBA. Their first child, Alexander, was born on their third wedding anniversary and their youngest, Margaret, had just turned five a few days before Phillip drove a knife into her eye.

  Phillip and Henry, though separated by a few hundred miles, kept in contact with one another. After Henry and his mother moved to Vermont and his father moved into the state prison, Phillip remained in his hometown on Long Island, finished high school, attended LeMoyne College in Syracuse where he graduated with a degree in Business Administration. Though he was younger than Henry, Phillip continued the role he had assumed of protector since the day he had smacked Henry’s father in the head with a cast-iron frying pan. As Phillip started to build his life, Henry began destroying his.

  He started with drugs—the gateway drug turned out to be just that in Henry’s case—then graduated to crime in order to bring in enough money to fund his ever growing addictions. The two seldom visited and, though he tried, Phillip was often unable to even speak with Henry via the phone. Either Henry was too high to bother answering his phone or was in jail, serving off any one of his six “non-violent” offender stints in the local county jail. The longest stretch Henry was “unavailable” stretched on for nearly nine months.

  When Henry’s mother asked Phillip to be part of an intervention, Phillip didn’t hesitate. Though he wouldn’t list Henry in his top five list of close friends, Phillip still felt a connection with Henry. The two were inseparable growing up and had promised that, no matter how old they got or how far away from each other they lived, they would always come running if one was in trouble.

  Phillip ran when Henry needed him.

  The intervention didn’t go as well as planned. In fact, when he arrived at the bar Henry’s mom had told him the intervention was to take place, Phillip was the only person that showed up. Even Henry’s mother found something else more important to attend to.

  “This is some intervention,” Henry joked. “About what I’d expect from my mom. And as far as friends go, let me tell you, people I hang with don’t give a fuck about anyone but themselves. But you came, Phil. You’re the only one who understands.”

  “Henry,” Phillip said, “you need to get your life back on track. It’s not too late and I’ll do what I can to help.”

  “Too late? Phil, you have no idea how late it is for me to get things back on track. It’s just a matter of time before they send me to the chair. I got into a little hot water down in Baltimore. Some hot assed DA is trying to pin a double murder on me and it’s just a matter of time before some fucking cop comes up with a good enough lie for her to charge me.”

  Phillip said, “Double murder? Henry, what the hell did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything, Phil. Wrong place, wrong time is all. But the people I ran with down in Baltimore, they turned out to be real bad dudes. I don’t have any proof but I know they did the deed and are more than happy to set me up for the fall. I need your help, Phil. You’re the only friend I got. You do this favor for me and I’ll promise you’ll get rewards you can’t possibly imagine.”

  Henry killed the entire family then was shot dead a few days later as he was walked out of a motel room . The shooter, it turned out, was one of the “bad dudes” Henry associated with when he was in the Baltimore area. That vigilante owed Henry a favor.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The wrenching was constant. It sought to squeeze out from him what was evacuated centuries before. Yet still the wrenching continued. His form, not just a horrible and very distant memory, was reduced to liquid mush so long ago. He could not move, for his bones and muscles were nothing but a gelatinous, oozing substance that could never find a known structure again.

  He screamed in terrorized horror and pain, his voice the only recognizable reminder of who he once was. He dared not wonder if the wrenching would ever cease. He surrendered that hope so long ago, knowing even the slightest, most impotent wish for the pain to end, would result in greater pain.

  The wrenching pressed on, day after day, year after year, century after century. Yes, he knew it was not without its value, for the decision he had made granted him some dominion. But he never realized the power he lustfully desired and then obtained, would come at such a terminal and eternal price.

  There was one thing, however, that remained in him. Something the wrenching could not extract from him. It was a wedge that forced a gap between that which was left and that which needed to still be destroyed.

  What remained now served only to give life to his torture. To give it purpose. Though he guarded against thoughts of what remained, he knew it was still there and that his torment would always focus on bridging the wedged gap, burning out the remains of his life and ending it at last.

  And he knew the gap would never be bridged.

  He screamed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I don’t know how much time I have to spend with you so I hope you don’t mind if I skip over
some details and get to what brought me to this place.

  Rachel and I must have talked right through that first night and into the next morning. The more she said, the more I knew what I was.

  I was officially a sender.

  I wasn’t happy about it, mind you, nor was I convinced of everything.

  Later that day, I made my way back to my apartment. It must have been ten times during my trip home I was convinced I was being followed. Probably was, for all I know, but nothing happened. I got home, climbed the stairs and was immediately ignored by Al. By all accounts my life seemed to be exactly how I left it just a day before.

  I picked up my guitar, a beautiful black Takemine acoustic-electric, and played like nothing had changed. But the music I played and the songs I sang seemed shallow to me.

  Like they meant nothing.

  The more songs I played, the more they felt like songs you hear at a funeral.

  They were songs for my funeral, I guess.

  My old life was over and my life as a sender, and whatever the hell that would mean, had begun.

  It took about three days after Rachel and I had our little chat before she showed up at my door. She held a look on her near perfect face that told me two things the second I opened my front door and saw her: One, she wasn’t here to get better acquainted, and two, she was pretty much filled up on the nervous meter.

  “We have to go,” was all she said. “Grab an overnight bag and something to eat on the way. We need to move, now.”

  “Where are we headed?” I asked, the reality of the moment causing mental paralysis.

  “Not sure yet,” she said as the nervous expression she had been wearing was evicted by the unmistakable look of impatience. “Just grab some clothes, some cash if you have any, a box of granola bars and let’s go.”