The Demon Deception

Copyright 2015 Mark
Harritt

Published by Mark Harritt at
SmashWords

SmashWords Edition License
Notes

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Title Page

Prolog – Afghanistan

Chapter One – Vampires, Witches

Chapter Two –
A Greasy Spoon in
Brooklyn

Chapter Three – A Cat named Mooch

Chapter Four – Myra Rothstein

Chapter Five –
A Game of tag in the
Poconos

Chapter Six –
Father, Bless this
Van

Chapter Seven – Mr. Mephistopheles

Chapter Eight – Kansas City Fry Cook

Chapter Nine –
Daddy’s at the Steak
House

Chapter Ten – Coffee at the 7/11

Chapter Eleven –
The Mystery
Mobile

Chapter Twelve –
The
Double
/Triple
Cross

Epilog – A New Player in Town

About the Author

Other books by Mark Harritt

Connect with Mark Harritt

Hartman
heard a whisper. It was hardly noticeable at first. It was at the
edge of her hearing. It sounded almost silly, like a child making a
pretend whisper, or someone calling a cat. She glanced over her
shoulder in the direction of the sound. As she looked, she heard
another whisper in a different direction. She whipped her head
around to see. It was too dark, though.

Whatever was out there, was beyond her
vision. Another whisper sounded, in a different direction. The
whispers came from at least three different directions, maybe four.
She was surrounded. Whatever it was seemed to be toying with her.
She wanted to yell, maybe throw something. In this area though,
that didn’t seem like a very good idea, not with the Taliban out
there somewhere.

The feeling hit her with an intensity she
couldn’t have imagined. She gasped as it made its presence known.
She couldn’t see it, or what it was, but she knew it was there. She
knew now that she was being hunted. She felt a chill. The hair on
her body stood up. It was more than physical cold. This wasn’t her
body reacting to a drop in temperature. It was something else
completely. She felt a dread engulf her. She began to shake. In the
back of her mind, she felt a horror growing. She was being stalked.
Whatever it was, though, was
different
. It wasn’t human.

She felt a malevolence, and that malevolence
made her gasp from the force of the hatred directed at her. That
entity didn’t just want to kill her, it wanted to destroy her. It
wanted to rend her body, and shred her mind. It was something
completely outside her experience. It wasn’t just a hunger for her
death, it wanted to revel in her utter and complete
destruction.

Not even an hour had gone past since her
world had shattered. The day had started well for Specialist Susan
Hartman. An IED had changed all of that. It had exploded, flipping
the Humvee she was riding in, and in the confusion of the moment,
she had been left behind at the scene of the complex ambush.

Her convoy had delivered much needed supplies
to a remote forward operating base. They had been headed back to
Highway 1, or as the soldiers called it, Ring Road. At the Ring
Road, they would turn north, and head back to Bagram Air Force
Base. Her logistics unit was supported by four infantry Humvees,
two in front of the logistics convoy, and two behind. She had been
excited to take her first trip outside the wire. That was then. Now
she just prayed that she would live to see the morning sun, and her
unit again.

Some of her memories of that night were
jumbled, or completely gone. Concussions did that to you. What she
saw, though, was a picture that would always stay with her. It was
a line in the dirt. It was not unexpected to see lines in the dirt
in Afghanistan. What made this line unusual was that it was
straight. Straight lines don’t occur naturally. She twisted to tell
SSG Alciannas, her supervisor and the leader of her logistic
convoy. Before she could tell him, her world became one of
confusion, noise and pain.

The Humvee was on a curve on the road when
the IED exploded. The force of the IED, plus the velocity around
the curve caused the Humvee to flip. Hartman’s first instinct was
to complete her turn and grip Peltier, the gunner, around the
waist, pulling him down, an action instilled in her during
immediate action drill training. He was gripping the edge of the
gunners hatch, and with her help, he was able to get back inside
the Humvee. His head cleared the roof, and the Humvee completed its
flip.

The Humvee landed hard, and slid to a stop.
The force of the impact mangled the machinegun mounted on top.
Peltier wasn’t strapped in, but Hartman was, so she held on for
dear life. The force of the impact as the Humvee flipped onto its
roof tore him from her grasp. Her head smacked against the roof of
the Humvee, hard. She was already concussed by the explosion, and
the additional head trauma, even though she had on her helmet,
didn’t help.

Green tracers lit the night, a holdover of
Soviet Block ammunition. US forces used red tracers, and even in
SPC Hartman’s condition, she realized that the enemy was shooting
at them. The door frame was warped, her door torn open by the
stress of the explosion, and the impact as the Humvee hit the
ground. Something hit the door in front of her and pinged. Another
one hit. She was confused, then realized that bullets were hitting,
and she was exposed. She felt something behind her, and she
couldn’t get back into the wrecked vehicle. She didn’t realize it
was Peltier. She was afraid she was going to get hit. She had to
move, and couldn’t go backward. Her only option was forward. She
saw a depression in front of her, and crawled away from the cover
of the Humvee.

She was scared by the muzzle flashes. Her
hearing began to come back, and she could hear the sound of bullets
pinging on rock and metal. The dirt of the road sloped down as she
crawled. A ditch opened up in front of her, running alongside the
road. She crawled forward and fell into it. A heavy stream of cold
water flowed in the bottom, soaking her uniform. The impact of
bullets on the Humvee armor screamed away into the night as
ricochets.

