INDELICATE INCIDENTS: 27
Negotiating with demons and other desperate measures.
27.
The demon moves. Too fast for a person. She reaches the edge of the salt circle. Slams against a barrier I can’t see, but I can feel the force of it. For a second there’s not a person in front of us. A great screeching thing with long legs and skittering arms. Shadows and smoke and sludge. Wings and tails and spikes and tentacles, all of it black and it’s mouth so many fucking teeth and too many things at once.
There’s a girl lying in the salt circle. She sits up. Her features shift. Mouth ends up in a frown. She hisses. Gets on all fours. Touches the edge of the salt circle again. There’s a crackling noise.
‘Oh shit,’ says Grady. ‘I summoned a demon.’ His eyes are wide.
‘Nescio says we’re not supposed to call them demons,’ I say. I can’t take my eyes off her either. ‘Monsters, maybe.’
‘Don’t ruin this for me,’ he says. Watches her, transfixed. The demon blinks like a lizard. Pupils shrink to pinpricks and her eyes blaze red. ‘
‘You did it,’ I say to Grady. Feel a surge of pride so intense I could cry. ‘You fucking did it.’ I go to him. Bump his shoulder with mine. ‘I knew you could do it.’
‘I summoned a demon,’ says Grady. Rolling the words around on his tongue. ‘A real demon.’
The demon sits down on the table. She had been pretty before the accident. Graceful features and thin lips. Big eyes. Great cheekbones. But she’s wrong. Her eyes are hellfire red around charcoal eyes. Tiny jerks and twitches, like she can’t quite work out the mechanics. Mouth pulled back to show her teeth. It gives the impression she’s always smiling.
It’s not a friendly smile.
‘What is this?’ she asks, gesturing to the salt ring. She has a pleasant, musical voice. Underneath it there’s a hint of graveyard dust and cyanide. ‘Why have you called me?’
Grady sits on the floor. Flip through his book again.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask him. ‘And can it wait until later?’
‘There should be more instructions here,’ he says without looking up. ‘I know there was a portion of the text about the binding aspects of the ritual. But I can’t seem to find it.’
‘Why do you need more instructions?’ I ask. ‘I thought you had this.’
‘You’d think the translations would have been more exact,’ says Grady. ‘Or you know what? The people who wrote this should have been clearer. The original writers, I mean. These sorts of things should not be open to interpretation, particularly when they involve demons. It’s frankly just another way to gate-keep information, based on arbitrary and political factors that prevent people from truly understanding the strange and inhuman beings plaguing -’
‘Grady!’ I say loudly. He blinks and looks over at me.
‘Yes, hello?’ he says.
‘Why do you need instructions for the spell you know backwards and forwards?’ Grady shrugs. Flips through the pages of the book with added speed.
‘Just in case,’ he says.
‘In case what?’ Grady slams the book shut with a snap.
‘I don’t think I understood the implications of the spell actually working,’ he says.
‘The implication was you would summon a demon,’ I say.
‘Yeah, exactly.’ He grimaces. ‘Life comes at you fast. And now I would like to guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything has gone off without a hitch, so neither of us gets murdered. That okay with you?’
‘Go for it,’ I say. Stand on the other side of the ring of salt. It surrounds the plastic table.
I’ll never be able to fold clothes on it again.
The demon watches intently, pupil-less eyes sharp and calculating. Her head twitches every now and then. Little jerks, learning the new muscles and bones of her body. Still can’t get the head to be quite centered. Walks to the edge of the circle. Reaches out to touch it. There’s a burning smell. She jerks back, hissing.
‘You two have no idea what you’ve done, do you?’ she snarls. Pinpoint pupils and nothing living should have eyes that color. ‘You’re amateurs. Hacks. You have no idea the power you’ve harnessed, the chaos you’ve wrought. Fools. Both of you.’
‘I have an idea,’ I say.
‘I am not a hack,’ snaps Grady at the same time, cheeks going red.
‘Please,’ I say to the demon. For a moment forget to be frightened. ‘You’re not the most fucked up thing I’ve dealt with today let alone in my life.’ Grady looks up from the book with a frown.
‘Frank, don’t harass the demon,’ says Grady.
‘She started it,’ I say. It’s a shitty attempt at a joke, but Grady smiles anyway.
I toss a duffel bag at the demon. She plucks it out of the air with a swift but jerky movement. Stop motion animation brought to life.
‘Clothes,’ I say. ‘Put them on.’
‘These bodies are depraved abominations,’ she says. ‘What the fuck is this?’ She points at her nose. ‘Who designed this?’
