by Shaun Meeks
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to see that I’m a big girl, Dillon, and I don’t need training wheels. I’m old enough to drink, vote and go to war. And I’d rather come along, make sure you’re not going to go into some zoned-out drug state, than stay here and maybe get visited by your hunter buddy again.”
Shit. I’d nearly forgotten about him. He’d be out of the picture for a couple of days, but when he was released by the police, he’d no doubt be on a tear for me. And one of the first places he’d go would be Rouge’s house.
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
“When do we leave?” she asked with a smile, clearly able to tell she was coming along.
“First, I need to get out of these terrible clothes,” I laughed, looking down at myself. “Then, as soon as Garcia lets me know they picked Parks up, we’ll go.”
“Should I go pack a bag?”
Before we could go to her house to grab Rouge’s things, including the puppy she’d need to drop off at her cousins house, I had to call Garcia, as I hadn’t gotten a call or text from him yet. We still needed to lay low a little, and preferably not together, until Don Parks had been snatched up. The last thing I needed was for him to follow us to Niagara Falls. I told Rouge that if they still didn’t have him, she’d have to go to her house alone to pack, and we’d meet up once the cops had done the deed.
“Oh, like you’re not going to ditch me and run there all on your own. No way, mister. We’re sticking together until all this is done.”
“I’m not going to ditch you. We just need to be careful, keep our heads down, and my face off his radar. I promise I won’t leave without you.”
There was no answer at Garcia’s end. I’d started to get worried he wasn’t going to be able to do what I’d asked him to. He’d sounded as though it wouldn’t be a problem, though, and I had to believe him. He’d managed not only to get me out of the mental hospital, but also got my weapons and car back for me, and had all the charges I’d faced dropped. I had nothing but confidence in him.
Five minutes later, I got a text saying he’d been right in the middle of arresting Parks when I’d called. How kismet was that?
The asshole put up quite a fight, the text read. We had to knock him around a bit. He’s a right prick, this one. We should be able to hold him for seventy-two hours now. Bloodied up the lip of one of the uniforms I brought with me.
Perfect. I told Rouge the good news, and we drove straight to her house to get done what she needed to. While she was in her room packing, I called Godfrey up to let him know we were going to swing by.
“What about the other hunter?”
“Detective Garcia arrested him for me. He should be away for a few days at least.”
“Arrested for what?”
“At first as a favour to me, but then he assaulted a cop, so there’s that.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” he laughed.
“You’ve been on my bad side plenty of times, Godfrey. Unless you forget all those times you’ve sold me bad goods. When I nearly get killed because of you, it puts you on my shit list. But don’t worry, that’s water and something to do with a bridge. Bygones are bygones and all that crap.”
After I hung up and Rouge was done packing, we dropped the puppy off. We made a quick stop at my house to change. I didn’t need Godfrey ragging on me about my free hospital gear. Once I was back to my typical style of a hoodie, jeans, and my leather jacket, we drove to Godfrey’s shop. He was sitting in the back room when we walked into the dark shop. He told me to lock the door, and when I did, he flicked on some lights. He seemed happy to see us, more so Rouge, but that’s no surprise.
“How are you doing, beauty?” he asked, and hugged her. I had no idea they’d advanced to the hugging stage.
“Not too shabby. Trying to keep this one out of trouble again,” she told him, thumbing at me. “He needs a chaperone to deal with this one.”
“You joining the hunters now, Rouge?” he chuckled. “Best looking one I’ve ever seen.”
“She’s not going to be a hunter. I think I’m in enough trouble as it is, don’t you?”
“Mon, she’s already a hunter. Didn’t she save your ass against the Hellion? Went face to face with one of those shadow thingies?”
“I didn’t do anything with the shadow people,” she corrected him before I could. “That was all Dill Pickle here. I just saved him from the biggest monster he’s ever fought.”
“Who said he was the biggest?” I asked, trying not to laugh. The Hellion, Rector, was by far the biggest, scariest demon I’d ever gone toe to toe with, and I’d die a happy man if I never saw another of his kind.
“You did,” she said, and slapped me on the back. “You tell me all the time, bragging about how lucky you were to come out of it in one piece. You’re welcome for that, by the way.”
We all had a good laugh at that, a moment of levity, which was something I really needed. After that, I told Godfrey everything that had happened from Niagara Falls, until my release from CAMH. He listened carefully, especially attentive when I explained my theory that a door to Beelz had been opened and something from there had infected me.
“Sounds about right. You have any idea the location of the door, and who might’ve opened it?” he asked.
“Pretty sure the source of all of this is a church.”
“It’s always a church,” Godfrey told Rouge. “They seem to be beacons for these things. Not because they’re bad places or anything. Don’t get me wrong. No, it’s because the power they hold with their icons, the prayers of their faithful, and the sheer power of belief people that go there have. It’s what calls demons to them.”
“Well, this place wasn’t a real church.” I could see the confusion on both of their faces. “It was a weed church. The guy who ran it wasn’t an actual priest. He was a guy who had an idea to find a legal, tax-free way to sell weed to people. Pastor Herb and two others—”
“His name was Pastor Herb?” Rouge asked, and when I nodded she began to laugh harder than I’d ever seen her laugh. “Clearly not his real name. Was he as Rasta? Hey, mon, pass de ’erb! No offence, Godfrey.”
