The Demonists (3 page)

Harbingers of something larger, and far more terrible.

Jackson’s camera ceased to function midway through the slaughter, but until that moment—

He’d had no desire to continue filming, sending scenes of the bloodletting into the living rooms of millions of viewers, but he’d had no choice.

He’d wanted to drop his camera to the cellar floor and flee for his life.

But something held him fast and made him continue to perform what had been his chosen profession for the last eleven years; something that chortled happily, its amusement echoing painfully in the hollows of his skull.

Watch!
it commanded him.
Watch and see the fate that will soon befall the world.

Becky was closest to the container as it began to vibrate to the point that its image through the camera’s viewfinder was blurred. Then it exploded in a flash of black so intense that it was darker than darkness of the environment surrounding it. Pieces of the jar spun through the air, hissing shrapnel that sought out the warmth and fragility of Becky’s flesh. The pieces were drawn to her, to her life, and each and every jagged fragment found its way into her body.

The presences inside Jackson’s skull laughed hysterically as Becky’s body danced and twitched, before it finally collapsed in upon itself, bones shattered, muscles shredded, tendons cut.

John was picked up by something that glinted wetly in the dark of the storage room. It lifted him as if he weighed nothing and slammed him against the nearby wall of stone, again and again, until the white rock was stained black.

Theodora’s screams allowed Jackson a brief moment of focus. The beautiful medium hung above the dirt floor, her head tossed back, the tendons in her neck straining as she screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Ghostly things—demonic things—swam about her: serpents of shadow, eels of darkness, entering her body, dissolving into her flesh. The spirits inside Jackson’s head cheered excitedly as the entities flowed into Theo’s helpless body.

John’s pathetic moans filled the basement space as he crawled into the camera’s view, a bloody hand reaching up toward his wife.

She is the vessel now,
the voices chimed, and Jackson did not understand, nor would he ever, for the evil spirits were done with him then. He began to cry, crying for his friends, but mostly for himself, because he knew he would not be spared this day.

But then he felt himself released from evil’s loathsome clutches, and he almost fooled himself into thinking that he might live. He dropped the camera, ending the horrific transmission as it smashed on the dirt floor, and he spun away from the blood-drenched storage room, running through the near pitch-blackness toward where he remembered the stairs to be.

They let him find them, one of his sneakered feet falling upon the creaking wood of the first step as he prepared to propel himself upward.

He thought of the happiness he would feel as he ascended to the kitchen and raced through the mudroom door into the yard, where he would hungrily gulp the cool autumn air. And he knew that he would cry tears of sadness for his friends, but also sheer joy that he had not shared their terrible fate.

That he had survived.

He would have experienced all of that, if only he had been allowed to live.

If only
.

I
n this place, John Fogg was a child again. In puddles that spread across the vast city street, he could see the reflection of himself clad in his favorite pajamas.

He was remembering a time, so very long ago now, that he had gone to New York with his folks to see a holiday show. He hadn’t been paying attention, caught up in the excitement of the city and the season, and had stepped away from his parents, eager to see the next of Macy’s wonderfully magical display windows. And suddenly he could no longer find them in the always moving crowd of people that flowed around him.

No matter where he looked, he saw only unfamiliar faces, and he had cried out for his mother and father for what seemed like an eternity, until finally they were before him. The looks of relief on their faces slowly dissolved to anger, and then the scolding began.

But he would take the scolding and the nearly painful squeezing pressure of his mother’s grip upon his hand.

They had found him, and that was all that mattered. John was back on those cold winter streets, only now it was nighttime, and it was raining. He was alone, clad only in his pajamas.

Why had he gone out onto the city streets wearing only his pajamas?

He had no answer, just an ever-increasing sense of dread that expanded in his belly like a balloon.

“Hello?” he called out, but the only response was the patter of freezing rain on the hard, puddle-dappled streets.

Why am I here? Why am I alone?

It was the first time that you let the fear in,
answered a voice from someplace nearby.

John spun, looking about Herald Square, finding only parked cars and gray, rain-drenched buildings—not a soul to be found, except for him.

“Who’s there?” he demanded. “Ma? Dad?”

Someone laughed. At least he thought it was a someone—hoped that it was a someone.

Your fear was like a door, John Fogg,
the mysterious voice said.
So intense that it swung wide, opening you up to all sorts of possibilities.

“Why can’t I see you?” John asked, his eyes darting to every corner, every shadow. “Why don’t you show yourself?”

Do you want to see me, John Fogg?
the voice asked with all sincerity.
Do you
really
want to see me?

John didn’t know how he should answer at first, but he managed to push past the expanding bubble of fear in his gut. At least he would have one answer; and for him, it was always about answers.

“Yes.” He braced himself. “Yes, I really do want to see you.”

