Pockets of Darkness (15 page)

Bridget was debating whether to tell them she caught the New York Yankee’s fan this morning when the dining room intercom buzzed and Michael got up to answer.

“Miss O’Shea,” the voice on the other end said. “Is Miss O’Shea there?”

“Yes.” Michael looked to Bridget. “But she’s eating dinner with her son and—”

“Mike? That you?”

“Yes.”

“You tell Miss O’Shea she’s got to come see something downstairs. In the basement. Her dinner isn’t going to be sitting too well afterward. You tell her she has to come right now.”

Michael dropped his hand from the intercom. “Miss O’Shea—”

Bridget pushed back from the table so fast that she tipped the chair over. “Michael, don’t let Otter out of your sight. Dustin, stay with them. Stay together. Understand? All of you stay together!”

She thought the demon had been sleeping by the nightstand in the bedroom. It had been making a noise that could have passed for snoring, all of its eyes closed. Though she had the buckle in her pocket, she realized the demon hadn’t followed her down here to dinner.

Bridget had a very bad feeling that it hadn’t been sleeping at all.

***

Twenty One

Jimmy was in the weight room and apparently had been doing bench presses. On his back, the bar of the two-hundred pound weight rested on his throat, his mouth open. That alone would have been enough to kill him, cutting off his oxygen; eyes bugged out like a something in a horror film, as though he’d fought for breath. But it was the gaping chest wound that had done it. Jimmy was ripped open down to his lifting belt, ribs broken and protruding at grotesque angles. Blood had spattered the wall behind the bench and had pooled on the floor. Blood continued to drip into a box of chalk, the powder Jimmy had used on his hands to help his grip. Shimmering bright red, Bridget couldn’t shake her gaze away from the growing pool of blood.

“Bridget.” Louder: “Bridget!”

Bridget looked away and into the face of the Aidan Murphy, her head domestic. Aidan was in his sixties, a Westie who had come to work full-time in the brownstone after it had been renovated, the only employee who never addressed Bridget as Miss O’Shea. It was Aidan who had summoned her.

“I was doing laundry, Bridget.” The brownstone featured a state-of-the art laundry facility in the basement. “I heard Jimmy scream and came straightaway. I’d thought he’d hurt himself, not having a spotter. I saw the weight had dropped on his neck, and before I could get to him his chest exploded. His heart came right out and disappeared in front of my very eyes.” Aidan reported this matter-of-factly, with little fluctuation in his low, thick brogue.

Aidan’s visage, however, revealed his utter shock and disgust. Aidan was bone pale, and blue veins on his nose stood out starkly. Blood had spattered on his shirt and pants and the tops of his shoes.

Bridget again looked at the blood pool beneath Jimmy and saw that a line of it led away, ending at the demon, which squatted in the shadows between the scale and a rack of dumbbells. Of course, Aidan couldn’t see the demon.

The demon opened its maw, so wide that Bridget saw Jimmy’s heart inside. It deliberately chewed with its lips pulled back so Bridget could get the full effect of the atrocity.

Bridget tottered and felt the bite of pizza rising into her throat. She leaned back against the doorframe.

“I know you don’t favor the police, Bridget,” Aidan continued.

“We can’t call them,” Bridget croaked. She hadn’t been a suspect in Tavio’s death, but calling the police for this would bring down far more scrutiny than she could manage, and would put her under a spotlight that could jeopardize not only her freedom, but the people who worked in the brownstone and the antique shop. And then what would happen to Otter? He’d be shoved off on Adiella. Dear God, Bridget couldn’t let that happen.

The police wouldn’t believe an invisible demon was responsible. So very few people in the world knew there was magic. “No cops. No cops ever. The cops won’t—”

“I understand.” Aidan closed his eyes and crossed himself, lips working in a prayer.

The sound of a dryer tumbling a load of clothes and a washing machine draining seeped into the weight room.

“He was a good one, Jimmy.” Aidan opened his eyes. “Wanted to please you, Bridget, and fit in.” He gestured to a couple of college catalogs next to a stack of folded towels and the boy’s LMFAO sweatshirt. The blood hadn’t yet reached that side of the room. “Told me he was going to enroll in some business courses come the next semester, at your suggestion.”

Tears slid down Bridget’s face and her hands shook. “We can’t call the police.”

“I understand,” he said again.

A four-bar chime sounded, signaling the washer had finished. The dryer continued to softly rumble.

