by Randall Pine
Demon Zero
Book 1 of the Dark Matter Series
Randall Pine
Chapter 1
“I’m not saying there’s not a demon in Mrs. Grunberg’s basement,” Simon sighed. “I’m just saying that if there is a demon, we’re not equipped to deal with it.”
“Come on, Simon!” Virgil said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “If not us, who?”
“No one. No one is equipped to deal with demons. That’s the thing about being a human person. You don’t come naturally equipped with demon-hunting skills.”
“Priests do,” Virgil pointed out.
“Not all priests.”
“Exorcists do. They’re priests.”
Simon ruffled his short blond hair and rubbed his hands down his face. The spinning, colored lights were really starting to hurt his eyes. “Why do we always come to Squeezy Cheez?” he complained.
“Because I work the morning shift at a ball bearing plant, and Squeezy Cheez is the only thing that brings me joy. Mostly, it’s the Skee-Ball. Skee-Ball brings me joy.”
“I hate Skee-Ball,” Simon said miserably.
“And the pizza,” Virgil pointed out, lifting another slice and chopping through the stringy cheese with one finger. “We come for that, too.”
“The pizza is terrible,” Simon pointed out.
“That’s what makes it great.”
Simon looked down sadly at the pizza. The sausage was weirdly pale, and clammy. He picked up a piece and jammed it into his mouth anyway. “Exorcists don’t really apply here,” he continued, mumbling through the cardboard crust. “They fight demons on a person’s inside. Mrs. Grunberg’s demon is on the outside.”
“So you admit Mrs. Grunberg has a demon.”
“I never said she didn’t have a demon!” Simon said, exasperated. “It’s just that if there is a demon in her basement, we’re not...hey.” He snapped his fingers. “Are you listening to me?”
Virgil’s attention had wandered. “Is that a new Pop-A-Shot?” he asked, craning his neck to get a better view of the far side of the game room.
“Who cares about a Pop-A-Shot?”
“I do. I care about a Pop-A-Shot. I have long arms, I’m really good at Pop-A-Shot.” He chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip. “I could get a lot of tickets out of Pop-A-Shot.”
“Look—”
“I need, like, three hundred more tickets, and the Nerf gun is mine. Also, did you see there’s a new girl working the counter?” he asked, jerking his thumb toward the cash register. A woman about their age stood behind it, drumming her fingers on the counter, bored. She had pale skin, almost translucent, and her hair was dyed bright purple and cut into a cute bob. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach even the bottom shelf of prizes, Simon had noticed.
“Yeah, I saw. So what?”
“So it’s weird, isn’t it? People in their twenties aren’t supposed to work at Squeezy Cheez.”
“I walk dogs for a living,” Simon pointed out miserably.
“That’s not all you do,” Virgil said. Simon had a lot of odd jobs, and Virgil knew he was self-conscious about not having an actual career.
“Look, are we talking about demons or not?” Simon demanded.
“Yes, fine, let’s talk about demons,” Virgil said, turning back in his chair and rolling his eyes.
“You’re the one who brought it up!” Simon cried.
“Well someone had to! It’s going to eat poor Mrs. Grunberg!”
Simon pushed himself up from the table and pulled a wad of bills from his pocket. He tossed them down, then turned and walked out of restaurant.
“Hey!” Virgil cried. He jumped up from his seat, rifled through his wallet, and pulled out a ten. He threw it down on the table and ran after his roommate. He stopped about halfway to the door, hurried back to the table, and jammed another piece of pizza between his teeth. Then he sprinted across the restaurant, nearly knocking over a pair of twins on his way out the door. “Simon, come on! Stop!”
“I’m not doing this today,” Simon said, fumbling for his keys and squinting in the sudden brightness of the sunlight. “I’m not getting sucked into your...your vortex of nonsense.”
“You love my vortex of nonsense.”
