Demon Zero

by Randall Pine

Virgil squirmed again, visibly uncomfortable. “It’s just…you also sort of said that he put something inside your head.”

  “I did?” Simon started.

  Virgil nodded. “Yeah.”

  Simon moved his head around on his shoulders. It didn’t feel any different than usual. He held out his arms and looked down, giving himself a visual inspection. He flexed his fingers, and he flexed his toes. Everything seemed fine. “I don’t think he put anything inside of me,” he said with a frown.

  “Well, I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Virgil said, scooting back his chair. “If he did, you are not going to stay healthy.

  “Great, thanks,” Simon said miserably. He watched as Virgil hopped to his feet. “Where are you going?”

  Virgil looked at him like it was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “Dude. Skee-Ball.”

  “Are you serious? You tell me a—” He realized how loud he was being, and he remembered the children a few tables over. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You tell me a demon showed me his face and then put something inside my head, and then you leave to go play Skee-Ball?”

  Virgil shrugged. “Yeah. Dude. I need that Nerf gun.” He scoffed and walked away, heading toward the token machine.

  “Unbelievable,” Simon murmured to himself. He picked up a piece of pizza and studied it, trying to decide if he was hungry enough to take a bite. He hadn’t eaten anything all day. The events of the night before—the ones he could remember, anyway—had shaken him enough that he’d lost his appetite. Add to that the things he couldn’t remember, and Simon wasn’t sure he’d ever want to eat again. He gave up and tossed the slice of pizza back down onto the pan.

  He heard a loud bang across the room, and he looked up to see Virgil whacking the side of the token machine with his open palm. “Come on, you stupid thing!” Virgil cried, smacking the metal box again. “Why won’t you work?”

  A few of the kids at the birthday table giggled.

  “Virgil, just go up to the counter,” Simon called across the room, but he was drowned out by the whirs and dings and buzzes and blips of a hundred arcade games, and by the sound of Virgil’s own fury. He sighed and pushed himself up from the table, pulling his wallet from his pocket and walking toward the cash register himself.

  Sometimes, when it came to Virgil, the easiest solution was the one that actually removed Virgil from the situation.

  The new girl was working the counter. Her purple bob was pulled back into a tight, tiny ponytail, and she was wearing glasses today, big, thick-rimmed glasses with square lenses that magnified her green eyes, made them look huge, like a Disney character. She wore a silver locket around her neck, and a black zip-up hoodie that was two sizes too large over a red-and-white striped boat neck shirt. Her jeans were the expensive, stylish kind that looked brand new but had a ragged hole in the knee anyway, like they had come that way. They probably had.

  Simon had never been this close to her before. She smelled like peppermint.

  “Um, hi,” he said, his voice shifting awkwardly. He gave her a wave, which he immediately regretted, because he was standing just eighteen inches away from her, on the other side of the counter. He winced. “Hi,” he said again, and then he felt stupid for doing that, because he had already said it. He blushed.

  The girl raised one perfect eyebrow, looking unimpressed. “Abby,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Abby. When you say hi to a person, it’s nice if you can finish with their name. So you should say, ‘Hi, Abby.’”

  “Oh. Your name is Abby,” he said dumbly.

  Abby blinked. “Yeah,” she said.

  Simon cleared his throat. “Great. Um.” He coughed. This was not going well. “Hi. Abby. Um…my friend is…” He looked over at Virgil, who was physically assaulting the token machine, rocking it back and forth and yelling at it loudly enough to drown out the animatronic animal band that had just started its set in the next room. Simon frowned. “Well, he’s…he’s an idiot, I guess, and could I just get him some tokens?” He held up a ten-dollar bill.

  Abby watched Virgil rocking the machine. “If he breaks it, he owes us, like, eighty thousand dollars.”

  “I think it’s already broken,” Simon pointed out.

  Abby looked at him, unimpressed. “If he breaks it more.”

