Demonologist (7 page)

She shook her head, grinned, then looked around. “I don’t think you have to worry about anyone here...except for maybe that guy.” She pointed and Bev turned around. Standing at the pier entrance was Cal
Stolt
, the singer for
Pathway
, another local band making their mark with a recent top-40 hit. He recognized Bev and waved. Bev returned the gesture and turned back to Kristin; each respected the other’s privacy.
  

“Ha-ha. Funny.”

She handed the invitation back to him. “Well...it’s not like you’ve never gotten invited to a party before. Hey Dad, maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll turn out to be one of those ultra-secretive high-class sex romps. You know, orgy of the stars!” Bev rolled his eyes. She added, “This is L.A., pops. They go on all the time.”

“How would you know?”

“I work for a music tabloid? Remember? I know everything that goes on in the business, maybe even more than you.” She grinned slyly.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe it is just an invite.”

She took a sip of beer. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You haven’t been threatened. Nobody’s held a gun to your head.”

After a silence, Bev said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just...well, I haven’t been feeling all too well since I got back, and I guess it’s got me a bit worked up.” He rubbed his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Bev explained. He told her about the odd lightheaded sensation that had come and gone, the disassociation with the music on stage last night, and the episode that occurred while driving on his way here, how he’d felt unexplainably angry and hostile. Plus the sudden anxiety. The out-of-body feeling. He even told her about the bugs in his apartment, and she responded with a look of horror.

He told her everything...except one thing.

The voice.

Too serious to discuss, he’d decided. Institutional stuff. Better left unsaid.

“I made an appointment with the doctor.”

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Noon.”

“Good. Please let me know how you make out, okay?”

“I will.” He stretched his legs out beneath the booth, then chanced another look around at those minding their own business. “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”

“A little ‘R and R’. Nothing important. And then Jake’s party tonight.”

“Jake’s Party?”

She smiled, her eyes narrowed with disbelief. Or, expectation. “He forgot to invite you?”

“I guess...then again, maybe he did mention something to me earlier. Can’t remember.”
He’d said something about having dinner
...

“Well, today’s his birthday and he’s having a party at his house at eight. He mentioned it to me last night. Said you were coming.”

“I don’t remember him saying anything to me about his birthday.” Is
it possible I forgot?

“Well, you better be there. I was hoping we could spend some more time together. And, Rebecca
Haviland
will be there.”

“What is it about Rebecca?”

“She likes you, dad. And, she’s a wonderful woman.”

Bev laughed uncomfortably.
 
“Drop it, okay.”

Kristen shrugged, sullen. “Okay, okay.”

Bev heard a close shuffling of feet behind him, a slight stir of something brushing by. He darted around, looked.

No one was there.

He turned back, audibly breathing out. “What do you say we take a quick walk on the beach?” Suddenly, he wanted to flee the restaurant.

“Sure.”

He stood from the booth, stretched his limbs, feeling as though someone was standing right next to him.

Brushing up against him.

He shuddered.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch
. In his head. And then, in a flash, it was gone.

 
Bev and Kristin bought plastic bottles of Evian water at the bar and took them along to the beach. White sand glared beneath the sun’s rays, splaying a blanket of warmth for the crowd: sunbathers, lifeguards, athletes flexing their muscles for strolling bikinis. Pacific Ocean waves crashing against the surf, into the bodies of waders. They walked northward toward a less populated point, nestled themselves in the sand, and took in the therapeutic vista.

Silence dominated the moment, Kristin pressing her face to the sky to worship its offer of warmth, Bev taking this time to think of Julianne. They’d met in their late teens after graduating high school, each of them working cashier shifts at an L.A. Bi-Mart. Quickly they’d discovered that they’d shared some common interests. Like a taste for the hard rock music that had come in from England in the sixties: The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd,
Jimi
Hendrix. Both had been brought up by aunts after losing their parents at a young age; they’d couldn’t afford college, and yearned to work enough hours to afford themselves small apartments. After a week, they’d started dating steadily and in two months pooled their narrow resources and moved into a South L.A. apartment together. After two years of sinful, blissful, faithful, and rather meager living, Julianne got pregnant. It was an unplanned shocker for the teens, who’d always played their love-making cards carefully. With no one else to talk to other than themselves, they’d discussed their options and came to a quick conclusion: their love was special and would last a million lifetimes; their baby was a gift to treasure and they would keep it and raise it to the best of their abilities. They’d arranged a quick trip to Las Vegas, pledging their vows to one another in a small church off the south end of the strip. Eight months after the young lovers received their license for love, Kristin was born.