“None taken. You know I’m not really Jamaican, girl. This is just a façade.”
“No,” I told them, finally getting the joke. “That wasn’t his real name. But he died in the church with two other people who lived there. Someone burned them: fire-bombed the place while they were sleeping. I’m thinking that might’ve been what opened the door.”
“Like a trauma gate?” Godfrey asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking, and hoping. I didn’t notice it when I checked the place out, but there were a lot of symbols drawn on the walls, things I’ve never seen.”
“Show me.”
I didn’t have my notepad on me. That was something that hadn’t been returned yet. I was pretty sure the doctor still had it. I drew some of them from memory in the dust on the glass displays that held nothing of true value or magic properties. He looked them over when I was done and shook his head for a while, studied them again, and continued to shake his head.
“Looks like nothing. You sure that’s all there was?”
“No, but this is what I remember.”
“And you’re sure this is the place?”
“Not a hundred percent, but it’s all I have for now.”
“Well, those things mean nothing to me,” Godfrey said, looking down at them and shaking his head.” If you think that’s the key to anything, you won’t get anywhere with it.”
“I’m pretty sure that one right there is a band’s logo,” Rouge said, pointing at one of the shapes I’d drawn. “I used to see it on people’s backpacks and books in school. I think Godfrey’s right. Sorry, Dill.”
“Godfrey’s always right,” the tool supplier said with an air of arrogance. “Now, I
got the things you want. You two leaving soon?”
“As soon as we’re done here.”
“Give me a sec.”
Godfrey went off to the backroom and Rouge turned to me.
“If it’s not the church, where else do we look?” she asked me, and to be honest, I had no idea. Nothing else made sense. Every other place he held either had no history as strange or horrible as the church, and most of them had a lot of people in and out of there. Chance Anderson wouldn’t have been the only one affected by the demons. It’s not how these things worked. Somewhere I went into, a place I came in contact with, had demons that had either snuck through or been called to this world. It was a short list, and the church was suspect number one.
The other thing about this particular type of demon was their inability to use weak spots to enter the Earth realm. In order for demons from the Beelz realm to come here, there needed to be a gateway. Gateways from that world could only be opened with some sort of major traumatic issue, a porter, or by someone who’d deliberately called a doorway forth. Chance wouldn’t have thought ghosts if he’d done the latter, so it had to be the church or a porter. I didn’t want to think a porter, either. Someone using a porter—a body with a swirling gateway inside them—could open doors to anywhere. And the only way to close the gate was to kill the person who housed the doorway.
I’d done it before.
Well, Rouge kind of did too, but she didn’t know the full details of that part of it.
“Okay, Dillon. Here you go,” Godfrey announced as he walked back into the room. “Everything you asked for, but because of what you said, I decided to add a few other things. One of them is a bag of Safferite Blue.”
“What’s that?” Rouge asked, and Godfrey pulled the bag out.
“This is the dust made from an alien crystal. It can be rubbed on the skin to protect you from demon invasions, or put on the floor to keep out certain types of spirits. Very handy. So is this,” he said, and pulled out a bronze rod with dark blotches on it. “This is Azzeen Staff. It can be used to kill some creatures, demons from Beelz fall into that category. It can also be used to close some gates. Trial and error for this one. I can’t put any sort of guarantee on it as I’ve never seen one used before.”
“I haven’t seen one of them in ages,” I said, happy to have it. I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for one. I had never used it to close a gate, but once, a long time ago, I did kill a terrible demon with one. I lost it because it melted as it turned the monster to ash.
“It’s been in the back room for a while, but I think it’s as good a time as any to give it to you. I had to trade off a Boar Helm to get it, so you better be thankful.”
“Oh, trust me, I am.”
“The rest of the stuff you asked for is in there, plus an extra pair of spellbound gloves since you’re bringing Rouge with you. Everything else you can show her what it’s for. I think she’ll make a great hunter,” he said, and winked at her.
“She’s not going to be a hunter, dude. Seriously.”
“You say that now, but I can see her mind is already made up.”
We left Godfrey’s and started the drive to Niagara Falls. I didn’t want to think about anything we were about to face. If I was alone, my mind would inevitably start to run through different scenarios. I’d imagine how things would go right and, of course, how they could go terribly wrong. The drive from Toronto to Niagara Falls can take anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours, so normally, it’d be quite a few scenarios I could run through.
Luckily, Rouge was there to keep me company and help distract my mind from wandering towards too many dark possibilities. Instead of thinking about being turned inside out, or being eaten alive by some monstrous bugs from a realm of dark and cold, I got to watch Rouge sing along to some CCR (the best driving music in my humble opinion), and when she wasn’t doing that, we talked about other, more mundane things. Mainly about when I was going to finally move out of Casa de Dillon, and into her place.
“If all goes well here, and I get Parks off my back, I’d really start to consider it.”
