by Adam Dark
Peter whirled to face him. “Yeah, sure. I’ll stop. ‘Cause you know what I meant to say instead? You’re insane.” He jabbed a finger at Ben, and a tiny trickle of blood ran from his swollen nose again. “You go back to that place looking for Ian, dead or not or whatever. And good luck, ‘cause I won’t be around to push you out any more windows.”
Ben blinked. “You know what? Screw this.” He pushed himself off the couch and jammed his shoes back onto his feet. “You wanted me to tell you.”
“You think I wanted any of this?”
Ben stormed onto the short linoleum entryway, roughly twisted the doorknob, and jerked open the front door.
“Where are you going?” Peter shouted.
“Doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You’re staying away from the crazy guy.” He didn’t even turn to look back before he slammed the door behind him and stomped down the three flights of stairs to the parking lot.
5
Crazy. He couldn’t believe Peter would throw that in his face. It didn’t matter if the guy was scared all the way through enough to turn him into a dick. That blow landed below the belt, and Ben wasn’t going to just sit there and take it like he had for four years after that night—not from his best friend. He got into his car and took off way too fast out of the parking lot, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was to get out.
He probably should have just lied about the dream, about what he knew in his gut was Ian trying to reach out. He should have kept Peter out of this, kept him separate from the whole thing happening all over again because, really, what did any of this really have to do with Peter in the first place? Yeah, they’d survived the nightmare that took the rest of their friends away from them. They’d born the scrutiny and the judgement, the hushed whispers behind lifted hands, the constant psych evals and the legal hearings and the ravenous press trying to break down both their doors. But for the rest of the world, that was over. For Peter, that was over. He didn’t have nightmares anymore. He hadn’t seen another demon trying to burn down a house and everyone inside it. He didn’t have voices flaring up in his head at the worst possible times and telling him to save them, to get them out, to just take the win. Peter majored in Mechanical Engineering, for crying out loud, and Ben hadn’t even managed to separate his past from the focus of his college degree.
So what exactly made him think it was a good idea to call Peter, to go over there and drag him through the same terrifying crap all over again? That wasn’t a hard question to answer at all, and Ben hated the fact that he knew—had always known—why. He didn’t want to be alone. Peter had been with him when they fell out of that second-story window, and he’d stayed with him when they faced everything the world threw at them after that. They’d spent almost every day together over the summer, even all the way through high school, and they’d picked the same college. The only thing they hadn’t done, short of date—or attempt to date—the same girls or wear the same clothes, was live together. And that was only because Peter’s anal-retentive neatness combined with his never-ending string of health issues drove Ben insane, and his friend had nagged Ben one too many times about not making his bed or taking a shower every day or throwing out the week-old pizza boxes left out on his kitchen counter. They would have killed each other.
No. That wasn’t the reason at all. Peter had been trying to step away from him since they’d started at BU. Ben gripped the steering wheel even tighter, the cracked leather squeaking under his hands. He’d just been too busy trying to be normal—desperate to make some kind of sense out of what they’d been through—that he’d never stopped to think about the real reason they hadn’t talked about any of it for the last two years or why Peter never wanted to talk about school. Hell, the party hadn’t been the first his friend had turned down, and now that he thought about it, they hadn’t really hung out since before Peter left to visit his grandparents in Missouri over the summer.
What was wrong with him? Life was as normal as it was ever going to get for Peter now, and Ben had been hanging onto him like a five-year-old who still couldn’t sleep without his pacifier. He slammed his hand on the steering wheel when he pulled up to the red light on the corner of Washington and Grove. Then again, and again, until his palm stung and he let out a growling, frustrated shout. He jerked his head back against the headrest, then turned to see the woman pulled up beside him in her silver Jetta. She stared for a minute with wide eyes, then slowly moved her head back to blink in surprise out her windshield. When the light turned green, she floored the gas pedal and sped ahead of him.
Ben sighed and drove slowly through the intersection. He was used to those looks, which were mild in comparison to some of the others, but this time he’d actually given her a reason to stare at him like that. If he wanted people to think he wasn’t crazy, he had to quit acting like he was. And for the most part, he’d been successful with that—before the voices came back.
The idea of going back to his own apartment felt just as bad as it had the night before, so he stopped at a coffee shop just outside Ashcroft and lugged his backpack inside with him. The place was packed even just after 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and he waited in line for four minutes just to order his latte before it took at least twice that long to get it. But he managed to grab an open two-person table by the window and figured he might as well get in some reading while he was out.
When he’d first set up his own course outline the first semester of his sophomore year—his freshman year devoted entirely to taking all the prerequisite classes just to get them out of the way as soon as possible—he hadn’t quite known where to start. There was so much information out there, the topics so broad, he’d been a little overwhelmed at first. Of course, he’d wanted to dive right into everything he could find on demons and malicious spirits, but Dr. Montgomery, his curriculum supervisor and a tenured professor herself in BU’s Religion Department, had told him he needed to wait. “Build the foundation first,” she’d told him. “Then zero in. Think of it like a pyramid. The wider the base, the higher you can go.” Or in Ben’s case, maybe just deeper down the rabbit hole.