“I have seen things in this city,” Aidan’s voice had grown quiet. “Things that defy explanation. Dark things, Bridget. Mouldy, desperate, diabolical things.”

Another chime played, the dryer shutting off,

“There is something very dark in this house.”

Bridget nodded.

“I will make the calls and have this taken care of, his room cleaned out. Jimmy had been so long out of any system that no one—save us—will notice he is gone.”

“Thank you, Aidan.”

“And then Bridget—”

“Yes?”

“Consider my resignation tendered. I will be gone before the morning.” Aidan slipped toward the elevator, leaving Bridget alone with the carnage and the demon.

“Bridget break prisons. Liburrrrrate. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon said. Four of its eyes were closed, but the fifth widened and held Bridget in place. “Else unshackle Otter from life.” It tongue lolled out and it wiped the blood off its lips. “Mmmm. Jimmy.”

“You feckin’ gollier! I’m working on freeing your damn demons!” Bridget raged at it, feeling her face turn instantly red and veins standing out in the sides of her neck. Her anger broke whatever hypnotic hold the beast had used with its fifth eye. “I’m gonna buy a gun. And I’m gonna blow your slimy brains out! You’ve ruined my life! Everything!”

“Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon repeated coolly in its long-dead language, all eyes open now and looking unfixed, like they were trying to find a place to settle on its hideous face. The effect was dizzying. “Else unshackle Otter from life. Unshackle Otter. Mmmmm Jimmy.”

“I’ll damn well unshackle you!” Bridget rushed it, knowing with every step it was the wrong thing to do. Fueled by grief and fury she dropped her shoulder and barreled into the beast, feeling it give like a rubber ball, like the thing had no skeleton. “You can’t hurt me, monster!” The buckle in her pocket made her indestructible, didn’t it?

The warty skin of the demon felt like sandpaper, and the goo that ran in streams from boils that appeared and disappeared was thick and blistering hot. It seemed like Bridget had stepped into a fire. The demon could indeed hurt her. She dropped to her knees in front of it, ignoring the heat and driving her fists into it, treating it like a punching bag. Connecting with it produced the same sound as pounding a bag.

The demon laughed, the sound deafening and horrifying and reverberating off the walls of the weight room and growing impossibly louder. Bridget was certain the entire neighborhood could hear the hurricane of malevolent cackling.

Then the monster slammed its enormous mouth shut and reached a blood-soaked claw up, thrusting Bridget back. Acid bubbled from nostrils that flared wide below its eyes. Still Bridget wailed away, pummeling the creature’s outstretched leg since she could no longer reach its body. It leaned forward, like a dog on all fours, twisted its head curiously, then swatted Bridget with its tail, the impact sending her halfway across the room and into the bench.

Bridget fell into the blood pool, and she slipped trying to stand.

The demon casually padded over and flattened Bridget, pinning her to the floor with a talon that felt like a sledgehammer had come down on her chest. It brought its head close to her face and opened its maw, belched up a cloud smelling of sulfur and death and of foul, foul things that there were no names for. Bridget felt her bowels release.

She’d known fear many times in her life, especially in the past few days since she’d acquired the buckle. But the fear that coursed through Bridget now was absolute, and she was certain the demon would kill her in a horrible, painful manner, rip out her heart, her soul relegated to some abyss. The things Bridget had done; there would be no eternal salvation.

Bridget had never begged for anything, but she tried to do that now, for her life and for Otter’s. But her throat was desert dry and nothing would come out; her tongue felt swollen and unwieldy.

The demon laughed again—long and loud and terrifying—and it looked from Jimmy’s body to Bridget. Then it spoke in its dead language, a string of words she couldn’t understand. But it ended with: “Break prisons. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti. Liburrrrrate. Else unshackle Otter from life.” It spat a gob of acid for emphasis and backed away to circle the weight bench. Making sure Bridget was watching, it stretched a claw up, broke off one of Jimmy’s ribs, and proceeded to pick its teeth with it.

Bridget crawled toward the door, pulling herself up by grabbing on the bar of a treadmill. She sucked in air that was filled with the demon’s stench.

“Break prisons. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” Bridget said, her voice cracking from the effort. “Break prisons. Liberate all the feckin’ Aldî-nîfaeti in the world.” She reached into her pocket for her cell phone and pulled it out, nearly dropping it, hand so slick with Jimmy’s blood. She thumbed it open and called up Rob’s number.

“Hey boss.”

“Anything?” Bridget’s voice was hoarse. “On the demon bowls, Rob? Anything?”