  “Right. Got it,” Simon said, nodding and swallowing hard. “Um, could I…get tokens, then?”

  “Sure,” Abby said, her voice wavering between sarcasm and irritability. She held out her palm. “Anyone can get anything if they have the cash.”

  Simon placed the bill in her hand. He meant to do it smoothly; he meant to do it casually. But there was something about Abby’s eyes, magnified by her glasses...or maybe it was something about her hair, shining like a galaxy in the Squeezy Cheez fluorescent lights...or maybe it was something about her smell, which wasn’t just peppermint, but peppermint lined with gingerbread and honey, he now noticed. Whatever it was, it caused his hand to tremble as he handed her the bill, and when he did, his fingertips brushed against the skin of her palm.

  Abby cried out in pain. She yanked her hand back against her chest, cradling it like a broken bird, and reeled back, away from the counter. She fell against the far wall, her face given over to complete and total shock. She stared at Simon with wide, frightened eyes. And she just stood there, frozen in place, rooted by her fear.

  Simon instinctively raised his hands in the air and backed away. “Are you okay? What? Are you—?” he cried, his eyes darting nervously. “What happened?”

  Abby gasped, and her breath was coming fast now, her chest heaving in desperate attempts to pull in enough air fill her lungs. “Who are you?”

  “I’m—I’m Simon,” he sputtered. “Simon Dark. I—are you—are you okay?”

  Abby placed a hand against her chest and closed her eyes. Her breathing began to slow. “No, I mean, who are you?”

  Simon frowned. “I don’t…I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  Abby opened her eyes. She stepped forward, planting both hands on the counter and leaning forward, staring hard at Simon. “I mean that there are two types of people who go around confronting demons, brave people and stupid people, and I need to know which one you are.”

  Simon started. “How did you know I confronted a demon?”

  “I felt it,” she said. She nodded at his hand. “When you touched me.”

  “How is that—”

  “I’m an empath,” she said curtly. She used a tone of voice that said she was sick of explaining this to people and would be all too happy never to have to do it again.

  “You’re an empath?” Simon asked. He felt an ember of excitement burn to life in the pit of his stomach. “A real empath?”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Yes, a real empath,” she sighed. “When someone touches me, I can feel their feelings, and sometimes I can see their thoughts.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way. I usually wear gloves that mostly block it out, because going through life taking on people’s baggage is the absolute worst way to live. Trust me. But Squeezy Cheez says it’s ‘unprofessional’ to wear gloves. But you know what?” She reached beneath the counter and pulled out a pair of gray elbow-length gloves. She pulled them on, flexing her fingers beneath the thin material. “They can go screw themselves, because it’s bad enough handing change back to parents and taking on all their panic and stress for a few seconds, and if people like you are going to be coming in here, throwing a supernatural layer on top of everything, then they can deal with me being unprofessional, or they can find some other bored and totally disinterested drone to work the register.”

  Simon wasn’t following any of this rant. He was still stuck on the whole “empath” thing. “You can see people’s thoughts?” he asked.

  “Yep. And I can even take their feelings and put
them back into themselves, magnified, and then pull them back out into me, then send them back to them, magnified even more, over and over, in a split second, creating a loop that overloads their emotional circuits and pretty much fries the prefrontal cortex. I could have fried your prefrontal cortex, but instead, I decided to just absorb your feelings, and when I did, I saw someone who is insanely confused and super scared about the fact that he confronted a demon last night, but what I can’t tell is if you’re brave, or if you’re stupid, so which one is it?”

  Simon stared at her in open-mouthed amazement. “I thought empaths were a myth.”

  “Well that’s funny, because I know you sought out a demon, and I don’t know if you know how people work, but usually it’s a lot easier for them to believe that there are people who feel other people’s emotions on a deep and meaningful level than it is for them to believe that an all-powerful, supernatural, literal spawn of evil who lives in a wholly separate dimension that’s dripping with fire and sulfur and the fury of a fallen god can just hop on over and show up in someone’s attic. The only people who think an earthbound demon is more likely to exist than a human being with preternatural empathy are serial killers, because they don’t understand empathy, and morons, so I guess I do have my answer about whether you’re brave or whether you’re stupid, because you don’t look even close to smart enough to be a serial killer.”