“Not today.” Simon reached the old, beat-up Pontiac 6000LE that his grandmother had left him in her will. What paint was left was a dark maroon color, but most of that had flaked away, leaving a sickly silver metal showing through the rust. He jammed the key into the lock and grunted as he tried to turn it. “Stupid car,” he muttered.
Virgil slipped on a trickle of oil on the asphalt and lost his balance, slamming into the side of the Pontiac. The muffler fell off with a clang.
“Oh, great,” Simon grumbled.
“Sorry. Look.” Virgil rubbed his elbow, which had slammed into the car window. “I’m sorry. It’s just…don’t you want to do something? Don’t you want to help people?”
Simon sighed. He let go of the key, his lucky dice keychain dangling from the lock. “I don’t not want to help people,” he said. “But a demon? In Mrs. Grunberg’s basement? Virgil, that’s not our problem.”
“I know it’s not our problem. But that’s exactly why it’s our problem! Don’t you get that?”
Simon blinked. “No,” he answered honestly. “I don’t.”
“A demon in Mrs. Grunberg’s basement isn’t our problem. It’s not anyone’s problem. It’s hardly even Mrs. Grunberg’s problem, I doubt she could take manage a flight of stairs...she’s 300 years old.”
“She’s 87.”
“Her demon isn’t anyone else’s problem,” Virgil continued. “The thing that crawled out of Gossamer Lake last month wasn’t anyone’s problem. That gross sewer monster that bubbled up on Ridge Road this year wasn’t anyone’s problem. Weird things happen in Templar, Simon. I don’t know why Pennsylvania is some whirlpool of awful, but things happen here, dangerous things, supernatural things, and people go missing, or they go mad, or their bodies end up broken into pieces and scattered on the subway tracks, and it’s never anyone’s problem. That’s why it has to be someone’s problem. Let’s do something!” he cried. “Let’s save people! Let’s go down to Mrs. Grunberg’s basement and send her demon back to hell!”
Simon’s face flushed red with anger. He pulled back against the instinct to slam his fist into the window of the Pontiac. But when his voice came out, it was small, and sad. “Do you even know what today is?” he whispered.
Virgil exhaled. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, and he shook his head. “Of course I know what today is,” he replied. “How could I forget it? Of course I know.”
Simon looked at his best friend, his eyes wet, his face pleading. “Then why are we talking about this today?”
The pain in his voice broke Virgil in half.
“We’re talking about this today because it’s today,” Virgil said gently. He gave Simon a soft punch on the arm. “She’s the reason we need to do this, Simon.”
Simon lowered his eyes. He stared down at the car door, lost in his own thoughts, his eyes clouded over with memory. Finally, after several long moments, he spoke: “We couldn’t have helped her.”
Virgil dug into his palm with his thumb. “But we could help the next person,” he said quietly.
Simon shot him a hard look. His eyes were rimmed red with the threat of tears. “We don’t know the first thing about fighting demons, or sewer monsters, or lake serpents. Yeah, Virgil, weird things happen in Templar. Awful things. Evil things. I don’t know why those things happen here, I don’t know why the rest of the world looks at us
and loses their minds and seals us off and leaves us for dead, I don’t know why we live in the one city in the Western world with a direct line to an otherworldly hellstorm, but I do know why it keeps happening, with impunity: because there are no heroes in Templar. There are no more magics, or mages, or wizards, or gods, there is no one here to fight whatever it is that sends ghouls and vampires and banshees into our streets, and all we can do is pack our bags and leave this terrible, awful, evil city. There’s no one here to save us, but it’s too hard to leave. So people stay here, and people just die.”
Virgil opened his mouth to respond, but Simon grabbed the key, jammed it to the left, popped open the door, jumped into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, and pulled through the parking spot, the Pontiac gasping for breath as it tore across the lot and pulled out into the midday city traffic, heading west.
Virgil stared after the car, spreading his arms open wide in disbelief. “But you’re my ride,” he said.
Simon did not come back.
