Demon Zero

by Randall Pine

  “We don’t have to fight him, we just have to expel him!”

  “He is going to expel our bones from our skeletons!” Simon snapped.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Virgil pointed out. “If our skeletons lost their bones, they wouldn’t be skeletons anymore.”

  But Simon just shook his head. “I can’t, Virgil. I can’t do this.”

  Virgil climbed up to his knees. He placed his hands on Simon’s shoulders and gave him a hard look, staring directly into his eyes. “Simon. Listen to me. I’m scared too. Okay? I’m scared out of my mind. But someone has to do something. If someone had done something six years ago, Laura might still be alive. But no one did anything. Let’s be the someone who does something.”

  Simon’s eyes filmed over with tears. He brushed them away. When he spoke again, his voice was clouded and shaky. “What if the thing we do is get ourselves killed?”

  Virgil shrugged. “Then I won’t have to go to my shift at the plant tomorrow. And that doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Simon closed his eyes. He pictured Laura—not as she looked the last time he had seen her, but as she might look now. If she had lived. If someone had done something.

  “Okay,” he said, swallowing hard and nodding his head. “Let’s do it. Let’s do something.”

  “Good,” Virgil said. “Besides, it’s going to be fine. We have PurgeYourEvil.org on our side.”

  “Great,” Simon mumbled. “Hurry up and finish the circle. I’ll keep looking for the best way in, but I’ll be able to breathe normally again if I’m on the other side of a line he can’t cross.”

  Virgil nodded. He rose to his feet, picked up the Morton’s salt, and continued his path along the grass, climbing over the fence and continuing on around toward the front of the house.

  From this close up, he noticed the begonias weren’t dripping liquid; they were dripping shadows. The soft, opaque drops collected on the tips of the leaves, then they floated down like smoke, disappearing when they hit the ground with a soft pfffth sound. “That’s freakin’ weird,” he mumbled.

  He drew the circle up the side of the house and crossed back into the front yard. He shook out the last leg of salt, connecting his trail to where it had started, completing the full, unbroken circle.

  Virgil stood back. He waited. He checked his watch. He frowned.

  He had expected something to happen. A flash of light, maybe, or the sound of a lock being thrown—something. But there was nothing remarkable about it. It was just a circle of salt.

  “Don’t steer me wrong, PurgeYourEvil,” he muttered to himself. “Simon’s going to be super angry if this doesn’t work.”

  “If what doesn’t work?” said a soft, warbling voice from behind him. Virgil screamed and jumped, flailing his hands and throwing salt in all directions. He spun around and was confronted with a small, thin, elderly woman, her white hair knotted on top of her head, a knitted blue shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

  “Mrs. Grunberg!” Virgil cried, his heart hammering in his chest. “What are you doing home?”

  Mrs. Grunberg adjusted the half-moon spectacles that perched on the end of her nose. She squinted through the lenses and said, “Is that Victor?”

  “Virgil,” he replied. “Virgil Matter. Do you remember me?”

  “Oh, of course!” Mrs. Grunberg said, brightening a bit. “I thought your family moved to the suburbs.”

  “My parents did,” Virgil said, willing his pulse to slow. The old woman had scared the daylights out of him. “I’m still here. I room with, um, Simon? Simon Dark? Do you remember him?”

  “Of course, of course! My Robert used to watch you boys when you were little! How nice to see you.”

  “Thanks,” Virgil said. Then he added, “Um, you too.”

  Mrs. Grunberg looked down at the Morton salt container in his hand. Then she peered down at the curved line of salt running across her lawn. “Can I help you with something, Victor?” she asked.

  “It’s Virgil. Um…” He looked down at the salt line, too. “I was…I’m just…it’s that…you have…slugs,” he lied.

  Mrs. Grunberg frowned. “Slugs?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Garden slugs. Big, huge garden slugs!” he said, really leaning into the lie. He held his hands two feet apart to show her how long they were. “Massive! And really dangerous. So I’m…um…salting. For the slugs.”