  “I’m…smart,” Simon said, clearly flustered. He waved his hands, trying to clear the air of the awkwardness that was weighing it down like lead. “And I’m not—I’m…listen, I’m plenty brave, okay?”

  Abby pushed a button on the cash register, and the drawer popped open with a loud DING. Simon jumped and screamed. Abby stared at him over the top of her glasses.

  “You can be brave and still be scared by loud noises!” Simon cried.

  “Sure.” Abby reached into the cash register and pulled out a set of keys. She closed the drawer. Then she put her hands on her hips and considered Simon. Finally, she said, “Either way, I think we should go for a ride.”

  Simon wrinkled his brow in confusion. “You and me?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Abby sighed.

  “I just…wanted some tokens…” Simon explained, laying the ten-dollar bill on the counter.

  “I know. And now you’re going to get in my truck, and we’re going to drive to East Templar.”

  Simon rubbed his forehead. He was losing a lot of ground in this conversation. “You have a truck?” he asked.

  Abby ignored the question. She looked over at Virgil, who was rocking the busted token machine while cursing under his breath. She snapped her fingers to get his attention. “Hey. Rage Against the Token Machine. Are you with him?” she asked, indicating Simon with her thumb.

  Virgil stopped assaulting the machine and frowned across the room. “Depends. What’d he do?”

  “He tried to fight a demon,” she called out.

  “Hey, maybe we could talk about this a little more privately?” Simon said, nodding toward the children at the birthday party table. They had stopped their chattering and were staring at Abby.

  But she shrugged them off. “Look, kids gotta know there are monsters out there. You think their parents are doing them any favors by pretending there wasn’t a zombie in the graveyard this week?”

  The birthday girl’s eyes grew huge. She looked at her mother. “Mommy, are there zombies?” she asked.

  “No,” the mother said pointedly, staring daggers at Abby. “Come on, sweetie, time to go. This party is over.” She started gathering up the protesting children.

  “Zombies are real,” Abby said loudly.

  Simon placed his hand on her elbow, trying to guide her away from that side of the counter while the mother glared at them, her face turning dark red. “Hey, come on, give her a break...she’ll tell her about monsters when she’s ready,” he whispered. “How did you know about the zombie?”

  “Oh, yeah, I saw that, too,” Abby said. “When you touched me. Hey, what happened to your sis—?”

  “Wow, you really know how to clear a room,” Virgil interrupted, clearly impressed, as he strode up to the counter. “By the way, your token machine’s broken.”

  “More now than it was before,” Abby said, rolling her eyes. She jangled the keys. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”

  Virgil shook his head. “It’s not a great time. I need to play some Skee-Ball. I’m feeling really in the zone.”

  “Play later.”

  “I can’t play later, I don’t know if I’ll be in the zone later. I’m in the zone now. I know you’re new here, so you don’t understand, but I’ve been racking up tickets at this Squeezy Cheez since sophomore year of high school. I have almost five thousand tickets, and I only need, like, three hundred more, and that Nerf gun is mine, and I need it.”

  “Fine,” she said, coming out from behind the counter. “Stay here. We’ll go.”

  “Well, I’m not going to stay here by myself,” Virgil whined.

  “Wait, why are we going to East Templar?” Simon said. His head was starting to ache, and he felt way behind in the conversation. “And I have my own car...I can drive myself.”

  Abby stopped. She screwed up her face and gave Simon a pained look. “Do you not care about using twice the amount of gas that we need to? Do you not care about global warming?”

  “I think the environment is very important,” Virgil offered.