Again he heard that laugh, only this time it was joined by others— many others.

Well, who am I to deny a child’s wishes?

A patch of shadow across from where John stood in front of one of Macy’s blackened windows shimmered and waved like a stretch of ocean caressed by the wind. A shape pulled free, standing motionless, watching the boy.

John felt the nearly uncontrollable urge to run but held his ground, watching the man.

Maybe . . . maybe he would help him.

Slowly he began to cross toward the figure. A vague swath of light from a nearby traffic light suddenly illuminated its face, and what John saw stopped him dead in the middle of the deathly quiet Manhattan street.

The face was as white as the moon in the sky, with eyes as round as the planetoid but void of anything other than deep, sucking darkness. Its mouth was pulled back in a smile that—
John supposed
—was to be considered friendly and comforting, but couldn’t have been further from that. It reminded him of an old animal trap he had once seen in his uncle’s shed while on a summer visit to West Virginia—wide and jaggedly sharp, stained black with old blood.

Somehow John knew this face. An older part of him, buried within the dream child, had hoped never to see its terrible visage again.

Do you remember me, John Fogg?
it asked, its pointed teeth clicking and clacking as it spoke.

John remained silent, carefully backing away, back toward the dark department store windows.

Your silence speaks volumes,
the monster said with a chilling laugh as it began to casually stroll toward him, joined by more shadows that detached themselves from the shimmering black mass.
And I’m not alone, John.

John wanted to run—but where? He looked about, desperate to find a safer place, but saw only darkness, darkness that pulsed and moved as if alive. Darkness that throbbed and stretched like the skin on the belly of some great beast, ready to disgorge its babies into the nightmare world.

There’s nowhere for you now, John,
the nightmare man said.
You are trapped here, with us.

The creature stopped and stood in the middle of Herald Square, waiting for the other monsters that continued to crawl from the shadows.

John found them familiar as well, and felt his terror grow even more. Painful flashes of memory thrummed within the core of his being like the plucked string of a badly tuned instrument. He saw himself as an adult, as he dealt with each of the demonic things that were gathering in the street before him.

They were minor supernatural pests, the demonic equivalent of fruit flies, but they were still annoying, and potentially dangerous. And he had disposed of them, performing rites of exorcism that had removed them from the earthly realm, depositing them—
he now realized
—in this nightmarish place.

We always said we would pay you back in kind,
the monstrous leader spoke.
If we ever had the chance.

The darkness around John continued to birth more things that shambled, crawled, flew, and hopped. He had nowhere to go. Everywhere he looked, there was danger.

And now we do.
With that, the leader’s jaw snapped loudly and the creature started toward him, a wave of jabbering nightmare following in his wake.

John could do nothing but stare, imagining the horror that was about to overwhelm him. He didn’t turn around, but he could hear other things converging on him from behind. And then accepting his fate, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, tensed, but ready for the nightmare that was certain to never end.

A sudden sound made him cringe. At first, he thought it might have been some sort of prehistoric beast baying its joy as it was about to consume him in a single bite, but then he recognized it as the blare of a truck horn.

John opened his eyes to find the leader, and the flow of shadowy entities, mere inches from him. He turned in the direction of the nearly deafening horn, and saw an eighteen-wheeler barreling down the street, right into the beasts, scattering some like road waste, while crushing others beneath its large wheels.

Falling backward onto the wet street, John looked up in awe as the truck ground to a halt, brakes screeching as it skidded upon the crushed bodies of the demonic entities that had been crossing the street to claim him. The door of the truck’s cab swung open to reveal the driver, and John could not help smiling.

“Quickly now,” the old woman ordered, holding out her hand. John immediately reached for her and Nana Fogg grasped his wrist, hoisting him up into the cab with ease. “Close the door. My interference won’t keep them at bay for long,” she said. Then she gunned the engine, and with a roar the truck was moving again, crushing more of the monstrosities as they threw themselves at it.

John could only stare at the silver-haired old woman, who worked the clutch as if she’d been doing it her entire life. “You saved me,” was all he could manage. Where once his chest had expanded with fear, now it was filled with a nearly overwhelming love for his Nana, who had saved him—

Again.

Margarite Alice Fogg—
Nana
—had always looked out for him.

As a small child, he had found the arms of the tall, statuesque woman who wore her silver hair in a tight bun at the back of her head far more comforting than those of his parents. Nana Fogg always knew how to make things right. She’d chased away bad dreams and wiped away his tears. She’d even stood up to his overbearing father who had never seemed to have enough patience with his overly sensitive son.

And she had continued to watch over him, even after her death, when she’d warned him from beyond the grave of a vengeful spirit’s plan to set fire to his college dormitory. Now here she was, saving him from demons in the realm between life and death.

“You’re driving a truck.” John suddenly realized the strangeness of the situation.

