Demon Dance

by Brian Freyermuth

  I finally managed to rip open the pantry door. Literally. I tossed the wooden door aside. Where the hell was Thelma’s rum? I waded through a sea of macaroni, potatoes, shredded chip bags, and various oils and vinegars that had plunged to their deaths. The stench overwhelmed me.

  There was one lone shelf that remained untouched. Bottles of rum sat quiet and serene among the chaos. Five glorious bottles.

  As soon as I grabbed them, everything stopped. A dozen knives, the wooden cutting board, a handful of yogurts, two frozen chickens, and the pan flute all hovered in the air. The silence made the blood rushing in my ears sound like Niagara.

  The living room was the same. Candlesticks, picture frames, chairs, a tall lamp, and even the wooden Buddha that already clubbed me, all hung in the air. But none of them made a move against me. At least, not while I had the rum in my arms.

  Trust me, I wasn’t about to complain as I made my way through a cloud of floating, killer projectiles and back up the stairs. Oussou sat in Thelma’s body, surrounded by a spinning dervish made of the remaining books from Thelma’s shelves.

  “Hey, Linda Blair,” I said as I set the bottles of rum in the doorway. “Looking for these?”

  Oussou growled. “Give Oussou his rum,” he hissed with Thelma’s voice.

  “You want one? How about this?” I held up one of the rum bottles and threw it at him. The spirit lashed it aside with a cone of power. I ducked as the bottle flew at my head and out the door. It shattered somewhere downstairs.

  “So, now we play,” Oussou whispered with a drunken giggle. “You make Oussou angry.”

  “Yeah, I do that a lot.” I picked up another bottle and threw it at him. A flick of his wrist sent it crashing into the wall. He began to advance at a languid pace as he laughed through Thelma’s lips.

  The hurricane of books was getting too close. After wiping my hands on my jacket, I picked up another bottle of rum and prepared to throw it.

  Oussou stopped and his eyes widened. The books fell to the ground.

  That’s what I thought. “Ah, you like”—I glanced down—“white rum, huh?” I said with the cockiest smile I could muster. I uncapped it and tilted the open end toward the carpet.

  “No!” Oussou cried. “You give Oussou drink, yes?”

  “Then you’ll leave?”

  “Yes, then Oussou will leave this woman.”

  Here’s the tricky part. I had no clue if he would keep his word.

  “I need a glass,” I said. I did a quick search, hoping Thelma had seen fit to have a shot glass in her ritual. Oussou didn’t move. Something then cracked me in the back of the head as I searched. Dammit, not again. Stars danced in my vision, but I stayed standing. Oussou giggled as a shot glass rolled against my feet.

  I rubbed the back of my head as I bent down and picked up the bloody shot glass. I’m proud to say my hands didn’t shake much as I poured him a shot of rum and set it on the floor. The glass rose on its own and drifted toward the Loa. Oussou caught it and drank deep. Thelma’s eyes closed in bliss.

  “More,” he said as he opened his eyes with a grin.

  “Oh, hell no. One drink and you’re gone, remember?” I made to tip the bottle again. “Now, get the hell out of my friend, or I dump it all.”

  Oussou’s grin never left. He began to dance, and his hands moved over Thelma’s slim curves. He slowly moved her hands from the sides of her breasts and down her stomach until they reached her hips. “You like this body?” Oussou slurred.

  “I don’t think you heard me.” My voice dropped in pitch. “Get the hell out of her.”

  “Oh, yes, you like this one,” Oussou said with a leer. “Oussou has his own deal. You give him the bottle, or your woman’s neck goes snap like a twig!” He raised Thelma’s hands and gripped her head at an unnatural angle.

  “Whoa, hold on!” I exclaimed. Damn, now what? My brain flew across the game board and landed on a plan. A very stupid plan, but there wasn’t much of a choice when the bastard kept changing the rules. I brought the bottle up. “How about we do one better? You take me and let her go. Then we’ll drink all you want.”

  Oussou cocked his head. “You a willing horse? Willing for Oussou?”

