A Friend of the Devil

by David Beers

  Time.

  God forbid, but she might already have run out of it …

  The crazy man didn’t think so, though. He’d showed up saying something was wrong, which in itself didn’t add up. Of course Brett could think up reasons for such a strange happenstance. Ease had seen her on TV—they’d all been on TV recently. He’d …

  … But, maybe there weren’t that many possibilities. Outside of the gruesome killings, why else would he have come?

  Which rubbed Brett the wrong way.

  The killings were one thing, but that didn’t lead to the man knowing something had happened to Emi. Very, very few people knew that. It’d hadn’t even been leaked to the media yet. Cops and FBI agents were the only ones who know, and it’d happened—well, Ease would have been on his way here before it actually happened.

  He’s crazy. You can’t put stock in crazy people anymore than you can addicts. Their brains work differently … Their brains don’t work.

  Maybe, but Emi had spoken about him.

  She’d been thinking about Abel Ease before he showed up.

  What are you trying to say here, Brett? his mind asked. What exactly are you getting at? Are you saying that there is some kind of connection between the two of them? Because that’s ludicrous. Even Emi would call you crazy, and she’s the one that sat there on her bed trying to peel her face off.

  Her black eyes flashed through his mind.

  The blood on her hands.

  Brett tried to think of something else—of anything else—but couldn’t. Because those two things mattered right now. To ignore them was to ignore her … Emi.

  Maybe something is happening, you dunce. Maybe something your rational brain doesn’t really want to admit, but might be there just the same.

  Brett turned to the computer on his desk and input his password. He opened the browser and typed in the name Abel Ease.

  He had to go through three screens of search results to find something worthwhile.

  But eventually he did. He understood that each minute spent reading was a minute not finding Emi, yet Brett Lichen couldn’t stop reading.

  Abel sat in a strange office with his hands cuffed. He’d watched the FBI agent lock the office’s door before leaving. The agent had read Abel his ‘rights’, though Abel didn’t really understand them at all.

  To say Abel wasn’t ‘handling’ any of this well was a severe understatement. At the mental hospital, there’d been routine, and he’d understood everything. Here, he could barely start processing what just happened because he couldn’t come to grips with the world around him.

  The phone the man had put down on the table—Abel had seen such things with the nurses and orderlies, of course, but never that close up. The staff was careful not to leave personal belongings out, so the phone and the recording device on it had …

  Abel couldn’t keep up.

  There was too much going on and now his hands were cuffed behind his back and he was under arrest?

  Abel felt sweat starting to pop out from his pours, his lungs breathing harder and harder…

  His head jerked to the window on the right.

  A naked woman was on the other side, her back to him. He could just see the top of her buttocks, though it looked more like an extension of her bony back, her entire body lacking fat.

  She leaned against the window, her skin squishing against it. Abel could see her ribs clearly, connecting to her spine and wrapping around her sides.

  God no, he thought. Not right now. No. No. No.

  The woman slowly turned around, her arms hanging at her sides and not moving as she did. Facing him fully, her breasts as nonexistent as her buttocks, blood dripped from her right nostril and the left corner of her lip. Worms crawled through her eye sockets, the actual eyes having been eaten long ago. A thin brown worm struggled out from the hole and rolled down her cheek, falling below the window to the floor.

  The woman stared forward, perhaps unable to see Abel, or perhaps seeing everything.

  She opened her mouth and blood spilled out over her chin, as if it’d just been sitting inside waiting for her to let it out. The dead woman took her right index finger and stuck it inside her mouth, dipping it like one might a pen into an inkwell.

  She pulled the finger out and brought it to the glass window, beginning to write. As the blood ran out, her finger screeched across the glass—no problem. She simply dipped it back into her mouth, pulling out a bony finger with blood up to the second knuckle.

  She went back to writing, continuing the slow process, gathering more bloody ink every time her finger ran empty.

  Finally, the words finished, she let her hand drop back to her side. She closed her mouth, and then all was still except for the worms writhing around in her eye sockets.

  He read the words.

  She’s going to die soon.

  The woman remained standing, not moving, her bloody streaks bright across the glass.

  The FBI Agent walked past her, not seeing any of it. He stuck a key inside the office door and then twisted the knob, entering the room.

  The dead woman hadn’t moved at all; she stood in front of the window with worms crawling around in her skull and blood streaked words in front of her face. Abel’s eyes were wide and he looked from the woman to the FBI agent, unsure of what to focus on. Back at the hospital, he would have known what to do—but too much was happening, this environment too new for him to come to grips with anything.

  “Get up,” the agent said—Abel couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t even fathom remembering his name.

  Abel stood, his knees shaking.

  “Go out the door,” the agent said.

  Abel did as he was told, exiting through the open door. The agent followed, closing it behind him. Abel looked to his left, the dead woman had turned. She was staring at Abel now, or as close to it as she could get. Abel could see inside her head from this vantage point; her skull was full of worms, and the ones twisting around in her eye sockets were only those at the top.