“One uses what one has on hand,” the old woman said, checking the side-view mirror for stragglers. “Would have used a jet plane if it had been handy.” Nana looked at him then, her gray eyes swimming with emotion. “We need to get you out of this place.”

“But we’re safe now,” John said. He watched through the expanse of windshield as the city changed, the buildings of New York growing less and less defined. “Right, Nana? We’re safe?”

His grandmother’s boney hands clutched the large steering wheel as she drove them farther into a world of blackness. “For now,” she reassured him. “But we have to get you home before she—”

John was confused. “Who?” he asked aloud. And then with a sudden rush of emotion, he remembered. “Theodora,” he whispered.

They were immersed in a universe of shadow now.

“Is she all right?” John asked, frightened by the look of worry he saw on his grandmother’s pale face. “Nana?”

“I don’t know, John,” Nana said finally, her eyes on the darkness ahead as if she was concentrating on something that he could not see. “Since you escaped them . . .” She stopped talking and stepped on the gas, sending the great truck leaping through the shadows.

“What, Nana? Tell me—what will they do?”

“Since they’ve lost you, they’ll look for the next best thing,” the old woman said. “They want to hurt you, John—in any way they can.”

The fear was back inside him, ready to consume him with the horrific realization.

“They’ll go after your wife.”

John Fogg’s eyes snapped open, the blare of a truck’s horn fading in the distance. He tried to move, but there was only pain and a terrible numbness that told him things were not right.

That things were terribly wrong.

Eyes that felt as though they’d been rolled in sand before being placed inside his skull darted about, trying to adjust to his surroundings.

Where?

A woman whom he did not recognize moved about a room that he did not know as he lay in a bed that felt unfamiliar to his body. John tried to speak, but the only sound he could make was like the rustling of dry fall leaves.

The woman moved too quickly for his eyes to capture, but then they found her at the side of the bed, pushing buttons on machines that chimed and beeped with her touch. Tubes trailed from the machines, and his eyes followed them down to where they disappeared into the flesh of his exposed arm.

RV, his soggy mind defined.
Got an RV in my arm.

He knew that was wrong when an image of his Nana waving from the driver’s seat of a monstrous recreational vehicle spattered with the blood of the demonic exploded inside his head, making him gasp aloud.

The woman was suddenly hovering over him.

“IV,” he croaked. “IV—not RV.”

“That’s right, Mr. Fogg,” the woman said, placing a gentle hand upon his chest and pushing him back down to the bed. He wasn’t even aware that he had been trying to sit up.

“What . . . ,” he began, but lost his train of thought as his eyes again scanned the unfamiliar room.

A hospital room. He was in a hospital.

“There was an accident,” the woman was saying, her hand still firmly on his chest. “Do you remember anything about that?”

At first he didn’t, but then the images rushed in: a flood of staccato moments that made his body thrash and the machines beside his bed protest with furious beeps and alarms.

His team . . . his wife . . . He didn’t want to see this—he didn’t want to remember. Someone was screaming, a raw, ragged sound. It took him a while to realize it was him.

There were more people in the room now, rushing around his bed, trying to keep him down. They were doing something to his RV—IV, and he felt himself begin to slip away again, the slide show of utter carnage growing less distinct, the corners of the nightmarish images growing darker, obscuring what he no longer wanted to see.

He tried to remain conscious, fighting with everything he had so that his question might be answered.

“My wife,” he managed. A thin man in a white lab coat turned his shaggy head to look him in the eye. “My . . . wife,” John croaked again, just as the world fell out from beneath him and a yawning oblivion drew him down.

But not before he’d seen the look in the man’s eyes, and he took it with him on his journey to nothing.

It was a look of sympathy.

John Fogg sat in a chair by the window in his hospital room, refusing to look at the bed that had been his prison for the last six weeks.

He was afraid that if he did look at it, the bed would draw him back into its embrace, whispering that it was not yet time for him to go, that there was still much more healing to be done.

As if in solidarity, his broken ankle encased in a walking cast throbbed painfully.

The doctors had told him that it was still too early for him to be mobile, but they had cut him some slack, considering his situation.

His situation.

John looked at his watch.
Where is Stephan?

“Ready?” Stephan asked from the doorway as if he’d heard John’s unspoken question.

“I’ve been ready for quite some time,” John grumbled, pushing off from the chair. He winced in pain from multiple places all over his body.

“Use the cane,” Stephan reminded him. “Remember what the doctor told you.”

“I know what the doctor told me,” John snapped, grabbing for the cane that leaned against the windowsill. Instead his hand brushed it, sending the cane crashing to the floor. On reflex, he reached for it, and nearly lost his balance, managing to steady himself by grasping the windowsill with an agonized hiss as pain stabbed through his ankle.