by David Dwan
Next to Tiff was a massive security guard who was loitering by the gate ready to lock up. The only structures left now were the small prefab security hut and the fence, and of course the house. Davis’ BMW was parked a little further away.
Tiff made a ‘well are you coming or not?’ gesture because she sure as hell wasn’t going to come any closer to the house. Davis walked over to the gate were Tiff was hopping from one foot to the next like she needed the bathroom. “Can we go now boss?” He pleaded.
“Of course,” he turned to the security guard. “You speak English?”
“I do,” the security guard answered with a strong Russian accent.
“Good, please take Miss Parker over to my car, would you? I just have to lock up for the night.”
The security guard gave him a quizzical look and held out his keys to the Producer.
“No,” Davis said with a shake of the head. “You can do that after we are gone.” He threw a thumb over his shoulder. “I have to lock up that.” He said.
“Ugh,” Tiff shuddered and took a hold of the security guard’s ample arm. “Don’t ask big fella, don’t ask.” With this she led the bemused guard away and over to the car.
Davis was about to open the box and take out the parchment when Tiff’s mobile phone went off. She answered it and after a moment nodded gravely.
“Boss?” She called over to him.
“Can’t this wait, Tiff?” Davis said testily. He hated using the parchment as each time he did, he always had that nagging doubt that this time he would mispronounce a syllable or two so it wouldn’t work and Mister Minx would come screaming out of the house and straight into his guts.
She took a couple of steps towards him and held out her phone like it was radioactive or something. “I think you should take this, Boss.” She said frowning.
“Okay,” Davis relented and snatched the phone from her.
“It’s the Vatican,” she told him.
Davis looked at the number, it was their man in the holy city, which only meant one thing, he had a new potential ‘volunteer’ for demon time. Perhaps the next show wouldn’t be quite so far away after all.
Over at the house Mister Minx let out a long gut wrenching howl.
SIX
The story of Father Shane Ross’ demise, as it had been laid down in the document he was now looking over, made compelling reading. Although he knew it was fiction, as he read the piece even he found himself slipping into sweaty palmed anxiety. How could he have let himself fall so far from grace after he had thought he had beaten his addictions?
More than once Ross had to remind himself that this was simply just a work of creative writing to sell his downfall to the people over at demon time. Still, whoever in Father Mendez’s team had penned it had an unusual talent for understated, believable drama and it had only taken a little over two weeks to compile.
This was a tale that could have been oh so true had his route in life taken another path. It was all there in stark no nonsense detail, how he had fallen into despair after failing his church funded PHD, (which in fact he had yet to take) his descent back into drug addiction, which led to the inevitable cycle of lies and deceit.
All very tragic, a promising career in phycology gone to waste. He had even, apparently, stolen a two hundred year old Crucifix to feed his habit, nice touch that, Ross thought grimly.
It was all the more disturbing to see the attached official Vatican documentation and police report and how the university had temporarily rewritten his education history. And reading it, Ross couldn’t help but wonder if all this went so horribly wrong he might not end up in prison or on the streets all the same, this fake evidence was so compelling.
Of course Father Mendez had reassured the young priest that no matter what happened, the church, and more specifically Mendez himself would not forsake him irrespective of the outcome.
Fine words from a man who Ross had little or no knowledge of, let alone his rather clandestine department over there in the Vatican. Certainly there were rumours amongst the young priests and novices Ross had come into contact with down through the years. But the more he found out about the man the less Father Ross wanted to know.
Ross thumbed through the document once again. No wonder the demon time production team had jumped at the chance to sign on this particular gift horse. He could imagine them salivating at each new revelation the document contained. A drug addicted Priest! Yes Father Shane Ross would make a fine contestant on their internet horror show.
He knew despite its unpleasant subject matter, Ross would have to learn his alternative history inside out. Once he had signed on to the show, which he would do in a little over two weeks, he would have no contact with the outside world, no phone or correspondence whatsoever, until the show was over.
A precaution on the part of the producers which meant Ross would now have to go through this the charade to the bitter end, unless he could somehow let Mendez know the time and location of the show beforehand and then the Spaniard could come charging in with the Vatican cavalry, if such a thing existed, to save the day.
That hope had soon been dashed however when his contact with the show had informed him that he would be put up in a hotel in London and then flown to the location, which could be anywhere in Europe, just a couple of days before the show.
And that he would have a ‘Production Assistant’ with him from the moment he signed the contract, right up until show time. It seemed they had thought of everything.
SEVEN
A scream, high and shrill like a shark attack victim, half mad with terror, staring down into blood red water and into the black maw of the deathly grey beast coming up from the murk for another bite.
It was the flashback again, that sickeningly vivid memory of the night not so long ago when Michael Davis had seen the face of hell leering over him as he laid helpless on his back waiting to die in some anonymous cheap hotel room. That mouth with row after row of jagged misshapen teeth so close he could feel its breath like rotting meat on his tear soaked cheeks.