  “They ate my brains,” she said. Her words were notebook paper rubbing across concrete. “They ate them all away and now the same thing is going to happen to her. Worms are trying to get into her brain, and when they do, she’ll be lost.”

  Blood flowed from the woman’s mouth with each word, falling out in waves before coating her chin and then her neck. Red streams ran over her nonexistent breasts and from there to her sunken stomach.

  “This way,” the agent said. “To the right.”

  He grabbed Abel’s elbow and practically shoved him, lurching him away from the dead woman. Abel looked forward, his feet attempting to catch up with the man’s force.

  They turned right and then got on an elevator. The agent pressed the top floor’s button and said nothing. Simply stared forward.

  Abel didn’t ask where he was being taken, didn’t even think about such a question. He was simply trying to slow things down for a moment, if only in his own head.

  The elevator door opened and the agent jerked him forward again, Abel’s wrists pulling painfully against the cuffs.

  “Left,” the agent said, and then Abel was moving quickly in that direction. The hallways up here held no windows, only doors sporadically placed. They quickly reached one on the right and took it. Stairs were in front of Abel, but they didn’t pause long enough for him to consider anything, simply marched up them.

  The stairs ended in front of another door. The agent moved Abel to the side and then pulled out a large ring of keys from his pocket—there must have been 50 on it. He searched through them for a minute or so, finding the one he wanted, and then stuck it in the door.

  He twisted and pulled it open.

  “Out.” He pointed at the open door. Abel saw where they were: the roof.

  Abel walked outside, the sun was almost gone, the light up here fading fast and cold air replacing the little warmth that had existed.

  The agent stepped onto the roof and the door closed behi
nd him. Abel looked around, coming to understand why they were up here. Why he’d been pulled from that office.

  He turned around and looked at the FBI agent.

  “I’m not going to throw you off,” he said, “so you don’t need to worry about that. You’re going to tell me what you know, though, and right now.”

  Abel blinked, remembering the woman downstairs—the words she wrote in her own blood.

  She’s going to die soon.

  “Something is happening to her, and it’s something you won’t understand.” His lips trembled as he spoke. “I can … I can help her, I think. That’s why I came. I don’t know where she is and I don’t know what’s happening. I only know that if I get near her, I can help.”

  “She told me about you,” the agent said. “She said you were insane, that your whole family was. Did you see her on the news? Is that why you showed up here? Your psychiatrist called a few minutes after I put you in cuffs. He said you were on the way here, and that I should be careful. So that’s two people saying you’re insane.”

  Abel nodded and looked at his feet.

  That helped him some. Someone calling him insane. Saying he was delusional or crazy. Abel was used to that.

  He smiled, staring at his shoes—the same pair he’d had for years. They didn’t get much use at the hospital, so they never wore out. It helped keep down on costs, he supposed.

  “Has the news said something is wrong with her?” Abel asked, still staring at his feet.

  The agent didn’t answer.

  “I doubt it has,” Abel continued. “I did see her on the news, for a minute or so. She was standing at the edge of a platform, someone was speaking at a podium. You might have been on it, too. I don’t know. That’s the only time I saw her, though, but I called her cell phone before I saw that. Because I knew something was wrong before that.” He looked up. “And something is wrong, isn’t it? Something big. That’s why we’re up here.”

  Abel looked around, the sun having already dropped further. There was a tall light pole in the roof’s corner, but it’s shine hardly reached the two of them.

  He turned back to the agent, shadows living on his face. “I think I can help, but I need to know more. I’m here because I want to help. Dr. Thoran is wrong. You don’t need to be careful of me, but you do need to make some decisions quickly, because her time is running out.”

  “How do you know?” the agent asked. His voice was lower, as if someone might hear him.

  “You won’t believe me even if I tell you,” Abel said, finally comfortable for a few seconds. He had dealt with this his whole life, and it was literally the only thing that resembled the hospital at all. The only thing that could give him comfort was this, the curse and all it brought with it. “All that matters is that she’s running out of time.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “I don’t know,” Abel answered.

  The agent stared at him, moments passing in silence as night finally took hold.

  “There were murders,” he said, his voice almost startling Abel in the new darkness. “After the second one, Emi began acting different. We had to sit down and speak with someone, and she nearly lost it. A third murder happened, and when we interviewed that same person, Emi did lose it.”

  The agent shook his head and looked down at the ground.

  “She ended up in the hospital, and then … the same guy, the one we interviewed, he went in there this morning and took her.”

  The agent looked up, as if expecting some reaction from Abel.

  He only nodded. “Do you have anything I can look at? A case file?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The entity had spent the last few hours next to the Vessel it couldn’t enter, and during that time, had come up with a few theories regarding the woman. But now, as the entity drove in the car, it was having an impossible time remembering them. The entity felt the theories were important, but it couldn’t focus on much besides what was in front of it. The theories remained back in the dilapidated building, and when the entity left, they hadn’t come with it.

  Fine, fine, fine, it thought. There would be time later, when it returned.

  The cycles of light and dark on this plane were odd, not something it had ever experienced before, but Demsworth’s mind continually told it that the darkness was better for concealment. In the dark, it could find an Altar, and bring it back to the building.