So he’d started with the general information in the department’s already existing first-level courses on Eastern and Western religions—the mysticized histories in Chinese and Japanese folklore; the countless deities of Hinduism; the surprising embrace of shamanic practices in Tibetan Buddhism; the jinn and free-willed “lesser spirits” of Islam; the multitude of tiny demons for every affliction in Judaism; the dark spirits and undead of old-world Paganism; and of course the traditional demons themselves within Christianity, both ancient and more modern. Every single one of them contained stories and beliefs deeply rooted in a fear of—and sometimes rigid respect for—the unseen spirits with the power to trick, confuse, lead astray, maim, capture, devour, or kill.
That hadn’t helped him narrow anything down, but not being a religious person or even a remotely spiritual one at that, he’d gathered the knowledge with a critical, objective eye—for the most part. Ben didn’t really know if he could call his views entirely objective; he knew these demons—or dark forces or restless spirits or whatever they were—existed. He’d seen them with his own eyes and had narrowly escaped becoming just another victim of them in the long list of others stretching through history all over the world. What he wanted to know was how to stop them. How to protect himself from the same thing ever happening again.
Obviously, he hadn’t gotten that far. If he had, he would have been able to do a lot more last night than he had, which was basically fail at getting the voices out of his head and take too much time to convince everyone in the house that they were in danger. He almost pounded his fist down on the table, then remembered where he was and ran a hand through his hair instead. No, he didn’t just want to stop it from happening again. That was what he’d wanted for the last eleven years; it had started out as a constant terror after that night, thinking he’d be followed, chased, pursued into the grocery store or his homeroom class
or his bedroom. Then it became a silent wariness of new places and unknown buildings, of random quick movement during the day and sounds with unknown sources at night. He’d thought all that fear and caution had led to his wanting to understand, to avoid reentering the nightmare by knowing how these forces worked, what they wanted, and what he had to do to keep them away from him.
Every culture and religion had its own long, convoluted lists of advice on the subject. Ben had tried a few of these from each—spitting to ward off the evil eye; hanging windchimes and dreamcatchers; placating spirits with offerings of food, alcohol, or money; visualizing the internal light of his own essence pulsing, growing, pushing the darkness away and back where it belonged. But none of these had felt any truer or more effective than putting a tooth under his pillow or leaving cookies and milk out for Santa Claus. He’d tried praying only once; it left him feeling annoyed and restless, and it didn’t seem right to ask a God he didn’t believe in to save him from equally unseen forces he knew were real.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe he didn’t need to find a way to protect himself, to make sure he was safe. He hadn’t walked into an old, abandoned, demon-possessed house last night; it was a fraternity house with people living in it, no history of being haunted or spooky or dangerous. It hadn’t freaked him out when the voices came back after two years; it just frustrated him. Then he realized with a jolt that the fear he thought he’d been carrying around with him for the last eleven years hadn’t reared up at all once he knew he was dealing with another demon. Yeah, seeing the thing in the dead black eyes of the guy who’d started the fire and was probably dead now had made him pause for a minute. Maybe more than pause; that had terrified him. But Ben hadn’t held onto that terror, and it hadn’t disabled him from doing what he knew had to be done before anyone else died. He’d jumped right into action, trying to think as quickly on his feet as he could and not really giving a damn about whether or not anyone thought he was insane. No, most of them had just thought he was wasted.
The important thing, he reminded himself, was that—all his guilt and lasting self-punishment aside—Ben Robinson wasn’t a coward. He and Peter hadn’t been able to save their friends that night, but he’d gotten everyone out of the party alive and relatively unharmed, including himself. Well, with April’s help, obviously. But that was just it, wasn’t it? He could be a quick thinker, smashing crystal bowls and splintering open wooden doors with heavy lamps all he wanted, hoping for something to go right when it seemed like the end. But April wouldn’t always be there to throw the first stone, as it were. Peter had saved him eleven years ago, but Peter was calling it quits, apparently.
What if Ben found a way that guaranteed safety, not just warding away these demons or trying to avoid them? What if he figured out how to resist them, to meet the dark forces where they were and make them stop? What if he fought back?
Forget fighting back; hell, he’d hit first. Throw the opening punch. He’d find out where they were, what they wanted, how they were going to get it, and he’d hunt every last one of those sick assholes down and make sure they never tried it again.
“Ha!” He pounded the table and managed to catch his paper coffee cup before the sloshing latte knocked it over. Ben started to look up, to count the raised eyebrows and the frowns of disapproval and the concerned glances he felt aimed his way. But then he stopped himself, wrapped both hands around his coffee, and grinned. Who cared? He’d just found his new career path—Ben Robinson, Demon Hunter. The absurdity of it made him laugh out loud, but he reigned it in again and forced himself to stare quietly at the table as he soaked it all in. For the first time since he was twelve, something actually felt right—completely, one-hundred-percent, there-can-be-no-other-way right. He’d given up thinking that was possible a long time ago.
