Demonologist (15 page)

This
, the man realized, filled with tears and unable to move,
is the beginning of the end of it all.

God help us
.

~ * ~

In tears, the man stood up from his bed, shaking the invading memory from his mind. He paced unevenly to the wooden nightstand alongside the bed and fumbled out a silver crucifix. He kissed the cross and continued his prayers until a knock came upon the door.

He looked up, shoving the cross back into the drawer. “Enter.”

Slowly, the door creaked open. A thirty-something woman appeared. She wore a hooded black robe and sash. A silver pentagram sat against her heart from a beaded chain around her neck. Her skin was pale and peppered with acne. Her blue eyes bristled with nervous anticipation.

“Additional vehicles have arrived,” she said, cocking her head curiously. The tears in his eyes.

“How many?” he asked.

“Three. A man, and two women.”

“How did they get here?”

“By calling.”

He nodded. Like the last one that had come.
Baphomet
.

He hesitated, then asked, “Who is your God?”

“Belial,” she answered, bowing.

“Go and pray,” he commanded, and the woman fled the room. He gazed at the clock on the wall. Through the cracked face, he saw: 2:45 PM. By eight tonight, twelve of the thirteen will have arrived. He reached for the bottle of scotch on the table in the center of the room. Drank in the darkness.

The last one. Number thirteen. He wouldn’t be here to begin the ceremony, he knew. His presence, though, was required. His acceptance, however...it had not functioned properly. Additional influence was needed. Would it work?

6:00. Would there be enough time for him to gather his forces?

The man continued his prayers.

The thirteenth would be his only hope for survival.

“Kristin, if you’re there, please pick up.”

2:57. No answer on her home phone. Her cell had also gone unanswered since last night. He’d been waiting in his car in the Eckerd’s parking lot for a half-hour now: waiting for the fingers to return, waiting for Kristin to return his calls.
Please
. He’d phoned her six or seven times now, worrying more and more with each unanswered call. He placed his cell phone on the passenger seat, started the car, feeling caught in the closed confines, as though caged under water.
Anxiety
. He opened the window, took a deep breath. Common sense told him that he should head home, nestle himself in bed, get some rest just as the doctor had ordered. But his fatherly instincts had him doing otherwise: driving out of the parking lot in the direction of Kristin’s apartment, taking the roads slowly and surely just in case another panic attack should arise. He gripped the wheel tightly, easing the clutch of panic that seemed to roll in even without the onset of the skull-fingers. Deep breaths; inhale through the nose; exhale through the lips.
Ohm
Nama
Shivaya
. Keep calm, keep calm.

Ahead, on a hill, the brownish facing of Kristin’s gated complex came into view. He pulled in through the security entrance, gave his name to the guard as Kristin’s permanent guest, then drove over the small stone bridge to townhouse 1034.

Kristin’s car was parked out front.

He parked alongside the red Mustang. Grabbed his cell phone and got out of the car. The sun cast a blanket of warmth upon him as he strolled nervously up the walkway leading to her residence. He tried to peek through the front window, but couldn’t see past his shadowed reflection in the panes. When he cupped his hands on the glass, he glimpsed only an unoccupied living room.

A door creaked open in the attached townhouse next door. A middle-aged man wearing jeans and a golf shirt emerged, holding a
Mervyn’s
bag. He eyed Bev suspiciously. Bev smiled weakly and shoved his hands in his pockets, feeling, and probably looking, guilty.

“Help ya?” the man asked, an eyebrow raised, the eye below probing him.

“My daughter,” Bev answered, defensively. “I’m looking for my daughter.”

“The man grinned, as though impressed. “Ah, you must be the rock star.”

Bev returned the grin, fingernails probing the dust in his pockets. “That would be me.”

The man drifted forward, offered a handshake, which Bev accepted
uneagerly
. “Joe Caputo. Pleased to meet you.”

“Bev
Mathers
.”

“I’ve heard much about you from Kristin.”

“You see her often?”

“Often enough. We are next door neighbors, of course.”

“Any idea where she is right now?”

Joey shrugged his shoulders. “Saw her getting into a limo last night. ‘Bout seven or so. Last I’ve seen her.”

“A limo?” His heart started pounding.
Be available
.

Joey nodded. “Yep. Nice big fancy black one.”

“You see anyone else get in?”

“No...is there something wrong?”

Bev shook his head. Ran a sweaty hand across his face. “No, just being a parent.” His voice wavered.

“
Gotchya
. Got two of my own. Both married for years. And I still worry.”

Bev peered about the manicured complex. A flock of black birds flew overhead and group-landed in a cherry tree across the street, filling the branches. An uncomfortable silence emerged. Finally, Bev said, “I’m gonna wait out front a bit. Hopefully she’ll be home soon.”
A limo will arrive at your residence at 6:00. Be available
. Had Kristin received the same invite?
No, impossible
, Bev thought. They’d talked all about it at the restaurant yesterday. She would have mentioned something to him.

Joey nodded, said, “Well, nice to meet you,” then paced away with a smile of doubt.

Bev watched Joey Caputo get into his car, back out, and drive away.