  “That’s what I said.” The rational part of my brain screamed at me to shut the hell up. But if the Loa entered my head, Thelma would have a better chance of getting it out. “What do you say?”

  Oussou thought about it for a moment.

  “Deal.”

  Two things happened simultaneously. Thelma’s eyes rolled up in her skull and she dropped like a puppet without any strings. My own vision went black as chaos erupted in my brain.

  And trust me, chaos was the only way to describe it. My ears filled with the roar of the cosmos. Scarlet light coated my vision, interlaced with swirls of blackness, like ink in a pool of blood. The darkness howled, and I think I screamed.

  The visions came like stormtroopers, stomping their boots across my brain. Memories of my dead wife. Memories of a night when I was ten, dancing in front of a bonfire in the desert. I danced as the night fed on blood and death.

  The images shifted and I stood in a shadowy forest, dark and filled with mist. Malignant shapes curled around the trees. Mountain lions, bears, wolves, and small rodents flooded from the trees. Their eyes shone like white stars.

  At their lead was a huge gray cat with black-tipped ears. It was as big as a mountain lion and just as wild. The cat growled, and the air shimmered from his anger. The white light from his eyes burst in my head. I fell backward through the red-tinged night. A woman screamed in the distance as I plummeted into nothingness.

  Remember it isn’t the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the bottom. I hit that stop like a car playing chicken with a freight train.

  The freight train won.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I opened my eyes, bracing myself for a fight I couldn’t win. The effort split my brain apart. The ceiling fan whoop-whoop-whooped above my head and added a nice little layer of throbbing to my misery. At least this one didn’t try to kill me. I sat up with a groan and found myself on a surprisingly comfortable antique red sofa, the kind made back when flappers were all the rage.

  Thelma made her way out of the devastation that was once her kitchen. She wore a long, swirling summer dress that looked right out of the era of bell-bottoms and tie-dyed shirts. Thelma’s dark skin had a gray tinge to it as she took in the chaos, but she managed a weak smile when she saw me.

  “How was your nap?” she asked wryly as she stepped over a pair of broken lamps. She hid her hand behind her back.

  “Just peachy,” I said. That’s when I noticed someone had filled my limbs with hot sand. With a groan, I lay back down.

  Thelma brought out her hand with a flourish. “Ta-da,” she said as she presented a plate of cooked steak. “I thought you might need this.”

  “You are a lifesaver,” I said as she handed me the plate and sat down at the end of the couch. I dug in with gusto. My gifts came with a price, and the exertion from earlier burned up my cells pretty bad. Red meat was the only thing that could stop the Fever.

  “You know, you should really invest in beef jerky,” Thelma said. Her frizzy hair was calmer, but she still looked like she just stepped out of a seventies flick, something like “Attack of the Raging Loas.” Yet, even with the afro-from-hell and the frumpy clothes, she looked gorgeous. I almost choked on the steak. Clearing my throat, I focused on my meal.

  “I used to,” I said as I chewed off another chunk of steak, “but I can’t stand the stuff. Too salty. And besides, I never seem to get a chance to stop off at the store before things go to hell.”

  After eating a few more bites, I decided to acknowledge the elephant in the room. “So,” I said, “can I ask what this was?”

  Thelma fiddled with the bottom of her dress. “You can probably guess.”

  “Yeah, I can.” I tried to keep the anger out of my voice. “This was some dangerous shit you had go
ing on here. Where’s Jake?”

  Thelma’s half-brother, Jake, was a pretty powerful Voodoo priest. He would never let his sister do this alone, especially since Thelma had only started delving into the magical underside of things a few months ago.

  “Remember the reunion coming up? He decided to head out early.”

  Thelma and Jake shared a father who had a huge family in the Caribbean. If I remembered correctly, this was some great-uncle’s ninetieth, and the whole family was gathering down in New Orleans. Thelma was supposed to leave next week.

  “You decided to try this on your own?” I asked. What had gotten into her? I wondered. Thelma wasn’t reckless by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Excuse me?” Her voice held a sharp edge.