  Mrs. Grunberg smiled. “Oh, you are a dear,” she said, patting his cheek. “Such a nice boy, helping out an old woman like me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Virgil said, blushing.

  “I’d invite you in for some milk, but I have so much to do!” she said, hobbling past Virgil and heading toward the porch stairs. She seemed oblivious to the red light pulsing out from under the porch. “My grandson Neil is coming tomorrow. He’s been coming by a few times a week to help me around the house, and I need to make up the guest bed.” She pulled herself up the stairs with the help of the handrail. She paused at the top of the porch and looked down at Virgil, squinting through her glasses. “Hmm,” she said, looking him up and down. Her demeanor changed, and she wrinkled up her face, looking down at him with something like disappointment, or disdain. Maybe it was the fact that he was covered in dirt and sweat from the labor of drawing the circle around the house…or maybe she sensed something about him, felt his true motive. Maybe it wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed the red light from the basement, but that she had ignored it. Maybe she had conjured up the demon, and she sensed that Virgil had come to expel it. Or maybe it was just the dirt and the sweat. Whatever it was, she frowned down on him and said, “There’s a sink in the basement. I leave the back door unlocked. Go on down there and wash up.” It wasn’t a question; it was a command.

  A chill ran through Virgil’s skin. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, but his voice came out in a squeak.

  Old Mrs. Grunberg nodded, then she turned back and walked up to the door. “Go down to the basement,” she said again, pushing her key into the lock and opening the door. “I mustn’t let you go home like that, when you’ve been so helpful to me.”

  Then she was inside the house, and she slammed the door shut.

  Chapter 6

  Virgil relayed the story of what had just happened with Mrs. Grunberg to Simon. “I think this might be a trap,” Virgil said, out of breath from climbing back over the fence.

  “Oh, you think?” Simon whispered, rolling his eyes.

  “I’m just saying, we should be careful down there.”

  “That’s a really good idea, because I was planning on smashing in through a window, running up to the demon, and punching him right in the face,” Simon said sarcastically.

  “Well I don’t think that’s a very good plan,” Virgil pointed out. Simon sighed.

  They approached the back door. It was a heavy wooden thing, set into the jamb with thick, rusty hinges. It looked like it belonged in a castle dungeon, not in the backyard of a Tudor-style mansion three blocks from a Starbucks in northwestern Templar.

  “She said she keeps it unlocked,” Virgil said, motioning toward the door.

  “I know,” Simon replied, “I checked it while you were drawing the circle.” He looked down at the line of salt in front of his feet. “I guess if everything goes badly, we can just run back up here, right? Dive across the line, and be safe?”

  “That’s the plan,” Virgil shrugged.

  “All right,” Simon said, nodding. “Better get your words ready.”

  Virgil slipped his phone out of his pocket and called up the website while Simon dug through the gym bag and pulled out the candle, the lighter, the chalk, and the rope. He slung the rope loop over his shoulder, and he took a piece of chalk from the box and pushed it into his back pocket so he wouldn’t have to fumble with the box downstairs. He took out a second piece and handed it to Virgil, who tucked it behind hi
s ear like a pencil.

  “Can we light the candle out here, or do we have to be closer to the demon?” Simon asked.

  “As long as we do it inside the circle, it should work,” Virgil replied.

  Simon took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. He stepped inside the circle.

  “Why are you acting so weird? You already went up to the house, you already tried the door,” Virgil pointed out.

  “I know!” Simon snapped. “But now we’re going through the door, and I’m nervous!” He knelt down on the grass, huddling against the candle to protect the flame, even though there wasn’t much of a breeze. “Ready?” he asked. Virgil nodded. Simon flicked the lighter to life, and he held the flame to the wick.

  The candle wouldn’t catch fire.

  “Why won’t it light?” Simon hissed.

  “I don’t know...it’s new! Sometimes it takes a while with a new wick!”

  “You didn’t pre-burn it?”

  “Why would I pre-burn it? No, I didn’t pre-burn it!”