Chapter 2
Simon pulled into the parking lot, a wide rectangle of dull white rocks. He threw the Pontiac into park. He turned off the ignition. He took a breath.
He got out of the car.
After three years, he knew the way to Laura’s grave by heart.
He padded across the soft, uneven grass of the cemetery, passing tombstones that dated back to the 18th century. Templar had been one of the first towns settled in Pennsylvania, in the foothills of the Appalachians. There was a time when it had been on track to become the biggest city in the state; then Pittsburgh hit its steel boom and sapped some of its strength. But there was more history here, and with that history came the graveyards, with their roughly settled earth.
Simon pushed on through the older stones and headed up the hill, toward the newer section. He found Laura’s grave right where he’d left it a few weeks before: at the end of the row, next to the rusty chain fence, overlooking Gossamer Lake.
He sat down on the grass and crossed his legs. Graveyards made some people uncomfortable, but not Simon. He had always been comfortable with the idea of the dead—not with death, but with the notion that people die, and that’s how it goes.
He actually took comfort in the quiet of the cemetery. It was peaceful.
“Hey, Laura,” he said, moving his eyes over the etching on her stone. Laura Dark, Beloved Daughter and Sister. The date of her death was carved near the bottom, six years ago to the day. Six years since they’d lost her. Six years that had gone by so fast.
Of course, the actual date was really just their best guess. On that autumn morning, Laura hadn’t come down for breakfast. Their mother had gone upstairs to wake her up, and Simon could still remember the sound of her panic when she opened the door and found Laura’s room empty. The bed hadn’t been slept in.
Laura didn’t come home that day, or the next day, or the next. The police had been notified, search parties had been sent out, but no one ever saw Laura again. What they did find was her bracelet, a thin chain with a silver charm shaped like an ice cream cone. Someone from one of the search parties had found it in the woods outside of city limits. It sat in the bottom of a circular pit that had been dug into the earth.
Pieces of Laura’s skin had rubbed onto the silver of the chain. The coroner said that was a sign of a struggle. They tested the DNA, just to be sure it was her.
Laura was gone.
“Mom can’t make it today,” Simon said, blinking back his tears. “I mean, she can come, but she won’t, or doesn’t think she’d be able to, or whatever. She’s not coming. And Dad…well, you know about Dad. I don’t know if he even knows you’re gone.”
He caught some movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turned. Standing on the other side of the chain was Virgil. He was breathing hard from his climb up the hill, and his shaggy brown hair was blowing in the wind.
“When did you get here?” Simon asked.
“Just now,” Virgil panted. “I would’ve been here sooner, but my ride just sort of left me in the parking lot. I had to take two buses, and then run up this stupid hill.” He started to cross over the chain, but stopped. “Can I join you?” he asked first. Simon nodded, and Virgil stepped over the fence. “It’s creepy here,” he said, looking around.
“It’s quiet.”
“It’s too quiet.” He reached down and touched the top of the tombstone. “Hi, Laura.”
“Sorry I left you at Squeezy Cheez,” Simon said.
Virgil shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t mean to make you mad. I know today’s the anniversary. But that’s, like, why we should do this. Because of Laura. Because of what happened to her.”
“We don’t know what happened to her,” Simon pointed out.
“Exactly. We don’t know what happened, but we know it was something evil. It might have even been Mrs. Grunberg’s demon.”
“It wasn’t Mrs. Grunberg’s demon,” Simon said, rolling his eyes. “And we don’t even know for sure that Mrs. Grunberg even has a demon.”
“So let’s go find out. And if she does have a demon, let’s send it back to hell.”
Simon snorted. He shook his head, but said nothing.
“Look,” Virgil continued, sitting down on the grass next to Laura’s grave. “How many people in Templar have disappeared like Laura did? How many people have died, or vanished, because there was no one to fight for them? We could be the ones who fight for them! We could be the ones who fight the monsters!”