“Just consider it then? Really?” she chuckled. “It’s not every day I invite someone to move in with me. You should consider yourself a lucky man to enjoy the house my grandfather built himself and my grandmother decorated with innumerable doilies of her own making. There are so many in there, I could open up a doily theme park or a museum.”
“Now I’m sold,” I said with a cup full of sarcasm, as we drove over the huge bridge in Hamilton. “I mean, you’re a good selling point, but those lace bits are what really float my boat.”
Not long after we were in Niagara Falls and I knew exactly where to go first. Coffee run. Caffeine would help me stay a little more clear-headed than I was feeling at the time. I found I was blinking more, struggling to make my eyes focus on things, and hoped coffee would help. Maybe some Timbits too.
We went through the drive-thru, got some food and drinks, and downed everything pretty quickly on the way to the former church of Pastor Herb.
“You’re not going to ask me to stay in the car while you work, are you?” she asked as she sipped a steeped tea.
“Would you do it if I asked?”
“Did I last time?”
“Exactly. No, we’ll do this one together. Just make sure to follow my lead and don’t move too quickly. I’m not sure where the gate or doorway is, but when we find it, I don’t want you falling into it.”
“Falling into it? That can happen?” she asked, and looked rightly worried.
I nodded. “No matter how much you think you’re ready to be involved in this, going into a demon realm, it’s nothing like you’d expect. Iron Maiden and Slayer totally lied with those album covers.”
She laughed, but I could hear nervousness in it. Not that I blamed her. This wasn’t like starting a new job at Sam the Record Man or Honest Ed’s. This was jumping into a world where the wrong move could mean not getting to see the next day. Especially for her. If I get injured, there is the magical bath I can take to heal me. If I get killed, only this body dies, but I can still take another. She couldn’t, and when I drove and started to think about that more in depth, I couldn’t avoid worrying more and more about this whole thing. The idea of her getting hurt, or worse, getting killed, wasn’t something I even wanted to imagine. My time away from her in the hospital, losing all ideas that she was even real, was terrible enough. Actually losing her forever wasn’t something I even wanted to allow to be a possibility.
I could feel her eyes on me as that began racing through my head. I turned to look at her and saw her studying me. I wondered if she could sense my sudden apprehension.
“What’s eating you, Dillon? And don’t say nothing. You get a look on your face when something is getting under your skin, or you dirty little mind has taken a trip out of the gutter and into somewhere you shouldn’t be visiting. So, what is it?”
I paused.
I wanted to think of how to put it without sounding like a dick. I didn’t want to come off like I was some chauvinist who didn’t believe women could do anything a man could do. The fact of it was, I wasn’t an actual man, not in the sense of everyone else on Earth. I was comparing her not as man to woman, but alien to human, vast experience to not much at all. Still, I wanted to be gentle and yet truthful.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Aw, that’s sweet, but you don’t need to worry about me. I want to be here. I want to do this, and help you too. It’ll be fine.”
“I know you say that, and I want to believe it will be. I mean, most times I do these things and walk away with little more than dirty hands, but we both know things can easily go sideways.”
“But that’s just life. Any time, on any day, something terrible can happen and boom, it’s game over. I’m not going to live my life being afraid to do things just because ther
e’s a chance something bad may happen.”
“But this isn’t just living your life. You’re deliberately going into something you don’t really need to deal with.”
“Okay, but what if I decided to give up the whole burlesque thing, which is going to happen, regardless of what you say, and decided to become a police officer or a fire fighter? There’s the same or even more risk involved there. Would you tell me not to do that, even if I felt a draw to it?”
Would I? I wasn’t even sure what the answer to that would be. When I met Rouge, she was a dancer and model, and that was how I saw her. Like most people, the jobs we do are part of what defines us. People see you as a seamstress, a librarian, or a teacher, and they can’t see you doing anything else, especially if that something is the complete opposite of the life you project. Going from homeboy to adventure-seeker; from safe job to something you’d watch people do on one of those Discovery Channel shows that start off with the words The Most Dangerous… was hard for people to wrap their minds around.
“I can see you’re having trouble with all that, Dillon, so let me help you a bit. It might keep you from saying the wrong thing, too. When I was younger, I did a lot to help people out. I would go from job to job, doing work that had meaning. This was when I was much younger. When I was the weirdo, the outcast, and I’d hide away in the things I did so I could forget all the bad things people would whisper about me, because when they saw how I helped out, it changed their view of what I was. Instead of seeing just this freak, they saw the good in me, and that felt great.
“Then, I get to this point where I put on this new look. My body changes to this ideal of what sexy is, and I go with it. At first, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want eyes on me, studying and critiquing my body as though I was putting it on display for them. But, eventually, I saw that I was helping people there, too. I told you before about how being on stage, I’m a distraction from the real world, from problems, and stress. I found that to be my own way of helping people. That’s all changed now, so I want to do something with meaning instead of just fading away and being some homemaker, or your kept girl. I’m not that person. So, why not do this with you? It makes a difference, I get to experience something I’ve never done before, and I will actually be helping people in a way few get to. You can show me what to do, help me learn to do this with a good head on my shoulders, and one day, maybe you’ll trust me enough to not worry any more. I still worry when you go out, though, so I won’t get my hopes up on that.