‘Nobody with good intentions,’ I say.
I watch the demon dress with those same jerky, unnatural movements. The sweatpants give her trouble. She catches me watching. The corners of the smile twitch upwards.
‘These bodies make no sense,’ she says. ‘All these stupid squishy bits. Not used to having legs like this. They bend wrong. And your feet are disgusting.’
‘You didn’t look like a prize either.’ My voice doesn’t shake. Flapping bat wings screech of a predator zeroing in on its kill. Incorporeal and always changing.
Living things shouldn’t move like her.
Once she’s more or less dressed, the demon sits on the plastic table. Fixes me with a long look. Her head tilts to one side until she remembers to right it. She keeps twisting her neck like she doesn’t know what to do with it.
‘You have a lot of blood on you,’ she says. Reflexively I glance down. I’m rumpled but clean. I raise an eyebrow. ‘Figuratively,’ she adds. ‘Oceans of it, really. It’s a wonder you haven’t drowned yet. It’s attracting the scent of predators. Born into blood and to blood you will return.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I say. ‘Grady,’ I call over my shoulder. He grunts in acknowledgement. ‘Grade.’
‘You’re an interesting one, aren’t you?’ asks the demon. She steeples her long fingers in front of her face. ‘Frank.’ She rolls my name around on her tongue in a way that makes me feel unclean. Snaps the ‘k’ at the end like a brittle twig. ‘Think you can bring back the dead? It’s all around you. They’re screaming. Begging you. It hasn’t forgotten you. It won’t, not until after it’s had you. There’s sins and there’s sinning and some defy realities.’
‘Grady, for fuck’s sake.’ I’m cold. Take a step back from the ring.
‘She can’t hurt you,’ Grady says as he walks over. She has to listen to what I say. And now that she’s in this body, she’s stuck until I release her. I think.’ I look up at him.
‘You think?’ I repeat.
‘I’d love to test that theory,’ says the demon. She looks around. ‘I’ve never been to this world before. It’s drab. I don’t think I like it.’
‘This is just our basement,’ I say.
‘Where I’m from the colors are alive and brutal and blinding and black, all black,’ says the demon. ‘And they live and they die and they burn, they all burn. You’ll burn too.’
‘We need you to hunt something,’ says Grady. He holds the book to his chest like a shield. The demon attempts a shrug. Her head flops to the side like a doll’s.
‘Do it yourself,’ she says. ‘You don’t need me. Humans are good at finding humans.’
Grady shakes his head, his face serious.
‘We’re hunting something else,’ he says. ‘Something like you.’
The demon’s smile twists. It looks a lot less friendly. A lot less human than it had the moment before.
‘There is nothing like me,’ she says. ‘There never was and there never will be again.’ She climbs off the table and walks stiffly to the very edge of the salt ring. Her toes stop a hair’s breadth away. ‘You don’t even know what you’ve captured,’ she says in wonder. Her slender body lists dangerously close to the edge of the circle. Despite what Grady said, I have the urge to bolt.
‘Listen to me,’ she says. ‘I’m feeling magnanimous. You get one last warning.’ She locks eyes with Grady. ‘Let me go. Return me to where I belong. End this now.’ Grady turns to me.
‘Frank?’ he asks. ‘Your call. Your choice.’
I stand toe to toe with the demon. A line of salt is all that separates us. I feel Grady by my side.
‘We’ll let you go once you’ve helped us,’ I say. ‘Then you can return from whence you came. Or whatever.’ A strange expression flits across the demon’s face. Surprise.
‘You refuse me freedom?’ she asks. Sounds confused. A little offended, to be honest.
‘Yeah,’ I say with as much false bravado as I can muster. ‘I refuse. You’re going to help me find my brother, and whatever monster is controlling him.’
The demon takes a step back. She twists her neck to a ninety-degree angle with a crunch. Licks her lips with a filmy pale tongue.
‘No,’ she says after a pregnant pause. Keeps pressing her hand along the edge of the circle. Listens to her skin singe.
‘No?’ repeats Grady. The demon shakes her head, hair greasy and lank around her face.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Go fuck yourself. I’m not doing shit for you.’
‘Can she do that?’ I ask Grady. ‘Just say no?’
‘I’m a creature you will never be able to perceive from a place you could never comprehend,’ says the demon. ‘I’ve seen worlds born and cities crumble. I’ve made castles of bones with moats of blood. Of course I can fucking say no.’
I turn and look at the monster in the circle. She doesn’t blink very often.
Maybe we’re related.
‘Grady,’ I say, holding her glassy-eyed gaze. ‘How do you torture a demon?’