  “Let’s see. I get a phone call in the middle of the night, my friend asks for help before the line goes dead, and I get my ass kicked by your house. Just how many musical instruments do you have anyways? But that’s not the point. You could have been killed.”

  Thelma sighed as the anger left her. “I know. Not one of my brightest ideas, was it?”

  “Hey, you’re talking to the king of hindsight.” The red meat cooled the Fever, and I just wanted to sleep for a year. “Speaking of brilliant ideas, how did you get rid of… What did he say his name was? Oussou?”

  Thelma frowned. “Oussou? Well, that explains the mess. His name means ‘tipsy.’ Obviously, he was a little angry.”

  “Obviously.”

  “As for how I got rid of him… I don’t know. One minute I finished the ritual, and then nothing. The next thing I remember was you going backward over the railing. When I got downstairs, the Loa was gone.”

  “Over the railing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn.” I whistled as I leaned back. The railing had to be fifteen feet up or more. I heal fast, but that seemed excessive. “Well, I’m just glad he’s gone. I take it you didn’t want Mr. Drunken and Pissy in the first place. He mentioned something about a baron.”

  “Baron Samedi,” Thelma said softly.

  Damn, that was like driving in NASCAR with a learner’s permit. “Isn’t he Death?”

  “He’s not really Death, just the major player. Loa of the Crossroads.” She bit her lip before looking away. “And protector of small children.”

  I waited, but nothing more came. Instead, she started to shake as tears came to her eyes.

  “Hey,” I said softly as I pushed myself over to her side of the couch. “It’s okay. We all make mistakes.” I placed my arm around her.

  She sighed and leaned against me, putting her head on my shoulder, frizzy hair and all. It felt nice. Hell, it felt more than nice. I hugged her close and suddenly was very conscious of her warm skin against mine. Her hair smelled of jasmine.

  “Thelma…” I said. My voice caught.

  She stiffened and pushed away. A mixture of confusion, longing, and awkwardness filled her eyes, which pretty much mirrored my own, except mine came with a big old wrecking ball of guilt. Where the hell did that come from? Never mind. I shoved it all down into the back of my brain and changed the subject.

  “This is going to take forever to clean up,” I said. “If you want, I can help. It’s the least I can do, since most of this was thrown at my head.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, refusing to meet my eyes. “I’m going to go to sleep early. I’ll get to this tomorrow.” Her voice held a tiny cocktail of guilt with a sorrow cherry on top.

  “If that’s what you want,” I said, a little too curtly. All of this confused the crap out of me. I saw her cocktail and raised her a big old awkward soufflé of my own guilt. I stopped when I noticed something else had grabbed her attention. Her fearful gaze reached past my shoulder and locked on a point behind me.

  Damn. I calmly put the plate down on the floor and grabbed the knife in my right hand. In a flash, I held it to the intruder’s throat before Thelma let out her breath. A black, featureless mask greeted me. The cold blue eyes didn’t blink, despite the naked steel under his chin.

  The Watchers were here. I lowered the knife, my gaze never leaving the stranger’s, and backed up a step.

  A scarlet cloak with matching hood fell from the Watcher’s shoulders, covering a heavy red shirt, black jeans, and scarlet leather boots. Black jeans? That was a new one. The cloak was outdated, as if the man had just stepped out of a masquerade. Tall and well built, he would be nasty in a fight, not that I was suicidal enough to find out.

  That didn’t stop me from needling him, though. “Shouldn’t you be guarding the Emperor?” I asked.

  “We serve no king,” the man said in a deep, monotone voice that held a hint of a British accent. Possibly Welsh.

  I sighed. “Forget it. Humor is pretty wasted on you guys, you know that? What made you grace us lowly mortals with your presence?”

  “Nick…” Thelma warned.

  “We do what we always do,” the Watcher answered.

  The Watchers were the guard dogs of humanity, although you couldn’t really call them human. I saw one of them bench a Lincoln Navigator and another one lobotomize a person with a flick of his hand. Yet, their sole purpose, as far as I could tell, was to keep the mass public in the dark about the horrific stuff that goes on out there. Whenever an event exposes the supernatural underbelly of our world, they usually wipe people’s memory and clean up the mess.