The demon had appeared out of nowhere as it always did in the nightmare. A black blur of stinking filth which he had first mistaken for a shadow cast by the tatty lamp shade that clung forlornly to the over-head light fixture in his room. Davis had been dead drunk, as was usual in those dark days. Hoping to find solace at the bottom of a cheap bottle of booze.
But this shadow had a mind of its own as it crawled from the top corner of one wall and slithered down the mildewed wallpaper in direct defiance to the meagre light the shrouded bulb could muster. Davis watched all this through a haze of alcohol as he lay on his musty bed, contemplating his woeful existence.
He had lost everything and everyone he had ever cared about over such a short space of time. His life had turned to shit in a matter of weeks and those whom not so long ago had called him friend (usually when he had the money to buy their devotion) had fled for fear no doubt of drowning in the same shit as he was now.
He spent night after sleepless night, obsessively going over all the lives he had ruined in his lust for fame and fortune. All those fresh faced young starlets he had cajoled and towards the end threatened into performing a quite dizzying array of depraved acts for the camera. What had become of them, he wondered in his misery? He hoped that a least some of them had fared better than their corrupter.
“I’m damned,” he slurred to himself in between mouthfuls of liquor.
That was when the shadow, which was now crawling across the floor towards the bed spoke to him. “You’ve got that right,” it had said. The sound of its wretched voice instantly made Davis void his bowels.
He let out a yelp of disgust and got to get to his feet, but the creature, more flesh now than shadow had leapt upon him and knocked him to the threadbare carpet, where it then jumped on his chest. Its talon like fingers closed around his throat, cutting off his windpipe. He saw blooms of light explode before his terrified gaze as it slowly throttled him.
“This,” it hissed into his face. “Is going to take a long, long time. And oh how it is going to hurt.”
Davis knew he would never fully recover from that traumatic moment, it was carved into some dark subconscious part of his terror frozen mind, where it would surface from time to time, like now, usually just when he had thought he had banished it forever. Over time his body would heal, but he was forever mentally scared by the memory of this impossible creature that had made a nonsense of the reality he thought he knew. You just don’t fully recover from that find of undiluted horror.
He was never fully sure of what happened next. There was that nerve shredding scream, which he had initially thought had been his own, but then the creature was flung off his chest. Davis turned painfully onto his side to see the thing convulsing on the floor next to him, flailing wildly like a downed bat. All the theatrics of its dark shadowy first appearance shed like so much reptilian skin. It was now just that emaciated, spindly limbed creature he would later know as Mister Minx.
Then Davis noticed the figure standing in the open doorway just off to the right of where he was sprawled. In his fear addled state, Davis had first thought one of the other residents had come to see what all the cacophony in the next room was about.
He was an unremarkable looking elderly man, even given the context of this appearance, perhaps in his late sixties, dressed for a winter walk, with a long heavy coat and a somewhat out of place beanie hat.
“You, you see it, right?” Davis asked hoarsely, his throat raw from his surreal attackers grasp. He was desperate for this not to all be in his head, but still half expected the old man in the doorway to look at him like he was a lunatic, fighting with a demon of his own imagination, covered in his own shit.
It was strange but sometimes in the weeks that followed Davis thought that scenario would have been the more preferable one. It would have been bliss just to put that night down to nothing more than some brief psychotic episode and get on with the rest of his life, such as it was at that time.
“You see it, right?” He repeated half hoping for a response in the negative.
Indeed at first the old man did looked at him like he was mad, but put paid to that notion when he came into the room and closed the door behind him, which Davis now saw had been kicked open with no little force. “Of course I see it, you fucking idiot,” he said in what sounded like a strong German accent. “It’s right there!” He gestured to the still convulsing creature.
Then out of nowhere the sheer absurdity of the last thirty seconds hit Davis like a freight train and before he knew what was happening he began to laugh uncontrollably, which won a raised eyebrow from his unlikely looking saviour. The old man took off his coat and crouched next to the still manically fitting creature.
It seemed impossible in the midst of that unbidden nightmare to fathom how Davis had gone from a gibbering wreck to cutting a deal and buying the creature, but he had. His ego would tell him in his waking hours that he hadn’t been as scared as the dream portrayed him and he was happy to accept that lie. Besides the proof was locked away in a warehouse even now as he slept.
Then Mister Minx, his would be assassin suddenly leapt up from the floor and knocked Davis to the floor. This part of the dream was new, a terrifying development to the half-forgotten narrative. The creature grabbed Davis by the throat once more its face was an inch from his.
EIGHT
“Jesus!” Davis sat up in bed and pulled off his sweat soaked pyjama top. He wiped his brow with the sleeve and tossed it across the room. He instinctively checked his crotch as he always did after the nightmare, just to make sure he was clean. Davis managed the slightest of laughs at the insanity of it all but still raised a hand to his throat all the same, no bruising.