“Oh, yeah boss. I spent all afternoon doing some research. An antique shop in Manhattan has two, both Sumerian. Go figure, eh? Some for sale right here in the city. I offered enough cash that the manager will deliver them here after he closes up. Want me to—”

“Bring them over as soon as you get them.”

“Sure, boss. Another thing, the Metropolitan Art Museum has some in a near-east display, three of them, also Sumerian. I saw it all on the museum website, but you know they ain’t gonna sell them, it being a museum and all. Got a bid on two on eBay—Babylonian for those. Neither had that buy-it-now option. Four days to go on the one, five on the other. We’ll win them.”

“Thanks, Rob. Keep looking, okay? And bring those two as soon as they’re delivered.”

“Oh, I will, boss. As soon as I get them. But it’s gonna take a while to nail all of these friggin’ bowls down, you know.”

“And any demon bowls that previously sold on eBay … see who bought them. Get names, addresses, phone numbers. Buy them. Buy them all.”

“Do my best, boss.”

“Do better than that, Rob.” Bridget breathed more evenly now, but each breath brought more of the noxious odor deep into her lungs. Her mouth was filled with an acrid taste that no amount of saliva she worked up could cut. “Work on it all night if you have to. Call Marsh and if he’s feeling better, get him to help. And don’t forget to call the captain.”

“Boss, mind telling me what this is about?”

“No.”

“Boss?”

“Yes, Rob?” Bridget noticed that the demon had returned to the spot between the rack of barbells and scale, looked to have comfortably settled itself, and was rotating its neck the way a man might work a kink out.

“Boss, I figured there wouldn’t be all that many, demon bowls you know, seeing as how old these things are, and made of clay and all. But boss—”

“Yes?”

“A link off the museum page says there’s about two thousand intact. If they’re real expensive, it could wipe out all the ready accounts. I suppose we could steal some of them—”

“Two thousand,” Bridget whispered.

“Break prisons. Unshackle Aldî-nîfaeti,” the demon repeated. “Liburrrrrate.”

O O O

Despite being a bloody, disheveled, mess, Bridget stopped in the dining room to make sure Otter, Dustin, and Michael were still there. She hadn’t been physically hurt by her brawl with the demon, not a scratch, just the temporary sensations of heat and pain. Indestructible.

The trio gasped and stared opened-mouthed and kept her at arm’s length.

“Mom?”

“What the hell happened to you?” Dustin said.

“You okay? Omigod, what happened? Mom? You’re bleeding!”

“It’s not my blood,” she said.

“Mom?”

“Listen very carefully.” Bridget had their complete attention. “The three of you need to stay together, understand? Just like I told you. Together. Nobody goes anywhere alone, not to the bathroom, not to bed, nowhere. Stay together like you’re all joined at the hip. No matter what. There’s—”

“I-I-I don’t understand, Mom. Is someone in the house? Should we call the police? What—”

“No cops.”

“Mom—”

“Otter, there’s a demon in the city. In the house. A real demon. A feckin’ ugly demon from some pit of hell. But it will be leaving with me shortly.”

“A what?” The boy had a look of disbelief on his face and started to interject.

Bridget kept going. “I know. Demons don’t exist, right? Wrong. It’s a horrid gobshite of a beast, and it’s hell-bent on killing people to get what it wants.”

“Not possible,” Michael said.

“Don’t believe me. Hell, I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me. You think I’m a real header, off my nut. It’s okay if you don’t believe me. But believe this—you three need to stay together. Michael, make some calls and get a few men over … with guns if they have them. It killed Jimmy. Get Rob, Marsh. Get Alvin and his brother Quin, too, the Halm brothers love guns.”

Dustin’s expression turned from worried to cold to shock. Bridget had told him how much she hated guns. “I won’t be part of any madness,” Dustin said. “Right now, I am going. I will not—”

“I can’t keep you here, Dustin,” Bridget shot back. “But there’s safety in numbers. And I’d rather you not turn up like Tavio or Jimmy. ‘Cause if you go off alone, that’s a very good possibility.” She shouldn’t have said it that way, especially seeing Otter’s face, but she couldn’t take the words back. “You’re safer together. You’re just … safer.”

She wheeled and stalked from the dining room.

“Where are you going?” Otter shouted.

“To the art museum,” Bridget returned. After a shower—alone—to wash off Jimmy’s blood and everything else. And after one more change of clothes, something nice and dark and nondescript. “To the museum so I can free some demons and save all of you. And damn myself to the deepest pit of hell.”

***