  “You always pre-burn it!” Simon said, annoyed. He clicked the lighter again, and this time he held the flame against the nylon wick until the wax melted away and the material caught fire. The small flame flickered orange and yellow in the darkness, cutting through the glow of red coming from the basement windows. Simon nodded at Virgil. “Go ahead,” he said.

  Virgil swiped up on the screen until he found the beginning of the spell. “Okay, here we go,” he said. He took a deep breath. He looked at the words. Then he frowned. He cocked his head, and he squinted down at the screen.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon demanded.

  “The spell is in Latin,” Virgil whispered back. “I don’t speak Latin.”

  “You’re just now realizing that the spell is in Latin and that you don’t speak Latin?!” Simon squeaked, trying to keep his voice down. His face flushed red with impatience. “Didn’t you read this before coming out here?”

  “I saw there was a spell, I didn’t read the spell!” Virgil said. “I didn’t want to use it up, in case it only works once!”

  “You are such an idiot.” Simon swiped Virgil’s phone and shoved the candle into his friend’s hands. The flame flickered and flattened, but it didn’t go out. Simon zoomed in on the words. He had taken a semester of Latin in high school, mostly to impress a girl named Lisa who was also taking the class. But during the third week of the semester, he saw Lisa in the cafeteria holding hands with the captain of the lacrosse team. Latin lost all its luster after that. Simon hadn’t been able to pay attention to a single lesson. Still, he had learned enough during those first few weeks to know how to pronounce most of the vowels. “Okay,” he said, shaking out his shoulders. “Here goes nothing.”

  The spell was long, two full paragraphs, and Simon struggled through it. Some of the words, he knew, like ignis and malum…but others, like praesidio and spatium, he had to guess at. There was one passage that read, Da mihi clypeus; da mihi solatium. He had to read that one three times before he got it right. But Virgil kept nodding encouragingly, so he pressed on, reading the ancient words and, he hoped, weaving a passable spell of protection.

  “Ab hoc malo defendat,” he read, finishing the enchantment.

  As soon as he said the word defendat, the flame of the candle roared to life, bursting into a huge tongue of fire, so large and hot that it singed Virgil’s eyebrows. Virgil almost dropped the candle, but he recovered just before it slipped from his grasp, and they watched in open-mouthed wonder as the flame continue to burn high and wide, a softball of fire perched atop a stout red base. The colors of the flame flickered from yellow to orange to blue to red to green to purple, and then continued to burn blueish-purple as it slowly shrank and reformed itself into a normal-sized candle flame, dancing lazily on the wick.

  “Two points for PurgeYourEvil.com,” Virgil said, amazed.

  “Not bad,” Simon admitted, emboldened somewhat by the apparent success of the spell. “Did the salt do something weird when you completed the circle, too?”

  “Yep,” Virgil lied, nodding vigorously, “sure did.”

  “Okay,” Simon replied, and for the first time all night, a smile crept across his face. His eyes shone with a newfound bravery. “Let’s send this demon back to hell!”

  They stood up, each holding the candle with one hand, and they crossed to the old basement door.

  Simon turned the handle and pulled it open. The short stairwell was flooded with the pulsing blood-red light. He stepped onto the first stair, going sideways so he and Virgil could both hold the candle while they descended the steps.

  When they were halfway down the stairwell, they heard a loud, deep laugh that shook the entire house. Then the door behind them slammed itself shut, and the entire cellar plunged into darkness.

  Chapter 7

  “What happened to the red light?” whispered Simon, alarmed. The purplish-blue candle flame still flickered in the dark, but it gave off only a dim, watery light, not enough to see by.

  “I don’t know,” Virgil whispered back, and the fear in his voice was clear. “Maybe…we should go.” He turned and grabbed the doorknob with his free hand, but it wouldn’t turn. He shook the knob, pulling at the door, but the heavy thing only rattled in the doorjamb, and it would not give.

  They were trapped.

  “You’re not leaving already?”