  The Altar was key to entering the Vessel.

  That had been one of the ideas inside the building. If it created an Altar to the Master, then the Master would allow it in the Vessel. The entity simply hadn’t done enough to earn what it wanted.

  The entity had taken the car and driven further west, away from the city. Demsworth’s mind wasn’t great for this, his geographical knowledge more familiar with the city—yet, his mind said going back inside the city would increase the likelihood of capture.

  Demsworth’s mind said the entity wanted a BAR, and a lonely one. Something on the OUTSKIRTS, where it would be full, but nothing else surrounding it.

  The establishment needed solitude, and the further away from the city the entity went, the more likely it would find such a thing.

  It drove for an hour, meandering west and south, until it found what it was looking for.

  The sign on the road held no lights, though when the car’s lights flashed across it, the entity saw FRED’S in large, bold type. The entity identified that as the name of a Vessel. It couldn’t quite see the building, their parking lot was packed and the structure squat—only one story.

  The entity parked the car in the back of the gravel lot. It shut the engine off and killed the lights before stepping from the vehicle. It had no intention of going inside the BAR, but when the moment came, it wanted to be ready.

  The entity waited. It did not check the watch on Demsworth’s wrist, though it understood the closer CLOSING TIME came, the less likely its opportunity. CLOSING TIME meant more people would be in the parking lot and that would make its mission much more difficult.

  People came and went, some entering the building, some leaving, but none walked the entity’s way. It was important that the entity remain where it was, though. To go closer, or to follow someone would bring attention. An idea floated up through Demsworth’s mind, and the entity saw it clearly. A large reptile, a CROCODILE, floated in brown colored water, and large beasts stalked around the watering hole. The reptile didn’t move at all, remaining perfectly still as it watched the animals. Finally, one of the beasts ventured too close to the water and the CROCODILE lunged forward, its powerful jaws gripping the animal’s neck. It wasted no time then, yanking the beast into the water, its teeth tightening on the tender meat of the creature’s neck.

  Yes, the entity thought. Yes, be the CROCODILE. Wait. The beasts will come to the water. Then take them.

  Another hour passed and Vince Demsworth’s body didn’t move at all. Not a sway. It barely breathed.

  And, eventually, it heard laughter moving across the parking lot—toward where it waited.

  The laughter grew louder as the people moved closer, and the entity could hear their feet crunching the gravel.

  It caught a glimpse of them, and then ducked. Its movement was swift and sure, as much a predator as any crocodile to ever exist. His eyes darted between cars, listening to the Vessel’s sounds.

  Quickly, a part of Demsworth’s brain said, informing the entity that it might miss the chance if the two were to get inside a car.

  The entity silenced Demsworth and kept moving, heading to where it last saw them and hoping they’d make more noise.

  The entity heard a moan and stopped moving.

  SEXUAL—whatever that meant. The entity didn’t care nor have time to search through Demsworth’s mind to understand it. The moan had been a little further to the left; without even pausing, the entity changed course, a being bent on only one purpose—without even the possibility of relenting.

  It stood up, strai
ghtening a moment before reaching the two would-be lovers.

  The man and woman didn’t look over, drunk off booze or lust, they didn’t even hear the entity’s feet on the gravel.

  It stood looking at them for a second.

  One or two. One or two, it considered. Demsworth’s left hand was a purple balloon, the pain alone would have knocked someone else out. The entity hardly recognized it at all.

  It wasn’t being allowed entrance into the Vessel because it hadn’t appeased its Master enough. More Altars were needed to glorify the Master, and 2 was more than 1.

  The entity nodded without thinking.

  It moved forward and that’s when the two people finally looked over.

  They saw something dark coming at them, and surely terror fell across them. The best that can be said is the terror didn’t last long.

  The entity grabbed each head and bashed them together. A solid clunk echoed gently into the parking lot.

  The sound of bodies collapsing wasn’t heard though. The entity held them both up by their hair. It stood like that for a moment, looking over the many cars surrounding it. Seeing nothing, the entity turned and dragged the bodies toward Demsworth’s car.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brett opened his desk drawer and pulled out the small, orange bottle of pills. He kept his eyes on Ease as he twisted the cap and took a pill from it. The label on the bottle read ‘Amphetamine Salts’, with the first work being the important part of that phrase. Brett didn’t take them often, but he had a prescription and took them when he needed. Like tonight.

  And probably tomorrow.

  And probably until they fucking found Emi.

  It was well after midnight and two things plagued Brett’s body and mind. Exhaustion was the first (thus the amphetamine). The second was worry, and that dial was slowly creeping up to panic.

  Shortly, Emi’s time missing would be at 24 hours, and Brett was no closer to finding her. It was a Saturday night, and the police force was stretched thin. Roadblocks and such might help, but with so many people driving drunk, it would be easy for Demsworth to get lost in the shuffle. FBI agents were scanning every road camera they possibly could, looking for the man’s license plate, but it wasn’t enough. They needed more agents and more time, and Brett knew they would get neither.