Taking a sip of his latte, he realized he had a long way to go if he really was about to do this. It wasn’t like he had a magic wand or superpowers. He chuckled and shook his head; that was ridiculous. Still, there had to be something out there that could give him what he needed. Chants, rituals, symbols, tools—he had no idea what it would be, but he couldn’t possibly be the only person in the vast history of those in every culture who’d decided to take things into their own hands. So many of the stories he’d already read were mostly legends, lessons dressed up with magic and embellished to teach children how to behave and highlight whatever morals were at their cores. But every legend started with the truth, and that was what he had to find.
It wasn’t like he could just put an ad up on Craigslist: ‘Novice Demon Hunter seeks Willing Teacher: Experiential Knowledge Preferred.’ Though he guessed he’d still get a flood of responses to that in record time, anyone trying to fill that position was most likely more mentally unstable than anyone had ever thought he was. No, whoever had done this before or knew anything that could help him wouldn’t show up in that crowd—probably wouldn’t even admit to knowing these things until Ben learned enough on his own to prove he was serious. Which he definitely was.
Without ever having opened his backpack, he picked it up, hoisted its ridiculous weight over his shoulder, and left the coffee shop. He considered tossing the latte—he had enough urgent, excited energy now without the added caffeine jitters—but decided to keep it as a backup. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do with his entire Saturday, so once he got back into his car, he set off to do what all aspiring novices did to reap the knowledge of their predecessors. There was nothing like a university library.
6
He was really glad he’d decided to keep that latte.
The Boston University library was relatively empty at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, most students preferring to enjoy the weekends as much as they could before the end of the semester loomed closer and the feverish scramble to study like their lives depended on it brought them swarming through the front doors. Ben had learned his first year to stay away from the library then. But for now, everything was quiet—just the way he liked it.
He pulled up a chair at one of the student-accessible computers and started with the library’s catalogue. Yes, he felt a little self-conscious about the search history within the catalogue itself—demon summoning; book of demons; black magic—but that was what college was all about, right? A place to explore, experiment with the unknown, and learn from it all in ways that would help prepare for the rest of life as a full-fledged adult. Ben rolled his eyes as he searched the list of books popping up on the monitor; he could hardly rationalize trying to find actual demons with this notion of college more commonly reserved for partying, switching majors, sexual encounters, living alone, and surviving on ramen and frozen dinners.
It also made him feel a little ridiculous that for three and a half years, he’d focused his line of study on the cause for the things he’d seen when he was twelve—what different religions held to be true about otherworldly spirits; the steps each of these took to ward them off and protect oneself; the things he could identify factually in the histories of these religions and their advice on dealing with spirits, to ensure he never went through anything like that night again. That was a wash; he knew that now. Funny how he’d turned to looking for books most people would call complete bull just on the off-chance that he’d stumble across something he could actually use. Until Ben figured out what he was really doing with this new apparent mission to hunt these things faster than they could find him, that was pretty much all he had to go on—stumbling across anything.
The titles that filtered onto the screen under his different searches didn’t make him feel any more confident in this new technique. Dark Magic; The Grand Grimoire; Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard; Grimoire for the Green Witch—these he jotted down with their library call numbers on the scrap paper beside the computer. He’d skim through these to see if they had anything he wanted. Some of the others were histories of demon-summoning texts, or volumes detailing what different cultures believed would get the job done, but none of these seemed to
offer any cut and dry instructions. One opening line in the sample description made him almost laugh at the ridiculousness of how serious he was: ‘So you want to summon a demon but don’t have your own Necronomicon, huh?’
Going through these was like being dragged into a tiny house with a sign out front in neon letters screaming, ‘Fortune-Teller’ or one of those woo-woo shops that sold protective crystals and tarot cards and spell kits. No, he realized. Those people had most likely gotten something right; after all, Ben had always known these demons or spirits or whatever were real. What made this other stuff any less effective? But he wasn’t looking for personal charms or to be told his future. He wanted to be able to control what happened from here on out, not to him but because of him. He wanted results. Some of this other stuff made him feel like he’d walked into a magic shop expecting to see actual dragons.
The book he really wanted was a mixture of historical accounts and a meticulous detailing of all the demons and spirits known to its author, including their recognized names, powers, weaknesses, who they ruled, what they wanted, and how to summon them. It had been translated and reformatted dozens of times since its supposed inception in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, and one of its newer versions included “critical analyses of all variations and possible derivative works”. The Lesser Key of Solomon: Detailing the Ceremonial Art of Commanding Spirits Both Good and Evil had apparently been composed by King Solomon himself, with an original Hebrew text of The Key of Solomon recently—in the scheme of things—discovered. The fact that it existed almost wholly in translations of Hebrew, Latin, Italian, and Greek during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and now in English made it particularly attractive in its global application. And, more importantly, in Ben’s intentions with it.