  “Great. Let’s go.” Abby knocked on the wall behind the counter, next to the doorway that led to the employees’ back room. “I’m on break!” she called back to some unseen co-worker. It was met with a muffled, very bored-sounding reply. Abby grabbed a handful of Kit-Kat bars from wire rack against the wall, stuffed them into her jacket pockets, and headed toward the front door.

  “Wait, stop...why are we going to East Templar?” Simon demanded, exasperated.

  Abby turned around, walking backward, spinning the ring of keys on her finger. “We’re going to meet a sorcerer,” she said.

  Chapter 10

  “Can we talk about this ‘sorcerer’ thing for a second?” Simon asked, snatching desperately at the grab handle above the GMC’s passenger window.

  Abby threw the truck into a slide around a sharp curve and said, “Not now. I’m focusing on the road.”

  The four-door Sierra skidded around the corner, and Virgil, who wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, went careening across the bench seat in the back. “Can I ask why we’re riding in a car with a stranger?!” he asked, smacking the back of his head against the driver’s side window. “I’m generally very trusting when it comes to strangers,” he said, rubbing his head and flailing for his seat belt, “but this one is driving like a Bond villain, and I do not have health insurance!”

  “You should be more responsible,” Abby murmured. Her eyes were glued to the road ahead as she navigated the curves and bumpy cobblestone terrain of Old Templar, the original town settlement.

  “Why aren’t you taking the 85?” Simon asked, holding onto his handle for dear life.

  “The 85 is murder at rush hour, and I only have an hour break.”

  They streaked around a corner that led into an alley, and the tailgate of the pickup skidded around and crashed into the broad side of a Dumpster. The two men inside the truck screamed. Abby gritted her teeth and pulled the Sierra back into her control as she roared down the narrow space between two buildings.

  “This is an alley!” Virgil pointed out.

  “It’s a shortcut,” Abby corrected him, gripping the wheel tightly.

  They burst out into the street on the other side, and Abby slammed on the brakes, squealing the truck’s tires around and lifting two of them up into the air as they pulled a ninety-degree turn. She gave the wheel a twist, and the tires slammed back down onto the asphalt. Then she sped away from the mess of cars that were screechi
ng their tires and blaring their horns in their wake.

  Eventually, she pulled them onto the ramp heading up to the interstate, and Simon took a breath. He let go of the grab handle and flexed the soreness from his hand. “Where are you taking us? Really? There hasn’t been a sorcerer in Templar for…well, I don’t know how long, but a long time. Decades, at least. Maybe centuries! My parents used to tell us stories about sorcerers that their parents had only heard of, so it’s safe to say there hasn’t been a sorcerer in Templar for a long time.”

  Abby shrugged. “There’s one here now.”

  “And also, who are you?” Simon continued, ignoring her. “I don’t even know why I got into this truck; I don’t know you, and if you are in with a sorcerer, a real sorcerer, that’s even worse! They’re nothing but trouble, and that makes you trouble.” He crossed his arms and sat back against the seat.

  He knew it was stupid to get into a car with a stranger—especially a stranger who claimed to be taking him to a sorcerer, and especially one who drove like she drove. But there was something about her that he couldn’t shake…something about her eyes, and her hair, and all the other things that he registered about her on some deep, subconscious level but really, really wished he didn’t.

  “Not all sorcerers are evil,” she said sourly. “The fact that you would even say that is so offensive.”

  “She’s right,” Virgil said, popping over the back of the seat and pushing his face down in between theirs. “Some sorcerers are good. I mean, Merlin, for one.”

  “Merlin is a myth,” Simon pointed out.

  Abby scoffed. “You have to be joking.”

  “And for another,” Virgil said, pushing on through their argument, “my cousin Rick told me he thinks one of his old neighbors from the LoDi district back when he was living there might have been a sorcerer, this old guy who kept bringing mason jars full of cloudy pink foams and things into his apartment.”

  “He was probably a serial killer,” Simon said grumpily.

  Virgil thought about that. “I guess he could have been a serial killer,” he decided.