  Their identities were an intensely guarded secret, but damn if I didn’t recognize this guy’s voice. “You’re the one who talked to me three months ago. About the senator,” I said.

  He didn’t respond. Instead, his gaze went to Thelma. “You have caused quite a disruption, Ms. Babineaux. My brethren are fixing the situation as we speak.”

  “What is it this time?” I inched over until I stood between the man and Thelma. You never knew when a Watcher would decide to become judge and executioner. “Torture? Mind scrubbing? Jazz hands?”

  He ignored me and continued to stare at her. “I suggest you be more careful in the future.”

  “Trust me. I will,” she said.

  He nodded to her and then glared at me. “You always seem to be surrounded by chaos, Mr. St. James.”

  “What can I say? I’m too much of a Good Samaritan.”

  “Indeed. I would suggest you find another hobby.”

  My ears popped, and something large and metal crashed to the floor in the kitchen. I almost jumped out of my skin as a stainless steel pot rolled on the linoleum. When I looked back, the Watcher was gone.

  “I hate it when they do that,” I muttered. “You okay?” I asked Thelma.

  “I don’t think I’m going to sleep anytime soon,” she responded as she pushed her hand through her frizzy hair.

  That was an understatement. My adrenaline had spiked again, leaving me wanting to hit something, but with no target in sight. The Watchers were terrifying at the best of times. “I’ll make us up some more steak.”

  It was going to be a long night.

  <><><>

  I gazed at the back side of three in the morning when I parked my old Mustang in my garage. The car was a recent addition after a nasty wind demon turned my truck into a pile of scrap three months ago. Thelma and her brother Jake were at my side during the whole fiasco, and I can honestly say I wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for them.

  Yet, she pulled away tonight.

  It hadn’t been that long since my wife, Ann, had died. Five years. Five years since I heard her soft laugh. Five years since I last saw her push her auburn hair behind her ear. It was too soon to feel like this, especially when just the thought of her made the Pain rear its ugly little head.

  I did what I always did. I grabbed the Pain and pushed it into a nice little box in the back of my head. I’d deal with it when the sun came up.

  The squeal of the gate to my apartment complex thankfully brought me out of my inner turmoil. I had traded the sunny beaches of Southern California for a tiny complex with a pool that even the lo
cal wildlife abandoned. Apartment 202 was my palace of mediocre living.

  Thelma asked me once why I still lived in such a hovel. My books sold enough to make a decent living, at least enough to get a place with an attached garage and a working laundry room. Yet, it was my home for almost five years. I knew all the neighbors and all the quirks of the place. Like a comfy old shirt ripped and torn from its battle scars, the apartment was a known quantity in a world of uncertainty.

  As I stumbled up the stairs, I focused on one thing: sleep. Like, for a year. At least that was the plan until a figure detached itself from the darkness next to my door. The man stood at least six foot six, and I’m pretty sure a strong breeze could have picked him up and whisked him away to Oz. His long, stringy white hair glowed in the moonlight, almost as bright as his pale skin. He wore a black trench coat, black T-shirt, and dark jeans. The whole look was completed with black combat boots. All in all, it was pretty stereotypical.

  Is this night ever going to end?

  “Top of the evening to you, Felix,” I said as I came up the stairs. “Trying to break into my place again?” I teased. His kind couldn’t go over a threshold without being invited. “What’s with the Goth look?”

  The tall man took in a defeated breath as he leaned against my wall. That was new.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No, man,” he said in the most somber voice I’d ever heard come out of his lips. “I’m not.”

  I followed his sigh with one of my own. All I wanted was to pass out. The small bumps and bruises from the Loa healed pretty nicely. I was still sore, but I just couldn’t leave him outside. I still owed him one.

  “Come on in.”

  I cleared off a stack of magazines and paperbacks from the leather couch and motioned for Felix to sit as I made my way to the kitchen. It took him a second as he surveyed my tiny living room with a distant expression. Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he sat down and stared at his hands.