  The voice of the demon enveloped them like a shroud. It was a smooth sound, thick and dense, as if the words themselves could swallow up any other sound that might try to exist in their space. Simon had the strange sensation that if he had some light, he would actually be able to see the words hanging in space, floating around them, squeezing their shoulders with their weight.

  “Say something,” Virgil whispered, giving Simon a nudge.

  “You say something!” Simon hissed back.

  “You’re in front!”

  “This whole thing was your idea!”

  “Gentlemen,” the demon interrupted, his voice billowing up from the darkness below like a heavy fog. It sounded as if it came from everyone and nowhere all at once. “Seeing as how we’re all gathered here inside the circle, and each of us a bit trapped, why don’t you come down so we can make proper introductions?” He breathed an indecipherable word from a long-dead language, and tiny orbs of red light filled the stairwell. Each was the size of a firefly, and they hung in the air like stars, lighting the way to the cellar.

  Virgil and Simon couldn’t see the demon. He was still hidden in the shadows somewhere in the main area of the cold, damp room. “What do we do?” Virgil whispered.

  Simon knew exactly what they would do. It was the only thing they could do. He tightened his grip on the candle. “We go down.”

  They stepped slowly down the stairs, pushing the red lights out of the way, holding the red candle between them. The flame seemed to diminish somewhat as they descended, shrinking back into itself bit by bit. But it didn’t go out.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs, their eyes still struggling to adjust to the utter darkness of the cellar. Simon pressed himself back against the wall, and Virgil followed suit, as if they could melt back into the cement and disappear if only they pushed hard enough.

  “Step forward,” the demon commanded.

  And, having no other real alternative, they did.

  They moved in the darkness, and as soon as they had taken two steps, the glare of the red light flamed back to life, and they squinted against the brightness of it. Once their eyes began adjusting to the glare, they peered into the basement room and saw the face of the demon for the first time.

  At least, they saw the face the demon wanted them to see.

  He sat in his high-backed chair, his right leg crossed over his left knee at the ankle, leaning back, with one arm slung back over the top of the chair. He wore a pressed white shirt under h
is gray suit, with the collar open at the throat. He wore shiny, black, expensive-looking loafers on his feet, with no socks. His skin was covered in a thin layer of scales, just as Virgil had noted from outside, but the glare of the pulsing red light was so strong that it was impossible to make out their color.

  So instead, they looked at the demon’s face, which was covered by a white porcelain mask. An elastic string was fixed to each side just above the cheekbones; it stretched over the demon’s great head, holding the mask tightly in place. The porcelain reached as high as his forehead, and as low as his chin, but his head was too big to be completely covered, and skin and scales protruded from above and below. His scales seemed to climb up the sides of his neck, but to become thinner and more widely spaced as they went up his jaw. The dome of his head was a rough, scabby mess of sickly pale skin, like plastic that had been set on fire, then stretched over the top of a skull.

  The porcelain mask was shaped like a baby’s face, with squinting eyes, pursed lips, and big, puffed-up cheeks that were highlighted with soft pink paint that glistened through the enamel coating. A short tendril of hair had even been molded into the porcelain, swooping down in a Superman curl beneath the upper edge.

  “This is the most scared I’ve ever been,” Virgil whispered.

  Simon was too terrified to reply.

  The demon’s left wrist rested against his propped-up knee, and he held his hand open, palm facing the ceiling. The pulsing red light seemed to emanate from that hand, though the exact source was indeterminable; he wasn’t holding any sort of light, nor was the hand itself glowing. But the light was brightest around his palm; when it became lighter, the room became lighter, and when it grew darker, the room became darker. “Come closer,” he said, his voice made soft by the porcelain, “and let us get to know each other.”

  “Here feels pretty good,” Virgil piped up. He nudged Simon’s shoulder.

  “We’re good here,” Simon confirmed.

  The demon uncrossed his legs. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, keeping the one hand open, and full of light. He tilted his head, as if considering them carefully. “I have not seen a Phoenician armament spell in many, many centuries,” he mused. They could see his eyes behind the slits in the mask, and he was looking at the dark purple flame of their candle. “Though this one is inexpertly made.”