He poked out a Camel, lit it, diverting his attention to the motionless birds in the cherry tree that seemed to be staring down at him. He rubbed his tired eyes, then stared back up at the birds and thought with dismay how awful he felt, both physically and mentally, as though he were on a slow-sinking ship, the water now up to his waist.

The lava...

Five minutes passed. The birds remained strangely quiet, not a squawk nor a rustle of feathers to be heard. He tossed the half-smoked cigarette to the floor, snubbed it out, then walked back to the townhouse window and gazed inside. Nothing different. Only his tired reflection staring back at him as he backed away. On a whim, he tried the door.

The knob turned.
Open
.

He pushed the door. It creaked as he entered in silence. A sense of unreality immediately consumed him, thoughts of actually having to continue his career as a musician taunting him; his mind, rightly so, was devoid of any creative inspiration at the moment.
Ain’t doing nothing until I find Kristin, and until I get myself feeling better. Wouldn’t be the first time someone in my position had to take some time off for mental health
.

Closing the door behind him, he felt a chill...a tearing premonition that seemed to fill his heart with shards of ice. He turned around and gazed about the empty townhouse. For a moment he stood still, studying the untouched living room, sniffing the stale air. Then, he stepped forward, overcome with an eerie sense of...of
inception
. He shivered.
Something
, he thought,
is about to happen
.

He paced across the living room, checking out the coffee table, the sofa and loveseat, wondering for the first time why Kristin had left the front door open.
Unlike her to be so careless
. The room—it was undisturbed, everything cleaned and neat as though she’d been expecting company.
A limo?
Yep. Nice big fancy black one
. Arms folded to counteract the invading chill, Bev crossed into the small eat-in kitchen, which was just as immaculate as the living room, oak table polished, the sink’s surface sparkling white.

On the wall over the table, Bev gazed at a series of photographs framed in a montage: pictures of Kristin at various ages, most of them with Bev. One photo on the bottom was of Bev and Julianne seated on a sofa, smiling as they cradled an infant Kristin. Bev placed a finger against the photo of Julianne.
She does look like Rebecca
Haviland
, he thought, smiling, thinking of his time spent last night with the
Rock Hard Magazine
publicist.

Feeling a sudden, remorseful need to apologize to Rebecca for his hasty departure this morning, he grabbed his cell phone.

Started dialing her number.

As he did so, he gazed at his hands.

And froze. The phone fell to the floor.

Because they’d stopped hurting him, he’d forgotten about the mysterious scars he’d obtained while sleeping. Now, looking at his hands, he saw that the scars had healed over. Once red and sore and bleeding, the deep gouges in his palms were now inexplicably dried and scabbed over. What should have taken a few days to mend, had taken only a few hours.

Shaking his head with confusion, flexing and staring at his hands in disbelief, he picked up the phone then slowly paced out of the kitchen, stopping in the foyer to stare at his hands and reaffirm the fact that the scars were nearly gone. In a cloud, he made a left down the short hall into the first of two bedrooms.

Here the walls were painted off-white. Curtains, drawn, blocked the view of the courtyard out back. The twin bed had been made, throws placed carefully atop the fitted spread. The bathroom door in the far left corner was ajar, brilliant white wall tiles gleaming beneath the skylight.

Finding nothing of interest here (and feeling a bit uncomfortable snooping in his daughter’s bedroom), he exited back into the hallway and stood before the closed door to the second bedroom, which Kristin used as an office for her work. He pushed the door open and stood attentively in the entranceway, gazing in sudden bewilderment at the contents of the small room.

In stark contrast to the rest of the house, here existed a major clutter of items, although everything seemed to be situated in its own respective area, as though, despite the presumed chaos, Kristin knew exactly where everything belonged. Magazines and newspapers were piled three feet high—rows that ran the entire length of the far wall. A desk was situated against the right wall beneath the curtained window, a computer, reading lamp, and telephone nearly buried beneath a mountain of textbooks and papers. Her closet had been left open and from within more books spilled out. It’d been perhaps eight months since he was here, and at that time the office had been kept as immaculate as the rest of the home.
So what happened?
Bev stepped over a crooked pile of data folders, to the desk.

He flicked on the lamp and eyeballed some of the papers there, mostly scattered writings of recent articles, interviews, and notes for her work at Rock Scene. Alongside the desk on the floor sat piles of books stacked at various angles, their bindings bragging a myriad of topics:
Rock Hard Magazine’s 100 Greatest Live Albums, Conducting Interviews With the Famous, How To Write A Bestselling Novel, Research In Demonology
...

“What the hell,” he muttered, crouching down to make sure he’d read the book’s spine correctly. He had. And, reading further down the pile, he noticed many more odd titles mixed in with the more common journalistic publications expected of Kristin:
Summoning the Dead, The Harsh Spirit World, Paranormal Studies
. He picked up the first book he spotted, near the top of the pile,
Research in Demonology
, and quickly thumbed through it. Nearly four-hundred pages of text peppered with artist’s renditions of historic people, as well as black and white photos of archaeological sites and the curios discovered in them. Portions of the text had been highlighted throughout.