And, as always, when thoughts of Julianne filtered into his mind, Bev flashed back to the accident. How he’d waited at the red light at the not-so-busy intersection of Crandon and
Wolfland
Road, how there hadn’t been any cars at all passing through the green light. And when
his
signal turned green, he looked both ways anyway because one couldn’t be too careful, especially with an infant in the car, and when all seemed clear, he inched out into the intersection, but how could he know that coming down
Wolfland
Road at sixty miles an hour was a car being driven by a girl who’d just hours earlier drowned her sorrows in a bottle of Jack Daniels and had decided on taking her own life, and what the fuck, how about a couple of innocents with her? Every cell in his body flinched when he recalled the howling shriek of the tires on the road—an instinctual response from the girl who might’ve had second thoughts in the last moments of her life—and he remembered turning, looking past Julianne who’d just echoed the scream of the tires herself, hands raised in defensive terror as the out-of-control car leaped at them like a shot from a cannon, and that for a split second he could see the girl behind the wheel of the car, and that her face had no discernible features, just a black void of nothing in the moment frozen in time, and then there was a different kind of shriek, that of tearing metal, and his world spun away into a black vortex like that swirling where the girl’s face should have been, and the next thing he recalled were the ambulance sirens and the pain that rose up into the agony of knowing that he’d lost his one and only true love, and
what about my daughter?
was all he could say, over and over again before his blurred vision pooled back into focus and he could see the twisted mangled car, the shattered glass, the blood on the pavement, and all he could only keep on wondering,
what about Kristin?,
and
how is it that am I alive?
, and so did the police at the scene whom he overheard saying,
It’s a miracle. The man and the child are going to be fine. They should be dead. Just look at the car...it’s destroyed
…
  

The impact had been devastating for Julianne, who’d become instantly unrecognizable in the crushed carnage of their car. And the cops had been correct in their immediate assumptions—miraculously Bev had managed only bruises from the accident, and thank God for the car seat that’d held six-month old Kristin
Mathers
; she’d cried terribly and gained only internal injuries, resulting in an three-day hospital stay, but she’d made it home just in time for her mother’s funeral, which had been delayed pending a police investigation.

And thus began Bev and Kristin’s lives, minus Julianne
Mathers
.

It always took great strength for Bev to put these hideous memories of catastrophic agony into the appropriate recesses of his mind, where they could do no additional damage. To counteract the pain, he utilized another branch of strength to drum up the more mystically pleasurable recollection of his day in
Alondra
Park, when the swan came to deliver his message from Julianne; yes, this helped him to relegate his doubts and fears of continuing his life with a sense of happiness and utter contentment, to move on as the sole provider for his daughter, who’d needed him for her survival.

A barking dog shook Bev from his reverie. He and Kristin adjusted their positions on the hard sand, a hundred yards back from the surf. Two shirtless, college-aged men ran down the beach, tossing a Frisbee back and forth, splashing in the tide’s crescents and diving into the shallow water to make great catches. A mixed-breed dog with a red bandana around its neck splashed along the edge of the rushing waves, barking gleefully, hopeful to catch the flying disk in its jaws. In between throws, the two guys, tanned and toned and flexing, peeked over at Bev and Kristin who were doing their best to avoid their overt gazes; they’d either recognized Bev beneath his hat-and-shades cloak, or were checking out Kristin. Maybe both.

Or, maybe, they were
watching
him.

Finally, the Frisbee was overthrown. Bev blew out a deep breath. Predictable. It landed a few yards from Bev and Kristin.

“Here they come,” Kristin said expectantly. “The male species at work.”

“They’ve been looking over here since we sat down.” Bev didn’t want to press the issue any further: that these guys, expertly camouflaged amidst the sunny environment, may very well be keeping tabs on him.
Something isn’t right here. I can feel it. In my brain. A perception of being watched
.

The dog darted over and clutched the Frisbee in its jaws. Shook it about. Sprayed some sand on Bev and Kristin. The Frisbee throwers rode the dog’s wagging tail, both of them male lions, chests out, pearly teeth bared. Their
boardshorts
rode low on their slender hips; one wore a matching red bandana around his neck; the other, a seashell necklace.

Bev nodded upon their approach; this simple acknowledgement would hopefully send them on their way.
Do they recognize me?

The guy with the bandana leaned down, grabbed the Frisbee from the dog. “Here’ ya go, Garcia.” He flung the Frisbee to the left of Bev and Kristin, a hundred feet away, toward the dunes.

The guy with the seashell necklace said, “Bev
Mathers
, right?”

“That’s right,” Bev answered impatiently. Kristin smirked, covering her mouth with her right hand.

“Don’t mean to bother you, man...actually I’m really not a fan of your music, but I just thought you’d like to know that there’s a man up there in the dunes watching you with a pair of binoculars. We’ve been watching him ever since you got here.”

“We’re guessing he’s the press, or something,” the guy with the bandana said.
 

“Where?”

Kristin pulled her hand away from her face. She peered up at the two guys; they eyeballed her up and down and sideways, grinning, vying for her attention. They didn’t get it.

The dog returned with the Frisbee and dropped it at Bandana’s feet. He picked it up, flipped it end-over-end, allowing the sand to spill out. “Don’t look now...I’ll toss the Frisbee toward him. He’s up on the dunes alongside the restaurant. Under the pier.”