“Are you even listening to yourself?” Simon asked, incredulous. “We can’t fight monsters, Virgil!”
“We can’t fight monsters yet,” Virgil correct him. “But I have a plan.”
He opened his mouth to elaborate, but Simon raised a hand, silencing him. “Hey,” he said, his eyes suddenly alert. “Do you hear that?”
Virgil cocked his head to the side and strained his ears. At first, he didn’t hear anything…but then, there it was: a soft, muffled sound, like it was coming from beneath a heavy blanket. It was the muted sound of something scratching on wood. “Actually, I do,” he said. He crossed behind Laura’s stone, careful not to step on the grave. Unlike Simon, he was a little more cautious about the dead.
He walked between the graves, listening carefully. The sound grew louder as he zeroed in on its source, and it changed, too. The scratching was interrupted by a hard cracking of wood...which transitioned into a gentle rumble. Virgil stepped up behind a tombstone four spots over from Laura’s grave. He looked back at Simon and held a finger to his lips. He pointed down with his other hand. This one.
Simon nodded, and he pulled himself up from his seat on the ground. He crossed cautiously over to the grave, stepping lightly. “What is it?” he whispered, but Virgil shushed him.
They stared at the ground. It began to pulse from beneath, mounding up and sinking back down, up and down, like something was pushing up from under the earth.
Then a gray, mottled hand broke through the dirt, and Virgil began to scream.
Chapter 3
“Undead!” Virgil screeched. He lunged forward and knocked Simon back, pushing him out of the way, which was ultimately unnecessary, since the creature in the ground was having a slow time of crawling up from his grave.
“Get off!” Simon cried, pushing Virgil to the side. They leapt to their feet and turned to face the grave. The sickly hand had broken all the way through the earth, waving wildly from the elbow. The rotting fingers of a second hand had pushed up through the hole and were clawing at the earth, making the hole gap.
“Have you ever fought a zombie?” Virgil asked, his voice high and tight with fear.
“Of course I’ve never fought a zombie...I’ve never even seen a zombie!” Simon snapped.
“We saw that one in science class in fourth grade,” Virgil reminded him.
“That one didn’t count. It wa
s in captivity.”
The zombie pushed its other hand through the ground and clawed frantically at the grass, pulling more dirt down onto himself and pushing the hole out even wider. Soon its head rose through the clumps of earth and grass. The undead monster had once been a man. Now it was something else entirely.
It gasped for breath, the yellow-gray flesh hanging from its cheekbones, flapping open so they could see its teeth behind the skin. Its pupils were dull black, and the whites of its eyes had filmed over with a rotten yellow mucous. It coughed and snarled as it struggled up out of its grave, thick drips of saliva trailing from its lips.
“I don’t remember anything from that class,” Virgil realized. “How are you supposed to kill them?”
“How are you supposed to kill them? You go for the brain—have you never watched a movie?!” Simon demanded. “You always go for the brain!”
“Great,” said Virgil, tracking the zombie’s struggling movements. “Go for it with what?”
Simon looked around. “Maybe with a rock?”
“Do you see any rocks?”
“I don’t see any anything.”
“Use your foot,” Virgil decided. “You can stomp on it with your foot.”
“I’m not stomping on it with my foot!” Simon cried. “You stomp on it with your foot!”
“You’re closer,” Virgil pointed out.
“I’m not smashing in its brain with my foot!”
The zombie shrugged its shoulders out of the hole. It looked at Simon and Virgil with such blunt desire, with such hunger, that they both shuddered at the same time. The zombie planted its hands on the grass and pushed, hauling itself out of the grave.
“Too late now!” Simon said. He grabbed Virgil’s sleeve and pulled him back. “We should go.”
“Go? Go where?” Virgil asked, watching the zombie pull its legs out of the hole.
“Anywhere!”
“There’s a school across the street!” Virgil cried. “We’re just going to run away and let him have a middle school buffet for lunch?”