Of course not he chastised himself and then swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes with the balls of his hands and just sat there on the bed to collect his thoughts and regulate his heartbeat that was still hammering ten to the dozen in his chest.
He glanced at the bedside clock; 04:15 it was still the middle of the night and despite how dog tired he felt (he’d only gone to bed at a little after one thirty). Davis knew he wouldn’t get another wink of sleep. Not now that Mister Minx was running around in his subconscious again.
Mister Minx. Davis padded over to the table where his lap top was and slumped down in the chair he hit a key to knock it off its sleep mode. It he couldn’t sleep, then why the hell should it? A grainy web cam image flickered into life on the screen. It was a security camera shot of Mister Minx’s crate, still safely shut away in an anonymous storage unit, where they kept the bastard in between shows.
Davis studied the image just to make sure the crate’s lid was still secure, then he hit a key and the picture switched to the warehouse’s security room to show the two security guards stationed there. Davis always insisted on two, just in case Minx managed to get into the head of one, then the other had (unofficial) orders to shoot his unfortunate possessed colleague in the face if needs be.
Not that once he was asleep and shut away, Minx had any chance of escape, but still it made Davis sleep a little better, most nights anyway. And it certainly helped to focus the minds of the guards who drew the short straw that night.
Davis felt every second of his fifty seven years tonight weighing down heavily on his sagging shoulders. He flicked the image back to Minx’s crate. The star of the show, he thought bitterly. A brief stab of memory hit him like an ice pick just behind his eyes. Minx, its face an inch from his, breathing filth into his lungs as he gasped under its deceptive weight.
“What the hell am I doing?” He said out loud. Surely it was time to cut his losses he told himself. Escape to somewhere far away and warm. After all he had all but repaid his debts, monetarily at least.
It was a nice fantasy, but deep down Davis knew that the one thing he could never escape was his own nature. He was greedy, plain and simple. It was a vice that had gotten him into the mess his life had been, but conversely it had also got him to where he was today. Still living a gypsy lifestyle, hopping from one hotel to the next, but these days the room rate had gone from the tens to the high hundreds.
Still in the entertainment business, of sorts. After all, who but perhaps the greatest entrepreneur in the world could turn the tool of his near destruction, into his greatest asset?
Still, he had to concede to himself logic dictated that despite all of his new found success of late. The best thing Michael Davis could do to preserve his life and sanity, if not his bank balance, was to go down to the warehouse were Mister Minx’s crate was safely stored away and put a bullet into its misbegotten brain whilst it slept.
To end its unnatural existence once and for all. Only then could he truly be free, of his past and those crimes he had committed against the countless innocents that lay hidden there. Either that or blow his own brains out. There were times when either option seemed very appealing.
He did his best to shake off that melancholy notion, and as much to take his mind off the nightmare he opened up a file on his lap top and the next contestant (victim, really) of demon time’s dossier came up on screen. It was quite the tale of woe, this Father Ross’ decent into addiction and estrangement from the church. And Davis could only imagine what horrors the demon would create out of that history to taunt and torture the poor bastard come show night.
A show night that promised to be the biggest yet. Only twenty four hours after the new date had been announced, sales had already surpassed the previous best figure by some way and they were rising all the time. Davis logged on to the site and his mood lightened yet further as the latest total came up on screen just over seventy thousand subscribers to the show and still a couple of weeks to go, then on top of that you could add the highlight show subscriptions and lotto ticket sales.
The bank on show five already had the potential to set Davis up for life. That of coursed begged the question. Should this be the last sho
w? Should he take the money and run, end Minx’s miserable existence?
That would be the sensible thing to do, pay off the last of his debts and start life again anew somewhere warm and demon free.
Davis laughed at the notion and set the laptop back to sleep mode. He rose and went over to the large patio doors at the other end of the hotel suite, he slid the door open and shivered as the balmy night air hit his naked top half raising goose flesh on his skin. Outside, the beautiful city centre of Geneva slept peacefully on below him.
Yes Michael Davis thought to himself. That would be the sensible thing to do. Which only meant one thing. He would, as always, do the exact opposite.
NINE
So it was settled, the show was scheduled for two weeks’ time. Ross was to meet with one of the shows representatives a full three days before, in a hotel yet to be determined. Where he would be briefed about the show, what to expect and to sign the all-important injury wavers.
Demon time was a full contact show, they told him. But he needn’t worry, they hadn’t lost a contestant yet. But just in case... Besides he would receive ten grand for his participation.
Ross remembered the final image of the vanquished Father Winthorpe as he was wheeled away, babbling incoherently, into a waiting ambulance.
Father Mendez has told him that Winthorpe had turned up in a French hospital the following morning, almost completely comatose from the traumas he had endured. Mendez and his team had taken the fallen priest back to the Vatican as soon as they could and were even now working with him as best they could to bring him back from the very brink of insanity.
For his sake and also so they might glean some clue as to the creature’s weakness’ or its current whereabouts. But judging by the show Ross had witnessed, he didn’t hold out much hope of either.