She knew she wasn’t safe. She saw heavy rocks
in the ditch in front of her. She crawled behind them. She pulled
in her legs to get as much of her body behind the cover of the
rocks as she could. She suddenly remembered that she had left her
rifle in the Humvee. She panicked. You never let your rifle out of
arm’s length. That was something that had been drilled into her
ever since basic training. She couldn’t crawl back and get it,
though, not with the bullets hitting around the wreckage.

On the road, her crew and the wrecked Humvee
were taking heavy fire. Gunners from the other convoy vehicles were
shooting at the muzzle flashes. One of the Infantry Humvees roared
up to the side, shielding the wreckage from the Taliban gunners.
The infantry gunner on top engaged the Taliban shooters, brass
tinkling as it ejected from the machinegun and hit the top of the
Humvee.

The vehicle commander and the soldier in back
jumped out, and pulled wounded soldiers out of the wreckage. They
piled wounded bodies into their Humvee, and when they had everybody
out, the vehicle commander yelled, “Go, Go.” The Humvee raced out
of the danger zone. They didn’t notice that they had missed
Hartman. They would race another five miles to a rally point before
they counted soldiers, and noticed that she was missing.

The night grew still after the convoy speed
away. The Taliban used the time to run away before the helicopters
with their infrared cameras could arrive to kill them. She stayed
in the ditch until she felt confident that there was nobody out
there. A few minutes of silence seemed to stretch forever before
she felt comfortable to climb out of the ditch. She went back to
the Humvee to find her rifle. She felt the heat of the engine from
the wreckage, and used it to warm her hands. She looked for her
rifle, and found one, but it was bent from the accident. She found
another that seemed to be okay. It felt like it was undamaged. She
just hoped it would fire without exploding if she tried to shoot
it. She didn’t have many options at that point, though.

She didn’t know if she should leave the
wreckage. If she stayed with the Humvee, she was afraid that the
Taliban would come back, search it, and find her. If she left the
Humvee, she was afraid that the convoy would come back and not be
able to find her. Everything was confusing. There was a loud
ringing in her ears. She knew she wasn’t thinking straight. It was
very hard for her to concentrate.

She feared getting lost, but she feared the
Taliban even more. She knew what would happen if they caught her.
Her head jerked as she heard gravel slide in the distance. She
thought the Taliban might still be out there. That gave her
incentive, and she made up her mind to leave the wreckage. She
would try to stay on the road in the dark, and pray she wouldn’t
meet anybody. She stood, swayed momentarily, and then leaned
against the wreckage until her lightheadedness went away. She
started walking, hoping that she was walking in the right
direction, towards Highway 1.

It was cold. She was shivering again. She
held her rifle at low ready. It was hard to walk, and hard to
concentrate. She knew that if she stopped, she might never get back
up, not with a concussion and as cold as she was. She concentrated
on the next step. One step wasn’t so hard. She could concentrate on
one step. One step became two, then two became three. She didn’t
think about that though. It was just one step, one step at a
time.

Soon, she had some distance between her and
the wreckage. It was cold, but her body heat was starting to dry
her uniform. She was still shivering, but not as badly as before.
She could see the road stretching out in front of her. It was a
lighter strip of land than the ground on either side. Afghanistan
could be beautiful at night. The stars were bright in the sky,
making the lighter road visible.

There was no light pollution in Afghanistan
at night until you got closer to the larger cities and military
bases. In the country there were no lights at all. Here, she could
see the infinite stars of the Milky Way. The stars were brighter,
and much more beautiful than they were at home. Illuminated by
starlight, the road stretched out before her.

What she didn’t know, and what she hadn’t
seen, was that the road where her Humvee had flipped, was a y
intersection. The arm of the y that the convoy had raced down, and
the arm that she wanted, was to the right. Hiding in the ditch,
behind the rocks, she didn’t see this. When she began walking, she
was on the left side of the wreckage, and never saw the other arm
of the road that went in the other direction. She didn’t know that
the road branched at that point. She walked down the left side of
the y. She was walking in the wrong direction, away from Highway
1.

She was okay at first, even though she was
cold. She had her rifle, and she thought she was on the road to
Highway 1. She felt edgy, though. At first she thought, maybe it
was the concussion. Soon, though, her nervousness increased. She
thought that something was watching her. She didn’t think it was
Taliban. Whatever it was, it moved too quietly. Her agitation faded
in and out. She thought it was her imagination. She heard a rock
rattle, and the anxiety came back. She walked further. She didn’t
hear anything else. The sounds were gone, but the impression was
still there. Again, she thought it might be her imagination. She
heard gravel crunch. She gasped and looked in the direction of the
sound.

Then she heard the whistling. She felt the
alien presence that was hunting her. She felt the alien, malevolent
entity. She prayed to God that she would live through the night.
She walked on, ten minutes, fifteen minutes. It was still out
there. Another presence unmasked itself. The intensity of the
hatred increased tenfold. She stumbled. A third presence unmasked,
and the pain she felt increased a hundred fold. She heard a hideous
moan. She was surprised to find the sound was coming from her.